No. You said that is possible to define genetically divergent human populations that are phenotypically distinct.
That statement is just plain wrong. It may not be what you intended to say, but it is what you said. When challenged you once again contended that you could make a valid case that you are able to define genetically divergent human populations that are phenotypically distinct.
If you are now willing to concede that it is impossible to define genetically divergent human populations that are phenotypically distinct, then we have no argument. We are in 100% agreement.
But I would appreciate you stating clearly that this is now your position.
People can argue all sorts of nonsense in god faith. People argue that the moonlandings were fake in good faith. That does not make the position true, not does it make the case for such a position valid.
And it has nothing to do with perceived “race.” We could just as easily say that the sprinting finals in the next Olympics will be dominated by humans and our statement would have just as much meaning.
It would, however, be misleading and nearly dishonest, because it would be taken to mean that there is some special quality that all people with sub-Saharan antecedents share that makes them fast sprinters. (In fact, that specific argument has been made on this board on numerous occasions by posters pushing for the acceptance of some vague notion of “race.”)
Sorry. The second statement might not be “entirely correct,” (it would also be rather rare on this board without a number of qualifiers), but the original observation has so much wrong with it that even a flawed response, (one that would typically be corrected pretty quickly on this board), is a better start than letting the original statement pass, unchallenged.
I don’t have a position on the matter, because I am not a biologist. I have only said it is possible, from a layman understanding, to construct a position that superficially appears to be the case given the definition I quoted from wikipedia of “race”.
If the interest is in convincing people, then perhaps more moderate tactics are called for. If you want the argument to go on forever, “no, you’re wrong about x, the only answer is y” is certainly a much better choice than “even if x were true, it’d still be superior to use y” after people have been declaring the former for literally hundreds of posts.
I am using a somewhat conciliatory arguing style when it’s been amply demonstrated that a fiat-declaration style is not working. I am ultimately arguing for the same functional position as you (that is, “The use of ‘race’ in a context involving human populations in biology is wrong.”). You will just have to cope with the fact that I’m willing to ignore the primary thrust of the argument that has not been working (“‘Race’ doesn’t actually apply to humans in a biological sense.”) to make a secondary argument (“Regardless of whether ‘race’ applies to humans in a biological sense, its use gives the wrong impression to laymen who will not have that problem with ‘population’.”).
You have said several times that it is possible to construct such a position, but every time I ask you to do so you are completely unable to.
The question is not whether it is better to say that there is no such thing as a biological as race. That is a subjective moral and sociological issue which has no correct answer. It is also an issue that I have almost no interest in and even less expertise. If you wish to debate that issue then please start another thread and stop cluttering this one. If you insist on arguing that unrelated, non-biological issue in this thread I will asks the moderators to consider your actions.
The question being debated here is whether there is there such a biological thing as a racial group? That is a subjective scientific issue, and a subject on which on I have some expertise. It is an issue which has only one correct answer.
And that answer is a definitive “No, there is no such biological thing as a race”. That is why, despite asking multiple posters multiple times, not one poster has been able to name a biolgical race, delineate the people within that race and explain the biological characteristics they used to define it.
I am not arguing a functional position
This thread is not about functional positions.
I am arguing a scientific position.
This thread is about scientific positions
If you wish to debate subjective, functional positions that have no basis in fact then please go elsewhere. The counterfactual claims that you have made pursuing this subject serve only to clutter up this thread.
No, I do not. I believe that you are threadshitting, and that is something that I do not need to cope with on this message board.
Whatever floats your boat. The fact is, this is a debate, and I’m not going to apologize for attempting to convince people of the correct position by a different method than yours.
“But the general skin tone of human populations seems to vary based on solar input in region of origin” is a position that superficially appears to align with the layman’s idea of ‘race’. The fact that position is invalid and completely wrong doesn’t change that appearance one iota.
I don’t want you to apologise. Just so long as you don’t do it any more you won’t worry me
Absolute rubbish. John Mace has already explained this to you.
Even superficially people from Tasmania are much darker than people from New York, Northern Italy and Northern Japan. People from southern Africa are much lighter than people from Northern Australia. People from Mexico and Hawaii are much lighter than people form Southern India. People from New Guinea and Uganda are much darker than people from Colombia or Singapore.
Not even to the most superficial examination does skin tone vary based upon solar input.
And Zeriel, I am still would like to know, are you still trying to argue the position that you can define genetically divergent human populations that are phenotypically distinct?
No, but it perfectly demonstrates that the “layman’s idea of ‘race’” is invalid and completely wrong.
A layman may be excused ignorance of a subject, but once presented with actual evidence, only someone deliberately obtuse will retain ignorance and reject enlightenment. In the instance offered above, note (again) that Africans and South Americans share roughly equivalent latitudes, thus roughly equivalent solar incidence, but their skin tones could not be much more different.
Why should we – or anyone – continue to profer a position that is invalid and completely wrong, except to pander to some layman’s idea? Doing so is the reverse of fighting ignorance.
I have never asserted the position as true. I have asserted that in order to be successful in making your point, you must remember that you’re dealing with people who believe it to be self-evidently true.
Christ, has the idea of devil’s advocacy in service of proving a larger point never actually occurred to you?
Do you still contend that it is possible to argue biologically that there are defined genetically divergent human populations that are phenotypically distinct?
If so then please present this argument. If not then please state clearly that no such biological argument is possible.
BTW, since CannyDan has felt the need to engage your irrelevant moral argument I have had to report you for your threadshitting. I hope this nonsense is not allowed to derail the whole thread.
I contend it is possible for you to make an argument that 1 + 1 = 3 for sufficiently large values of 1, and that “possible to make an argument” doesn’t imply in any way, shape, or form that the resulting argument will be valid, useful, or free of flaws. I also note you cut off my next sentence:
If my position is at fault, it’s using the word “is” in the last quoted sentence instead of “can be construed, by laymen, as”.
I expect nothing will come of this, as it’s not threadshitting to approach a problem from a different angle than your chosen one, especially as this is “Great Debates” and not “Great Blake Proclaims By Fiat”.
It is my opinion, especially in the light of the fact that offering the bare fact has not appeared to convince anyone currently posting in this thread who was not already aware of said fact, that offering an alternate tack that demonstrates why using the term “race” in these situations is a bad idea from a “conveying an accurate meaning” perspective might convince someone who is stuck on the wrong facts to nonetheless use the correct terminology out of other considerations.
I disagree. Obviously it will be dominated by humans. So will swimming, fencing, horseback riding, competitive eating, and the best supporting actress nominations. But only one of those will be dominated by people who would be viewed, in racial terms, as “black”. That’s a pattern, a statistical surprise, something that might or might not be worth investigating.
Logically, it would not. Or at least, should not. If I say “black people are better sprinters”, then your point would be valid. But if I say “the very very best sprinters are disproportionately black people”, that says nothing about black people as a whole. People are likely to misinterpret it, which is one of many reasons that I wouldn’t go wandering around in public discussing this phenomenon willy-nilly. But it still doesn’t make that statement untrue.
I think it depends on the context. If someone spends a lot of time talking about race using various buzzwords and is talking about the negro’s amazing athletic ability as evidence of something or other, well, that’s one thing. But I’m making very very restricted and precisely delimited statements, and only ones I’m saying might be true, not even ones I’m saying are true.
There are many things that humans say and believe that “should not” be expressed in the way that we do. I am addressing the way that the language is currently empoyed in the overwhelming number of cases in North America in the early 21st century. Finding some way to make a statement technically not entirely false has rather little to recommend it.
That sure seems to be an awful lot of work to insist on making some statement that will still be misinterpreted by +95% of one’s audience when it would be easier to simply state facts as they exist.
If there were an unusual concentration of Christians among top distance runners, it might be worth discussing why. However Christianity is not passed genetically to one’s children (as far as we know), whereas dark skin that causes one to be labelled as “black” is. So there’s a huge distinction right there.
Answered above, I think. Or to put it another way, if tomndebb, who is a poster who I have incredibly respect for, is correct that certain East African populations have a set of genetic traits that makes them particularly good sprinters, then if we took 100000 random babies and distributed them all around the world to be raised, and then in 20 years checked in to see which ones were the fastest sprinters, among the very top sprinters would be a disproportionate number of “blacks”, but not a disproportionate number of Christians. Unless you’re claiming otherwise?
As for your previous very long post, I do appreciate the effort you put into it, and you do raise some interesting points, but it’s almost bedtime and I don’t have the energy to respond to it all right now. But this is a very key point:
I feel like that’s basically exactly what I’m trying to say. Groupings of people into the traditional racial groupings produces groups that are more closely related, biologically/genetically, than if you just grouped them together randomly. But the traditional racial groups are not based on biology, and it is possible to use actual science and knowledge to come up with groupings of populations that are much better than “race” at putting like with like. So race is not 100% unrelated to biology or genetics. Or maybe race as a concept is unrelated, but actual racial groupings are not, from a biological sense, totally random. That’s at least one of the main things I’m trying to express, and you seem to agree with me on it.
As for the discussion of a test involving dopers identifying photographs, here’s the test I have in mind, although I’m pretty skeptical of actually trying to implement it. We pick a country at random. We find 40 photos of inhabitants of that country, at random. We pick 20 of those at random and show them to someone. We then show that person 40 additional photos, 20 of them being the other people from the original country, 20 being random people from elsewhere int he world. We ask them to guess which 20 it is, and see if they can do better than chance.
We could do all sorts of interesting variations involving countries that we think have more or less genetic diversity, or larger or smaller immigrant populations. We could try to pick our 20 false choices from neighboring countries vs countries as far away as possible.
It might be interesting, but honestly I’ve lost track of what point it is either of us thinks it would demonstrate one way or the other.
In any case, I’m going to bed, I do apologize for not responding at full length, if there particularly key issues you’d like me to address, please point them out specifically.
You seem to be arguing “one should not use racial language when discussing athletic performance, partly because it’s confusingly imprecise, and partly because of the great cultural baggage of racism that it invokes”. I agree. One should not. However, that still doesn’t make a statement like “a disproportionate majority of the world’s top sprinters are what would traditionally be called ‘black’, for reasons having to do with those individuals’ genetic makeup” or something along those lines, a false statement.
But honestly, I think we’re just going around in circles here at this point.
However, noting that the world’s best sprinters come from one set of populations that might be biologically defined does not really do anything to establish the accuracy of a claim that some much larger groups of populations that happen to include the smaller groups that are good sprinters qualify biologically as a “race.” You are just working really hard to keep a definition that simply fails.
Biologists who work with taxonomic systems use words like species, subspecies, race, and population in very particular ways; these are “words of art”. Admittedly taxonomists may vary in their application of one or another of these words to any given subset of life forms, but there is general agreement about what these words mean and each researcher will take pains to clearly define his/her own usage in context. The actual biological meaning of these words has been explained repeatedly upthread and in previous threads. There is no valid biological basis for the subdivision of recent humankind (not necessarily to include prehistoric) into what a layman may term races. You are correct in your observation that some posters here and some people in the world at large remain resistant to reality. That is their loss.
I have zero interest in engaging “someone who is stuck on the wrong facts”. Willful ignorance cannot be overcome by factual argument, since it is based, not on a lack of information, but on a rejection of information.
You though seem to be suggesting that we should deliberately distort our usage of these perfectly fine words from a biological lexicon in order to allow people who are willfully ignorant to use them incorrectly. Let us hypothecate that we have some people who insist that the world is flat, and who continue to so insist, ever more stridently, when presented with actual evidence that their position is not supported by fact. Indeed, they misrepresent information presented, either through an abundance of ignorance or deliberate distortion, in order to support their indefensible position. Having failed to convince these people by reasonable persuasion and presentation of fact, you would now suggest that we change the definition of ‘sphere’ from a 3 dimensional object to a 2 dimensional object so that they can “nonetheless use the correct terminology” while continuing their fantasy. I reject the suggestion.