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

[ApostateAbe]

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.

Again, do not assume that it is either social or biological. It is both. The social strata affect the mating patterns, and the mating patterns affect the differential genetics.

 

[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.

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.

I don't suggest waiting that long, but instead accept a coherent sense of the theory of evolution in the present. The Fst (or fixation index, a metric of genetic variation between populations) between large human races is about 0.12 on average. There is no standard value of Fst for speciation, but, between chimpanzees and bonobos (barely two different species), the Fst is 0.5. The races of humans would become different species in maybe 200,000 years, if the mating patterns continue on their courses typical of the last 10,000 years (not that they will for sure).

 

[Canard DuJour]

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.

I don't suggest waiting that long, but instead accept a coherent sense of the theory of evolution in the present. The Fst (or fixation index, a metric of genetic variation between populations) between large human races is about 0.12 on average. There is no standard value of Fst for speciation, but, between chimpanzees and bonobos (barely two different species), the Fst is 0.5. The races of humans would become different species in maybe 200,000 years, if the mating patterns continue on their courses typical of the last 10,000 years (not that they will for sure).

:laughing-smiley-014 and the assumption that this indicates impending speciation by racial folk category is why you're not in the same forum as ppl who have "a coherent sense of the theory of evolution in the present"

 

[exodiasrightleg]

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.

I don't suggest waiting that long, but instead accept a coherent sense of the theory of evolution in the present. The Fst (or fixation index, a metric of genetic variation between populations) between large human races is about 0.12 on average. There is no standard value of Fst for speciation, but, between chimpanzees and bonobos (barely two different species), the Fst is 0.5. The races of humans would become different species in maybe 200,000 years, if the mating patterns continue on their courses typical of the last 10,000 years (not that they will for sure).

The actual course of human mating patterns show a lot of invasions, displacement and admixture, following the ebb and flow of human culture. Like every bigot in eras before, you assume that the current state of affairs reflects some eternal truth and tries to convince yourself that it's how things have ever been and will be.

 

[ApostateAbe]

I don't suggest waiting that long, but instead accept a coherent sense of the theory of evolution in the present. The Fst (or fixation index, a metric of genetic variation between populations) between large human races is about 0.12 on average. There is no standard value of Fst for speciation, but, between chimpanzees and bonobos (barely two different species), the Fst is 0.5. The races of humans would become different species in maybe 200,000 years, if the mating patterns continue on their courses typical of the last 10,000 years (not that they will for sure).

The actual course of human mating patterns show a lot of invasions, displacement and admixture, following the ebb and flow of human culture. Like every bigot in eras before, you assume that the current state of affairs reflects some eternal truth and tries to convince yourself that it's how things have ever been and will be.

I am well aware of the racial admixtures over the last 10,000 years. And, the Fst value among the races is 0.12 on average. It would follow from racial inbreeding exceeding racial outbreeding. The admixture both past and present on its current course would slow down the racial divergence but would not erase it. I am a rationalist. That means I take all the data into consideration. It matters not if it seems backward or bigoted to those who take only some of the data, the data they prefer, into consideration. If you are not one of those people, then how have you considered the Fst average? Does it matter to you?

 

[Canard DuJour]

I am a rationalist. That means I take all the data into consideration.

And jump to unwarranted conclusions. What you're on about simply isn't evidence of impending speciation.

 

[ApostateAbe]

I am a rationalist. That means I take all the data into consideration.

And jump to unwarranted conclusions. What you're on about simply isn't evidence of impending speciation.

Speciation is not inevitable--the process could instead reverse itself with greater racial admixture in the future--but what we see among human races is expected from what is typical of the evolutionary process of parapatric speciation. If you don't accept it as such evidence, then what hypothetical evidence would you accept?

 

[Canard DuJour]

And jump to unwarranted conclusions. What you're on about simply isn't evidence of impending speciation.

Speciation is not inevitable

Or likely.

--the process could instead reverse itself with greater racial admixture in the future--

Or be in reversal, or remain stable or have been stable for a long time.

but what we see among human races is expected from what is typical of the evolutionary process of parapatric speciation.

Which is rare and the genetic distance you're on about is nothing like sufficient condition.

If you don't accept it as such evidence, then what hypothetical evidence would you accept?

Of what? No one's disputing that you'd expect some genetic distance prior to speciation so it's pointless pretending they are. Barring time travel, there can be no "evidence" that it will lead to speciation. But you apparently base your race-realism case on the assumption that it will. It's like assuming triplets from pregnancy. Sure, you need to be pregnant but you're still probably not having them.

Definitely pseudoscience.

 

[ApostateAbe]

Canard DuJour, it really does not matter whether speciation WILL happen or if it just MAYBE will happen. What the Fst values tell us is that human races are a significant biological reality now. We don't need a fast spaceship to travel to the future to know whether or not speciation will happen, as it is not a premise of determining whether or not parapatric races exist right now, because parapatric races are directly observable RIGHT NOW. That is what the Fst values are about. It is a way of knowing that skin color is NOT just an insignificant accident of evolution that has nothing to do with race, nor is adult lactose tolerance among whites, nor are the higher odds of cystic fibrosis, celiac disease, skin cancer, type 1 diabetes, etc. among whites, nor are the racial height differences, nor are the racial bone density differences, nor are the lung size differences, nor are the penis size differences, nor are the alcohol addiction differences, nor are the twinning rate differences, nor are the brain size differences--none of these things are flukes that follow from cobbling random people together, but such differences are expected from evolutionary divergence among human races. Yes, races, the same way evolutionary biologists have made sense of races broadly among species for 150 years. The ideological knee-jerk denial of human races is common but incoherent, and for the sake of rationality it needs to be criticized as incoherent. Creationists, you know, have a ridiculous theory, but, at least their theory was coherent until they sided with incoherence.

 

[Canard DuJour]

Canard DuJour, it really does not matter whether speciation WILL happen or if it just MAYBE will happen.

Then rationalists will be baffled as to why you repeatedly invoke speciation in support of 'race-realism'

What the Fst values tell us is that human races are a significant biological reality now. We don't need a fast spaceship to travel to the future to know whether or not speciation will happen, as it is not a premise of determining whether or not parapatric races exist right now, because parapatric races are directly observable RIGHT NOW. That is what the Fst values are about. It is a way of knowing that skin color is NOT just an insignificant accident of evolution that has nothing to do with race, nor is adult lactose tolerance among whites, nor are the higher odds of cystic fibrosis, celiac disease, skin cancer, type 1 diabetes, etc. among whites, nor are the racial height differences, nor are the racial bone density differences, nor are the lung size differences, nor are the penis size differences, nor are the alcohol addiction differences, nor are the twinning rate differences, nor are the brain size differences--none of these things are flukes that follow from cobbling random people together, but such differences are expected from evolutionary divergence among human races. Yes, races, the same way evolutionary biologists have made sense of races broadly among species for 150 years. The ideological knee-jerk denial of human races is common but incoherent, and for the sake of rationality it needs to be criticized as incoherent. Creationists, you know, have a ridiculous theory, but, at least their theory was coherent until they sided with incoherence.

Then you apparently misunderstand what you purport to address.

No one's saying the genetic distance you're obsessed with isn't biological. Rather, it's tiny compared to intra-group variation and no greater than exists between groups that do not correspond to those folk-racial categories which approximately correlate with geographic clusters. This within an unusually genetically homogenous species. When, for example, the world authority on population genetics says "The classification into races has proved to be a futile exercise for reasons that were already clear to Darwin. Human races are still extremely unstable entities in the hands of modern taxonomists," he's not going all Marxist, he's saying that biology reveals folk racial categories to be poor candidates for sub-species taxonomic classification of humans.

The "ideological knee-jerk" here is yours.

 

[EgalitarianJay]

Bill Nye debated the creationist Ken Ham a year ago, and he hit the ball out of the park in the debate.

I saw that debate recently. Ken Ham fought very hard for his position but Bill Nye picked him apart.

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.

They actually misuse science to suit their racist agenda. Against real evolutionary Biologists like Joseph Graves they get destroyed.


[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUjo31DChcE[/YOUTUBE]

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.

He doesn't seem to argue that. He argues that race is a social construct and the differences between humans are superficial as opposed to there being fundamental biological differences.

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.

Race in the biological literature is equivalent to subspecies. A subspecies is a population on the cusp of speciation. To determine that a population has reached that threshold where they are nearly a different species they must exhibit an objective disagree of genetic divergence. Nye's argument is that human populations haven't diverged enough to be called races. There is biological variation in the human species but we're not so biologically differentiated as to be called races.

Oh and Humans are not Apes.

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.

Scientific racists are motivated by ideology. Bill Nye appears to be motivated by the desire to advance an objective scientific position.You might say he has an Egalitarian agenda but his position is still supported by science. Racial classification is a social construct. Subspecies do exist in some animal species but not all of them and certainly not in humans. It's not impossible for humans to diverge racially but at present there are no biological races in the human species.

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

Thanks for posting it. I enjoyed it. However the pseudoscientific position belongs to Scientific Racists with their race-realism agenda. They need races to be real in order to support their racist ideological agenda. The no biological races position is a scientific one but it also refutes racist ideas which is why it is so popular.

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.

I agree that the 0.1% difference could include significant biological differences. Bill Nye uses this argument to reject the idea that we are very different in our DNA structure just because we look different. That 0.1% difference includes many genes including those that code for the differences in physical characteristics we readily observe. But Bill Nye is correct to say that we are not so genetically different as to be separate subspecies or races.

• 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.

I think what she is trying to say is that the biological variation that does exist is not significant. Yes, we can determine population affinity based on hundreds of genetic markers but the biological differentiation between populations is insignificant from an evolutionary perspective.

• 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.

I've read those studies and I don't see how they support the argument you are making. Can you provide quotes from either study that shows that the genetic structure of populations supports a racial paradigm?

• 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 argument they were making is that it doesn't make sense to be prejudice based on superficial human differences. Humans may be tribal in nature but our biological differences are as superficial as the differences between cow hides. Bill Nye said in the video that people had a tendency to over think things and I believe that is true.

• "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.

It's not really moral, she's saying that superficial characteristics are not important in our everyday lives.

• 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?

Do you have sources for each of the differences that you claim exist?

 

[J842P]

EgalitarianJay, humans are apes.

 

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

EgalitarianJay, humans are apes.

To bolster your point, here's the taxonomic classification of human beings, from Wikipedia:

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Primates
Suborder: Haplorhini
Family: Hominidae
Genus: Homo
Species: H. sapiens

I highlighted the family, as Hominidae refers to the great apes.

 

[EgalitarianJay]

EgalitarianJay, humans are apes.

Humans are primates, not apes.

Ape


noun
1.
any of a group of anthropoid primates characterized by long arms, a broad chest, and the absence of a tail, comprising the family Pongidae (great ape) which includes the chimpanzee, gorilla, and orangutan, and the family Hylobatidae (lesser ape) which includes the gibbon and siamang.
2.
(loosely) any primate except humans.
3.
an imitator; mimic.
4.
Informal. a big, ugly, clumsy person.

 

[ApostateAbe]

The atheists who argue against creationists are in the habit of claiming that humans are apes. With an elegantly-structured model of taxonomy or phylogeny, this is true: if all the species we typically consider "apes" belong to the same branch of "apes," then Homo sapiens necessarily belong to that same branch, so humans are apes. By the same reasoning, birds are dinosaurs. But, it does neglect the common taxonomic allowance of  polyphyly: you can allow words to describe a set of taxonomic branches that are disconnected from each other, or they exclude a part of the branch, useful for reconciling common understandings of words with taxonomy.

 

[ApostateAbe]

Do you have sources for each of the differences that you claim exist?

Yes, I do for most of them. If you go to the Dropbox folder I shared with you, you can do a word search (I have the relevant keywords included in the file names), and chances are you can find what you are looking for.

 

[EgalitarianJay]

Do you have sources for each of the differences that you claim exist?

Yes, I do for most of them. If you go to the Dropbox folder I shared with you, you can do a word search (I have the relevant keywords included in the file names), and chances are you can find what you are looking for.

I can of course search for them but for the sake of discussion I'd like you to present your sources in the thread so we can debate.

 

[J842P]

EgalitarianJay, humans are apes.

Humans are primates, not apes.

Ape


noun
1.
any of a group of anthropoid primates characterized by long arms, a broad chest, and the absence of a tail, comprising the family Pongidae (great ape) which includes the chimpanzee, gorilla, and orangutan, and the family Hylobatidae (lesser ape) which includes the gibbon and siamang.
2.
(loosely) any primate except humans.
3.
an imitator; mimic.
4.
Informal. a big, ugly, clumsy person.

Are you seriously citing a dictionary definition?

Anyway, humans are classified in the family Hominidae, which is the Great Apes. Humans are apes. Humans are also primates, since all apes are primates.

 

[ApostateAbe]

Yes, I do for most of them. If you go to the Dropbox folder I shared with you, you can do a word search (I have the relevant keywords included in the file names), and chances are you can find what you are looking for.

I can of course search for them but for the sake of discussion I'd like you to present your sources in the thread so we can debate.

OK, here is my list. All of these you can find in the Dropbox folder, except for the Wikipedia article about blood types.

• bone density: Wagner and Heyward - Measures of body composition in blacks and whites- a comparative review 2000
• height (heritability): Schousboe et al - Twin study of genetic and environmental influences on adult body size, shape, and composition 2004
• muscle mass: Schutte et al - Density of lean body mass is greater in blacks than in whites 1984
• brain size: Beals, Smith and Dodd - Brain Size, Cranial Morphology, Climate, and Time Machines 1984
• lactose tolerance: Scrimshaw and Murray - The acceptability of milk and milk products in populations with a high prevalence of lactose intolerance 1988
• lung size: Harik-Khan, Muller and Wise - Racial Difference in Lung Function in African-American and White Children- Effect of Anthropometric, Socioeconomic, Nutritional, and Environmental Factors 2004
• penis size: WHO - The Male Latex Condom 1998
• blood pressure: Jones and Hall - Racial and Ethnic Differences in Blood Pressure 2006
• blood type: Wikipedia - Blood type distribution by country 2015
• testosterone: Ellis and Nyborg - Racial ethnic variations in male testosterone levels- A probable contributor to group differences in health 1992
• estrogen: Kim et al - Racial-Ethnic Differences in Sex Hormone Levels among Postmenopausal Women in the Diabetes Prevention Program 2012
• pathogen resistances: Novembre, Galvani and Slatkin - The Geographic Spread of the CCR5 Δ32 HIV-Resistance Allele 2005

 

[EgalitarianJay]

Are you seriously citing a dictionary definition?

Do you have a problem with the dictionary?

Anyway, humans are classified in the family Hominidae, which is the Great Apes. Humans are apes. Humans are also primates, since all apes are primates.

Humans do indeed belong to the family Hominidae, known colloquially as "The Great Apes" but I don't think many biologists and zoologists refer to humans as Apes. You often hear references to "Humans and the Great Apes" as if they are separate entities. When I think of Apes I think of non-human primates. Anyway I don't think it's worth arguing about. I would prefer to focus on the topic of the thread.