Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

This sounds like it was made up by some racists to try to explain why some races are better than others.

Race is a bad idea to begin with. There is no major difference, we are all human.




There’s no major difference between a chihuahua and a German shepherd in the same way there’s no major difference in “insert your X & Y breeds here” - it’s pathological to think that there isn’t a bred phenotype exposed within a population cluster.


Pure imbreds in dogs end into retardations and dangerous genetic illnesses. There's no 100% pure dog... with a good physical fit. Deal with it. The same with humans. Read about the "sleep illness".


Deal with it?


This is false. Many animals have races, and they are different enough from each other genetically.

Human "races" are in not different enough to be called races from a scientific point of view.


What’s different enough? There’s clearly physical differences of magnitude and measurement.

I’m saying dogs have “races” - yes, just as humans do. Whatever you call that grouping it is based on the comparison I made on my original post which is logically correct.


Don't know much biology, but appears "modern human biological variation is not structured into phylogenetic subspecies ('races'), nor are the taxa of the standard anthropological 'racial' classifications breeding populations."

"'Race' is a legitimate taxonomic concept that works for chimpanzees but does not apply to humans (at this time)."

https://www.nature.com/articles/ng1455


You don’t need to be a biologist to know that when you bring a chihuahua to a dog park you go to the little fenced section compared to the bigger section for the bigger “breeds” and as a human you marvel at the sight and fact fact that they’re biologically the same species yet clearly with defined differences. Perception of reality allows you to infer boundaries and collections of similar things, words in a paper to justify what reality demonstrates physically and clearly is not only an appeal to authority and a fallacy of argument but it’s also meaningless as it’s out of context and can’t possibly refer to a shared experience of reality.


> What’s different enough?

Genetics. In case of humans the differences are tiny.

> There’s clearly physical differences of magnitude and measurement.

By that logic two brothers would be different races if one is tall and one is short.


Human have no species. It's the same species all over the world.


If we use the current definition of species, humans can reproduce with any other human in the planet, therefore we are at this moment the same species. We are probably too promiscuous to expect otherwise.


That's not the definition of species. In many cases different species can reproduce together, e.g. wolves and coyotes. In other cases, species are asexual so clearly there must be some other way of distinguishing them besides sexual compatibility.

The actual definition of species is essentially arbitrary and, when applied to humans and the possibility of different human subspecies or species, the question is essentially political.

It becomes even more obvious when you look into previous proto-human groups like neanderthals, denisovans, etc, as far back as you want; one can ask what counts as a subspecies, what counts as a species, and struggle to apply that in a self-consistent way today between Chinese, neanderthals, Australian aborigines, African pygmies, denisovans, native Americans, etc.

Don't let anyone trick you into thinking there is some clean science answer here - biology is far too messy.


These are political statements and as such they should not be made with the authority of science.


More like the reverse. There's no proof on being separate human species. The rest it's quakey science.


There’s no proof you exist but there’s proof you belong to a group by comparisons.


Eh, there are, but not sorted by skin tone or location. If you consider a situation as "home" (the species cycled through crisis/conflict every generation), certain neuro-types pop out as adaptions to this situation cycle parts. A shizophren might look out of place in SF, but he might call us out of place in a warzone.

Its not a good thing though and hardly something to claim pride from or for. Nobody wants to be on team wheel chair.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: