Let me be absolutely papa smurfly clear about this. I have argued that (morphological etc.) differences between my populations are “significant” as judged using two independent metrics: (1) correct classification > 75% and (2) a medium to large effect size for the differences mentioned. These were separate points, not to be confused. (1), I argue, is relevant to taxonomic classification. (2), I argue, is relevant to our every day understanding of differences.
When I say that ‘differences’ are ‘significant,’ I don’t mean anything else. Please mind the context of my statements.
The statement under discussion concerned the correlation between IQ and brain size. Cohen’s statement, quoted, was moronic. By the time he wrote it, the body of evidence supporting Sarich’s claim was overwhelming. The statement also misrepresented Saricb; contrary to what was said, Sairch did present evidence for the within population correlation. I’m not sure why you think Cohen is a well-regarded expert in psychology or neurology. Those are the subjects of relevance. Nor am I sure why you think that this issue is worth pursuing. You are spending an inordinate amount of time on it. Hence my statement.
Don’t bother posting about this again. I’m not going to reply.
No, they do not, as I just explained , the term “natural history” can’t even be applied to humans in any way that makes sense.
If you are conceding that race is neither taxonomically valid class nor biologically real, then we really don’t have anything to discuss. This thread asked why race is considered not tobe real, while sex is. And the answer is that sex is biologically real and race is not.
No they do not, as we have already shown.
WTF?
That reference states that **craniometric variation provides no support for classifying Gorilla groups as subspecies. And it provides no support precisely because the variation between putative subspecies is less than that found within the subspecies
It goes on to say that the the only reason the subspecies are considered valid is because the Gorilla genetic data show a much deeper divsion between the subspecies than the craniometric data, and it is the genetic data that provides evidence for subspeciation, not the craniometric data, which is utterly useless for subspecies classification.
Compare that to the human situation. Craniometric variation provides no support classifying human groups as subspecies precisely because the variation between putative subspecies is less than that found within the subspecies. For exactly the same reason that craniometric data do not support splitting Gorilla groups into subspecies, it also does not support splitting human groups into subspecies
But the very data that you introduced shows that human genetic data show a shallower division between the subspecies than the craniometric data.
Do you even bother to read these references that you introduce? Or do you just not understand them? Because they are totally demolishing your position.
You own references state quite clearly that is craniometric variation is less between two groups than within those groups, this provides no support classifying groups as subspecies. And the variation between your putative races is an order of magnitude less than the variation within them.
Your own reference says that groups can only be classified as subspecies if the genetic variation is higher than that of the cranionmetric. And your own data, the stuff that you introduced, shows quite clearly that the genetic variation between your races is less than the fund by craniometrics.
I thank you for humoring me by providing evidence that utterly demolishes our own position.
Keep it up.
Which you cannot do for humans.
You can correctly assign humans to population *only *when the population is purely defined as “the population that possess this trait”. Such a classification of course is perfectly self-referential. The population shares no other characteristics at all aside from “possesses this trait”. The population does not share any common geography, genetics, ancestry or morphology.
Wrong. You are misinterpreting wildly.
The authors of the study you just cited state specifically that “analytic methods should reveal subtle and consistent morphological differences among” groups of primates solely because they are species, and “species are genetically independent”.
That is what the authors say. Quite explicitly. The analysis only works for species because species are genetically independent.
Since even you won’t argue that Black people are a separate race that are genetically incapable of breeding with you Whites, this is yet another example of where your reference utterly destroys your own argument.
You haven’t actually read that paper have you? Like all the rest of your cites, you are just pulling them off Google based on a few keywords, without actually reading them, or even having access to the full text. This is why you keep presenting references that demolish your own position, isn’t it?
But hey, keep it up. When your own references state clearly that your position is rubbish, it works even better than when we do it.
I forget, which craniometric data is this?
The craniometric data that your own reference says does not provide any support for subspecies classification?
Or the craniometric data that says that there is an order of magnitude more variation within races than between them?
Or the craniometric data that says that, as tiny as the genetic variationis between races, the phycial variation manages to be even smaller?
Is one of those the craniometric data that comes in now?
Gee, I sure am getting roasted in this thread, even worse than in the last one.
If you keep posting references that directly contradict your argument, I won’t have anyhting to do, and that sure roasts me.
No, Cohen rather accurately described what a silly claim Sarich made.
In fact, in your post where you rather foolishly accused him of being “a moron”, the only evidence you presented was an article by Rushton(a well-known racist crank) a letter to the editor, and an article that wasn’t a university publication.
Anyway the gist of your argument is that Cohen is “a moron” because he stripped away a myth I like to believe in.
Finally, you didn’t answer my question. What exactly are your credentials to justify calling a distinguished professor “a moron”?
If you’re going to get tetchy about someone describing Cohen’s comment as moronic you should probably avoid accusing other academics of being “cranks”. Especially when they’ve recently been published on the subject in the International Journal of Neuroscience.
Rushton was reprimanded for approaching people at a shopping mall and asking them how large their penises were and how far they could ejaculate.
Doesn’t that sound like someone who is a crank?
He has long insisted that men are more intelligent than women and also for several decades he’s had a really weird fetish about penises insisting that there’s an inverse correlation between “penis size and brain size” and obsessively trying to prove that “blacks” have larger penises than “whites” while “Orientals” have smaller penises than “whites”.
So Chen, what do you think?
Do you believe that “Orientals” have smaller penises than “whites”?
You claimed that Indians and Lebanese immigrants living in NZ are not considered to be Caucasian?
Do you have any evidence for this extraordinary claim? Or are you, yet again, making shit up?
This is the second time i have asked this question.
And once again, I encourage this behaviour in you. The past 4 pages of this thread are now filled with evidence of you squirming away form these ridiculous claims that you have made.
There is no better evidence of how ridiculous your position is than to watch you being hounded for evidence for your claims, and being unable to provide any.
I think your answer sums up part of the problem. You see these things as personal and whether they cause offense. If it does, then you presumably consider it must be wrong. The data is value neutral. We need to put our priors to one side.
You claimed that Indians and Lebanese immigrants living in NZ are not considered to be Caucasian?
Do you have any evidence for this extraordinary claim? Or are you, yet again, making shit up?
This is the third time i have asked this question.
And once again, I encourage this behaviour in you. The past 4 pages of this thread are now filled with evidence of you squirming away form these ridiculous claims that you have made.
There is no better evidence of how ridiculous your position is than to watch you being hounded for evidence for your claims, and being unable to provide any.
I’m sorry, no. When the argument is about whether race is a valid biological classification scheme, then taxonomic validity is the entirety of the biological reality to be considered.
They are if you’re proposing a classification scheme.
a) You know there’s a difference between how tiger subspecies are defined and how they are distinguished, right? Your own cite says these visual differences are so subtle as to not work even for professionals. So clearly it isn’t just piddly morphological differences - geographic range restrictions, for example, play a significant role in deciding things as well. And that’s not even at a continental level - there were no barriers to mainland tigers geographically.
b) Many of those tiger subspecies were defined last century or earlier. They didn’t have genetics then. Lately, people haven’t been so sure the traditional tiger classification scheme is valid in light of genetics- see e.g. Mazak et al.
c) Doesn’t address why the much greater variation isn’t used as a schema in e.g cats - could it be that there’s more to the classification schema than just the visuals? We can’t tell from your cite, as you linked to a zoo, not a taxonomic paper.
For the purposes of a debate on classifying human subspecies, the terms are interchangeable.
As to the rest, that’s been dealt with ad nauseum. Yes, you’ll find differences between traditional continental populations. No, you won’t find differences that consistently match.
Differences in real world performance based on race tend to be negligible, but differences based on gender can be profound.
Some women are capable of carrying 100 lbs of cold-weather gear load in the military for instance, but can they carry it 15 to 20 miles when necessary? Not likely. In contrast there are certain combat roles that women have been shown to handle far better than their male counterparts, mostly relating to certain kinds of stress - and they should populate those roles with the best candidates i.e., women.
There should be nothing wrong with using science and statistics as a predicate of performance as opposed to political correctness.
Well I think you need to be a bit more specific about what you mean by “negligible” and “profound.”
Consider a small difference in the distribution of some characteristic between two different groups. On an individual level, it may be very difficult to detect. But in a population of billions of people, it could have a very big impact at the highest levels of achievement.
Which in no way demonstrates the validity of the group.
If I divided people into groups based upon the colour of shirt that they are wearing today, there is certain to be a small difference between the groups that, as you put it, could have a very big impact at the highest levels of achievement.
That doesn’t make “wore a blue shirt on March 19” a biologically valid grouping.
I had a long reply, but it didn’t post. I’m not going to rewrite it. I’ll just summarize.
(a) “Taxonomic validity” is not equivalent to “biological reality,” at least given how philosophers of science use the latter term. If we are going to use the term differently, then let’s clarify what we mean.
(b) You can look up the diagnostic criteria for tigers yourself (e.g.," P.t.corbetti, cranium size somewhat smaller than the nominate form P.t.tigris, with a relatively darker ground coloration and more numerous, rather short, narrow and rarely doubled stripes.") I’m not sure what you mean by “piddly differences” – do you mean that these types of differences are piddly? Or do you mean that the magnitude of differences are piddly when it comes to humans?
You agree that, on average, there could be socially important congenital differences between “blue shirt wearers” and, say, “pink shirt wearers” – or “Bra-wearers” and “non-Bra-wearers,” right? And you agree that the differences between these classes would be biologically real, right? Could we then say that these classes, in the instance that there are biologically real differences between them, have biological reality? Or does “having biological reality” mean “being biologically real”? I’m trying to figure out how we are using these terms and phrases.
By your terminology, are sexes biological valid groupings? What about genders? If sexes aren’t ‘biological valid groupings,’ how would you characterize them?
It appears you haven’t read through this thread, since it’s been made clear that virtually the only person who questioned the idea that sexes are not “biologically valid groupings” was Rand who started this thread.
So yes, “males” and “females” are biologically valid groupings but “whites” and “blacks” aren’t and it is utterly moronic to compare “whites” and “blacks” to “males” and “females”.
It’s not specifically about “classifying human subspecies” but about “biological meaningfulness.” And the author doesn’t seem to equate
“biological meaningfulness” with “taxonomic validity.” Otherwise, how would the comparison between race and gender make sense? If the thread topic was “classifying human subspecies” (and if our topic of discussion was the same), I wouldn’t have brought up the distinction. Regardless, you’re right that it’s not pertinent to our current discussion. So let’s drop the issue (for now).
Since our current debate concerns classifying human subspecies, could you show me why “consistently matching,” as you mean it, is relevant? From what I can tell, all that is needed is a “set of phylogenetically concordant” traits. So, yes, there needs to be consistency among some traits (hence a set), but not among all, if that’s what you mean. And to be honest, I don’t know what you mean. Could you give an example using a pair of non-human subspecies? (Did you discuss this issue with Chen? – I must have missed your argument.) Specifically, could you explain in what sense the differences between human populations “don’t consistently match” but do between valid subspecies?
