That reminds me of an analogy I made in a letter to someone, in which I made the point that races exist even when there are intermediate racial types. Here's what I said.

The words "orange" and "green" have no precise meaning. They are loosely associated with wavelength bands within the spectrum of visible light, but their meanings have not been made into well-established, universally recognized conventions. People generally know "green" when they see it, and they never confuse it with "orange," although there might be some dispute over where to draw the line between yellowish green and greenish yellow.

Someone might come along with the argument that the usual color categories are too narrow, asserting that orange is nothing more than yellowish red and that green is nothing more than yellowish blue. But nobody would deny that color is a real sensory impression. Nobody would claim that the existence of yellow proves that green and orange are the same color, or that "color does not exist" because "it's all one kind of light." Nobody would abandon the descriptive use of color for reason that there is no clear limit to the number of colors that could be recognized, if the notion of color were resolved down to bands of nanometer or Angstrom width.

Someone might argue that a mere sensory impression isn't important enough to distinguish light on the basis of color because, as a practical matter, color makes no difference. But anyone making such an argument would be wrong: color, the sensory impression, is well correlated with physical phenomena that don't depend on subjective interpretations of the brain and that do make practical differences. Consider the photoelectric effect.

The analogy with race should be obvious....

Going back to the color analogy for a moment, I alluded to the photoelectric effect because it illustrates a correlation between a continuous phenomenon and the outcome (pass or fail) of a related test.

A difference of 20 angstroms in the wavelength of an incident photon will seldom change the outcome of a potential ionization event (yes or no). But a difference of 2000 angstroms will often do so.

Similarly, a genetic distance of 20 of Cavalli-Sforza's (x10000) FST units will seldom affect whether either of the peoples so distanced will be able to meet and overcome a difficult social or physical challenge to their welfare (live or die). But a genetic distance of 2000 such units might often do so.

Not necessarily. It can indicate that I forgot where this forum was. It can indicate that I forgot about the debate for a while. It can indicate that I was busy elsewhere.

The standard racial classifications result primarily from biological (genetic) differences. It is certainly true, though, that the phenomenon of race in humans is more complicated than many humans conceive it to be. Most people have a simplified picture that works for them well enough.

I mention "leftists" because most of my debate opponents are leftists in the political sense: persons with generally liberal views who have a degree of power and an aggressive attitude. It generally comes with a certain amount of dishonesty and willingness to use censorship when debate will not yield results favorable to themselves.

You made a point that I'd like to address.

No, that isn't it at all. The point you're missing is that violence is an inescapable condition for life. It has no absolute moral assignment; it is either advantageous or not, or worth its while or not. Every animal species kills something for its sustenance.

Among humans, slavery has been a normal feature of both primitive and civilized cultures, until the use of fossil fuels in modern times made slavery unnecessary. When the decline in available exosomatic energy makes our present society unsustainable, slavery will return, and not all the moral wringing of our hands will prevent it from returning. These pretensions that violence is WRONG and that slavery is WRONG are hypocrisies.

The reality is that during the recent past, and for a little while yet, slavery has been unnecessary in the First World (the West). It has continued in primitive cultures. And among rich countries, there is at least one exception among technically advanced countries in which slavery, in particular sexual slavery, has never been abolished.

War hasn't been necessary for the traditional reason (population pressure), but it has endured because a certain racial group, relatively few in numbers but relatively big in terms of money and influence, have been trying to gain control of the resources of the whole planet. Were that group absent from our world, then war would have been kept in abeyance at least to the extent that slavery has been.

I can't answer this question well because I don't remember what I said in that deleted post. However, generally no race needs another in the way that, for example the male and female sexes do. Different races of the same species have very similar resource demands on the environment, which means they are usually rival groups of tribal primates. War would be a natural condition, at any time that any race found itself short. Which is to say: most of the time.

Would have been better if you hadn't said that. I'd have had the chance to say something along the lines of you making snappy comebacks.

[Private message] Happy that you have managed to save up for a working computer. I will do my best to be kind. I consider this argument to be for the betterment of those who read it.

I won't even bring up that you got a post deleted for calling for a race war. I promise.

So, lets get to arguing as kindly and as reasonably as possible so that people can make their up their own mindss. [/private message]

My statement was about that particular study was that it was particularly mathematically stupid.

That you bring up Cavcalli-Sforza is pretty funny. "The classification into races has proved to be a futile exercise for reasons that were already clear to Darwin" Try to guess what book that was in. I'll give a hint: You mentioned the title just a bit above this paragraph.

Not a quibble. The best you can do is say "didn't find a difference."

"I couldn't find a statistical difference" (which is what you cite as reasonable above) would never get published.

You mean the ones sponsored by the Pioneer Fund*?

IQ isn't a genetic construct.

Yes, you managed to find two researchers who have no background in genetics who happen to be part of the Pioneer Fund* (one being the founder) who make genetic claims about IQ.

One further point that struck me as particularly humorous:

Like duh, obviously. Everyone knows that Italians and Poles aren't really what we mean when we say "white people."

*The Pioneer Fund is a white supremacist group.

Question: 1 million years from now, how many species will Homo sapiens spit into? I say 2.

17, but 3 of them will be considered subhuman and 2 will need machine assistance to survive.

Most likely, either 0 or 1.

Two reasons: The trend is toward cosmopolitanism as it is the most fit strategy (those who don't agree will die off eventually en masse since big groups can beat the crap out of small groups pretty easily). Also, when you have transportation, people tend to enjoy sharing their horizontal dancing styles with the locals.

It is possible that if we get around to permantly populating other planets, the number could be higher than 1 eventually if we then stop visiting with each other regularly.

I'd just like to leave these two articles
http://www.world-science.net/exclusi...28_racefrm.htm (2005 study based on the 2001 study, which was highly censored due to political correctness)
http://www.technologyreview.com/news...nome/#comments (read through the lines)

And within the first article, “Race is a social construct, not a scientific classification,” the New England Journal of Medicine, one of the most prestigious medical journals, editorialized on May 3, 2001. “In medicine, there is only one race—the human race.’’

I found that hilarious, they clearly contradict themselves and considering medicine can be personalized, racially at that time, and now even individually; they're showing their incompetence, medicine is very generalized and there isn't much difference between a veterinarian and a M.D. besides specific training, the systems are similar, everything is similar, just a tiny bit different, and that tiny difference plays a HUGE role when specific aspects of medicine continually advance.

I would recommend you guys check out stuff by Tang, Zhivotovsky, and Rosenberg relating to DNA to truly understand it from an unbiased point of view. There is much more of a difference than we're led on to believe. I don't think it really matters though, but the implication of radical egalitarian views does pervert society and bring about political correctness. Not to mention..........

osama bin hiding lol nice 1st post, i thought they caught you already man

rly this Rosenberg???? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Rosenberg. Explain in detail how Rosenberg's theory could possibly be positively affective towards science, math, and sociology etc. Especially within the USA? Looking forward to ur response, btw Do you ever troll in real life as you did on this forum, and why create a gimmick acct dude?

Your newsletter must be fascinating.

I'm fairly certain that he meant a different Rosenberg.

What recent research has found is that dark and curly hair is genetically caused.

The amusing problem is that the people who worry about racial differences are generally at the lower end of the spectrum in their specific ethnic grouping. The last one lived in a very amusing way in a small town in West Virginia (the undisputed center of intellectualism), couldn't afford a computer at Walmart (he did eventually save up for one apparently a few months later), and quite amusingly called for a race war when it was mentioned that Jews and Asians are much better at IQ tests in America than white people are.

We should be nice to him so that he can amuse us more.

Lol...

Im prty sure it was Alfred Rosenberg, seeing the end of bin ladens post echoes Joseph Goebbels, actually i think he is quoting the latter or Hitler

Anyways I do hope he/she posts more, Posters like Bin Laden are not only interesting but also comical.

and btw I read a few of JenaB (i assume thats the West Virginian?) posts, He/she put a ton of detail into it... fascinating nonsense it was. My question is what attracts these folks to two plus two? I thought they just trolled youtube posts