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Did evolution leave all races equal in terms of mental and physical competence?

Did evolution leave all races with equal mental and physical competency?

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RStringfield said:
Based upon your definition, you think it is an ambiguous word.
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You think I think I think it's an ambiguous word based on my definition. My definition is more clear than the Wikipedia definition.
 
Tucker Case said:
Really? What "race" are most Mexicans?
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Good point.

I did say I was the inquisitive one who didn't know, not the argumentative one who didn't know.
 
Wake said:
Good point.

I did say I was the inquisitive one who didn't know, not the argumentative one who didn't know.
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When you refused to clarify what was meant exactly by the term "race" in the op, and called that request for clarification a fallacy, you became the argumentative one who didn't know, even if that was not your intention.

The question was very appropriate given the ambiguity of the term.
 
OscarB63 said:
according to you they haven't...we are all equal.
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I have made no assertion on that. I am with those that argue that race and intelligence are both so arbitrary as to make any assertion pointless. Intelligence is whatever the test says it is. One test could measure it one way and another could use a totally different metric. Like beauty, intelligence is in the eye of the beholder.

OscarB63 said:
you can't have it both ways. can't blame black failure on slavery and then cry that environment doesn't affect IQ.

FWIW, my "sentiment" isn't that black failure is due to a lack of IQ, it's due to a lack of motivation. they are intelligent enough to succeed, many of them just choose not to. there is a difference.
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It appears to me that environment affects IQ. IQ is not necessarily a good measure of intelligence and I cannot think of anyway to measure it that is not arbitrary and subjective. Therefore, the statement does not say much.
 
Wake said:
You think I think I think it's an ambiguous word based on my definition. My definition is more clear than the Wikipedia definition.
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Race is a very ambiguous term, no matter how it is defined. Is an Eskimo the same race as a Navajo Indian, and are they the same race as an Indian in the Amazon? Is the Eskimo the same race as people in Siberia, and also the same race as Mongolians? Are the Mongolians the same race as Japanese people, and are they the same race as a Thai person, and is an Indian (not American Indian) the same race as the Thai person, who is the same race as the Japanese person who is the same race as the Mongolian who is the same race as the Siberian who is the same race as the Eskimo who is the same race as the Navajo who is the same race as the Amazon Indian??
 
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By "I can't wait to see this ****" I do not mean to pick on Wake, btw. Im just waiting fro the thread to asplode. :shrug:
 
The premise is flawed in the first place because there are no separate races among humans. We are all the same race. More scientifically, we are all the same species, we just have different phenotypes. Phenotypes occur in adaptation to environments.

On an extremely minute level you could argue that a Chinese person has different genetics than an African because they have different visual features; but if you were to look at a house cat that's spotted vs. a house cat that is all white, would you start referring to them as being different species? No. You call them all cats. Same thing with the different types of dog.

If you put all kinds of dog together in one environment, they all interact uniformly. The same goes for humans, except we have more cultural layers that make this more complicated. But that's not genetic.

Europe tried to divide humans into different species along time ago. It's called Social Darwinism. Modern science has proven it completely fallacious and if you'd care to look at the science behind it you'd see that.

I therefore cannot vote in this poll, because the opening question, although scientifically intended, has zero to do with scientific fact. It is personal supposition only.
 
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SE102 said:
By "I can't wait to see this ****" I do not mean to pick on Wake, btw. Im just waiting fro the thread to asplode. :shrug:
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It's taking a long time...
 
Tucker Case said:
When you refused to clarify what was meant exactly by the term "race" in the op, and called that request for clarification a fallacy, you became the argumentative one who didn't know, even if that was not your intention.

The question was very appropriate given the ambiguity of the term.
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Not so. I objected to this:

Communique: Let's start with the premises. What are the races you are referring to? Let's get a complete list first, then we can try tackling the question posed...
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With this:

Nope.

A List Of Fallacious Arguments

Argument By Question:
asking your opponent a question which does not have a snappy answer. (Or anyway, no snappy answer that the audience has the background to understand.) Your opponent has a choice: he can look weak or he can look long-winded. For example, "How can scientists expect us to believe that anything as complex as a single living cell could have arisen as a result of random natural processes ?"

Actually, pretty well any question has this effect to some extent. It usually takes longer to answer a question than ask it.

Variants are the rhetorical question, and the loaded question, such as "Have you stopped beating your wife ?"
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There was absolutely nothing about the clarity of the term "race". It was about the fallacious Argument by Question, in which he asked a question about which and all races that had no quick answer to be given. That was the problem, not the definition of the term "race".
 
Temporal said:
The premise is flawed in the first place because there are no separate races among humans. We are all the same race.
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If you're going to say we're all the same race then racism can't exist because racism demands that there's a race that oppresses/insults/etc another race.
 
Wake said:
Not so. I objected to this:



With this:



There was absolutely nothing about the clarity of the term "race". It was about the fallacious Argument by Question, in which he asked a question about which and all races that had no quick answer to be given. That was the problem, not the definition of the term "race".
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It was entirely about clarification of what you meant by the term race. In order to even begin debating the issue, a clear cut definition of race must exist, and if such a calrification were possible, a list of all races would also be possible.


Just because his response was a question doesn't mean it was an argument by question fallacy.
 
Wake said:
Not so. I objected to this:



With this:



There was absolutely nothing about the clarity of the term "race". It was about the fallacious Argument by Question, in which he asked a question about which and all races that had no quick answer to be given. That was the problem, not the definition of the term "race".
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It looks to me that he had not even started arguing. He was asking for clarification to YOUR argument before he could begin his argument.

the important part:

then we can try tackling the question posed...
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Wake said:
If you're going to say we're all the same race then racism can't exist because racism demands that there's a race that oppresses/insults/etc another race.
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No, racism demands that there's a group of people perceived as a race that oppresses, etc.

In other words, racism doesn't demand that a race objectively exists. It demands that there are groups that we refer to as races that oppress one another.
 
Wake said:
You think I think I think it's an ambiguous word based on my definition. My definition is more clear than the Wikipedia definition.
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So you are saying ambiguous is ambiguous? LOL. "More clear" does not mean completely lacking ambiguity. Rather it implies it. Your definition is no more "correct" than that of wikipedia. It is simply the one you prefer.

Similar is an ambiguous word. Who decides the features that define race and whether the features of one particular are more similar to this group or that group? We do, collectively. Because there is no certain way to define the general features of the group or whether a particular is more like this group or that group, it is ambiguous.
 
RStringfield said:
Similar is an ambiguous word. Who decides the features that define race and whether the features of one particular are more similar to this group or that group? We do, collectively. Because there is no certain way to define the general features of the group or whether a particular is more like this group or that group, it is ambiguous.
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Looking at his definition: "I view race as a set of people with similar physical features, etc" All people with Achondroplasia would be part of a single race since it would be a group of people with similar physical features. They also have similarities in their genes, too.
 
What exactly would various different groups of people be more or less competent at? There is no such thing as general competency at life. Unless you are dealing with a person with serious brain damage, then a person would have a certain set of strengths and weaknesses. I have no idea how to evaluate general adeptness. Is it in terms of population? I guess Asians are winning, then. Their genetic differences are more prevalent, and thus apparently better. Is it in terms of wealth? How about the ability to not get melanoma? Other than climate adaptation, our racial differences are basically nil. There are simply no side effects of race besides this one thing.

This question is not specific enough.
 
Wow, 8 pages and only 4 votes?
 
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