Multiculturalism is Nonsense

But it didn't spring from nothing.

And then the settled tribes continued warring with each other.

I guarantee you haven't. Even in Britain, which has had enormous mingling of people, you can see clearly the distinction between the Cornish and their neighbours. Feel free to tell an Albanian in Finland that he's just one of the guys. Or tell a Sami that he's Greek. Or tell the real Macedonians that the guys called Macedonians today are the real Macedonians.

Modern countries working together for economic benefit. Big deal. Groups working together for mutual benefit is nothing new. There's a type of ant in Indonesia which farms these little bugs that collect due from leaves. The ants actually carry them around to new leaves and such. Heck, feel free to call the EU its own country if you want, since it may end up going that way. But that doesn't miraculously eradicate the distinct tribes within that region.

 

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Looks like you're correct in the amount of variation between individuals. Three points however: One, you were still incorrect in stating that the earlier determination of 1% variation was founded solely by studying 5 people. Two, even though the variation is greater it is still not population specific. That is, most of the variation occurs within populations rather than between them so you're not showing that there is more differentiation between the so called races. Three, it doesn't invalidate the main thrust of my argument.

I disagree.

I'm not arguing that people are the same. I'm not even arguing that it isn't possible to identify related populations based upon genetic markers. What I am arguing is that the makers that we choose to select as a determination of race is arbitrary from a scientific standpoint. There are many possible groupings that cross over socially defined racial boundaries.

This is no more surprising or meaningful than noting that one family of European descent has a history of heart disease and another has a history of cancer. Again, I'm not denying the existence of heritable traits only that it makes any logical sense to categorize humanity into races by a handful of them while ignoring all others. Can we do so? Of course. But I've yet to see any cogent argument as to why it makes any sense to do so.

Let's take a look at that, shall we? If you examine the mappings on the following link you'll note that they do not track racial groupings. In fact, they demonstrate a very different although equally valid order of classification.

http://anthro.palomar.edu/vary/vary_3.htm

Or why not solely by eye color?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080130170343.htm

As these groups are genetically distinct how do you validate classifying them as the same race?

Yes. If you're selecting the centers of these populations. Of course, the problem is that except occasionally where there are large geographic barriers these populations interbred frequently. Which is why if you walked from Norway down through the Middle East and on into the heart of Africa you would not find any distinct racial boundaries. Instead you would find a gradually changing landscape of features and skin color would gradually become darker as you progressed Southward.
Even the Native Americans (arguably the most isolated population) had ongoing interactions as recent as 15,000 or so years ago.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071025160653.htm

Done... thanks for the links. I love being challenged.

~Raithere

 

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The initial claim about 0.1% or 1% difference or whatever was based on comments from the work done by Celera Genomics. They used what they referred to as a shotgun method of scanning genes, which was basically checking a few small parts here and there. They used only five people ("In the Celera Genomics private-sector project, DNA from five different individuals were used for sequencing."). I don't recall exactly, but it was something like a black man and woman, a hispanic man and woman, and a white guy.

Basically they used that shortcut and non-thorough method to get the drop on the HGP, and made claims which were taken up by biased Internet folks all too readily, folks who were desperate to "prove" that people were all the same. The reality was different. A few years later, as those articles showed, Craig Venter corrected those statements by: admitting the inadequacies of the method they'd used; and stating that the difference was a lot larger than they'd previously suggested.

Kind of a misrepresentation of the facts though. The vast majority of our genes are the basic building blocks that make us animalia > chordata > mammalia > primates > hominidae > homininae > hominini > homo > homo sapiens > homo sapiens sapiens. That bold text is most of our genetic similarity, it's the bulk of what we are, and it's why we're all so similar. No fucking wonder you get such similarity when you compare people from around the world: you're getting similarity all the way up the tree to animalia. It's like all cars are predominantly the same. The vast majority of everything that makes a car a car is the same from one to the next, like 99% of the vehicle is the same deal from one to another. But a Porsche Boxter is going to be different to a Porsche 911 Carrera. Indeed looking at the Boxter and Carrera side by side, they may be 20% different in shape, features, colour, and so on. Even so, both are 99% car, the same principles as every other car out there on the roads. Yet the two Porsche models have mostly the same parts and the same engineering, come from the same place, and indeed share common appearance characteristics. Certainly either Porsche is totally different to a Ford family sedan, even though both share 99% common automotive principles in their engineering.

Sorry, not sure exactly which thing you're referring to there.

I showed you the science. Those several dozen links to articles discussing the biological differences between racial groups.

It's easy to pick the markers which clearly indicate geographical and therefore demographics origin. That's why I linked the article discussing a study which shows exactly that. Humans have an instinctive ability to see the genetic differences and know where people are from, which group they belong to.

1. We actually know races when we see them. That's been demonstrated.

2. We're using the differences that mark us as African group, European group, Asian group, et cetera, which are easily discernible even tot he naked eye. As opposed to the bulk of our genetic makeup which makes us animalia, chordata, and so on.

There's more to blood than blood type.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-03/acs-blo030806.php
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20464500/
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/13/n...o-be-sought-to-identify-rare-blood-types.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/05/27/health/main5044251.shtml
http://www.southtexasblood.org/marrow_donor_program_FAQ.asp

Sorry, I missed the point there. What does eye colour have to do with blood type for donations?

I don't and I didn't. It was an example of how geographical features separated groups and over time resulted in very different genetic groups.

Absolutely. What this shows, obviously, is that there are these vaguely separate groups which are mixed more as geographical proximity increases. That's why I did that basic diagram on that blog page, to represent exactly that.

 

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And the wars became larger as the groups became larger. Which is why two recent wars cost Europe almost entire generations.

1. Maybe it predates the Stone Age, maybe it even predates climbing down from the trees.

2. If it promotes unity in a society which assists with competition against other groups, it may be a good thing. Consider, if radical Islam grows, and unites a majority of Muslims, and their culture takes over all Western nations, their group wins. Even if it then splits apart and has its own wars, it's still an evolutionary victory for that branch and an evolutionary failure for the defeated branch. Having a bad opinion of such beliefs then won't matter because it will have contributed to one branch being more successful than the other.

1. I don't want one single tribe. I like having different groups with different looks, genes, cultures, beliefs, et cetera.

2. Being all the same can't happen unless you somehow magically force everyone to think the same, like the Borg, and that is pure fucking evil to me. I am 100% against such notions.

3. Having different groups is better for evolution, for our survival as a species. That is the better option.

We've been having wars since before that first primate smacked his cousin with an old femur. Before we came down from the trees. Way back to when it was one strain of microbes against another.

I suspect the Darfur region has had its high and low tides of civilisation, high being when the Egyptians, Ottomans, and British were in charge. The retardation occurred when those outside forces left.

Extremely rarely. Europeans tend to be less prone to tribal warfare. They do tend, however, to be prone to massive wars waged by non-tribal-based governments.

Like England and Northern Ireland?

Yeah, personally I think that's a bad thing. Research has shown that diverse communities are unhappier, and don't function as well. People are happier and function better among their own kind. And it is a natural inclination (as per Hamilton's Rule) to seek the prosperity of your own kind over others.

What we have now, instead, is a society ruled by allegiance to the mighty dollar, or those at the top who have the most dollars. They don't give a shit about your blood, your family, your relatives, your beliefs, or anything, as long as you live and work and fight under their banner and increase their holdings. And it is fucking up our world. It has resulted in wars that wiped out almost entire generations. Hardly an improvement.

I think you're delusional if you believe that. I think most people have the gut feeling that our civilisation is wrong, even if they never get around to putting the reasons into words. We are fucking up this planet, and fucking over our own species by living the way we do. We are wage-slaves, labour units with zero control over the fate of our species. Think about something as simple as putting a roof over your family's head. Unless you're born upper crust, you can't do it without a loan. That means you have no choice but to labour away and maintain job security above all else just to keep a roof, else your family is homeless. That's the first half of your life gone. By which time it's too late to take up arms and change the world. Meanwhile, you're paying far higher taxes than any of your ancestors ever did (Egyptians 20%, medieval Europeans 15% to 25%, et cetera). Income tax, council rates, tax on savings, tax on transactions, tax on purchases, and tax on everything else. Good little labour unit. We're poisoning ourselves every day. We're physically less fit than the ancient Greeks and Romans (saw a study about this a couple of years back). Then there's this alleged tolerance, which is really just people being too scared to say what they think and feel, in case they are ostracised or sued. Tolerance that equates to being convinced its a good thing to let every other group overtake and displace your own group, to let their ways replace your own, and so on.

Cooperation has been with us for ever, or near enough. As I mentioned earlier, ants cooperate with other bugs. We have been cooperating with canines and equines for millennia. We've been cooperating with other tribes for millennia; the first empires were thousands of years ago. But cooperation between groups has generally been for mutual benefit of some degree. What we're getting now, what's new about it, is that we're cooperating with an agenda imposed by our politicians and those who own them, and we're being told its for our benefit, when it is so very clearly fucking up us and the planet.

Also, don't assume tribal/pack behaviour is somehow opposite to reasoned and learned behaviour. Reason and learned would involve and acknowledgement of the fundamental drives of all forms of life (ie. survival, including competition for survival against other life in the same ecological niche). You can sit there calling yourself enlightened while your group is replaced by other groups and your culture is relegated to the history books, but you'll still have lost the evolutionary fight.

Assumption. All our activities have been driven by instinct. Groups formed for mutual (tribe) benefit. Larger groups formed to beat out smaller groups, to gain more control over the watering hole. Larger and larger the groups got, until we had nations and empires. Within each there was competition for supremacy, people striving to be the kings or presidents or the wealthiest or whatever. Even now we have nations and groups of nations seeking supremacy and greater control of the watering hole, with our politicians, bankers, and wealthy industrialists at the top of the pyramid. Just a long chain of groups and individuals seeking to succeed over others. It's all been driven by instincts.

I believe the whole thing about tool use is that tools are our claws, our shells. We didn't get the fangs of the sabretooth, the venom of the snake, or the tough hide of the rhino. We got our brains, and the ability to use tools, to create our own fangs and tough hides. That is our nature.

Mutual benefit.

We humans have evolved to use our minds, our creativity, and our hands to craft things and to survive. Now, in our weird-arse aberrant society, most of us push buttons and shuffle papers and are spoon fed processed shit produced by some mysterious hole in the wall that we know nothing about. There's no transcendence in that. It's a backslide. I believe people are happier when following their evolutionary trend of working their minds and hands to be creative, compared to shuffling papers in a cubicle.

They are at peace, if that's what you mean. They have been closer in the past, when they were one region, the Holy Roman Empire (parts of France were involved at least). However, in my opinion France is on the way down the toilet. Another five or ten years and you'll see it.

I disagree. Oh, there's certainly a trend toward countries joining together into federations or empires or such. But that trend is merely the upward slope of a cyclic trend. They then get messed up and fall over, shattering into components. Civilisations rise then fall, then something else rises.

Merely one difference. The study I mentioned involved people discerning race by looking at the outlines of people. Not tiny details of eyelids.

That's because he's mulatto, not black.

Indo-European refers to language, not genetics. And contrary to some of the shit I've seen on forums, it doesn't mean Europeans came from India; it means the groups (across the central Asia between India and Europe) had cultural and linguistic interaction way back and over a long time (just thought I'd cut that off before anyone posted that nonsense). Finnish and Hungarian language group is from further north, no surprise since they are from further north. That's their language group. Genetically they are kin due to common geographical background. As in, all that bunch up there are closely related genetically, but there were different languages in different areas. Europe across the Middle East to India is the Indo-European language group. Further north they were the Finno-Ugric language group, due to not having as much interaction through central Asia to India.

 

"It is no secret that there can be huge disagreements between cultures: over values and morals, over customs, and over rules of etiquette, and even more. Thus, how does it make any sense that we should have one government and several nations?"

You went to great lengths trying to equate the terms nation and culture but then reverted to calling a culture a nation. One government and many cultures, right? Cultures and nations are the interchangeable terms in your mind.

 

You came upon the idea of America, it was established by others before you. You can't change the course of human life. We are here. Terms like 'gay" or "black" are temporary. You are a human being on earth and you will pass. There is nothing you can establish that will have a lasting effect. Nothing can ever be deep-rooted other than the thing that brought you here and will take you away.
We do not create cultures or systems; it's all been done. We accept what we've been given. People want to believe their life on earth is special, but in the end we realize we all live the same life and it never changes.

 

It's been done. We are all humans living on earth.

 

lol Make division in order to avoid devision. Brilliant! :facepalm:

 

Or any day United States. There has never been a time when the US population was united over beliefs about what that nation should be like, what foreign affairs should be like, who gets to be included, what the laws should be, etc.

The only way to make people united on their beliefs, fascism, does not work either. It just makes people pretend and it criminalizes their differences until that day the dictatorship is overthrown.

 

For the most part, I think you're right, Doreen.

But when America was still young, and there was room to grow, people were free to leave for the frontier if they were dissatisfied. There was room to grow, and out there in the west, it was, for the most part, out of the easy reach of the greedy, dominating politicians, etc.

Now? We're all trapped ...just like the Europeans were trapped earlier. We have to accept what the gov says or ....well, ...or else! And as far as I know, there's no place on Earth now where people can go to be "free" and "independent".

Baron Max

 

I've already linked you several sites that demonstrate that the 1% was exhibited in other testing involving far more than 5 people. Further you will note that the cause for the discrepancy isn't an error in the original testing method but merely a limitation of what they were testing for. The earlier tests were looking at variation allele frequency via SNP and haplotype while the later test is looking at variation in the number of copies of sequences. While it does expand our understanding of the variation between individuals it's not precisely an invalidation of the previous work, SNP variation is still less than 1%. Finally, I will repeat again that the variation found is between individuals, they discovered no increased variation between races. What it means is that every individual is further apart than we thought.

Sorry this is an invalid comparison. Cars do not have DNA nor do they pass heritable traits to other cars. Neither do genetic variations always result in phenotype variation which is what you are looking at with cars.

But if we are to attempt to use the comparison the variation between cars is far greater than 20%. Every nuance of a car's design, from the diameter of the tailpipe to the curve of the front bumper to the sparkplug gap varies. Comparing a Porsche to a Ford is closer to comparing a Mouse to a Cheetah, while the components may be related in origin, shape, and function the specifics make all the difference in performance. Comparing human races is closer to comparing identical 1994 Porsche 911 Carrera 2 Convertibles in different colors with different trim options. Mostly cosmetic but the leather seats do get a bit hotter in the summer than the cloth ones and the fog lamps help a little bit in inclement weather.

DNA markers trace ancestry, not race. That a race then encompasses an inherited ancestral marker does not validate the racial classification unless all members of that race had the same marker and shared it with no members of any other race. Rarely (if ever) are the examples in your list restricted to a single race and they never encompass the entire population of that race. Tay-Sachs is not exclusive to Askhenasi Jews but some non-Jewish Europeans have it. Turks, Yemenis, Indians, Greeks, and Sicilians also may carry Sickle trait along with sub-Saharan Africans. Meanwhile many Africans do not. So how do you point to something like Sickle trait and say it is in any way a defining metric of race? If anything it demonstrates the opposite.

Much of your list is made up of questionable studies and even those that aren't I find you seems to be making predetermined inferences. Pointing at any marker that can be linked to race as evidence of race.

Your examples only further serve my point. Additional markers define additional groupings.

Then I'm not sure what your point is. How many different races do you think there are and how do you define them?

Take a look again at the link I provided that maps blood groups and show me how those maps layered one on top of the other has any similarity at all to your diagram or even a more complex geographic mapping of populations by race. Once you've done that, start mapping for eye color, lactase production, tongue curling, finger print type, hair loss patterns, ear lobe attachment, ancestry markers, and hair color... then tell me how closely this map correlates to race.

Oh btw. Was just about to post and I found this article which is more recent than yours. So the less than 1% variation in SNP is still considered a valid measure of human genetic variation.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-10/nhgr-cpp101507.php

~Raithere

 

I just checked the articles you linked again. I don't see it. But I know it was 5 from earlier reading, not that I have the article address now. However, the Wikipedia page I linked before ("In the Celera Genomics private-sector project, DNA from five different individuals were used for sequencing.") links to two items as sources for the assertion, one of which requires a subscription.

Other efforts may have used more than 5 people. But the claim regarding the amount of difference between race groups was from Craig Venter initial, before being taken up as a rallying cry by the Internet hordes. Venter changed his mind. The Internet hordes were wrong.

Just an analogy. I think it explains the differences quite well.

Back later.

 

Some well thought-out posts on this thread.

It seems to me that multicultural societies, due to their greater variation, would out compete monocultural societies?

I agree that in the past people had a place to move to if they didn't like living under the thumb of some power-brokers in dense cities and that's still a bit of the case in Australia (lot of land up north). Minus a pandemic I suppose it's only going to get worse. The thing that pisses me off, is, when we finally had a chance to let the house of cards fall - people were too f*cking soft to do it. They ran willingly into the arms of the government looking for sugar-daddy to save their arses (at a small fee of a zillion dollars and perpetual enslavement to the machine

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). When the Detroit bound plane was about blown out of the skies last week, Obama made a statement that the government was doing all it can to protect US citizens ... gee, how about the people on the fucking plane getting off their fat arses and doing something to save themselves?!?!? I'd preferred if Obama lavished praise on the Dutch guy who had the balls to jump over 4 seats and swat that piss-ant "terrorist", Obama should have said something like: It's good to see some people have the capacity take the tit out and can still eat solid food

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Back to multiculturalism, I spend about a month a year in Japan. It's a great place. Pretty successful and relatively monocultureal. But, I prefer to live in a more diverse society, personally. That said, I am not open to anything goes. It's a give and take situation. Bring the good, leave the bad. Be willing to work hard and assimilate and contribute and don't worry, you'll add your flavor to the soup. I notice some people come and feel it's their "right" to take and scam and get as much as they can giving as little as possible in return. Take this African fellow the other day. Came here and is trying to have as many kids as humanity possible - up to about 8 now. And will pretty much leave the rest of us for this massive bill to take care of his brood. Maybe where he came from you needed to have 12 kids just so that 3 made it? Or maybe he's like Whoopie! Free money! I don't know. When you figure out you can work under the table for cash in hand and not pay tax (just like back home) AND screw the tax payer for as much as possible in aid. Well, these guys should be sent packing along with their 8-12 kids. Maybe we should instigate an assimilation policy and crack down mercilessly on those that screw the system.

 

Indeed. Yet the Boxter and Carrera are both indisputably Porsche engineering, from a Porsche background. Even with the huge differences. HUGE differences between Boxter and Carrera. Yet both have the same basic layout as a Ford or Holden or any number of other cars, the same principles involved, and so on; vast similarity.

Race is about ancestry. Common genetic heritage.

Bollocks. That may be the definition you;re trying to push for the purposes of your forum arguments, but it ain't true. Genes drift, are exchanged, all sorts of things. That's why people in geographic boundary regions share traits.

"Jew" is not a race but a religion. Although the religion brought various groups together and they've been breeding primarily amongst themselves for a couple of thousand years now. Tay-Sachs is a defect which stemmed from one person, one mutation, but which spread through that tribe, which became part of the Jewish group, thus why it is found in Jews and some others.

Feel free to address the very many other racial genetic differences though.

Because of interbreeding as they live around a geographical border area.

Not all, but it is most prevalent among them rather than among other groups. Why? 1. Malaria. 2. Common ancestry. The population came from a specific region.

It shows very clearly the heritability of traits associated with regions where people come from.

How so?

Unsupported assertion and fallacy.

The additional information about blood from different racial groups shows more differences between racial groups.

Ah, now this is the fun part. If you go to certain places, you can find a tribe at one end of a road which insists it is a completely different group to the tribe at the other end of the road. A few years back in Kenya, some guys from one tribe marched down the road to a school used by the next tribe, and slaughtered 22 children just for being the other tribe. This is pretty common in some parts of Africa.

There was some more recent trouble in Kenya, tribal warfare, even in the cities. People who had lived together as neighbours for years were burning each others' homes down and killing each other for being in different tribes.

Also: http://accidentalhuman.livejournal.com/26477.html

The point being that race or tribal groups are defined at every level of differentiation as you traverse the tree of commonality. My siblings and I are a discrete group of genetic commonality from our cousins, who are their own similar group. My siblings plus cousins and various others up the tree form another line of distinction. And so on. At each level there is a branch of difference, of distinction, and every such level of difference is as real as the ground beneath your feet. Some folks declare race as the local tribal boundary; some folks as a difference way further up the tree, to where we split between peoples migrating to different continents. But either way, those differences are absolutely real.

I have ten fingers. A guy in Africa has ten fingers. Are you saying that invalidates all the very real differences? That's pretty lame.

"In its overview paper in Nature, the consortium estimates that the Phase II HapMap captures 25 percent to 35 percent of common genetic variation in the populations surveyed."

They found 99% similarity in 25% to 35% of the material from surveyed populations.

 

Why?

 

I imagine there's probably some sort of mathematical model out there that shows such is the case?
:shrug:

But, without one, I'll just try to go with an analogy. Species that reproduce via sexual reproduction versus species that reproduce via cloning. Sexual reproduction is more competitive per generation than clone reproduction because it creates more diversity. More diversity is more adaptive to a changing world and increases the likelihood of be successful.

If societies compete somewhat as species do, then diversity is key ingredient to competitive advantage.


Thinking back to Japan. Even though Japan may appear as monocultureal to us gaijin there is a lot of diversity within Japanese society. Tokyo people are quite different than Kansai people and even within the Kasai region, Kobe people are very different to Osaka people. Maybe to us they all seem "Japanese" but there's really a lot of variety in there.

 

Shagfest vs cloning.

If you clone one person, and at a rate of reproduction equal to the shagfest society's rate of reproduction, the shagfest society will probably result in higher survivability through variety.

If the clones are made uber fast, they might produce a thousand times faster, wipe out the shagfest society, and keep all the land and resources for themselves. Whether they survive later on is irrelevant to the dead shagfesters. Maybe later on they'll change.

If you clone a shitload of people, enough to ensure a decent amount of genetic variation, and then continue with sexual reproduction, they'll probably end up beating the shagfest society. Why? Because you don't clone people with hereditary weaknesses. You clone the very best, and then allow them to breed. In the long run they'll be a healthier, smarter, stronger group.

Regarding Japan, yes, I am aware that it's a bunch of different groups over there.

 

You may be able to clone the best and the brightest, but, it should be noted that you selected the best and the brightest FROM the shagfest society! AND, while they were great at that one point in history and that place, in the future they may be considered obsolete compared to what natural selection can produce out of shagfest....?


Well, I'm not sure, but I can only imagine that multicultureal societies would be much more innovative compared with monocultureal societies.

There may be downfalls too? Multicultreal societies don't really have a Natural Selection weeding process to get rid of the weak members who are screwing it up. Maybe if we were more ruthless and cut down those members who didn't thrive ... we'd create and even better and even more diverse society! Just teasing .....

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Multicultural societies could be so successful that they attract the weakest from monocultureal societies who migrate and instead of adding good societal traits... instead add bad ones? :S

Well, we'll see how it turns out, life is probably harder for individual members of an multiculreal society, but, through their hard work and suffering, we become much stronger and more advanced than the rest.