How did Darwin define race?

[rpenner]

You quoted me on estimates of average nucleotide diversity among populations and between populations, not $$\textrm{F}_{\textrm{ST}}$$. So there is no need to fault my arithmetic.

The observation that a statistic like $$\textrm{F}_{\textrm{ST}}$$ is not impressive of itself is generic to the field of statistics. $$\textrm{F}_{\textrm{ST}}$$ is sensitive to how you look at the genome. Sampling only 8 loci is inferior to comparing average nucleotide diversity or the wide spectrum methods used in the 2004 articles, covering hundreds of SNPs above. Likewise, the maximum value of $$\textrm{F}_{\textrm{ST}}$$ over all possible partitions for a given population is not 1, but a lower value depending on variation. This means you can't direction compare $$\textrm{F}_{\textrm{ST}}$$ for populations of humans and $$\textrm{F}_{\textrm{ST}}$$ across species.

The figures you highlight in bold do not come from Long (2009), but rather from Long and Kittles (2003) and has been cited as reference in many papers since, but their opinion is described as too strong for the data they present. The 2009 update doesn't improve the argument.

We are seeking to distinguish a continuum of diversity which clumps in populations of isolated, inbred, villages from the discrete structure implied by terms like "subspecies" and "human race". Both are structures have support. At the nucleotide level we get a broad, very-high dimensional shape with little to suggest partition has occurred. With methods like cladistics, a tree structure always forms whether statistically significant or not.

Finally, you can hardly cite Long for the proposition that there are human races when his opinion from 2003 and 2009 was that there aren't. It's right there in the title of the paper you cite. Also here:
https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/62159/20932_ftp.pdf

 

[Galtonian]

You quoted me on estimates of average nucleotide diversity among populations and between populations, not $$\textrm{F}_{\textrm{ST}}$$. So there is no need to fault my arithmetic.

The observation that a statistic like $$\textrm{F}_{\textrm{ST}}$$ is not impressive of itself is generic to the field of statistics. $$\textrm{F}_{\textrm{ST}}$$ is sensitive to how you look at the genome. Sampling only 8 loci is inferior to comparing average nucleotide diversity or the wide spectrum methods used in the 2004 articles, covering hundreds of SNPs above. Likewise, the maximum value of $$\textrm{F}_{\textrm{ST}}$$ over all possible partitions for a given population is not 1, but a lower value depending on variation. This means you can't direction compare $$\textrm{F}_{\textrm{ST}}$$ for populations of humans and $$\textrm{F}_{\textrm{ST}}$$ across species.

The figures you highlight in bold do not come from Long (2009), but rather from Long and Kittles (2003) and has been cited as reference in many papers since, but their opinion is described as too strong for the data they present. The 2009 update doesn't improve the argument.

We are seeking to distinguish a continuum of diversity which clumps in populations of isolated, inbred, villages from the discrete structure implied by terms like "subspecies" and "human race". Both are structures have support. At the nucleotide level we get a broad, very-high dimensional shape with little to suggest partition has occurred. With methods like cladistics, a tree structure always forms whether statistically significant or not.

Finally, you can hardly cite Long for the proposition that there are human races when his opinion from 2003 and 2009 was that there aren't. It's right there in the title of the paper you cite. Also here:
https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/62159/20932_ftp.pdf

You keep alleging there's some numerical threshold to valid taxon status. You keep saying human race fails because "it's not enough". You never quantify or contrast it.

That's because you're lying.

And now, of course, you want to change the subject to diversity patterns.

This is how it always is. You lie. I contradict you. You change the subject.

 

[spidergoat]

This is how it always is. You lie. I contradict you. You change the subject.

Always? You have 3 posts to your name.

 

[Kristoffer]

Always? You have 3 posts to your name.

Probably a sock then. The timing of Galtonian showing up coincides with the OP of this thread being banned.

ETA: And he's been banned already, so most likely a sock.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

That one can somehow find and delimit five regions of the globe, and claim to match them with some carefully unspecified five races of Western culture's "popular" classification, is not surprising. But in doing so, they have - for example . . . .]

Two or three hundred years ago, it would have made a bit of colloquial sense (but not scientific sense, even by the scientific standards of the era) to identify three "races," which could be correlated with geographical distribution as well as appearance: the Native Americans, the Africans, and everybody else.

Even then, travel technology had advanced to the point where there was considerable mingling of populations, and therefore considerable mixing of DNA. But still, I'll wager that if you spent a month in the central region of any of those three places, most of the people you'd see would be stereotypes of the dominant gene pool.

Of course, this is certainly not true today, even if I could collect on my wager.

- but imho . . . . this approach and expression tends to obscure the basic and all-important (in the US) fact: the US racial classifications are incoherent garbage, biologically. Nothing can be biologically argued from them with confidence.

This classification system is more popular among the "minorities" than us "white" folks. You'll have to ask them why they support incoherent garbage. And I don't want to be there when you broach the subject!

 

[iceaura]

Two or three hundred years ago, it would have made a bit of colloquial sense (but not scientific sense, even by the scientific standards of the era) to identify three "races," which could be correlated with geographical distribution as well as appearance: the Native Americans, the Africans, and everybody else.

Even then, travel technology had advanced to the point where there was considerable mingling of populations, and therefore considerable mixing of DNA. But still, I'll wager that if you spent a month in the central region of any of those three places, most of the people you'd see would be stereotypes of the dominant gene pool.

I have to disagree here.

For starters, you haven't got a central region of "everyplace else", and you have a hell of a lot of variety - including clear stereotypical resident lookalikes of the other two "races" - scattered throughout this "everywhere else". One thousand years ago there were (are) US "black" aboriginal residents of every inhabited continent except, possibly, Europe (and that is controversial). People who looked like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olmec_colossal_heads. There were also "red/yellows", the Americas's predominant appearance, on every inhabited continent except Australia.

Second, in the middle of Africa one thousand years ago you had - living in fairly close proximity to the "center" - what we can call "Congo", "Kenyan", and two different lineages of "Pygmy", that did not look much alike. Also in the Americas, which would be even harder to find a "center" of, the traveller would have found at least two different "red" lineages along with the "black" tribes here and there, occasionally neighbors, who likewise differ noticeably and significantly from each other. And that's without counting the Arctic tribes, of recent immigration.

- - " the US racial classifications are incoherent garbage, biologically."
This classification system is more popular among the "minorities" than us "white" folks. You'll have to ask them why they support incoherent garbage.

Not biologically. The people I talk to from the target "races" generally have a somewhat better handle on the sociological roots of this crap than the "white" folks who insist on it; it's fairly conventional wisdom, for example, that white folks invented the races - especially their own, which is an illusion and fairy tale they dwell in and defend by violence if necessary. As Coates put it, quoting Baldwin, who was probably indebted in the end to the Buddha or Lao Tzu: " - - - - people who believe they are white".

 

[origin]

Two or more individual attempting to perform a task in the shortest time possible. The person who completes the task first is typically declared the winner.