13 ms·

By the way, it turns out people have been fucking all along and that there actually aren't any black or white people. Never were. Someone made the whole thing u

By the way, it turns out people have been fucking all along and that there actually aren't any black or white people. Never were. Someone made the whole thing up and it got a wee bit out of hand. Thought you might like to know, as it might save you an awful lot of time and worry.

shard972 9y ago
What is the claim you are trying to make? I don't see any sarcastic "/s" present so I assume you are being serious. Are you saying that there are none to little genetic/biological differences between different races?
- tensor_rank_0 9y ago
  I think he's saying that "races" are a made up category and theres just people. I happen to agree, there is nothing special about some gene pool with an evocative label.
  - shard972 9y ago
    To believe that you would have to ignore the current scientific evidence which is becoming stronger and stronger with the acceleration in our understanding of the human genome. Even without any of that evidence though, we still have books like the bell curve which people have tried hard to debunk but so far the key points made in the book about the genetic existence of race have not even come close to being debunked.
    - tensor_rank_0 9y ago
      > current scientific evidence there is no evidence for the existence of a race that does not rely on referencing the idea of a race. the idea is self-referential. to understand this, you must understand philosophy. another way of saying this is that assigning a person to a race doesn't give us any more information than the information we used to classify him in the first place. > so far the key points made in the book about the genetic existence of race have not even come close to being debunked. ok, I'll bite: what defines a race? what test do I apply to a specimen in order to sort him/her into a race category?
      - shard972 9y ago
        > there is no evidence for the existence of a race that does not rely on referencing the idea of a race. the idea is self-referential. to understand this, you must understand philosophy. Huh? Race is defined by a combination of genetics in the form of phenotypes and culture. I don't see the circular paradox here. > another way of saying this is that assigning a person to a race doesn't give us any more information than the information we used to classify him in the first place. But we can? We can say that Chinese are more likely to be shorter than africans. That asians are more likely to have black hair than blonde hair or that africans are more likely to have higher testosterone than european whites or indians. Ask any doctor or pharmacist and they can list you a few ways they are taught about how to treat people of different races differently because of biological differences. We can even go further and say for instance that ashkenazi jews have a higher average IQ compared to Africans due to a large part their genetic differences and not purely environmental reasons. The bell curve which was published a few decades ago proves many of these kind of claims so I don't know where you get this idea that we cannot determine anything useful from race. > ok, I'll bite: what defines a race? what test do I apply to a specimen in order to sort him/her into a race category? I gave a definition previously which is pretty accepted, for how you test for a race the answer is that's pretty easy, 99% of the time you can just ask someone and they will tell you. We can prove this through cluster analysis, where you take a sample set of people and first ask them what race they are from a set number of selections. They then can read SNPs from each of the participants and hand that to a computer without the self reported data the people provided. What you see is that even with 100 random SNP's you have a near perfect correlation between what people say their race is and the computer correctly grouping them into the race they chose. If you want to see some sources, here is an article that links off and summarizes the studies I am referencing http://thealternativehypothesis.org/index.php/2016/04/15/329/ http://thealternativehypothesis.org/index.php/2016/04/15/329...
        tensor_rank_0 9y ago
        > We can say that Chinese are more likely to be shorter than africans. whats a chinese? whats an african? and what is it about those categories that makes it necessary for you to speak in probabilities and not certainties? if those categories accurately described features of reality, and were not mere artifacts that stem from your worldview, you would be able to rigorously tell me a relationship between gene(s) and features. > Race is defined by a combination of genetics in the form of phenotypes and culture. > for how you test for a race the answer is that's pretty easy, 99% of the time you can just ask someone and they will tell you. exactly, its a made up category, i.e. not a real thing. > We can prove this through cluster analysis, where you take a sample set of people and first ask them what race they are from a set number of selections. They then can read SNPs from each of the participants and hand that to a computer without the self reported data the people provided. you can do the same thing for things like "hippie", "biker", "nerd" etc. it doesn't make those categories leave the intersubjective realm.
    - Firadeoclus 9y ago
      > but so far the key points made in the book about the genetic existence of race have not even come close to being debunked. Some would strongly disagree: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/02/the-unwelcome-revival-of-race-science https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/02/the-unwelcome-r...
      - shard972 9y ago
        I started reading that article a couple days ago and it's part of the reason why this subject as sparked with me. His article does a pretty pathetic job of trying to actually disprove anything about the science. The way he smears Charles murray as if hes some closet white supremacists is just absurd if you actually have heard him speak or read his works. Charles is one of the best example of someone who end up stumbling into the question on race and gets put on a fiery cross simply for not towing the line that race is purely a social construct. It's a long read so I don't think you expect anyone to try and debunk it on the spot, so all i would suggest is people interested listen to the episode of Sam Harris's podcast with Charles and determine for yourself if Charles is just some shifty white supremacist neo nazi posing as a liberal or a scientist just trying to get to the bottom of uncomfortable truths. https://samharris.org/podcasts/forbidden-knowledge/ https://samharris.org/podcasts/forbidden-knowledge/ If you really want a point by point rebut though, I know someone who did a video a couple days ago on the article https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxCKQupwZQM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxCKQupwZQM
        Firadeoclus 9y ago
        I listened to the audio for a bit but gave up after coming across multiple logical fallacies. The fundamental point, though, is that given the large variability of both genetics and IQ (or most other traits, really) within those groups commonly called "races", and big overlap between them, the group label itself is almost always of little use.
  - PhasmaFelis 9y ago
    Sure, but I don't think anyone has claimed otherwise? Obviously there's very little genetic basis for the concept of race as a big important thing, but social constructs are absolutely real even if they're a product of our collective imagination.
    - tensor_rank_0 9y ago
      I'm having a little discussion on a parallel thread where someone absolutely is advocating for some sort of racial determinism and thats the context for the comment. [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16517930 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16517930
- testestx 9y ago
  There's no such thing as human races. http://www.americananthro.org/ConnectWithAAA/Content.aspx?ItemNumber=2583 http://www.americananthro.org/ConnectWithAAA/Content.aspx?It...
  - nefitty 9y ago
    The statement on race by that group was adopted in 1998, and is based on work from 1996-1997. That's at least 20 years of possible advancement in the field, unaccounted for. 'The paper above was adopted by the AAA Executive Board on May 17, 1998, as an official statement of AAA's position on "race."'
  - shard972 9y ago
    I linked these papers to someone else but it seems like you could use them. Both show absolutely no consensus by anthropologists on race and even a general acceptance of race among biologists: https://sci-hub.hk/10.1111/j.1548-1433.2009.01076.x https://sci-hub.hk/10.1111/j.1548-1433.2009.01076.x http://sci-hub.hk/10.1002/tea.3660290308 http://sci-hub.hk/10.1002/tea.3660290308
- OrganicMSG 9y ago
  I'm saying I can invent races on the fly, then find genetic differences that would appear to back me up. Is like playing numerology with a large enough book, you can always find patterns. Finding patterns however doesn't mean that black and white as racial qualifiers are anything other than a highly inaccurate classification system that is used to align skin colour with social class, and which doesn't even fall within the gamut of actual skin tone. Is patently obvious where black and white came from as concepts, if you look through history rather than biology. While I do not expect to win this argument on nomenclature within the next fifty years, I do hold out some hope over the next century. edit - Also, am British, the use of a sarcasm tag is offensive to our people. Probably for genetic reasons.
  - shard972 9y ago
    I think you need to read up on some the cluster analysis work that has been done over the last decade. Your statement about inventing races and assigning them to people isn't true. I linked this in another comment but ill mention it again, this article makes a comprehensive argument for race while linking off to the supporting papers instead of just me shotgunning a bunch of papers at you. http://thealternativehypothesis.org/index.php/2016/04/15/329/ http://thealternativehypothesis.org/index.php/2016/04/15/329... Look under the heading "Genetic Clusteredness" and you find a summary of papers such as Bamshad 2003 which explain how they can conclude a strong correlation between self reported races and objective measured genetics via SNPs.
    - OrganicMSG 9y ago
      I hereby invent the race classifier of tongue-dexterity. Society consists of those who can and cannot roll their tongue and there is a high priesthood of the folks who can bend their tongue into a 'W'. It is just as arbitrary and capricious, but has at least one benefit I can think of over classifying people by latitude adaptation.
- DanBC 9y ago
  > Are you saying that there are none to little genetic/biological differences between different races? That's pretty much what any geneticist says.
  - shard972 9y ago
    Unless you go to china, and suddenly we find pretty much 0 geneticists who would claim that races are just some arbitrary construct with no predictive value. To roll it back to the west though, I have seen surveys like this of anthropologists which show no con: https://sci-hub.hk/10.1111/j.1548-1433.2009.01076.x https://sci-hub.hk/10.1111/j.1548-1433.2009.01076.x Or this paper, in particular page 313 which show biologists with a 70% agreement with the question of “There are Biological Races Within the Species Homo Sapiens;”. http://sci-hub.hk/10.1002/tea.3660290308 http://sci-hub.hk/10.1002/tea.3660290308

shard972 9y ago

What is the claim you are trying to make? I don't see any sarcastic "/s" present so I assume you are being serious. Are you saying that there are none to little genetic/biological differences between different races?

tensor_rank_0 9y ago
I think he's saying that "races" are a made up category and theres just people. I happen to agree, there is nothing special about some gene pool with an evocative label.
- shard972 9y ago
  To believe that you would have to ignore the current scientific evidence which is becoming stronger and stronger with the acceleration in our understanding of the human genome. Even without any of that evidence though, we still have books like the bell curve which people have tried hard to debunk but so far the key points made in the book about the genetic existence of race have not even come close to being debunked.
  - tensor_rank_0 9y ago
    > current scientific evidence there is no evidence for the existence of a race that does not rely on referencing the idea of a race. the idea is self-referential. to understand this, you must understand philosophy. another way of saying this is that assigning a person to a race doesn't give us any more information than the information we used to classify him in the first place. > so far the key points made in the book about the genetic existence of race have not even come close to being debunked. ok, I'll bite: what defines a race? what test do I apply to a specimen in order to sort him/her into a race category?
    - shard972 9y ago
      > there is no evidence for the existence of a race that does not rely on referencing the idea of a race. the idea is self-referential. to understand this, you must understand philosophy. Huh? Race is defined by a combination of genetics in the form of phenotypes and culture. I don't see the circular paradox here. > another way of saying this is that assigning a person to a race doesn't give us any more information than the information we used to classify him in the first place. But we can? We can say that Chinese are more likely to be shorter than africans. That asians are more likely to have black hair than blonde hair or that africans are more likely to have higher testosterone than european whites or indians. Ask any doctor or pharmacist and they can list you a few ways they are taught about how to treat people of different races differently because of biological differences. We can even go further and say for instance that ashkenazi jews have a higher average IQ compared to Africans due to a large part their genetic differences and not purely environmental reasons. The bell curve which was published a few decades ago proves many of these kind of claims so I don't know where you get this idea that we cannot determine anything useful from race. > ok, I'll bite: what defines a race? what test do I apply to a specimen in order to sort him/her into a race category? I gave a definition previously which is pretty accepted, for how you test for a race the answer is that's pretty easy, 99% of the time you can just ask someone and they will tell you. We can prove this through cluster analysis, where you take a sample set of people and first ask them what race they are from a set number of selections. They then can read SNPs from each of the participants and hand that to a computer without the self reported data the people provided. What you see is that even with 100 random SNP's you have a near perfect correlation between what people say their race is and the computer correctly grouping them into the race they chose. If you want to see some sources, here is an article that links off and summarizes the studies I am referencing http://thealternativehypothesis.org/index.php/2016/04/15/329/ http://thealternativehypothesis.org/index.php/2016/04/15/329...
      - tensor_rank_0 9y ago
        > We can say that Chinese are more likely to be shorter than africans. whats a chinese? whats an african? and what is it about those categories that makes it necessary for you to speak in probabilities and not certainties? if those categories accurately described features of reality, and were not mere artifacts that stem from your worldview, you would be able to rigorously tell me a relationship between gene(s) and features. > Race is defined by a combination of genetics in the form of phenotypes and culture. > for how you test for a race the answer is that's pretty easy, 99% of the time you can just ask someone and they will tell you. exactly, its a made up category, i.e. not a real thing. > We can prove this through cluster analysis, where you take a sample set of people and first ask them what race they are from a set number of selections. They then can read SNPs from each of the participants and hand that to a computer without the self reported data the people provided. you can do the same thing for things like "hippie", "biker", "nerd" etc. it doesn't make those categories leave the intersubjective realm.
  - Firadeoclus 9y ago
    > but so far the key points made in the book about the genetic existence of race have not even come close to being debunked. Some would strongly disagree: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/02/the-unwelcome-revival-of-race-science https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/02/the-unwelcome-r...
    - shard972 9y ago
      I started reading that article a couple days ago and it's part of the reason why this subject as sparked with me. His article does a pretty pathetic job of trying to actually disprove anything about the science. The way he smears Charles murray as if hes some closet white supremacists is just absurd if you actually have heard him speak or read his works. Charles is one of the best example of someone who end up stumbling into the question on race and gets put on a fiery cross simply for not towing the line that race is purely a social construct. It's a long read so I don't think you expect anyone to try and debunk it on the spot, so all i would suggest is people interested listen to the episode of Sam Harris's podcast with Charles and determine for yourself if Charles is just some shifty white supremacist neo nazi posing as a liberal or a scientist just trying to get to the bottom of uncomfortable truths. https://samharris.org/podcasts/forbidden-knowledge/ https://samharris.org/podcasts/forbidden-knowledge/ If you really want a point by point rebut though, I know someone who did a video a couple days ago on the article https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxCKQupwZQM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxCKQupwZQM
      - Firadeoclus 9y ago
        I listened to the audio for a bit but gave up after coming across multiple logical fallacies. The fundamental point, though, is that given the large variability of both genetics and IQ (or most other traits, really) within those groups commonly called "races", and big overlap between them, the group label itself is almost always of little use.
- PhasmaFelis 9y ago
  Sure, but I don't think anyone has claimed otherwise? Obviously there's very little genetic basis for the concept of race as a big important thing, but social constructs are absolutely real even if they're a product of our collective imagination.
  - tensor_rank_0 9y ago
    I'm having a little discussion on a parallel thread where someone absolutely is advocating for some sort of racial determinism and thats the context for the comment. [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16517930 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16517930
testestx 9y ago
There's no such thing as human races. http://www.americananthro.org/ConnectWithAAA/Content.aspx?ItemNumber=2583 http://www.americananthro.org/ConnectWithAAA/Content.aspx?It...
- nefitty 9y ago
  The statement on race by that group was adopted in 1998, and is based on work from 1996-1997. That's at least 20 years of possible advancement in the field, unaccounted for. 'The paper above was adopted by the AAA Executive Board on May 17, 1998, as an official statement of AAA's position on "race."'
- shard972 9y ago
  I linked these papers to someone else but it seems like you could use them. Both show absolutely no consensus by anthropologists on race and even a general acceptance of race among biologists: https://sci-hub.hk/10.1111/j.1548-1433.2009.01076.x https://sci-hub.hk/10.1111/j.1548-1433.2009.01076.x http://sci-hub.hk/10.1002/tea.3660290308 http://sci-hub.hk/10.1002/tea.3660290308
OrganicMSG 9y ago
I'm saying I can invent races on the fly, then find genetic differences that would appear to back me up. Is like playing numerology with a large enough book, you can always find patterns. Finding patterns however doesn't mean that black and white as racial qualifiers are anything other than a highly inaccurate classification system that is used to align skin colour with social class, and which doesn't even fall within the gamut of actual skin tone. Is patently obvious where black and white came from as concepts, if you look through history rather than biology. While I do not expect to win this argument on nomenclature within the next fifty years, I do hold out some hope over the next century. edit - Also, am British, the use of a sarcasm tag is offensive to our people. Probably for genetic reasons.
- shard972 9y ago
  I think you need to read up on some the cluster analysis work that has been done over the last decade. Your statement about inventing races and assigning them to people isn't true. I linked this in another comment but ill mention it again, this article makes a comprehensive argument for race while linking off to the supporting papers instead of just me shotgunning a bunch of papers at you. http://thealternativehypothesis.org/index.php/2016/04/15/329/ http://thealternativehypothesis.org/index.php/2016/04/15/329... Look under the heading "Genetic Clusteredness" and you find a summary of papers such as Bamshad 2003 which explain how they can conclude a strong correlation between self reported races and objective measured genetics via SNPs.
  - OrganicMSG 9y ago
    I hereby invent the race classifier of tongue-dexterity. Society consists of those who can and cannot roll their tongue and there is a high priesthood of the folks who can bend their tongue into a 'W'. It is just as arbitrary and capricious, but has at least one benefit I can think of over classifying people by latitude adaptation.
DanBC 9y ago
> Are you saying that there are none to little genetic/biological differences between different races? That's pretty much what any geneticist says.
- shard972 9y ago
  Unless you go to china, and suddenly we find pretty much 0 geneticists who would claim that races are just some arbitrary construct with no predictive value. To roll it back to the west though, I have seen surveys like this of anthropologists which show no con: https://sci-hub.hk/10.1111/j.1548-1433.2009.01076.x https://sci-hub.hk/10.1111/j.1548-1433.2009.01076.x Or this paper, in particular page 313 which show biologists with a 70% agreement with the question of “There are Biological Races Within the Species Homo Sapiens;”. http://sci-hub.hk/10.1002/tea.3660290308 http://sci-hub.hk/10.1002/tea.3660290308