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Cultural differences may leave their mark on DNA

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Re: Cultural differences may leave their mark on DNA

#41

Post by danharaj »

dqv wrote: post #32
danharaj wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The construction of whiteness as an ideology of European imperial powers is well documented and well studied. I doubt you've ever read any scholarship on the matter.

Okay. I mean... You're the one saying it's well documented and well studied. Are you going to prove your assertion?

If someone were on Hacker News trying to insist that they had violated the laws of thermodynamics or invented a perpetual motion machine, I would not be called upon to prove those laws. Race is a crank theory. It is a most pernicious crank theory because it is tied with some of the greatest brutality the world has ever seen.

You have the Internet. Go use it. It is preposterous to give racists the benefit of the doubt and put the burden on us to bring up the same arguments over and over again to refute them.

Re: Cultural differences may leave their mark on DNA

#42

Post by kingkawn »

if culture impacts DNA then the concept of DNA being subject to mutation as the primary driving factor is at last beginning to crumble.

Also if culture impacts genetics then the idea there are races is clearly not the case, but rather loosely organized behavioral groups that can change in whatever direction their common culture takes them next.

All of the conclusions being drawn about the implications of this for your hobby-grudges about politics are beyond inane

Re: Cultural differences may leave their mark on DNA

#43

Post by lngnmn »

maxerickson wrote: post #35
lngnmn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> instantaneous change in the genetics of a population though. How exactly, given that a generational time for humans is about 20 years?

Say 5 people out of 25 have tails at time=0. One day, the 20 without tails kill the 5 with tails. So at time=0, the prevalence of tails is 20%. At time=1 day the prevalence of tails is 0%. The remaining members of the population may still have the genes to make a tail, but no one currently has a tail. If tails are a dominant trait, they won't. If tails are a recessive trait, a couple generations of killing babies wit…

Do you understand the fundamental difference between a simulation according to some primitive model and reality?

Re: Cultural differences may leave their mark on DNA

#44

Post by qntty »

danharaj wrote: post #33
ChemicalWarfare wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Race" has 2 meanings. 1. Race as a social construct. It does exist in that capacity - as an extreme example Irish were not considered "white" in America (google for some "hilarious" images from "back in the day"). 2. Race as a biological reality. This is a touchy subject for a variety of reasons. But that doesn't mean that well documented taxonomic differences between human races are "fake". They do exist and are mo…

What does it mean for "race" to be a "biological reality"? Interpopulation diversity of both phenotype and genotype isn't remarkably different from intrapopulation diversity. There are no genetic markers that taken together say "this person is black" or "this person is white". The concept of race was never grounded in real science and its proponents constantly change their justifications after the fact. At one point…

This is really insightful. Can you recommend any books to introduce thinking critically about race?

Re: Cultural differences may leave their mark on DNA

#45

Post by danharaj »

lngnmn wrote: post #30
danharaj wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article talks about gene expression, which is much more fluid. Another factor that influences gene expression whose effects are just starting to be measured is poverty.

Gene expression has nothing to do with altering DNA, leave alone any propagation of such "changes".

> The study examined DNA methylation—an “annotation” of DNA that alters gene expression without changing the genomic sequence itself—in a group of diverse Latino children. Methylation is one type of “epigenetic mark” that previous research has shown can be either inherited or altered by life experience.

What are you even arguing against?

Re: Cultural differences may leave their mark on DNA

#46

Post by lacampbell »

hx87 wrote: post #37
lacampbell wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source? By southern African do you mean Khoisan?

Here's one paper. By southern African I do mean Khoisan as well as related peoples. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2953791/

Would the layman consider Khoisan and Bantu people to be of the same race? I mean after learning about the existence and names of both of them.

I am a layman who knows next to nothing about genetics, but a bit about Africa, and I would not consider the two peoples to be in the same race. They look completely different - which is what most laymen use to determine race, isn't it?

Re: Cultural differences may leave their mark on DNA

#47

Post by pc2g4d »

In my understanding, the article was saying that who your ancestors are has less of an impact on DNA methylation (epigenetic markers) than where you grew up. It's not about race, it's about ethnicity---the cultural identity of the individuals, the environment they lived in. It's not about DNA, it's about how DNA is actually manifested, as represented by methylation markers.

Re: Cultural differences may leave their mark on DNA

#48

Post by alistproducer2 »

tristor wrote: post #2

Looks like the TL;DR conclusion is that "race" is not just a social construct, but actually has genetic markers which are expressed beyond ethnic heritage. As the authors conclude, this could be extremely important in tailoring medical treatments for people for differences in their genetic makeup based on their race. In other words harder sciences are proving that social sciences obsession with identity politics has…

It's pretty clear you skimmed the article and read from it what you wanted, instead of what it actually said. I read through the responses and you've been pretty thoroughly proven wrong so I won't reiterate the points.

Constructively, try not to see news as a chance to reinforce your existing views. Try and do the opposite. try to expand your world view.

Re: Cultural differences may leave their mark on DNA

#49

Post by fvdessen »

svachalek wrote: post #31
ChemicalWarfare wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Race" has 2 meanings. 1. Race as a social construct. It does exist in that capacity - as an extreme example Irish were not considered "white" in America (google for some "hilarious" images from "back in the day"). 2. Race as a biological reality. This is a touchy subject for a variety of reasons. But that doesn't mean that well documented taxonomic differences between human races are "fake". They do exist and are mo…

What I understand of the issue is that genetic differences between populations are real, but they form a continuum whose boundaries are extremely blurry if visible at all from a genetic level. Thus the drawing of boundary lines and the assignment of individuals into those handful of categories is something subject to change from culture to culture. In other words, genetic differences do not make race a "biological re…

If you do a clustering analysis on a large sample of DNA data you will get different clusters corresponding to the usual definitions of races or ethnicities, depending on the number of clusters you choose.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_clustering

Re: Cultural differences may leave their mark on DNA

#50

Post by ChemicalWarfare »

danharaj wrote: post #33
ChemicalWarfare wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Race" has 2 meanings. 1. Race as a social construct. It does exist in that capacity - as an extreme example Irish were not considered "white" in America (google for some "hilarious" images from "back in the day"). 2. Race as a biological reality. This is a touchy subject for a variety of reasons. But that doesn't mean that well documented taxonomic differences between human races are "fake". They do exist and are mo…

What does it mean for "race" to be a "biological reality"? Interpopulation diversity of both phenotype and genotype isn't remarkably different from intrapopulation diversity. There are no genetic markers that taken together say "this person is black" or "this person is white". The concept of race was never grounded in real science and its proponents constantly change their justifications after the fact. At one point…

>>>What does it mean for "race" to be a "biological reality"?

to quote my own post - well documented taxonomic differences between human races.

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