Is race in the sense of human categorization by ancestry a valid concept?

Discussion in 'The Cesspool' started by Over 9000, Oct 21, 2016.

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  1. Over 9000 Banned Banned

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    Why or why not? Can we not classify humans by shared ancestry as we do with other organisms?
     
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  3. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    Why do you want to classify humans? Out of morbid curiosity what organisms do we classify by shared ancestry?
     
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  5. Over 9000 Banned Banned

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    • Racists and other bigots should not bother with this message. "Naïveté Revival" is not a proper school of argument; it is a weak-tea method of trolling.
    To make predictions based on race. This is very useful for large scale demographic questions eg. immigration among other things.

    All of them. It's called phylogenetics.
     
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  7. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    Making predictions based on race is called racism, as such it is not worth my time. Enjoy your stay here - I am making a prediction (not based on your race) that your time here will be short.
    Thanks for the link.
     
  8. Over 9000 Banned Banned

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    I don't understand why calling something a name invalidates its utility? Can you explain? I could call making predictions based on density "densityism" and say "as such it is not worth my time". But that would be...stupid.

    You ban people for disagreeing with your (frankly idiotic) POV? "Sci" forums: lol.
     
  9. PhysBang Valued Senior Member

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    If somebody tried making all their physics predictions solely on density, excluding all other factors, including common causes and common responses to density in certain systems, then, yes, that would be something stupid worthy of the name like "denstiyism".
    Just because some racist tells you a small fraction of the available science and you believe it because you are a racist, this doesn't mean that you actually have scientific support for your racism.
     
  10. Over 9000 Banned Banned

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    But one can make predictions based on density? I objected to:

    "Making predictions based on race is called racism, as such it is not worth my time."

    not

    "Making [all] predictions based [solely] on race is called racism, as such it is not worth my time."

    which is where you're moving the goalpoasts.

    Laughable. You have no idea how much I know. You might as well write "u r ignorant". Which would be rather ironic.
     
  11. PhysBang Valued Senior Member

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    I suspect that you just make all your predictions on race and don't really check up on whether they are true or not.

    No, I think we all have a pretty good idea of how much you know.
     
  12. Over 9000 Banned Banned

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    This is off topic personal commentary. Further, it's made-up slander based on nothing. Very disappointing. Very empty responses. Anyone care to post something relevant to the OP?
     
  13. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    The term you want is genetics. Yes, the study of genetics can be used to make predictions. Is race a useful term? Not when genetics shows that variation between individuals is greater than the social classifications of race, which are based on surface characteristics only.
     
  14. Over 9000 Banned Banned

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    No, I'm talking about race. As in classification by ancestry. Genetics is a wide field with some overlap. I'm not talking about using "genetics" to make predictions. I'm talking about race, defined by ancestry, to make predictions.

    Would it be at all possible for you to actually address what I'm saying?

    And you think genetic variation ratios within/between taxa can invalidate them? This is known as Lewontin's fallacy. Any biologist knows that it's common for taxa to be differentiated by <0.5 Fst. You didn't know that? Shall I give you some examples? The human race Fst of 0.12 is pretty standard for subspecies.

    The fact is that any difference validates a taxon, and the taxon is about that difference. It could be 0.000001. There is no fixed bound in taxonomy.

    Race can be based on morphology, or genetics, both of which can be used to infer ancestry. They match nicely. So your "surface characteristics only" claim is a patent falsehood.
     
  15. PhysBang Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, racists probably call it a fallacy. It just happens to be something Lewontin pointed out that makes the idea of using human race as a biological predictor very silly.

    See, we did have good reason to predict your particular intellectual limitations. And this is very on-topic because this topic is just about your particular, unfounded biases.
    That is a funny little dodge of the actual point. I'm sure that is cut-and-pasted at a number of racist websites.

    Actually, the point is that they don't match nicely. You might realize that if you actually read what "Any biologist knows" rather than taking what you read on racist websites at face value.
     
  16. Over 9000 Banned Banned

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    I've removed your childish name calling and ad hominem. The fact that more variation is found within groups means that the between group variation, however small, can be predicted by the grouping.

    That <0.5 Fst doesn't invalidate taxa in other species is "dodging" the point? Are you sure it's not you that's making up ad hoc arbitrary requirements for human race because of your emotions or politics? Facts of biology published in the scientific literature may or may not be "cut-and-pasted at a number of racist websites". Does this somehow contradict them? Does calling something "racist" make it untrue? Remember that simply using the race concept is "racist" according to you. So any number of the top journals are "racist". Everything's "racist". I'm "racist". Are you happy now? Can we continue the discussion? Shall I reference some subspecies at <0.5 Fst since you are apparently unaware of them?

    Would you stop saying "racist websites". It's really very lame. It's embarassing. Would you like me to reference genetic and morphologically inferred ancestry?
     
  17. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    Of course it's a valid concept. There is a great deal of work currently being done to do exactly that, to trace back how human beings spread out over the world after leaving Africa. In the past, much of that work was linguistic, trying to classify languages and trace language families. Genomics has provided a whole new kind of probably better evidence. So there are currently many projects underway to try to characterize different populations genetically, and then reconstruct their ancestries and interrelationships.

    https://investigativegenetics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13323-015-0024-0

    Why? To understand human ancestry, to get some understanding of how human beings radiated across the planet. What other organisms to we classify by shared ancestry? All of them. It's called evolutionary biology, more specifically cladistics.

    The phrase "to make predictions based on race" is guaranteed to get left-knees jerking. (Of course making testable predictions would seem to be a basic component of the "scientific method".)

    Right.

    I think that as we see illustrated in this thread, there's some reluctance to apply evolutionary biology to human beings on the left as well as on the right. The right or at least the religious evangelicals among them, fear that human evolutionary biology might contradict their religious beliefs. The left (or a subset of it) fears that desireable or undesireable characteristics might be discovered to correlate to particular ancestral lines.
     
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