Re: genome news (fwd)

[Doyle Saylor]

Title: Re: genome news (fwd)

Greetings Economists,
   JKS writes in reply to Mines,

JKS,
No it's not. It would be racist (and genetically illiterate, for the most
part) to say that some groups of people are inferior to another because of
their genes, but it is not racist to say, for example, that Black people are  
different in the color of their skin from whites in large part because of
their genes. That is just true.  Genes are causally efficaous; they do
account for some of the variation in differences between groups and
individuals, and anyone who denies that has no idea what he is talking about.

Doyle
The theory of sociobiology is that genes control behavior.  In other words any social group are the way they are because of their genes.  Is that true?  Well you say above that is not true (falsifiable in the traditional sense of the words in science).  

Let's look at Mine's comment again,

Mine
<< the socio-biological claim that
people differ because they differ genetically is called RACISM,  >>

Doyle
JKS says anyone who claims sociobiology does not assert control over the human social behavior has no idea what he is talking about.   And I have no idea from JKS what exactly makes him different from Sociobiology.   If I pick up a book on evolutionary psychology is that not the whole thrust of their theory?  See "The Adapted Mind, Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture", Jerome H. Barkow Leda Cosmides, John Tooby, Oxford University Press, 1992.

In replying to M. Forstater,  JKS writes,

JKS
Don't assume any such thing. Of course I am aware of the social contruction
of race, and I don't uncritically assume anything. I also don't need to do
the dance every time I use a  loaded word,a t least, I hope, in this context.
Among people to whom the social construction of race might bea  new thought,
I'd emphasize it. Here, I might have hoped that I could take it for granted.
How very foolish of me.

I might have said, I briefly contemplated it, that malinin content avrirs
with geographic origin; that genetics explains why people from subSaharan
Africa have darker skins, because of higher melanin content, on average, than
people fron Northern Europe. But it is tiresome, particularly when one is
talking about race, to pretend that one is not. Political correctness is very
boring.

Doyle
Your comments do not explain "black" skin, because you don't understand genetics or you wouldn't so loosely assert something about black skins.  When groups are relatively isolated from each other there are directions to that in changes arising or falling in a pool in relation to other pools otherwise related to the isolate, selection may make dark skin arise, and it may not according to a climate, because the source of change is contingent.  Color vision in primates is interesting in that sense.  But not in the crude way you articulate your views.  That is why arguments such as yours fade away in time in the sciences because they are not sufficiently accurate and practical in understanding reality.  In current times when all the human community intermarries there is not going to be a geographic origin to skin color and your point seems just plain Eurocentric to others.  Which comes first, light or dark in skin?  What about a Baboon's blue ass, why aren't humans blue skinned, since they are our relatives too.  And your point is just how you insert yourself into this argument when you have no sense what so ever that Mine's outrage is justified and important about the re-rise of socio-biology under the name evolutionary psychology.  Your remarks are as sloppy as you accuse Mine of being.
thanks,
Doyle Saylor