Stevie Wonder

No, I've addressed these points ad nauseam and you simply keep repeating yourself and have failed to respond to my request to apply these standards of "variation within groups" and "zones of hybridity" to non-human species. Both of these features are not unique to humans, and are in fact normal among subspecies in other species. They are applied to human races ad hoc. Really at this point you're just chanting "variation within groups" and "clines" like a mantra and completely failing to contrast this with other species. If you did, you would see that these characteristics are normal. Lewontin's fallacy, continuum fallacy. Repeat ad nauseam.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quoting_out_of_context Ad nauseam. PRATT.

No you're wrong. It's useful. LOL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedigree_collapse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_novelty Where is the data from 2018 you are looking at that contradicts me? *doesn't hold breath* Especially since I've already referenced modern genetic clustering studies which corroborate early divisions. You are arguing with your imagination. Just an ad nauseam refusal to address what I present. When sociologists (and rarely biologists) claim race is a "social construct", they are claiming that it does not have validity in biology. That is why they present spurious and ill understood biological arguments like Lewontin's fallacy and clines. If you are trying to claim sociologists mean race is biological when they call it a social construct then no, this is not what they mean. You've gone off into your own little world of sophistry rather than look at what the people you represent are actually saying. I didn't accuse you of being racist. If I am emotional it's because of your endless sophistry and lies rather than the subject matter. I am not even particularly emotional, this is just some "y u mad tho" lame ad hominem nonsense. It doesn't support your point. For the last time, it's irrelevant. I know it's irrelevant because it's obviously irrelevant. That some concepts in oncology have different definitions is irrelevant to the meaning of a biological concept, since the concepts you refer to are not disputed as being biological concepts. There is nothing to explore. Explore it yourself because nobody could have any understanding of how one would explore what you are talking about in a way that is relevant to this thread. Please go ahead and show us how exploring concepts in oncology could have any bearing on what we are talking about. If you cannot it will be obvious that you are simply trying to waste people's time with deliberate red herrings, which would be a disgusting indictment upon you. The fact that you deny race defined by ancestry is biological because it falls under the discipline of "history" (LOL) while genus doesn't, is an obvious flaw in your logic. It's just so transparently false that anyone who would be so obviously wrong isn't worth responding to.

In some sense yes all social constructs are biological constructs, since they are a feature of living things. But the usual meaning of "social construct" is something created arbitrarily for human convenience, with no reference to natural phenomena. In this view race is not always a social construct, since one definition of race is based on patterns of shared ancestry, which is a natural phenomenon. This disingenuous garbage is used as a stick to beat White people, e.g. the pseudoscientific AAA statement in the OP where it is claimed the race concept was developed to justify slavery. Disgusting anti-White fabrication. I am not interested in exploring irrelevant supposed parallels. The fact that concepts in oncology have different definitions is just totally irrelevant and I don't know why you keep bringing it up. There is no question to answer.

I already gave an example of predictive validity in description. Ad nauseam attempt to ignore responses. I already agreed dividing people by sports habit was a valid biological construct. Fine. That's a biological construct. Ad nauseam attempt to ignore responses. Lying. No, it has no relevance because natural biological divisions exist whether or not they are "useful". I've already pointed out one use, description, and that is enough for the purposes of this thread. Ad nauseam red herring. Psychology and sociology are subdisciplines of biology, the study of living things. What you had for breakfast 10 years ago is both history and biology. Both. You're confusing your nonsense about what you had for breakfast with how we infer ancestry. Terms have meaning. Calling something a social construct is meant to imply it's not a biological construct. And this is false. Obviously some supposed parallel cases are relevant and some aren't. The fact that some concepts in oncology have several different definitions is irrelevant, they are all biological concepts. We are examining why some concepts are biological and some aren't. There is no question to answer. The question of why you deny the race concept is biological because according to you, laughably, it falls under the discipline of history, but genus does not, is highly relevant. Why the transparent double standard? The reason you cannot answer it is because it exposes your sophomoric and disingenuous sophistry. But I think everyone can see that.

Maybe the source of your confusion is a lack of familiarity with this. So when I ask why North Africans are never grouped with Subsaharan Africans, North Africans does not mean Ethiopia. Also lol at the people downvoting my posts. I guess that's easier than refuting me.

I've already told that whether or not race is useful the subject of this thread is whether it's a valid biological category vis a vis other taxa. I think I've sufficiently demonstrated that, although I doubt it will be admitted. I already stated one use of race: description. If I tell you somebody is Chinese that allows you to make predictions about their appearance. I could go on and on listing various traits which are predicted by racial categories. I could point how the concept is used in medicine and forensics, seems they didn't get the memo from American sociology, or dismissed it as obvious politically motivated pseudoscientific garbage applied only to human races and nowhere else in biology. I could point out various policies which would be informed by a race concept. One way mass immigration to only countries with largely European populations policies could certainly be informed by a race concept, as they are informed now by the supposed "equality" concept. But all of this is outside the scope of this thread and seems to be a way of dodging discussion of whether race is a valid concept. Feel free to open a thread on why the race concept is useful. Do you not have rules about sidetracking threads here, because "experts" want to ask random questions about stuff, as if the people that come and post here have some obligation to dance to their whims? I'm disingenuous? That's rich. I'm not the one spewing PC fallacy after falsehood on a supposed science board. I am. How does this little lecture on the obvious address my point? If race is divided arbitrarily why don't early and modern grouping techniques group East and South Asians versus West Eurasians? Blumenbach with his early methods put the hybrid Ethiopians in the Subsaharan group and that's not unreasonable, although modern genetic analysis shows they scatter between the Negroid/Caucasoid clusters. http://www.scs.illinois.edu/~mcdonald/PCA84pops.html Why didn't he include North Africans in the Negroid group? I'm asking why major clusters are always the same via different lines of analysis. And you're trying to contradict that by pointing out that there has been some disagreement about hybrids between the clusters, which is irrelevant. You understand that we can divide continua? We do it in biology e.g. ring species. Is human variation a perfect continuum? Take a look at this (from 2013 I believe, where available genomic data was massively increased) again. http://www.scs.illinois.edu/~mcdonald/PCA84pops.html If you had to divide that for description how would you do it? Maybe there is something wrong with my eyes but I don't see a continuum. I see an orthogonal pattern of variation hinging on classic race groups.

What? You referenced the history of research in this area and misrepresented it. You said which is false. Whether or not Blumenbach opposed "scientific racism" whatever that means.

You're confusing common and political definitions of race with scientific ones. This is akin to disputing that tomatoes are fruits or that dolphins are mammals. The scientific conception of race can be traced through Kant, Blumenbach, and Darwin. They were very much based on data, especially Blumenbach's analysis of non-metric skull traits to infer ancestry. And we keep seeing the same African/Caucasian/East Asian divisions through morphological and genetic analysis. This strongly suggests a natural division exists. If not, why do multiple lines of analysis keep throwing up the same divisions? Why did no scientist ever group South Asians with East Asians? North and Subsaharan Africans? No offence but you appear to be asserting the history of research in this area with no knowledge of it. To claim it was "not based on biological data or research" is just a transparent falsehood. And throwing in the cultural/geographical term "Hispanic" is just cheap. https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2018/04/08/live-not-by-lies/

But you defined a biological concept as So the history of living things is a metric of them and thus a biological construct. And that history is inferred from either morphology or genetics. You realise your same sophistry could be used to deny that genus was a biological concept? Do you?

Yes, I would agree. Fine. That's a biological construct. No, because race is a different biological construct defined by shared ancestry, not sports habit. It's a different construct which allows different predictions.

So therefore no concepts are biological, if they have different definitions? I think the crux here is that you are arguing all constructs are social, which may be true but is then trivial, and I am claiming race is biological, which you are failing to discuss. No, they really don't. I've asked how you define a biological concept. I asked why species and subspecies are biological but race isn't. Then you go on an irrelevant waffle about how concepts can have different definitions, which nobody disputes. No it's completely irrelevant. Obviously concepts in biology can have different definitions. But they are still biological concepts. I am asking why you are dismissing race as not biological. It seems you fail to understand the meaning of the word predict. Your "exceptions" response was entirely predictable lame sophistry. "Chinese" allows one to make several correlated predictions. Really your responses have been so consistently lame and disingenuous that you aren't worth responding to. I've heard all of the pop fallacies before.

So if I tell you somebody is Chinese, you can predict they have black hair. QED.

You link a discussion of the various definitions of species. This is indeed irrelevant. I asked whether species (by any definition) was a biological concept and how one defines a biological concept. This was ignored. So people are ignoring my relevant questions and you are complaining when I ignore irrelevant discussion. Why is race defined by shared ancestry not biological while other taxa defined by shared ancestry (species being a special case including distinct separation due to infertility or isolation. Darwin of course situated species in a continuum as only being distinct due to non-extant intermediate forms and not fundamentally different to other taxa.) are? Would we agree that predictive validity was the sine qua non of a scientific concept?

Is this the "science" you're talking about John? What a joke. Listing all of the potential uses of race in humans is irrelevant to the question of whether it's a valid biological concept. Would you argue that subspecies was a useless and non-biological concept? You have to explain what makes race the exception. I'm not giving "non-specific answers" because I didn't get sidetracked by an irrelevant question.

Well it seems people on this so-called science board are making a lot of "points" to try to dismiss the race concept. All of them easily dismissed failures of understanding of the very basics of taxonomy. Literally no groups of living things "spring up independently in separate locations". I'm truly dumbfounded by what you are writing. All living things have common ancestors. Very many subspecies exhibit gene flow and hybridisation. None of this impugns classification or utility.

Well based on that African Americans may not be a group. If some African Americans share ancestry with East Africans vis a vis other African Americans then they're not a group by that definition. I don't have data on it. Again some "black folks from Brazil" however you're defining your term may or may not constitute a distinct race depending on whether they share ancestry. Again I don't have data. These are hybrid groups defined by current location in addition to ancestry and scatter between the broad racial clusters we see. So your question is comparing apples to oranges, groups defined by location with groups defined by ancestry. I'd guess African Americans are largely of West African ancestry with significant European admixture so obviously that's a different race to East Africans. Different ancestry, different race. Race is synonymous with ancestry. Then again some of them may share ancestry in toto with East Africans versus African Americans with large European ancestry. There is no limit on how often one subdivides groups. There are any number of races. LOL. There is only one organism: the organism. So you have a politically based antipathy towards the biological race concept? That's pseudoscience.

Sure but the topic of the thread is whether it's a valid biological construct.

Just a complete failure to respond to my request to contrast this finding with other species.

Yes, it is fairly unique how genetically similar humans all are. The reason, as outlined in my initial post, is that nearly all human populations have mixed throughout history. Race simply isn't a real thing biologically. Genetics show it and the fossil records also so how human migrated across the planet. The idea of racial identity is rooted in sociology and not biology. Is that unique to human races? I didn't see any contrast with divisions in other species. So you're presenting the fact that chimps have more genetic variation than humans when asked whether "greater variation within "racial" groups than between them" applies only to human races. Hopefully you can see that your fact does not answer the question. Please demonstrate that "greater variation within "racial" groups than between them" is a standard applied to other taxa, and not just ad hoc to human races for political reasons. Please show that no other taxa have greater variation within groups than between them. Now additionally, you are claiming that the fact that a related species, chimpanzees, have more genetic variation than humans, means that further subdivision among humans is not possible. Again please show this argument being applied outside the context of human races. If we were to find, for example, that lions have more genetic variation than tigers, would that invalidate subdivision among tigers? It seems to me like a transparently ad hoc dishonest argument. Also please quantify genetic diversity among humans and show that they are uniquely undiverse among other species. One example does not do that. It is cherry picking and fallacious. I agree. The problem is we do not have this technology yet, let alone widespread access to it, making racial categories useful. Shameless strawman argument. Race is defined by shared ancestry. Nobody thinks Dravidian Indians are the same race as Africans.

Didn't I already question this? Is that unique to human races? I didn't see any contrast with divisions in other species. Again does that invalidate divisions in other species?

I'm guessing this is pure speculation. Besides, whether or not this is true, don't you have to use a race concept to make the statement?

I'd say that means some conceptions of race can be social constructs. That doesn't mean no conceptions are biological constructs. How would you define a biologicial construct? Is species a biological construct? Is subspecies? Why? You seem to be contrasting a social construct of race (Latino) with a biological construct (mixed European, Asian and African) then claiming that because the social construct exists, the biological one doesn't, even though you just used the biological construct. Rather bizarre example of double think.

This seems to be a bit of an appeal to authority without much analysis of the arguments. For example this: Is that unique to human races? I didn't see any contrast with divisions in other species. Again does that invalidate divisions in other species? Also aren't you contradicting yourself by agreeing that race isn't a valid concept then using that concept to make statements about group differences in disease susceptibility?

The AAA state that race was developed by Europeans to justify slavery. They present some scientific arguments to argue that race is not a valid biological concept. http://www.americananthro.org/ConnectWithAAA/Content.aspx?ItemNumber=2583 Is this valid reasoning?