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Is race biologicial?


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I think what people are saying is that race is kind of irrelevant.  Clearly there are physical traits such as skin color, eye shape, etc. which are regional, but the genetic diversity within a region is just as large as the genetic diversity between the regions.  

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6 minutes ago, Bufofrog said:

I think what people are saying is that race is kind of irrelevant.  Clearly there are physical traits such as skin color, eye shape, etc. which are regional, but the genetic diversity within a region is just as large as the genetic diversity between the regions.  

I don't understand this at all. If there is a difference between regions we can categorise. I think we share most of our genetic variation with dogs don't we? But there is a difference and the classification is about the difference.

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There's lots of potential ways of categorising people based on biology. We could get a load of basketball players and jockeys and they would genetically cluster based on the genes that determine height. But is it useful? Maybe, depends on what you're doing and why. Is distinguishing biology based on historical ideas of race useful?  Maybe still in some contexts - small medical studies without the resources for genetic testing using it as a proxy marker for the presence of some gene. But if we can directly measure the genes of interest it's far better to do that.

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7 minutes ago, Spondulax said:

I don't understand this at all. If there is a difference between regions we can categorise. 

Sorry you do not understand.  If it is important for you to place people from different regions in categories based on physical attribute, you are free to do that, seems irrelevant to me.

 

7 minutes ago, Spondulax said:

I think we share most of our genetic variation with dogs don't we?

 As compared with other humans?  Seriously?

edit to add:  I have a very strong suspicion that soon this thread will take a hard turn to racism.

Edited by Bufofrog
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3 minutes ago, Prometheus said:

There's lots of potential ways of categorising people based on biology. We could get a load of basketball players and jockeys and they would genetically cluster based on the genes that determine height. But is it useful? Maybe, depends on what you're doing and why. Is distinguishing biology based on historical ideas of race useful?  Maybe still in some contexts - small medical studies without the resources for genetic testing using it as a proxy marker for the presence of some gene. But if we can directly measure the genes of interest it's far better to do that.

So you're saying we get basketball players and jockeys, then look at only the genes that "determine" height, then cluster them? I don't see how that would be useful at all. Predictive validity is the sine qua non of a scientific construct. What would this predict? Nothing beyond what you already knew. This is called Diamond's fallacy I think, after the Marxist charlatan Jared Diamond. He claimed you could make an "eye-color/shoe-size" race, or something. Which would predict nothing beyond the initial classification. However clustering based on overall genomic similarity would be highly predictive for any number of things. Do you make these same objections about "size classifications" being possible when people classify bears by shared ancestry too?

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22 hours ago, Spondulax said:

the Marxist charlatan

!

Moderator Note

Discussions of this sort always seem to reveal an agenda, and statements like this is one of the tells. (i.e. topics like this require you to be as like Caesar's wife  in terms of scientific integrity)

 

The thread will remain closed, and Spondulax, you are not to bring this up again. Take your business elsewhere.

 
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