> If races look different, then the possibility of other metrics being different is a logical induction.
This doesn't follow. It becomes more clear why if you put it in more abstract terms. Take a bunch of balls, half red, half blue. Now assume some half of these balls are heavy (say 10lbs) and some half are light (say 2 lbs). Assume the balls have a bunch of other characteristics this way. Now what you're saying is that if we know a ball is e.g. Red, we can conclude something about the probability that it's e.g. heavy. Clearly that's not the case, why would it be? Unless you just assume a priori that the characteristics are distributed in a way that's correlated with ball color, there's no reason we should think there's an association between color and e.g. weight.
I'm basically saying that if one trait (appearance) can be different than other traits can be different as well.
In the abstract universe I'm referring to, imagine a bunch of balls and cubes. The balls have no sides and the cubes have six. We live in a culture that says this is the only difference between balls and cubes, otherwise balls and cubes are completely equal. This statement is not true, because balls can roll down a hill faster than cubes.
Outside of the world of mathematics words are used to refer to a fuzzy category of traits. If one trait in this category is different from another category then the possibility exists that another trait is also different, inductively speaking.
>This statement is not true, because balls can roll down a hill faster than cubes.
Yeah but that's because ability to roll down is directly caused by the observable geometry. They are just different properties of the same trait. Skin tone or facial structure cannot cause someone to be intelligent. If you flattened the sides of the round balls, they'd be just as slow. But imagine there's some new way to painlessly crush people's faces into different racial-typical shapes and change the color of their skin to some racial-typical tone. Would this cause their intelligence to change? Obviously not. So how is this different than people with different physical characteristics from birth?
Race categorizations are made by humans according to how people look. From wikipedia's definition "Race, as a social construct, is a group of people who share similar and distinct physical characteristics." You're saying that these physical characteristics somehow also indicate how people behave (outside of social conditioning). There is really no reason to conclude that.
I think this wiki section on race along with the sources mentioned are useful here.
>There is a wide consensus that the racial categories that are common in everyday usage are socially constructed, and that racial groups cannot be biologically defined.[22][23][24][25][26][27] Nonetheless, some scholars argue that racial categories obviously correlate with biological traits (e.g. phenotype) to some degree, and that certain genetic markers have varying frequencies among human populations, some of which correspond more or less to traditional racial groupings. For this reason, there is no current consensus about whether racial categories can be considered to have significance for understanding human genetic variation.
> So how is this different than people with different physical characteristics from birth?
That's because skin color and facial features are directly caused by the DNA. They are just different manifestations of the same trait. DNA is also known to correlate with intelligence. Just like flattening round balls will make them slower, picking embryos with gene combinations known to correlate with higher intelligence will cause the resulting humans to have higher intelligence on average. But imagine if genes responsible for genes correlated with higher intelligence occured million times as often among genotypes of white people than among genotypes of black people. Would then picking embryos based on skin color genes instead of intelligence genes themselves produced more (on average) intelligent people? Obviously yes.
I don't really know whether intelligence genes actually occur more often among white people. I just want to point out that if it's so, it's not skin color that causes people to be more or less intelligent. It's their DNA.
>DNA is also known to correlate with intelligence.
But not with race. You can't tell which race someone is by their DNA, because, and here's the key point I think people are missing, race is a social construct based on appearance, not a biological reality.
>picking embryos with gene combinations known to correlate with higher intelligence will cause the resulting humans to have higher intelligence on average. But imagine if genes correlated with higher intelligence occurred million times as often among genotypes of white people than among genotypes of black people. Would then picking embryos based on skin color genes instead of intelligence genes themselves produced more (on average) intelligent people? Obviously yes.
Sure, if you assume from the start that skin color genes are correlated with intelligence genes then it follows that skin color is correlated with intelligence. I'm saying there's no reason to make that assumption to begin with.
DNA obviously correlates with race. What do you think makes the skin color of black-skinned people black? Or are you claiming skin color doesn't correlate with self-identifying as black, or being identified as black by the rest of the society?
> You can't tell which race someone is by their DNA, because (...) race is a social construct based on appearance, not a biological reality.
So is gender. However, the biological reality is that you can tell which gender someone self-identfies with by their DNA correctly at least 99 times out of 100. How hard it is to believe you can do at least as well (success rate >0.99) with race self-identification? As a data point, some people claim they can do it, and would bet their lifes on results.
http://archive.wired.com/politics/law/magazine/16-01/ps_dna
> Sure, if you assume from the start that skin color genes are correlated with intelligence genes then it follows that skin color is correlated with intelligence. I'm saying there's no reason to make that assumption to begin with.
Nobody makes this assumption, though (well, except for the sake of argument). There's no reason to assume the opposite either. Science works by formulating a hypothesis and testing it.
Here's the thing... traits some in collections. Mongoloid or African American are words that describe a collection of physical traits.
Black people will have darker skin AND frizzy hair. Asians have asian eyes AND black hair. This is proof that traits are inherited in collective groups.
You are stating by certain magic these collections of physical traits that describe an asian or a caucasian magically only correlate with other physical traits. So in a sense, for asians: Black hair correlates with asian eyes but these traits can absolutely never ever correlate with anything related to intelligence and behavior.
What is the mechanism in genetics that deliberately demarcates physical traits from behavioral traits? What causes social traits to be totally random while physical traits come correlated with one another? I think it is more logical to conclude that there is no mechanism that does this.
Please note that I am well versed in the theory you present. It is often used as a scientific basis for racial equality. I agree with the intent of the theory but I disagree with it as a practical truth. Life is just unfair. Anyway, the theory does address a valid point but here's why I think it's wrong:
I think searching for genetic markers at the molecular level doesn't yield results because behavioral and physical traits are abstractions on top of DNA.
Imagine two programs, one written in C++, the other in Haskell. Both programs have the same behavior... let's say they both return the derivative of an expression. If you analyze the source code for correlations without completely understanding it (largely the way we analyze DNA today) you will find that the languages are completely uncorrelated. Both are totally different in style, structure and syntax. This occurs even though the surface behavior (finding the derivative of an expression) is exactly identical. This is what I believe is happening with the DNA. You cannot find correlations with race because the correlations only occur at a higher level of abstraction not in the source code.
You can talk about red and blue balls all you want, but what matters is the real world. It's not inconceivable that like there are physical differences between the races, that there can be other differences as well. Refusing to see this isn't reasonable.
This doesn't follow. It becomes more clear why if you put it in more abstract terms. Take a bunch of balls, half red, half blue. Now assume some half of these balls are heavy (say 10lbs) and some half are light (say 2 lbs). Assume the balls have a bunch of other characteristics this way. Now what you're saying is that if we know a ball is e.g. Red, we can conclude something about the probability that it's e.g. heavy. Clearly that's not the case, why would it be? Unless you just assume a priori that the characteristics are distributed in a way that's correlated with ball color, there's no reason we should think there's an association between color and e.g. weight.