Genetic Superiority

with.buddha

well, the impact of society would have an affect on ethnic differences,, but i think russ_waters is right,, they're extremely insignificant.. or impossible to tell

take math for example..do more advanced cultures that have been using math for thousands of years have a "superior" brain structure because they have exercised that area of the brain? what about a culture that doesn't use math, but instead believes in magick?

pit in a battle against each other, it's pretty obvious who would win, mathematics leads to engineering of "superior" weapons, while the other culture would be summoning gods and casting hexes.

but the question is, would the part of the brain that contemplates math be different than the part of the brain that contemplates magick? if a baby from each culture were swapped, would there be a difference between the two?

i'd say no,, i think racial differences are tiny when intellect is concerned. the physical differences are much more obvious, but that is due to climate adaptation and besides, intellect is our selective advantage..

a very scary thought though = with bio-tech engineering, couldn't a person create a virus that would target all but a certain race? or even a certain lineage within that race??

if that were to happen, "superior" would cease to be subjective and could actually become objective in a sense - selective advantage favored the Evil Scientist who figured out how to kill all competitors!!!

it's scary stuff,, and you know people will try.. [:((]

GlamGein

Let me repeat: there is no such thing as biological race. So no, bio-tech engineering could NOT be used to attack a certain race. It could attack a certain trait, but since traits are not racially distinct, the attack would certainly harm others not deemed to be a part of a certain race, and would NOT harm others OF the race that was being attacked.
Furthermore, superior intelligence is not necessarily a selective advantage; it depends upon context. Are you speaking of species wide advancement? What kind of population are you talking about? Superior intelligence won't save you if you live in a malarial environment and don't have sickle-cell trait.
Try to think outside of the proverbial box. We are inundated with concepts of race, etc., that are completely false.
Why can't we seem to grasp the FACT that biological race is false???

with.buddha

Right, i know what you're saying.. that the genetic make-up between the "races" are not very different - only certain traits are different.

you could take any asian person, black person and white person (each with it's own subdivisions) and trace a common ancestor within what, a couple thousand generations? it's not too far and evolution hasn't changed much,, just brought out certain traits.

but that's what i'm saying.. say i took my own DNA and created a self-replicating nano-robot that would 1.)check it's host DNA structure and a.)if the host structure is my own - shutdown or b.) if it's not my own - replicate and destroy white blood cells.

how deep could bio-engineering go? at the deepest level, there are 6.2 billion "races" - each person is different..

i don't think any certain "group" could be more intelligent and i agree that racial differences are just different traits due to heritage, but there are differences in genetic makeup..

i mean, couldn't you make a nano-machine that targeted all people who will go bald? that's not a racial trait, but it is a trait..

russ_watters

No, that doesn't work. Its a completely hypothetical "ends based" idea. Move stupid people to one place and you will find that all stupid people live in one place. Duh? Evolution does NOT work that way.

Except that in general race is based on a single trait - skin color. So you COULD attack a race (yes, I know thats a social definition) by attaking that trait. It would work exactly the same as attaking people based on eye or hair color.

Les Sleeth

Remember however, that the point of this thread isn't whether races are inferior or superior to each other, but rather to pose the hypothetical: if natural selection/genetics is what primarily determines human potential (as materialists assert), then why couldn't conditions exist, that would evolve specific features in one population more than in some other population (especially in the past when populations were separated from each other for millenia)? One of those features, for instance, might be intelligence (assuming it was a selective adantage).

wuliheron

They did, blacks have nappy hair and dark skin as an adaptation to the heat and ultraviolet light of the tropics, eskimos are short and round and their blood vessels are deeper under their skin as an adaptation to cold weather. Intelligence, however, is another story altogether.

The agracultural revolution and the civilization it supports is only ten thousand years old, nothing in evolutionary terms. Before that all of humanity shared a much more natural environment and lived in small hunter gather groups for millions of years. That it is difficult if not impossible to discern any real differences in brain structure or capacity comes as no surprise whatsoever given that we all lived and evolved under such similar circumstances until very recently.

In addition, modern theories of evolution are based on the principle of punctuated evolution. Periodically, so the theory goes, catastrophies occur which open up large environmental niches which surviving animals then rush to fill. In the process, evolution speeds up as they compete. Eventually animals come to dominate particular niches and stamp out all the serious short term competition for those niches. Evolution then slows to a crawl.

Humanity is such a successful species that it has no competition other than itself. Mass migrations have occured as humanity has spread across the planet adapting physically to each new environment and as competition for available resources heats up. Over the last hundred thousand years of homo sapiens we have yet to find a single species we can't drive out of its ecological niche if we so desire.

Quite the contrary, humanity today is the cause of the greatest mass extinction of species in the history of the planet. Greater than any ice age or the demise of the dinosaurs. Within twenty years the oceans will no longer be commercially fishable and within fifty every wild land animal on the planet will either be extinct or only exist in zoos.

Nature is already having the last laugh as she rushes to fill in the countless ecological niches we are openning up with rapid adaptations of existing creatures we either cannot kill or don't care too. However, until we ourselves must adapt to nature rather than vice versa, we won't.

GlamGein

I don't think that we are thinking about the race question correctly. Someone stated earlier that this thread was hypothetical, but the fundamental question is invalid, so this thread is pointless. Let me ask, "what makes a person black"? When is skin "black"? How dark exactly does it have to be? What we think of as race is a phenotypic expression of a few alleles. To say that these are related bound to other traits thus making a race is extremely false, but easy to do. The person who said that the Inuit (eskimos) are round and have blood vessels deeper beneath the skin due to adaptation brings up a good point. Just because you are "round" and have "deeper blood vessels", does not mean you are an Inuit. Just because you have "racial characteristics" does not mean someone would think you belong to a certain race, making race undefinitive, and thus invalid.

Les Sleeth

Well, that was me, the author of this thread.

I probably didn't make sure my point was clear when I started this thread, so let me correct any misconceptions now. First you have to know that I am usually trying to find logic holes in materialist philosophy. In my original post the key thing I said was, " . . . the universe hasn't guaranteed equality between the races, and there is nothing special about humanity over any other physical manifestation in creation. So why then couldn't the Black race be utterly inferior to the White race, or men superior to women, or any other twist evolution wants to give life?"

I started out with "race" as a basis to claim superiority because people have done that (and still do); but it really wasn't my point. What I was suggesting is that if you believe a human being is purely, 100% a product of physical processes (i.e., no soul or other inherently "given" nature"), then why couldn't evolution shape humans anyway it selected?

I am asking you to ponder of if something is built into us all which ultimately takes precedence over the machinations of natural selection, genetics, and even conditioning.

GlamGein

Les:
Thanks for clearing that up! I did not intend to demean your post, but I will say that I am passionate about ideas of power and inequality, which I (perhaps mistakenly) read into your thread.

Les Sleeth

All's well that ends well . . . [a)]

By the way, I appreciate passonate debate on behalf of goodness.

ObsessiveMathsFreak

The whole genetic superiority of races really doesn't hold water.

Look at dogs. The differences between a collie and a labrador must be comparible, if not more different, to the differences between two races of people.

And yet you couldn't say which dog is superior could you.

Genetic superiority can only be applied in comparisions to different species. Cats for instance are cleary smarter than collies or labradors:E

I can hardly see how a difference in 3 DNA block can make you smarter than someone else.

wuliheron

I agree with this, but the question was about genetic superiority, not racism. As with the genes coding for sickle cell anemia, given the right environment that can be superior. In the modern world with various treatments for malaria sickle cells are a disadvantage, inferior genes.

If perchance civilization were destroyed, sickle cells would become an advantage once again. In some sense then, the shear variety of genes is superior.

FZ+

Good post wuli. I always believe the real failing of the racial superiority theories proposed by various eugenicists is that the real asset of the human gene pool is not that some genes are good, but the sheer variety of the genes available, maximising the potential for adaptation. Man isn't where we are due to our superiority, but rather our sheer flexibility.

wuliheron

The real irony, FZ, is that these have been the findings of genetic research over the last few decades. When Chimp DNA was been compared to human it was discovered that whites are more closely related to chimps. Chimps have straight brown hair, no lips, white/pink skin, and sometimes blue eyes.

In addition, around half the human genome has been discovered to be junk held in reserve for the day the human race might need it. When fast adaptation is required we have a reserve of DNA that helps to make that possible. Such a flexible yet unimaginably complex system in a species who do not reproduce by the hundreds and thousands from a single female is difficult to manage.

jammieg

The environment is more important in shaping a person than their genes.
Perhaps the real question is, what is it about certain environments that have such a tendency to produce certain results in people? Who decides what genes would be superior and inferior?
And what are we supposed to do start handing out jobs based on genes over experience or more importantly the desire to do that job?
The belief in genetic superiority often arrises out of a lack of confidence.
The essential of racism is when a square peg believes it is better than a round peg. Who are we to play God and say some people are not worth as much as others.

FZ+

Erm.... take the genes of a goldfish and put it in a human environment. I don't think it would work very well.

I think you mean that the environment is more important in "differentiating a person" than their genes.

EDIT: as opposed to integrating, no doubt.

wuliheron

LOLOLOL... Bottom line, you can't have a person without an environment and vice versa. Thus, both are equally important. Instead of attempting to decide which one is more important in shaping a person the more important and personal question for us all is how to maximize both towards productive and humane purposes. Superior genes may be able to overcome inferior environments and vice versa, but these are all inferior scenarios.

Regardless of which is may or may not be more important, this is straying from the original topic.