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> My position, on the other hand, is that all people should be afforded the same basic rights, regardless of their differences. Great, you've espoused the oste

> My position, on the other hand, is that all people should be afforded the same basic rights, regardless of their differences. Great, you've espoused the ostensible position of every person who isn't a self-identified racist. > The position that differences aren't possible Differences are clearly possible and readily apparent, my point is that any definitive conclusions drawn from correlations to "race" are of dubious merit because our racial definitions (as defined by the government and thus as it relates to policy) are imprecise heuristic amalgamations of apparent phenotypes. Skin tone, hair texture, facial structure in addition to language pretty much constitute the entirety of racial identity, so the impulse to group abstract polygenic characteristics like intelligence into what is essentially an individual's outward appearance doesn't lead to much in the way of profound insight. It's like trying to draw conclusions about road safety by measuring the correlation between car color and rate of receipt of speeding citations.

dionidium 10y ago
I think it's clear from your first comment which of us feels superior. Smugness seems to pass as argument in this debate. I was clearly distinguishing between those who hold that position because they think there are no significant differences and those who would maintain that position if uncomfortable differences were discovered.
- homogeneous 10y ago
  > I think it's clear from your first comment which of us feels superior. Smugness seems to pass as argument in this debate. Not sure what you're referring to here but I did not use the word superior or make any references to superiority in any of my replies, but I think it's ironic that you accuse me of using smugness as an argument when you only responded to the first sentence of my reply (to tell me I'm smug) instead of the paragraph describing the argument. > I was clearly distinguishing between those who hold that position because they think there are no significant differences and those who would maintain that position if uncomfortable differences were discovered. What I'm telling you is that "those who hold that position because they think there are no significant differences" is a strawman. Once again, everyone except self-identified racists (they do exist) claim that all people should be treated equally and it is fallacious for you to claim a monopoly on this position because you believe it to be an inevitable truth that some races are genetically predisposed to stupidity.
  - dionidium 10y ago
    Apologies. There's another commenter in this thread focused on superiority and I think I confused you two. I would like to highlight how this argument engenders emotional hyperbole, though. My position is that there are likely uncomfortable genetic differences to be revealed ahead. You characterize this view as the "inevitable truth that some races are genetically predisposed to stupidity." I'll just have to leave it to others to decide if I said anything at all like that.
    - homogeneous 10y ago
      I hope I have not misinterpreted your position. > We're almost certainly going to discover less palatable differences between races -- e.g. around intelligence. I read that as "we are almost certainly going to discover, for example, that some races are more intelligent than other races". From this statement it follows that we will be able to prove that some races are "more intelligent" and some races are "less intelligent", thus it seems fair to conclude that you're asserting that the genetic factors that cause someone to fall into a specific racial category predisposes them to a certain level of intelligence. From that position we can conclude that if an individual displays the phenotypic traits that meet the definition of one of the less intelligent races, it follows that this individual would be genetically predisposed to less intelligence, also known as stupidity. I do notice that you said "almost certainly", not "inevitably" so I apologize for that, but please let me know if I have otherwise misinterpreted your position.
quicknir 10y ago
I don't know what you mean by "definitive conclusions". Any conclusions that will be made will naturally be statistical in nature, and obviously the boundaries between groups are fuzzy in many cases. That does not mean that groups do not exist. It's not a coincidence you can pass people by on the street and readily identify 95% of them as being "white", "Asian", "Indian (/Pakistani/etc)", "black", etc, and that if multiple people perform this task, the agreement will be very high. It's obviously shared genetics that are causing these groupings, and if shared genetics are leading to statistically significant identifiable observable characteristics in one area (appearance), it's reasonable to ask if they are leading to other statistically significant differences. These differences are already used very widely in discussions about policy, as you noted, and that's exactly part of the reason why it should be fair game to fully investigate those differences.
- homogeneous 10y ago
  > I don't know what you mean by "definitive conclusions" I mean any conclusions that follow from a baseline assumption that certain races are genetically predisposed towards abstract characteristics. For example "we should target white communities for voluntary firearm buy-back programs because white people are genetically pre-disposed to firearm suicide." We know that white people are statistically more likely to commit suicide and statistically more likely to use a gun to do it, we also know that genetics play a large role in suicide risk, what does not follow is that the common genetic factors that culminate to express the phenotypes that are unscientifically identified as "white" necessarily imply the existence of genetic factors that increase suicide risk. You might ask, "Well what's the practical difference? In your example we should still target white people for the buy-back because the statistics show the population we define as white is the most vulnerable". To this I say, that's ok, we collected data on "white" people so targeting them for assistance is the best we can do, but it doesn't mean that we cannot do better in the future by disentangling the specific genetic factors that increase suicide risk from the opaque genetic category of "white" people. > It's not a coincidence you can pass people by on the street and readily identify 95% of them as being "white", "Asian", "Indian (/Pakistani/etc)", "black", etc, and that if multiple people perform this task, the agreement will be very high. It's obviously shared genetics that are causing these groupings Right, what I'm saying is that walking down the street and categorizing people into races based on how they look is a crude and unscientific (but efficient) method for grouping people with some shared genetics. Obviously, shared genetics are at the root of these groupings because genetics are the foundation of all phenotypes, but it is not a given that the presence of the phenotypes used to define arbitrary categories like "white" or "black" or "indian" necessarily account for the genetic factors that culminate to make someone more or less prone to violence, or intelligence, or an affinity for musical composition. > These differences are already used very widely in discussions about policy, as you noted, and that's exactly part of the reason why it should be fair game to fully investigate those differences. Investigate away, I have no problem with that, we use racial categories because they are practical, what I reject is the hypothesis that we will one day be able to prove that there is an intrinsic link between the particular genes that cause the expression of a given phenotype and the specific polygenes that constitute complex characteristics like intelligence.

dionidium 10y ago

I think it's clear from your first comment which of us feels superior. Smugness seems to pass as argument in this debate. I was clearly distinguishing between those who hold that position because they think there are no significant differences and those who would maintain that position if uncomfortable differences were discovered.

homogeneous 10y ago
> I think it's clear from your first comment which of us feels superior. Smugness seems to pass as argument in this debate. Not sure what you're referring to here but I did not use the word superior or make any references to superiority in any of my replies, but I think it's ironic that you accuse me of using smugness as an argument when you only responded to the first sentence of my reply (to tell me I'm smug) instead of the paragraph describing the argument. > I was clearly distinguishing between those who hold that position because they think there are no significant differences and those who would maintain that position if uncomfortable differences were discovered. What I'm telling you is that "those who hold that position because they think there are no significant differences" is a strawman. Once again, everyone except self-identified racists (they do exist) claim that all people should be treated equally and it is fallacious for you to claim a monopoly on this position because you believe it to be an inevitable truth that some races are genetically predisposed to stupidity.
- dionidium 10y ago
  Apologies. There's another commenter in this thread focused on superiority and I think I confused you two. I would like to highlight how this argument engenders emotional hyperbole, though. My position is that there are likely uncomfortable genetic differences to be revealed ahead. You characterize this view as the "inevitable truth that some races are genetically predisposed to stupidity." I'll just have to leave it to others to decide if I said anything at all like that.
  - homogeneous 10y ago
    I hope I have not misinterpreted your position. > We're almost certainly going to discover less palatable differences between races -- e.g. around intelligence. I read that as "we are almost certainly going to discover, for example, that some races are more intelligent than other races". From this statement it follows that we will be able to prove that some races are "more intelligent" and some races are "less intelligent", thus it seems fair to conclude that you're asserting that the genetic factors that cause someone to fall into a specific racial category predisposes them to a certain level of intelligence. From that position we can conclude that if an individual displays the phenotypic traits that meet the definition of one of the less intelligent races, it follows that this individual would be genetically predisposed to less intelligence, also known as stupidity. I do notice that you said "almost certainly", not "inevitably" so I apologize for that, but please let me know if I have otherwise misinterpreted your position.

quicknir 10y ago

I don't know what you mean by "definitive conclusions". Any conclusions that will be made will naturally be statistical in nature, and obviously the boundaries between groups are fuzzy in many cases. That does not mean that groups do not exist. It's not a coincidence you can pass people by on the street and readily identify 95% of them as being "white", "Asian", "Indian (/Pakistani/etc)", "black", etc, and that if multiple people perform this task, the agreement will be very high. It's obviously shared genetics that are causing these groupings, and if shared genetics are leading to statistically significant identifiable observable characteristics in one area (appearance), it's reasonable to ask if they are leading to other statistically significant differences. These differences are already used very widely in discussions about policy, as you noted, and that's exactly part of the reason why it should be fair game to fully investigate those differences.

homogeneous 10y ago
> I don't know what you mean by "definitive conclusions" I mean any conclusions that follow from a baseline assumption that certain races are genetically predisposed towards abstract characteristics. For example "we should target white communities for voluntary firearm buy-back programs because white people are genetically pre-disposed to firearm suicide." We know that white people are statistically more likely to commit suicide and statistically more likely to use a gun to do it, we also know that genetics play a large role in suicide risk, what does not follow is that the common genetic factors that culminate to express the phenotypes that are unscientifically identified as "white" necessarily imply the existence of genetic factors that increase suicide risk. You might ask, "Well what's the practical difference? In your example we should still target white people for the buy-back because the statistics show the population we define as white is the most vulnerable". To this I say, that's ok, we collected data on "white" people so targeting them for assistance is the best we can do, but it doesn't mean that we cannot do better in the future by disentangling the specific genetic factors that increase suicide risk from the opaque genetic category of "white" people. > It's not a coincidence you can pass people by on the street and readily identify 95% of them as being "white", "Asian", "Indian (/Pakistani/etc)", "black", etc, and that if multiple people perform this task, the agreement will be very high. It's obviously shared genetics that are causing these groupings Right, what I'm saying is that walking down the street and categorizing people into races based on how they look is a crude and unscientific (but efficient) method for grouping people with some shared genetics. Obviously, shared genetics are at the root of these groupings because genetics are the foundation of all phenotypes, but it is not a given that the presence of the phenotypes used to define arbitrary categories like "white" or "black" or "indian" necessarily account for the genetic factors that culminate to make someone more or less prone to violence, or intelligence, or an affinity for musical composition. > These differences are already used very widely in discussions about policy, as you noted, and that's exactly part of the reason why it should be fair game to fully investigate those differences. Investigate away, I have no problem with that, we use racial categories because they are practical, what I reject is the hypothesis that we will one day be able to prove that there is an intrinsic link between the particular genes that cause the expression of a given phenotype and the specific polygenes that constitute complex characteristics like intelligence.