I mean, yeah, that's pretty much the long and the short of it. That you think attacking Murray and his defenders is "bad faith" strongly implies that there's no expression of racism that you think should be criticized. If literally reshaping immigration and welfare policy with an eye towards the intellectual inferiority of non-white people doesn't count, what would?

This is very upsetting to you and you honestly do need to think about why two people you clearly aren't super familiar with getting called racist by anonymous internet randos gets you manic but being super super racist doesn't offend you at all.

(also, for a guy who throws around the phrase strawman a lot, third thread on this subject buddy. Event happened in 2017, talking about a book from 1992. It's not just from that one quote that people are calling Harris and Murray racists. I know that podcast might be your only exposure to Charles Murray, but it ain't everyone else's)

If you change that thesis to "There are many distinct genetic differences between isolated ethnic groups" its not racist. And yes, it was a sloppy hypothesis, but it kind of shows how there seems to be an emphasis on IQ as an indicator of "superiority" when that's a low brow argument people like to use in Western Racism, and Western Scientific Racism.

I'm going to let it go though. I'll accept my part in being unable to explain my point, or understand that my point makes no sense. I'll also accept that Fly wasn't making bad faith arguments and truly believes that Sam Harris is a White Supremacist who supports Nazi style Eugenics, and that him believing that doesn't make him, or anyone like him, a loon.

To be clear, I don't think Harris is particularly racist, although I do think he's culpable for handling the subject somewhat poorly. I think it's pretty reasonable to call Murray racist, given the entirety of his work.

I also don't think fly's approach to this thread is particularly useful, and my last post wasn't intended to convey an endorsement of it. I think mostly your complaint centers around his conversational style.

I do think the somewhat "in the weeds" conversation that you, wiild, and luckbox was starting to get into is an interesting and very important conversation to have and I was excited how that was playing out. I don't think I can articulate my points in an educated and constructive manner though.

Do you have any understanding about the history of the term “race” as it has been used in society?

This is biology thread.
We are using the definitions found here. Try to keep up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(biology)
And why should a science discussion give a crap about how a term has been used? But like I said taxonomists do seem to like to use the term variety to represent division below the subspecies level perhaps to soothe those who care about insensitive terminology.

And let's assume that I do have an understanding --to actually address your question--what would that have to do with anything that I've posted? Is there something you disagree with?
Do you believe in human exceptionalism and the idea that humans exist outside of the regular laws of biology that all other species on Earth abide by?

Because that term’s use/misuse causes real harm to real people? Again, if you understood the history of how the term race has been used in society, the answer should be obvious, I would hope are you a sociopath?

Ok I will switch to variety for your sake and for the sake of everyone. You win again. I still would like you to answer the question about human exceptionalism though.

If it’s true, as I believe you and others are arguing itt, that Murray’s work is being misunderstood, and he did Not actually mean that there are differences in intelligence across race (as the term is popularly used) but rather in some technical scientific meaning of the word, then all we have to do is look at the history of the Bell Curve and understand the history of racism in the US tonunderstand why it might not be a good idea to treat the subject like we do for every other animal.

Actually no variety is a bad term and I'm not going to not use it just like I will use internationalist if I want.

I hardly know anything about Murray and don't care.

I do know a lot about Avian systemics.

I've heard of the bell curve for a long time because I don't live in a cave but I haven't read it and I don't listen to Sam Harris and only know who he is from 2p2. I don't know a lot about human population genetics but the idea that race shouldn't exist in humans seems really dumb from my Avian based perspective.

Here I am making posts about Dark-eyed juncos and Chickadees and getting called a sociopath.

Please don't try to pin anything about Murray on me. Thanks.

I don't know how to say this without it sounding snarkier than intended, but humans aren't birds. It's not like it's a given that genetic variation will be distributed in consistent ways within different species, such that similar taxonomic approaches will make sense for all of them. Also, if you've only studied phenotype-based means of classifying birds it won't necessarily make you well informed about genetics.

Given that this is a politics forum (and not primarily a science forum, even if here the political argument is rooted in arguments about science), I think the history and politics of race as applied to various groups of humans is pretty important.

Somebody is going to at some point need to point to a sentence that I have written and tell me how it is wrong if they want to argue with me though.

And it sounds like you believe in human exceptionalism which is going to be something I'm going to hold in disdain here. Yes humans are not birds. But the same processes apply.

And there are some 10,000 bird species. The same doesn't hold for all of them either. There are Ring species and species with narrow hybridization zones and species not understood and species that are being hybridized away like golden-winged warblers So there is a lot of different variety as far as how different genetic processes are working. I'm pretty sure you end up with a more nuanced view of population genetics than you would get from studying humans alone.

what I wrote does not require any belief in human exceptionalism, if I understand what you mean by the term. It would be no different if I said that I was skeptical that an understanding of bird taxonomy was going to allow someone to adequately predict the best classification scheme for any other species of primate.

I'm not sure how this follows from what I posted but as for the bold, we're not basing our thoughts on what Vox tells us to think. Fly mentioned this repeatedly and I can't cosign hard enough: we were already very familiar with everything surrounding Murray and then read the actual transcripts of the Murray podcasts and Harris' statements.

I mean, my first reaction when I heard that Murray was going to be on the podcast was, "Wait, the The Bell Curve guy... Nah, can't be. 'Charles Murray' is probably a common name."

I'm pretty sure alll higher level taxonomy stuff is now being done using molecular genetics techniques like dna-dna hybridization.
Looking at phenotypic variation can get you really far as far as separating species but for both higher level (family relations) and lower level subspecies stuff everyone is using genetics.

I think your fundamental misunderstanding is that before you joined the thread "race" was only being used in the societal sense. This thread was about sociology and how conflating genetic research with the societal meaning of race is flawed. It is only since you joined the thread that things have delved more into biology and that part of the conversation, while somewhat relevant to the original topic, has meant we have people assuming different meanings when people refer to race.

Still doesn’t mean Harris is a closet white supremacist. My guess is his motives for taking up the issue were much more narcissistic than racist. Although like a lot of us he could very well have some buried racial prejudices his mindfulness practice has yet to uncover.

What I'm trying to argue is that gene flow determines how taxonomists go about their work.**

When you have a set of genes that remain isolated then you have a isolated population and can draw some sort of boundary line. This holds for all species. When you have genes that are flowing freely within a species, subdivisions are not possible. Within humans you see both processes at work* but the principle is still the same. In the case of the Sentinelese that coordi mentioned--under any understanding of race or subspecies as a biological concept--they fit it. The fact that human differences are mostly clinal means nothing as clinal differences abound in the animal world and that doesn't stop taxonomists from dividing them up into subspecies. And when I say subspecies I mostly just mean race since there is no sharp line between what those two terms mean.
*and this perhaps is what makes human special and what makes race "hard" because it clearly exists and doesn't exist at the same time. But these same processes are going on elsewhere in nature and especially in the Avian world and birds are even more mobile than humans in lots of respects.
**there are other approaches too like molecular genetics based approaches (again used more for higher level classification) like I mentioned--but that the principles of what makes a species/subspecies/race are ultimately determined by how organisms interact with each other as any species that has individuals interbreeding freely won't remain subdivided into finer classifications for long. So you either have genes flowing freely and no subdivisions or you have division and thus race/subspecies.

A real good argument in favor of just how pervasive white supremacy is in shaping our society in general and the IDW in particular is benefit of the doubt noodling about "buried racial prejudices" like this. The dude spent the last decade boosting Islamaphobia, did this podcast, defended that podcast by endorsing Murray and melting down at Ezra Klein about his hurt feelings, then went on to join an reactionary "intellectual dark web" group that includes a bunch of other racists. He's not a child, give the man some credit for knowing what the **** he's doing with his life.

Are there other character flaws that you'll often see people demand mindreading and beyond a reasonable doubt proof on when it's internet randos discussing public figures? Certainly that isn't the tone people take about corruption, deceit, greed, etc.

Like a lot of you people will, when faced with direct questions, acknowledge the role that racism has played in the black/white achievement gap, you generally have to get to full on alt-right before you start denying that entirely, and even then those people will generally top out at "racism no longer exists" but admit that Jim Crow was racist and negatively impacted black people.

But that next step, from "racism exists" to "racists exist", that's a struggle. Lot of hurt feelings there.

You're right, I think he came out of the closet.

As far as Nazi eugenics are concerned, Willd explained the nuance like seven times already. Though I might add, the Nazis were actually inspired by America's treatment of black people when shaping their ethos.

Can we talk about how Jamaica is apparently in West Africa?