Human races are real according to evolution

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Google "Mikemikev" (the thread starter). He even has an Encyclopaedia Dramatica entry. Its obviously not a serious thread.
 
AncientMoon said:
Google "Mikemikev" (the thread starter). He even has an Encyclopaedia Dramatica entry. Its obviously not a serious thread.
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Mikemikev takes this topic very seriously. I'm surprised however that he has not tried to debate this topic with the posters here. And yes he's quite infamous on the internet as a racist troll. But you can get some serious debate out of him from time to time.
 
Hi, this is the real Mikemikev and some clown is impersonating me, probably the deranged troll who wrote the ED page. I'd be happy to confirm my identity, perhaps via my Stormfront account.

Nevertheless I'd be happy to debate this subject here in more depth than the retarded OP.

I'd recommend posters make sure they are familiar with these points first

https://right.orain.org/wiki/Arguments_regarding_the_existence_of_races

So we can avoid going round in circles or explaining common fallacies.
 
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I think this is the real Mikemikev. I informed him of this thread elsewhere thinking that he created it but it seems to be an impersonator.
 
Stormfront is a Neo-Nazi/white-supremacist site. You are also linking to another Nazi site (rightpedia) that hosts extreme racist content where I see you are an admin.

Not sure why you expect anyone to take you seriously.
 
Basically from that link no evidence, zilch, is presented for "race". It just repeats itself over and over that academics that deny race are politically correct.

The PC-claim is amusing, since believing in race is actually what is politically correct, not the reverse.

"The “race” that is at the heart of forensic assessment is a politically correct manifestation of the circumstances that governed the peopling of the western hemisphere. That it is regarded as an “important” forensic finding is simply a product of what is politically correct in contemporary North America." (Brace, 1995)
 
EgalitarianJay said:
Mikemikev takes this topic very seriously. I'm surprised however that he has not tried to debate this topic with the posters here. And yes he's quite infamous on the internet as a racist troll. But you can get some serious debate out of him from time to time.
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Well linking to a Nazi site wasn't a good start. He pretty much confirms that those few people arguing for races, are just white supremacists. Like creationists who start with the bible, they start with some racist political ideology.
 
AncientMoon said:
Well linking to a Nazi site wasn't a good start. He pretty much confirms that those few people arguing for races, are just white supremacists. Like creationists who start with the bible, they start with some racist political ideology.
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I agree. There are some anthropologists who believe races exist but on the internet most of the people who argue that races are real and biologically important are White Supremacists. Mikmikev is an admin on that right-wing Encyclopedia which he probably sees as an alternative to Wikipedia where he has been banned from over 200 times. Mikemikev is unquestionably a racist. I would however like to see how he does in a debate here.
 
EgalitarianJay said:
adj8m1.jpg
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1 https://right.orain.org/wiki/Argume...ces#.22Out_of_Africa.22_and_related_arguments

2 https://right.orain.org/wiki/Argume...ically_defined_with_biologically_defined_race

3 Not disputed

4 Not disputed

5 Not disputed

6 https://right.orain.org/wiki/Argume...of_races#Semantic_games_with_taxonomic_labels
 
RealMikemikev said:
1 https://right.orain.org/wiki/Argume...ces#.22Out_of_Africa.22_and_related_arguments

2 https://right.orain.org/wiki/Argume...ically_defined_with_biologically_defined_race

3 Not disputed

4 Not disputed

5 Not disputed

6 https://right.orain.org/wiki/Argume...of_races#Semantic_games_with_taxonomic_labels
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1. I don't see what that section has to do with Keita's first summary point.

2. Keita doesn't use socially or politically defined race to say that races don't exist he's simply saying that U.S. demographic groups are not biological races.

6. The labels mentioned by Keita are recommended to describe human genetic variation as an alternative to race because they are more accurate biologically.
 
EgalitarianJay said:
1. I don't see what that section has to do with Keita's first summary point.

2. Keita doesn't use socially or politically defined race to say that races don't exist he's simply saying that U.S. demographic groups are not biological races.

6. The labels mentioned by Keita are recommended to describe human genetic variation as an alternative to race because they are more accurate biologically.
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1 So why does Keita say variation isn't structured into race.

2 Then this is not disputed.

6 No it's just pointless semantics and an attempt to muddy and subvert the matter.
 
RealMikemikev said:
I think this section is the best reason that race is a valid and informative concept:
https://right.orain.org/wiki/Arguments_regarding_the_existence_of_races#Predictive_Value
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Rushton's research is highly selective and very poor in quality. His work only seems to have predictive value if you accept his model of human biological variation and its relation to the variables he lists. Several scholars have found problems with Rushton's work.

Joseph L Graves said:
1. Rushton's arguments rely on r- and K- life history theory. These designations are general descriptions of investment in reproduction and somatic tissue on opposite ends of a spectrum (r- = more reproduction/less soma and K- = less reproduction/more soma.) The problem with this notion is that it has been shown to be incorrect in a series of experiments with a wide variety of organisms. No one took this theory seriously after about 1990.

2. Even if r- and K- theory were correct, I showed that Rushton applied it backwards. By the theory, Africans should be K- selected (K selection occurs in stable environments, such as the tropics) while r-selection was to be favored in fluctuating environments, such as the temperate zones. So by Rushton's reasoning, Africans should be more genetically capable of intelligence, and Europeans/Asians less.

3. Throughout his work, Rushton selectively uses examples to support his ideas. I have caught him manipulating data in unclear ways, for the purposes of making his points.

4. Rushton requires the existence of biological races, which humans do not have. The existence of geographically based genetic variation is not the same as proving races exist, or that in life history features all Africans are different from all Europeans.
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J Philippe Rushton said:
Several years ago Joseph Graves did write a book chapter critique of my life-history explanation of race differences. I no longer recall it in detail except that he had ducked the main part, that is, the data.

As you know, most race research focuses on Black-White differences in the US in IQ, education, crime, and marital stability. My research went a lot further to cover some 60 variables such as speed of maturation, brain size (three separate indicators), rate of producing twins at birth, longevity, testosterone, sexual behavior, etc. Moreover, I looked at African descended people in the Caribbean, Canada, the UK, and sub-Saharan Africa. and found the same Black-White differences where ever they were studied. Most crucial, I looked at East Asians on all the same 60 characteristics and found they had higher IQ scores, larger brains, less sexual activity, less crime, fewer twins per 1,000 births etc.

In other words, a highly consistent three-way pattern of racial differences exists in brain size, intelligence, sexuality, personality, speed of maturation, life span, crime, and family stability in which East Asian descended people fall at one end of the spectrum, African descended people fall at the other, and European descended people fall intermediate, typically close to East Asians. East Asians are slower to mature, less fertile, less sexually active, with larger brains and higher IQ scores. They also engage in greater social organization and less crime than Africans who are at the opposite ends in each of these areas. My 1995 book, Race, Evolution, and Behavior summarized these theories and the evidence supporting them.

So, the fundamental question is, how do we explain the consistent three-way pattern? No environmental theory alone can do so. Only evolutionary theory in which genetics are crucial can account for the pattern If Dr. Graves can come up with a better theory or show the data is different than I described, he should do so. But he has not done so.
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Joseph L Graves said:
Rushton's memory of my critique is quite limited. First, it began with an evaluation of the efficacy of r- and K- theory in general. Professional life-history evolutionists (of which I am, and he is not) no longer regard r- and K- theory as a useful research paradigm. This dismantling occurred due to a series of experiments that tested the predictions of r- and K-theory and showed that they did not hold up in a wide variety of species. Second, I demonstrated that Rushton misapplied r- and K- theory; indeed by MacArthur and Wilson (the originators of r- and K-theory) Africans would be K-selected and Europeans and East Asians (r-selected); just the opposite of what Rushton claimed. Third, I demonstrated that much of the data he cited to make his case was flawed either in collection or source; particularly data like "social organization" and "crime". Thus at three levels his r- and K-theory approach to human life history variation fails. So I challenge the notion his 3-way spectrum is real; secondly even if it were real, he has not presented an evolutionary theory that could explain it; and third that environmental differences could easily explain much of what he reports.
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Scott MacEachern said:
As for that email, the bulk is just filler, a restatement of the abstract for Rushton's book. His thesis here is simply that this conjunction of data (his 'highly consistent three-way pattern of racial differences') is significant and can only be explained genetically.

The problems with this claim are so great that it's sometimes hard to know
where to begin, but in general, here are some of the main problems:

(1) Aggregation of data is only useful if some degree of control and
comparability are exerted over the data being aggregated - otherwise, you
end up with the GIGO Rule (Garbage In, Garbage Out). Many of Rushton's
data sources are exceptionally poor, to the point of being caricatures of scientific research: thus, one of his primary sources on 'sexual behaviour' is a book of 19th-century travel porn, of no serious scientific value, and many of the studies that he cites on IQ and brain size are based on datasets that even people who agree with him accept as unreliable. In the most direct sense, many of his data are the garbage in the GIGO Rule.

You may or may not have read David Barash's review of Rushton's
methodology:

"...the pious hope that by combining numerous little turds of
variously tainted data, one can obtain a valuable result; but in fact, the
outcome is merely a larger than average pile of shit." Barash, David 1995.
Review of Race, Evolution, and Behavior. _Animal Behaviour_ 49:1131-1133

(2) Aggregating data on (say) brain size or twinning rates into his three 'racial' groupings conceals the very significant variations in aggregated
characteristics _within_ those racial groups. Essentially, he reduces
very, very, very diverse characteristics down to single numbers, then
generalizes those single numbers to every population within his putative
races. However, averages among diverse populations tell you almost nothing
about the distributions of those diverse characteristics, nor about the
evolutionary pressures that might have brought them into being.

(3) Many of the characteristics that he thinks are evolutionarily
determined have actually changed dramatically over historical time-periods
in different parts of the world (and are extremely variable _within_ his
'racial' populations - see #2 above): besides obvious things like
longevity, fertility and infant mortality rates, these include characteristics like twinning rates, speed of sexual maturation/first menarche and so on. He treats them as immutable evolutionary differences, whereas in fact they seem entirely sensitive to historical contingency
over short time-scales.

Best

Scott
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RealMikemikev said:
1 So why does Keita say variation isn't structured into race.

2 Then this is not disputed.

6 No it's just pointless semantics and an attempt to muddy and subvert the matter.
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1. Because human populations do not meet the criteria for classification as phylogenetic subspecies.

6. It's not a semantic dispute. No one denies that human biological variation exists it's just a matter of how it is structured.
 
RealMikemikev said:
I think this section is the best reason that race is a valid and informative concept:
https://right.orain.org/wiki/Arguments_regarding_the_existence_of_races#Predictive_Value
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What relevance does this have? None. A Sesardic straw man.

"Sesardic defines social constructionism as the view that 'Classifying people into commonsense races tells us absolutely nothing informative about biological characteristics of these people' (Sesardic 2013, p. 287). But even the staunchest social constructionist knows that socalled 'common sense racial classification' tells us
somewhat informative things about phenotypic traits: skin colour, hair texture, eye shape, etc. For instance, few people racialised as 'Asian' have naturally blonde hair."
(Hochman, 2014)

"It is a misconception that anti-realists about biological race believe that 'race' is totally uncorrelated with any biological difference: we just believe that it does not capture very much biological difference, and that it does not capture that difference very well." (Hochman, 2014)
 
AncientMoon said:
Well linking to a Nazi site wasn't a good start. He pretty much confirms that those few people arguing for races, are just white supremacists. Like creationists who start with the bible, they start with some racist political ideology.
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Note that this is the OP.
 
The way I see it, any system of categorization is a social construct. Categories by nature are abstractions we create to make sense of our world, rather than something imposed onto it by a non-human authority (like a god?). And the thing about race as we understand the term is that it's not simply the observation of difference so much as the categorization of difference. We all know that people around the world look different, but the problem sets in when you try to sort them into certain races. How many races should you create, and where do you draw the lines between the different races?

It's not even like the traditional racial definitions are even consistent in usage. There are entire African populations with darker skin and less European ancestry than Barack Obama, yet many of the same racialists who call Obama a "lyin' African" and all those other anti-black slurs wouldn't call those darker Africans "black" if they have, say, lower nasal indices than the "Negroid" archetype (and/or they have a connection to some impressive ancient ruins nearby). If the definition of certain races can change depending on one's agenda, it's easy to see why it's considered a social construct more than anything else.
 
AncientMoon said:
"It is a misconception that anti-realists about biological race believe that 'race' is totally uncorrelated with any biological difference: we just believe that it does not capture very much biological difference, and that it does not capture that difference very well." (Hochman, 2014)
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So can you give us a taxonomy that captures more difference Atlantid?
 
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Howard Carter said:
The way I see it, any system of categorization is a social construct. Categories by nature are abstractions we create to make sense of our world, rather than something imposed onto it by a non-human authority (like a god?). And the thing about race as we understand the term is that it's not simply the observation of difference so much as the categorization of difference. We all know that people around the world look different, but the problem sets in when you try to sort them into certain races. How many races should you create, and where do you draw the lines between the different races?

It's not even like the traditional racial definitions are even consistent in usage. There are entire African populations with darker skin and less European ancestry than Barack Obama, yet many of the same racialists who call Obama a "lyin' African" and all those other anti-black slurs wouldn't call those darker Africans "black" if they have, say, lower nasal indices than the "Negroid" archetype (and/or they have a connection to some impressive ancient ruins nearby). If the definition of certain races can change depending on one's agenda, it's easy to see why it's considered a social construct more than anything else.
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So your argument is "some guy" doesn't know how to classify races so it's an invalid taxonomy? Could we not throw out every taxonomy like this, simply by asking some utter retard to classify things?

PS Note how you tacitly admit the validity of an ancestry based race concept to make your argument that "some guy" gets it wrong.

Check this out too
https://right.orain.org/wiki/Arguments_regarding_the_existence_of_races#Diamond.27s_Fallacy
 
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