Bill Nye and Ken Ham agree: races do not exist. But all for the wrong reasons.

[ApostateAbe]

Bill Nye debated the creationist Ken Ham a year ago, and he hit the ball out of the park in the debate. Going up against creationists is easy. Going up against the scientific racists is actually more difficult, because the scientific racists take the theory of evolution most seriously out of everyone.

Otherwise it would seem odd that Nye's argument against race (shown in [video]http://bigthink.com/think-tank/bill-nye-race-is-a-social-construct[/video]) is adapted from a bad argument common among creationists (http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB910_1.html). The argument is that the many breeds of dogs are still dogs and the races of humans are still humans, therefore races are not biological.

The argument goes wrong from not understanding evolutionary theory. Even if human races fully diverged into two different species (at this point races would be only part of the way toward speciation and may be merging again and never speciating in the future), each species would still be humans, because evolution is a diverging hierarchy. All mammals have a common ancestor, and, no matter how much dolphins and humans evolve away from each other, each population is still mammals. Humans are still great apes, still primates, still mammals, still tetrapods, still chordates, still animals and still eukaryotes.

Sometimes, it is appropriate to share ideas with creationists, but only when they are correct. It is not appropriate to share ideas with creationists when the contrary ideas follow from both stacks of data and the theory of evolution, the only probable explanation for the diversity of life. If there were no races, evolution would be impossible. If you don't care so much for data and theory, an easy shortcut is to not share ideas with creationists when you are likewise motivated by ideology.

Bill Nye had a TV episode on race in 2005, advocating the same pseudoevolutionist position that human races are not biological.



The relevant arguments of Bill Nye and his interviewees are as follows:

• All humans share 99.9% of their DNA. This is true. Big number. Therefore, the 0.1% is insignificant? It is actually a self-defeating argument, because, in the surrounding context of genetics, the number is not big enough. Humans also share 98% of our DNA with chimpanzees. This means that the variation within the human species is on the order of 1/20th on its way to the difference between humans and chimpanzees (not that some races must be more chimp-like than others--we are all ancestrally equidistant from chimps). Humans have a brain about three times the size of chimpanzees, and the difference in brain size is fully encoded in a very small subset of that 2%. When we talk about DNA, don't be fooled by big numbers lacking context. Note: the 0.1% was misstated as 0.01% later in the video.
• After a DNA test, with only a few genetic markers, you can't tell which race you belong to. With hundreds of genetic markers, you most certainly can tell which race you belong to, but that doesn't matter. Therefore, races are biologically irrelevant. That is a hardly a hyperbolic representation of the argument presented by the geneticist Mary-Claire King at time 19:50. Accurate identification of breeds of dogs likewise requires at least a hundred genetic markers, but does it follow that breeds of dogs biologically irrelevant? The argument makes sense only with the very common strawman about races: they must be identified with only a few genes, not with many gene frequencies in combination. But, if races could be identified with only a few genes, it would fully conflict with evolutionary theory. The discrete model of races can be found only either in politics or among some biologists of the 19th century, who believed in polygenism (many races became the same human species at the same time), which really does not make sense with the theory of evolution as we now know it and not advocated by even the most controversial scientific racists today.
• We will find as much variation between two Africans as between an African and a Japanese. As the human species originated in southern Africa and therefore black Africans are the most genetically diverse race in the world, this is possibly true. But it most certainly is not true of two random Africans from two neighboring tribes: they will tend to share much more of their genes in common than between a typical African and Japanese, because of their respective ancestral histories. This follows from a fundamental of biogeography, but it also follows from data: we can do cluster analysis of hundreds of genetic markers (not just seven of them like Mary-Claire King seems to prefer) to see who is more closely related to who, and it really does correspond to common expectations of a racial paradigm. See for example, Rosenberg et al's "Clines, Clusters, and the Effect of Study Design on the Inference of Human Population Structure," a study conducted in the same year as this episode, or Tishkoff et al's "The Genetic Structure and History of Africans and African Americans," 2009.
• Cows are not prejudiced against each other based on the color of their cow hides, therefore it is not biologically expected that humans would be prejudiced against each other based on skin color. Not quite an argument that races are not biological, but an argument that racism is not biological. If it was purely a moral argument, then I would at least agree with the conclusion: no good reason for prejudices based on skin color. But I think it is a biological argument that racism among humans has nothing to do with biology, and I think it would work only if humans were sufficiently like domestic cows. Humans are a highly tribal species, and we seemingly retain behavioral vestiges of ancestral tribalism (us vs. them mentality common among human social groups). Maybe the ancestors of cows (aurachs) likewise had a strong violent herd mentality, but aurachs are now extinct, and domestic cows descended from thousands of years of artificial selection in which any cow who exhibits violence against another cow was immediately killed, not bred. The best indicators of human beings are human beings. The  minimal group paradigm experiments show that even differences in genetically-irrelevant appearance among groups of children (i.e. red shirts and blue shirts) seems to spontaneously precede mutual group prejudices. Even though racial prejudices are immoral by the best moral theories, nature does not care so much for our morals, and racial prejudices seem to follow very easily from our human nature.
• "The features that we can easily detect when we look at people from different races are important but extremely superficial features..." That is actually an exact quote from Mary-Claire King, and I did a double-take to make sure I got it right. The contradiction within the same pair of adjectives is not the only problem. Nature does not know which phenotypes are important and which are superficial. If we call phenotypes superficial, it is not a scientific claim but a moral one.
• Race is based on superficial skin color differences. This was roughly the argument of Nina Jablonski (skin color variations being her own "superficial" scientific specialty). But, in fact, racial variations are most certainly more than just skin color variations. There are significant and apparent racial differences in every human body system--differences in bone density, height, muscle mass, brain size, lactose tolerance, lung size, penis size, blood pressure, blood type, testosterone, estrogen, pathogen resistances... again, superficiality is subjective, not scientific, but would the racial difference in smallpox resistance really be "superficial" to the only 10% of Native Americans who survived after the beginning of European exploration of the Americas?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

:mod:

 

[ApostateAbe]

 

[exodiasrightleg]

Scientific racists are not taken seriously at all, and it's because anyone with two brain cells to rub together can easily see their arguments amount to dressing up 19th century prejudice in scientific jargon.

By the way, try presenting something better than a bunch of arguments by assertion and quibbling about semantics.

 

[ApostateAbe]

Scientific racists are not taken seriously at all, and it's because anyone with two brain cells to rub together can easily see their arguments amount to dressing up 19th century prejudice in scientific jargon.

By the way, try presenting something better than a bunch of arguments by assertion and quibbling about semantics.

OK, what is your position on the matter?

 

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

Well, the fact that we can't seem to agree on what constitutes a distinct "race" (as a human social construct, it underwent numerous definitional revisions over the centuries, if not millennia) makes the whole discussion rather curious. We've seen:

- Early Egyptian categories, such as "the evil race of Ish" (when referring to darker skin tones) or "the pale, degraded race of Avrad" (when speaking of lighter skin tones), both used by who was in power at the time
- Middle-Age European distinctions based upon ancestry, tracing back to individual Biblical figures (Semitic, Hamitic and Japhetic)
- 17th-century categories based on such characteristics as height, food choice and shape
- Blumenbach's famous categories (Mongoloid, Caucasian, etc.)

And numerous other attempts to differentiate human societies based on stuff like skin tone, habits, location and other criteria. For example, James Cowles Pritchard adopted Blumenbach's model and provided five different categories, while Charles W. Pickering posited eleven races (such as Ethiopian, Hottentot, Abyssinian and Telingan). All of these methods of determining "race" returns to one thing - we don't have a solid scientific basis for categorizing them, as early and modern examples include such determinants as location and food intake to explain differences in human societies.

 

[ApostateAbe]

Well, the fact that we can't seem to agree on what constitutes a distinct "race" (as a human social construct, it underwent numerous definitional revisions over the centuries, if not millennia) makes the whole discussion rather curious. We've seen:

- Early Egyptian categories, such as "the evil race of Ish" (when referring to darker skin tones) or "the pale, degraded race of Avrad" (when speaking of lighter skin tones), both used by who was in power at the time
- Middle-Age European distinctions based upon ancestry, tracing back to individual Biblical figures (Semitic, Hamitic and Japhetic)
- 17th-century categories based on such characteristics as height, food choice and shape
- Blumenbach's famous categories (Mongoloid, Caucasian, etc.)

And numerous other attempts to differentiate human societies based on stuff like skin tone, habits, location and other criteria. For example, James Cowles Pritchard adopted Blumenbach's model and provided five different categories, while Charles W. Pickering posited eleven races (such as Ethiopian, Hottentot, Abyssinian and Telingan). All of these methods of determining "race" returns to one thing - we don't have a solid scientific basis for categorizing them, as early and modern examples include such determinants as location and food intake to explain differences in human societies.

Races, following from the theory of evolution, are objectively spectral. They are defined not by discrete gene sets but by gene frequencies. Other spectral phenomena have the same problems. Take colors, for example. Colors are defined by three dimensions, could be red-green-blue or cyan-magenta-yellow or hue-saturation-value, and all three dimensions of whatever system you choose are necessarily spectral. It is always at least a little misleading to describe the objective world with such a spectral phenomena using discrete categories. The blue-gold-dress thing did not so much follow from some people being right and others being wrong--it followed from the objectively-spectral nature of colors. It is argued that people of antiquity did not see the color blue. Of course they saw it, but to them the sky or the ocean would be another shade of green, because they divided the color spectra differently than we would. Cultures and times vary in their divisions of such spectral phenomena. Does that mean colors are unscientific? Of course not! Colors have an objective foundation in physics. Races, even more importantly, are a fundamental component of the theory of evolution, and the theory of evolution is the fundamental theory of biology. Without races, evolution could not happen except for one species of life on the planet Earth, and of course it turns out there are countless millions. Evolution happens through speciation, and every unique speciation follows from at least two different races. When we sacrifice race, we sacrifice a core part of science. Maybe the damage to scientific thought can be minimized by pretending that humans are a special exception, and the delusions are limited to the human species alone, but that is hardly comforting given the relevance of human life to everything we do.

 

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

Races, following from the theory of evolution, are objectively spectral. They are defined not by discrete gene sets but by gene frequencies.

Wait, I just described how social factors determine "race" categories throughout human history. One's diet is not a genetic factor (not completely, at least), and such concepts as height and body shape don't directly address a "spectral" approach to genetics. As for your comments on color, the only dimensions that have any weight in the topic (in terms of scientific observation) would be the lattermost three of the groups you described - hue, chroma and value are all verifiable aspects of color, independent of the terms we use to name specific wavelengths on the light spectrum, which is more subjective. You yourself mentioned a major intricacy of the language of color - one can look at different societies and find different approaches to describing color outside of hue, chroma and value. To give an example, the Japanese language contains the word ao, which incorporates both blue and green colors, as well as midori, which came into use during the Heian period; ao is still widely used, even though midori saw wider usage in post-WW2 Japan.

Races, even more importantly, are a fundamental component of the theory of evolution, and the theory of evolution is the fundamental theory of biology. Without races, evolution could not happen except for one species of life on the planet Earth, and of course it turns out there are countless millions. Evolution happens through speciation, and every unique speciation follows from at least two different races. When we sacrifice race, we sacrifice a core part of science. Maybe the damage to scientific thought can be minimized by pretending that humans are a special exception, and the delusions are limited to the human species alone, but that is hardly comforting given the relevance of human life to everything we do.

This final bit is rather curious - evolution does not speak of races, especially not in the way employed here; you might be thinking of a taxonomic classification, such as species or phylum, which are descriptions of concrete evidence found within nature. From what you describe, I think you mean species, as you specifically mention speciation in your post; in which case, use species instead. Since it is more a social construction, race is not a formal term in biology, neither is it recognized as a viable scientific concept.

 

[dystopian]

This thread again...

 

[ApostateAbe]

Wait, I just described how social factors determine "race" categories throughout human history. One's diet is not a genetic factor (not completely, at least), and such concepts as height and body shape don't directly address a "spectral" approach to genetics. As for your comments on color, the only dimensions that have any weight in the topic (in terms of scientific observation) would be the lattermost three of the groups you described - hue, chroma and value are all verifiable aspects of color, independent of the terms we use to name specific wavelengths on the light spectrum, which is more subjective. You yourself mentioned a major intricacy of the language of color - one can look at different societies and find different approaches to describing color outside of hue, chroma and value. To give an example, the Japanese language contains the word ao, which incorporates both blue and green colors, as well as midori, which came into use during the Heian period; ao is still widely used, even though midori saw wider usage in post-WW2 Japan.

Races, even more importantly, are a fundamental component of the theory of evolution, and the theory of evolution is the fundamental theory of biology. Without races, evolution could not happen except for one species of life on the planet Earth, and of course it turns out there are countless millions. Evolution happens through speciation, and every unique speciation follows from at least two different races. When we sacrifice race, we sacrifice a core part of science. Maybe the damage to scientific thought can be minimized by pretending that humans are a special exception, and the delusions are limited to the human species alone, but that is hardly comforting given the relevance of human life to everything we do.

This final bit is rather curious - evolution does not speak of races, especially not in the way employed here; you might be thinking of a taxonomic classification, such as species or phylum, which are descriptions of concrete evidence found within nature. From what you describe, I think you mean species, as you specifically mention speciation in your post; in which case, use species instead. Since it is more a social construction, race is not a formal term in biology, neither is it recognized as a viable scientific concept.

One way to get an idea of scientific vocabulary past and present is to do a search on Google Scholar. Here is a search for the terms race+speciation, with all the results since 2014:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2014&q=race+speciation&hl=en&as_sdt=0,50

2,530 results, most of them supportive of the biological race concept (i.e. "host race"). The term is still widely used among biologists, especially evolutionary biologists. You wouldn't know it from the popular science articles, nor TV, nor high school/undergraduate courses, nor creationist articles. They all repeat the same myth: race is not biological. Not only is it biological, but it is essential to the theory of evolution. If you disagree, then I challenge you to explain how evolution happens without races. How do you get two species out of one? Does it happen all of a sudden? One day, you have one species, and the next day, *poof*, you have two? If not, then how do you think it works without races?

 

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

Wait, I just described how social factors determine "race" categories throughout human history. One's diet is not a genetic factor (not completely, at least), and such concepts as height and body shape don't directly address a "spectral" approach to genetics. As for your comments on color, the only dimensions that have any weight in the topic (in terms of scientific observation) would be the lattermost three of the groups you described - hue, chroma and value are all verifiable aspects of color, independent of the terms we use to name specific wavelengths on the light spectrum, which is more subjective. You yourself mentioned a major intricacy of the language of color - one can look at different societies and find different approaches to describing color outside of hue, chroma and value. To give an example, the Japanese language contains the word ao, which incorporates both blue and green colors, as well as midori, which came into use during the Heian period; ao is still widely used, even though midori saw wider usage in post-WW2 Japan.



This final bit is rather curious - evolution does not speak of races, especially not in the way employed here; you might be thinking of a taxonomic classification, such as species or phylum, which are descriptions of concrete evidence found within nature. From what you describe, I think you mean species, as you specifically mention speciation in your post; in which case, use species instead. Since it is more a social construction, race is not a formal term in biology, neither is it recognized as a viable scientific concept.

One way to get an idea of scientific vocabulary past and present is to do a search on Google Scholar. Here is a search for the terms race+speciation, with all the results since 2014:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2014&q=race+speciation&hl=en&as_sdt=0,50

2,530 results, most of them supportive of the biological race concept (i.e. "host race"). The term is still widely used among biologists, especially evolutionary biologists. You wouldn't know it from the popular science articles, nor TV, nor high school/undergraduate courses, nor creationist articles. They all repeat the same myth: race is not biological. Not only is it biological, but it is essential to the theory of evolution. If you disagree, then I challenge you to explain how evolution happens without races. How do you get two species out of one? Does it happen all of a sudden? One day, you have one species, and the next day, *poof*, you have two? If not, then how do you think it works without races?

Sympatric speciation, for starters, along with allopatric speciation and parapatric speciation. Out of curiosity, how do you define "race"? Are you using the term as analogous to species?

 

[ApostateAbe]

One way to get an idea of scientific vocabulary past and present is to do a search on Google Scholar. Here is a search for the terms race+speciation, with all the results since 2014:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2014&q=race+speciation&hl=en&as_sdt=0,50

2,530 results, most of them supportive of the biological race concept (i.e. "host race"). The term is still widely used among biologists, especially evolutionary biologists. You wouldn't know it from the popular science articles, nor TV, nor high school/undergraduate courses, nor creationist articles. They all repeat the same myth: race is not biological. Not only is it biological, but it is essential to the theory of evolution. If you disagree, then I challenge you to explain how evolution happens without races. How do you get two species out of one? Does it happen all of a sudden? One day, you have one species, and the next day, *poof*, you have two? If not, then how do you think it works without races?

Sympatric speciation, for starters, along with allopatric speciation and parapatric speciation. Out of curiosity, how do you define "race"? Are you using the term as analogous to species?

Many species is what you get at the end of the speciation process, but races are the populations of intermediate genetic differences before speciation happens. I define races as populations, within a species, of differing allele frequencies due to differing geographies. Sympatric speciation would be the exception in which geographic variation plays no part, so that is a good point.

 

[Juma]

Sympatric speciation, for starters, along with allopatric speciation and parapatric speciation. Out of curiosity, how do you define "race"? Are you using the term as analogous to species?

Many species is what you get at the end of the speciation process, but races are the populations of intermediate genetic differences before speciation happens. I define races as populations, within a species, of differing allele frequencies due to differing geographies. Sympatric speciation would be the exception in which geographic variation plays no part, so that is a good point.

Weird. The reason for the differing allele frequencies shouldnt be part of the definition.

 

[ApostateAbe]

Many species is what you get at the end of the speciation process, but races are the populations of intermediate genetic differences before speciation happens. I define races as populations, within a species, of differing allele frequencies due to differing geographies. Sympatric speciation would be the exception in which geographic variation plays no part, so that is a good point.

Weird. The reason for the differing allele frequencies shouldnt be part of the definition.

The distinction of genetic variation resulting from geographic differences is useful to distinguish it from random genetic variation expected between any random subsets of a species, as geographic difference means that the genetic separation will continue from the tendency of each race to mate within its own race. The sympatric speciation process is the exception in that the mating tendencies still happen (each race tends to mate within itself) without the geographic separation. It is perhaps why Ernst Mayr had the extra qualifier of "geographic race" and not merely "race" in his article about human races, "The Biology of Race and the Concept of Equality."

 

[ApostateAbe]

The possibility of significant sympatric races within the human species should not be neglected. India seemingly had such a thing with their caste system (each caste tends to mate with its own caste), and it is happening in the western world: notice that your high-intelligence relatives tend to mate with those of likewise-high intelligence.

 

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

The possibility of significant sympatric races within the human species should not be neglected. India seemingly had such a thing with their caste system (each caste tends to mate with its own caste), and it is happening in the western world: notice that your high-intelligence relatives tend to mate with those of likewise-high intelligence.

This conversation took an uncomfortable turn. "Mating within one's own caste" goes into pseudoscientific territory in regards to human genetic diversity - that caste system does not constitute sympatric speciation by any stretch of the term, as it is a social construct based on a particular system of cultural identification.

 

[ApostateAbe]

The possibility of significant sympatric races within the human species should not be neglected. India seemingly had such a thing with their caste system (each caste tends to mate with its own caste), and it is happening in the western world: notice that your high-intelligence relatives tend to mate with those of likewise-high intelligence.

This conversation took an uncomfortable turn. "Mating within one's own caste" goes into pseudoscientific territory in regards to human genetic diversity - that caste system does not constitute sympatric speciation by any stretch of the term, as it is a social construct based on a particular system of cultural identification.

Feel free to disagree, but I think it would be an error to assume "social, therefore not biological." Mating patterns are a social construct with biological consequences. I am not the first to think of this, as this search on Google Scholar shows. Castes of India have differing disease frequencies and susceptibilities due to their mating patterns.

 

[ApostateAbe]

I forgot to welcome you to the forum. Welcome to the forum!

 

[dystopian]

Castes of India have differing disease frequencies and susceptibilities due to their mating patterns.

Or you know, because different castes are on different rungs of the socio-economic ladder.

 

[Canard DuJour]

Many species is what you get at the end of the speciation process, but races are the populations of intermediate genetic differences before speciation happens.

Well there you have it, folks. When black, jewish or whoever people turn into a different species, scientific racists will be shown not to have been spouting nonsense after all.