The depressing story of the American continent.

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[–]milkmender11 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (10 children)

Dragonere, I dismantled your point completely. Let me try to explain it again.

Your 'clusters' are literally human opinions. They do not exist as scientific data. You are talking about a research package called STRUCTURE which I and other scientists use. In order to get ANY clusters from this program, we must put the desired number of clusters in ourself. You are acting as if these clusters are real data. They are not. Every time you talk about any number of clusters, you are referencing a specific researcher who decided to arbitrarily use a given number of clusters. You actually have to open STRUCTURE and TELL it how many clusters you want. It can't give you ANY clusters, none at all, until you tell it to give you a specific number. Your clusters, literally, are arbitrary opinions. They are not in the data. They never were. There is no 'race' to correspond to, either. Race is not a defined scientific concept. I am talking about science here.

Here is what you are doing: without realizing it, you are choosing to use a number of clusters that corresponds to the 'races' you want to see. You say they 'correspond.' They do not. You have to first choose an arbitrary number of clusters (a k value) for STRUCTURE to give you. Then, you backwards-rationalize that number into alignment with the racial categories that you want to believe in. What about two races? You can tell STRUCTURE, 'give me an output with two clusters,' and it will. What would your preferred two races be? You can ask it to give you 3, 4, 5, literally any number that is equal to or less than the number of individuals. Hell, you could use data that includes multiple samples from single individuals and ask STRUCTURE to give you more clusters than there are individual humans in your sample!! And it WOULD! You are only talking about a program, STRUCTURE, that you are only just learning about from me. I have been using this program for years.

Finally, the ML k values. I read your link. Honestly, I'm not sure why you would use this when I quite literally taunted you to use it in my first post. I asked you to bring this up. Don't you know a trap when you see one?? The first problem is that it assumes a single level of magnification for the sample. It decides to look at the data at one level of magnification--not closer, not further. This is precisely what I said in my previous post. Of course, at a specific level of magnification, it 'looks' like there are 3 clusters. So, again, you arbitrarily choose 3, and just pass the buck to an algorithim which you have chosen in advance. You have not gotten away from the arbitrary nature of the k selection at all. You simply loaded up your data at one level of magnification, chose the number 3, and ran an algorithim that would give you 3, based on your hunch. If you zoom out, you will see 2, or 1. If you zoom in, you will see 4, 5, 6, up to as many individual points of data that you have. This is how cluster analysis works. There is no one 'true' or 'correct' algorithim that will give you an objective k value, and I can prove it right now. I actually found this tidbit in a paper by a researcher who runs exactly this analysis, who used this argument to debunk your claim in advance, because he knew people would make it.

Take your Magic Algorithim, the one that gives you your Objective K. Let's say it's 7. Ok, now an algorithim gave you the k value of 7, and you can pretend that you didn't choose that number, that The Gods of Science did. Wow! What a great algorithim. It is so great, let's run it on the same sample again!

Whoops. 49. Get it?

Algorithims to magically 'justify' k values are not an escape to your problem of arbitrary k designation. They just pass the buck to an algorithim that was likewise developed by a person. You see that graphic in your link, it is obviously 3 clusters at that scale, so you run the algorithim that you already know will give you 3. You are abusing the function of that algorithim. Its intended function is very much like an ANOVA or MANOVA. It is a confirmation test, a way to say: "Hm, I am pretty sure I see 3 clusters here, at this scale, and I do indeed want to use 3 clusters in my analysis. However, I worry that if I eyeball it like this, the peer reviewers will take issue with that. What I can do instead is use this algorithim to confirm that, at this scale, the computer also sees 3 distinct clusters. It might seem obvious, but this way, my reviewers won't be able to chastise me for eyeballing the chart. It is obvious that I see 3 clusters here, but this is just one little test I can use to not make it seem like I am choosing to see the 3." This is common. The more we can seem like we have a test to back us up, that it isn't our opinion, the more likely we are to get through peer review. You seem to think of science as more rigorous and monolothic than it actuall is. Hard reality check, my friend, we are just a bunch of stressed and overworked peons like everyone else. In a way, your idealism is invigorating, and reminds me of my more energetic graduate students. You would have made a decent geneticist, with a proper superviser, of course :)

It's great that you use Python. Wonderful. I am glad you are developing skills. That does not change the fact that your data, the data you cited, with your first link, mostly came from studies which used STRUCTURE. I am quite familiar with those studies, having cited them myself. The same researchers who published them would tell you the same things I am telling you now. I learned much of this from their papers myself.

You didn't address the issue of the taxonomic nonexistence of the race concept. You handwaved it away and made reference to the color spectrum argument, which I didn't use. I understand if these arguments may be new to you, but please respond to the arguments I make rather than the ones you feel you are prepared to debunk, that I never invoked.

You are incorrect that my argument could be used to nullify the species concept. There are several species concepts, each well defined, with conventional classification criteria. This does not exist with the race concept. Actually, this is rich! YOU are using the equivalent of the color spectrum argument to say that my correct designation of the race concept as an undefined taxonomic classification, is tantamount to denying species classification wholesale!! Brilliant! It's as if you are saying that if I throw away the subspecies concept as a scientifically robust taxonomic criteria because it is inconsistent, then I must also throw away the species concept because there are moments when its consistency flickers. But that IS the color spectrum argument, which you already reject!

You then again claim that k is not arbitrary, but fail to recognize that a human told STRUCTURE, or your analysis package in Python, how many clusters to find. At best, you can arbitrarily choose a specific scale where you see 3 clusters, and run an algorithim that will show you 3 clusters. Zoom out, adjust the parameters of the algorithim, and you will see 1 cluster. Zoom in, adjust, you will see 10. Or 100. Arbitrary. Or, just run the algorithim on the clusters it produced. Why not? If it worked so well the first time, why not learn more. And all this on selectively chosen SNPs that do not express in phenotypes, not a random sample of genes. Hell, if you did choose a random sample of genes, you analysis would look overwhelmingly Chinese.

[–]milkmender11 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (9 children)

I mean, the clusters ALWAYS correspond to something. Always. If we have one cluster for every single individual in the study, those clusters will correspond perfectly to the number of individuals in the dataset. It will be a 1:1 correspondence. Does that mean there are about 8 billion+ races? Yes. It does. It is the same method that you used to get 3, or 7, or 12, or however many you wanted. There are as many races as you want to see. All an algorithim can do is put a robot-buddy next to you who obsequiously repeats what you programmed him to say. The reality of genetics is in the real genes themselves, genes that modify us. You are trying so hard to turn that reality into some kind of scientific argument for a given k value, and you have failed to do so.

I did not cede any ground. I hypothetically assumed your position for a moment to demonstrate a damning inconsistency inherent within it. Come on, man. I know I was a bit snarky in my previous message, but don't play this game. It's as if I said, "Even if I were to assume your position is true, then there would be this problem of--" "HA!! You just assumed my position is TRUE, I ,got you, you snake in the grass! You admitted it!" You're clearly smart enough to know the game you are playing there, and so you are smart enough to know you won't get away with it.

I never claimed that racial clusters aren't useful enough. Again, you are responding to an argument you have heard in the past, one you feel ready to reply to, but not the one I made. I said, quite specifically, that the utility of clusters depends on the question we ask. This is always the way clusters work. They are, by their nature, supportive classification schemes. They don't exist in nature, we use them as tools to answer scientific questions. Change the question, change the clusters. They could be immensely useful, or not useful at all. How many loci? Depends on the question. How useful? Depends on the question. If your question is, "Why is it possible to choose a k value that corresponds to one of the many available socially popular racial classification schemes?" Now there is a question we could talk about. But it is a specific question. The answer is not 'because race exists.' We would need to talk about why humans evolved to classify each other along ethnic boundaries, how we prioritize our distinctions, what selection pressures might have contributed. Lawrence Hirschfeld is currently the leading expert in this field.

Think about it. Let's pretend you are right (remember, this is a Socratic exercise). Why would humans have evolved to correctly determine the 'correct' racial boundaries? We don't evolve to see scientific truths, we evolve to perpetuate our genes. It ought to be assumed that we are very selective in our racial assignments, that we would care overwhelmingly about clearly expressed features like skin, eyes, hair, and not so much about hidden features that are often much more consequential, like circulatory systems. And this is exactly what Hirschfeld's work demonstrates. Indeed, we humans do have a naive race-assignment module. That is the true home of race, the closest place where race is real science. But that is a real feature of evolved human cognition, not a real feature of human populations. Scientifically, race is in the eye of the beholder. If you want to talk about human populations genetics in a way where it becomes compatible with what we observe in the data, without needless references to what racial categories might be popular in one place or another (it changes from place to place, time to time) then the word 'ancestry' is a good place to go, since researchers have already done pioneering work in that direction.

Genome wide clustering does not separate races at all. It, again, produces the number of races you input into the analysis. In fact, it does a much poorer job than the SNP analyses, because there are far fewer differences to analyze. Of course there will be groups in the data. I'm not saying you won't see obvious clusters. You see obvious clusters in one family. You see them in one individual. There is a reason you keep bringing up the social classifications of race, even though I am staying glued to the science. It's because you know that you need to leave science to come up with a way to justify your k value. You need to find a way to legitimize your preferred race number, and you can't do it with science, so you try to backwards-rationalize into it with popilar opinion, and pretend that there is some grand secret truth here about a magic number that we have intuited, and science somehow justifies. But you haven't even told me how many races you think there are, you just keep saying that society has some number that corresponds to the clusters. What number? I have heard so many. Is it 3? 5? 7? 12? All of these k values have appeared in the literature. They ALL correspond to one view or another of how many races there are. I don't know which number you like, but you seem to believe we all already agree on this. Do you think that most humans today agree about how many races there are? What about 100 years ago? 100 years from now? That is hardly a scientific variable.

My friend, about my 'garbage paragraph.' Oh, my friend. My dear friend, Dragonerne. Please direct your attention to your flair. "Jesus is white." A Jew, is white, apparently, and you feel the need to append that information to every single post you make, right at the top. Yeah, what I said is painfully relevant. In fact, it cuts through this debate and strikes at something personal about your own motivations. Honestly, Dragon, thank you for this. It is a rare day when someone so spectacularly makes my point for me like this. My apologizes for the snark--this one is going right in the scrapbook.

You failed to demonstrate my 'misunderstanding' of the clustering algorithims. Actually, you didn't even know what STRUCTURE was, which is what you didn't know you were citing. You told me that you use Python, as if I had said YOU were running analyses through STRUCTURE. I was talking about your first link. I wouldn't know what textbook you are looking at, because we mostly stop using them in grad school, certainly by our first postdoc. Textbooks are such a vague thing to cite, and become outdated quickly. In academica proper we cite published papers, sometimes edited volumes. If you have a specific paper to cite, please do. I try to avoid doing so myself because it comes across as trying to bully someone into silence by giving them homework. But without meaning to, you are showing your hand by mentioning textbooks at all.

I know you aren't dumb. I already kind of apologized for being snarky, but I will actually apologize here. It's just that I already know you, I have met you and your arguments 100 times, and I can't help but feel as if we are already pals engaged in friendly and lightly abusive sparring. Truth be told, I learn more from altrighters than I have from many professers, who would never acknowledge something as straightforward as the warrior gene. I know you aren't dumb. You're wrong, and you're clearly not formally trained in this, but you are well-spoken and you've retained complex information well.

[–]SamiAlHayyidGrand Mufti Imam Sheikh Professor Al Hadji Dr. Sami al-Hayyid 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (8 children)

Can two black parents create an Asian kid?

Can two Asian parents create a White kid?

Can two White parents create a black kid?

What we mean by race is simply the fact that all of these questions can only be correctly answered with a resounding "No". Those who believe in race rightly don't care about any of this other stuff (continuum fallacy, '99.X% similarity', etc.) simply because no amount of scientific meandering is even remotely going to turn that resounding "No" into a "Yes" or even a "Maybe".

Your style of argument could just as easily be used to attack dog breeds. Sure, dogs probably are overwhelmingly genetically identical. So what?

Can two Great Danes beget a chihuahua?

Is a chihuahua as equally capable of being a police dog as a Belgian Malinois?

The answers to these questions are evidence enough of the existence of dog breeds for most people. Yet strangely when we substitute 'Great Dane' for one race and 'chihuahua' for another in the first question, suddenly the egalitarians amusingly try to backpedal and declare such arguments unsound.

It's hilarious how Western 'science' is so transparently hellbent on trying to provide quasi-scientific explanations for Left-liberal ideological views. The same people who argue this nonsense are incidentally most of the same people who believe that the male-female distinction is also 'fake', and who simultaneously use the 'born this way' argument and the 'sexuality can change over the course of one's life' argument. Hmm... we see a pattern here. Those who want racial distinctions abolished also want these other distinctions abolished. The 'science' in all three cases is subordinate to purely ideological and quasi-moral reasoning. The presupposed assumptions and the reached conclusions are numerically identical.

Until two black parents can create an Asian kid (i.e. never), there will always be a need for racial classifications among humans. End of. Keep denying race all you like—it's transparently obvious that the underlying reasons for doing so are based in ideology. Eastern European and East Asian geneticists, who overwhelmingly accept race, will bury Western science.

[–]milkmender11 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (7 children)

Yes, two Black parents can create an Asian kid. Yes, two Asian parents can create a white kid. Yes, two white parents can create a Black kid.

You are wrong.

https://www.konbini.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/12/files/2018/03/national-geographic-cover-april-2018-race.adapt_.1190.1.jpg

These are twin sisters, from the same parents. One is Black, one is white.

Now, it is a bit complicated. You don't realize it, but you are invoking the "rule of hypodescent." This is a known anthropological concept. Your categories are social, and they break down when we apply more rigorous scrutiny to them.

Chen is Asian, but he has half white ancestry. Because he lives in the USA, where Asians are a minority group, he is seen as Asian, not at all white. Everyone knows Chen is Asian. Nobody goes out of their way to say he is 'half white.' They don't even see it, since Asian alleles tend to be dominant.

Chen marries Sue. Sue is also Asian, but half white. Everyone likewise knows that Sue is Asian. Her census record says 'Asian,' not 'Asian and Caucasian.' Just 'Asian.'

Chen and Sue have a daughter, Sally. Sally is white!! She looks white, everyone sees her clearly as such. Of course, this can happen. It's luck of the genetic draw. The genes were there, and society has spoken. The phenotypes interact with the zeitgeist, and everyone knows exactly what box to put these people in. Chen is Asian. Sue is Asian. Sally is white. Nobody hesitates to give their 'resounding answers.'

Now, here is where you want to try and be specific, when it becomes inconvenient for you. Before, you said that these questions have resounding answers. Indeed they do! all of Chen's coworkers know that he is Asian. But now, you don't think the answers are so resounding. Now you want nuance and subtlety, now it is complicated. Now it matters to you that Chen is half white.

See, you can't have your cake and eat it too. You want it to be the case that everyone 'just knows' the answers to these questions, but they don't. They have many default assumptions that they make as a matter of their socialization, assumptions that vary enormously from culture to culture, and they won't become more nuanced to accomodate your worldview. Chen IS Asian. Everyone knows it. Sue IS Asian everyone knows it. It is your 'resounding answer.' Sally IS white, and everyone knows it. You can kick and scream and try to persuade society otherwise, but they aren't trying to make your case. You have to do it yourself, and I doubt your reply is going to have a 'resounding answer.' You're going to try to be nuanced, to bring in the little things that matter. What happened to 'resounding answers'??

I didn't mention the continuum fallacy and I didn't mention dog breeds. I appreciate that you refer to this as my 'style' of argument, because you know I didn't say any of that. It's like 'homestyle' food, aka, not homemade. So I won't bother addressing your point about dogs, because it is YOUR point, not one I made. I'm making arguments different than the ones you seem prepared to reply to, which is very much an altright theme. I didn't talk about sex or gender either. Let's stay focused.

And who's denying race?? Again, whose argument are you replying to?? Race is extremelt real. It isn't science, but not everything has to be.

[–]MarkimusNational Socialist 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

Yes, two Black parents can create an Asian kid. Yes, two Asian parents can create a white kid. Yes, two white parents can create a Black kid.

No they can't

https://www.konbini.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/12/files/2018/03/national-geographic-cover-april-2018-race.adapt_.1190.1.jpg JPG

These are twin sisters, from the same parents. One is Black, one is white.

No, they're both mixed race retard.

[–]milkmender11 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

Wow. "Nuh-uh!" Is your reply. Want to throw in a "nya nya!" or a "neener-neener"? Give me a wet willy maybe, or kick me in the balls? I haven't got any, sadly.

You are also mixed raced. Everyone is mixed race. That doesn't matter. What matters is society's RESOUNDING ANSWERS, as you said. Nobody looks at the white twin and says 'she is mixed race.' She is white. That is the resounding answer. Nobody looks at the Black twin and says she is mixed. Everyone gives the resounding answer: SHE IS BLACK. But now, you don't like resounding answers anymore!! Now, you like nuance. Now you like to nitpick, and be specific. Now it really matters to you that we look PAST the resounding answers of society, and keep in mind who is 'mixed' and who is 'not mixed,' even as society rolls their eyes at you and continues to give the resounding answers that you liked 30 minutes ago.

[–]DragonerneJesus is white 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

You are talking about outliers and mixed race people. Yes, you can incorrectly guess someones race, but that doesn't mean that the person wasn't half-Asian, half-White to begin with. You literally stated in your post that the two parents were mixed race.

You're confusing social race with biological race.

[–]MarkimusNational Socialist 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

No they have one black and one white parent, they're mixed race. You're literally the only person in the world that would dispute this fact because you're just trolling using tactical nihilism.

You should also get a psychological evaluation, this comment is wacky as fuck.

[–]milkmender11 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

9People don't see their parents. If I showed you each twin without context, you would say one is Black and the other is white. When you walk around, do people come up to you and demand to see photos of your parents? No. They just have a RESOUNDING ANSWER about what you are. It's the same for these twins. They don't go around getting called 'mixed.' Everyone takes one look at them, don't know anything about their parents, and knows which one is white and which one is Black. I thought you liked RESOUNDING ANSWERS! Now we need to invoke everyone's parents in order to know their race? That isn't very resounding.

What about the example I gave with multiple mixed race Asian parents? It's the same situation, with a different distribution. You see many people like this every day. You think they are Black, white, Asian. You don't know about their parents and you don't ask. You do what everyone does. You give your resounding answer.

A lot of people here care about your assessment of my sanity. I care about it a lot as well. It is very important, and consequential.

[–]MarkimusNational Socialist 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

9People don't see their parents. If I showed you each twin without context, you would say one is Black and the other is white. When you walk around, do people come up to you and demand to see photos of your parents? No. They just have a RESOUNDING ANSWER about what you are. It's the same for these twins. They don't go around getting called 'mixed.' Everyone takes one look at them, don't know anything about their parents, and knows which one is white and which one is Black. I thought you liked RESOUNDING ANSWERS! Now we need to invoke everyone's parents in order to know their race? That isn't very resounding.

Schizophrenia moment.

What about the example I gave with multiple mixed race Asian parents? It's the same situation, with a different distribution. You see many people like this every day. You think they are Black, white, Asian. You don't know about their parents and you don't ask. You do what everyone does. You give your resounding answer.

No it's an assumption based on appearances, and an incorrect one once facts are obtained.

Logic is a famous rapper who looks white to most people, but his father is black so he's mixed race. He's not magically white just because you insist that he is.

The other guy did better. You should leave this to him.

I'll gladly not talk to a kike battling with his schizophasia whilst attempting to do tactical nihilism.

[–]milkmender11 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

A lot of people care that you are calling me a schizophrenic Jew. I am worried that this will impact my life negatively, because what you say matters a lot. Won't you please take your comments down before people see?

Now assumptions based on appearances are bad? The other guys said this was about resounding answers, not nuanced assumptions that involve detailed understanding of everyone's parental lineages. Do you agree with what he said or not?

It's great that you did a lot of background reading on Logic. If you put a picture of him in front of random Americans, don't say his name, don't talk about his parents, what would they say his race is? Society will give a resounding answer, and it won't be the same as what you want it to be. Again, if you have a disagreement with the Sheikh, why are you responding to me? Respond to him.

I'll gladly not talk to a kike battling with his schizophasia whilst attempting to do tactical nihilism.

Lol, you got all of that wrong. Not a Jew. Atheist. Not a schizo. OCD. Not a 'he.' Biofemale.

I have only the faintest idea of what tactical nihilism is, but I can clearly see how you mean it here--it means 'disregards the arguments I like'! Nice buzzword, though. Very cool. Makes you sound super smart