How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of ‘Race’ • Hacker News Board

Re: How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of ‘Race’

#21

Post by door3 » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 2:45 PM UTC

The problem with this kind of "gene-centered" social thinking is that the implication, almost always, is some sort of regressive or conservative politics about social problems and inequalities being a result of natural forces. A horrifying example of this is, for example, the book "A Natural History of Rape" which makes a biological deterministic argument that explains rape as a natural and evolutionarily selected-for behavior in men.

Show me a controlled longitudinal study where (eg) men and women are raised in an identical environment, treated identically, and not even informed of the concept of gender. That doesn't exist, and never will exist. There are massive emergent cultural forces that make biology a pretty useless tool for doing sociology, much like chemistry studies the emergent properties of physics principles, but trying to account for emergent properties of atoms and molecules in terms of quantum mechanics is totally useless. Human societies should be studied on sociological terms, not biological ones. With even the smallest amount of effort, you can see that there are HUGE confounding factors that make any attempt to explain social outcomes biologically totally useless.

Re: How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of ‘Race’

#22

Post by nostalgeek » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 2:46 PM UTC

nukeop wrote: post #18

nostalgeek wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Jews for example more likely to have Tay Sachs disease. Sure but it's not because they practice Judaism. And since one can convert to judaism, I've never heard about someone who can convert his genes to "jew genes". > Sickle cell disease affects blacks disproportionately. Sure but it isn't necessary because their skin are dark, when you can find people from Sri Lanka or India who have a skin blacker than African pe…

Judaism is not a race, being black means more than just a different skin color, you're intentionally trying to derail the discussion.

> Judaism is not a race, being black means more than just a different skin color, you're intentionally trying to derail the discussion.

no I'm not. What does being black means then? and why bring "jews" into a discussion with race? If we're going to talk about race scientifically using these words, well you'd better have solid arguments as to why you use "jews" and "black" as race discriminant.

I'd also like to talk about the fact that most European jews are convert from the medieval era and have very little to do with the "Semites" who lived in what is now Israel 2000 years ago. So what race are you talking about?

Re: How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of ‘Race’

#23

Post by nukeop » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 2:49 PM UTC

nostalgeek wrote: post #22

nukeop wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Judaism is not a race, being black means more than just a different skin color, you're intentionally trying to derail the discussion.

> Judaism is not a race, being black means more than just a different skin color, you're intentionally trying to derail the discussion. no I'm not. What does being black means then? and why bring "jews" into a discussion with race? If we're going to talk about race scientifically using these words, well you'd better have solid arguments as to why you use "jews" and "black" as race discriminant. I'd also like to talk…

>no I'm not. What does being black means then? and why bring "jews" into a discussion with race?

Because Jews have different risks of falling ill to many diseases than people of other races. You are still trying to conflate race with religion which makes it clear that you're here to derail the discussion.

Re: How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of ‘Race’

#24

Post by Erlangolem » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 2:50 PM UTC

nukeop wrote: post #23

nostalgeek wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Judaism is not a race, being black means more than just a different skin color, you're intentionally trying to derail the discussion. no I'm not. What does being black means then? and why bring "jews" into a discussion with race? If we're going to talk about race scientifically using these words, well you'd better have solid arguments as to why you use "jews" and "black" as race discriminant. I'd also like to talk…

>no I'm not. What does being black means then? and why bring "jews" into a discussion with race? Because Jews have different risks of falling ill to many diseases than people of other races. You are still trying to conflate race with religion which makes it clear that you're here to derail the discussion.

Safartic or Ashkenazi? Both are Jews, only one is st risk of passing on Tay-Sachs. Which is the “race” hm?

Re: How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of ‘Race’

#25

Post by nostalgeek » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 2:51 PM UTC

nukeop wrote: post #23

nostalgeek wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Judaism is not a race, being black means more than just a different skin color, you're intentionally trying to derail the discussion. no I'm not. What does being black means then? and why bring "jews" into a discussion with race? If we're going to talk about race scientifically using these words, well you'd better have solid arguments as to why you use "jews" and "black" as race discriminant. I'd also like to talk…

>no I'm not. What does being black means then? and why bring "jews" into a discussion with race? Because Jews have different risks of falling ill to many diseases than people of other races. You are still trying to conflate race with religion which makes it clear that you're here to derail the discussion.

> Because Jews have different risks of falling ill to many diseases than people of other races. You are still trying to conflate race with religion which makes it clear that you're here to derail the discussion.

quoting myself:

> I'd also like to talk about the fact that most European jews are convert from the medieval era and have very little to do with the "Semites" who lived in what is now Israel 2000 years ago. So what race are you talking about?

You didn't answer about "blacks", what are blacks?

Re: How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of ‘Race’

#26

Post by pavlov » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 3:16 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #10

pavlov wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand your examples. How does race affect medical treatment of an individual? Should people be treated differently in the eyes of the law depending on skin color?

There are some situations where both illnesses and treatments behave differently depending on race-linked genetics; sickle-cell aenemia vs malaria is the famous one, but there's a long tail of medicines that are slightly less effective in nonwhite people because of who happened to be in the clinical trials.

How strong is the link to race? There is a great number of diseases and conditions affected by genes that have no correlation with skin pigment.

Swedes and Finns have quite different profiles of hereditary diseases. Are Finns a different race based on that?

In the 1930s, Finnish scientists spent a lot of time “proving” to their German counterparts that Finns are an Aryan group rather than part of the Mongolic race. That seems completely absurd today. Hopefully in 80 years we’ll be able to say the same about present-day race obsessions.

Re: How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of ‘Race’

#27

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 3:20 PM UTC

throwaway538 wrote: post #19

ak_yo wrote: post #7

This is an interesting argument but I think it fails to coherently restate what it means for race to be socially constructed. Nobody is denying that genetic differences between people exist and are important for health. They’re saying that reusing racial categorization schemes in genetics is scientifically ungrounded because these racial categories have no inherent biological content— they’re more like receptacles fo…

This is because phenotype is a good predictor of genotype and people are good at assessing someone's phenotype very quickly. I can usually tell roughly which European country someone is from by looking at their face. It doesn't work as well with different parts of Eastern Europe but you get the idea.

[deleted]

Re: How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of ‘Race’

#28

Post by rout39574 » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 5:32 PM UTC

pavlov wrote: post #4

nukeop wrote: post #2

No matter how much the society at large wants to tiptoe the subject, the concept of race has never fell into disuse wherever facts really matters, such as in healthcare or the legal system.

I don’t understand your examples. How does race affect medical treatment of an individual? Should people be treated differently in the eyes of the law depending on skin color?

Race is a predictor of susceptibility to a wide variety of diseases.