Minor game stuff from around the web for commentary...

[Emerald]

So what word or short phrase do we use to describe (as wikipedia puts it) the "classification system used to categorize humans into large and distinct populations or groups by anatomical, cultural, ethnic, genetic, geographical, historical, linguistic, religious, and/or social affiliation."

Or do you think that should have no name? [edit] Or to have several names describing several parts?

There are some good ways to classify people according to those criteria, but race isn't one of them. Let's look at the "black race," since that's what is currently being discussed: take an average African American, Māori, black Algerian, and Afro-Iranian. They're all the same race, so they should have a ton of stuff in common, right?

Well...

• Anatomically and ethnically, you might not be able to look at them and tell which one comes from which country, but it should be obvious that they do come from different populations, just like any random sample of people with the same general skin tone from a bunch of different corners of the globe.
• Culturally, historically, and linguistically, the example people have much more in common with, respectively, white Americans, Chickasaw Native Americans, white Algerians, and white Iranians than they do with each other.
• Genetically, zugschef already covered the lack of genetic differentiation between races.
• Geographically...they're on different continents.
• Religiously and socially, the example people probably belong to religions and social subcultures that are radically different (if they exist at all) from those in each others' countries and cultures.

So...what part of that definition of "race" is at all useful for classification purposes, again?

[rapa-nui]

All living humans belong to the same species and subspecies. That is, we can all exchange genetic information pretty freely with each other*. Awesome! Now that this is established, we can also establish that- yes- there is as much genetic variation found within any arbitrarily designated "race" as across it, which pretty much begs the question- how useful is the concept of race?

Well, there are phenotypic markers that can readily give me rough sociohistorical data about a person. That is, I can make inferences with above-average accuracy regarding a person's ancestral history just by *looking at them*. Granted, there are many, many cases where I'll look and be confused (is that person Afro-Caribbean, or a native from Angola?), but just as often I'll see someone with an epicanthic fold and be all like "oh, OK that person is very likely to be within 3 generations removed from a native East Asian ancestor". Does that validate the concept of race?

Honestly, I don't know. Intuitively, it seems like it means "something". The hope is that as time goes on, the erosion of geographical barriers will make it a less and less meaningful concept, but there's always the risk that socioeconomic barriers will maintain something akin to racial distinctions alive.




*Although to my knowledge, there hasn't been like a rigorous test of the possible existence of post-zygotic incompatibilities across highly isolated human populations.

[fectin]

I'm not a veterinarian, so I have to pose the question: is there any reason, whatsoever, to treat a chihuahua and a German shepherd differently, from a medical or scientific standpoint? Ignore dosage differences and what-not based on weight, that's not what I'm getting at; more things like German shepherds have susceptibility to some disease that chihuahuas don't, or chihuahuas are more likely to have some medical problem that German shepherds don't.

A quick and easy (though not perfectly accurate) example would be hip dysplasia. Some breeds have much greater propensity to it than others. It's related related to size, but also to breed.

[fectin]

Holy fuck. It's 2014 and there are still people who believe that there are human races. The UNESCO set the fact that there is only ONE human race in stone in 1950.

Holy fuck. It's 2014 and there are still people who believe that the pope is fallible. The Vatican set the fact that the pope is infallible in stone in 1870.

"How biochemically identical are we to our fellow humans? The DNA sequence in your genes is on average 99.9% identical to ANY other human being. Meaning, if you have a gene that is 1000 bases long, on average there will be only 1 base that is different between you."
http://genetics.thetech.org/ask/ask166

Not only is that a meaningless measurement, it would harm your point if it wasn't. If a base pair difference were a meaningful measurement of difference, there would be, on average, 3.2 million meaningful differences between you and any other given person.

Completely separately, I ran across this, and have no words:
http://gnosticwarrior.com/dogs-human-dna.html

[DSMatticus]

While '99.9% identical' and '3.2 million bases' sound like big claims with big numbers, they're both basically meaningless. There's no benchmark being set here for what quantity of genetic material constitutes a meaningful biological distinction, and so all quantities are basically pointless. I don't even think you could set such a benchmark, because sometimes DNA spends a lot of bases doing very little and sometimes DNA spends very few bases doing a great deal.

[fectin]

While '99.9% identical' and '3.2 million bases' sound like big claims with big numbers, they're both basically meaningless. There's no benchmark being set here for what quantity of genetic material constitutes a meaningful biological distinction, and so all quantities are basically pointless. I don't even think you could set such a benchmark, because sometimes DNA spends a lot of bases doing very little and sometimes DNA spends very few bases doing a great deal.

To be clear: DSM is absolutely correct, and I agree 110%.

---

I have a PhD friend who I've known for years and who I trust. He swore to me that his lab had identified a single base pair which was the difference between black physiology and white physiology (please excuse my phrasing there: I tried to figure out how to make that more PC and couldn't). I have no way to independently verify that, nor interest in doing so, but it's not surprising. Much like any other program, poking bits here and there occasionally leads to wildly divergent results.

---

For all that he's controversial, Piers Anthony actually provides a large number of good [rubrics? test cases? metaphors? thought experiments?] for controversial subjects. Macroscope, Bio of a Space Tyrant, and the Tarot trilogy spring easily to mind, but there are plenty others. Specifically, in this case, I'm reminded of In The Barn (published in Ellison's Again Dangerous Visions and possibly other places. Google "In The Barn Piers"). It describes a somewhat-sordid protagonist and an explicitly alternate Earth where some humans are kept as chattels. Their development is deliberately retarded, so they essentially are animals. The protagonist recognizes one as his love interest from Earth Prime, so they are explicitly different only by nurture, not nature.
So. In this thought experiment, there are humans who are more differenter than anything the random shuffling of genetics throws up. Are they a separate race?

IMHO, the only useful answer is meta: race, like all taxonomic artifacts, is (tautologically) useful only to the extent that the heuristic is useful. So, for example, you can look at someone, see darker skin, and use that as a prompt to pay extra close attention to cardiac disease in that person, so obviously "race" is sometimes useful. You can also (historically, tragically) draw wildly inaccurate conclusions, substituting racism for actual thought. That has lead to various enormities, but never has good results. Either way though, arguments about whether race is "real" are inherently unproductive: it's all just rehashing taxonomy.

[Sam]

Thanks. For reals. I've spoilered your post below but it was a good one. I could have said that myself and didn't think to bother, so well said.

You're welcome. It sounds like we're in violent agreement after all.

These arguments about whether there is a "biological basis" for race are inane. It's like arguing about whether there's a "geographic basis" for the United States. Sure, there's no meaningful scientific basis for either. But that means precisely fuck all, because people still treat each other as American, foreign, black, white.

You can (and should) advocate for immigration liberalization and affirmative action EVEN THOUGH the national borders and the racial categories involved are 110% super bullshit. 200% bullshit. A thousand percent. But you have to acknowledge them anyway. That's how social constructs work.

[rapa-nui]

I have a PhD in biology.

"single base pair which was the difference between black physiology and white physiology (please excuse my phrasing there: I tried to figure out how to make that more PC and couldn't)"

This is horseshit of the highest magnitude, specially since you don't specify what physiological trait he's talking about, and what population he's defining as having that attribute.

[Kaelik]

I have a PhD in biology.

"single base pair which was the difference between black physiology and white physiology (please excuse my phrasing there: I tried to figure out how to make that more PC and couldn't)"

This is horseshit of the highest magnitude, specially since you don't specify what physiological trait he's talking about, and what population he's defining as having that attribute.

I'm not a biology anything, but even I can see that that is obviously false. First of, base pairs are so fucking simple that they literally mean and do nothing by themselves. There are literally 4 base pairs. Every living thing has all four base pairs. The only thing that could matter is specific patterns. But even beyond that, base pairs don't do anything by themselves, even set in a pattern. Like, the absolute minimum would be three pairs can code a single ATG start or whatever, that if created in the different place could plausibly create a protein. But seriously, your friend, who doesn't exist, hasn't discovered a specific protein that only black people have. Because those don't exist. To say nothing of the absurd belief that their even is a black physiology that you can trace back to a single base pair.

This might literally be the most racist thing that was ever said on this forum.

[Prak]

Question for rapa-nui on that, since he's the one most likely to know-

How much difference is there between "a single base pair which was the difference between black physiology and white physiology" and "the physiological difference between (short and tall/blond and brunette/any other basic physiological difference)?"

Another question that I've wondered for a while, how different or similar are the concepts of race and breed? I mean, other than the fact that a person of a typically light skinned race could easily be darker in complexion than a person of a typically dark skinned race, whereas you're not likely to find a particularly large chihuahua that is bigger than a particularly small pit bull.

[Kaelik]

How much difference is there between "a single base pair which was the difference between black physiology and white physiology" and "the physiological difference between (short and tall/blond and brunette/any other basic physiological difference)?"

The thing that makes your hair have a color is so complex that it is orders of magnitude more than a single base pair and it is scattered throughout and not in one discrete chunk.

Like, the idea that a single base pair could define any meaningful difference is so absurd that it literally deserves not even a seconds investigation.

[momothefiddler]

A single pair is two bits of information. That's technically enough to prompt code to be run that wouldn't otherwise, if that info was already there. But that's claiming that there's a spot in all human DNA that reads

if($white==TRUE){
...
}
else{
...
}

which in no way reflects how genetics actually works. Or there could be some weird overflow buffer that shifts all later values by a digit and changes everything entirely, which is not only also not how genetics works, but indeed not how any reasonable language works either.

Still, the claim that there's a single base pair that spells the difference isn't technically impossible just because of the information capacity of the pair. If the claim was that the single pair contained all the information itself, that's impossible. If it's that it's a toggle, then it's just laughably stupid.

[rapa-nui]

There are some traits where a single base pair can make all the difference. If a base-pair change is in coding sequence, this can severely disrupt a protein's form and function. If the base-pair change is non-coding sequence, it can potentially still have dramatic effects if it changes the way the gene is regulated or expressed (by affecting DNA binding proteins, such as transcription factors).

The problem is that the statement "single base pair which was the difference between black physiology and white physiology" doesn't address what aspect of physiology is being discussed, and furthermore presumes apriori that there's a meaningful distinction to be hewed between white/black in the everyday usage of these racial words.

So, sure, a single base pair change can mean the difference between normal blood cells and sickle cell anemia, but that's a very specific disease that doesn't affect a sizable fraction of the people we might call "black" on regular basis.

"how different or similar are the concepts of race and breed"

These are not really rigorously defined for a biologist. Generally, in biology, we think of species (things that can regularly exchange genetic information with each other without encountering prezygotic or postzygotic isolation barriers) and subspecies (things that can exchange genetic information, but maybe with reduced fertility, and maybe one or two phenotypic markers to distinguish them). Veterinarians have to worry about "breeds" (essentially similar to "strain" for a bacteriologist or virologist) sometimes because particular diseases may be statistically associated with some lineages. For example: Bassets and their obesity or ivermectin sensitivity in Collies.

So, I guess one could ask if humans have different "breeds", but I would say one should only apply that word in cases where traits have been artificially selected for by human domestication. So, no.

[Prak]

Ah, gotcha. I've only taken basic bio courses in High School and College, and both were nearly eight years ago or more.

[Kaelik]

A single pair is two bits of information. That's technically enough to prompt code to be run that wouldn't otherwise, if that info was already there. But that's claiming that there's a spot in all human DNA that reads

A single base pair is one bit of information. The coding that says turn on is basically ATG, so it is three long.

Or there could be some weird overflow buffer that shifts all later values by a digit and changes everything entirely, which is not only also not how genetics works, but indeed not how any reasonable language works either.

That is exactly how genetics works. There are replacement mutations, but their are also addition mutations. If the addition mutation occurs anywhere important, it usually results in death, so you don't see a lot of those around, but they can and do occur, and do cause the exact overflow you would expect, which usually results in death if we are talking about in a zygote.

[Voss]

While '99.9% identical' and '3.2 million bases' sound like big claims with big numbers, they're both basically meaningless. There's no benchmark being set here for what quantity of genetic material constitutes a meaningful biological distinction, and so all quantities are basically pointless. I don't even think you could set such a benchmark, because sometimes DNA spends a lot of bases doing very little and sometimes DNA spends very few bases doing a great deal.

To be clear: DSM is absolutely correct, and I agree 110%.

---

I have a PhD friend who I've known for years and who I trust. He swore to me that his lab had identified a single base pair which was the difference between black physiology and white physiology (please excuse my phrasing there: I tried to figure out how to make that more PC and couldn't). I have no way to independently verify that, nor interest in doing so, but it's not surprising. Much like any other program, poking bits here and there occasionally leads to wildly divergent results.

---

For all that he's controversial, Piers Anthony actually provides a large number of good [rubrics? test cases? metaphors? thought experiments?] for controversial subjects. Macroscope, Bio of a Space Tyrant, and the Tarot trilogy spring easily to mind, but there are plenty others. Specifically, in this case, I'm reminded of In The Barn (published in Ellison's Again Dangerous Visions and possibly other places. Google "In The Barn Piers"). It describes a somewhat-sordid protagonist and an explicitly alternate Earth where some humans are kept as chattels. Their development is deliberately retarded, so they essentially are animals. The protagonist recognizes one as his love interest from Earth Prime, so they are explicitly different only by nurture, not nature.
So. In this thought experiment, there are humans who are more differenter than anything the random shuffling of genetics throws up. Are they a separate race?

I'd like to think that rapists who prey on the mentally handicapped are a different race, but that is just my optimism talking. And unfortunately, in any case, I suspect what you're asking is if the mentally handicapped are a different race.

Fortunately, I'm too disgusted by your line of thought and by the fact that your bringing the Pedophile's Fantasist back to the Den to really want to entertain your line of thought.

But the answer is no. Not educating someone and treating them like a cow or dog doesn't change their genetics. Even if you do it over generations. It just means you aren't educating them so you can feel justified about treating them like animals. Particularly if you encourage raping them. For fuck's sake, that actively encourages interbreeding with the 'animals.'

Addendum: the people who you trust and who you place on pedestals are fucking disgusting individuals, and you should feel like shit for doing so.

And your personal definition of 'somewhat sordid' is fucking disgusting. Rapist is spelled differently.

[TiaC]

A single pair is two bits of information. That's technically enough to prompt code to be run that wouldn't otherwise, if that info was already there. But that's claiming that there's a spot in all human DNA that reads

A single base pair is one bit of information. The coding that says turn on is basically ATG, so it is three long.

No, one bit only has two states, 1 and 0. A base pair has four states, A, T, G, and C. This is the same amount of information as two bits.

[Maxus]

There's four chemicals that only have two possible combinations.

Adenine bonds with thymine, and cytosine bonds with guanine.

So sure, there's four chemicals involved but only two possible combinations: AT or GC.

So you could call that binary.

[momothefiddler]

Yeah, but A-T and T-A are different, as are G-C and C-G. I'm nearly certain. That's why half the chain (which is what gets read/copied/etc.) can be A G C T, and that's different from A G G A.

Or there could be some weird overflow buffer that shifts all later values by a digit and changes everything entirely, which is not only also not how genetics works, but indeed not how any reasonable language works either.

That is exactly how genetics works. There are replacement mutations, but their are also addition mutations. If the addition mutation occurs anywhere important, it usually results in death, so you don't see a lot of those around, but they can and do occur, and do cause the exact overflow you would expect, which usually results in death if we are talking about in a zygote.

Apologies if I was unclear. Overflows like that do happen, but they produce unrunnable gibberish for the most part (as you said, death of the zygote). I was saying a one-base overflow isn't going to just happen to change $melanin=010 to $melanin=100 and all the other changes. That's absurd.

[Dean]

Lets talk about human races and dog breeds and why they're different. Dogs have 339 recognized breeds, they are things like Siberian Husky, Boston Terrier, and Pembroke Welsh Corgi. These different breeds are defined taxonomically.

The United States census allows it's humans to count as one of 5 races, these are "White" "Black" "Hispanic" "Asian" and "Native American". These different races have no definition, and are defined socially. Different countries have different races depending on their own cultural landscape. In Portugal someone of mixed European and Native American ancestry is a Mestico. This has it's own implications and stereotypes within Portugal and Europe at large. If a Portugese Mestico moved to America they might become "White", "Hispanic", or "Native American" depending on facial features and skin tone. By changing their zip code they would change their race, and whichever of those three races the family accepted as a title it would not tell you anything about their ancestral history.

Human races are different than dog breeds because they have no definitions and are uselessly broad. Dog breeds are things like "Polish Lowland Sheepdog" and have recorded ancestries and defined taxonomies based on the animals in that area used to breed them. Human races are things like "Black" and are defined as being "y'know, brownish". If human races were things like "Congolese Bantu" or "Slovenian Croat" instead of broad sweeping titles like White or Asian then it might have some credibility or use to some field of study. But as that's not true it is a useless descriptor.

Human race is entirely a social construct and I wish people would stop saying that is meaningless to point out because it obviously isn't. A huge amount of the power that beliefs about race are drawn from is the idea that it is a biological truth, some valid concept describing the different peoples of the world and what they pass on in their genes. The statement that race is a construct isn't some pedantic grammatical quibble, it's an important point that is still contentious or unknown even in liberal and educated circles. So the next person who wants to say that we shouldn't talk about how race is biologically and genetically meaningless because people ascribe it meaning should shove their dicks in their mouth and keep it there until the conversation is over.

[rapa-nui]

Clearly, and I wasn't arguing any differently.

[rapa-nui]

"yeah, but A-T and T-A are different, as are G-C and C-G. I'm nearly certain."

They are. The genetic alphabet is not binary, its quaternary.

ATG is very different from TAC.

Basics-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_code

[Maxus]

Oh, really?

Huh. I didn't know that.

Cool.

[tussock]

So what word or short phrase do we use to describe (as wikipedia puts it) the "classification system used to categorize humans into large and distinct populations or groups by anatomical, cultural, ethnic, genetic, geographical, historical, linguistic, religious, and/or social affiliation."

Or do you think that should have no name? [edit] Or to have several names describing several parts?

We have a lot of word for various categorisation schemes of humanity.


Language. The ability to casually communicate with each other. Individuals often have multiple languages, and there's accents and dialects and pidgins and so on on top of that.

Culture. For example, the strip-mall culture across much of the modern US, or the oldawan culture of Homo Habilis in the lower Palaeolithic. It describes common sets of tools, housing, diet, art, social structures, and migration patterns. Cultures have no real borders or anything, and change over time.

Ethnicity. These are self-identifying groups of historical derivation. In the US that might be Jewish, Black, White, Latino, and Native, all further divided as the individuals choose. In The Ukraine it'd be Ukrainian and Russian, even though they'd all be White in the US.

Nation. Like everyone living in Germany.

Employment or Hobby. People can be mountain climbers. They take that seriously, and it will often amount to a sub-culture grouping with their own common knowledge set, resources, travel patterns, and peer structures.

Population. This is a related group that share an interesting genetic difference not found elsewhere because of breeding isolation. Almost never used for humans because there's almost no cases of isolated breeding for sufficient generations, though a few island populations carry unique genetic sequences of medical or sporting interest.


So I'm a monolingual English-speaking rural European New Zealander, net troll and mountain biker.


You can also divide people up by skin colour, or height, or body fat proportion, or hair colour, or nose length, or flat-vs-long faces, or suit price, or skirt length, or birth order, or personal wealth, or political alliance, or which music they like most, or the sound patterns of their surname, or their dominant hand, or any number of things that are generally just going to make you stupider by doing that.

Like, skin colour matters for purposes of solar exposure (and because you'll suffer from racism in many countries) but not for anything else. Melanin doesn't do anything else.

[Josh_Kablack]

Ethnicity. These are self-identifying groups of historical derivation. In the US that might be Jewish, Black, White, Latino, and Native, all further divided as the individuals choose. .

Your general point is correct, but the actual sociological categories in the US of A are a bit weirder, as we consider "race" separate from "hispanic / latino" origin.

See questions 5&6 on the most recent decennial census questionnaire

I refuse to make any sort of value judgement on the accuracy or relevance of such categorizations, but those are the way the Census does it, so that's the way most NIH funded research also does it.

*****

And it gets even weirder informally, since we identify as a nation of immigrants, there are neighboorhoods near me full of people who would properly answer those Census questions as White, Non Hispanic, but if you were to ask them their "ethnicity" in a face-to-face conversation, they would reply with "Italian", or "Polish" or "German"....but that's really just shorthand for "I have one or more ancestors not more than 4 generations back who were of that nationality"