Somehow NDD can "tell the truth’ whilst simultaneously ignoring actual facts…
NDD, you’re foaming at the mouth.
Seriously. Stop.
There’s no evidence that cannibalism was any more common in prehistoric Africa vice the rest of the world’s prehistory.
But this is some really hateful language, NDD, whether you realize it or not. It reveals a lot about you… and it may be the most revealing thing you’ve posted. I feel sorry for you; all the hate you have inside cannot feel very good.
I have been againts the calls for banning, and for censure, but I must say that this is indeed hate speech. It is desperation as we have seen refutation fundamental of all his ideas, no concept for race makes sense genetically.
I say do not ban this but it must not pass without comment. It is not inconvenient facts it is a blood libel of the same nature as that againts the Jews in the Middle Age.
Hi again.
You’re… skeptical? Of what? That I was writing a long, tedious, overwrought, and ultimately pointless response? Then you’re clearly not familiar with my work. Hyperverbosity ad absurdium is my metier, baby. Please, allow me to demonstrate…
Oh, perhaps you were skeptical that I had nothing new to say. No, that was true. I didn’t say anything in that post that I hadn’t already said (and that hadn’t already been said sooner and better by others). Now, I *did *technically say more, and used some different words than I did before, but that’s not at all the same thing as presenting an entirely new and/or different argument, which I didn’t do. If you’re confused about the difference between presenting an argument and just saying more words, well… that explains a lot.
You know, if I were the kind of person to get all excited about discussions on the internets, I might be a little frustrated by the fact that not only did you clearly not read my cites, which thoroughly answer your questions, you even edited them out of your response to me. But to be fair, there’s a lot of material even in just those two cites. So, since you’re not a geneticist any more than I am, I’ll just point out some statements that seem relevant to me, and you can make of them what you will.
“We can find some gene patterns that are found almost exclusively in small sub-groups of black people, but the majority of black people do not have those gene patterns.” - I would consider Haplogroup L5 to be an example of this:
Of course, this presumes that you’d consider Mbuti Pygmies to be “black people”.
“We can also find gene patterns that are found in the vast majority of black people, but are also found in many, many other populations.” - I think Macro-haplogroup L fits the bill:
I hope that answers your question.
No, I know exactly what I’m talking about, but clearly, you don’t. And it seems the problem is pretty basic. You don’t know what a “group” is. Simply put, it’s one or more of something. However, please note that a “group” of one is generally not considered a group. Also, while the members of a group can be unrelated, typically, calling something a “group” indicates that the members all have something in common. So in a “group of children”, all the members of the group are children. In a “group of trees”, all the members of the group are trees. In a “study group”, all the members of the group are in the group for the purpose of studying something. In a “genetic group”, all the members of the group have some gene or gene pattern in common. So, when I talk about “people who have some gene or gene pattern in common”, I’m talking about a “genetic group”, and vice versa. Perhaps if you read my posts again with this new understanding, they’ll make more sense to you.
Oh, good! If you understand these two things, then everything else should be clear. But…
Oh. I see. You don’t understand those two things. It’s okay; it may come more easily to me because I’m a programmer (though not at all a geneticist, as you might have thought), and I’ve done a lot of work with Boolean logic and binary trees and so forth. So let me try to explain a couple of things:
First of all, here’s a little more about my basic understanding of genetics. (I’ll make explicit my ongoing assumption that if anyone sees an error in what I’m saying, they’ll take they time to educate me, with my thanks.)
Imagine, if you will, a tree, with many branches. You can choose any leaf on the tree, and follow up the stem to a twig, and back along progressively bigger branches until you get to the trunk. So you can look at any two leaves and see how closely “related” they are. Some will sprout from the very same twig, while others are on completely separate branches that only meet at the trunk. The more recent the split that divides them, the more closely related they are. And at any branching point you choose, you can draw an imaginary line, and declare that all of the smaller branches that split off from this point onward, and all of the branches that split from those branches, and so on, all the way out to the leaves, will be in one “group”, and what that group has is common is that it all comes from this single branch, or in other words, is all related at that degree of closeness.
Genetics works the same way. If two people (leaves) have some gene or gene pattern in common, that means that they must share a common ancestor (branch) somewhere in the past. And conversely, if two people have a common ancestor somewhere in the past, they will have some gene or gene pattern in common. It is impossible for people to share a gene or gene pattern in common if they do not have a common ancestor at some point.
Ethnic groups are different. What their members have in common is generally things like physical appearance, clothing, language, cuisine, place of origin, and social customs. Obviously, people can have all these things in common and yet not share a common ancestor that is at all recent. And conversely, people can share a relatively recent common ancestor, and still not have any of those things in common. Sometimes, though, ethnic groups can track fairly closely with genetic groups. Perhaps they are socially insular and insist on marrying within the ethnic group. Or perhaps the only way to be part of the ethnic group is if one’s biological mother was also a member. If something like this is the case, it’s possible that most members of the ethnic group can trace back to a single common ancestor, as indicated by some common gene or gene pattern, and most people not in that ethnic group will not share that ancestor, as indicated by the absence of that gene pattern.
“Han people” are an ethnic group, but it also happens that the majority of the people who consider themselves to be in the Han ethnic group are descended from a certain common (prehistoric) ancestor (which we can tell by the presence of a particular gene pattern). In other words, at some point, someone in China looked around and said, “Okay, we’re Han.” And it just so happened that there hadn’t been a ton of people migrating to the area over the last few epochs, so almost everyone they included in “we” was descended from a common ancestor. From then on, they didn’t tend to call anyone who wasn’t blood-related “Han”. So now, you see that particular genetic pattern in
However, there were probably a few descendents of that ancestor who had wandered off long before anyone got around to calling themselves “Han”. And there were also quite a few descendents who, for whatever reason, didn’t call themselves “Han”. So now, although most Hans do have the gene pattern, there are large numbers of non-Han (Chinese and otherwise) who also have it. In fact,
[Emphasis mine] So if we know someone is Han, there’s a good chance that they are in this genetic group (that is, they share this genetic pattern). But if all we know is that they are in this genetic group, it’s not a safe guess that they are Han.
Or to put it another way, if we drew a circle around ethnic Hans, and another circle around people with Haplogroup O3, the Han circle would be a smaller circle almost entirely inside the genetic group circle. There’d be little portion of the Han circle poking out of the genetic group circle - that’s the people who call themselves “Han”, but don’t have the gene pattern. Then, there’d also be a larger space outside the Han circle, but still inside the genetic group circle - that’s the non-Hans who have the gene pattern. And just as a reminder: those people who are in the Han circle but outside the genetic group circle are, by definition, not as closely related to the other people in the Han circle as the the people within the genetic circle (Han or not) are related to each other. So, just as you say, there may be a Han person who is more closely related to a Vietnamese person than to another Han person.
So, what kind of generalizations can we draw about these two groups, ethnic Han and Haplogroup O3? Well, we can say that, in general, people who call themselves “Han” will be fairly likely to have this gene. And therefore, if there’s some attribute directly associated with this gene, like a lovely singing voice, then we can also reasonably say that, in general people who call themselves “Han” will be fairly likely to have a lovely singing voice.
Now, here’s the question: if we see that, on average, people who call themselves “Han” are far more likely to have a lovely singing voice than people who don’t call themselves “Han”, would it be reasonable to assume that this disparity is primarily due to the prevalence of the Haplogroup O3 gene pattern among people who call themselves “Han”?
No.
Why not? Because if the gene pattern is responsible for having a lovely singing voice, then we would expect to see an *equal *(or greater) likelihood of having a lovely singing voice in non-Han people who nevertheless also have this pattern, and a lesser likelihood of having a lovely singing voice in Han people who do not have this pattern.
This is “why [relative closeness/distance of relatedness among racial groups] somehow invalidates generalizations on the basis of race”. There cannot be genetically-based similarities unless there are genetic similarities. And the degree of genetic similarity is dependent on the closeness of relatedness. If part of a racial group is more closely related genetically to part of another race than it is to other members in the group, then we cannot attribute some genetically-based similarity to that racial group without also including the more closely related members of the other race.
Huh. You know what would be effective in “closing the gap”, at least in the height example? Completely ignoring the race groupings. Because again, while height is genetic in origin, the gap is entirely a statistical fluke. If you were to consider the population as a whole, you’d find that there’s a group of people who are Exceptionally Tall, and another group who’s not, and you’d never be able to work your way backward from those groups to the randomly designated racial groups, because they have no relation to the height of the individuals in those groups. Now there’s no “height gap”! Done!
So what do you think? Maybe we could just ignore the categories of “black people”, “white people”, and so on, and consider the population as a whole. We’ll just group by “intelligent people”, “slightly less intelligent people”, and so on. Yes! Good! And if we do that, and we *still *see that there are more white people in the smarter groups, and more black people in the dumber groups, what does that indicate? That intelligence is linked to race somehow? Yes! I think you’ve got it! And do we then have reason to assume that the linkage is genetic in origin? No. No, no, no. And why not? Class? “Because we haven’t demonstrated any link between race and genetics.” Correct.
Yes, I dispute this. Once more, with feeling: in my example, the Pure Environmentalists (that is, the strawmen you invented), are indeed wrong. But the people who assert that the gaps are primarily genetic in origin are also wrong. The gap is based on nothing more than random chance. It’s almost tautological, in fact: Race 1 has the greatest average height, and *all *that allows us to say about the members of Race 1, individually or in general, is that they are members of the race with the greatest average height. The gap has nothing to do with genetics. If I had made height totally dependent on nutrition in my example, and all the numbers were the same, then you could hardly claim the gap was genetic in origin. It just happens that the gap is in an attribute that is genetic.
And here’s the thing: that attribute is genetic because I made it a given in the premise of my example. In the real world, however, while I believe most people agree that genetics has some role in determining intelligence (depending on how we define it, and no, I’m not going back down that road again), I’m pretty sure exactly no one claims it’s 100% genetically determined, and questions of how large that role may be, and whether (and if so, to what degree) the genetic influence can be impacted or nullified entirely by other factors are hotly disputed. So even if you could reasonably call the “height gap” primarily genetic, you cannot, by that same logic, say the same about the “intelligence gap”. That is, the “gap” is only as genetic as the attribute in question.
Yes. Fine. It does not necessarily follow that the intelligence gap between blacks and whites is not substantially genetic in origin.
It’s possible that, even though “black people” are not a genetic group, even so, by some crazy coincidence, all the branches of the tree leading to groups that you’d call “black people” just happened to develop some genetic mutation, right after splitting off from everyone else, that makes them dumber than non-“black people” groups, and whenever a non-“black people” group separated from a “black people” group, they lost the mutation. Somehow. Maybe aliens did it. Or, we could say God. Whatever.
It’s roughly equally possible that if we were to take your genetic code, convert it to binary, parse that into hexadecimal, and then translate that into ASCII, it would spell out the full lyrics to “Baby Got Back”. In Farsi.
Tell you what. Let’s try it like this: if you think that “black people” have lower intelligence due to their genes - and it’s possible - then presumably, there’s some gene, or group of genes, or various groups of genes, that correlate with lower intelligence. And presumably, we’d find at least one of these genes in almost all “black people”, and we wouldn’t find any of them almost anywhere else. If you think this gene (or genes) exist, then you should be able to provide some evidence. We’ll wait here. Oh, and a tip? Starting with the presumption that there are genetic similarities that correspond to racial groups doesn’t count as evidence.
See, this is your problem. You start with a flawed premise (that your questions are “reasonable”, that “black people” means something genetically), and you draw a faulty conclusion (that I’m not responding because I don’t have good answers, that racial gaps in intelligence must be genetic) that ignores all evidence to the contrary (the fact that I’ve been exhaustively responsive thus far, the fact that any genetic group that contains all “black people” necessarily contains just about everyone else in the world). Instead, if you *really *looked at all the evidence (the fact that you’re apparently unaware that you have nothing to say that contradicts anything I have to say, the fact that you jump to conclusions, the fact that you’re unable or unwilling to string together a clear, cogent argument and engage in a reasoned discussion), then you might understand the true reason I won’t be responding anymore.
Assertion of a conspiracy to suppress the truth is a standard “take a drink” trigger.
(Of course, I mean a drink of water or milk or Yoo-Hoo or something similarly innocuous. Alcohol poisoning is no laughing matter.)
But liberals are the smarter of the two political platforms. I have facts on my side. So, obviously there must be a genetic basis for the fact I’m smarter than you, therefore superior, which enables me to dismiss all your arguments out of hand, if I so choose. And I do.
I’m also 100% caucasian, so I’m smart[sup]2[/sup]. Who owns you? I’d like to buy you from your masters and put you to work cleaning my toilets and weeding my yard. Also, have you been castrated? We’ll need to be sure you’re castrated as I have a teenage daughter. We can’t trust your kind around the women-folk.
For an encore, do you spout nonsense about chemistry, in the course of which you declare the periodic table “difficult to read”?
NDD is still engaged in the battle of wits, threatening to bite his foe’s knees off.
Returning from my self-imposed thread exile just long enough to say bravo, HoD.
(And farewell again.)
First, Dorkness, that was beautiful, clear, logical writing. Kudos for the effort. While the probability that Brazil or NDD will get any enlightenment from it approaches zero, I am learning from the responses to their assertions, so this thread has been educational for me.
Secondly, Cymk, while you may not be able to trust NDD, I am sure you can fully trust your daughter…
I missed that. Did he?!
BWAHHAHAHAAHHAHAAHA!
Couldn’t agree more. Heart of Dorkness, excellent post.
Oh, I fully trust my daughter, as she’s clearly inherited not only my intellect, but my irresistible good looks. Needless to say, going scorched-earth on his genitalia is the only way to be sure.
It’s a 20-minute crash course in population genetics. However, here’s the interesting thing. Most of what he said? Other people have brought it up in this thread. You ignored them.
He’s seen all of the Tyler Perry Madea films. He’s a victim, really.
I could take any stance from flat-earth to unicorns still exist and use the exact same “logic”, “fact” cherry-picking, and ignoring of any presented scientific evidence to doggedly defend my stance to nth degree as NDD and b84 have both applied here and elsewhere.
It’s really not that hard to employ, actually, as it’s what people who lack critical thinking do. And if anyone mocks you, you only need to remain calm and cool-headed then accuse your opponents with ad hominems of all degrees, or put them on your “ignore” list, so you can weasel your way out of having to defend your illogic and lack of intelligence from being exposed, when your obtuse strawmen arguments start to fail.
"when your obtuse strawmen arguments start to fail. "
Assuming you are even capable of *discerning *their failure…
This is an extremely odd statement coming from someone who claims there are only three races.
If I didn’t no better I’d say you’re conceding your claim to there being three races is bullshit.
No, that you ever seriously intended to respond to my post. Until I pointed out that you had disappeared.
Not really. To be sure, you have precisely defined what is meant by a “genetic group,” but under your definition, blacks clearly qualify as a “genetic group.”
To illustrate this, consider my Race 1, which is defined as {People born on Ceylon; People born in China between 1950 and 1970; People who self identify as “Puerto Rican”}
Since everyone in Race 1 is a human being, they surely all have genes in common.
Similarly, any subset of human beings is a “genetic group” under your definition.
That may be so, but so what?
What exactly is your point with this analogy?
That may be so, but again, so what?
It does not undermine my point in the slightest.
Besides which, are you aware that there are people out there (with political power) who obsess over disparate racial outcomes and insist that it must be due to discrimination?
Seriously, are you aware of them?
Well would you say that in my Race 1, Race 2, Race 3 example, there is no link between race and genetics?
It’s not a strawman at all. Why do you think people in this very thread talk about economic embargos on Haiti? Why do you think they assert that blacks underperform because of American culture? Seriously, why?
Well do you agree that in my example, if everyone had the same genes for height, then there would be no difference in average height between Race 1 and Race 2?
Agreed, but that’s not the point. The point is that even if you have 2 or 3 arbitrary groups, like my Race 1, a gap between or among those groups might still be primarily genetic in origin.
Exactly.
By your definition, they clearly are a “genetic group.”
It wouldn’t take that that much of a coincidence. For example, suppose that by coincidence, a few genes for intelligence popped up in Europe and Asia (they had to pop up somewhere), and spread through Europe and Asia but did not make it into Sub-Saharan Africa because there was a big desert in the way at the time.
I think it’s pretty likely that (1) genes will be found which are related to higher intelligence; and (2) most of those genes will be found to be a lot more common in whites and Orientals than in blacks.
Please quote the question which you think is unreasonable.
Well perhaps the problem is that you have a mote in your own eye.
For example, you started using a new phrase – “determining factor” – and yet you won’t define it for me or give examples.
Similarly, I asked you the following question which you ignored:
Why won’t you concede this point?