Thank you, all. I've been converted.

By sanction of rational skeptics around the world, i'm now a disciple to the religion of Science. I now believe anything I'm told by religious leaders, army generals, doctors, anthropologists, philosophers, historians, forum trolls / moderators, politicians, scientists, and especially our sociologists. Everything important about reality is well-known and documented in unbiased, peer-reviewed scientific journals and sacred texts.

So-called realities, obvious facts, and contradictions are but meaningless social constructs; and accepting this truism exempts me from all criticism from anyone -- including God, who loves me more than any other creature. God created my species as exact biological clones with no measurable genomic differences that would be useful in any scientific study.

From now on I shall be known as, Felis catus illuminatus. We are legion.

*facepalm* I hate arguing about silly things on the net.
Okay, so I'm lil' bit lazy. Sue me.

By the way, L.C., I had a look around the forum and it seems overly moderated, which is fine. As i said before, I truly loathe internet debates; however, the topic of genetics is interesting enough.

Esoteric fields like genomics, pyschometrics, epigenetics, behavioural psychology, and biology in general are all immense and mind-numbing. While interesting, no-one pays me to study this stuff, lol. I prefer sleep over work and fun over mental agony, when the only reward is a sleepless night or two.

And the topic almost invariably leads to extremely controversial paths which, I feel, would be entirely inappropriate for a forum as such. So if you'd like to resume our discourse in a more serious tone, and if you're 21 years or older, please send me a private message, and we can continue by e-mail if you wish - unfettered, of course.

Anyway, if it's not against the rules or anything, let me know if you fancy the idea.

Thanks.






In other news, James Cameron accidently falls into a time-warp portal and releases Avatar, good movie.

QuantumKitty wrote:And the topic almost invariably leads to extremely controversial paths which, I feel, would be entirely inappropriate for a forum as such.

That's a shame.
I shudder to try and imagine the horrors that these "controversial paths" could have led to.
My thanks for sparing me the nightmares that would have surely followed.


PH: I thought you were almost there, when you realised the fallacy of the "jewish race", especially as they only consider half of a person's genes, to be relevant. There's something of a clue in that.
What does a "jew" look like anyway..? How would I "know one, when I see one"...?
"Race" isn't a "taxonomic" definition. It's almost entirely self-ascribed, without any sort of "scientific tests", In 99.999% of cases. (An estimate, based on what proportion of the world's population, I think might be forensic scientists...)

Okay Jovan. Now be honest and don't cheat. One of the below is Jewish, the other is from the Congo. Can you guess which is which with >50% accuracy. Maybe even 99%. Don't spend too much time on it. How did you go? Did you avoid using "I know one when I see one etc"?


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pinkharrier wrote:Okay Jovan. Now be honest and don't cheat. One of the below is Jewish, the other is from the Congo. Can you guess which is which with >50% accuracy. Maybe even 99%. Don't spend too much time on it. How did you go? Did you avoid using "I know one when I see one etc"?

HA!
I 'see through' your ruse PH!
The one at the bottom, is wearing a hat. So clearly, he's the "jewish" one!
And the term "from the Congo", is not a regognised taxonomic term, for the other chap, but obviously,
he may have been 'on safari', and was simply on his way back.?

Now your turn:
Can you tell me where this dolphin has been...?



Seriously, they could both be "jewish", or at any rate, claim to be.
Judaism, is after all, just a religion, and not a "race".
Despite their fanciful claims to the contrary.
If I was that way inclined, I could learn some verses, and mutilate my genitals, and become a "jew".
Or are you claiming that a separate "race" has emerged, since that religion was invented...?(c 6,000 years ago?)

If I go back just 500 years, I have 1million direct ancestors, 600 years, gives me 16 million.
You soon realise that we all must have, fairly recent shared ancestry, because you very quickly reach a point where I've got more direct ancestors, than there were people alive, at the time.

How long does it take for a "race" to develop..?
How many ancestors have I got, if I go back 6000 years..?
I only ask, because according to my calculations, I reach 1 Billion direct ancestors, at only 750 years ago!

Jovan wrote:

QuantumKitty wrote:And the topic almost invariably leads to extremely controversial paths which, I feel, would be entirely inappropriate for a forum as such.

That's a shame.
I shudder to try and imagine the horrors that these "controversial paths" could have led to.
My thanks for sparing me the nightmares that would have surely followed.

Jovan, Jovan. No -- dreams are nothing but social constructs.

Imagine if L.C. accepts and we end up arguing about taxonomy, genetics and anthropology for hours & hours on end, with neither willing to concede. I'm sure there will be a spark in that vast, unyielding veil of cruel emptiness!!

Like the inevitable spring rain, we'd meander toward post-modernism and then maybe even philosophy -- yes, philosophy! -- and who knows what might happen?

Hmmmm. Moonlit beaches at sundown, colourful clouds that pattern across an endless sky, gentle crashing waves of blue and green that emanate beyond the placid fabric of surreality itself.

<3 <3


It's the journey that's important -- not the destination, my friends.

pinkharrier wrote:Okay Jovan. Now be honest and don't cheat. One of the below is Jewish, the other is from the Congo. Can you guess which is which with >50% accuracy. Maybe even 99%. Don't spend too much time on it. How did you go? Did you avoid using "I know one when I see one etc"?

How about:

QuantumKitty wrote:Jovan, Jovan. No -- dreams are nothing but social constructs.

I suspect that dreams existed before there was even any sort of language, or recognisable 'society', in our currently accepted form.
But despite the sarcasm, there is an argument there....

QuantumKitty wrote:Imagine if L.C. accepts and we end up arguing about taxonomy, genetics and anthropology for hours & hours on end, with neither willing to concede. I'm sure there will be a spark in that vast, unyielding veil of cruel emptiness!!

As I have pointed out, in the overwhelming majority of cases, "race" is not used as a taxonomic term, nor as a 'medical term'.
Other than that, I see nothing wrong in that. We don't all have to agree, on anything.

QuantumKitty wrote:Like the inevitable spring rain, we'd meander toward post-modernism and then maybe even philosophy -- yes, philosophy! -- and who knows what might happen?

Hmmmm. Moonlit beaches at sundown, colourful clouds that pattern across an endless sky, gentle crashing waves of blue and green that emanate beyond the placid fabric of surreality itself.

<3 <3


It's the journey that's important -- not the destination, my friends.

I agree. (Though I'm not 'well-read' in philosophy, I'm prepared to give it a shot. )
The rest sounds delightful
With that in mind, you seem unwilling to even embark on this metaphoric journey, despite it's alleged importance, and it's uncertain destination.
Whereas for me, they're the best sort of journies, the one's where you don't need to leave home.

Jovan wrote:

QuantumKitty wrote:Jovan, Jovan. No -- dreams are nothing but social constructs.

I suspect that dreams existed before there was even any sort of language, or recognisable 'society', in our currently accepted form.
But despite the sarcasm, there is an argument there....

I blame my cynical neandertal ancestors.

Despite all the vast studies on brain chemistry, REM sleep, etc. and with all the documentaries I've seen, I've yet to be convinced that it's "all in the brain." And the non-linear timescale during purely lucid dreaming is enigmatic, to say the least, and dreams can be much more complex than physical reality as we know it.

Most people in my life tell me, that they don't remember their dreams in great detail, and I suspect this to be a natural defense mechanism -- something the mind uses to alleviate the burden of nightmares -- for one's conscious self. It's only a pet theory of mine.

"Dreams are real; everything is real." That's exactly what someone told me once, during one of my vast, memorable, and most lucid dreams, that seemed to last for days. Again, the time-scale issue arises in such dreams.

Jovan wrote: As I have pointed out, in the overwhelming majority of cases, "race" is not used as a taxonomic term, nor as a 'medical term'.
Other than that, I see nothing wrong in that. We don't all have to agree, on anything.

oh, Don't take it seriously. The satirical sections of my response came from thin air, because I found it easier than doing real research. Why work when your opponent is a work-a-holic? lol. I know, I know.. i'm incorrigible. I do apologise, LC <3

Jovan wrote:

QuantumKitty wrote:Like the inevitable spring rain, we'd meander toward post-modernism and then maybe even philosophy -- yes, philosophy! -- and who knows what might happen?

Hmmmm. Moonlit beaches at sundown, colourful clouds that pattern across an endless sky, gentle crashing waves of blue and green that emanate beyond the placid fabric of surreality itself.

I agree. (Though I'm not 'well-read' in philosophy, I'm prepared to give it a shot. )
The rest sounds delightful
With that in mind, you seem unwilling to even embark on this metaphoric journey, despite it's alleged importance, and it's uncertain destination.
Whereas for me, they're the best sort of journies, the one's where you don't need to leave home.

Glad you enjoyed it. lol.

Reality is an intricate web, and all things - no matter how distant in time or space-- are perhaps connected in causal chains, and it seems, we may never truly understand what's important and what's not.

For all we know, "ignorance of the masses" could be the universe's only defense against self-implosion -- something resulting, perhaps, from a catastrophic singularity event. Nah, i doubt it. Or wait.. Maybe the ancient Mayans were onto something, NEXT on the discovery channel! Oh, those silly ancients.

@pinkharrier and rainbow

Did you finish writing your screenplay yet? I'd like to read something like that. (seriously!) I'm that bored right now.

pinkharrier wrote:Okay Jovan. Now be honest and don't cheat. One of the below is Jewish, the other is from the Congo. Can you guess which is which with >50% accuracy. Maybe even 99%. Don't spend too much time on it. How did you go? Did you avoid using "I know one when I see one etc"?

No one is denying that different people look different, or that you can organize human beings into form groups (or whether different populations have different allele frequencies). That is not what the discussion is about. The discussion is about whether traditional racial groups are supported by the scientific data. They are not.

1. Traditional racial categories are not monophyletic

A rule within biology is that groups should be monophyletic. This means that they should include the common ancestor and all of its descendants. If we look at the traditional racial category "black" we see that this is really just a form group that includes many different ecotypes that have different, independent proximate origins. In other words, black Africans are not more closely related to black Polynesians than to other groups. It also excludes specific ancestral lines, such as pretty much all white people. This means that traditional racial categories are not supported by science.

2. There is more genetic diversity within traditional racial categories than between them

Many, high-quality scientific studies have shown that there is more genetic diversity within traditional racial categories than between them, further undermining traditional racial categories. They investigated around 270 STRs and over 600k SNPs and showed that only 5-10% (at most) of genetic diversity in humans can be accounted for by genetics differences between populations from large geographical areas. The rest can be accounted for by within-group genetic variation. This invalidates traditional racial categories. They are simply too overlapping to be biologically meaningful or useful.

Rosenberg, N. A. et al. (2002). Genetic structure of human populations. Science 298, 2381–2385.
Li, J. Z. et al. (2008). Worldwide human relationships inferred from genome-wide patterns of variation. Science 319, 1100–1104.

My science against your primitive race realist misconceptions. Let's go.

Morodin repeated "Many, high-quality scientific studies have shown that there is more genetic diversity within traditional racial categories than between them, further undermining traditional racial categories."

Well true but, as I have noted elsewhere, there is more genetic diversity within traditional species categories than between them. e.g Humans and chimps. It hardly undermines the concept of species. The same logic can be applied to gender and age.

Do you think this logic undermines concepts of age, gender and species?

Morodin wrote; Many, high-quality scientific studies have shown that there is more genetic diversity within traditional racial categories than between them, further undermining traditional racial categories.

pinkharrier wrote; Well true but, as I have noted elsewhere, there is more genetic diversity within traditional species categories than between them. e.g Humans and chimps. It hardly undermines the concept of species. The same logic can be applied to gender and age.

Do you think this logic undermines concepts of age, gender and species?

You are missing the point. 'Race' promoters seek to support their warped views by attempting to create fallacious links with established science, ie genetics. They need these illusory supports to maintain and promulgate their backward views.

Whereas the (general) concepts of 'age, gender and (differential) species' are so incontrovertibly established that genetic intricacies don't weaken them, and aren't indispensably needed to support them.

If "age, gender and species" were the shaky concepts your false equivalence with racial concepts implies then such things as progeria, sexually indeterminate babies, and con-joined twins, would weaken or explode them. Which, of course, they don't.

Dear Morodin and LC, the statement "...there is more genetic diversity within traditional racial categories than between them, further undermining traditional racial categories" doesn't disprove the existence of race. So why do people keep using it like it came from an Oracle?

Sigh, if it did, all those incontrovertible categories - age, gender, species - could likewise come under question because e.g., sigh, there is more genetic diversity within traditional species categories than between them.

Why? Because the coding for my nose, your nose, and Robert Mugabe's nose (one of a zillion differences) are being compared to the coding that generates, say, a quick dose adrenaline, common to many animals.

It is a smoke and mirrors argument that understandably fools many people. Presumably, that is what Lewontin desired.

pinkharrier wrote:Well true but, as I have noted elsewhere, there is more genetic diversity within traditional species categories than between them. e.g Humans and chimps.

No, there is not. Humans diverged from chimps about 6 million years ago. The most recent common ancestor of all humans alive today are only a few thousand years old. Can you understand the difference? If you plot chimps and humans, you will see that these fall into discrete categories. But if you do the same for traditional race categories, you will see that there is a huge overlap, thereby disproving traditional racial categories.

Furthermore, biological species are defined functionally i. e. two organisms are of the same species if they can successfully interbreed and produce fertile F2s, so your analogy is fatally flawed. Traditional racial categories, on the other hand, are not defined by biology, but by stereotyping.

pinkharrier wrote:Dear Morodin and LC, the statement "...there is more genetic diversity within traditional racial categories than between them, further undermining traditional racial categories" doesn't disprove the existence of race.

It certainly does disprove traditional racial categories, since they are so overlapping genetically that it makes no sense to treat them as separate. This means that traditional racial categories are biologically arbitrary (so are age categories by the way).

Read the scientific articles I linked.

Furthermore, you even failed to reply to my argument that traditional racial categories are not monophyletic, making them invalid biological categories. Perhaps you do not even understand the science well enough? I would be more than happy to explain it to you.

It is a smoke and mirrors argument that understandably fools many people.

Are you calling peer-reviewed science published in top journals "smoke and mirrors"?

Since it is pretty clear that you are deeply entrenched in pseudoscience, please specify what it would take for you to accept the position that traditional racial categories are not evidence-based. Be specific.

pinkharrier wrote:Dear Morodin and LC, the statement "...there is more genetic diversity within traditional racial categories than between them, further undermining traditional racial categories" doesn't disprove the existence of race. So why do people keep using it like it came from an Oracle?

Sigh, if it did, all those incontrovertible categories - age, gender, species - could likewise come under question because e.g., sigh, there is more genetic diversity within traditional species categories than between them.

Why? Because the coding for my nose, your nose, and Robert Mugabe's nose (one of a zillion differences) are being compared to the coding that generates, say, a quick dose adrenaline, common to many animals.

It is a smoke and mirrors argument that understandably fools many people. Presumably, that is what Lewontin desired.

I think I understand your argument, PH., and the confusion which led to it:
But there is a huge difference between the proportions of a population (any population, probably) which exhibit 'indeterminate' sex, and the proportion which are one or the other.
Most people are either male, or female.
The same goes for 'age', I don't really understand your point here. Age is a simple factual measurement of the length of time, a person has been alive, surely..?
How can you have 'indeterminate' age..?

Whereas with "race", most people are "indeterminate", because the variety of genetic variation within "races", is so vast. And consequently, it's almost impossible to produce a definitive phenotype, for any given "race".

I realise that this directly contradicts your IKOWISO theory.

"Jews" claim themselves to be a "race", an "ethnicity" and a "culture".
I think that's an example of the fallacy of the paradigm, because there is more genetic variation amongst that particular religion, than most others, because of their widespread migrations, and subsequent introduction of many genetic phenotypes.
Rather laughably, they claim that only the female genes are of any significance, anyway. Odd that they should still insist on "marrying within their religion" too, if that's the case...

Pink Harrier:
Look at the photo's of "jews", on this page alone, and the variety displayed.
Now, Think. Focus. Concentrate...
Now, are "jews" a "race"....?

They think so, and "some other people" thought so too (Hint: They armed themselves with calipers, to determine this "race".)
Do you really agree with both of those groups...? [/Godwin]

pinkharrier, shall I take your silence as an admission of defeat?

Nope. Been sailing. When you don't use "I know 'em.." etc to check on affirmative action policies in the work place, I will take you seriously.

pinkharrier wrote:Okay Jovan. Now be honest and don't cheat. One of the below is Jewish, the other is from the Congo. Can you guess which is which with >50% accuracy. Maybe even 99%. Don't spend too much time on it. How did you go? Did you avoid using "I know one when I see one etc"?

There, fixed it for you, you don't need to use both the link and the image tags to show images PK.

Oh yes, and to answer your question, the guy at the bottom is the Jew, he's wearing a hat. Dead giveaway.

Edit: Of course that's a generalization, not all Jews wear hats but if he's being photographed and is devout, a Jew would wear a hat. I see you are now including "Jews" into your list of "races." I think I should introduce you to this guy, he thinks "white" people are a separate "race" and preferably would like them to "go home."