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How Should Human Subspecies Be Classified?; A discussion about human subspecies.
Topic Started: Apr 18 2016, 02:05 AM (4,111 Views)
Spartan
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maker
Apr 21 2016, 03:07 PM
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.
Did you read my post? It's not because it "offends some people". It's because the whole concept of 'subspecies' is extremely arbitrary and in many cases useless. Based on examples in animals we could already separate humans into subspecies, but what would science gain from it? Absolutely nothing. But on the other side it would just fuel racism.
I generally agree that science shouldn't have considerations for societal objections. The gain of knowledge from the theory of evolution was absolutely massive and it still is, but in this case it would be near zero.
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Thalassophoneus
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maker
Apr 21 2016, 03:07 PM
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.
Regardless of whether humans should or shouldn't be classified into separate subspecies, I believe that this change, besides from being a useless detail, would also become food for racism. It's not that it "offends" some people. It is that many people adopt a belief for any reason and will find anything they can to support it. The separation of humans into subspecies would supposedly justify the assumption that the "European subspecies", for example, has evolved more quickly than the "African subspecies".
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Jinfengopteryx
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As I said before, you guys are mixing up traditional subspecies divisions and more or less plausible subspecies divisions.
This doesn't mean discrimination against Aborigines or Pygmys is better than discrimination against Africans in general or Asians. I am rather worried that you guys are not quite understanding what is actually being discussed here. It is of course also possible that you are worried about racists quote mining scientists to say "Scientists now believe that some subspecies exist, therefore, my classification is right" (such shameless quote-mining is common in pseudoscience) in which case I need to retract my accusation.
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maker
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Jinfengopteryx
Apr 21 2016, 07:02 PM
Nope, most racists today are Social Darwinists. In fact, racism and eugenics are very ugly siblings.
Source? Most racist groups today seem to be religiously motivated:
Quote:
 
In 2001, the Southern Poverty Law Center found the following quote on the website of one of those groups, the white nationalist Council of Conservative Citizens: "God is the author of racism. God is the One who divided mankind into different types. ... Mixing the races is rebelliousness against God."
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/6/19/south-carolinas-19-active-hate-groups.html

Also in Sudan and other African countries, the Islamic extremist and Arab supremacist government had carried out genocide against black people in the Darfur and the south, and I'm sure they aren't Social Darwinists.
Spartan
Apr 21 2016, 09:29 PM
but what would science gain from it? Absolutely nothing. But on the other side it would just fuel racism.
The problem is once you start giving out exceptions, others start following. Of course, some aspects of science would be relatively useless, but this applies to every system there is. Making some exceptions to physical laws is just ridiculous.
Edited by maker, Apr 22 2016, 03:20 PM.
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Jinfengopteryx
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maker
Apr 22 2016, 03:16 PM
Jinfengopteryx
Apr 21 2016, 07:02 PM
Nope, most racists today are Social Darwinists. In fact, racism and eugenics are very ugly siblings.
Source? Most racist groups today seem to be religiously motivated:
Quote:
 
In 2001, the Southern Poverty Law Center found the following quote on the website of one of those groups, the white nationalist Council of Conservative Citizens: "God is the author of racism. God is the One who divided mankind into different types. ... Mixing the races is rebelliousness against God."
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/6/19/south-carolinas-19-active-hate-groups.html

Also in Sudan and other African countries, the Islamic extremist and Arab supremacist government had carried out genocide against black people in the Darfur and the south, and I'm sure they aren't Social Darwinists.
Sorry, maybe I should have specified racialists (racialism = "scientific" racism). Most racialists I have seen (be it the Bell Curve authors, the editors of the neo-Nazi wiki Metapedia guys or guys like J.P. Rushton) are heavy supporters of Social Darwinism. I admit that focusing on them was maybe not so smart, as they seem to be a fringe group among modern racists, but they are the ones who would care most about a subspecies classification of humans, so I'd say they are relevant.
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Gyirin
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So they think Caucasians are genetically superior to other 'races'?
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Jinfengopteryx
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Pretty much, even though they usually throw in some stupid alibis like "I believe Asians are more intelligent and Africans are better at sport, so I am not racist!" (but usually, they'll still explain why Europeans are nevertheless the most "creative" and "balanced" race of all, so the aforementioned advantages don't count XD ).
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Gyirin
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Gun powder, paper, compass actually came from China. East Asia had a lot of creative geniuses in history. They're just not well known as European ones.
Edited by Gyirin, Apr 22 2016, 07:38 PM.
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Spartan
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maker
Apr 22 2016, 03:16 PM
The problem is once you start giving out exceptions, others start following.
It's not an exception. It's the principal arbitrariness of the system. You can make both valid zoological arguments for and against human subspecies.
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Thalassophoneus
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A classmate of mine had told me that James Watson once supported that the DNA of whites is "superior" to that of blacks.
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Jinfengopteryx
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Yup, Watson was indeed a racialist, but it is not uncommon that Nobel Laureates sometimes believe in crap (it's called "Nobel disease").
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Cat
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Jinfengopteryx
Apr 22 2016, 07:01 PM
maker
Apr 22 2016, 03:16 PM
Jinfengopteryx
Apr 21 2016, 07:02 PM
Nope, most racists today are Social Darwinists. In fact, racism and eugenics are very ugly siblings.
Source? Most racist groups today seem to be religiously motivated:
Quote:
 
In 2001, the Southern Poverty Law Center found the following quote on the website of one of those groups, the white nationalist Council of Conservative Citizens: "God is the author of racism. God is the One who divided mankind into different types. ... Mixing the races is rebelliousness against God."
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/6/19/south-carolinas-19-active-hate-groups.html

Also in Sudan and other African countries, the Islamic extremist and Arab supremacist government had carried out genocide against black people in the Darfur and the south, and I'm sure they aren't Social Darwinists.
Sorry, maybe I should have specified racialists (racialism = "scientific" racism). Most racialists I have seen (be it the Bell Curve authors, the editors of the neo-Nazi wiki Metapedia guys or guys like J.P. Rushton) are heavy supporters of Social Darwinism. I admit that focusing on them was maybe not so smart, as they seem to be a fringe group among modern racists, but they are the ones who would care most about a subspecies classification of humans, so I'd say they are relevant.
I wouldn't define the authors of the Bell Curve as racialists, nor 'fringe' scholars. They just point out the average differences in IQ between races, which have emerged in other studies as well, and could be an important social factor. They don't propose white supremacy, in fact according to their study East Asians have the highest IQ, even if whites don't lag much behind.
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Jinfengopteryx
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First of all, I must admit that I cannot discuss the book in great depth because I have not read it (only glossed over a PDF). It was rather one of the examples that popped up in my mind when thinking of scientific racism. I was not intending to denounce the book as a whole, nor to ignite a discussion about it, as it was rather meant to be an example (I have seen racialists in action though and I'm sure the book was among their fuel).
Cat
Apr 23 2016, 02:46 AM
I wouldn't define the authors of the Bell Curve as racialists, nor 'fringe' scholars.
I was not calling them fringe scholars, rather fringe among racists, as the majority of racists don't care for that much for evidence. But I guess calling them fringe scholars won't be wrong either, as the scientific consensus is not very much in favor of the race concept and a glance at their reference list shows little more than the classical "big names" in race research (Jensen, Lynn, Rushton).
Cat
Apr 23 2016, 02:46 AM
They just point out the average differences in IQ between races, which have emerged in other studies as well, and could be an important social factor.
From my discussions with racists, I learned that "just pointing out stuff" is a very common euphemism. I don't know how racism is defined, but I believe if someone claims that races exist, that they have socially relevant biological differences and that we must act according to it, then it comes pretty close.
The problem is that I consider scientific racism to be pseudoscience. As I pointed above before, there is not enough evidence for the black-white-Asian distinction, nor even a clear definition of the race concept. The closest I have seen from the authors was this (I used the search function of my PDF reader, if I nonetheless overlooked something, please show it):
Quote:
 
It would be disingenuous to leave the racial issue at that, however, for race is often on people's minds when they think about IQ. Thus we will eventually comment on cognitive differences among races as they might derive from genetic differences, telling a story that is interesting but still riddled with more questions than answers. This prompts a second point to be understood at the outset: There are differences between races, and they are the rule, not the exception. That assertion may seem controversial to some readers, but it verges on tautology: Races are by definition groups of people who differ in characteristic ways. Intellectual fashion has dictated that all differences must be denied except the absolutely undeniable differencesin appearance, but nothing in biology says this should be so. On the contrary, race differences are varied and complex-and interesting and they make the human species more adaptable and more interesting
In light of the necessity of a clear definition of the race concept, this is not much. The lack of clear definitions is usually one of the most common characteristics of pseudoscience, as it makes their work harder to falsify and criticism can be easily dismissed.
I of course can't comment on the particular research of the book, but reviewers have accused it of selective use of data:
http://reason.com/archives/1995/03/01/cracked-bell
The same applies to comparable research:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations#Criticism_of_data_sets
Cat
Apr 23 2016, 02:46 AM
They don't propose white supremacy, in fact according to their study East Asians have the highest IQ, even if whites don't lag much behind.
Fair enough, although I have to say that their fans love to relativate this.

This reminds me of something though:
Earlier race "research" on skull size and IQ tests have shown that Jews and Asians were less intelligent than whites, modern research shows vice versa. We have a similar pattern if we compare the birthrates of blacks and whites (just remember those times when European countries had far higher populations than African ones and twofold birth numbers). This is for me rather convincing evidence that the differences between the "races" in birth numbers or IQ are little more than social constructs, since sociology has, as we all know, little predictive power compared to biology. It is also rather telling that most race proponents I am aware of (namely Arthur Jensen, Richard Lynn, Richard Herrnstein and Jean-Phillipe Rushton) are psychologists rather then biologists.
Moreover, if I understood them correctly, the authors themselves seem undecided on whether genetics or the environment account for the differences, even though this is extremely important as to whether the race concept can even be applied.
Edited by Jinfengopteryx, Apr 23 2016, 05:49 AM.
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Spartan
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I highly doubt any of these differences in IQ tests are due to genetic reasons and as has been pointed out any theoretical valid human subspecies would compass completely different ethnicities than 'traditional' race concepts suggest.
I don't even think there would be much differences in Intelligence between Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis, but that's of course extremely speculative.
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Fireflight
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I think it's a fairly reasonable thing to say that humans could have more subspecies, but I don't think it's important right now. Without it, we already have so much discrimination, and with science agreeing that some people are "different", there would probably be even more people using the wrong logic that because someone is different, they should have different rights. Science is meant to discover things that improve our life style, and it is a good thing, but it isn't that great when it is used to cause discrimination. I think we are just fine the way we are and that we don't need to go very far into the subject, a bit too complicated to prove if we have subspecies or not, and in the end if we prove something we don't really get that many benefits from it.
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