Comments by "bj0rn" (@TheLivirus) on "Racist Rant Gets John Derbyshire Fired From National Review" video.

  1. I'm tired of you getting caught up in details, so I consulted an actual scientific report on the subject. I was able to extract the following facts (a bit simplified): An individual has 14% chance of being genetically closer to the average of another population than his own. A pair of individuals from different populations has 31% chance of being more similar to eachother than a pair from a single population. Again, human races are significant, but not enough to make accurate predictions.
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  2. It's here: ";at Dissimilarity fraction = 0.5, individuals are as likely to be more similar to members of other populations as to members of their own." In other words 0.5 is your hypothesis, that race is a myth. As it turns out it's about 0.31. How is that 100% agreement?
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  3. Look up "Genetic Similarities Within and Between Human Populations" by Genetics Society of America. The numbers I mentioned was the "Dissimilarity fraction" and "Centroid misclassification rate". Make sure you understand the definition of these two. My numbers are a bit simplified, since in reality they are depending on the number of observed "loci". But they are in the discussion referred to as indicators that racial classification should be used with caution, so they should be reliable.
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  4. I don't get your point.
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  5. Yes, I understand that the concept of race become vague now that we have a proper understanding of evolution, but race is still a rather practical concept. I wouldn't call it "superficial". As humans have evolved geographically isolated from eachother, we have developed different characteristics. Racists think peoples 'behavior' can be determined by their genome, and that's where racism fails. When it comes to the mind, the role of environment is much more important than genome.
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  6. I'm just being rational. If you look at the attributes of the intellectual elite of the world they tend to be non-racist, non-violent and law-abiding. Doesn't that imply something? Racism is a simplification of reality. Instead of going to the bottom with the problem and find the true factors and solutions, you settle with the first correlation your mind can percieve: Their appearence.
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  7. So if the groups exist, why not call them races?
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  8. Your terminology suggests 50% "superficial" "myth" Listen. Tomorrow I'll read the article you were referring to earlier. I have a feeling it will help me understand what you're getting at.
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  9. Of course the situation is a bit different with dogs because their races are products of selective breeding. However, for hundreds of thousands of years people have lived pretty much geographically isolated in different parts of the world where they have been subjected to different environements. I find it very unlikely that a few centuries of selective breeding can outrun that. I'm not saying our diversity is a platform for discrimination. I just think it's unwise to pretend it's not there.
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  10. Yeah all of us have some kind of prejustice based on generalization. But most of us are aware of this and have a functional frontal lobe to inhibit these primitive instincts.
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  11. Although there are general differences between the average of races, it is a fact that most variation is within races, not between them. This makes it very hard to make accurate predictions which makes you an ignorant moron. It's like saying all candy in your bag is chocolate, when in fact it contain 48% licorice.
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  12. Ok, humans have evolved geograpically segregated (in general) for say 100k years. This weakens my argument. Dogs are domesticated wolves. If they don't make themselves useful or adopt traits that are attractive to their host, they are likely to either be offed or castaway. Whether their host is a kennel club or a suburban family, mankind is very much involved in their evolution. Either way, that they have partly evolved on the terms of natural selection would only strengthen my argument.
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  13. So what this boils down to is really the definition of "signicifant". If you were right, that races were a complete myth, then we'd expect the probabilities to be 1/2 and (n-1)/n [say 5/6] respectively, where "n" is the number of observed populations assuming they are equally large and equally genetically distant. I say the deviation from this expected value is significant, you say it's not. I don't think we're able to take this discussion any further.
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  14. Are you satisifed with this?: Races do exist, but people in general have an outdated and inaccurate understanding about their nature and relation to eachother, which leads some people to belive that race is enough information to justify discrimination.
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  15. Stupidity can exist without racism. But racism can not exist without stupidity.
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  16. Statistics say racists have a lower IQ, are more likely to be violent, have a criminal record, and being an overall less productive citizen than non-racists. Are you an excpetion? Yes: You're the biggest fucking hipocrite ever. No: k thnx bye!
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  17. It's funny that you mention "long-known", since it's only recently, due to the Human Genome Project, that we've had access to proper statistical data, and geneticists were never in agreement. "Some geneticists concluded the differences were negligible (Lewontin 1972); others disagreed (Mitton 1978). Despite the limited data, it soon became apparent that even a modest number of loci should allow accurate assignment of individuals to populations (Mitton 1978; Smouse et al. 1982)."
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