Talk:Race (human categorization)/Archive 12

message: So far the suggests are:
<african <kenyan <mongoloid <ferengi
<vulcan <hippy <white <hobbit <rogan-josh
Please add or subtract.
For a good source of images see: List of people by nationality Chris 73 | Talk 08:11, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Suggested Images

message: [regarding 7,8,9 below:] People of the same population may belong to different races (it can happen in Brazil); people from the same race may belong to different populations. Slrubenstein
:True, but these are indeed people from different populations. (I did the sampling, so I  know.)  Please suggest your caption below. P0M 18:50, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: § I don't know. I went back through some of the earlier content and found two more. Would anyone else like to go back through the "history" stuff and add the various ones that have already been tried? Any comment on the photos below? P0M 14:12, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comment on captions

message: § I think that we can do without terms like "goofball" in edit summaries. It was not my caption that was removed, but it has been available for comment, along with others, since around the time when this article was protected. P0M 05:30, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, and I participated in the discussions above.  But you're right I probably shouldn't have used the word goofball. VV 05:34, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  impolite language in edit summaries 

message: === Issues relevant to the philosophy of science ===
:Individual human beings, even individual twins, have some traits that are held in common with all other human beings, some traits that are held in common with some other human beings, and some traits that characterize them as individuals. Races are defined by selecting a number of the sets of traits that pertain neither to all human being nor to only one human being. Individual human beings would theoretically be assigned to a race by the application of an operational definition that would involve checking all pertinent characteristics of each individual against the list of characteristics that define each race, but, in practice, humans are frequently classified into races on grounds of much less stringent requirements. For instance, rather than checking all characteristics one might check an individual for some characteristics – especially easily apparent “marker” characteristics, or one might simply ask individuals to declare their races. There is a clear danger in this procedure that on the basis of a few characteristics such as skin color, nose shape, hair texture, etc., one might falsely be assumed to possess characteristics that are socially, medically, or otherwise significant. A common flawed process of reasoning is to argue from the color of someone’s skin to the IQ range within which that individual must fall.
I removed this section from the article.  It adds nothing, just repeating material from other parts of the article, and has nothing at all to do with the philosophy of science. VV 21:51, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: If this is what the paragraph is trying to say, it doesn't do it in a very clear manner.  Most of it just seems to be repeating other material.  Is it all meant to be window dressing for the cite of the term operational definition?  And "danger in the procedure" and "common flawed process of reasoning" are obvious POV, anyway.  And I disagree that anything I said was demeaning. VV 22:27, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  removed section 

message: :Individual human beings, even individual twins, have some traits that are held in common with all other human beings, some traits that are held in common with some other human beings, and some traits that characterize them as individuals. Races are defined by selecting a number of the sets of traits that pertain neither to all human being nor to only one human being. Individual human beings would theoretically be assigned to a race by the application of an operational definition that would involve checking all pertinent characteristics of each individual against the list of characteristics that define each race, but, in practice, humans are frequently classified into races on grounds of much less stringent requirements. For instance, rather than checking all characteristics one might check an individual for some characteristics – especially easily apparent “marker” characteristics, or one might simply ask individuals to declare their races. There is a clear danger in this procedure that on the basis of a few characteristics such as skin color, nose shape, hair texture, etc., one might falsely be assumed to possess characteristics that are socially, medically, or otherwise significant. A common flawed process of reasoning is to argue from the color of someone’s skin to the IQ range within which that individual must fall.
I removed this section from the article.  It adds nothing, just repeating material from other parts of the article, and has nothing at all to do with the philosophy of science. VV 21:51, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: If this is what the paragraph is trying to say, it doesn't do it in a very clear manner.  Most of it just seems to be repeating other material.  Is it all meant to be window dressing for the cite of the term operational definition?  And "danger in the procedure" and "common flawed process of reasoning" are obvious POV, anyway.  And I disagree that anything I said was demeaning. VV 22:27, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Issues relevant to the philosophy of science 

message: These faces were created using the GenHead software produced by Genemation. Each face is, in effect, the same "identity", but modified to reflect the average features of each of four different notional races.
Perhaps computer generated faces such as these can capture the facial appearance that is so readily associated with traditional labels of race, yet avoid the difficulties of presenting pictures of individual people.
:My browser isn't rendering the image, does anyone else have this problem? Rikurzhen
:I appreciate the intention, but have serious problems with this suggestion.  One of the basic insights of Darwinian thought is that there are no "ideal" types in nature.  And one of the greatest barriers to a scientific understanding of race is the belief (which I think very few scientists, but many non-scientists, have) that there is some "ideal" or "pure" example of a White, Black, and so on.  If there is any value to photographs of people of different races, I think it is to show how in the real world there is no such purity or ideal.  To computer generate photos based on some average I think would only mislead people.  Slrubenstein
::Based on the description -- I can't see the images -- it seems to me that they doesn't actually reflect an ideal so much as an empirically derived average. Thus, I'm not sure that I agree that faces that show the variation within human races are any more appropriate than faces that show the average of different races. Both kinds of data are informative and seem equally appropriate. For the sake of argument, which kind of faces would you show in an article on human sexes? Rikurzhen
I think there is a serious risk the average reader of Wikipedia will confuse an "average" with an "ideal."  Also, I question the possibility of coming up with a real average -- surely the computer program doesn't have access to a complete sample, and I wonder whether it is actually even using a random sample. Slrubenstein
:Hmm. If they did, then we need to do a better job with this article. But that raises an interesting idea: can we find a research paper on this topic? We could use that to build a sub-section on "facial features and race" in order to support and explain all the face pictures in this article. -- Also, any idea why the images doesn't render correctly? Rikurzhen
::Well, this isn't a peer-reviewed paper, but it is Richard Dawkins. I interpret this essay as an endorsment of an average face picture -- based on my guess of what it looks like. What does the group think?  --Rikurzhen 20:44, Sep 25, 2004 (UTC)
re: Four typical faces of different races created using GenHead software
§ The images use CYMK color rather than RGB color. I could see them, but only as gray images. When I copied them to my computer and opened them in graphics software that software converted them for me and the color showed up.
§ They are rather interesting images, I guess, but I agree with Slrubenstein. I think there is already far more than enough social construction going on in the area of [race], and putting out even quasi-realistic images probably would add to the problem.  P0M 01:14, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposal for faces of different races 

message: I wonder if most people have it totally wrong when it comes to race.  As Diamond pointed out (in Guns, Germs and Steel) most of the modern 'races' originate with the expansion of small groups that gained some technological advantage.  These changes can be comparable with the classic idea of how sympatric speciation occurs.  Part of the reason why the branches run much deeper in Africa is that humans evolved there, but I suspect that the other reason is that most of the non-African people are the product of recent expansions.  Doesn't it seem strange that, despite deep differences, the people who live along the edges of the major expansions all look somewhat alike - the Australian aborigines, the people of New Guinea, the aboriginal people of India, of Indo-China, the Negritos of the Philippines and many Sudanese/Somalis/Ethiopians...and to a certain extent the San/Khoisan people.  Some of it people will blame the N.African examples on racial mixing...but mixing between races in the absence of the selection pressures which created the 'races' in the first place is likely to get back towards what the ancestral 'normal' human looked like BEFORE these very specialised (and thus, very distinctive) sub-populations expanded.  Guettarda 00:05, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: No, these people have all evolved the way they have because they live in hot climates. It's got nothing to do with being at the edges of expansions. Australian Aborigines, sub-Saharan Africans, the Philippine Negritos and many other groups have evolved dark skin because the extra melanin provides protection from UV light. No more, no less. Scandinavian people, by contrast, are generally very pale-skinned because they have less need for this heat protection. thefamouseccles 02:05, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  What is Race 

message: I made the map  based on http://www.mitomap.org/mitomap/WorldMigrations.pdf — it is not identical to the Cavalli-Sforza map , which is afaik based on genes and not on mitochondrial DNA. The mtDNA map gives more precise migrations and a timeframe (out of Africa 150 millennia ago); maybe you would consider replacing the current "phylogeny" map with it? dab 16:30, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: i like it too - the only problem is internationalisation, you should prepare a version without English labels so that other people can easily add other language labels without having to make a mess in the figure. Boud 14:45, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

text: There's an error in this image link - i can't find the image. Boud 14:45, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Phylogenetic representations

message: The edition I see right now has the "Overview" section starting in mid-sentence.
Queerwiki 15:00, Oct 26, 2004 (UTC)
:I fixed it.  An anon user wiped out half the section, possibly by mistake. VeryVerily 15:16, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fix this page!