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More women than expected are genetically men (2016)

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Re: More women than expected are genetically men (2016)

#221

Post by r14c »

otterley wrote: post #220
r14c wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

race is a category assigned based on crudely determined heritable traits, but looking at the genetics you don't get the same categories. dark skin is a convergent evolutionary trait that comes from living near the equator, you don't need the groups to be related at all for them to arrive at a similar skin tone. the same goes for all skin tones in fact. racial categories actually don't make sense from a biological per…

There are in fact biological differences, some of which lead to disproportionate susceptibility to diseases such as sickle cell disease, Tay-Sachs disease, thalassemia, and Gaucher disease.

i'm not saying that there are no biological differences between different groups of people. you're missing the key point here: race doesn't classify people into genetic groups, it classifies people based on phenotypes that appear in genetically distinct groups. you're also conflating race with heritable traits in general.

that's what I'm trying to point out with this example: https://www.npr.org/2009/02/02/100057939/your-family-may-onc...

Re: More women than expected are genetically men (2016)

#222

Post by otterley »

r14c wrote: post #221
otterley wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are in fact biological differences, some of which lead to disproportionate susceptibility to diseases such as sickle cell disease, Tay-Sachs disease, thalassemia, and Gaucher disease.

i'm not saying that there are no biological differences between different groups of people. you're missing the key point here: race doesn't classify people into genetic groups, it classifies people based on phenotypes that appear in genetically distinct groups. you're also conflating race with heritable traits in general. that's what I'm trying to point out with this example: https://www.npr.org/2009/02/02/100057939/…

> race doesn't classify people into genetic groups

Race is the word we use to do exactly that. It's not perfect, but it's what we have.

Re: More women than expected are genetically men (2016)

#223

Post by r14c »

otterley wrote: post #222
r14c wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'm not saying that there are no biological differences between different groups of people. you're missing the key point here: race doesn't classify people into genetic groups, it classifies people based on phenotypes that appear in genetically distinct groups. you're also conflating race with heritable traits in general. that's what I'm trying to point out with this example: https://www.npr.org/2009/02/02/100057939/…

> race doesn't classify people into genetic groups Race is the word we use to do exactly that. It's not perfect, but it's what we have.

Race is a word we use to divide society into castes. The genetic component is practically tangential to the concept of race.

A much more useful concept is ethnicity

Re: More women than expected are genetically men (2016)

#224

Post by otterley »

r14c wrote: post #223
otterley wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> race doesn't classify people into genetic groups Race is the word we use to do exactly that. It's not perfect, but it's what we have.

Race is a word we use to divide society into castes. The genetic component is practically tangential to the concept of race. A much more useful concept is ethnicity

Most people use the terms interchangably.

Re: More women than expected are genetically men (2016)

#225

Post by drdeca »

otterley wrote: post #214
drdeca wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but discrete categories people come up with are less real the less they align-with/derive-from the actual how-things-are . I’m willing to talk about the radius of a helium atom even though there is no sharp cut-off in distance beyond which the amplitude for an electron being found there becomes zero. But not every k-means clustering on a dataset reflects a real separation into types. Just because people draw li…

One can observe people’s skin color and other outward appearance attributes. Those are undeniably real. It doesn’t mean that the conclusions one makes from those observations are necessarily correct or useful, which I think is what the OP is getting at. And yet sometimes they are useful. Prople whose lineage originates in different places (race, if you will) do have medically significant differences (see the literatu…

Yes, “amount of melanin content” is a real thing. And it is in large part attributable to genes which have correlations with both other genes (with medically relevant differences) and to geographic locations of ancestors.

So, if by “race” one means “melanin content and geographic location of ancestors”, then that is a real thing. But the way these vary do not come in any particular natural grouping into categories; “race”, in the sense of a categorical variable (not just the concept of ancestry more generally), isn’t real, or, at least, it is less real than the distinction between male and female.

If one has a random real-valued variable which has a continuous distribution, it may be useful to chunk it up into discrete buckets even if the way of chunking ends up being fairly arbitrary. Having a way of chunking it up into intervals being useful doesn’t imply that the arbitrary chunking is actually a natural categorical variable.

Re: More women than expected are genetically men (2016)

#226

Post by prmoustache »

otterley wrote: post #224
r14c wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Race is a word we use to divide society into castes. The genetic component is practically tangential to the concept of race. A much more useful concept is ethnicity

Most people use the terms interchangably.

most people *in the USA*.

Re: More women than expected are genetically men (2016)

#227

Post by tptacek »

otterley wrote: post #222
r14c wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'm not saying that there are no biological differences between different groups of people. you're missing the key point here: race doesn't classify people into genetic groups, it classifies people based on phenotypes that appear in genetically distinct groups. you're also conflating race with heritable traits in general. that's what I'm trying to point out with this example: https://www.npr.org/2009/02/02/100057939/…

> race doesn't classify people into genetic groups Race is the word we use to do exactly that. It's not perfect, but it's what we have.

They just explained why it isn't, and you didn't engage with their point.

Re: More women than expected are genetically men (2016)

#228

Post by tptacek »

otterley wrote: post #224
r14c wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Race is a word we use to divide society into castes. The genetic component is practically tangential to the concept of race. A much more useful concept is ethnicity

Most people use the terms interchangably.

Most people misuse these terms (don't get me started on "heritable").

Re: More women than expected are genetically men (2016)

#229

Post by otterley »

tptacek wrote: post #228
otterley wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people use the terms interchangably.

Most people misuse these terms (don't get me started on "heritable").

Fair! I'm probably guilty of it, myself. My primary quibble was with the idea that groupable variations among humans ("race" being one of them) aren't "real" (as opposed to "imaginary"), not about whether the groupings are correct or properly used.

Re: More women than expected are genetically men (2016)

#230

Post by kasey_junk »

otterley wrote: post #229
tptacek wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people misuse these terms (don't get me started on "heritable").

Fair! I'm probably guilty of it, myself. My primary quibble was with the idea that groupable variations among humans ("race" being one of them) aren't "real" (as opposed to "imaginary"), not about whether the groupings are correct or properly used.

The problem with race is that it’s more social convention than science. Read Winston Churchill, he’ll tell you all about the various races of the British isles.
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