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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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 Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 7:44 am Post subject: |
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| Fat_Elvis wrote: |
| I think most biologists agree now that race is just a social construct anyway. |
Race is an inexact term. Better to consider clusters of similar genetic traits. Such clusters exist, are entirely consistent with evolution, and create meaningful differences between groups.
Or. Humans for 100,000 years were scattered around the world. They lived in difference climates. Had access to different veggies/fruits/nuts. Different meats/fish. They had different threats. Some lived in lush tropical areas. Some lived in areas covered in snow for 8 months of the year.
And from the extremely different conditions evolved groups of humans who are exactly the same in every conceivable way?
Would any other animal be totally resistant to evolution? Is any other culture as prone to nonsense as ours?
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Some problems in Oklahoma City:
http://www.news9.com/Global/category.asp?C=116601&autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=5209456&flvUri=&partnerclipid=
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A black female driving a school bus apparently did nothing to intervene as black students were beating a White girl. Black students knocked the White girl to the floor and were beating her.
When the girl's father saw his daughter being beaten, he attempted to rescue her. The bus driver responded by throwing punches at the White man's face while shouting anti-White racial slurs.
The bus driver was not suspended. A black female spoke in behalf of the school district claiming the matter was under investigation. |
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http://www.newson6.com/Global/story.asp?S=13353575
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OKLAHOMA CITY -- A second student this week said a bullying incident involving racism forced him to drop out of his Oklahoma City Public School.
The student from China was taken to a hospital after he said black students attacked and taunted him on his school bus.
The foreign exchange student said a group of 13 and 14-year-olds jumped him, beat him and called him several racial slurs. The student shared his story less than 24 hours after another student said she has been dealing with the same problems.
Seventeen-year-old James said he was so terrified about what happened to him last week, he asked to remain anonymous.
"I never talked to those kids before and they want to fight me," James said.
James was enrolled at Centennial High in Oklahoma City, until he was beaten on one of the school's buses. He said the students who attacked him were black and feels the random assault was racially motivated.
"It's not friendly," James said.
Not friendly and certainly not what he said he expected in America. Diane is his host mother.
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http://www.news9.com/global/story.asp?s=12072101
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| OKLAHOMA CITY -- Oklahoma City Police are still searching for a man who attacked the principal of Frederick Douglas High School, but some say the attack was a result of building racial tensions. |
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Etc. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 10:24 am Post subject: |
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| mises wrote: |
| Fat_Elvis wrote: |
| I think most biologists agree now that race is just a social construct anyway. |
Race is an inexact term. Better to consider clusters of similar genetic traits. Such clusters exist, are entirely consistent with evolution, and create meaningful differences between groups.
Or. Humans for 100,000 years were scattered around the world. They lived in difference climates. Had access to different veggies/fruits/nuts. Different meats/fish. They had different threats. Some lived in lush tropical areas. Some lived in areas covered in snow for 8 months of the year.
And from the extremely different conditions evolved groups of humans who are exactly the same in every conceivable way?
Would any other animal be totally resistant to evolution? Is any other culture as prone to nonsense as ours? |
Our common ancestors are less than 3,000 years old.
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| Those precise mathematical results showed that in a world obeying the simplified assumptions, the most recent common ancestor would have lived less than 1,000 years ago. He also introduced the "identical ancestors point," the most recent time -- less than 2,000 years ago in the simplified model -- when each person was an ancestor to all or ancestor to none of the people alive today. |
The genetic variations in humans from different cultures are minor, and focus primarily on dietary tolerances and melanin-content. We're much more likely to see the most meaningful genetic variations within races than cross-racially. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 10:36 am Post subject: |
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Kuros, you might find this book interesting:
http://www.amazon.com/000-Year-Explosion-Civilization-Accelerated/dp/0465002218
Page 1:
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| "We intend to make the case that human evolution has accelerated in the past 10,000 years, rather than slowing or stopping, and is now happening about 100 times faster than its long-term average over the 6 million years of our existence. The pace has been so rapid that humans have changed significantly in body and mind over recorded history. Sargon and Imhotep were different from you genetically as well as culturally." |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 10:37 am Post subject: |
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| Yes, I would. That looks like a natural companion to Guns, Germs, and Steel. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 11:25 am Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
| Yes, I would. That looks like a natural companion to Guns, Germs, and Steel. |
Oh lordy. I was really hoping you would reference Jared Diamond. Ok. Later I'll get into it. |
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Gwangjuboy
Joined: 08 Jul 2003
Location: England
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| Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 11:27 am Post subject: |
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| mises wrote: |
Kuros, you might find this book interesting:
http://www.amazon.com/000-Year-Explosion-Civilization-Accelerated/dp/0465002218
Page 1:
| Quote: |
| "We intend to make the case that human evolution has accelerated in the past 10,000 years, rather than slowing or stopping, and is now happening about 100 times faster than its long-term average over the 6 million years of our existence. The pace has been so rapid that humans have changed significantly in body and mind over recorded history. Sargon and Imhotep were different from you genetically as well as culturally." |
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True, especially with respect to the brain. I can't find it - after trying - but I recall reading an article which suggested that the brain had evolved significantly even over the last several hundred years.
The article below is related:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2004/dec/29/evolution.science |
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catman
Joined: 18 Jul 2004
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| Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 4:35 pm Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
| Yes, I would. That looks like a natural companion to Guns, Germs, and Steel. |
One of the best books I ever read. |
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Charon
Joined: 14 Dec 2010
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| Posted: Mon Mar 07, 2011 3:39 am Post subject: |
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Guess I'll take the dissenting opinion on this one, but there are over at least 40 scientifically verifiable differences between the White and Black races including such criteria as Physical Traits (skin color, musculature, skeletal structure, etc.), Brain size, Intelligence, Reproductive traits, Personality, Social patterns and Maturation rates. And the most contemporary DNA research indicates that Whites and Blacks split some 100,000 years ago, and Asians and Whites some 40,000 years ago.
Humans are humans are humans just like dogs are dogs are dogs, but there's a HUGE difference between a Caucasian Shepherd and a Chihuahua, or between a Shih-Tzu and a St. Bernard. "Race is a social construct" between a Toy Poodle and a Great Dane too, is it not? Particularly if one is about to be bitten?
Funny, lots of folks here quoting Diamond, Gould et. al. with nary a mention one of the dissenting research and scholarship of J. Phillipe Rushton, Carleton Coon, Edward Miller, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, or Nobel Prize Winners Jim Watson or William Shockley.
Back to the topic at hand, however, I suggest a field trip into certain parts of EVERY larger American city some Saturday night and test firsthand Diamond and Gould et. al's theories of "Race" as some kind of "social construct."
Enjoy the experience!  |
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Fat_Elvis
Joined: 17 Aug 2006
Location: In the ghetto
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| Posted: Mon Mar 07, 2011 6:50 am Post subject: |
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| Charon wrote: |
| Guess I'll take the dissenting opinion on this one, but there are over at least 40 scientifically verifiable differences between the White and Black races including such criteria as Physical Traits (skin color, musculature, skeletal structure, etc.), Brain size, Intelligence, Reproductive traits, Personality, Social patterns and Maturation rates. And the most contemporary DNA research indicates that Whites and Blacks split some 100,000 years ago, and Asians and Whites some 40,000 years ago. |
Source?
| Charon wrote: |
| Humans are humans are humans just like dogs are dogs are dogs, but there's a HUGE difference between a Caucasian Shepherd and a Chihuahua, or between a Shih-Tzu and a St. Bernard. "Race is a social construct" between a Toy Poodle and a Great Dane too, is it not? Particularly if one is about to be bitten? |
Lat time I checked most humans were more or less the same size with about the same jaw size. What exactly are you suggesting here? Sounds like a fairly specious analogy to me.
| Charon wrote: |
| Funny, lots of folks here quoting Diamond, Gould et. al. with nary a mention one of the dissenting research and scholarship of J. Phillipe Rushton, Carleton Coon, Edward Miller, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, or Nobel Prize Winners Jim Watson or William Shockley. |
I'll get back to you on specific criticisms on said scholars' work, but I think many would dismiss much of their work as "scientific racism".
| Charon wrote: |
Back to the topic at hand, however, I suggest a field trip into certain parts of EVERY larger American city some Saturday night and test firsthand Diamond and Gould et. al's theories of "Race" as some kind of "social construct."
Enjoy the experience! |
Try explaining to the many African-American men jailed as a result of racial profiling that race is a social construct too. To describe something as a social construct is not to deny that in the minds of most people and in our society it is perceived as reality. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2011 6:20 am Post subject: |
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Guns, Germs, and Steel is airport bookstore quality history. Presumably, one will read it in between Thomas Friedman's metaphor books and Malcolm Gladwell's everybody can be Gretzky nonsense. GG&S was interesting.
..
Which Diamond shall we believe:
In the New York Review of Books, making reference to the total blank slate, no races, no groups, all exactly the same argument:
https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/wash/www/102/diamond.htm
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The biggest controversy in worldwide genetic comparisons is, of course, the race controversy. This is a subject of special interest to Cavalli-Sforza, who has had a leading part in demolishing scientists' attempts to classify human populations into races in the same way that they classify birds and other species into races. Any competent American birdwatcher can assign individuals of the common bird species known as the yellow-rumped warbler into its eastern and western races (termed the "myrtle warbler" and "Audubon warbler," respectively). The eastern race has a white throat, the western race a yellow throat. That's easy and uncontroversial, but it's even easier for a layperson to distinguish Swedes infallibly from Japanese and Nigerians, just by glancing at faces. Common sense tells us that that's how we divide humans into races, such as whites, blacks, Mongoloids, and so on.
From a scientific perspective, however, the concept of race still fails, for reasons to which Genes, Peoples, and Languages devotes its first chapter. Even if you try to subdivide human populations by visible differences like skin color, it's completely arbitrary how far you should go on subdividing: different anthropologists recognize between three and sixty races, depending on their personal preference. If you go so far as to assign Nigerians and Kalahari Bushmen to different races within Africa�as do virtually all anthropologists who recognize races�why lump Tamils and Swedes as "Caucasians," or Japanese and Quechuas as "Mongoloids"?
Our racial stereotypes turn out to be based on just a few external traits: skin and hair and eye color, hair form, and facial shape. Variation in those traits bears little relation to variation in well-studied genetic traits. Genetically remote populations, such as New Guinea highlanders and black Africans, may be outwardly similar. Conversely, outwardly dissimilar populations may prove to be genetically similar, as illustrated by the slight genetic differences separating blond-haired, blue-eyed, fair-skinned Swedes from black-haired, brown-eyed, darker-skinned Sicilians. As Cavalli-Sforza puts it, "It is because they are external that these racial differences strike us so forcibly, and we automatically assume that differences of similar magnitude exist below the surface, in the rest of our genetic makeup. This is simply not so: the remainder of our genetic makeup hardly differs at all." |
In Natural History, he goes on:
| Quote: |
| �There are also practical reasons for interest in Jewish genes. The state of Israel has been going to much expense to support immigration and job retraining of Jews who were persecuted minorities in other countries. That immediately poses the problem of defining who is a Jew.� |
Which is the real Diamond? The man of scientific fuzzy blank slate universalism or genetic particularism? Perhaps it depends on the audience? Or is it only Jews that can be classified?
Groups either can or can not be identified by their genes. Either it is possible or it is not.
| Quote: |
| I'll get back to you on specific criticisms on said scholars' work, but I think many would dismiss much of their work as "scientific racism". |
Mother nature is a big bad racist. Terrible, isn't it. She should be sent to an EEOC diversity seminar.
http://takimag.com/article/the_thug_gene
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Consider a 2010 study5 that researched African-American men and five violence genes, concluding that a crude genetic index of these genes predicted adult violence and criminality more accurately than a detailed measure of the men�s childhood relationships with their mothers.
This line of research could reinforce unfair judgments that all black men are dangerous, but most black men do not have said allele; they merely have it at a rate ten times higher than white men do. |
At any rate, Europeans and Asians mated with a different species:
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2011/01/x-linked-haplotype-of-neandertal-origin.html
..but we're exactly the same.. Exactly. No difference. If science doesn't fit what Franz Boas decided Americans should believe then science (through the scientist) is racist, whatever that means. Example:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2677098.ece
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James Watson, a Nobel Prize winner for his part in discovering the structure of DNA...
The 79-year-old geneticist said he was �inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa� because �all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really.". He said he hoped that everyone was equal, but countered that �people who have to deal with black employees find this not true�.
He says that you should not discriminate on the basis of colour, because �there are many people of colour who are very talented, but don�t promote them when they haven�t succeeded at the lower level�. He writes that �there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so�. |
A scientist making a statement he believes is backed up by evidence. The politicians got pissy:
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The newly formed Equality and Human Rights Commission is studying Dr Watson�s remarks �in full�.
Keith Vaz, the Labour chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, said today: �It is sad to see a scientist of such achievement making such baseless, unscientific and extremely offensive comments. |
Blank slaters aren't going to enjoy the genetic revolution much. Or the the genetic revolution will be moved to Asia, where science won't face Human Rights Commissions when violating PC.
http://www.economist.com/node/14742737
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2010/12/supercomputers-and-mystery-of-iq.html |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2011 6:54 am Post subject: |
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Related to this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/science/10anthropology.html?_r=1&hpw
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Anthropologists have been thrown into turmoil about the nature and future of their profession after a decision by the American Anthropological Association at its recent annual meeting to strip the word �science� from a statement of its long-range plan.
The decision has reopened a long-simmering tension between researchers in science-based anthropological disciplines � including archaeologists, physical anthropologists and some cultural anthropologists � and members of the profession who study race, ethnicity and gender and see themselves as advocates for native peoples or human rights. |
Notice that the activists see science as a barrier to their work.
Also:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/science/08tier.html?_r=3&ref=science |
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Fat_Elvis
Joined: 17 Aug 2006
Location: In the ghetto
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| Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2011 8:17 pm Post subject: |
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| mises wrote: |
| Quote: |
. Even if you try to subdivide human populations by visible differences like skin color, it's completely arbitrary how far you should go on subdividing: different anthropologists recognize between three and sixty races, depending on their personal preference. If you go so far as to assign Nigerians and Kalahari Bushmen to different races within Africa�as do virtually all anthropologists who recognize races�why lump Tamils and Swedes as "Caucasians," or Japanese and Quechuas as "Mongoloids"?
Our racial stereotypes turn out to be based on just a few external traits: skin and hair and eye color, hair form, and facial shape. Variation in those traits bears little relation to variation in well-studied genetic traits. Genetically remote populations, such as New Guinea highlanders and black Africans, may be outwardly similar. Conversely, outwardly dissimilar populations may prove to be genetically similar, as illustrated by the slight genetic differences separating blond-haired, blue-eyed, fair-skinned Swedes from black-haired, brown-eyed, darker-skinned Sicilians. As Cavalli-Sforza puts it, "It is because they are external that these racial differences strike us so forcibly, and we automatically assume that differences of similar magnitude exist below the surface, in the rest of our genetic makeup. This is simply not so: the remainder of our genetic makeup hardly differs at all." |
In Natural History, he goes on:
| Quote: |
| �There are also practical reasons for interest in Jewish genes. The state of Israel has been going to much expense to support immigration and job retraining of Jews who were persecuted minorities in other countries. That immediately poses the problem of defining who is a Jew.� |
Which is the real Diamond? The man of scientific fuzzy blank slate universalism or genetic particularism? Perhaps it depends on the audience? Or is it only Jews that can be classified? |
I think what Diamond is pointing out in both quotes is that definitions of race are often politically motivated, particularly in the second instance where the definition of who a Jew is is important to see who can immigrate to Israel, at least, that's how I read it from the limited quotes above
| mises wrote: |
| Quote: |
| I'll get back to you on specific criticisms on said scholars' work, but I think many would dismiss much of their work as "scientific racism". |
Mother nature is a big bad racist. Terrible, isn't it. She should be sent to an EEOC diversity seminar.
http://takimag.com/article/the_thug_gene |
No, Nature isn't a racist, people are.
[quote="mises"]
| Quote: |
Consider a 2010 study5 that researched African-American men and five violence genes, concluding that a crude genetic index of these genes predicted adult violence and criminality more accurately than a detailed measure of the men�s childhood relationships with their mothers.
This line of research could reinforce unfair judgments that all black men are dangerous, but most black men do not have said allele; they merely have it at a rate ten times higher than white men do. |
Here's another view, a slightly less reductive view showing how heredity and environment interact with relation to 'violence genes'
http://www.economist.com/node/1259045?story_id=1259045
| mises wrote: |
At any rate, Europeans and Asians mated with a different species:
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2011/01/x-linked-haplotype-of-neandertal-origin.html
..but we're exactly the same.. Exactly. No difference. If science doesn't fit what Franz Boas decided Americans should believe then science (through the scientist) is racist, whatever that means. Example:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2677098.ece
| Quote: |
James Watson, a Nobel Prize winner for his part in discovering the structure of DNA...
The 79-year-old geneticist said he was �inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa� because �all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really.". He said he hoped that everyone was equal, but countered that �people who have to deal with black employees find this not true�.
He says that you should not discriminate on the basis of colour, because �there are many people of colour who are very talented, but don�t promote them when they haven�t succeeded at the lower level�. He writes that �there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so�. |
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Not to take anything away from Dr Watson's work discovering DNA, but he does have a history of making these kinds of comments
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_D._Watson#Comments
| Quote: |
| While speaking at a conference in 2000, Watson had suggested a link between skin color and sex drive, hypothesizing that dark-skinned people have stronger libidos. His lecture, complete with slides of bikini-clad women, argued that extracts of melanin � which gives skin its color � had been found to boost subjects' sex drive. "That's why you have Latin lovers," he said, according to people who attended the lecture. "You've never heard of an English lover. Only an English patient." |
I'm sorry, but where is the scientific research that backs this up? I know that there are group differences in IQ, but we've discussed this elsewhere mises, there are also differences in the same group in different socio-economic positions, and there has also been increases in IQ in different groups which suggests IQ is determined by a whole host of factors, and to reduce group differences to hereditability is a little simplistic.
It's been ten years since human DNA was mapped. Where is the genetic revolution? It hasn't occurred because things such as illness and behaviour can't be reduced to genetics. |
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Fat_Elvis
Joined: 17 Aug 2006
Location: In the ghetto
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| Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2011 8:19 pm Post subject: |
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double post
Last edited by Fat_Elvis on Wed Mar 09, 2011 6:21 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Fat_Elvis
Joined: 17 Aug 2006
Location: In the ghetto
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| Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2011 8:21 pm Post subject: |
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triple post
Last edited by Fat_Elvis on Wed Mar 09, 2011 6:22 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2011 9:02 pm Post subject: |
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Yeah, I read impatiently through the indigenous-friendly nonsense in Diamond's book to get to the historical analysis. His work on agriculture, domesticated animals, the spread of technology, and the East-West axis all remain very powerful.
It is an essential skill to be able to pluck the worthwhile from authors who have a worldview different from our own. |
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