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How Should Human Subspecies Be Classified?; A discussion about human subspecies.
Topic Started: Apr 18 2016, 02:05 AM (4,112 Views)
Jinfengopteryx
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Aspiring paleontologist, science enthusiast and armchair speculative fiction/evolution writer
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While I agree that this would be very unpleasant, science should not depend on politics, so I don't think these are good objections.
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Spartan
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In this case I think it should since dividing humans into subspecies would add nothing to the scientific discourse while fueling racist mindsets.

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Obgleich bei einigen Populationen (z. B. australische Aborigines, Negritos oder San[13]) eine so lange räumliche Isolation existiert, dass hier die Kriterien für Unterarten aus zoologischer Sicht gegeben wären, wird analog zum verpönten Rasse-Begriff eine weitere Untergliederung der Art Homo sapiens vermieden.


(Although some subspecies (australian aborigines, negritos or san) were long enough geographically separated to meet the criteria for subspecies-status from a zoological point of view, a further segmentation of the species Homo sapiens, analogous to the proscribed race-concept, is avoided)

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unterart



We don't have a generally accepted definition of subspecies, it's not based on something objective like ancestry, but rather arbitrary criteria. You could make valid cases for human subspecies just as good as against them.

From Edward O. Wilson's book "The diversity of life":

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What exactly is a subspecies? The textbooks define it as a geographical race, a population with distinctive traits occupying part of the range of the species.

What then is a population? We are in immediate trouble. It is easy to say that a clearly defined population, one recognizable by everyone at a glance, occupies an exclusive part of the range of a species. And geneticists like to add, for purposes of mathematical clarity but not as an absolute requirement, that the population is a “deme”: its members interbreed at random, and any member is equally likely to mate with any other member in the population, regardless of its location.

...

To the south, in the mountains of northern Georgia and Alabama, there is another generally recognized subspecies, Plethodon cinereus polycentratus, separated from P. cinereus cinereus by 80 kilometers of redback-free terrain. A third subspecies, P. cinereus serratus, occurs in several widely separated localities in the hill country of Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. These two additional races offer the same difficulties as the main northern subspecies. Their triple names are a convenient shorthand, the statement of a rough truth. The classification works so long as we recognize that dicing up the whole species geographically is imprecise and to a large degree arbitrary. Depending on the criteria used, there could be one subspecies of P. cinereus, or there could be hundreds.
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Jinfengopteryx
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Fair enough.
I guess we can at least conclude that, if human subspecies/races exist, the exact groups are at least vastly different from what most people have in mind.
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Gyirin
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Jinfengopteryx
Apr 18 2016, 09:07 PM
While I agree that this would be very unpleasant, science should not depend on politics, so I don't think these are good objections.
Human right to be happy and not get harmed >>>>>>>>>>> Scientific progress. And science has always been affected by society.
Edited by Gyirin, Apr 18 2016, 10:17 PM.
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Jinfengopteryx
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Gyirin
Apr 18 2016, 10:16 PM
Human right to be happy and not get harmed >>>>>>>>>>> Scientific progress.
OK, my statement was a bit imprecise, I was not talking about science that can cause harm (like certain forms of cloning and genetic engineering; I was not trying to say scientists can create unviable mutants for the sake of curiosity), rather about covering the truth for not offending certain people. This doesn't change the fact that I do now consider this to be a valid objection to this topic though. Spartan has convincingly argued though that a subspecies classification of humans would have no benefits (racialism has pretty much zero predictive power), so there is no point in doing it when the problems outweigh it.
Gyirin
Apr 18 2016, 10:16 PM
And science has always been affected by society.
Sure, it often had (evolution, heliocentrism) and still has (global warming) to fight against what the broad masses wish.
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Gyirin
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Certain people will always find a loophole. The fact that there are Homo sapiens subspecies is all the racists would hear.
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Jinfengopteryx
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No, having classifying humans into subspecies would be little more than a play on nomenclature, it does not imply the stuff (like IQ differences) all the racialist literature is dreaming of. Not to mention that the Asian-European-African division would not be justified like that either.

I am not denying that classifying aborigines or a few African tribes as different subspecies should not be done as it would contribute to discrimination against these groups (particularly because they'd feel so small and marginalized compared to the rest), but that does not mean that it would confirm the BS found in works like The Bell Curve.
Edited by Jinfengopteryx, Apr 18 2016, 11:09 PM.
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Taipan
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maker
Apr 18 2016, 07:01 PM
Most humans, if not all, are already in the subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens, so subspecies within a subspecies wouldn't be plausible.


Correct.

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Spartan
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They could just define any member of a hypothetical subspecies to make it the holotype for this particular subspecies and call it Homo sapiens whatever while keeping Homo sapiens sapiens for any other subspecies.
Edited by Spartan, Apr 19 2016, 12:02 AM.
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Grimace
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Gyirin
Apr 18 2016, 10:16 PM
Jinfengopteryx
Apr 18 2016, 09:07 PM
While I agree that this would be very unpleasant, science should not depend on politics, so I don't think these are good objections.
Human right to be happy and not get harmed >>>>>>>>>>> Scientific progress. And science has always been affected by society.
I'm not even sure there is any notable progress to be made by classifying humans into subspecies. It may/may not be accurate, but either way we don't really lose anything not doing it.
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Gyirin
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Then no reason to do it unless someone wants racism to grow bigger and badder.
From what I've seen, racists would use everything available. Thats why racists used to use science to try to prove their superiority even if it was pseudo science. I'm sure modern racists still do it.
Edited by Gyirin, Apr 20 2016, 10:09 PM.
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Jinfengopteryx
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Grimace
Apr 20 2016, 08:47 PM
I'm not even sure there is any notable progress to be made by classifying humans into subspecies. It may/may not be accurate, but either way we don't really lose anything not doing it.
Gyirin
Apr 20 2016, 10:07 PM
Then no reason to do it unless someone wants racism to grow bigger and badder.
No offense, but I already admitted this long before (and my admission was completely ignored), so I don't really see what you guys are trying to say. The fact that it brings no benefits is exactly the reason why I am against it.
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maker
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Censoring science because it offends some people is simply ridiculous, this in every way is considered political manipulation of science. Based on this logic shouldn't teaching evolution be banned because it have been used as justification for genocide?

But I agree that modern humans shouldn't be classified into multiple subspecies. However, if they could be classified this way, which they couldn't, then there's nothing wrong with it. It's simply stating that all humans are different and in itself does not encourage racism. Science should have no exceptions or loopholes.
Edited by maker, Apr 21 2016, 03:09 PM.
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Gyirin
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You mean justification for European Empires to colonize other countries and kill or enslave the natives?
I think the difference is that evolution that was used as justification was cultural evolution and not biological. Plus human was one species but the Europeans considered their colony's natives sub human anyway. Modern racists are no better and if they know that human is one species but still show off their racism, what would they do if human is devided into several subspecies?
Also the worst thing evolution teaching can do today is offend extrene creationists while racism can take away people's job, money, rights, home, life.
Edited by Gyirin, Apr 21 2016, 06:25 PM.
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Jinfengopteryx
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Gyirin
Apr 21 2016, 06:07 PM
You mean justification for European Empires to colonize other countries and kill or enslave the natives?
What are you trying to say? As maker said, evolution has justified about as evil things (not to mention that it could also justify "We are animals, so why don't we behave like animals?" ideologies; or some sexist stuff that evolutionary psychology could justify).
Gyirin
Apr 21 2016, 06:07 PM
I think the difference is that evolution that was used as justification was cultural evolution and not biological.
This is not true at all. Evolution is biological and eugenics is an ideology based on biology as well.
Gyirin
Apr 21 2016, 06:07 PM
Plus human was one species but the Europeans considered their colony's natives sub human anyway.
If you have several subspecies, it does not follow that some are superior or inferior to each other.
Gyirin
Apr 21 2016, 06:07 PM
Modern racists are no better and if they know that human is one species but still show off their racism, what would they do if human is devided into several subspecies?
Well, modern racists have no problem exploiting the already existing divisions (languages, nations, ethnicities, religions) to declare superiority, so subspecies (which would either way not be the division everyone has in mind, there is no way a subspecies classification would come close to the traditional white-black-Asian-Native American classification). Besides, most of them believe in the existence of "races" regardless of what science says (it is simply seen as some politically correct conspiracy).
Gyirin
Apr 21 2016, 06:07 PM
Also the worst thing evolution teaching can do today is offend extrene creationists
Nope, most racists today are Social Darwinists. In fact, racism and eugenics are very ugly siblings.
Gyirin
Apr 21 2016, 06:07 PM
while racism can take away people's job, money, rights, home, life.
I doubt actions with these consequences would be in any way influenced by the scientific consensus, as they are illegal, so people who do such stuff probably don't care for what others say anyway.


BTW, if we take the science censoring to the next step, we may also prohibit quite a large amount of belief systems because there are so many ideologies and religions that can justify violence as well.
Edited by Jinfengopteryx, Apr 21 2016, 08:57 PM.
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