4 ms·

does it rly change anything? like, take sports. asians have some structural advantages (endomorphism and limb to body ratio) for lifting, west africans at mnay

does it rly change anything? like, take sports. asians have some structural advantages (endomorphism and limb to body ratio) for lifting, west africans at mnay explosive/power sports (fast twitch muscle concentration, arms/legs to body), east africans at long-distance running etc. (lighter structure, efficient muscles over long term), whites at swimming (shoulder structure & torso length). should we stop large swathes of research into athletic performance? bc i guess it doesn't provide sufficiently "antiracist" outcomes?

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Studies that show the genetic diversity of the continent of Africa are in fact "anti-racist". They truthfully reveal that the psuedoscientific 19th century ideas we refer to as race had no scientific basis. Some people really haven't taken this "truth" well though. They still try to fit every new fact into their old model. Like "West African Scorpios" are much more open to emotion, while "East African Scorpios" are open to new experience. So should we stop all research into Astrology? Yes, because it's psuedoscientific nonsense that only distracts from the actual truth. This current controversy includes the attempts to stop exactly this, with rules saying if you do medical research, and classify people by "race" then you need to explain who made this classification and why. Because a Brazilian looking a photos might put people into different races than an American or Japanese researcher, which might differ from the subjects chosen race, which definately differs from their genetic race, because genetic races don't exist.
- collegeburner 4y ago
  i mean, i agree they're imperfect but there's also not "0 basis". if nothing else they may continue to associate with stuff because society often sees them as coherent groupings. but cool, now suppose some study has a result i can't spin as "anti-racist". what do? also you seem well-intentioned but your definition seems wildly different from kendi's defining anti-racism to include support for present discrimination to "remedy" past.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    It's clear you haven't read what they are asking people to do. You've read Haidt's take on it and have been misled, as intended.
    - collegeburner 4y ago
      yeah, i've read it. they're requiring people to write statements on whether/how their research advances the stated goals of the society in this area. next year, they will make it part of the scoring rubric for submissions. here's the thing: "anti-racism" is being used as a motte-and-bailey argument. it's basically dogwhistling an intent to promote present discrimination (c.f. kendi) even if they're using a different definition that doesn't explicitly state that, because it's how that term has been widely used and understood. but when people take issue with it, they can be like "oh our definition doesn't say that." and ngl i find it pretty disingenuous.
- chaxor 4y ago
  I don't understand the argument that genetics isn't correlated with race. I would imagine a better argument is that it's a spectrum - but the fact is that when plotting the principle components of any large scale set of human genetic data from around the world, self reported race actually clusters (PC isn't even a clustering technique) quite well. So the fact that the axes of tbe largest explained variance of the data (PC_0 and PC_1) correlates with self reported race is hard to mend with the idea that is loudly exclaimed in academia that race isn't genetic. Am I missing some important subtlety here? While I agree that we need to do as much as possible to eradicate the awful racism we see in far too many places today, this idea to turn a blind eye to the largest explained variance in large scale genetic studies by saying it doesn't exist is perplexing.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    It's not a subtlety you're missing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization)
  - dekhn 4y ago
    It's correct to say that: there is a genetic history to all humans, and that history roughly correlates with pre-scientific clustering of humans by visible attributes. The academic claim that "Race is not scientific" is really an overstatement of the case being made by people who are very optimistic but also fairly good at overlooking some fairly well understood science. It's not a universally held opinion but most people who disagree with it are fairly circumspect because it's very easy to get cancelled by talking about race and science in public.
Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
What's that research going to be used for? Will it become of the basis of policy that says 'only asians are allowed to enter the power lifting club', 'only east africans on the running team', 'only white land owning men are allowed to vote'.
- Stupulous 4y ago
  Setting aside the question of whether the truth should be suppressed because of consequences, this kind of research could very easily be beneficial. Suppose you find out that the green people from East Arbitria are less productive. The immediate effect is that an innocent objective employer who being tried for discrimination or hated by a community no longer has to suffer- the cruelty of the universe is no longer being made anyone's fault. The secondary effect is that we now have grounds to investigate why Arbitrarians have that disadvantage. Maybe green people have a harder time metabolizing a nutrient; a non-issue with the diet/climate/lifestyle of Arbitria. An update to health recommendations later and millions of people's lives are improved.
  - Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
    It would also mean that people could use this to say "All East Arbitaria people are less productive than all other ethnicities, therefore I shall ban them from my workplace. I am not anti-Arbitrian, I am just using the latest science". And of course these things are always statistical and so high performing East Arbitarians are going to be shut out of work because of this study. The point is, there is a history of race-based discrimination in the world and researchers can't just pretend that it doesn't still exist when constructing these kinds of studies and how their outcomes could be used negatively by both benevolent and malevolent actors. It isn't just 'truth or not truth', also because lots of sociological studies aren't repeatable and many others suffer all sorts of issues with methods, populations, etc. Measuring people is crazy hard to do reliably. Anyway, my hot take is that its not a simple question and does not have a simple answer.
- collegeburner 4y ago
  1. we don't know how a piece of research will be used because we don't even know what the outcome will be. 2. rarely is a piece of research only used for 1 thing, and even if someone uses it wrongly, maybe someone else uses it for good purpose or builds on it for an important discovery. 3. the correct answer is to address the person attempting to abuse the data when that person does it not to attempt to suppress that information by preventing the research or limiting how it's done. 4. are you saying we shouldn't do research on e.g. whether certain groups are better at lifting because it could be abused?

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

Studies that show the genetic diversity of the continent of Africa are in fact "anti-racist". They truthfully reveal that the psuedoscientific 19th century ideas we refer to as race had no scientific basis. Some people really haven't taken this "truth" well though. They still try to fit every new fact into their old model. Like "West African Scorpios" are much more open to emotion, while "East African Scorpios" are open to new experience. So should we stop all research into Astrology? Yes, because it's psuedoscientific nonsense that only distracts from the actual truth. This current controversy includes the attempts to stop exactly this, with rules saying if you do medical research, and classify people by "race" then you need to explain who made this classification and why. Because a Brazilian looking a photos might put people into different races than an American or Japanese researcher, which might differ from the subjects chosen race, which definately differs from their genetic race, because genetic races don't exist.

collegeburner 4y ago
i mean, i agree they're imperfect but there's also not "0 basis". if nothing else they may continue to associate with stuff because society often sees them as coherent groupings. but cool, now suppose some study has a result i can't spin as "anti-racist". what do? also you seem well-intentioned but your definition seems wildly different from kendi's defining anti-racism to include support for present discrimination to "remedy" past.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  It's clear you haven't read what they are asking people to do. You've read Haidt's take on it and have been misled, as intended.
  - collegeburner 4y ago
    yeah, i've read it. they're requiring people to write statements on whether/how their research advances the stated goals of the society in this area. next year, they will make it part of the scoring rubric for submissions. here's the thing: "anti-racism" is being used as a motte-and-bailey argument. it's basically dogwhistling an intent to promote present discrimination (c.f. kendi) even if they're using a different definition that doesn't explicitly state that, because it's how that term has been widely used and understood. but when people take issue with it, they can be like "oh our definition doesn't say that." and ngl i find it pretty disingenuous.
chaxor 4y ago
I don't understand the argument that genetics isn't correlated with race. I would imagine a better argument is that it's a spectrum - but the fact is that when plotting the principle components of any large scale set of human genetic data from around the world, self reported race actually clusters (PC isn't even a clustering technique) quite well. So the fact that the axes of tbe largest explained variance of the data (PC_0 and PC_1) correlates with self reported race is hard to mend with the idea that is loudly exclaimed in academia that race isn't genetic. Am I missing some important subtlety here? While I agree that we need to do as much as possible to eradicate the awful racism we see in far too many places today, this idea to turn a blind eye to the largest explained variance in large scale genetic studies by saying it doesn't exist is perplexing.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  It's not a subtlety you're missing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization)
- dekhn 4y ago
  It's correct to say that: there is a genetic history to all humans, and that history roughly correlates with pre-scientific clustering of humans by visible attributes. The academic claim that "Race is not scientific" is really an overstatement of the case being made by people who are very optimistic but also fairly good at overlooking some fairly well understood science. It's not a universally held opinion but most people who disagree with it are fairly circumspect because it's very easy to get cancelled by talking about race and science in public.

Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago

What's that research going to be used for? Will it become of the basis of policy that says 'only asians are allowed to enter the power lifting club', 'only east africans on the running team', 'only white land owning men are allowed to vote'.

Stupulous 4y ago
Setting aside the question of whether the truth should be suppressed because of consequences, this kind of research could very easily be beneficial. Suppose you find out that the green people from East Arbitria are less productive. The immediate effect is that an innocent objective employer who being tried for discrimination or hated by a community no longer has to suffer- the cruelty of the universe is no longer being made anyone's fault. The secondary effect is that we now have grounds to investigate why Arbitrarians have that disadvantage. Maybe green people have a harder time metabolizing a nutrient; a non-issue with the diet/climate/lifestyle of Arbitria. An update to health recommendations later and millions of people's lives are improved.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
  It would also mean that people could use this to say "All East Arbitaria people are less productive than all other ethnicities, therefore I shall ban them from my workplace. I am not anti-Arbitrian, I am just using the latest science". And of course these things are always statistical and so high performing East Arbitarians are going to be shut out of work because of this study. The point is, there is a history of race-based discrimination in the world and researchers can't just pretend that it doesn't still exist when constructing these kinds of studies and how their outcomes could be used negatively by both benevolent and malevolent actors. It isn't just 'truth or not truth', also because lots of sociological studies aren't repeatable and many others suffer all sorts of issues with methods, populations, etc. Measuring people is crazy hard to do reliably. Anyway, my hot take is that its not a simple question and does not have a simple answer.
collegeburner 4y ago
1. we don't know how a piece of research will be used because we don't even know what the outcome will be. 2. rarely is a piece of research only used for 1 thing, and even if someone uses it wrongly, maybe someone else uses it for good purpose or builds on it for an important discovery. 3. the correct answer is to address the person attempting to abuse the data when that person does it not to attempt to suppress that information by preventing the research or limiting how it's done. 4. are you saying we shouldn't do research on e.g. whether certain groups are better at lifting because it could be abused?