The works of Jean Philippe Rushton & countering them

[mr friendly guy]

Basically I open this thread to seek advice particular from scientists and biologists on how to counter this guys BS. I will also include how I have attacked this man's works. But first lets set the scene.

I have first heard of this man's work in a Michael Shermer book about why people believe weird things, although that was mentioned only in passing. However on another message board I frequent which deals with (Chinese economic news / culture / politics and military), I have seen this man's works being posted by a few different posters, one of them praising him as an "honest" academic.

Before we go on, the poster who likes Rushton has been warned by the mods about Holocaust denial, believes in vast Zionist conspiracies, is a racist cumstain who is too cowardly to admit it when I called him out on that, talks about racial purity and dismisses biological arguments about how stupid that concept even is because those academics are "liberals". If anyone is interested, he doesn't actually know what Liberalism is. He is also AFAIK a Chinese American who is very insular and I suspect has not actually left the country and thinks he knows more about life in a country more than the people who actually live there. Oh, and he doesn't seem to understand the concept that cause precedes effect, and tried to lecture me on science by defining what makes something an idea scientific is that it doesn't arrogantly purport to be definite and must have degrees of certainty (like how I supposedly do). Except when he talks about something that he is very certain of course. Like Holocaust denial.

Now that I have set the scene, lets talk about the works of Rushton himself, since he is somewhat smarter.

You can read his wiki article here. Here is a youtube video of a speech.

Essentially he is a Professor of psychology who argues for a racial cause as the main reason there are differing IQ scores between blacks, whites, Asians etc. From memory Whites average 100, Asians 105, blacks score around the 80s. In the video he believes differences in genetics account for 50-60% cause, the rest being environmental. Both side argues a mixture of genetics and environmental, the classic nature vs nurture conundrum. Few scholars imply such a high relation to genetics between the races.

That is the crux, because its a leap of logic to go from 1) Intelligence is hereditary to b) some races are less intelligent. The reason being of course you would have to show these "stupid" genes are more frequent in certain races. Firstly we run into the problem of how to define race biologically, and I don't want the thread side track by this but...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(clas ... of_humans)

Since the 1970s, anthropologists with the exception of forensic anthropology argue that race is mainly a social / cultural construct than a biological one. Thats not to say genetics and biology don't play a part, merely that it plays a smaller part than social factors. Lewontin proposed this in a speech in the 70s. Richard Dawkins agrees with most of that, but he argues on a technical detail that race does have some taxonomic use (which can explain why forensics can identify the "race" of people).

It sounds counter intuitive, so let me give examples.
1. A man who is 1/4 African and 3/4 European would be considered "black" under America's old "one drop" rule. In fact sometimes even if you are 1/8 African you are considered black. Biologically speaking, they should be more white. This shows an example of culture triumphing over biology.

2. Australian Aborigines who look white still identify and are counted in the census as Aborigines. One would think they have more "white" / European genes than Aboriginal ones, but thats the way it goes. So again an example of culture triumphing over biology.

I can give more examples, but I think you get the idea. The other issue is that if you take two humans (even if they are from different races, eg a "black" man and an Asian man) their genetics would be closer to each other than the genetics or two chimps, even though the chimps look more alike than the humans do. One can also compare the genes from members of one race vs members of another race, and sometimes the genetics between the people from different races are actually closer. Or to put it another way, the intra-population variance is greater than the inter-population variance. For race to have meaning on a biological level, wouldn't two people of the same race always be more similar genetically than two people of different races?

This makes race an ambiguous term biologically speaking, which is automatically hard for people like Rushton who want to talk about the differences between say blacks and whites. If that black person has say 3/4 European heritage, but is still counted as "black", wouldn't that throw out your genetic analysis?

Lets assume for a moment, Rushton defines race the same way people identify themselves and go from there. If you watch the youtube video we see some red flags already.

1. In the opening minute (of the linked video) they talk about how Rushton has been persecuted. Thats already a red flag. Its just like Creationist talking about how close minded mainstream science are for not accepting their awesome ideas.

2. He is arguing for things outside his field of specialty (psychology). For example

a) His arguments are predicated on the concept of race on a biological level, so he is arguing against anthropologists who say that race is an ambiguous term biologically speaking.
b) He also says speculates in this video that the wider hips in Asian and white women are to evolutionary speaking allow for bigger brains. Ok, its been a while, but I am pretty sure evolutionary speaking we accomodated our bigger brains, not so much by humans having wider hips, but our offspring at birth has less mature brain than say chimps. Thats why a chimp in a short span of time will start walking and self care, while a human baby cannot. A human offspring at the same level of maturity will not accomodate our bigger brains, so evolutionary speaking, we come out less mature. So he appears to be arguing against biologists who deal with evolution as well.

Arguing outside one's field of specialty against the establishment is fraught with peril. Remember Fred Hoyle with his anti evolution arguments. Or Michael Behe with Idiotic Design and irreducible complexity.

Thats a second red flag, and I haven't even gotten to his arguments yet. So here they are

1. Essentially some of his arguments simply do not appear to take into account environmental factors to any great extent. Its difficult, but it seems he doesn't make much effort. For example in the first video he simply says Chinese have an average IQ of 105, Indians have around the 80s, therefore China is a country we (whites) can work with. Don't believe me, watch the video yourself. Its been mentioned numerous times that China has superior social indicators and wealth indicators than India and has for ages. How does he even try to reconcile that?

2. The other thing to note is he has to contend with the Flynn effect. Essentially this phenomena describes how IQ has been increasing (when standardise against older IQ tests), particularly in black populations, and also in developing nations, will recently it appears its plateaued in developed nations. There are several environmental factors speculated to explain this, and studies done which suggest some of these. You can read the wiki article itself, however the point is, unless you believe in Lamarckism or saltations, the improvement in IQ in so short a time must have an environmental cause rather than genetic. This is a factor Rushton can't account for by just saying environmental just raises 4 IQ points, because it clearly does more.

3. As mentioned earlier, he purports that bigger brains in Asians and Whites make them smarter than blacks (see Second video). However he also states that bigger brains in men don't make them smarter than women. Ignoring for a moment that not all the parts of the brain are dedicated to higher cognitive functions, taking this to the logical conclusion, basketballers or tall sports stars would have bigger brains, and smarter. I am pretty sure Yao Ming, Michael Jordan etc are known for many things, but being a mega genius isn't one of them.

Now considering that Rushton is the head of the Pioneer Fund and it all clicks into place. A white supremacist showing the inferiority of blacks, but is forced to concede East Asians are smarter using his own methodology.

I can only speculate that the work of Rushton is popular among some members of that other board because he says nice things about Chinese people (we are smarter) and it appeals to the pride of certain people, and because some people are simply stupid. However I believe Rushton's work falls on their own merit (or lack of merit).

Any further thoughts on how to counter this bullshit?

[Adam Reynolds]

Since the 1970s, anthropologists with the exception of forensic anthropology argue that race is mainly a social / cultural construct than a biological one

Even forensic anthropologists usually don't refer to it as race, the term ancestry is much more frequently used anymore.

[Elfdart]

You should start with Stephen J. Gould's The Mismeasure of Man if you're looking to debunk the pseudoscience itself. If you're looking for handy talking points for slapping down a racist creep in a web forum, try the article Racism Resurgent here. The part that best illustrates what a crackpot Rushton is:

Murray and Herrnstein also rely heavily on Thomas Bouchard, whose study of separated-at-birth twins has "proved" that not only is intelligence largely genetically determined, but so are religiosity, political orientation and leisure-time interests. The Bell Curve uses Bouchard to rehabilitate Sir Cyril Burt, whose twin-based evidence for inherited intelligence is now believed to be fraudulent. Their logic is that Burt's research must have been sound, because Burt's findings closely resemble Bouchard's, and Bouchard's research is "accepted by most scholars as a model of its kind."

That illustrates the sort of scholars Murray and Herrnstein associate with. More reputable researchers have raised many questions about Bouchard's work: While other twin researchers estimate that 50 percent of the average variation in intelligence can be attributed to heredity, Bouchard comes up with 70 percent. Even the twin studies that came up with more conservative estimates of intelligence's "heritability" (itself a highly dubious concept) are flawed because the supposedly "separated-at-birth" twins usually turn out to have been raised in close proximity; Bouchard refuses to let skeptics examine the case histories of the twins he studied, essentially rendering his research into so many "Believe It or Not!" anecdotes (Scientific American, 6/93; The Nation, 11/28/94).

Bouchard, of course, is also a major recipient of Pioneer money--"We couldn't have done this project without the Pioneer Fund," he told GQ (11/94). And he's a colleague and mentor of (and has some peculiar views in common with) perhaps the crankiest of all of Pioneer's beneficiaries, J. Philippe Rushton.

"More Brain or More Penis"

Rushton (who's gotten more than $770,000 from Pioneer) has transformed the Victorian science of cranial measurement into a sexual fetish--measuring not only head and brain size, but also the size of breasts, buttocks and genitals. "It's a trade-off: More brain or more penis. You can't have everything," he told Rolling Stone's Adam Miller (10/20/94), explaining his philosophy of evolution.

Rushton was reprimanded by his school, the University of Western Ontario, for accosting people in a local shopping mall and asking them how big their penises were and how far they could ejaculate. "A zoologist doesn't need permission to study squirrels in his backyard," he groused (Rolling Stone, 10/20/94).

Rushton's creepy obsessions intersect with the ugliest sides of politics: A 1986 article by Rushton suggested that the Nazi war machine owed its prowess to racial purity, and worried that demographic shifts were endangering our "Northern European" civilization. Rushton co-authored a paper that argued that blacks have a genetic propensity to contract AIDS because of their "reproductive strategy" of promiscuous sex (cited in Newsday, 11/9/94). The other author was Bouchard, the author of those amazing twin studies celebrated in mainstream news outlets.

It's not surprising that Murray and Herrnstein would defend Rushton, writing that his "work is not that of a crackpot or a bigot, as many of his critics are given to charging." But it's startling that a science writer for the New York Times, Malcolm Browne, would actually endorse Rushton's book (10/16/94). Echoing The Bell Curve, Browne respectfully concludes his summary of Rushton's bizarre theories with: "Mr. Rushton is nevertheless regarded by many of his colleagues as a scholar and not a bigot." ("Browne doesn't identify these 'colleagues,' but I expect he means Professor Beavis and Professor Butthead," the Toronto Star's Joey Slinger wrote--10/20/94.)

The guy you're arguing with sounds like a total moron who, like creationists and holocaust deniers, will ignore any facts you bring to the discussion. I'd would keep asking him when he (like Rushton) developed such a weird fixation on black penises.

[Pelranius]

I simply refused to take a similar Han Chinese chauvinist (who clearly was very angry with Indians for being more genetically similar to Europeans than him) seriously at all. Since he's such a cesspool of stupidity and a pathetic fawning desire to be the sex slave of Neo Nazis, the English Defense League, Geert Wilders, Marine Le Pen, that Atlas Shrugs blog cretinness, and other such wankers, I just responded to him with a borrowing of Shroom's dialectic theory about balls and whores, in between the mocking him that the Nazis Third Position White Nationalists would rather hang out with Indians than an inbred Han Chinese "with a pure genetic lineage going back to the Shang Dynasty".

Some things are just so out there that the Mel Brooks approach is the only right one.

[Tiriol]

I simply refused to take a similar Han Chinese chauvinist (who clearly was very angry with Indians for being more genetically similar to Europeans than him) seriously at all. Since he's such a cesspool of stupidity and a pathetic fawning desire to be the sex slave of Neo Nazis, the English Defense League, Geert Wilders, Marine Le Pen, that Atlas Shrugs blog cretinness, and other such wankers, I just responded to him with a borrowing of Shroom's dialectic theory about balls and whores, in between the mocking him that the Nazis Third Position White Nationalists would rather hang out with Indians than an inbred Han Chinese "with a pure genetic lineage going back to the Shang Dynasty".

Some things are just so out there that the Mel Brooks approach is the only right one.

... What? Why was he so enthralled by Europeans?

[mr friendly guy]

You should start with Stephen J. Gould's The Mismeasure of Man if you're looking to debunk the pseudoscience itself. If you're looking for handy talking points for slapping down a racist creep in a web forum, try the article Racism Resurgent here. The part that best illustrates what a crackpot Rushton is:

The guy you're arguing with sounds like a total moron who, like creationists and holocaust deniers, will ignore any facts you bring to the discussion. I'd would keep asking him when he (like Rushton) developed such a weird fixation on black penises.

I used quotes from The History and Geography of Human Genes by Luca Cavalli-Sforza et all mainly. I was hoping to use knowledge here for next time. The fact that Rushton conducts scientific research by asking people in a shopping mall how far they can ejaculate just shows how much academic rigour he uses. Thanks for that find.

I also tended to counter act him by using Creationist analogies, since he is anti-religion but most probably too stupid to reason it out. For example when he defends that Rushton is persecuted, I just substitute his terms with Kent Hovind aka Dr Dino. And Dr Dino was actually jailed while Rushton is not.

I even used a youtube video showing Rushton saying bigger brains in Asians and white mean they are smarter, but he just accused me of taking him out of context. At this point I won't press it. I have already trounced him before.

I simply refused to take a similar Han Chinese chauvinist (who clearly was very angry with Indians for being more genetically similar to Europeans than him) seriously at all. Since he's such a cesspool of stupidity and a pathetic fawning desire to be the sex slave of Neo Nazis, the English Defense League, Geert Wilders, Marine Le Pen, that Atlas Shrugs blog cretinness, and other such wankers, I just responded to him with a borrowing of Shroom's dialectic theory about balls and whores, in between the mocking him that the Nazis Third Position White Nationalists would rather hang out with Indians than an inbred Han Chinese "with a pure genetic lineage going back to the Shang Dynasty".

Some things are just so out there that the Mel Brooks approach is the only right one.

I find it hard to do a Shroomy, which is why he is just one of a kind and why we like him so much.

The moderator already edited one of his replies to me saying he apologised to me, after falsely accusing me of whining to the mods. It wasn't true. In other words the moderators already had enough of him. His crowning moment was when he went on a anti Bill Gates tirade consisting of Gates secretly trying to steal China's research into civilian nuclear power plants, of which naturally like all conspiracy theory BS, Gates does so in the most retarded manner possible. To help support his case he put forward essentially character assassinations of Gates charity work including a spill against the Gardasil vaccine against cervical cancer which Gates donates money to. Too bad he took from an anti vaxxer site which promotes taking vitamins instead of vaccinations. I rubbed his face in that one and challenged him to report his oooh sooo awesome evidence to Xinhua or the People's daily. Naturally he was still there trying to debate the finer point of vaccines with a giant strawman of my position, but the thread was locked before I could bitchslap him some more.

[Big Triece]

You should check out the Rushton vs Graves debate:


(11 parts)

Or the Suzuki vs Rushton debate:



It's quite clear that Rushton and his theory is a complete joke.

[Pelranius]

I simply refused to take a similar Han Chinese chauvinist (who clearly was very angry with Indians for being more genetically similar to Europeans than him) seriously at all. Since he's such a cesspool of stupidity and a pathetic fawning desire to be the sex slave of Neo Nazis, the English Defense League, Geert Wilders, Marine Le Pen, that Atlas Shrugs blog cretinness, and other such wankers, I just responded to him with a borrowing of Shroom's dialectic theory about balls and whores, in between the mocking him that the Nazis Third Position White Nationalists would rather hang out with Indians than an inbred Han Chinese "with a pure genetic lineage going back to the Shang Dynasty".

Some things are just so out there that the Mel Brooks approach is the only right one.

... What? Why was he so enthralled by Europeans?

I think he wants white people to accept Han Chinese as being their racial equals. It was pretty clear from his tirades on multiculturalism and homosexuals that he buys into the whole far right viewpoint (and by extension, wants to participate in the club).

[Elfdart]

I simply refused to take a similar Han Chinese chauvinist (who clearly was very angry with Indians for being more genetically similar to Europeans than him) seriously at all. Since he's such a cesspool of stupidity and a pathetic fawning desire to be the sex slave of Neo Nazis, the English Defense League, Geert Wilders, Marine Le Pen, that Atlas Shrugs blog cretinness, and other such wankers, I just responded to him with a borrowing of Shroom's dialectic theory about balls and whores, in between the mocking him that the Nazis Third Position White Nationalists would rather hang out with Indians than an inbred Han Chinese "with a pure genetic lineage going back to the Shang Dynasty".

Some things are just so out there that the Mel Brooks approach is the only right one.

... What? Why was he so enthralled by Europeans?

Maybe he wants to be dubbed an "honorary Aryan" like Tojo was.

[mr friendly guy]

It's quite clear that Rushton and his theory is a complete joke.

If that was me I would have said, well if you are going down this path, I am Asian, he is white. According to him I am smarter. I win. Flawless victory.

Suzuki is in fine form at the second part, when he mocks Rushton's litter size argument.

Suzuki is right about how Rushton goes from 1. Certain traits are inherited to 2. Some races have these certain traits more frequently. I already explained why this is sooo wrong. He totally skips the part about the propensity of these genes in certain races. Which is particularly problematic when race itself is a weak concept biologically, and Rushton did not even address this.

That Asian girl was stooooopid, proving that all Asians are smart is BS. She totally missed Suzuki's argument about race, that the differences within a group is bigger than the differences between the mean.

[Darth Wong]

Personally, I think the whole "attack the idea of races" tactic is a bad idea. Not only does it reek of political correctness, but it pretty much exemplifies the reason why political correctness got a bad name in the first place: because it seeks to suppress discussion of an idea by attacking its terminology.

Suppose you succeed in convincing everyone that there's no such thing as "races". So what? You can still say that there are large ethnic populations with historically geographical segregation. What are you going to do, admit that there's a group which is particularly prone to sickle-cell anemia but simply refuse to call them a "race"? What are they, then? The thing that we dare not name?

Regarding inter-breeding, the fact that race categorization doesn't neatly work for everyone doesn't mean that there's no such thing as race. Lots of sociological categorizations don't neatly work for everyone. Perhaps in another few hundred years, races will be so intermixed that these populations will be blurred beyond recognition, but right now there are still some pretty clearly defined groupings out there.

[Bakustra]

The idea of biological race is ridiculous and entirely distinct from how race is treated around the world, however. I haven't had the time to watch Suzuki's debate, but the idea that race is solely a social construct is far more useful than treating it as a physical concept- since the genetically diverse population of Africa is generally summed up as "black", while the far less genetically diverse pre-Columbian population of the Americas and Asia are treated as four or five races. This can only be understood through the lens of social context, to be blunt.

[Lord Zentei]

Personally, I think the whole "attack the idea of races" tactic is a bad idea. Not only does it reek of political correctness, but it pretty much exemplifies the reason why political correctness got a bad name in the first place: because it seeks to suppress discussion of an idea by attacking its terminology.

Indeed, relying so much on the attack on the concept of race is hardly the best way to deal with racism, even if we grant that race is a social construct.

After all, the whole of racism is based on flawed inferences, not merely on bad postulates. To wit:

P: There are biological differences between these groups of people.
C: Therefore, group A should have inferior rights to group B.

And:

P: The mean of a measurement of a particular measure for group A has a different score than group B.
C: Therefore, group A should have superior rights to group B.

Both, of course, are total non-sequiturs. If the inference is bad, then the conclusion is invalid regardless of whether the premise is true or not. And only attacking the premise risks that anti-racist arguments are seen to imply that IF there were differences, then that would change everything, as it should not. Different individuals retain their rights and respect as human beings, regardless of ability, so why should the same not apply to any given set of individuals?

Regardless of that, genetic analysis would imply that races do not exist. Or, if they do exist, that the correct classifications of such are not the usual suspects.

[Darth Wong]

Arguing that races do not exist because you dispute their current classifications is hardly a way to make yourself appear to be the logical party. So what if Africans should be subdivided into a half-dozen ethnic sub-groups? It doesn't change the fact that "race" is just another term for "biologically distinct group".

The fact that these populations have spent centuries breeding in largely distinct groups from one another is not something that anyone can or should overlook. When one harps on this notion that race does not exist, he plays perfectly into Rushton's hands: he seeks to portray all critics as people who have their heads buried in the sand, who do not want to face reality, who bury science beneath mountains of political correctness. What better way to make him look correct than to stand there and pretend you can't identify black people as a distinct group from white people?

[Lord Zentei]

Yes, that was my main point; my caveat in the last line was only me acknowledging the position of most biologists that the differences between the races are in fact superficial and biologically insignificant. It doesn't change the non-validity of Rushton and his ilk either way.

[Formless]

Here's a question: if you were to meet a kid with brown skin walking down the street, would you mentally classify him as "black"?

Now, if you said yes, would you change your answer if you saw firsthand that the kid's father or mother was white?

Where am I going with this? Your initial assumption about his ancestry was based entirely on superficial phenotypes, none more meaningful than his hair or eye color. The idea of race is not wrong because the schema we use is oversimplified, the very assumptions behind it are false. That is why people harp on the fact that "race" is little more than a baby's babble biologically speaking. Yes, geographically a lot of ethnic populations have not interbred in a long time and are easy to distinguish at a glance. However, there are also those that have intermingled; then we get pointless (and obviously racially motivated) arguments like whether the ancient Egyptians should be considered "Black" or "Mediterranean", or something else entirely. Its easy to use racial schema when the ethnicities being compared are geographically distant, not so much when you look at a more global data set.

So I don't buy that this is either a matter of political correctness or that by denying the reality of racial schema you play into the hands of racist fuckwits. Indeed, I think it is the other way around-- allowing racists their theory of racial categories at all would be like allowing a creationist his assumption of God. Sure, there are logical arguments within that framework that you can make, but you are cutting off the most powerful weapon you have-- the facts.

Also, as a note. Ethnicity is already a distinct concept from race precisely because the defining characteristics of an ethnicity include social constructs like nationality and culture-- the non-biological aspects of a person's heritage. That makes it a far more useful, practical concept than race can ever be.

[Lord Zentei]

So I don't buy that this is either a matter of political correctness or that by denying the reality of racial schema you play into the hands of racist fuckwits. Indeed, I think it is the other way around-- allowing racists their theory of racial categories at all would be like allowing a creationist his assumption of God. Sure, there are logical arguments within that framework that you can make, but you are cutting off the most powerful weapon you have-- the facts.

If racist bullfuckery can be compared to religious bullfuckery, one can also draw a comparison between the claims of racial definitions with claims of the virgin birth, rather than claims of god's existence.

Religious claims will often go along the lines of "Jesus was born from a virgin and rose from the dead, therefore he's the son of god and you must accept everything he says".

While it's certainly a powerful weapon to debunk claims of virgin birth and resurrection, the inference itself is invalid, and that too needs to be debunked. Certainly, if you concentrate on the premises alone, you're failing to demonstrate the fundamental irrelevance of the so-called "facts" of the virgin birth and the resurrection. You're also allowing for the possibility that your opponent MIGHT be right, in the hypothetical scenario where the facts are not on your side.

By the same token, should we challenge racial definitions that aren't supported by evidence? Of course we should. But that's not adequate by itself, IMHO.

[mr friendly guy]

Arguing that races do not exist because you dispute their current classifications is hardly a way to make yourself appear to be the logical party. So what if Africans should be subdivided into a half-dozen ethnic sub-groups? It doesn't change the fact that "race" is just another term for "biologically distinct group".

The thing is though, the biological distinction seems arbitrary based on how we classify things scientifically. The way I see it, you have two tall men, one white and one black. Add in a short black man. Compare their DNA. Will the two tall men be closer genetically because they are both tall, or the two black men because they are black? If race was a useful biological classification, then every time we do this, people who are black should always be closer genetically when we compare them, then say when we compare a black person to a white or Asian. Such is not the case, because we know the variation in a racial population is greater than the variation between the mean of the population. I assume this presumably is because race is defined only be a few phenotypical features out of the many, and these phenotypes only deal with visible things, like appearance, and not less overt ones like say genes responsible for the complement system, blood grouping, lactose intolerance etc.

This is not to say that races don't exist, just that how we define race is more via social means than biological, even though to the average person that seems counter intuitive.

P: There are biological differences between these groups of people.
C: Therefore, group A should have inferior rights to group B.

And:

P: The mean of a measurement of a particular measure for group A has a different score than group B.
C: Therefore, group A should have superior rights to group B.

Both, of course, are total non-sequiturs. If the inference is bad, then the conclusion is invalid regardless of whether the premise is true or not. And only attacking the premise risks that anti-racist arguments are seen to imply that IF there were differences, then that would change everything, as it should not. Different individuals retain their rights and respect as human beings, regardless of ability, so why should the same not apply to any given set of individuals?

Regardless of that, genetic analysis would imply that races do not exist. Or, if they do exist, that the correct classifications of such are not the usual suspects.

The problem is, this tactic can also play into Rushton's hands. Simply watch his debate with Suzuki. He will just use a Timothy Jones "Who me tactic." Essentially when questioned what this does for policy, he does "Who me", I am not interested in criticising policy, thats for policy makers. However as Suzuki points out, such a finding will inevitably lead to debates on policy. Note someone quoted an interview where he just did that. At worse Rushton can simply say well I change my mind, I am definitely not going to criticise policy. Hence that non sequitur from premise to conclusion is invalid against Rushton, since he will say he isn't interested in drawing that conclusion.

The way I see it is, if he wants to be a psychologist playing at anthropology and biology, then he has to use the terms. Just like a Creationist has to theoretically properly understand what evolution says to critique it (and not give strawmen), Rushton needs to understand how race is viewed by anthropologist since he relies on that premise.

Of course there are other ways to demolish his argument, I pointed out the Flynn effect, David Suzuki pointed out how he doesn't control for variables very well (namely racism itself), although I simply used the example Rushton gives when comparing India and China (he fails to take into account different wealth and social indicators such as GDP / capita is much higher in China for example). However I am with Formless on this one. Arguing from the POV of race is a strong card we hold because he essentially is going outside his field of knowledge and he is dead wrong.

[Formless]

You're also allowing for the possibility that your opponent MIGHT be right, in the hypothetical scenario where the facts are not on your side.

So? That's just basic open mindedness. My analogy with religious apologetics isn't perfect. There certainly is a disconnect present in the statement "this guy is God --> this guy is an authority on how to live your life." You need only logic to articulate the question "is it right because the Gods say so, or do the Gods say so because its right?" Racists on the other hand operate on falsifiable stereotypes, which cause them to behave in prejudiced ways. Debunking the theory of genetically defined racial groups is part and parcel with debunking the stereotypes, because it falsifies the assumption of homogeneity needed for prejudice to be rational.

[Bakustra]

All right then, if biology is useful for discussing race (PS: This does not mean that "race doesn't exist", which is a strawman of "race is socially constructed"), then explain why, if I lived forty years ago, I would be an Indian, and probably black (though I haven't looked far enough back into my family tree to be sure about the latter one way or another). Yet today, I would definitely not be black, and nobody would consider me a Native American. My biological makeup would not have changed one iota, but what has changed is the social definition of blackness and Indianness. Similarly, Chinese, Lebanese, Indian, and many other migrants to the American South in the days of segregation were classified as either black or white, because segregation relied on a biracial society to exist. Inevitably, race is something which is a matter of social classification, which at best uses biology or appearance as a starting point. If we are to understand race on anything more than the most superficial level, we must understand it as a social phenomenon.

[Alyrium Denryle]

All right then, if biology is useful for discussing race (PS: This does not mean that "race doesn't exist", which is a strawman of "race is socially constructed"), then explain why, if I lived forty years ago, I would be an Indian, and probably black (though I haven't looked far enough back into my family tree to be sure about the latter one way or another). Yet today, I would definitely not be black, and nobody would consider me a Native American. My biological makeup would not have changed one iota, but what has changed is the social definition of blackness and Indianness.

Because silly pants, the categories currently defined as races are socially constructed and disconnected from any significant biological difference. They are assigned a priori, and based upon superficial characteristics that have very little to do with patterns of common descent.

Currently, races are categorized based upon a small number of specific polymorphisms in skin color, eye and hair color, and bone structure that are adaptations to specific environments and arose independently several times in human history. They are utterly meaningless, and have no explanatory power. Now, it might be possible to re-define a concept of race based upon large scale differences in nested categories of human ethnic groups based on common descent. For example, it might be highly useful to talk about race like we do language families. Tracing patterns of population movement and common descent like we do language.

So, you might talk about how indo-europeans arose from migrants moving across the Levant (off the top of my head) in two different directions --one north, and one east-- forming the peoples colonizing europe and the indian sub-continent. Then, how the European group migrated back across the med via spain and contributed to the gene pool of North Africa. You can talk about groups--real biological groups--this way. However it has absolutely no bearing on social status or anything like that. You can even extend it into the present day and talk about migrations and interbreeding among these different groups.

[Darth Wong]

I love the way I point out that the particular names and groupings we give to races right now are not the point, and of course, every post from that point on harps on how stupid it is that we lump all white people together, or all black people together.

[Bakustra]

I love the way I point out that the particular names and groupings we give to races right now are not the point, and of course, every post from that point on harps on how stupid it is that we lump all white people together, or all black people together.

I really love that you're unwilling to address the broader point, which is that race is a social construct, and blatantly always has been, in favor of smugness. To pretend that biology has anything to do with race other than provide a basic starting point is simple foolishness, no matter how much you puff up the basic idea of "racial categories are biological".

PS: The point is not that it's stupid, but that racial definitions are so fluid as to change massively within the course of a lifetime, and this can happen because they are socially defined.

[Formless]

All right then, if biology is useful for discussing race (PS: This does not mean that "race doesn't exist", which is a strawman of "race is socially constructed"), then explain why, if I lived forty years ago, I would be an Indian, and probably black (though I haven't looked far enough back into my family tree to be sure about the latter one way or another). Yet today, I would definitely not be black, and nobody would consider me a Native American. My biological makeup would not have changed one iota, but what has changed is the social definition of blackness and Indianness.

Because silly pants, the categories currently defined as races are socially constructed and disconnected from any significant biological difference. They are assigned a priori, and based upon superficial characteristics that have very little to do with patterns of common descent.

Currently, races are categorized based upon a small number of specific polymorphisms in skin color, eye and hair color, and bone structure that are adaptations to specific environments and arose independently several times in human history. They are utterly meaningless, and have no explanatory power. Now, it might be possible to re-define a concept of race based upon large scale differences in nested categories of human ethnic groups based on common descent. For example, it might be highly useful to talk about race like we do language families. Tracing patterns of population movement and common descent like we do language.

So, you might talk about how indo-europeans arose from migrants moving across the Levant (off the top of my head) in two different directions --one north, and one east-- forming the peoples colonizing europe and the indian sub-continent. Then, how the European group migrated back across the med via spain and contributed to the gene pool of North Africa. You can talk about groups--real biological groups--this way. However it has absolutely no bearing on social status or anything like that. You can even extend it into the present day and talk about migrations and interbreeding among these different groups.

What is the point of redefining race? What does it accomplish? Racists like the one this thread is about don't use this concept of race, and indeed it would lead to vastly different conclusions about race than the ones we associate with race. Redefining a term so charged and with such a well cemented meaning in our culture is just asking for confusion and cross-talk. Why bother? We already have the term "ethnicity" to address groups which have a significant cultural identity and national history together.

Its like redefining the Firmament as the edge of the atmosphere, even though we know the idea was conceived as part of a falsified cosmology.

edit: actually, come to think, an example a little closer to home for you Aly would be trying to keep around the old taxonomic system's terminology even while under the hood you were replacing it with cladistics. If one system is better than the traditional one, why keep around its baggage?

[Darth Wong]

I love the way I point out that the particular names and groupings we give to races right now are not the point, and of course, every post from that point on harps on how stupid it is that we lump all white people together, or all black people together.

I really love that you're unwilling to address the broader point, which is that race is a social construct, and blatantly always has been, in favor of smugness. To pretend that biology has anything to do with race other than provide a basic starting point is simple foolishness, no matter how much you puff up the basic idea of "racial categories are biological".

Bullshit. The fact that racial categorizations are imprecise, fluid, or whatever else you want to call them does not mean that ethnic distinctions are a purely social construct. It just means that we don't define them well.

PS: The point is not that it's stupid, but that racial definitions are so fluid as to change massively within the course of a lifetime, and this can happen because they are socially defined.

Again, you harp on the problem of poor definition. Your problem is that you are too fucking stupid to realize that while popular notions of race like "the white race" are nonsense, that doesn't mean that there are no historically isolated-breeding ethnic groups. Such groupings are real. They are not a mere social invention. They are as real as any isolated-breeding animal population that a biologist would study in the wild. You're focusing on words ("race" vs "ethnicity") which just makes you look like your bailiwick is rhetoric rather than facts.