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On August 04 2012 23:50 DoubleReed wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2012 23:06 sunprince wrote:On August 04 2012 22:11 DoubleReed wrote:On August 04 2012 20:44 sunprince wrote:On August 04 2012 12:07 DoubleReed wrote:On August 04 2012 11:29 sunprince wrote:On August 04 2012 06:35 DoubleReed wrote:On August 04 2012 04:42 sunprince wrote:On August 04 2012 04:08 DoubleReed wrote:On August 04 2012 03:24 sunprince wrote:
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Because there's more to life than socioeconomic status. Are engineers inferior to businessmen?
[quote]
I've dealt with plenty of racists, including in violent face-to-face encounters (as an ethnic minority myself). This doesn't change the fact that I have a strong distaste for people who try to shut down logical debate with fallacies and insults, whether they are bigoted religous conservatives, or culturally deterministic liberals.
Blindly crying "racism" when someone talks about ethnic issues is about as legtimate as blindly crying "antisemitism" whenever Israel is criticized, or "misogynist" when feminists are criticized. I'm sorry, I didn't think you were implying that blacks were genetically predisposed towards engineering... I'm sure you actually understood that the analogy was pointing out that differences in socioeconomic status do not imply superiority or inferiority. On August 04 2012 04:08 DoubleReed wrote:Look, you show me evidence of something like that, then I'll change my tune. But what you've shown me so far is wild speculation. What I've said is a logical inference given contemporary understanding of genetic and cultural selection effects, in the absence of any studies to suggest the contrary. Ugh, I am between conceding for the sake of being ending this topic and arguing for the sake of how many baseless assumptions you'd have to make before that is true. And of course, because I like wasting my time, let's go with the latter. 1. You'd have to assume that significant selection was occurring. Admittedly, that's sort of assumed with evolution, but things like slavery and how super-awesome humans are at surviving complicate things a bit. The study you showed was resistance to certain diseases, which you would be expected even without a slave trade. The study I linked illustrates that there was a significant selection process over a single generation even in spite of modern technology (particularly medical science) sustaining unfit individuals who would otherwise have perished. Given that this is the case, how can you deny that significant selection would occur given the far greater number of generations as well as the far stronger selection pressures of slave capture and slavery? Well, selection to survive disease would obviously be more significant over a shorter number of generations, but sure. I don't see how slave capture and slavery is necessarily a strong selection pressure though. On August 04 2012 04:08 DoubleReed wrote:
2. You'd have to assume that the traits being favored while they were slaves would have negative impacts on them once they were no longer slaves. I'm not quite sure how you get around this idea, because traits like "hard working" would generally be favored here, while traits like "violent behavior" would be generally less favored. That doesn't exactly fit our stereotypes. And genetics definitely have a role to play in terms of our personality, so those traits, while simplified, are fair game. I haven't claimed to support any "stereotypes" that you suggest. Generally speaking, though, the selection process of slave capture and slavery would likely select in favor of traits such as physical strength/endurance, earler puberty (which we know results in lower SES outcomes), and fecundity (which plays a big role in reinforcing the cycle of poverty), while selecting against traits such as intellectual curiosity (slaves who attempted to learn were brutally suppressed). I was partly joking about the stereotypes. But is there evidence suggesting that modern blacks have those traits? That seems like a relatively easy thing to find out and have evidence for. Like, you have a claim, and here's a great way to check it. Selection pressures aren't exactly simplistic, you could easily be wrong that those traits necessarily would have been chosen more than common white people at the time. On August 04 2012 04:08 DoubleReed wrote:
3. We should not pretend as if white people did not have children with black people during slavery, because the fact is it was rather common. Black people were far from an isolated population during this 'selection process'. Genetic studies indicate that current African-Americans inherited only ~14-17% of their ancestry from Europeans. So while we certainly do know that many slaveowners and overseers took sexual liberties with their slaves, this did not constitute a majority of the genetic total. A majority wouldn't make sense, and is not needed for me to throw a wrench in your claims. (Actually the things I've seen put it more at 20% but whatever). 14-17% is actually pretty significant. The population simply was not isolated very much. It's more likely that they became more similar to the white people during this time, rather than less. As often happens with minority subpopulations, they became more hybridized with the majority population. On August 04 2012 04:08 DoubleReed wrote:
4. With all these concerns, you would need to show that the genetic factors are not only there, but of noticeable significance compared with nurture and cultural factors. Nurture = cultural factors; I think what you meant to say was historical. Yes, genetic factors are only a part of the picture here, alongside cultural and historic factors. That said, it's a rather naieve P.C. argument to suggest that genetic factors aren't in play at all, considering what we do know. The argument from ignorance you're making is no different from the European feminsts insisting that there are no differences between men and women except the external one, and that everything is culturally determined. It completely falls apart given what we know about biology, and is a far more extreme position than the default assumption that both nature and nurture each play a role (to unknown degrees). No, I'm not making these arguments. What I'm saying is that genetic factors are far insignificant compared to social factors in these cases. At least as far as the population of black people is concerned. Your argument is based on faith. I thought we both acknowledged that we don't know what the exact effect of genetics is? On what basis are you concluding that genetic factors are not significant? Given what we know about genetics, the default position is that genetics is a significant factor. The burden of proof is on you to demonstrate otherwise. On August 04 2012 12:07 DoubleReed wrote:
As I have said repeatedly, genetic variability within a race is far greater than the genetic distance. Seriously? Are you even reading at all? How many times do I have to debunk this factoid until you get it? Your statement is a strawman because "race" is not a valid scientific concept. Of course there is great genetic variability between people with the same skin color; it's not a valid way of grouping people. But if we use legitimate classifications like haplogroups, then we quickly see why your strawman is wrong. Genetics are a significant factor is the default position? No, it doesn't work like that. We don't just assume that poor people are genetically predisposed to being poor. That's the opposite of default. That's something that needs some kind of evidence. That's Social Darwinism. You can't even find studies about the most basic parts of your claims to be true, and you're telling me that you're using logical inference. Based on faith? Are you for real? Are you serious? You have yet to show any evidence, and you're telling me that my arguments are based on faith. My argument is based on skepticism. I don't believe claims with a lack of evidence. It's not like the evidence would be impossible to obtain or anything, in fact with the traits you said we probably have done studies on that. The evidence I see is that the genetic variability within African Americans wouldn't make them any less 'genetically prone to lower socioeconomic status,' (whatever that means) than the majority population. I'm sorry, this is nothing but wild speculation, compounded with many layers of gross assumptions. We've established the following premises: 1. Genetics influence human traits. 2. Human traits influence socioeconomic outcomes. 3. Culture also influences socioeconomic outcomes. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that socioeconomic outcomes are influenced by both "nature" and "nurture" (African-Americans additionally suffer from the historical effects of slavery followed by widespread discrimination). Of course, we might revise this logical inference when and if we get experimental data on this topic, but for the time being this conclusion is logically reasonable. Despite this, you seem to be arguing that human traits don't signficantly influence socioeconomic outcomes in the specific case of African-Americans. Unless you can explain why this would uniquely qualify as an exception to the above premises and conclusion, it makes no sense to go with your argument. The burden of proof is on you to establish why the socio-economic status of African-Americans are an exception to the reality shared by every other population group with regards to every other human trait. No, I'm saying you're trying to explain the modern outcomes of a poorly-defined racial group (because we are talking about African Americans here, which even in haplogroups it's pretty silly) based on selection processes which may not have negatively affected them in that way, compared to white people at the same time (because white people are also undergoing selection processes even without slavery).
African-Americans are a population group composed primarily of specific haplogroups. As far as populations go, "African-American" is actually fairly well defined. It's also not a huge inference that slavery has certain negative selection effects, and although white Americans have also undergone selection processes, they underwent vastly different selection processes for several hundred years (as well as different initial selection if you consider which groups immigrated from Europe).
On August 04 2012 23:50 DoubleReed wrote:
I'm totally with you in terms of those premises. What I'm saying is that your grouping and theory of selection within this grouping makes very little sense given what we know about how genetics works. There's no reason to assume that African Americans are genetically predisposed to a lower socioeconomic group. It's not like the majority of poor people are black, or the majority of black people are poor. It's just that black people have a higher proportion of poor people. Cultural factors could easily explain the disparity without any odd genetic theories, considering that almost all African Americans are part-white anyway. And of course, culturally it is just black and white, without haplogroups.
I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding here about how to understand population tendencies. If a higher proportion of African-Americans are poor, then by definition African-Americans are predisposed towards lower socioeconomic outcomes (that doesn't explain the causes of said tendency just yet, but the tendency is there). As an analogy, a larger proportion of Asian-Americans going to college means that Asian-Americans by definition are predipsosed towards higher education. You don't need a majority for a tendency to exist, you merely need an average which deviates significantly from the control group.
On August 04 2012 23:50 DoubleReed wrote:Show nested quote +Of course, we might revise this logical inference when and if we get experimental data on this topic, but for the time being this conclusion is logically reasonable. This is opposite of the way science works. The default position is skepticism, regardless of your theoretical concoction. You need evidence to hold a position.
Actually, we make theories all the time based on existing data, before we have more data to test them out. Many scientific theories were developed before we had the technological means to fully verify them (e.g. evolution), by simply using the evidence we have available.
On August 04 2012 23:50 DoubleReed wrote:
And I'm sorry, but I would like a link to something that says haplogroups have less genetic distance than genetic variability. I couldn't find it with a quick search. The only I found said that it was about lineages, which makes it a valid scientific grouping, but that would not say anything about its variability.
Haplogroups are lineages. They're mitochondrial (matrilineal) lines of descent. They have less genetic distance pretty much by definition.
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On August 04 2012 22:42 Kakaw wrote:
For the 'racial' debate, the latest study I heard about intelligence, was that african-american are on average 10 IQ points below whites, while asians are a few points above. Intelligence is hereditary; and comparing Africa to Europe, it would make sense that, in Africa, intelligence did not equal survival and adaptability as much as it did in Europe the past, oh, 1000 years. As for evolution during actual period of slavery, it was much too short for any noticable evolution to take effect, if anyone suggested this.
Ofcourse, noticing a trend does not mean the numbers are exact in every (or any) study.
edit: imo there's more to race than simply skin colour. Equating race with skin colour makes no sense in my eyes. What I'm saying is that there's "race", and there's race: Obviously everybody are slightly different, but we can categorize certain groups which are slightly more similar; doesn't have to be simply skin colour: For instance where this 'race' evolved and how 'it' evolved plays a role in its current state evolution. E.g: We categorize animals this way; not to use as a tool for discrimination.
Heritable != Genetic! People need to learn this!
edit: Or, to be more specific before I'm pounced on, within group heritability does not without significant further argument say anything whatsoever about the degree to which between group differences are explained by genetics, which is what would be needed for your simple inference to go through.
edit2: This place is too depressing. I've had my fill of the TL scientific racism thread and will depart for greener subforums. I just ask that, before taking in just-so story speculation that confirms their prejudices, the kind denizens of this place understand what the heritability of IQ means and what lies behind the general factor of intelligence.
It would also be nice if people who are not even trying to make valid deductive arguments but are rather trying to make inferences to the best explanation would stop talking about how 'logical' they are being. All it does is show everyone that you have no idea what logic is and are simply trying to look smart.
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On August 05 2012 00:14 sunprince wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2012 23:50 DoubleReed wrote:On August 04 2012 23:06 sunprince wrote:On August 04 2012 22:11 DoubleReed wrote:On August 04 2012 20:44 sunprince wrote:On August 04 2012 12:07 DoubleReed wrote:On August 04 2012 11:29 sunprince wrote:On August 04 2012 06:35 DoubleReed wrote:On August 04 2012 04:42 sunprince wrote:On August 04 2012 04:08 DoubleReed wrote:
[quote]
I'm sorry, I didn't think you were implying that blacks were genetically predisposed towards engineering... I'm sure you actually understood that the analogy was pointing out that differences in socioeconomic status do not imply superiority or inferiority. On August 04 2012 04:08 DoubleReed wrote:Look, you show me evidence of something like that, then I'll change my tune. But what you've shown me so far is wild speculation. What I've said is a logical inference given contemporary understanding of genetic and cultural selection effects, in the absence of any studies to suggest the contrary. Ugh, I am between conceding for the sake of being ending this topic and arguing for the sake of how many baseless assumptions you'd have to make before that is true. And of course, because I like wasting my time, let's go with the latter. 1. You'd have to assume that significant selection was occurring. Admittedly, that's sort of assumed with evolution, but things like slavery and how super-awesome humans are at surviving complicate things a bit. The study you showed was resistance to certain diseases, which you would be expected even without a slave trade. The study I linked illustrates that there was a significant selection process over a single generation even in spite of modern technology (particularly medical science) sustaining unfit individuals who would otherwise have perished. Given that this is the case, how can you deny that significant selection would occur given the far greater number of generations as well as the far stronger selection pressures of slave capture and slavery? Well, selection to survive disease would obviously be more significant over a shorter number of generations, but sure. I don't see how slave capture and slavery is necessarily a strong selection pressure though. On August 04 2012 04:08 DoubleReed wrote:
2. You'd have to assume that the traits being favored while they were slaves would have negative impacts on them once they were no longer slaves. I'm not quite sure how you get around this idea, because traits like "hard working" would generally be favored here, while traits like "violent behavior" would be generally less favored. That doesn't exactly fit our stereotypes. And genetics definitely have a role to play in terms of our personality, so those traits, while simplified, are fair game. I haven't claimed to support any "stereotypes" that you suggest. Generally speaking, though, the selection process of slave capture and slavery would likely select in favor of traits such as physical strength/endurance, earler puberty (which we know results in lower SES outcomes), and fecundity (which plays a big role in reinforcing the cycle of poverty), while selecting against traits such as intellectual curiosity (slaves who attempted to learn were brutally suppressed). I was partly joking about the stereotypes. But is there evidence suggesting that modern blacks have those traits? That seems like a relatively easy thing to find out and have evidence for. Like, you have a claim, and here's a great way to check it. Selection pressures aren't exactly simplistic, you could easily be wrong that those traits necessarily would have been chosen more than common white people at the time. On August 04 2012 04:08 DoubleReed wrote:
3. We should not pretend as if white people did not have children with black people during slavery, because the fact is it was rather common. Black people were far from an isolated population during this 'selection process'. Genetic studies indicate that current African-Americans inherited only ~14-17% of their ancestry from Europeans. So while we certainly do know that many slaveowners and overseers took sexual liberties with their slaves, this did not constitute a majority of the genetic total. A majority wouldn't make sense, and is not needed for me to throw a wrench in your claims. (Actually the things I've seen put it more at 20% but whatever). 14-17% is actually pretty significant. The population simply was not isolated very much. It's more likely that they became more similar to the white people during this time, rather than less. As often happens with minority subpopulations, they became more hybridized with the majority population. On August 04 2012 04:08 DoubleReed wrote:
4. With all these concerns, you would need to show that the genetic factors are not only there, but of noticeable significance compared with nurture and cultural factors. Nurture = cultural factors; I think what you meant to say was historical. Yes, genetic factors are only a part of the picture here, alongside cultural and historic factors. That said, it's a rather naieve P.C. argument to suggest that genetic factors aren't in play at all, considering what we do know. The argument from ignorance you're making is no different from the European feminsts insisting that there are no differences between men and women except the external one, and that everything is culturally determined. It completely falls apart given what we know about biology, and is a far more extreme position than the default assumption that both nature and nurture each play a role (to unknown degrees). No, I'm not making these arguments. What I'm saying is that genetic factors are far insignificant compared to social factors in these cases. At least as far as the population of black people is concerned. Your argument is based on faith. I thought we both acknowledged that we don't know what the exact effect of genetics is? On what basis are you concluding that genetic factors are not significant? Given what we know about genetics, the default position is that genetics is a significant factor. The burden of proof is on you to demonstrate otherwise. On August 04 2012 12:07 DoubleReed wrote:
As I have said repeatedly, genetic variability within a race is far greater than the genetic distance. Seriously? Are you even reading at all? How many times do I have to debunk this factoid until you get it? Your statement is a strawman because "race" is not a valid scientific concept. Of course there is great genetic variability between people with the same skin color; it's not a valid way of grouping people. But if we use legitimate classifications like haplogroups, then we quickly see why your strawman is wrong. Genetics are a significant factor is the default position? No, it doesn't work like that. We don't just assume that poor people are genetically predisposed to being poor. That's the opposite of default. That's something that needs some kind of evidence. That's Social Darwinism. You can't even find studies about the most basic parts of your claims to be true, and you're telling me that you're using logical inference. Based on faith? Are you for real? Are you serious? You have yet to show any evidence, and you're telling me that my arguments are based on faith. My argument is based on skepticism. I don't believe claims with a lack of evidence. It's not like the evidence would be impossible to obtain or anything, in fact with the traits you said we probably have done studies on that. The evidence I see is that the genetic variability within African Americans wouldn't make them any less 'genetically prone to lower socioeconomic status,' (whatever that means) than the majority population. I'm sorry, this is nothing but wild speculation, compounded with many layers of gross assumptions. We've established the following premises: 1. Genetics influence human traits. 2. Human traits influence socioeconomic outcomes. 3. Culture also influences socioeconomic outcomes. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that socioeconomic outcomes are influenced by both "nature" and "nurture" (African-Americans additionally suffer from the historical effects of slavery followed by widespread discrimination). Of course, we might revise this logical inference when and if we get experimental data on this topic, but for the time being this conclusion is logically reasonable. Despite this, you seem to be arguing that human traits don't signficantly influence socioeconomic outcomes in the specific case of African-Americans. Unless you can explain why this would uniquely qualify as an exception to the above premises and conclusion, it makes no sense to go with your argument. The burden of proof is on you to establish why the socio-economic status of African-Americans are an exception to the reality shared by every other population group with regards to every other human trait. No, I'm saying you're trying to explain the modern outcomes of a poorly-defined racial group (because we are talking about African Americans here, which even in haplogroups it's pretty silly) based on selection processes which may not have negatively affected them in that way, compared to white people at the same time (because white people are also undergoing selection processes even without slavery). African-Americans are a population group composed primarily of specific haplogroups. As far as populations go, "African-American" is actually fairly well defined. It's also not a huge inference that slavery has certain negative selection effects, and although white Americans have also undergone selection processes, they underwent vastly different selection processes for several hundred years (as well as different initial selection if you consider which groups immigrated from Europe). Show nested quote +On August 04 2012 23:50 DoubleReed wrote:
I'm totally with you in terms of those premises. What I'm saying is that your grouping and theory of selection within this grouping makes very little sense given what we know about how genetics works. There's no reason to assume that African Americans are genetically predisposed to a lower socioeconomic group. It's not like the majority of poor people are black, or the majority of black people are poor. It's just that black people have a higher proportion of poor people. Cultural factors could easily explain the disparity without any odd genetic theories, considering that almost all African Americans are part-white anyway. And of course, culturally it is just black and white, without haplogroups. I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding here about how to understand population tendencies. If a higher proportion of African-Americans are poor, then by definition African-Americans are predisposed towards lower socioeconomic outcomes (that doesn't explain the causes of said tendency just yet, but the tendency is there). As an analogy, a larger proportion of Asian-Americans going to college means that Asian-Americans by definition are predipsosed towards higher education. You don't need a majority for a tendency to exist, you merely need an average which deviates significantly from the control group. Show nested quote +On August 04 2012 23:50 DoubleReed wrote:Of course, we might revise this logical inference when and if we get experimental data on this topic, but for the time being this conclusion is logically reasonable. This is opposite of the way science works. The default position is skepticism, regardless of your theoretical concoction. You need evidence to hold a position. Actually, we make theories all the time based on existing data, before we have more data to test them out. Many scientific theories were developed before we had the technological means to fully verify them (e.g. evolution), by simply using the evidence we have available. Show nested quote +On August 04 2012 23:50 DoubleReed wrote:
And I'm sorry, but I would like a link to something that says haplogroups have less genetic distance than genetic variability. I couldn't find it with a quick search. The only I found said that it was about lineages, which makes it a valid scientific grouping, but that would not say anything about its variability. Haplogroups are lineages. They're mitochondrial (matrilineal) lines of descent. They have less genetic distance pretty much by definition.
You're talking about genetics and haplogroups and even specifically refer to the theory of evolution, but you're using the Creationist definition of "theory" where any logically possible conjecture can be considered a theory? What the hell is going on here?
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On August 05 2012 01:08 HunterX11 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 05 2012 00:14 sunprince wrote:On August 04 2012 23:50 DoubleReed wrote:On August 04 2012 23:06 sunprince wrote:On August 04 2012 22:11 DoubleReed wrote:On August 04 2012 20:44 sunprince wrote:On August 04 2012 12:07 DoubleReed wrote:On August 04 2012 11:29 sunprince wrote:On August 04 2012 06:35 DoubleReed wrote:On August 04 2012 04:42 sunprince wrote:
[quote]
I'm sure you actually understood that the analogy was pointing out that differences in socioeconomic status do not imply superiority or inferiority.
[quote]
What I've said is a logical inference given contemporary understanding of genetic and cultural selection effects, in the absence of any studies to suggest the contrary. Ugh, I am between conceding for the sake of being ending this topic and arguing for the sake of how many baseless assumptions you'd have to make before that is true. And of course, because I like wasting my time, let's go with the latter. 1. You'd have to assume that significant selection was occurring. Admittedly, that's sort of assumed with evolution, but things like slavery and how super-awesome humans are at surviving complicate things a bit. The study you showed was resistance to certain diseases, which you would be expected even without a slave trade. The study I linked illustrates that there was a significant selection process over a single generation even in spite of modern technology (particularly medical science) sustaining unfit individuals who would otherwise have perished. Given that this is the case, how can you deny that significant selection would occur given the far greater number of generations as well as the far stronger selection pressures of slave capture and slavery? Well, selection to survive disease would obviously be more significant over a shorter number of generations, but sure. I don't see how slave capture and slavery is necessarily a strong selection pressure though. On August 04 2012 04:08 DoubleReed wrote:
2. You'd have to assume that the traits being favored while they were slaves would have negative impacts on them once they were no longer slaves. I'm not quite sure how you get around this idea, because traits like "hard working" would generally be favored here, while traits like "violent behavior" would be generally less favored. That doesn't exactly fit our stereotypes. And genetics definitely have a role to play in terms of our personality, so those traits, while simplified, are fair game. I haven't claimed to support any "stereotypes" that you suggest. Generally speaking, though, the selection process of slave capture and slavery would likely select in favor of traits such as physical strength/endurance, earler puberty (which we know results in lower SES outcomes), and fecundity (which plays a big role in reinforcing the cycle of poverty), while selecting against traits such as intellectual curiosity (slaves who attempted to learn were brutally suppressed). I was partly joking about the stereotypes. But is there evidence suggesting that modern blacks have those traits? That seems like a relatively easy thing to find out and have evidence for. Like, you have a claim, and here's a great way to check it. Selection pressures aren't exactly simplistic, you could easily be wrong that those traits necessarily would have been chosen more than common white people at the time. On August 04 2012 04:08 DoubleReed wrote:
3. We should not pretend as if white people did not have children with black people during slavery, because the fact is it was rather common. Black people were far from an isolated population during this 'selection process'. Genetic studies indicate that current African-Americans inherited only ~14-17% of their ancestry from Europeans. So while we certainly do know that many slaveowners and overseers took sexual liberties with their slaves, this did not constitute a majority of the genetic total. A majority wouldn't make sense, and is not needed for me to throw a wrench in your claims. (Actually the things I've seen put it more at 20% but whatever). 14-17% is actually pretty significant. The population simply was not isolated very much. It's more likely that they became more similar to the white people during this time, rather than less. As often happens with minority subpopulations, they became more hybridized with the majority population. On August 04 2012 04:08 DoubleReed wrote:
4. With all these concerns, you would need to show that the genetic factors are not only there, but of noticeable significance compared with nurture and cultural factors. Nurture = cultural factors; I think what you meant to say was historical. Yes, genetic factors are only a part of the picture here, alongside cultural and historic factors. That said, it's a rather naieve P.C. argument to suggest that genetic factors aren't in play at all, considering what we do know. The argument from ignorance you're making is no different from the European feminsts insisting that there are no differences between men and women except the external one, and that everything is culturally determined. It completely falls apart given what we know about biology, and is a far more extreme position than the default assumption that both nature and nurture each play a role (to unknown degrees). No, I'm not making these arguments. What I'm saying is that genetic factors are far insignificant compared to social factors in these cases. At least as far as the population of black people is concerned. Your argument is based on faith. I thought we both acknowledged that we don't know what the exact effect of genetics is? On what basis are you concluding that genetic factors are not significant? Given what we know about genetics, the default position is that genetics is a significant factor. The burden of proof is on you to demonstrate otherwise. On August 04 2012 12:07 DoubleReed wrote:
As I have said repeatedly, genetic variability within a race is far greater than the genetic distance. Seriously? Are you even reading at all? How many times do I have to debunk this factoid until you get it? Your statement is a strawman because "race" is not a valid scientific concept. Of course there is great genetic variability between people with the same skin color; it's not a valid way of grouping people. But if we use legitimate classifications like haplogroups, then we quickly see why your strawman is wrong. Genetics are a significant factor is the default position? No, it doesn't work like that. We don't just assume that poor people are genetically predisposed to being poor. That's the opposite of default. That's something that needs some kind of evidence. That's Social Darwinism. You can't even find studies about the most basic parts of your claims to be true, and you're telling me that you're using logical inference. Based on faith? Are you for real? Are you serious? You have yet to show any evidence, and you're telling me that my arguments are based on faith. My argument is based on skepticism. I don't believe claims with a lack of evidence. It's not like the evidence would be impossible to obtain or anything, in fact with the traits you said we probably have done studies on that. The evidence I see is that the genetic variability within African Americans wouldn't make them any less 'genetically prone to lower socioeconomic status,' (whatever that means) than the majority population. I'm sorry, this is nothing but wild speculation, compounded with many layers of gross assumptions. We've established the following premises: 1. Genetics influence human traits. 2. Human traits influence socioeconomic outcomes. 3. Culture also influences socioeconomic outcomes. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that socioeconomic outcomes are influenced by both "nature" and "nurture" (African-Americans additionally suffer from the historical effects of slavery followed by widespread discrimination). Of course, we might revise this logical inference when and if we get experimental data on this topic, but for the time being this conclusion is logically reasonable. Despite this, you seem to be arguing that human traits don't signficantly influence socioeconomic outcomes in the specific case of African-Americans. Unless you can explain why this would uniquely qualify as an exception to the above premises and conclusion, it makes no sense to go with your argument. The burden of proof is on you to establish why the socio-economic status of African-Americans are an exception to the reality shared by every other population group with regards to every other human trait. No, I'm saying you're trying to explain the modern outcomes of a poorly-defined racial group (because we are talking about African Americans here, which even in haplogroups it's pretty silly) based on selection processes which may not have negatively affected them in that way, compared to white people at the same time (because white people are also undergoing selection processes even without slavery). African-Americans are a population group composed primarily of specific haplogroups. As far as populations go, "African-American" is actually fairly well defined. It's also not a huge inference that slavery has certain negative selection effects, and although white Americans have also undergone selection processes, they underwent vastly different selection processes for several hundred years (as well as different initial selection if you consider which groups immigrated from Europe). On August 04 2012 23:50 DoubleReed wrote:
I'm totally with you in terms of those premises. What I'm saying is that your grouping and theory of selection within this grouping makes very little sense given what we know about how genetics works. There's no reason to assume that African Americans are genetically predisposed to a lower socioeconomic group. It's not like the majority of poor people are black, or the majority of black people are poor. It's just that black people have a higher proportion of poor people. Cultural factors could easily explain the disparity without any odd genetic theories, considering that almost all African Americans are part-white anyway. And of course, culturally it is just black and white, without haplogroups. I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding here about how to understand population tendencies. If a higher proportion of African-Americans are poor, then by definition African-Americans are predisposed towards lower socioeconomic outcomes (that doesn't explain the causes of said tendency just yet, but the tendency is there). As an analogy, a larger proportion of Asian-Americans going to college means that Asian-Americans by definition are predipsosed towards higher education. You don't need a majority for a tendency to exist, you merely need an average which deviates significantly from the control group. On August 04 2012 23:50 DoubleReed wrote:Of course, we might revise this logical inference when and if we get experimental data on this topic, but for the time being this conclusion is logically reasonable. This is opposite of the way science works. The default position is skepticism, regardless of your theoretical concoction. You need evidence to hold a position. Actually, we make theories all the time based on existing data, before we have more data to test them out. Many scientific theories were developed before we had the technological means to fully verify them (e.g. evolution), by simply using the evidence we have available. On August 04 2012 23:50 DoubleReed wrote:
And I'm sorry, but I would like a link to something that says haplogroups have less genetic distance than genetic variability. I couldn't find it with a quick search. The only I found said that it was about lineages, which makes it a valid scientific grouping, but that would not say anything about its variability. Haplogroups are lineages. They're mitochondrial (matrilineal) lines of descent. They have less genetic distance pretty much by definition. You're talking about genetics and haplogroups and even specifically refer to the theory of evolution, but you're using the Creationist definition of "theory" where any logically possible conjecture can be considered a theory? What the hell is going on here?
So what is a theory then? The problem with creationists is that they attack evolution as if it was "just a theory". Every theory is "just" a theory. It's just that we accept some theories as true, like evolution, and gravity.
Edit: In short, everything and anything can be a theory. That doesn't mean that that theory is correct or even worthy of discussion.
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On August 05 2012 01:22 HellRoxYa wrote:Show nested quote +On August 05 2012 01:08 HunterX11 wrote:On August 05 2012 00:14 sunprince wrote:On August 04 2012 23:50 DoubleReed wrote:On August 04 2012 23:06 sunprince wrote:On August 04 2012 22:11 DoubleReed wrote:On August 04 2012 20:44 sunprince wrote:On August 04 2012 12:07 DoubleReed wrote:On August 04 2012 11:29 sunprince wrote:On August 04 2012 06:35 DoubleReed wrote:
[quote]
Ugh, I am between conceding for the sake of being ending this topic and arguing for the sake of how many baseless assumptions you'd have to make before that is true. And of course, because I like wasting my time, let's go with the latter.
1. You'd have to assume that significant selection was occurring. Admittedly, that's sort of assumed with evolution, but things like slavery and how super-awesome humans are at surviving complicate things a bit. The study you showed was resistance to certain diseases, which you would be expected even without a slave trade. The study I linked illustrates that there was a significant selection process over a single generation even in spite of modern technology (particularly medical science) sustaining unfit individuals who would otherwise have perished. Given that this is the case, how can you deny that significant selection would occur given the far greater number of generations as well as the far stronger selection pressures of slave capture and slavery? Well, selection to survive disease would obviously be more significant over a shorter number of generations, but sure. I don't see how slave capture and slavery is necessarily a strong selection pressure though. On August 04 2012 04:08 DoubleReed wrote:
2. You'd have to assume that the traits being favored while they were slaves would have negative impacts on them once they were no longer slaves. I'm not quite sure how you get around this idea, because traits like "hard working" would generally be favored here, while traits like "violent behavior" would be generally less favored. That doesn't exactly fit our stereotypes. And genetics definitely have a role to play in terms of our personality, so those traits, while simplified, are fair game. I haven't claimed to support any "stereotypes" that you suggest. Generally speaking, though, the selection process of slave capture and slavery would likely select in favor of traits such as physical strength/endurance, earler puberty (which we know results in lower SES outcomes), and fecundity (which plays a big role in reinforcing the cycle of poverty), while selecting against traits such as intellectual curiosity (slaves who attempted to learn were brutally suppressed). I was partly joking about the stereotypes. But is there evidence suggesting that modern blacks have those traits? That seems like a relatively easy thing to find out and have evidence for. Like, you have a claim, and here's a great way to check it. Selection pressures aren't exactly simplistic, you could easily be wrong that those traits necessarily would have been chosen more than common white people at the time. On August 04 2012 04:08 DoubleReed wrote:
3. We should not pretend as if white people did not have children with black people during slavery, because the fact is it was rather common. Black people were far from an isolated population during this 'selection process'. Genetic studies indicate that current African-Americans inherited only ~14-17% of their ancestry from Europeans. So while we certainly do know that many slaveowners and overseers took sexual liberties with their slaves, this did not constitute a majority of the genetic total. A majority wouldn't make sense, and is not needed for me to throw a wrench in your claims. (Actually the things I've seen put it more at 20% but whatever). 14-17% is actually pretty significant. The population simply was not isolated very much. It's more likely that they became more similar to the white people during this time, rather than less. As often happens with minority subpopulations, they became more hybridized with the majority population. On August 04 2012 04:08 DoubleReed wrote:
4. With all these concerns, you would need to show that the genetic factors are not only there, but of noticeable significance compared with nurture and cultural factors. Nurture = cultural factors; I think what you meant to say was historical. Yes, genetic factors are only a part of the picture here, alongside cultural and historic factors. That said, it's a rather naieve P.C. argument to suggest that genetic factors aren't in play at all, considering what we do know. The argument from ignorance you're making is no different from the European feminsts insisting that there are no differences between men and women except the external one, and that everything is culturally determined. It completely falls apart given what we know about biology, and is a far more extreme position than the default assumption that both nature and nurture each play a role (to unknown degrees). No, I'm not making these arguments. What I'm saying is that genetic factors are far insignificant compared to social factors in these cases. At least as far as the population of black people is concerned. Your argument is based on faith. I thought we both acknowledged that we don't know what the exact effect of genetics is? On what basis are you concluding that genetic factors are not significant? Given what we know about genetics, the default position is that genetics is a significant factor. The burden of proof is on you to demonstrate otherwise. On August 04 2012 12:07 DoubleReed wrote:
As I have said repeatedly, genetic variability within a race is far greater than the genetic distance. Seriously? Are you even reading at all? How many times do I have to debunk this factoid until you get it? Your statement is a strawman because "race" is not a valid scientific concept. Of course there is great genetic variability between people with the same skin color; it's not a valid way of grouping people. But if we use legitimate classifications like haplogroups, then we quickly see why your strawman is wrong. Genetics are a significant factor is the default position? No, it doesn't work like that. We don't just assume that poor people are genetically predisposed to being poor. That's the opposite of default. That's something that needs some kind of evidence. That's Social Darwinism. You can't even find studies about the most basic parts of your claims to be true, and you're telling me that you're using logical inference. Based on faith? Are you for real? Are you serious? You have yet to show any evidence, and you're telling me that my arguments are based on faith. My argument is based on skepticism. I don't believe claims with a lack of evidence. It's not like the evidence would be impossible to obtain or anything, in fact with the traits you said we probably have done studies on that. The evidence I see is that the genetic variability within African Americans wouldn't make them any less 'genetically prone to lower socioeconomic status,' (whatever that means) than the majority population. I'm sorry, this is nothing but wild speculation, compounded with many layers of gross assumptions. We've established the following premises: 1. Genetics influence human traits. 2. Human traits influence socioeconomic outcomes. 3. Culture also influences socioeconomic outcomes. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that socioeconomic outcomes are influenced by both "nature" and "nurture" (African-Americans additionally suffer from the historical effects of slavery followed by widespread discrimination). Of course, we might revise this logical inference when and if we get experimental data on this topic, but for the time being this conclusion is logically reasonable. Despite this, you seem to be arguing that human traits don't signficantly influence socioeconomic outcomes in the specific case of African-Americans. Unless you can explain why this would uniquely qualify as an exception to the above premises and conclusion, it makes no sense to go with your argument. The burden of proof is on you to establish why the socio-economic status of African-Americans are an exception to the reality shared by every other population group with regards to every other human trait. No, I'm saying you're trying to explain the modern outcomes of a poorly-defined racial group (because we are talking about African Americans here, which even in haplogroups it's pretty silly) based on selection processes which may not have negatively affected them in that way, compared to white people at the same time (because white people are also undergoing selection processes even without slavery). African-Americans are a population group composed primarily of specific haplogroups. As far as populations go, "African-American" is actually fairly well defined. It's also not a huge inference that slavery has certain negative selection effects, and although white Americans have also undergone selection processes, they underwent vastly different selection processes for several hundred years (as well as different initial selection if you consider which groups immigrated from Europe). On August 04 2012 23:50 DoubleReed wrote:
I'm totally with you in terms of those premises. What I'm saying is that your grouping and theory of selection within this grouping makes very little sense given what we know about how genetics works. There's no reason to assume that African Americans are genetically predisposed to a lower socioeconomic group. It's not like the majority of poor people are black, or the majority of black people are poor. It's just that black people have a higher proportion of poor people. Cultural factors could easily explain the disparity without any odd genetic theories, considering that almost all African Americans are part-white anyway. And of course, culturally it is just black and white, without haplogroups. I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding here about how to understand population tendencies. If a higher proportion of African-Americans are poor, then by definition African-Americans are predisposed towards lower socioeconomic outcomes (that doesn't explain the causes of said tendency just yet, but the tendency is there). As an analogy, a larger proportion of Asian-Americans going to college means that Asian-Americans by definition are predipsosed towards higher education. You don't need a majority for a tendency to exist, you merely need an average which deviates significantly from the control group. On August 04 2012 23:50 DoubleReed wrote:Of course, we might revise this logical inference when and if we get experimental data on this topic, but for the time being this conclusion is logically reasonable. This is opposite of the way science works. The default position is skepticism, regardless of your theoretical concoction. You need evidence to hold a position. Actually, we make theories all the time based on existing data, before we have more data to test them out. Many scientific theories were developed before we had the technological means to fully verify them (e.g. evolution), by simply using the evidence we have available. On August 04 2012 23:50 DoubleReed wrote:
And I'm sorry, but I would like a link to something that says haplogroups have less genetic distance than genetic variability. I couldn't find it with a quick search. The only I found said that it was about lineages, which makes it a valid scientific grouping, but that would not say anything about its variability. Haplogroups are lineages. They're mitochondrial (matrilineal) lines of descent. They have less genetic distance pretty much by definition. You're talking about genetics and haplogroups and even specifically refer to the theory of evolution, but you're using the Creationist definition of "theory" where any logically possible conjecture can be considered a theory? What the hell is going on here? So what is a theory then? The problem with creationists is that they attack evolution as if it was "just a theory". Every theory is "just" a theory. It's just that we accept some theories as true, like evolution, and gravity. Edit: In short, everything and anything can be a theory. That doesn't mean that that theory is correct or even worthy of discussion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory
A theory isn't straight up conjecture.
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On August 05 2012 00:46 frogrubdown wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2012 22:42 Kakaw wrote:
For the 'racial' debate, the latest study I heard about intelligence, was that african-american are on average 10 IQ points below whites, while asians are a few points above. Intelligence is hereditary; and comparing Africa to Europe, it would make sense that, in Africa, intelligence did not equal survival and adaptability as much as it did in Europe the past, oh, 1000 years. As for evolution during actual period of slavery, it was much too short for any noticable evolution to take effect, if anyone suggested this.
Ofcourse, noticing a trend does not mean the numbers are exact in every (or any) study.
edit: imo there's more to race than simply skin colour. Equating race with skin colour makes no sense in my eyes. What I'm saying is that there's "race", and there's race: Obviously everybody are slightly different, but we can categorize certain groups which are slightly more similar; doesn't have to be simply skin colour: For instance where this 'race' evolved and how 'it' evolved plays a role in its current state evolution. E.g: We categorize animals this way; not to use as a tool for discrimination. Heritable != Genetic! People need to learn this! edit: Or, to be more specific before fools pounce, within group heritability does not without significant further argument say anything whatsoever about the degree to which between group differences are explained by genetics, which is what would be needed for your simple inference to go through. edit2: This place is too depressing. I've had my fill of the TL scientific racism thread and will depart for greener subforums. I just ask that, before taking in just-so story speculation that confirms their prejudices, the kind denizens of this place understand what the heritability of IQ means and what lies behind the general factor of intelligence. It would also be nice if people who are not even trying to make valid deductive arguments but are rather trying to make inferences to the best explanation would stop talking about how 'logical' they are being. All it does is show everyone that you have no idea what logic is and are simply trying to look smart.
Uhm. I don't understand how your two first paragraphs can co-exist. If heredity != genetics, you cannot interchange their usage within paragraph 1 and 2 ? Atleast this didn't teach me anything, and I'm now more confused than before you wrote anything.
Also, I wasn't being racist. Just because certain topics can be politically charged, doesn't mean that's why we discuss them -_-
Clearly you infering that I have no grasp of logic is a much more valid deduction than anything else o_o.
I simply have no in-depth knowledge about this and never claimed I did ^^ relax.. If you know so much better and simply get frustrated, then maybe you should take a break ^^
My main point was that these things can be said and discussed WITHOUT it being racism: Else we can have no constructive debate on anything afro-american at all.
I'm not racist. The problem is there. I didn't create it, and not specifically because I were racist -_-. All I did was attack the issue from the other end... Wether or not intelligence is a requirement to succeed, or how intelligence is developed across different groups/races (and no, just for saying races I'm not racist ^^, mind you), I simply mentioned what little I had absorbed of "facts"/studies/"knowledge". . . It's still there. It came from somewhere. But if you feel like we need to write a book about this or not say anything at all; then maybe this forum wasn't meant for you. Which is the conclusion you seem to have arrived at anyway  .
Yes yes, all is relative. But our society actually isn't. Atm it is how it is and these are the current frames against which all are measured.
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On August 05 2012 01:28 Cutlery wrote:Show nested quote +On August 05 2012 00:46 frogrubdown wrote:On August 04 2012 22:42 Kakaw wrote:
For the 'racial' debate, the latest study I heard about intelligence, was that african-american are on average 10 IQ points below whites, while asians are a few points above. Intelligence is hereditary; and comparing Africa to Europe, it would make sense that, in Africa, intelligence did not equal survival and adaptability as much as it did in Europe the past, oh, 1000 years. As for evolution during actual period of slavery, it was much too short for any noticable evolution to take effect, if anyone suggested this.
Ofcourse, noticing a trend does not mean the numbers are exact in every (or any) study.
edit: imo there's more to race than simply skin colour. Equating race with skin colour makes no sense in my eyes. What I'm saying is that there's "race", and there's race: Obviously everybody are slightly different, but we can categorize certain groups which are slightly more similar; doesn't have to be simply skin colour: For instance where this 'race' evolved and how 'it' evolved plays a role in its current state evolution. E.g: We categorize animals this way; not to use as a tool for discrimination. Heritable != Genetic! People need to learn this! edit: Or, to be more specific before fools pounce, within group heritability does not without significant further argument say anything whatsoever about the degree to which between group differences are explained by genetics, which is what would be needed for your simple inference to go through. edit2: This place is too depressing. I've had my fill of the TL scientific racism thread and will depart for greener subforums. I just ask that, before taking in just-so story speculation that confirms their prejudices, the kind denizens of this place understand what the heritability of IQ means and what lies behind the general factor of intelligence. It would also be nice if people who are not even trying to make valid deductive arguments but are rather trying to make inferences to the best explanation would stop talking about how 'logical' they are being. All it does is show everyone that you have no idea what logic is and are simply trying to look smart. Uhm. I don't understand how your two first paragraphs can co-exist. If heredity != genetics, you cannot interchange their usage within paragraph 1 and 2 ? Atleast this didn't teach me anything, and I'm now more confused than before you wrote anything. Also, I wasn't being racist. Just because certain topics can be politically charged, doesn't mean that's why we discuss them -_- Clearly you infering that I have no grasp of logic is a much more valid deduction than anything else o_o. I simply have no in-depth knowledge about this and never claimed I did ^^ relax.. If you know so much better and simply get frustrated, then maybe you should take a break ^^ My main point was that these things can be said and discussed WITHOUT it being racism: Else we can have no constructive debate on anything afro-american at all. I'm not racist. The problem is there. I didn't create it, and not specifically because I were racist -_-. All I did was attack the issue from the other end...
Since you took my post personally, I'll respond while reiterating my desire to leave this debate permanently. But I don't understand why you took my post personally since:
1) off the top of my head I couldn't think of any posts by you on this debate
2) I was responding to Kakaw
3) I even now can't find any posts by you on this topic.
No offense, but it looks an awful lot like Kakaw is your alt...
Now a few points to address misunderstandings.
First, you can participate in scientific racism without knowing it. All you have to do is use a misunderstanding of science to reach racist conclusions. You don't have to be at fault except in an epistemic fashion.
Second, I was not criticizing all types of argument aside from valid deductions; inferences to the best explanation are great. But, if you use one and then go on to talk about how "logical" you are, then you clearly don't know what logic is.
Third, I agree that constructive discussion can happen on this issue. I just think it should be done by scientists. I don't see any value whatsoever in non-scientists telling everyone why they think that science justifies their beliefs in genetic racial inferiority.
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On August 05 2012 01:45 frogrubdown wrote:Show nested quote +On August 05 2012 01:28 Cutlery wrote:On August 05 2012 00:46 frogrubdown wrote:On August 04 2012 22:42 Kakaw wrote:
For the 'racial' debate, the latest study I heard about intelligence, was that african-american are on average 10 IQ points below whites, while asians are a few points above. Intelligence is hereditary; and comparing Africa to Europe, it would make sense that, in Africa, intelligence did not equal survival and adaptability as much as it did in Europe the past, oh, 1000 years. As for evolution during actual period of slavery, it was much too short for any noticable evolution to take effect, if anyone suggested this.
Ofcourse, noticing a trend does not mean the numbers are exact in every (or any) study.
edit: imo there's more to race than simply skin colour. Equating race with skin colour makes no sense in my eyes. What I'm saying is that there's "race", and there's race: Obviously everybody are slightly different, but we can categorize certain groups which are slightly more similar; doesn't have to be simply skin colour: For instance where this 'race' evolved and how 'it' evolved plays a role in its current state evolution. E.g: We categorize animals this way; not to use as a tool for discrimination. Heritable != Genetic! People need to learn this! edit: Or, to be more specific before fools pounce, within group heritability does not without significant further argument say anything whatsoever about the degree to which between group differences are explained by genetics, which is what would be needed for your simple inference to go through. edit2: This place is too depressing. I've had my fill of the TL scientific racism thread and will depart for greener subforums. I just ask that, before taking in just-so story speculation that confirms their prejudices, the kind denizens of this place understand what the heritability of IQ means and what lies behind the general factor of intelligence. It would also be nice if people who are not even trying to make valid deductive arguments but are rather trying to make inferences to the best explanation would stop talking about how 'logical' they are being. All it does is show everyone that you have no idea what logic is and are simply trying to look smart. Uhm. I don't understand how your two first paragraphs can co-exist. If heredity != genetics, you cannot interchange their usage within paragraph 1 and 2 ? Atleast this didn't teach me anything, and I'm now more confused than before you wrote anything. Also, I wasn't being racist. Just because certain topics can be politically charged, doesn't mean that's why we discuss them -_- Clearly you infering that I have no grasp of logic is a much more valid deduction than anything else o_o. I simply have no in-depth knowledge about this and never claimed I did ^^ relax.. If you know so much better and simply get frustrated, then maybe you should take a break ^^ My main point was that these things can be said and discussed WITHOUT it being racism: Else we can have no constructive debate on anything afro-american at all. I'm not racist. The problem is there. I didn't create it, and not specifically because I were racist -_-. All I did was attack the issue from the other end... Since you took my post personally, I'll respond while reiterating my desire to leave this debate permanently. First, I don't know why you took my post personally since: 1) off the top of my head I couldn't think of any posts by you on this debate 2) I was responding to Kakaw 3) I even now can't find any posts by you on this topic. No offense, but it looks an awful lot like Kakaw is your alt... Now so many points to address misunderstandings. First, you can participate in scientific racism without knowing it. All you have to do is use a misunderstanding of science to reach racist conclusions. You don't have to be at fault except in an epistemic fashion. Second, I was criticizing all types of argument aside from valid deductions; inferences to the best explanation are great. But, if you use one and then go on to talk about how "logical" you are, then you clearly don't know what logic is. Third, I agree that constructive discussion can happen on this issue. I just think it should be done by scientists. I don't see any value whatsoever in non-scientists telling everyone why they think that science justifies their beliefs in genetic racial inferiority.
Oh right, I'm kakaw on my laptop since I couldnt retreive my password. sorry.
Also, these weren't my conclusions, inherently. I just had them presented to me as one way we are different within our frame of judging eachother within society. How we have different toolsets based on many factors.
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On August 05 2012 01:22 HellRoxYa wrote:Show nested quote +On August 05 2012 01:08 HunterX11 wrote:On August 05 2012 00:14 sunprince wrote:On August 04 2012 23:50 DoubleReed wrote:On August 04 2012 23:06 sunprince wrote:On August 04 2012 22:11 DoubleReed wrote:On August 04 2012 20:44 sunprince wrote:On August 04 2012 12:07 DoubleReed wrote:On August 04 2012 11:29 sunprince wrote:On August 04 2012 06:35 DoubleReed wrote:
[quote]
Ugh, I am between conceding for the sake of being ending this topic and arguing for the sake of how many baseless assumptions you'd have to make before that is true. And of course, because I like wasting my time, let's go with the latter.
1. You'd have to assume that significant selection was occurring. Admittedly, that's sort of assumed with evolution, but things like slavery and how super-awesome humans are at surviving complicate things a bit. The study you showed was resistance to certain diseases, which you would be expected even without a slave trade. The study I linked illustrates that there was a significant selection process over a single generation even in spite of modern technology (particularly medical science) sustaining unfit individuals who would otherwise have perished. Given that this is the case, how can you deny that significant selection would occur given the far greater number of generations as well as the far stronger selection pressures of slave capture and slavery? Well, selection to survive disease would obviously be more significant over a shorter number of generations, but sure. I don't see how slave capture and slavery is necessarily a strong selection pressure though. On August 04 2012 04:08 DoubleReed wrote:
2. You'd have to assume that the traits being favored while they were slaves would have negative impacts on them once they were no longer slaves. I'm not quite sure how you get around this idea, because traits like "hard working" would generally be favored here, while traits like "violent behavior" would be generally less favored. That doesn't exactly fit our stereotypes. And genetics definitely have a role to play in terms of our personality, so those traits, while simplified, are fair game. I haven't claimed to support any "stereotypes" that you suggest. Generally speaking, though, the selection process of slave capture and slavery would likely select in favor of traits such as physical strength/endurance, earler puberty (which we know results in lower SES outcomes), and fecundity (which plays a big role in reinforcing the cycle of poverty), while selecting against traits such as intellectual curiosity (slaves who attempted to learn were brutally suppressed). I was partly joking about the stereotypes. But is there evidence suggesting that modern blacks have those traits? That seems like a relatively easy thing to find out and have evidence for. Like, you have a claim, and here's a great way to check it. Selection pressures aren't exactly simplistic, you could easily be wrong that those traits necessarily would have been chosen more than common white people at the time. On August 04 2012 04:08 DoubleReed wrote:
3. We should not pretend as if white people did not have children with black people during slavery, because the fact is it was rather common. Black people were far from an isolated population during this 'selection process'. Genetic studies indicate that current African-Americans inherited only ~14-17% of their ancestry from Europeans. So while we certainly do know that many slaveowners and overseers took sexual liberties with their slaves, this did not constitute a majority of the genetic total. A majority wouldn't make sense, and is not needed for me to throw a wrench in your claims. (Actually the things I've seen put it more at 20% but whatever). 14-17% is actually pretty significant. The population simply was not isolated very much. It's more likely that they became more similar to the white people during this time, rather than less. As often happens with minority subpopulations, they became more hybridized with the majority population. On August 04 2012 04:08 DoubleReed wrote:
4. With all these concerns, you would need to show that the genetic factors are not only there, but of noticeable significance compared with nurture and cultural factors. Nurture = cultural factors; I think what you meant to say was historical. Yes, genetic factors are only a part of the picture here, alongside cultural and historic factors. That said, it's a rather naieve P.C. argument to suggest that genetic factors aren't in play at all, considering what we do know. The argument from ignorance you're making is no different from the European feminsts insisting that there are no differences between men and women except the external one, and that everything is culturally determined. It completely falls apart given what we know about biology, and is a far more extreme position than the default assumption that both nature and nurture each play a role (to unknown degrees). No, I'm not making these arguments. What I'm saying is that genetic factors are far insignificant compared to social factors in these cases. At least as far as the population of black people is concerned. Your argument is based on faith. I thought we both acknowledged that we don't know what the exact effect of genetics is? On what basis are you concluding that genetic factors are not significant? Given what we know about genetics, the default position is that genetics is a significant factor. The burden of proof is on you to demonstrate otherwise. On August 04 2012 12:07 DoubleReed wrote:
As I have said repeatedly, genetic variability within a race is far greater than the genetic distance. Seriously? Are you even reading at all? How many times do I have to debunk this factoid until you get it? Your statement is a strawman because "race" is not a valid scientific concept. Of course there is great genetic variability between people with the same skin color; it's not a valid way of grouping people. But if we use legitimate classifications like haplogroups, then we quickly see why your strawman is wrong. Genetics are a significant factor is the default position? No, it doesn't work like that. We don't just assume that poor people are genetically predisposed to being poor. That's the opposite of default. That's something that needs some kind of evidence. That's Social Darwinism. You can't even find studies about the most basic parts of your claims to be true, and you're telling me that you're using logical inference. Based on faith? Are you for real? Are you serious? You have yet to show any evidence, and you're telling me that my arguments are based on faith. My argument is based on skepticism. I don't believe claims with a lack of evidence. It's not like the evidence would be impossible to obtain or anything, in fact with the traits you said we probably have done studies on that. The evidence I see is that the genetic variability within African Americans wouldn't make them any less 'genetically prone to lower socioeconomic status,' (whatever that means) than the majority population. I'm sorry, this is nothing but wild speculation, compounded with many layers of gross assumptions. We've established the following premises: 1. Genetics influence human traits. 2. Human traits influence socioeconomic outcomes. 3. Culture also influences socioeconomic outcomes. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that socioeconomic outcomes are influenced by both "nature" and "nurture" (African-Americans additionally suffer from the historical effects of slavery followed by widespread discrimination). Of course, we might revise this logical inference when and if we get experimental data on this topic, but for the time being this conclusion is logically reasonable. Despite this, you seem to be arguing that human traits don't signficantly influence socioeconomic outcomes in the specific case of African-Americans. Unless you can explain why this would uniquely qualify as an exception to the above premises and conclusion, it makes no sense to go with your argument. The burden of proof is on you to establish why the socio-economic status of African-Americans are an exception to the reality shared by every other population group with regards to every other human trait. No, I'm saying you're trying to explain the modern outcomes of a poorly-defined racial group (because we are talking about African Americans here, which even in haplogroups it's pretty silly) based on selection processes which may not have negatively affected them in that way, compared to white people at the same time (because white people are also undergoing selection processes even without slavery). African-Americans are a population group composed primarily of specific haplogroups. As far as populations go, "African-American" is actually fairly well defined. It's also not a huge inference that slavery has certain negative selection effects, and although white Americans have also undergone selection processes, they underwent vastly different selection processes for several hundred years (as well as different initial selection if you consider which groups immigrated from Europe). On August 04 2012 23:50 DoubleReed wrote:
I'm totally with you in terms of those premises. What I'm saying is that your grouping and theory of selection within this grouping makes very little sense given what we know about how genetics works. There's no reason to assume that African Americans are genetically predisposed to a lower socioeconomic group. It's not like the majority of poor people are black, or the majority of black people are poor. It's just that black people have a higher proportion of poor people. Cultural factors could easily explain the disparity without any odd genetic theories, considering that almost all African Americans are part-white anyway. And of course, culturally it is just black and white, without haplogroups. I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding here about how to understand population tendencies. If a higher proportion of African-Americans are poor, then by definition African-Americans are predisposed towards lower socioeconomic outcomes (that doesn't explain the causes of said tendency just yet, but the tendency is there). As an analogy, a larger proportion of Asian-Americans going to college means that Asian-Americans by definition are predipsosed towards higher education. You don't need a majority for a tendency to exist, you merely need an average which deviates significantly from the control group. On August 04 2012 23:50 DoubleReed wrote:Of course, we might revise this logical inference when and if we get experimental data on this topic, but for the time being this conclusion is logically reasonable. This is opposite of the way science works. The default position is skepticism, regardless of your theoretical concoction. You need evidence to hold a position. Actually, we make theories all the time based on existing data, before we have more data to test them out. Many scientific theories were developed before we had the technological means to fully verify them (e.g. evolution), by simply using the evidence we have available. On August 04 2012 23:50 DoubleReed wrote:
And I'm sorry, but I would like a link to something that says haplogroups have less genetic distance than genetic variability. I couldn't find it with a quick search. The only I found said that it was about lineages, which makes it a valid scientific grouping, but that would not say anything about its variability. Haplogroups are lineages. They're mitochondrial (matrilineal) lines of descent. They have less genetic distance pretty much by definition. You're talking about genetics and haplogroups and even specifically refer to the theory of evolution, but you're using the Creationist definition of "theory" where any logically possible conjecture can be considered a theory? What the hell is going on here? So what is a theory then? The problem with creationists is that they attack evolution as if it was "just a theory". Every theory is "just" a theory. It's just that we accept some theories as true, like evolution, and gravity. Edit: In short, everything and anything can be a theory. That doesn't mean that that theory is correct or even worthy of discussion.
What you are talking about is a hypothesis...not a scientific theory. Very different stuff.
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I don't see how this race debate is really relevant to the 2012 election.
There are better places for such a discussion. Like Stormfront.
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On August 05 2012 01:45 frogrubdown wrote:Show nested quote +On August 05 2012 01:28 Cutlery wrote:On August 05 2012 00:46 frogrubdown wrote:On August 04 2012 22:42 Kakaw wrote:
For the 'racial' debate, the latest study I heard about intelligence, was that african-american are on average 10 IQ points below whites, while asians are a few points above. Intelligence is hereditary; and comparing Africa to Europe, it would make sense that, in Africa, intelligence did not equal survival and adaptability as much as it did in Europe the past, oh, 1000 years. As for evolution during actual period of slavery, it was much too short for any noticable evolution to take effect, if anyone suggested this.
Ofcourse, noticing a trend does not mean the numbers are exact in every (or any) study.
edit: imo there's more to race than simply skin colour. Equating race with skin colour makes no sense in my eyes. What I'm saying is that there's "race", and there's race: Obviously everybody are slightly different, but we can categorize certain groups which are slightly more similar; doesn't have to be simply skin colour: For instance where this 'race' evolved and how 'it' evolved plays a role in its current state evolution. E.g: We categorize animals this way; not to use as a tool for discrimination. Heritable != Genetic! People need to learn this! edit: Or, to be more specific before fools pounce, within group heritability does not without significant further argument say anything whatsoever about the degree to which between group differences are explained by genetics, which is what would be needed for your simple inference to go through. edit2: This place is too depressing. I've had my fill of the TL scientific racism thread and will depart for greener subforums. I just ask that, before taking in just-so story speculation that confirms their prejudices, the kind denizens of this place understand what the heritability of IQ means and what lies behind the general factor of intelligence. It would also be nice if people who are not even trying to make valid deductive arguments but are rather trying to make inferences to the best explanation would stop talking about how 'logical' they are being. All it does is show everyone that you have no idea what logic is and are simply trying to look smart. Uhm. I don't understand how your two first paragraphs can co-exist. If heredity != genetics, you cannot interchange their usage within paragraph 1 and 2 ? Atleast this didn't teach me anything, and I'm now more confused than before you wrote anything. Also, I wasn't being racist. Just because certain topics can be politically charged, doesn't mean that's why we discuss them -_- Clearly you infering that I have no grasp of logic is a much more valid deduction than anything else o_o. I simply have no in-depth knowledge about this and never claimed I did ^^ relax.. If you know so much better and simply get frustrated, then maybe you should take a break ^^ My main point was that these things can be said and discussed WITHOUT it being racism: Else we can have no constructive debate on anything afro-american at all. I'm not racist. The problem is there. I didn't create it, and not specifically because I were racist -_-. All I did was attack the issue from the other end... Since you took my post personally, I'll respond while reiterating my desire to leave this debate permanently. But I don't understand why you took my post personally since: 1) off the top of my head I couldn't think of any posts by you on this debate 2) I was responding to Kakaw 3) I even now can't find any posts by you on this topic. No offense, but it looks an awful lot like Kakaw is your alt... Now a few points to address misunderstandings. First, you can participate in scientific racism without knowing it. All you have to do is use a misunderstanding of science to reach racist conclusions. You don't have to be at fault except in an epistemic fashion. Second, I was not criticizing all types of argument aside from valid deductions; inferences to the best explanation are great. But, if you use one and then go on to talk about how "logical" you are, then you clearly don't know what logic is. Third, I agree that constructive discussion can happen on this issue. I just think it should be done by scientists. I don't see any value whatsoever in non-scientists telling everyone why they think that science justifies their beliefs in genetic racial inferiority.
pls wait, im reading your links. Where heridity is explained through genes and enviroment, and the variance in the specific trait; but the meaning of enviroment seems to be much deeper than simply "nurture"; but rather how much of a variance the enviroment actually allows. Naturally.
I see where my "generalization" fails to be biologically correct; but I implied that they were simply based upon how studies credited the inherent interest towards intellectual activities based upon whom gave birth to them, without knowing the technicalities behind (or the actual science behind it). The traits and intensity of it which you were born with; based on what you came from. As I said; if you want to be painfully correct you should write a book, and not look to a TL discussion.
Also I'd like to argue that our 'conception' of IQ is not baseless. It might not do what we say in everyday language: measure intelligence; but it measures certain aspects of the brain which we seem to value and which we have built society and structure around. And thus a measure of how well you inherently grasp our reality. IQ was not thought up in a vacuum.
I'm glad if you're able to tell me that I'm wrong. This is not my area of expertise. I was simply looking to evolotuion to explain why those who stem from africa don't have all the traits that might fit naturally with out society which was conceived much differently. Asians seem to do just fine. They come from a different background, but still seem to be a better fit. I said that it made sense to me, that different aspects would be different, different traits have different "intensities" based on how different our history has been in the far reaching past. And that society is forged by us, who do not have their background, so they don't automatically fit in; which seems to be the empirical evidence. What the specific traits are, I simply do not know. I just mentioned one that had certain discrepancies; and said the link made sense to me. You're free to disagree and tell me where I'm illogical 
But all the other things you said about me personally I don't really care for. Keep it to yourself perhaps. I won't stretch any further. Got other things to do. Yw on the bit of time I gave you and this issue.
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On August 05 2012 01:08 HunterX11 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 05 2012 00:14 sunprince wrote:On August 04 2012 23:50 DoubleReed wrote:On August 04 2012 23:06 sunprince wrote:On August 04 2012 22:11 DoubleReed wrote:On August 04 2012 20:44 sunprince wrote:On August 04 2012 12:07 DoubleReed wrote:On August 04 2012 11:29 sunprince wrote:On August 04 2012 06:35 DoubleReed wrote:On August 04 2012 04:42 sunprince wrote:
[quote]
I'm sure you actually understood that the analogy was pointing out that differences in socioeconomic status do not imply superiority or inferiority.
[quote]
What I've said is a logical inference given contemporary understanding of genetic and cultural selection effects, in the absence of any studies to suggest the contrary. Ugh, I am between conceding for the sake of being ending this topic and arguing for the sake of how many baseless assumptions you'd have to make before that is true. And of course, because I like wasting my time, let's go with the latter. 1. You'd have to assume that significant selection was occurring. Admittedly, that's sort of assumed with evolution, but things like slavery and how super-awesome humans are at surviving complicate things a bit. The study you showed was resistance to certain diseases, which you would be expected even without a slave trade. The study I linked illustrates that there was a significant selection process over a single generation even in spite of modern technology (particularly medical science) sustaining unfit individuals who would otherwise have perished. Given that this is the case, how can you deny that significant selection would occur given the far greater number of generations as well as the far stronger selection pressures of slave capture and slavery? Well, selection to survive disease would obviously be more significant over a shorter number of generations, but sure. I don't see how slave capture and slavery is necessarily a strong selection pressure though. On August 04 2012 04:08 DoubleReed wrote:
2. You'd have to assume that the traits being favored while they were slaves would have negative impacts on them once they were no longer slaves. I'm not quite sure how you get around this idea, because traits like "hard working" would generally be favored here, while traits like "violent behavior" would be generally less favored. That doesn't exactly fit our stereotypes. And genetics definitely have a role to play in terms of our personality, so those traits, while simplified, are fair game. I haven't claimed to support any "stereotypes" that you suggest. Generally speaking, though, the selection process of slave capture and slavery would likely select in favor of traits such as physical strength/endurance, earler puberty (which we know results in lower SES outcomes), and fecundity (which plays a big role in reinforcing the cycle of poverty), while selecting against traits such as intellectual curiosity (slaves who attempted to learn were brutally suppressed). I was partly joking about the stereotypes. But is there evidence suggesting that modern blacks have those traits? That seems like a relatively easy thing to find out and have evidence for. Like, you have a claim, and here's a great way to check it. Selection pressures aren't exactly simplistic, you could easily be wrong that those traits necessarily would have been chosen more than common white people at the time. On August 04 2012 04:08 DoubleReed wrote:
3. We should not pretend as if white people did not have children with black people during slavery, because the fact is it was rather common. Black people were far from an isolated population during this 'selection process'. Genetic studies indicate that current African-Americans inherited only ~14-17% of their ancestry from Europeans. So while we certainly do know that many slaveowners and overseers took sexual liberties with their slaves, this did not constitute a majority of the genetic total. A majority wouldn't make sense, and is not needed for me to throw a wrench in your claims. (Actually the things I've seen put it more at 20% but whatever). 14-17% is actually pretty significant. The population simply was not isolated very much. It's more likely that they became more similar to the white people during this time, rather than less. As often happens with minority subpopulations, they became more hybridized with the majority population. On August 04 2012 04:08 DoubleReed wrote:
4. With all these concerns, you would need to show that the genetic factors are not only there, but of noticeable significance compared with nurture and cultural factors. Nurture = cultural factors; I think what you meant to say was historical. Yes, genetic factors are only a part of the picture here, alongside cultural and historic factors. That said, it's a rather naieve P.C. argument to suggest that genetic factors aren't in play at all, considering what we do know. The argument from ignorance you're making is no different from the European feminsts insisting that there are no differences between men and women except the external one, and that everything is culturally determined. It completely falls apart given what we know about biology, and is a far more extreme position than the default assumption that both nature and nurture each play a role (to unknown degrees). No, I'm not making these arguments. What I'm saying is that genetic factors are far insignificant compared to social factors in these cases. At least as far as the population of black people is concerned. Your argument is based on faith. I thought we both acknowledged that we don't know what the exact effect of genetics is? On what basis are you concluding that genetic factors are not significant? Given what we know about genetics, the default position is that genetics is a significant factor. The burden of proof is on you to demonstrate otherwise. On August 04 2012 12:07 DoubleReed wrote:
As I have said repeatedly, genetic variability within a race is far greater than the genetic distance. Seriously? Are you even reading at all? How many times do I have to debunk this factoid until you get it? Your statement is a strawman because "race" is not a valid scientific concept. Of course there is great genetic variability between people with the same skin color; it's not a valid way of grouping people. But if we use legitimate classifications like haplogroups, then we quickly see why your strawman is wrong. Genetics are a significant factor is the default position? No, it doesn't work like that. We don't just assume that poor people are genetically predisposed to being poor. That's the opposite of default. That's something that needs some kind of evidence. That's Social Darwinism. You can't even find studies about the most basic parts of your claims to be true, and you're telling me that you're using logical inference. Based on faith? Are you for real? Are you serious? You have yet to show any evidence, and you're telling me that my arguments are based on faith. My argument is based on skepticism. I don't believe claims with a lack of evidence. It's not like the evidence would be impossible to obtain or anything, in fact with the traits you said we probably have done studies on that. The evidence I see is that the genetic variability within African Americans wouldn't make them any less 'genetically prone to lower socioeconomic status,' (whatever that means) than the majority population. I'm sorry, this is nothing but wild speculation, compounded with many layers of gross assumptions. We've established the following premises: 1. Genetics influence human traits. 2. Human traits influence socioeconomic outcomes. 3. Culture also influences socioeconomic outcomes. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that socioeconomic outcomes are influenced by both "nature" and "nurture" (African-Americans additionally suffer from the historical effects of slavery followed by widespread discrimination). Of course, we might revise this logical inference when and if we get experimental data on this topic, but for the time being this conclusion is logically reasonable. Despite this, you seem to be arguing that human traits don't signficantly influence socioeconomic outcomes in the specific case of African-Americans. Unless you can explain why this would uniquely qualify as an exception to the above premises and conclusion, it makes no sense to go with your argument. The burden of proof is on you to establish why the socio-economic status of African-Americans are an exception to the reality shared by every other population group with regards to every other human trait. No, I'm saying you're trying to explain the modern outcomes of a poorly-defined racial group (because we are talking about African Americans here, which even in haplogroups it's pretty silly) based on selection processes which may not have negatively affected them in that way, compared to white people at the same time (because white people are also undergoing selection processes even without slavery). African-Americans are a population group composed primarily of specific haplogroups. As far as populations go, "African-American" is actually fairly well defined. It's also not a huge inference that slavery has certain negative selection effects, and although white Americans have also undergone selection processes, they underwent vastly different selection processes for several hundred years (as well as different initial selection if you consider which groups immigrated from Europe). On August 04 2012 23:50 DoubleReed wrote:
I'm totally with you in terms of those premises. What I'm saying is that your grouping and theory of selection within this grouping makes very little sense given what we know about how genetics works. There's no reason to assume that African Americans are genetically predisposed to a lower socioeconomic group. It's not like the majority of poor people are black, or the majority of black people are poor. It's just that black people have a higher proportion of poor people. Cultural factors could easily explain the disparity without any odd genetic theories, considering that almost all African Americans are part-white anyway. And of course, culturally it is just black and white, without haplogroups. I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding here about how to understand population tendencies. If a higher proportion of African-Americans are poor, then by definition African-Americans are predisposed towards lower socioeconomic outcomes (that doesn't explain the causes of said tendency just yet, but the tendency is there). As an analogy, a larger proportion of Asian-Americans going to college means that Asian-Americans by definition are predipsosed towards higher education. You don't need a majority for a tendency to exist, you merely need an average which deviates significantly from the control group. On August 04 2012 23:50 DoubleReed wrote:Of course, we might revise this logical inference when and if we get experimental data on this topic, but for the time being this conclusion is logically reasonable. This is opposite of the way science works. The default position is skepticism, regardless of your theoretical concoction. You need evidence to hold a position. Actually, we make theories all the time based on existing data, before we have more data to test them out. Many scientific theories were developed before we had the technological means to fully verify them (e.g. evolution), by simply using the evidence we have available. On August 04 2012 23:50 DoubleReed wrote:
And I'm sorry, but I would like a link to something that says haplogroups have less genetic distance than genetic variability. I couldn't find it with a quick search. The only I found said that it was about lineages, which makes it a valid scientific grouping, but that would not say anything about its variability. Haplogroups are lineages. They're mitochondrial (matrilineal) lines of descent. They have less genetic distance pretty much by definition. You're talking about genetics and haplogroups and even specifically refer to the theory of evolution, but you're using the Creationist definition of "theory" where any logically possible conjecture can be considered a theory? What the hell is going on here?
My favorite part was when he failed reading comprehension 101 and said the other guy had a "fumdamental misunderstanding of population tendencies" when the only thing that was rejected is that its necessarily a genetic tendency.
Edit @ Cutlery: There's a difference between "painfully correct" and "avoiding generally baseless conjectures claiming that a significant portion of the population is inherently inferior"
Just because IQ wasn't thought up in a vacuum does not make it a good metric, if it fails to accurately measure what it aims to, it's useless.
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On August 05 2012 01:51 zalz wrote:
I don't see how this race debate is really relevant to the 2012 election.
There are better places for such a discussion. Like Stormfront.
In all honesty, debating anything on the internet isn't "relevant", since probably only 1% of the people around here actually listen to others' opinions and bother reading articles and such, most people only shout out their opinions without listening to others.
Not only that, but no one here actually matters, not a single person here has an ounce of influence of the outside world, and the time that people take to debate on the internet should be used for more important things.
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On August 05 2012 02:21 RageBot wrote:Show nested quote +On August 05 2012 01:51 zalz wrote:
I don't see how this race debate is really relevant to the 2012 election.
There are better places for such a discussion. Like Stormfront. In all honesty, debating anything on the internet isn't "relevant", since probably only 1% of the people around here actually listen to others' opinions and bother reading articles and such, most people only shout out their opinions without listening to others. Not only that, but no one here actually matters, not a single person here has an ounce of influence of the outside world, and the time that people take to debate on the internet should be used for more important things.
By that logic, no thread should have any designated purpose. We shouldn't form topics. It should be a continuous stream of people's thoughts with no organization. That doesn't make any sense.
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On August 05 2012 02:25 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On August 05 2012 02:21 RageBot wrote:On August 05 2012 01:51 zalz wrote:
I don't see how this race debate is really relevant to the 2012 election.
There are better places for such a discussion. Like Stormfront. In all honesty, debating anything on the internet isn't "relevant", since probably only 1% of the people around here actually listen to others' opinions and bother reading articles and such, most people only shout out their opinions without listening to others. Not only that, but no one here actually matters, not a single person here has an ounce of influence of the outside world, and the time that people take to debate on the internet should be used for more important things. By that logic, no thread should have any designated purpose. We shouldn't form topics. It should be a continuous stream of people's thoughts with no organization. That doesn't make any sense.
I was tempted to answer you, but realized that the odds of you listening to me are very low, so I won't waste my time.
See? now not only did I save myself some time, but i've saved you the time required to answer what I would've written, and so on and so forth.
And, not only that! But I don't actually care what you think, and I assume that you don't actually care about what I think, all that you (and me) want to do is to be "right", not to listen and improve our worldview, i'm doing both of us a favor!
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On August 05 2012 02:18 TheFrankOne wrote:Show nested quote +On August 05 2012 01:08 HunterX11 wrote:On August 05 2012 00:14 sunprince wrote:On August 04 2012 23:50 DoubleReed wrote:On August 04 2012 23:06 sunprince wrote:On August 04 2012 22:11 DoubleReed wrote:On August 04 2012 20:44 sunprince wrote:On August 04 2012 12:07 DoubleReed wrote:On August 04 2012 11:29 sunprince wrote:On August 04 2012 06:35 DoubleReed wrote:
[quote]
Ugh, I am between conceding for the sake of being ending this topic and arguing for the sake of how many baseless assumptions you'd have to make before that is true. And of course, because I like wasting my time, let's go with the latter.
1. You'd have to assume that significant selection was occurring. Admittedly, that's sort of assumed with evolution, but things like slavery and how super-awesome humans are at surviving complicate things a bit. The study you showed was resistance to certain diseases, which you would be expected even without a slave trade. The study I linked illustrates that there was a significant selection process over a single generation even in spite of modern technology (particularly medical science) sustaining unfit individuals who would otherwise have perished. Given that this is the case, how can you deny that significant selection would occur given the far greater number of generations as well as the far stronger selection pressures of slave capture and slavery? Well, selection to survive disease would obviously be more significant over a shorter number of generations, but sure. I don't see how slave capture and slavery is necessarily a strong selection pressure though. On August 04 2012 04:08 DoubleReed wrote:
2. You'd have to assume that the traits being favored while they were slaves would have negative impacts on them once they were no longer slaves. I'm not quite sure how you get around this idea, because traits like "hard working" would generally be favored here, while traits like "violent behavior" would be generally less favored. That doesn't exactly fit our stereotypes. And genetics definitely have a role to play in terms of our personality, so those traits, while simplified, are fair game. I haven't claimed to support any "stereotypes" that you suggest. Generally speaking, though, the selection process of slave capture and slavery would likely select in favor of traits such as physical strength/endurance, earler puberty (which we know results in lower SES outcomes), and fecundity (which plays a big role in reinforcing the cycle of poverty), while selecting against traits such as intellectual curiosity (slaves who attempted to learn were brutally suppressed). I was partly joking about the stereotypes. But is there evidence suggesting that modern blacks have those traits? That seems like a relatively easy thing to find out and have evidence for. Like, you have a claim, and here's a great way to check it. Selection pressures aren't exactly simplistic, you could easily be wrong that those traits necessarily would have been chosen more than common white people at the time. On August 04 2012 04:08 DoubleReed wrote:
3. We should not pretend as if white people did not have children with black people during slavery, because the fact is it was rather common. Black people were far from an isolated population during this 'selection process'. Genetic studies indicate that current African-Americans inherited only ~14-17% of their ancestry from Europeans. So while we certainly do know that many slaveowners and overseers took sexual liberties with their slaves, this did not constitute a majority of the genetic total. A majority wouldn't make sense, and is not needed for me to throw a wrench in your claims. (Actually the things I've seen put it more at 20% but whatever). 14-17% is actually pretty significant. The population simply was not isolated very much. It's more likely that they became more similar to the white people during this time, rather than less. As often happens with minority subpopulations, they became more hybridized with the majority population. On August 04 2012 04:08 DoubleReed wrote:
4. With all these concerns, you would need to show that the genetic factors are not only there, but of noticeable significance compared with nurture and cultural factors. Nurture = cultural factors; I think what you meant to say was historical. Yes, genetic factors are only a part of the picture here, alongside cultural and historic factors. That said, it's a rather naieve P.C. argument to suggest that genetic factors aren't in play at all, considering what we do know. The argument from ignorance you're making is no different from the European feminsts insisting that there are no differences between men and women except the external one, and that everything is culturally determined. It completely falls apart given what we know about biology, and is a far more extreme position than the default assumption that both nature and nurture each play a role (to unknown degrees). No, I'm not making these arguments. What I'm saying is that genetic factors are far insignificant compared to social factors in these cases. At least as far as the population of black people is concerned. Your argument is based on faith. I thought we both acknowledged that we don't know what the exact effect of genetics is? On what basis are you concluding that genetic factors are not significant? Given what we know about genetics, the default position is that genetics is a significant factor. The burden of proof is on you to demonstrate otherwise. On August 04 2012 12:07 DoubleReed wrote:
As I have said repeatedly, genetic variability within a race is far greater than the genetic distance. Seriously? Are you even reading at all? How many times do I have to debunk this factoid until you get it? Your statement is a strawman because "race" is not a valid scientific concept. Of course there is great genetic variability between people with the same skin color; it's not a valid way of grouping people. But if we use legitimate classifications like haplogroups, then we quickly see why your strawman is wrong. Genetics are a significant factor is the default position? No, it doesn't work like that. We don't just assume that poor people are genetically predisposed to being poor. That's the opposite of default. That's something that needs some kind of evidence. That's Social Darwinism. You can't even find studies about the most basic parts of your claims to be true, and you're telling me that you're using logical inference. Based on faith? Are you for real? Are you serious? You have yet to show any evidence, and you're telling me that my arguments are based on faith. My argument is based on skepticism. I don't believe claims with a lack of evidence. It's not like the evidence would be impossible to obtain or anything, in fact with the traits you said we probably have done studies on that. The evidence I see is that the genetic variability within African Americans wouldn't make them any less 'genetically prone to lower socioeconomic status,' (whatever that means) than the majority population. I'm sorry, this is nothing but wild speculation, compounded with many layers of gross assumptions. We've established the following premises: 1. Genetics influence human traits. 2. Human traits influence socioeconomic outcomes. 3. Culture also influences socioeconomic outcomes. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that socioeconomic outcomes are influenced by both "nature" and "nurture" (African-Americans additionally suffer from the historical effects of slavery followed by widespread discrimination). Of course, we might revise this logical inference when and if we get experimental data on this topic, but for the time being this conclusion is logically reasonable. Despite this, you seem to be arguing that human traits don't signficantly influence socioeconomic outcomes in the specific case of African-Americans. Unless you can explain why this would uniquely qualify as an exception to the above premises and conclusion, it makes no sense to go with your argument. The burden of proof is on you to establish why the socio-economic status of African-Americans are an exception to the reality shared by every other population group with regards to every other human trait. No, I'm saying you're trying to explain the modern outcomes of a poorly-defined racial group (because we are talking about African Americans here, which even in haplogroups it's pretty silly) based on selection processes which may not have negatively affected them in that way, compared to white people at the same time (because white people are also undergoing selection processes even without slavery). African-Americans are a population group composed primarily of specific haplogroups. As far as populations go, "African-American" is actually fairly well defined. It's also not a huge inference that slavery has certain negative selection effects, and although white Americans have also undergone selection processes, they underwent vastly different selection processes for several hundred years (as well as different initial selection if you consider which groups immigrated from Europe). On August 04 2012 23:50 DoubleReed wrote:
I'm totally with you in terms of those premises. What I'm saying is that your grouping and theory of selection within this grouping makes very little sense given what we know about how genetics works. There's no reason to assume that African Americans are genetically predisposed to a lower socioeconomic group. It's not like the majority of poor people are black, or the majority of black people are poor. It's just that black people have a higher proportion of poor people. Cultural factors could easily explain the disparity without any odd genetic theories, considering that almost all African Americans are part-white anyway. And of course, culturally it is just black and white, without haplogroups. I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding here about how to understand population tendencies. If a higher proportion of African-Americans are poor, then by definition African-Americans are predisposed towards lower socioeconomic outcomes (that doesn't explain the causes of said tendency just yet, but the tendency is there). As an analogy, a larger proportion of Asian-Americans going to college means that Asian-Americans by definition are predipsosed towards higher education. You don't need a majority for a tendency to exist, you merely need an average which deviates significantly from the control group. On August 04 2012 23:50 DoubleReed wrote:Of course, we might revise this logical inference when and if we get experimental data on this topic, but for the time being this conclusion is logically reasonable. This is opposite of the way science works. The default position is skepticism, regardless of your theoretical concoction. You need evidence to hold a position. Actually, we make theories all the time based on existing data, before we have more data to test them out. Many scientific theories were developed before we had the technological means to fully verify them (e.g. evolution), by simply using the evidence we have available. On August 04 2012 23:50 DoubleReed wrote:
And I'm sorry, but I would like a link to something that says haplogroups have less genetic distance than genetic variability. I couldn't find it with a quick search. The only I found said that it was about lineages, which makes it a valid scientific grouping, but that would not say anything about its variability. Haplogroups are lineages. They're mitochondrial (matrilineal) lines of descent. They have less genetic distance pretty much by definition. You're talking about genetics and haplogroups and even specifically refer to the theory of evolution, but you're using the Creationist definition of "theory" where any logically possible conjecture can be considered a theory? What the hell is going on here? My favorite part was when he failed reading comprehension 101 and said the other guy had a "fumdamental misunderstanding of population tendencies" when the only thing that was rejected is that its necessarily a genetic tendency. Edit @ Cutlery: There's a difference between "painfully correct" and "avoiding generally baseless conjectures claiming that a significant portion of the population is inherently inferior" Just because IQ wasn't thought up in a vacuum does not make it a good metric, if it fails to accurately measure what it aims to, it's useless.
I didn't want to imply that some were inferior or asians superior. I thought IQ was simply something we created to fit within society, and its measure is how well you intellectually fit in in the western world. Why this would make you inferior I'm not the one to contemplate. It just makes you different.
You can't say it (IQ) is useless. Because if you know what it measures then it is of limited use within that area... Nothing uncommon about this. Infact, all statistics work like this. You measure something, but you have a strict background and guildelines/rules/settings to which it actually applies. Knowing where it comes from lets you know how you can apply it.
I'll gladly say it doesn't measure the absolute or overall intelligence; but I will say it is a certain trait, and it is a trait which has certain fits within our society. But now I feel like I'm having to explain in 'what way I'm *not* racist', simply because others choose to read things into IQ that they simply cannot.
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On August 05 2012 02:29 RageBot wrote:Show nested quote +On August 05 2012 02:25 Mohdoo wrote:On August 05 2012 02:21 RageBot wrote:On August 05 2012 01:51 zalz wrote:
I don't see how this race debate is really relevant to the 2012 election.
There are better places for such a discussion. Like Stormfront. In all honesty, debating anything on the internet isn't "relevant", since probably only 1% of the people around here actually listen to others' opinions and bother reading articles and such, most people only shout out their opinions without listening to others. Not only that, but no one here actually matters, not a single person here has an ounce of influence of the outside world, and the time that people take to debate on the internet should be used for more important things. By that logic, no thread should have any designated purpose. We shouldn't form topics. It should be a continuous stream of people's thoughts with no organization. That doesn't make any sense. I was tempted to answer you, but realized that the odds of you listening to me are very low, so I won't waste my time. See? now not only did I save myself some time, but i've saved you the time required to answer what I would've written, and so on and so forth. And, not only that! But I don't actually care what you think, and I assume that you don't actually care about what I think, all that you (and me) want to do is to be "right", not to listen and improve our worldview, i'm doing both of us a favor!
then why did you answer him?
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On August 05 2012 02:42 darthfoley wrote:Show nested quote +On August 05 2012 02:29 RageBot wrote:On August 05 2012 02:25 Mohdoo wrote:On August 05 2012 02:21 RageBot wrote:On August 05 2012 01:51 zalz wrote:
I don't see how this race debate is really relevant to the 2012 election.
There are better places for such a discussion. Like Stormfront. In all honesty, debating anything on the internet isn't "relevant", since probably only 1% of the people around here actually listen to others' opinions and bother reading articles and such, most people only shout out their opinions without listening to others. Not only that, but no one here actually matters, not a single person here has an ounce of influence of the outside world, and the time that people take to debate on the internet should be used for more important things. By that logic, no thread should have any designated purpose. We shouldn't form topics. It should be a continuous stream of people's thoughts with no organization. That doesn't make any sense. I was tempted to answer you, but realized that the odds of you listening to me are very low, so I won't waste my time. See? now not only did I save myself some time, but i've saved you the time required to answer what I would've written, and so on and so forth. And, not only that! But I don't actually care what you think, and I assume that you don't actually care about what I think, all that you (and me) want to do is to be "right", not to listen and improve our worldview, i'm doing both of us a favor! then why did you answer him?
I thought that, while what he stated is technically accurate; it is why we write in forums in the first place. It doesn't matter that we're not Obama at a UN meeting. We're simply TLers and this is how we discuss. But I think his point, also, was that some people aren't open for the actual "discussion" part, and simply want to be heard and not listen; not really listen. And instead they keep forcing an (possibly outdated) issue and discussion stagnates and it becomes a back-and-forth tedious waste of time. Instead of an 'intellectual' exchange of thoughts it becomes two or three sides throwing stones from behind walls.
In a way, I take *everything* as open for discussion. And expect others to treat me the same. Even if it is krass it doesn't neccesarily mean anything. Could only mean the 'author' tried to save time. Personal attacks however (which happens often enough; no matter how subtle) I usually ignore and forgive; but there's discussion, and there's stagnation... That is typically when I leave for a few days ^^
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On August 05 2012 02:06 Cutlery wrote:Show nested quote +On August 05 2012 01:45 frogrubdown wrote:On August 05 2012 01:28 Cutlery wrote:On August 05 2012 00:46 frogrubdown wrote:On August 04 2012 22:42 Kakaw wrote:
For the 'racial' debate, the latest study I heard about intelligence, was that african-american are on average 10 IQ points below whites, while asians are a few points above. Intelligence is hereditary; and comparing Africa to Europe, it would make sense that, in Africa, intelligence did not equal survival and adaptability as much as it did in Europe the past, oh, 1000 years. As for evolution during actual period of slavery, it was much too short for any noticable evolution to take effect, if anyone suggested this.
Ofcourse, noticing a trend does not mean the numbers are exact in every (or any) study.
edit: imo there's more to race than simply skin colour. Equating race with skin colour makes no sense in my eyes. What I'm saying is that there's "race", and there's race: Obviously everybody are slightly different, but we can categorize certain groups which are slightly more similar; doesn't have to be simply skin colour: For instance where this 'race' evolved and how 'it' evolved plays a role in its current state evolution. E.g: We categorize animals this way; not to use as a tool for discrimination. Heritable != Genetic! People need to learn this! edit: Or, to be more specific before fools pounce, within group heritability does not without significant further argument say anything whatsoever about the degree to which between group differences are explained by genetics, which is what would be needed for your simple inference to go through. edit2: This place is too depressing. I've had my fill of the TL scientific racism thread and will depart for greener subforums. I just ask that, before taking in just-so story speculation that confirms their prejudices, the kind denizens of this place understand what the heritability of IQ means and what lies behind the general factor of intelligence. It would also be nice if people who are not even trying to make valid deductive arguments but are rather trying to make inferences to the best explanation would stop talking about how 'logical' they are being. All it does is show everyone that you have no idea what logic is and are simply trying to look smart. Uhm. I don't understand how your two first paragraphs can co-exist. If heredity != genetics, you cannot interchange their usage within paragraph 1 and 2 ? Atleast this didn't teach me anything, and I'm now more confused than before you wrote anything. Also, I wasn't being racist. Just because certain topics can be politically charged, doesn't mean that's why we discuss them -_- Clearly you infering that I have no grasp of logic is a much more valid deduction than anything else o_o. I simply have no in-depth knowledge about this and never claimed I did ^^ relax.. If you know so much better and simply get frustrated, then maybe you should take a break ^^ My main point was that these things can be said and discussed WITHOUT it being racism: Else we can have no constructive debate on anything afro-american at all. I'm not racist. The problem is there. I didn't create it, and not specifically because I were racist -_-. All I did was attack the issue from the other end... Since you took my post personally, I'll respond while reiterating my desire to leave this debate permanently. But I don't understand why you took my post personally since: 1) off the top of my head I couldn't think of any posts by you on this debate 2) I was responding to Kakaw 3) I even now can't find any posts by you on this topic. No offense, but it looks an awful lot like Kakaw is your alt... Now a few points to address misunderstandings. First, you can participate in scientific racism without knowing it. All you have to do is use a misunderstanding of science to reach racist conclusions. You don't have to be at fault except in an epistemic fashion. Second, I was not criticizing all types of argument aside from valid deductions; inferences to the best explanation are great. But, if you use one and then go on to talk about how "logical" you are, then you clearly don't know what logic is. Third, I agree that constructive discussion can happen on this issue. I just think it should be done by scientists. I don't see any value whatsoever in non-scientists telling everyone why they think that science justifies their beliefs in genetic racial inferiority. + Show Spoiler +pls wait, im reading your links. Where heridity is explained through genes and enviroment, and the variance in the specific trait; but the meaning of enviroment seems to be much deeper than simply "nurture"; but rather how much of a variance the enviroment actually allows. Naturally. I see where my "generalization" fails to be biologically correct; but I implied that they were simply based upon how studies credited the inherent interest towards intellectual activities based upon whom gave birth to them, without knowing the technicalities behind (or the actual science behind it). The traits and intensity of it which you were born with; based on what you came from. As I said; if you want to be painfully correct you should write a book, and not look to a TL discussion. Also I'd like to argue that our 'conception' of IQ is not baseless. It might not do what we say in everyday language: measure intelligence; but it measures certain aspects of the brain which we seem to value and which we have built society and structure around. And thus a measure of how well you inherently grasp our reality. IQ was not thought up in a vacuum. I'm glad if you're able to tell me that I'm wrong. This is not my area of expertise. I was simply looking to evolotuion to explain why those who stem from africa don't have all the traits that might fit naturally with out society which was conceived much differently. Asians seem to do just fine. They come from a different background, but still seem to be a better fit. I said that it made sense to me, that different aspects would be different, different traits have different "intensities" based on how different our history has been in the far reaching past. And that society is forged by us, who do not have their background, so they don't automatically fit in; which seems to be the empirical evidence. What the specific traits are, I simply do not know. I just mentioned one that had certain discrepancies; and said the link made sense to me. You're free to disagree and tell me where I'm illogical But all the other things you said about me personally I don't really care for. Keep it to yourself perhaps. I won't stretch any further. Got other things to do. Yw on the bit of time I gave you and this issue.
PM response to avoid further discussion in this thread.
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On August 05 2012 04:35 frogrubdown wrote:Show nested quote +On August 05 2012 02:06 Cutlery wrote:On August 05 2012 01:45 frogrubdown wrote:On August 05 2012 01:28 Cutlery wrote:On August 05 2012 00:46 frogrubdown wrote:On August 04 2012 22:42 Kakaw wrote:
For the 'racial' debate, the latest study I heard about intelligence, was that african-american are on average 10 IQ points below whites, while asians are a few points above. Intelligence is hereditary; and comparing Africa to Europe, it would make sense that, in Africa, intelligence did not equal survival and adaptability as much as it did in Europe the past, oh, 1000 years. As for evolution during actual period of slavery, it was much too short for any noticable evolution to take effect, if anyone suggested this.
Ofcourse, noticing a trend does not mean the numbers are exact in every (or any) study.
edit: imo there's more to race than simply skin colour. Equating race with skin colour makes no sense in my eyes. What I'm saying is that there's "race", and there's race: Obviously everybody are slightly different, but we can categorize certain groups which are slightly more similar; doesn't have to be simply skin colour: For instance where this 'race' evolved and how 'it' evolved plays a role in its current state evolution. E.g: We categorize animals this way; not to use as a tool for discrimination. Heritable != Genetic! People need to learn this! edit: Or, to be more specific before fools pounce, within group heritability does not without significant further argument say anything whatsoever about the degree to which between group differences are explained by genetics, which is what would be needed for your simple inference to go through. edit2: This place is too depressing. I've had my fill of the TL scientific racism thread and will depart for greener subforums. I just ask that, before taking in just-so story speculation that confirms their prejudices, the kind denizens of this place understand what the heritability of IQ means and what lies behind the general factor of intelligence. It would also be nice if people who are not even trying to make valid deductive arguments but are rather trying to make inferences to the best explanation would stop talking about how 'logical' they are being. All it does is show everyone that you have no idea what logic is and are simply trying to look smart. Uhm. I don't understand how your two first paragraphs can co-exist. If heredity != genetics, you cannot interchange their usage within paragraph 1 and 2 ? Atleast this didn't teach me anything, and I'm now more confused than before you wrote anything. Also, I wasn't being racist. Just because certain topics can be politically charged, doesn't mean that's why we discuss them -_- Clearly you infering that I have no grasp of logic is a much more valid deduction than anything else o_o. I simply have no in-depth knowledge about this and never claimed I did ^^ relax.. If you know so much better and simply get frustrated, then maybe you should take a break ^^ My main point was that these things can be said and discussed WITHOUT it being racism: Else we can have no constructive debate on anything afro-american at all. I'm not racist. The problem is there. I didn't create it, and not specifically because I were racist -_-. All I did was attack the issue from the other end... Since you took my post personally, I'll respond while reiterating my desire to leave this debate permanently. But I don't understand why you took my post personally since: 1) off the top of my head I couldn't think of any posts by you on this debate 2) I was responding to Kakaw 3) I even now can't find any posts by you on this topic. No offense, but it looks an awful lot like Kakaw is your alt... Now a few points to address misunderstandings. First, you can participate in scientific racism without knowing it. All you have to do is use a misunderstanding of science to reach racist conclusions. You don't have to be at fault except in an epistemic fashion. Second, I was not criticizing all types of argument aside from valid deductions; inferences to the best explanation are great. But, if you use one and then go on to talk about how "logical" you are, then you clearly don't know what logic is. Third, I agree that constructive discussion can happen on this issue. I just think it should be done by scientists. I don't see any value whatsoever in non-scientists telling everyone why they think that science justifies their beliefs in genetic racial inferiority. + Show Spoiler +pls wait, im reading your links. Where heridity is explained through genes and enviroment, and the variance in the specific trait; but the meaning of enviroment seems to be much deeper than simply "nurture"; but rather how much of a variance the enviroment actually allows. Naturally. I see where my "generalization" fails to be biologically correct; but I implied that they were simply based upon how studies credited the inherent interest towards intellectual activities based upon whom gave birth to them, without knowing the technicalities behind (or the actual science behind it). The traits and intensity of it which you were born with; based on what you came from. As I said; if you want to be painfully correct you should write a book, and not look to a TL discussion. Also I'd like to argue that our 'conception' of IQ is not baseless. It might not do what we say in everyday language: measure intelligence; but it measures certain aspects of the brain which we seem to value and which we have built society and structure around. And thus a measure of how well you inherently grasp our reality. IQ was not thought up in a vacuum. I'm glad if you're able to tell me that I'm wrong. This is not my area of expertise. I was simply looking to evolotuion to explain why those who stem from africa don't have all the traits that might fit naturally with out society which was conceived much differently. Asians seem to do just fine. They come from a different background, but still seem to be a better fit. I said that it made sense to me, that different aspects would be different, different traits have different "intensities" based on how different our history has been in the far reaching past. And that society is forged by us, who do not have their background, so they don't automatically fit in; which seems to be the empirical evidence. What the specific traits are, I simply do not know. I just mentioned one that had certain discrepancies; and said the link made sense to me. You're free to disagree and tell me where I'm illogical But all the other things you said about me personally I don't really care for. Keep it to yourself perhaps. I won't stretch any further. Got other things to do. Yw on the bit of time I gave you and this issue. PM response to avoid further discussion in this thread.
Thank you. That race discussion was starting to derail all other discussion on the election. Reminds me of the balance discussion threads. I suggest you guys start a new topic to carry out your debate, then others can chime in there.
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