Human evolution and differentiation of races

[lomiller]

aside
they have a commonly accepted social cultural meaning but the phenotypes don't mean much.

I'm not sure how that is different from what I wrote

 

[lomiller]

They are clssed as "varieties" , or "sub-species", or "breeds", depending on the person doing the classifying.

Dog breeds are *NOT* sub-species.

 

[lomiller]

race implies sub-species then I'm not comfortable making that claim, though I would defer to taxonomists

Race is not su-species either. Humans all belong to a single sub-species homo sapies sapies.

 

[Jono]

Certainly it wouldn't be incorrect to frame it as; there are hereditary genetic differences inbetween given groups (arbitrarily, or not, categorized via ethnic/racial/sub-racial labels et al).
This is, at least imo, something rather uncontroversial when dealing with the physiology (below the neck, i.e avoiding wired behaviour anomalies, tendencies of different averages thereof and those cans of worms). For example the difference of diabetic-tendencies, related metabolic syndrome (MetS), retinopathy and so forth in the polynesian group compaired to european groups.

As has been mentioned elsewhere, concerns related to the 'consequences' of contemporary genetic-research and DNA-mapping inbetween 'races' is and will continue to be an increasingly controversial issue:

Such developments are providing some of the first tangible benefits of the genetic revolution. Yet some social critics fear they may also be giving long-discredited racial prejudices a new potency. The notion that race is more than skin deep, they fear, could undermine principles of equal treatment and opportunity that have relied on the presumption that we are all fundamentally equal.

“We are living through an era of the ascendance of biology, and we have to be very careful,” said Henry Louis Gates Jr., director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. “We will all be walking a fine line between using biology and allowing it to be abused.”
...
“There are clear differences between people of different continental ancestries,” said Marcus W. Feldman, a professor of biological sciences at Stanford University. “It’s not there yet for things like I.Q., but I can see it coming. And it has the potential to spark a new era of racism if we do not start explaining it better.”

NY Times - In DNA Era, New Worries About Prejudice

 

[Dancing David]

As stated by many, yes you can identify differences, it is the conflated associations that are the issue.

(Especially when people want to claim race and intelligence are related, yet they do not have good demographic matches, they have no controls for environmetal toxins, alcohol exposure syndromes in preganancy, socio economic impacts, probanding and parental pools of socio economic clustering. The issues are amazing in making those studies, and they are all just swept away under poor demographic assumptions of parity.)

 

[Rrose Selavy]

As stated by many, yes you can identify differences, it is the conflated associations that are the issue.

(Especially when people want to claim race and intelligence are related, yet they do not have good demographic matches, they have no controls for environmetal toxins, alcohol exposure syndromes in preganancy, socio economic impacts, probanding and parental pools of socio economic clustering. The issues are amazing in making those studies, and they are all just swept away under poor demographic assumptions of parity.)

and they don't have clear definitions/measures of intelligence other than passing IQ tests..

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[bpesta22]

and they don't have clear definitions/measures of intelligence other than passing IQ tests..

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David and RRose: You guys just chose to ignore decades of research on the topic that both shows how IQ can be measured validly as a single number and controls for kitchen sink / factor x variables in the environment when trying to understand group mean differences on test scores.

You got to get past "mismeasure" and read something scientific and current to appreciate the problem.

 

[Rrose Selavy]

David and RRose: You guys just chose to ignore decades of research on the topic that both shows how IQ can be measured validly as a single number and controls for kitchen sink / factor x variables in the environment when trying to understand group mean differences on test scores.
.

If course IQ can be recorded . It's What it records that is the issue and how that relates to "intelligence" .

 

[bpesta22]

If course IQ can be recorded . It's What it records that is the issue and how that relates to "intelligence" .

Yes, and it's an empirical question that's been answered pretty soundly in the literature over 100 years. Yet so-called skeptics won't bother looking at it, or dismiss it as racist junk without ever saying why.

Not all skeptics do this, but it's frustrating when one can't appeal to science when debating this topic.

That single number -- whatever you want to call it-- covaries too much and too strongly with other things for us to stick our heads in the sand and hope to will-away reality with happy thoughts.

 

[bpesta22]

So, suppose you're right:

Belief: There's no way the complexity of human cognition and intelligence-- whatever that is-- can be summarized by a single number. No way. These are the anti-iq'ers

Reality: Science has been doing this for a century-- assigning single number IQ scores to people or groups of people. Doesn't mean the numbers mean anything; we need to appeal to data.

Anti iq'ers squarely predict:

1. the single number IQ scores being wholly invalid should not predict (co-vary) with anything important.

This is clearly false, as IQ scores co-vary with nearly all important variables in the real world. The correlations range between around .20 to .80, depending on what one measures. How good is this? A fair claim is that as a predictor, IQ scores are the most powerful (but far less than perfect) variable in all of social science.

So, anti-iq'ers have to go to step 2.

2. The correlations are explained by confounds-- IQ scores don't measure innate intelligence, but (pick a third variable): experience with white culture; test-taking skills; educational opportunity; motivation; stereotype threat; income/SES; ability to solve problems that are irrelevant to the real world.

But now the burden's on the anti-iq'er to conduct a fairly simple study: Show that the correlation between IQ and an important outcome goes away once the confound (factor x variable or variables) is (are) controlled.

IQ scores predict educational achievement. But, when controlling for income and opportunity, the correlation goes away. False!

False for any factor x that's been studied in 100 years.

So, the anti-iq'ers are left with a few options:

3. Dismiss all this as racist crank
4. attack the field for what it did 80 years ago (mismeasure of man) while ignoring anything modern
5. refuse to accept the correlations until all variables are defined with 100% precision; never mind that the correlations couldn't exist were single-number IQ a wholly invalid construct (and if you accept the correlations, then you are stuck back on step 2, still with the burden of proof and 100 years of failure).
6. question the motives of any pro-iq'er. I think it's UW who points out every time I post to an IQ thread as it gives me wood (though I think UW might get wood when he sees me posting about it and calls me on it).

I get paid to do research. My area is this. It's not unreasonable that I'd reply to every thread here on the topic, given that this is an educational/discussion board and I have been around here a while.

 

[Rrose Selavy]

Yes, and it's an empirical question that's been answered pretty soundly in the literature over 100 years. Yet so-called skeptics won't bother looking at it, or dismiss it as racist junk without ever saying why.

Not all skeptics do this, but it's frustrating when one can't appeal to science when debating this topic.

That single number -- whatever you want to call it-- covaries too much and too strongly with other things for us to stick our heads in the sand and hope to will-away reality with happy thoughts.

You're projecting motives onto me that don't exist. I'm looking for science. I'll ask again. What is the definition of intelligence that the IQ test measures?

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[bpesta22]

Genetic science.

How about we call blood groups racial divides?

Can you argue that the amount of genetic code which produces a blond vs a brunette is less than the amount of genetic code which differentiates a black from a Caucasian?

It doesn't have to be less or more, it just has to be different, even if by some small amount (you can pick what small is).

Were it the case that hair color co-varied with dozens of important biological, social and cultural outcomes, you'd see people researching it. It does not. It's a non-issue.

Whatever them genes are that code for skin color, their presence / absence co-varies importantly with nearly everything, unfortunately massively confounded with the social and cultural baggage attached to "race". But, we can unconfound variables and study them. And, we should.

Race inequality is one of the most important issues facing humanity. It's a multi-faceted hugely complex problem. It's resolution requires scientific inquiry. No other area in science is so marginalized and rejected as this area, which is unfortunate (the only fix possible is not allowed to be addressed-- can ruin one's career and reputation if one even thinks of looking at this through the lens of science).

 

[Michael Redman]

Are you saying that the differences that are so apparent to our eyes and laboratories have no biological basis, they are merely social or cultural?

Race requires distinction, not difference.

Even if we stick to something as superficial as skin color, you cannot make the claim that there are apparent distinctions unless you can point to the apparent delineation between one group and the next. In other words, line up every human, darkest to lightest, and show where the apparent delineations are between one race and the next. If you can't, then the races are not distinct as to skin color. It isn't enough to pick two people out of the line and say they're apparantly different.

Now line everyone up, tallest to shortest. How do your races look now, with The Dutch and Kenyans tending to stand on the opposite end as the Japanese and Nigerians? Is the black race unusually tall, or unusually short? Are the Dutch and Kenyans the same race, due to their common characteristic?

Are blue-eyed, black-haired Afghans the same race as blue-eyed, blonde Norwegians, or as brown-eyed, black-haired Persians? Where is the distinct delineation here? If there isn't one, then the classification of these people into distinct races must be arbitrary.

 

[bpesta22]

You're projecting motives onto me that don't exist. I'm looking for science. I'll ask again. What is the definition of intelligence that the IQ test measures?

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We've got probably dozens of threads on these, so rather than start this up again one can go there. I can post one article here too that's long but covers all this and covers probably 90% of stuff we've debated here on this topic for 8 years or so:

There should be a moderated thread on this topic, since it comes up so much, that indexes all the arguments pro and con in an orderly fashion so that anyone interested can read and contribute, or not.

http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/PPPL1.pdf

 

[lomiller]

Race requires distinction, not difference.

Even if we stick to something as superficial as skin color, you cannot make the claim that there are apparent distinctions unless you can point to the apparent delineation between one group and the next. In other words, line up every human, darkest to lightest, and show where the apparent delineations are between one race and the next. If you can't, then the races are not distinct as to skin color. It isn't enough to pick two people out of the line and say they're apparantly different.

Now line everyone up, tallest to shortest. How do your races look now, with The Dutch and Kenyans tending to stand on the opposite end as the Japanese and Nigerians? Is the black race unusually tall, or unusually short? Are the Dutch and Kenyans the same race, due to their common characteristic?

Even if you could identify groupings, would those groupings be useful for anything beyond studying skin color, height, etc?

People have tried to retrofit race to various populations, usually by taking people from each race they want to identify and data mining for allele frequencies that distinguish them from the other populations they are considering. Given the large number of allele’s they have to work with and the way they radiate from their origins it’s inevitable they can find something that can match their predetermined races.

The questions, again is what these allele’s mean, since they are only selected to match a pre-determined set of data, they don’t actually mean anything. IOW they are a marker that is only useful in identifying a group, and the group is only useful in defining the marker.

 

[Perpetual Student]

Race requires distinction, not difference.

Even if we stick to something as superficial as skin color, you cannot make the claim that there are apparent distinctions unless you can point to the apparent delineation between one group and the next. In other words, line up every human, darkest to lightest, and show where the apparent delineations are between one race and the next. If you can't, then the races are not distinct as to skin color. It isn't enough to pick two people out of the line and say they're apparantly different.

Now line everyone up, tallest to shortest. How do your races look now, with The Dutch and Kenyans tending to stand on the opposite end as the Japanese and Nigerians? Is the black race unusually tall, or unusually short? Are the Dutch and Kenyans the same race, due to their common characteristic?

Are blue-eyed, black-haired Afghans the same race as blue-eyed, blonde Norwegians, or as brown-eyed, black-haired Persians? Where is the distinct delineation here? If there isn't one, then the classification of these people into distinct races must be arbitrary.

The above is a nonsensical argument. Can we then say that there is no such thing as the color blue or red? Is there is no such thing as color? I can line up objects by their color beginning with red at one end and ending with violet at the other. There will be a potentially infinite number of intermediate colors. So what? We still know what we mean by yellow even though on one side of yellow things look a little orange and at the other side things look a little greenish. Color is a universal way to describe, categorize and identify all the stuff around us.
"The leaves of most trees are green" is a simple statement universally understood even though some trees tend to have leaves that tend towards yellow, grey or blue. We see flowers that are red, blue, yellow and all sorts of colors in between. The fuzzy areas to not inhibit us from saying "that flower is red" any more or less than "that man is Caucasian."

 

[Michael Redman]

We still know what we mean by yellow even though on one side of yellow things look a little orange and at the other side things look a little greenish. Color is a universal way to describe, categorize and identify all the stuff around us.

I'm obviously not saying that we can't differentiate the color, or shade, of one person's skin from another, or use words to describe the difference. What I'm saying is that the groupings we have created on the basis of skin color are arbitrary, and inaccurate. While it may be apparent that one person is a different color from another, it is not at all apparent that our racial classifications describe visually discrete and distinct groups, as they pretend.

 

[Soapy Sam]

Dog breeds are *NOT* sub-species.

Not by YOUR definition.
(Or mine, FWIW).
But that was my point. Different people use such labels differently, because that's all they are. labels.
There's no reason we couldn't use the term "breed" for different looking humans. You (almost certainly) wouldn't. Nor would I. But there is no biological reason not to, its just a word.
To a dog, if it smells like a dog, it's a dog. To a breeder it's a breed, to a biologist it's a variety of Canis familiaris and if it's wierd enough, it could well be a sub species. (The Dingo is the only one I ever heard of. African hunting dogs are a different breed of cat).

 

[Perpetual Student]

I'm obviously not saying that we can't differentiate the color, or shade, of one person's skin from another, or use words to describe the difference. What I'm saying is that the groupings we have created on the basis of skin color are arbitrary, and inaccurate. While it may be apparent that one person is a different color from another, it is not at all apparent that our racial classifications describe visually discrete and distinct groups, as they pretend.

Whom are you referring to here as making such pretenses?

 

[Dancing David]

David and RRose: You guys just chose to ignore decades of research on the topic that both shows how IQ can be measured validly as a single number and controls for kitchen sink / factor x variables in the environment when trying to understand group mean differences on test scores.

You got to get past "mismeasure" and read something scientific and current to appreciate the problem.

Show me how they controlled for fetal alcohol exposure, did they actually measure it? Or just assume that some other variable would act as a control?

That is the point, so show me how it is controlled for.