But if you did any kind of statistical analysis to compare this group with any other, it would fail the null hypothesis and be considered NOT TRUE. And again, the hypothesis is whether greenness correlates with climbing. Even a non-scientist who actually observed a significant number of each individual within the group would see that there’s actually two different groups. So saying on “average group x is significantly better at skill y than other groups because of nature” would be false because group x really doesn’t exist beyond being green. The only thing one could say that is true is group x is green. Whether or not gekko climbing ability is really due to nature is irrelevant to the premise of greenness relates to climbing.
The reason people lump humans into incorrect ‘races’ is because they really don’t observe differences within groups of which they are not members. Just like when people joke that all x’s look alike. This is why some people are claiming that races aren’t just lumped by color. But they are lumped by only a few superficial characteristics that happen to be different than the superficial characterstics in their own group.
Let’s just set the record straight about the whole red herring concerning people who live close together looking more alike than they do to people living further away (as a general rule). No one is disputing that.
Bot for those who seem to think that piece of evidence is conclusive for the existence of races, please do as the OP requests: Tell us what the races are. How many, where are the borders, and what are the defining characteristics?
Well, now we’re quibbling about the rules of the hypothetical. In this hypothetical, people really can’t tell the difference between peas and gekkos, even though it seems so obvious to us.
Of course the group “exists”. It’s defined in a way that to us outside observers seems bizarrely arbitrary, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Or at least, I’d like you to explain a lot more clearly what you think it means for a group to “not exist”.
Well, now we’re just discussing semantics. What does “biologically meaningful” mean in the first place? I claim that in that universe (and remember, this is not a hypothetical I created), it is possible for someone to make a true claim about the average abilities of that group, one that might help in a practical fashion (ie, you need to find someone to climb walls), and one that is based solely on nature and not nurture.
And this is in fact not a trivial statement that would be true about any possible groupings, ie, group-by-last-digit-of-SSN.
In other words, even if you would never start from pure biology and end up creating those classifications, you can take those classifications, run them through various biology-based analyses, rank them on a scale from 0 to 100 in terms of meaningfulness, and as long as they’re not 0, then they’re not “meaningless”.
When someone uses a word that can have multiple meanings, and you don’t know which meaning they mean, you can simply ask them what they mean. You don’t need to fly off the handle and assume they are an evil evil person simply because they said “race” instead of “genetic cluster.” A scientific article that uses the word “race” would generally define its terms, so you can decide whether you are happy with exactly how that researcher drew the circle around particular genetic clusters.
And I have no “need to cling” to the word “race.” I’ve just been trying to explain that people can use the word “race” to mean only “genetic clusters” and don’t necessarily have any bad motive.
Well, it’s as bimodaly as a bimodal distribution can be. An average doesn’t really mean anything. Now that I’m thinking of it, can you even test significance between the other groups if they’re not even close to being normal distributions?
Even though they can’t tell the difference, that doesn’t make their observations true.
I said in my post, exists beyond greenness. Beyond green, there’s no reason to group them.
I guess I’m trying to stay close to the OP, which is biological meaning. That’s why I still don’t get what you’re trying to say. I have a serious block. Of course, I’m defining biological as genetic.
First, you can certainly specify that by ‘race’ you mean populations or genetic clusters if you want. But it’s not good science. Terminology should be chosen for uniqueness, specificity, and a lack of ambiguity. There are terms fitting those criteria that should be used instead of ‘race’.
Secondly, even in the quotes you are responding to, nobody is calling you evil or ascribing a bad motive to you. You do seem to be using the same arguments as people who do have bad motives, even though you seem to understand the the facts. That’s what is curious about your responses.
How do you figure? If there’s a room with 10 people in it and 5 are billionaires and 5 are homeless, they have an average net worth of $500 million. That’s somewhat meaningless in that saying to a homeless guy “hey, you’re in a group with an average net worth of $500 million” doesn’t really help him much. However, if you’re going to attempt to fundraise for charity from that group while I’m attempting to fundraise from 10 people who each have a net worth of $20,000, then that average is pretty darn meaningFUL, although granted it would be nice if you could tell the homeless people from the billionaires so as to not waste your time with them.
I can’t swear I understand what you’re asking, but I’m pretty sure you’re talking in an abstract statistical sense, rather than in actual practicality… see the above discussion re billionaires.
What observation? Those people put “peas and gekkos” into a group. They do. That’s a matter of definition. Those groups “exist” in that universe. What we’re discussing is what can be meaningfully said and done with or about those groups. At least, that’s what I think we’re discussing.
Sure, but the grouping has already been done. It’s fait accompli. Remember, I’m not claiming “here is the way that grouping SHOULD be done, or here is the BEST way, or even here is a GOOD way”, I’m just saying “grouping already IS done this way, is it correct to say that that grouping is truly and completely without any biological meaning”.
Exactly. For every-day use, “race” is OK and we generally know what people mean when they use it, especially in the US where we don’t have the full continuum of populations represented to any proportional degree that the exist over the globe. Or, when we don’t know, we can ask the person to be more specific. IOW, it’s a fine and dandy social construct.
But you don’t want to use such terms in a scientific (ie, biological) context where it’s never quite clear what any given scientist means when he uses that term. AND when that term actually has defined meaning (subspecies) that does not apply to humans.
You can’t say that biology has an infinite numbers of ways to define race. It would still be somewhat limited. This doesn’t create a false dichotomy. This is a common argument used to say that any definition of race is as good as another. Well it isn’t, not in a scientific context.
You’re contrasting the obvious connection between child and parent with the arbitrary relationship to a person chosen at random. This is a logical fallacy which can’t be used to draw a conclusion. You’ve also brought in something about fed up people and silly positions that haven’t been expressed in this thread.
Here you clearly take that position that one definition of race is as gpod as another, based on the logical construct bingo bango.
More strawmen, over-generalization, and discussion of matters not present in the thread. Yet amidst these statements you clearly reject conventional notions about race and decribe something like sound biology. Maybe you just have some left over frustrations from other threads. This one has (remarkably) stayed on the track of biological reality instead of all the other possible uses of the term ‘race’. I’m not clear what you are arguing against.
Here’s a different way to think about this… so a new disease comes up which is particularly deadly to peas. So a pea has 30% likelihood of being susceptible to it, whereas for non-peas it’s < 1%.
So, some guy studying this disease and cross-referencing it with census data using the groupings that everyone in this universe is used to is going to notice that there’s a 15% susceptibility rate among peas-and-gekkos, compared to <1% for the other groups. He reports that to the scientific authorities. How should they proceed? Is it unreasonable for them to immediately (well, as soon as they’ve confirmed the basic data) send an alert warning all peas-and-gekkos about this disease and how to protect themselves, etc? Or should their response be “well, we happen to know that peas-and-gekkos is a biologicaly meaningless group, therefore we reject your data, la la la la la”. (I mean, ideally they’d also continue to research and would presumably at some point isolate the disease to peas, not gekkos, but there’s no reason they should refuse to act on the potentially important information they have until they get that far…)
That would be excellent support for the existence of biological races if the authors of that paper didn’t say:
You trot that out in every thread on this subject, and someone always has to point that out to you. Will you never stop with the nonsense? Your cites do not support your conclusions.
So what if gene flow is not linear with distance? So what if there are “small” discontinuities in the clines if you do some incredibly complex statistical analysis as these guys have done. This is not the same as what we see when we say there are subspecies of populations.
Are we somehow incapable of identifying Peas from Geckos?
Take the concrete example of Tays-Sachs. There are three major populations/elasticities that are carriers of the disease; Ashkenazi Jews, Cajuns, and French Canadians. Should you warn and test all Jews because one particular group of Jews is at risk, or everyone in Louisiana or Quebec? In the real world, we can study things beyond the fact that they’re all green and find a true biological connection. Once we have discovered that we can apply testing and remediation efforts to the affected people.
You’re analogy only holds if there’s no way to distinguish between Peas and Geckos. If we can only see color and nothing else, then perhaps your analogy would hold. But you are putting restrictions on your case that simply don’t apply in the real world of human ancestry. We are able to tell peas from geckos, and we’re able to tell Ashkenazi from Sephardi.
People may be unclear of their heritage, or adopted, or simply may be unaware. As a first order approximation you could test everyone in a geographic area that has a higher percentage of Ashkenazi (or Cajuns, or French-Canadians) as a public safety matter but you’d never call them a race. It’s an artifact of statistics - there are no biological underpinnings.
Most biologists classify the common chimpanzee into 3 or 4 subspecies (depending on who is doing the analysis). If you want to see a real species that can be subdivided into geographically isolated populations, look at figure 3 in this link.
The amount of human variation is much, much less than that seen within any given subspecies of chimps. Add to that the fact that things like rivers (or even oceans) don’t stop us from interbreeding (as they do for chimps), and it just makes no sense to talk about isolated populations of humans forming some sort of subgroup.
Now, clearly that is incorrect - that is why the clusters are found, because of geographical separation leading to restricted gene flow between groups.
So what do you see when there are subspecies of populations? Consider the genetic differentiation in other species.
Also, what is your take on the cladistic race concept that Robin Andreason suggests?
Unless it is your contention that gene flow has to be exactly equal everywhere and at every time, then… so what? “Restricted” gene flow can mean almost anything. In a subspecies, it has to be nonexistent (or nearly so).
That’s why I provided the information on differentiation amongst other species above. The discussion of which ones have subspecies is interesting, as it appears human populations have sufficient differentiation to meet that criteria. Also, races are less distinct that subspecies?