270 replies to this topic

[Alislaws]

I think a lot of the reason people are hostile to the idea of investigating and acknowledging that different races have real quantifiable physical differences is that there are a lot of bigoted people in the world who would hear something like: "A study has shown that on average X race have larger brains than Y race" and they would take it to mean "People of X races are smarter and therefore superior to people of Y race" and use it to justify their racism. 

 

I'm sure most of the people on this forum understand science well enough not to make stupid jumps like that but I can see why people would tend to downplay the differences as an effort to counteract this sort of thinking. 

 

So does anyone disagree with the idea that while there are significant genetic differences between human populations these differences are much less significant than the cultural/social/economic differences and should not be used as the basis for discrimination?

 

I can understand the objection to affirmative action policies as they set down inflexible rules which cannot be fair in all situations. 

 

But is there anyone posting here who actually believes that racism is over and we don't need to try and fix these things at all? or is it just the methodology? Because the original post was about black people "playing the Victims" which implies that Racism is no longer a real issue which seems pretty obviously untrue to me. 

[Cody930]

 

So you are fundamentally disagreeing with Voluntaryist's ideas that somehow race is a differentiating factor when it comes to sucess?

 

No, race is not differentiating factor for social success. Of course, unless society itself decided that "this man can play violin and study mathematics while this man... just look at him... can only pick cotton".

 

And still, human races (you may use other word if don't like "race") are not some "social construct", they are genetic reality, the result of human adaptation to different environments on different continents. It is true that human genome 99,9% identical, yet the rest 0,01% is more than enough to provide the noticeable differences (not only appearance, also resistance to certain diseases, etc). No, these differences are still not enough to classify races as human subspecies.

 

 

Okay I get where you're coming from. I don't think anyone here, including progressives, doesn't recognize that reality (unless they're just being so silly as to ignore basic biology). Still though, race did quickly become a social construct in US history, that was what I was getting at before.

[kjaggard]

 

So you are fundamentally disagreeing with Voluntaryist's ideas that somehow race is a differentiating factor when it comes to sucess?

 

No, race is not differentiating factor for social success. Of course, unless society itself decided that "this man can play violin and study mathematics while this man... just look at him... can only pick cotton".

 

And still, human races (you may use other word if don't like "race") are not some "social construct", they are genetic reality, the result of human adaptation to different environments on different continents. It is true that human genome 99,9% identical, yet the rest 0,1% is more than enough to provide the noticeable differences (not only appearance, also resistance to certain diseases, etc). No, these differences are still not enough to classify races as human subspecies.

 

but you and I may differ genetically more than you differ from my roommate of black ancestry. does that mean you and I are racially distinct? Humans vary, I have hazel eyes and a large bridge to my nose and curly brown hair. I know a young child who has very nearly the same heritage as I do who has green eyes, blond straight hair and a smaller nose profile. Were both of us to have children they would perpetuate those same traits forward (trust me, I've got half sisters from multiple mothers all with this nose we got from our father but the half sisters on my mothers side do not have the same nose.)

 

This nose and curly brown hair with hazel eyes do not make a distinction of race or even sub race. Given enough time and success my siblings and I could populate an entire region with our traits, Should the descendants of the blond child and the region of people populated by my sisters and myself meet, it's not a meeting of different races characterized by blonde hair and small noses vs wavy brown hair with big noses.

[Unity]

I think a lot of the reason people are hostile to the idea of investigating and acknowledging that different races have real quantifiable physical differences is that there are a lot of bigoted people in the world who would hear something like: "A study has shown that on average X race have larger brains than Y race" and they would take it to mean "People of X races are smarter and therefore superior to people of Y race" and use it to justify their racism. 
 
I'm sure most of the people on this forum understand science well enough not to make stupid jumps like that but I can see why people would tend to downplay the differences as an effort to counteract this sort of thinking. 
 
So does anyone disagree with the idea that while there are significant genetic differences between human populations these differences are much less significant than the cultural/social/economic differences and should not be used as the basis for discrimination?
 
I can understand the objection to affirmative action policies as they set down inflexible rules which cannot be fair in all situations. 
 
But is there anyone posting here who actually believes that racism is over and we don't need to try and fix these things at all? or is it just the methodology? Because the original post was about black people "playing the Victims" which implies that Racism is no longer a real issue which seems pretty obviously untrue to me. 

I fundamentally disagree with you. Think of the genome like an operating system. Imagine if only 2 bytes per megabyte were changed in the program. It is unlikely that those bytes could have the information content to display the information that they do (hair color, eye color, hair texture, skin pigmentation) and also be a significant source of other major change. Even a small change in neural architecture would Vastly change the brain's capacity to process information this would likely co-occur with a change in metabolism, etc in order to change supply enough energy to the brain (the brain sucks up a lot of energy). This would likely be a measureable phenomena. Not only would it be measureable, but it would be in some ratio to the amount of information content in the genome. Ie AGTC is base 4 so the difference should be proportional to log_4 X (the amount of information encoded in bits of genetic data). So what I think is that you are likely making a fallacy of trying to find a "compromise" between these positions, but personally I find that reprehensible because what it amounts to is shielding bigots from criticism and in this case they should be held accountable for willful ignorance.

[TheComrade]

I don't think we should continue... as TG said "you guys can keep on believing what you want". Anyway, this thread forced me to refresh my memory reading some articles from this wonderful site & I thank you for it.

[Alislaws]

Hi Unity, 

 

I'm not sure what you are fundamentally disagreeing with me on. The content of your post is not that clear and you have quoted everything i said. since you seem to be talking about brains and evolution i'm assuming you're disagreeing with this statement: 

 

So does anyone disagree with the idea that while there are significant genetic differences between human populations these differences are much less significant than the cultural/social/economic differences and should not be used as the basis for discrimination?

 

So I'm guessing, that you are not disagreeing with "there are significant genetic differences between human populations" unless you have a high bar for "significant" and think that everyone is basically genetically the same?

 

If you disagree with "and should not be used as the basis for discrimination" then I'm not really interested in talking further, as PhoenixRu says above you'll believe what you want and no amount of forum posts would make you less of a racist. (I don't think this is what you're saying though)

 

So I think you are saying that you think the genetic differences in people are more significant than the social and cultural differences? 

 

Oh unless you are disagreeing with my theory as to why people are reluctant to discuss and examine the differences between races? but you haven't come up with an alternative reason why people are reluctant to do this?

[Unity]

Yes, I am disagreeing with this potion: "there are significant genetic differences between human populations." I think they are largely due to social/environmental factors. What you neglect to mention in your post is that say race green vs race blue had 15% larger brains this could be caused for example by living in poor conditions such as in a highly industrial sector with more environmental pollution. Usually this is where the poorer people live and those kids of conditions can affect neural development. I think you are being prone to two styles of cognitive errors at least based on what you have written thus far. 1 The concept of people having "innate" qualities. I think even genetic information tends to be expressed probabilistically and I bet I could make a pretty good argument for it. 2. I'm not sure if you did not understand my original post, but my argument was that there is not enough information for genetic differences to be the causal factor between different populations. I apologize if I was putting words in your mouth, but often I have found that the position "oh these differences are not very significant, but they definitely exist and are the cause of why those people are that way" is just a "soft" form of bias that people use because it is more socially acceptable and often it hides a more sinister "hard" racist attitude that is revealed when the person is relaxed among "others like them" or under the influence of alcohol, etc. In other words, I am making an argument based on information theory as to why such a position is measurably wrong and if someone disagreed with that position, then I would want to hear the experiment they could perform to confirm their position and to dissuade me from my own.

[Frizz]

Italian ufo is such a racist, sexist , homophobic man of profound misjudgment.

[tw88]

I don't think the genetic differences between race are that significant, and I dont think there is good evidence to suggest otherwise. I think racism exist because it was important for our survival for much of human history. People who live close by are more likely to have common interest and a shared investment in eachother's wellbeing and for most of human history, people who lived close by also looked more similar to eachother spoke the same language and wore the same style of clothing ect. Nearly 10% of our hunter gatherer ancestors died as a result of violence, so being able to use a quick and easy heuristic to identify people much more likely to be hostile was of huge importance. For most of human history if someone was to travel far enough to be in a region that was linguistically, racially, or culturally different than their own was probably doing so either for trade or conquest. For most of human history encountering people who looked different, or spoke a different language was a precarious situation that had a much higher chance of resulting in violence and so being prejudice towards people different from your self was advantageous. Living in multi-cultured multi-raced society sets off alarm bells that have much less warrent in a globalized world, and so racism will probably always be an uphill battle until people of different races homogenize to the point of no longer being distinguishable from eachother.

[Frizz]

Blac chyna is cool

[MarcZ]

Blac chyna is cool

 

Did you really necro this thread just to make this asinine statement you goose.