A few weeks ago, I met a man who genuinely believes that all humans are 100% genetically the same.

A bit of background, and as unrelated as the following may seem, I promise; it leads into the above claim:

As most of you have figured out by now, I'm an enormous cinephile, and as such, I'm passionate about my opinions. However, I understand that people have different tastes and methods of judgement, so I'm obviously going to like films that others don't and vice versa. Nothing wrong with that. Unfortunately, this man disagrees with me. He believes that the quality of a motion picture is inherent, existing outside of the opinions of critics and the general public. Now, that's completely nonsensical; how can the quality of a film exist outside of human opinion when it's humans that make them and judge them in the first place? Film is not a science, after all; it's something that appeals to emotions and particular sensibilities. However, he persisted; he claimed that Hollywood has created basic standards for deciding wether not a film is good, and based on those standards, a film is either good or bad. I told him that this was silly, as there are plenty of fantastic surreal and avante garde films that break the Hollywood standard ten fold. Besides, even when you break a film down into it's different parts, it's possible for one person to think it was horribly directed while another can think it was a masterfully guided piece of art, and I told him this. He then said "We know if a film is good based on wether or not it has a director, actors, script, camera, color..." "What the fuck..." I thought. By that standard, Raging Bull isn't as good as Alvin & the Chipmunks simply because the latter is in color. He said "In that respect, it is". WHAT. After chipping away at this particularly idiotic statement, I finally got him to say that Raging Bull was an exception. "AHA!", I thought. I'd finally caught him. However, he simply went back to his original argument and started going int a circle. FFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUU-

After an agonizing hour of this mindless drivel (and yes, I persistsed for at least an hour. I probabl deserve all of the pain it brought me), he finally used an argument that I could make some sort of sense out of: "Well if an apple exists it exists regardless of wether or not I think it does." HOLY GOD, AT LAST: something I can latch onto without wanting to stab myself in the eye with a pencil. This is, of course, a fundamental misunderstanding of the point. I explained that we weren't talking about wether or not the apple existed; we were talking about wether or not the apple tasted good, which is subjective. Unfortunately, this taught me that his fuckwittery was not limited to film; he argued that it WASN'T subjective, and that apples taste good regardless of people's opinions. As much as this argument made me want to rip out my own jugular vein, I tried my best to be reserved, realizing that I was on the brink of successfully debunking this man's claim. I calmly asked him why this was. He said that we have taste critics to determine the quality of food based on standards. "YES," I thought, "My opening at last..." I explained to him that this was a faulty argument, as every person had different taste buds. It doesn't matter what the standard is; every human has different taste buds because all humans are chemically different from one another. "No", he said. "... What?" I thought. What on Earth could he mean. Unfortunately, I knew what he was going to say even before I finished reading his sentence: "That's not true because all people are genetically the same."

WHAT. THE. FUCK.

I could barely believe what my eyes were seeing. He HAD to be trolling me. At this point I could taste the metal from the barrel of the shotgun that was in my mouth. Could this man ACTUALLY believe what he was saying? Yes. Yes he could. I contacted the mighty dprjones to see if he could help me knock some sense into this man, but even he said that it was a lost cause. Unfortunately, I'm much too stubborn to accept that answer, so I continued. I explained to him that being 100% genetically identical is impossible, as certain humans have genetic traits that others do not. The first example I used was hair color. The reason some people have blond hair and some people have black hair or brown hair is that humans are genetically different; different genes bring about different hair colors. If I remember correctly, I also used both eye color and skin color in the same fashion. Did he accept this as a valid argument? Of course not. He claimed that eye color and hair color were the result of environmental affects on the evolution of a human being, and that all people were genetically the same. After attempting to chip away at his arguments for about 15 minutes, he finally ended up claiming that even if the order of the genes was different, the set DNA is still the the same as another set because they all contain the same parts. Disregarding for the moment that this may more may not be true, I noticed that this was nothing more than a variation on the creatard argument, "It's not new information, just a rearrangement of pre-existing information" To test this, I proposed a simple thought experiment. I have two stacks of ten red blocks. However, the 6th block from the bottom of one stack was blue, while the other stack has a blue block 6th from the TOP. I then asked if both stacks were EXACTLY the same, even though the order of each was different. He said "Yes." That was it. I finally gave up. I knew that there was no fixing this man. I told him to fuck off before logging off. Was that uncalled for? Yeah, probably. However, after an hour and a half of his condescending "I analyze cinema more deeply than anyone else" bullshit, I really didn't care.

There is no request or question here. I just thought I'd confirm that human idiocy really doesn't know ANY bounds. Good afternoon, good evening, and good night.

Ask him if he was with a woman who claimed he was the father of her child and he was pretty sure she wasn't and she was looking child support of him would he accept DNA evidence that says the child isn't his and if so what grounds does he have to accept it?

Alternatively, ask him if he looks more like his father or his mother.

Or ask him if he is a few sandwiches short of a lunch pack.

hackenslash wrote::this:

Alternatively, ask him if he looks more like his father or his mother.

I had already asked him similar questions, such as "Why do people have different facial structures?" I explained that genetic traits like this were passed down from one generation to another. He again claimed that it was just a different arrangement of the same DNA. Either that or "It was an environmental factor." I can't remember which, but I know that those were really the only two arguments he used.

Has he heard of the term "recessive gene"?

rEvolutionist wrote:Has he heard of the term "recessive gene"?

I explained recessive genes to him, but it didn't help at all. You don't understand. This man wasn't simply a brick wall; he was a steel slab covered in tiny spikes and topped with barb wire.

Maybe you should have asked him which lab cloned him. Last I heard, procreation au naturel invoves men & women, and one of the defining characteristics is to do with chromosomes. One would imagine, if we were all genetically identical, we'd be hermaphrodites. Funnily enough, we're not.

By his reasoning, all humans must be the same gender. It'd be funny if he turned out to be a homophobe.

The genome may be 100% identical, but it's the genes that make us all different, and no, our genes are not all the same.

Who was this stubborn old man you were talking to? Your father?

Heck only a few weeks ago Scientists said that everyone out of Africa has Neanderthal genes. This means that there are some humans that don't.

People with blue eyes have a well known mutation (HERC2 gene) and it is believed to originate from one MRCA over 6000 years ago.

Apples have been selectively breed for taste (from I think a Rose-like plant) and truthfully if he wants to eat crab apples then be my guest. They are bitter but make an excellent jelly. Other apples are bred to be sweet. Horses like apples too. Does this mean that horses and humans have the same sense of taste ?

Grace wrote:The genome may be 100% identical, but it's the genes that make us all different, and no, our genes are not all the same.

Who was this stubborn old man you were talking to? Your father?

No. He's part of an internet chat room devoted to a podcast that I enjoy listening to. I'm not sure how old he was, but he definitely had an irritating holier-than-thou attitude. He's one of those people that wear their ignorance on their sleeves, holding it up as if it were a symbol of their superior intelligence. He genuinely believes that he analyzes things on a level that is above most people.

EDIT: Oops. Grammar.

I think he's watched too many movies...

From your write-up I think it would be more productive to re-enact all forms of medieval torture on yourself.

Well, by one point of view, we all have only 4 genetic chemical components and it's just the arrangement that is different, but that's at such a useless level of "the same" that only crazy people would refer to it as making humans 100% identical to each other. By that definition, humans are 100% genetically identical to all bacteria.
At any and all ways of looking at this beyond that, there are differences. And you're talking to a crazy person. If I were you I'd seriously think of walking away from the idea of changing his mind. Not only is his reasoning pure BS, but his 'facts' are distantly related to fiction and have no link to reality. That's usually a sign that no amount of reality will piece his bubble of ignorance.
That said, if he's making these claims where others will read them, you owe it to your co-listeners to shoot down his arguments. Just don't get trapped trying to convince him. You're just highlighting his stupid for the audience.

I think the dude is just fucking nuts and no matter what anyone tells him he'll still be a fucking nut. Electroshock therapy might help, but I doubt it.

RS

Dogmatic Pyrrhonist wrote:Well, by one point of view, we all have only 4 genetic chemical components and it's just the arrangement that is different, but that's at such a useless level of "the same" that only crazy people would refer to it as making humans 100% identical to each other. By that definition, humans are 100% genetically identical to all bacteria.
At any and all ways of looking at this beyond that, there are differences. And you're talking to a crazy person. If I were you I'd seriously think of walking away from the idea of changing his mind. Not only is his reasoning pure BS, but his 'facts' are distantly related to fiction and have no link to reality. That's usually a sign that no amount of reality will piece his bubble of ignorance.
That said, if he's making these claims where others will read them, you owe it to your co-listeners to shoot down his arguments. Just don't get trapped trying to convince him. You're just highlighting his stupid for the audience.

I plan on using him to start a YouTube video that leads into creationist ignorance, which is funny because I'm not even sure that he's a creationist at all.

At least with what he said, he's not a racist.

Grace wrote:The genome may be 100% identical, but it's the genes that make us all different, and no, our genes are not all the same.

The genome isn't 100% identical, courtesy of the fact that, contrary to the popular perception of the relevant information, there isn't just one genome. Bear in mind that what the genome actually represents is the hereditary information of an organism. We use the term as if it applies to the whole population, but that's not really the case. It's merely a linguistic convenience to talk of 'the human genome'.