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/sci/ - Science & Math

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7337244 No.7337244[DELETED]  [Reply] [Original]

Is this correct?

I thought there actually was a scientific basis for race.

>> No.7337254

do you use the catalog?

>> No.7337262

>>7337254
there isn't a duplicate thread of this

>> No.7337464

>>7337244
>trusting meme science

>> No.7337480

>>7337262

There's a shitpost general

>> No.7337481

>>7337480
this isn't a shitpost, I legit want to know if bill nye is correct in saying this

>> No.7337491

>>7337244
>I thought there actually was a scientific basis for race.
Well, what do you propose?

>> No.7337503

>>7337491
Caucasoid, negroid, mongoloid

>> No.7337527

>>7337481
Yes, he is. There are a few genetic trends you can find between two isolated populations of people, but there will always be as much genetic variation within each population as there is between the two.

For example, let's consider two fictional tribes. You might find that 80% of Akostonians have blood factor QFZ, while only 2% of Dagrebians have that. "Ah, I conclude that they are different races," you say. Well, not quite. Because that's one small gene, plus, some Akostonians don't have QFZ, and a few Dagrebians do. You could never take a DNA sample from a person and conclusively say which race they are... which makes the whole concept scientifically useless. Lack of predictive power makes it not science.

The only people who disagree have no understanding of basic statistics. And of course, the usual classifications like "Negroid" and "Caucasian" are so big as to be meaningless.

>> No.7337546

>>7337244
He's correct in saying that there are no well defined criteria for categorizing "races", but the rest is just oversimplification. It is very easy to trace geographical ancestry using genetics, and various populations have their own allele frequency clusters that disprove that whole "everyone everywhere is basically the same" meme the left loves so much.
We are similar enough that there should not be an issue with granting everyone the same rights, but "Asians" and "Caucasians" and "Africans" and other groups, self-identified or assigned, however broad and fuzzy they are, have consistently shown different levels of capability that cannot be easily explained away with socialization.

>> No.7337557

>>7337244
No, there isn't. There was back in the 1950s before we had genetics. Back then everything was deduced based on the assumption that
>things that share similar traits are descended from a closer common ancestor than things that share different traits.
Nowadays we know that's not true because of crazy shit like convergent evolution. In particular, it is possible that genetically distant creatures can look almost identical to each other while at the same time looking very different from other creatures that are genetically near to them.

In particular ever since we really started making progress in genetics all of those old traditional notions of races have become more and more difficult to formalize objectively. So instead they've been downgraded to mere social science (hence why we always call it a social construct). The entire branch of science has now been superseded by population genetics where we instead study populations based on region (physical distance). A population isn't the same thing as a race since a population is typically composed of many different races that all happen to live in the same cities/regions/etc.... Similarly it is possible to compare two different populations of the same race (for example when comparing different tribes). In the context of population genetics the term "race" is often used to refer to different populations even though it has nothing to do with the traditional notion of races, this often times tends to cause confusion with laymen and retarded /pol/ users.

>>7337503
This is now considered pseudoscience.

>> No.7337563

>>7337546
>that whole "everyone everywhere is basically the same" meme the left loves so much.
That's not a meme anywhere. The only people who ever say "everyone everywhere is basically the same" are /pol/ users setting up a straw man.

It basically goes like this.

>Retard comes in claiming that all coffees can be split up into three categories: astral, spiritual, and electric.
>Everyone calls them retarded and points out that their criteria is arbitrary as fuck.
>Retard misinterprets this as everyone telling them that coffees are all basically the same and proceeds to strip and eat their own feces.

No one has ever said that humans are all the same. Just that races are a shitty antiquated classification system. We have much better systems now such as populations.

>> No.7337568

>>7337546
The fact that you even consider "African" to be a single group shows how full of shit you are.

>> No.7337575

>>7337527
>>7337557
>>7337563
Thank you anons, and do not confuse me for some retarded /pol/ user. I just thought that because things are deeper than just skin color, we could classify things pretty much black and white and that's what is called race.

Anyway, thank you for this. I enjoy learning new things.

>> No.7337587

>>7337563
>No one has ever said that humans are all the same.

did you even read OPs pic

>> No.7337590

>>7337244
I don't understand how there can not be races when you just have to look at an african's skull and a scandinavian's skull to see a difference in shape. Yes, we're all humans etc etc, but clearly not the same "race" (just as dogs are all dogs, but not all are puggs). I don't understand how this can be the case without there being races.

>> No.7337593

>>7337587
>We are all one species.
>We are all one people.
The same thing as
>We are all the same.
Nigga, you dumb or what?

>> No.7337594

>>7337590
Refer to
>>7337557

Yes, you can tell regions based on skull differences, but there are so many similarities in their DNA it makes race antiquated.

>> No.7337598

>>7337590
Skulls aren't that reliable and vary a lot within an individual population. They can really only be used to make inferences when presented within the context of a lot of other information (hence why it is admissible in non-sciences like "forensic science".

Dog breeds have a larger genetic distance than human races.

>> No.7337602

>>7337593
>one speices
True
>one people
This is rhetoric, he means differences are superficial

>> No.7337614

>>7337602
>This is rhetoric, he means differences are superficial
More importantly, the decision of where to draw the lines between different groups is subjective.

Look at "species". For the most part, you can tell if two animals are in the same species by seeing if they can interbreed.
Dogs and cats can't make babies together, so they're not the same species.
That's a simple, objective test.
Sure, there are grey areas. Horses vs donkeys, etc.

But there's no such objective test for where to draw the lines between races.
Are all sub-sarahan africans the same race, or are there 5 black races?
Are Jews white?
etc.

>> No.7337767

>>7337244
>arguing with an emotional plea
>moral injunction
Go home Bill, you're drunk.

>> No.7337774

>>7337590
Have you ever looked at a whole bunch of skulls? They're all very different. A million factors go into determining skull shape, from diet to epigenetic factors to how you were squeezed out of your mom's twat.

You can cherry pick a couple of skulls and say, "look, this is characteristic of so-and-so," but that doesn't make it true. You are better off making the same argument about eye colour.

>> No.7337783

>>7337244
Who the hell really knows. The main issue with biology these days is that it's way too politically charged. It's almost impossible to have an objective view on anything race related because everyone who has something to say on the matter always has an agenda and is a obviously biased.

It's kinda like choosing sides in the conflict between Israel and Palestine - each side always claims to have the facts, but it's really impossible to verify anything anymore because it's devolved too much into a clusterfuck

Politics have no place in science. This is why physics, chemistry and mathematics are more pure than biology. When evolution was announced think of the shitstorm it created. In comparison nobody really cared about Higgs or other obscure particles.

Imagine what would happen if Bill Nye said something non PC in the OP image. He'd join the ranks of Tim Hunt straight away. That's why there can be no meaningful conclusion in any discussion about race.

>> No.7337790

>>7337783
>main issue with biology these days is that it's way too politically charged
You don't... you don't actually work in a biological field, do you? Or even know any biology?

>> No.7337796

>>7337244
let me explain:
Whites. Latinamericans, Asians = Humans
Niggers = Subhumans

do you need science for this?
No, just go outside and the point will prove itself.

>> No.7337821

>>7337790
He does sort of have a point with the evolution thing.

>> No.7337825

>>7337790
A few years ago I was assigned to be a translator for a bunch of US Berkeley grad students in biology doing some sort of research program in my country (my country is one of the most biodiverse in the world). Something about komodo dragons and shit. I forgot about that but during our long trips we'd always talk about random stuff like evolution, and of course race. Of course it became really awkward when the topic came up. Probably had something to do because they were white and me being Asian. Anyway one of them promptly told me to stop talking about race, which I didn't understand at the time but I did anyway because I was supposed to be showing them around anyway.

One of them ended up coming back because he married some woman from here and renounced his citizenship. Now he works as a biology teacher at some high school here which I went to for my senior year. I was pretty much top of his class so there wasn't any reason for him to hate me. There were edgelords in my class who brought up race every now and then and he'd always throw them out of class. That was the one thing he was known for.

At the end of the year this one girl who was some sort of race autist who keeps chimpanzee skulls in her home wanted to do anthropology so she asked him for a recommendation letter. But he told her not to apply to Berkeley. Pretty sure there's some unspoken message in that.

>> No.7337834

>>7337783
right. physics has never in history had its toes stepped on by politics and religion.

>> No.7337836

>>7337244
It's slightly exaggerated but right. there's insanely greater genetic diversity between 2 individuals in a population than there is between 2 populations. black people may have an average dick bigger than whiteys by like half an inch, but some white or black, one person's dick length can vary from the other by like 4 inches.

>> No.7337837

>>7337834
I can count remarkably few transgressions. I never claimed physics to be pure, but merely far more pure than biology.

I can't imagine a war would be fought over particles anytime soon.

>> No.7337840

>>7337836
That doesn't even make sense.

>> No.7337841

>>7337527
>You could never take a DNA sample from a person and conclusively say which race they are...

If by conclusively you mean never making a mistake, then sure. But that is an absurd standard.

>> No.7337843

>>7337590
Of course there are races. The guy spouting the usual mumbo-jumbo party line notwithstanding.

>> No.7337859

>>7337244
No, there is an overwhelming amount of evidence in favor of the theory of evolution and humans are not exempt.

Populations largely separated for 10000s of years will diverge, they will be subject to natural selection, they will end up with genes that are far more prevalent among their group, some of which can confer significant advantages and disadvantages.

http://www.jneurosci.org/content/32/25/8732

http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2012/06/genetic-variants-build-smarter-brain

People felt the theory of evolution was an attack on their religion, now people feel as though genetics is an attack on their race. Regardless of whether society accepts it or not, genes are a factor, the only thing up to debate is how significant they are, so you can use this knowledge to your personal advantage when making judgments about people, who to trust, who to invest time and resources into.

Importantly it is completely morally and ethically justified because it is the truth.

>> No.7337862

>>7337825
contd.

Anyways the point is that even if you study biology at a top uni, it doesn't really guarantee that you would know everything about biology. Its tempting to think the science is settled about this and that but science is never really settled. We know a lot less than we think we do, and I'm sure this is true for every field.

>You don't... you don't actually work in a biological field, do you? Or even know any biology?

I'm not precisely sure how to answer this. I wonder myself the same thing, if all the biology I've been taught in my life has made me actually know any biology. Realizing how political biology is made me realize something. The question is not if I know biology, but rather whose biology is it that I know of? There are so many groups that want to get their hands on biology and make it theirs. The left is no different.

After all, there are lots of creationists who look down on me when I talk about evolution and ask me:

>You don't... you don't actually believe in the Bible, do you? Or even know any Genesis?

I like physics and chemistry because they're pretty damn testable in a real life scenarios. For example you're told gravity is real and you go outside and let go of a ball. It drops. I don't know if gravity is real for sure, but what I have observed definitely looks like it and I can live with that and make good use of it because it conforms to the expected model of behavior.

Compare this to being told about how all humans came out of africa or whatever. I can't go up there and dig the skulls all for myself. I'd have to listen to people doing the work, and of course they will always claim themselves to be objective.

Much like preachers always claim to be objective. Like the Palestinians who claim Israel is in the absolute moral wrong and vice versa. And we'd be none the wiser.

>> No.7337930

>>7337859
>novel way to find genes related to brain
>we found some genes responsible for brain structure

>gathered several genes that when people had, scored and average of 1.29 higher than those who didn't

You're not using those articles to in any way suggest there's evidence that genes cause intelligence, are you?


>genes are a factor
A factor of what? There are smart people working on this but we don't have many answers yet

>> No.7338048

>>7337930
>we don't have many answers yet
we do have many answers which you can at any time find using the power of the internet

https://lesacreduprintemps19.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/haprinderm.pdf
http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/v16/n10/full/mp201185a.html
http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v44/n5/full/ng.2250.html
http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v44/n5/full/ng.2237.html
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/international-team-uncovers-new-231989
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcephalin#Evolution

Both environment and genes are factors influencing someone's intelligence.

>You're not using those articles to in any way suggest there's evidence that genes cause intelligence, are you?
The article carefully explains that there are a variety of genes that influence intelligence and work well together. Also think about what you are saying, you are implying genes do not affect intelligence at all and a rabbit could be as smart as a human if raised right.

>> No.7338130

>>7338048
I'm not that guy but I'm aware of this research and I still wouldn't classify that as "many answers". It's nowhere near comprehensive nor well understood.

>>7337783
Most of biology just doesn't care about this topic. It's mostly the public that gets up in arms about it because they're desperate to hear someone educated tell them they're special.
>I may not be very smart but scientists say that some of the people sharing some of my physical traits have a slightly higher chance of carrying certain genes that have the possibility of making them slightly smarter on average. That means I'm better than everyone else who doesn't share the same physical traits!

>>7337825
The rule of thumb is to keep stuff like that out of professional conversations because it tends to create awkward tension and social rifts between people. It's probably not because they're white so much as it is because they're from the US. I'm not white either but I've lived in both the US and Canada and this has been my experience as well.

>>7337859
>>7337862

>Ignoring human rates of speciation.
>Excessive hand waving.
>Mixing pop-science, social science, and real science like they're interchangable.

Also, this
>>You don't... you don't actually work in a biological field, do you? Or even know any biology?

>I'm not precisely sure how to answer this. I wonder myself the same thing, if all the biology I've been taught in my life has made me actually know any biology. Realizing how political biology is made me realize something. The question is not if I know biology, but rather whose biology is it that I know of? There are so many groups that want to get their hands on biology and make it theirs. The left is no different.

Are you for real?

>> No.7338290

>>7338130
What is "real" anon?

>> No.7338486

>2015
>Everyone forgets to ask the doctors
Different races respond to certain medicines in DRASTICALLY different ways.

>> No.7338501

>>7337244
> genetics is what serperates us, not culture
riiight

>> No.7338523

Intelligence is 80% genetic, if you think genetic variation doesn't cause a variation in intelligence you are mentally retarded.

>> No.7338529

>>7338523
I'm sure you consider yourself intelligent. Why cheapen your own hard work by believing it was all innate and biological?

>> No.7338534

>>7337244
>basis for race
>scientific
L0Lno

>> No.7338569

>>7338486

Anon, groups and individuals in general react to certain medicine drastically regardless of race.

You can have two Caucasians react to medication differently simply because they have different diets and BMI.

>> No.7338583

So, how is the different skin colour called in science? It's obviously a difference.
And if different climates selected different skin colours, couldn't other more subtle features have been selected?

>> No.7338586

>>7338569
Yes, but many of them trend along statistically relevant racial lines.

>> No.7338831

>>7338048

>assessing millions of genes one by one leads to intractable false positive results. Even more intractable is how the genes work together

>they found genetic variants weakly related to intelligence, with 1.29 IQ points higher than those without on average
>1.29

If you read it carefully, note how they don't actually say they know a variety of genes work together to cause intelligence, but tenuously suggest they do. There's a giant difference

>I'm implying genes don't affect intelligence
Of course genes have something to do with it, I'm suggesting we don't know how
how.

>Wikipedia links
You do know that humans have estimated 20 thousand genes right? You literally a dozen. Not to mention those are all correlations.

>> No.7338901

>>7338583
Skin colour is determined by a variety of pigment-producing genes. Anyone in any population can have these genes, and their expression is largely controlled epigenetically.

There are areas in which a certain gene is expressed more frequently than another, but it's not universal and isn't exclusively dependent upon heritage. So no, there's actually no real difference. Statistics don't apply to individuals.

Climate doesn't select skin colour, by the way. There are various regional differences in terms of bulk statistics, but they have more to do with historical diets than anything else.

>> No.7338905

>>7338831
I'd think it's obvious there's a heritable component to intelligence, we just don't understand it fully, or close to fully.

>> No.7339028

>>7338583
You think skin color is the only genetic difference between populations? If you lump races solely by skin color, somehow the more closely related Europeans and native Americans get separated, yet massively diverse Africans and Australian Aboriginals get lumped together.

>> No.7339041

>>7339028
I thought Native Americans were more closely related to Mongoloids...

>> No.7339044

>>7339041
'Mongoloid" isn't a valid genetic or biological term. Americans in general are more closely related to Siberian populations, but compared to the genetic diversity within Africa we're essentially the same.

That's another huge problem with the outdated racial categories. It lumps all of black Africa together despite having the absolute most genetic diversity within the species, and in comparison to them all other non-African populations are the same.

>> No.7339311

>>7337557
>skull structure is pseudoscience

holy fuck go back to /leftypol/

>> No.7339319

>>7339311
> 2015
> taking phrenology seriously

>> No.7339330

>>7339319
It's not phrenology to recognize basic fucking structural differences in skulls. This is literally the reason why we can the race of a body long dead. Read a book, Cletus.

>> No.7339333

>>7339330
*we can identify
my apologies

>> No.7339340

>>7337244
/pol/ stay on your containment board ya nazi fucks

>> No.7339349

>>7337244
Researchers have proven scientifically that we are all one animals. The body features of our ancestors and ultimately my features and your features is a consequence of the environment. Despite our recent sad conflicts here in the terrestrial habitat, there really is no such thing as species. We are one phylum — each of us much, much more alike than different. We all come from the sea. We all are of the same stardust. We are all going to live and die on the same planet, a Pale Blue Marble in the vastness of space. We have to work together.

>> No.7339356

>>7339330
>This is literally the reason why we can the race of a body long dead

Except that's wrong

http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-experts-01-09.htm

Tell me more about a field you obviously know nothing about.

>> No.7339377

>>7339333
>we can identify
No, "we" fucking cannot. The best "we" can do is not very good.

>> No.7339378

>>7337503
Please. Just stop. That was accepted ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

Not in the TWENTY FIRST CENTURY.

>> No.7339468

I think there's more science in this thread
>>>/pol/46697978

>> No.7339474

>>7339468
LOL THAT COPYPASTA

>> No.7339477

>>7339474
yeah there is somebody keeping the bullshit train rolling too, it's cringey

>> No.7339483

>>7339477
I mean I agree with people saying that race means jackshit but LOL you can't use DNA to tell someone's race? ahahahahaha

>> No.7339486

>>7339483
Not in the way you probably think. There's nothing in DNA that can make you go "HA! this is a white person!" or "this one's indian!"

>> No.7339492

>>7339486
Well...there are specific alleles/combinations of alleles at specific loci that can very specifically identify anyone's ethnic extraction.

How does it feel to be trolling out of ignorance alone?

>> No.7339502

Race means the same thing as sub-species.


wikipedia:
"A taxonomist decides whether to recognize a subspecies or not. A common way to decide is that organisms belonging to different subspecies of the same species are capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring, but they do not interbreed in nature due to geographic isolation or other factors. The differences between subspecies are usually less distinct than the differences between species."

>> No.7339504

>>7339502
Most of taxonomy is arbitrary as fuck.
It's not just humans.

>> No.7339505

>>7339492
No, this is incorrect, because it's entirely possible, even probable, that someone from a completely different area will also have that combination.

>> No.7339508

>>7339505
Special pleading
pls go

>> No.7339527

>>7339508
No it's not you idiot.

>> No.7339534

>>7339527
I guarantee it
it's also wrong
there is ultimately enough information in the genotype to infer an idealised phenotype
which is the basis of racial/subspecies classification anyway

>> No.7339561

Is the set of alleles which is different in people from different ethnic backgrounds, ground enough to say that there are races?
I'm not saying that we are different species, nor are we sub-species, but there are differences in the phenotype of humans of different ethnicities, which can't be ignored with appeals to U-V light, latitude and climate.

>> No.7339566

>>7339561
races = subspecies
There are plenty of animal species with less taxonomically-useful genetic information separating their subspecies, I don't see why PC stuff has to stop us from looking at humans more objectively.

>> No.7339568

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ-e5XjlmZA

>> No.7339571

>>7339566
I thought that sub-species needed to have different genes and still be able to breed?
Are we sure that this is the case in human races?

>> No.7339574

>>7339571
Yes, human population groups cluster genetically, and we can all definitely interbreed. Only one species, multiple subspecies.

>> No.7339578

>>7339574
source

>> No.7339586

>>7339578
google
these are basic, basic facts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_clustering

>> No.7339587

>>7339586
> attempts to allocate individuals into ancestry groupings based on genetic information have yielded varying results that are highly dependent on methodological design.
sounds worthless to me

>> No.7339591

>>7339587
Just shows that the design of your study is important. If you don't include enough loci, or the right alleles at the right loci, you're gonna have a bad time. A lot of the earlier studies did not have enough markers.

>> No.7339614

>>7339586
>Doesn't know that clustering algorithms are not convergent.
Learn some basic Machine Learning before you embarrass yourself further, anon.