[ExI] Race Biology
Damien Broderick
thespike at satx.rr.com
Fri Mar 21 22:36:12 UTC 2008
At 05:27 PM 3/21/2008 -0400, Rafal wrote:
>The primary meaning has to do with de[s]cent, and identifiable
>differences between groups of different descent within a potentially
>interbreeding population. These are strictly biological facts, in
>the sense that an automaton completely ignorant of culture would be
>able to analyze and properly segregate organisms strictly by
>investigating their inherited traits.
By "properly" I assume you mean "reliably" or "replicably" rather
than "appropriately." The distinction is important. What canon of
criteria, independent-of-human-history, does the automaton use to
select the major traits it uses to characterize individuals into 3,
30 or 300 "human races"? For example, to what extent are the tens of
thousands of traits of people called "Negroes" or "blacks"
cross-correlated, and would the automatons rediscover this "racial
group" as automatons have rediscovered certain theorems of set
theory? *We* know they nearly all have visibly darker skin that some
other humans of historically different geographical descent, of
course. Do they all have thick everted lips? No. Wide flattened
noses? No. Kinky hair? No. Specific blood types? MHC genes? Fast
twitch muscles? Weeeeellll--of course, those people traditionally
labelled "black" whose ancestors lived fairly segregated lives in
regions of Africa or Papua or Australia or India for many many
generations will tend to share some but not all of these traits.
Plenty of other people of different historical descent in widely
separated parts of the planet will share other traits. What's a poor
mindless automaton to do? Look at tooth size? Fingernail shape? Exact
hue of liver? Height? Girth? IQ? Ah, look, here's the "race of
Mensans" popping out! They all do great on tests, and you can tell
them by their distinctive skin color... well, no, wait, it's true
that many have ancestors from China and Japan, but that's also true
of a very large number of fairly ordinary or stupid people.
Damien Broderick
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