While “rave” is a misnomer, being applied almost exclusively based on skin color, haplogroups are a well defined aspect of genetic study and are very well defined geographically. It’s why the Germans look so distinct to Australians and so on, because different genetics found their footing in different areas. Claiming they are based solely on “socio-economic” factors is wildly incorrect and wildly racist. To what authority does someone’s social and economic standing define their genetics?

> haplogroups are a well defined aspect of genetic study and are very well defined geographically

Nobody is claiming there are no genetic differences between populations of people. People are reiterating that race is an entirely socially-constructed concept. Human racial categories are not based on genetics.

> It’s why the Germans look so distinct to Australians and so on

As a white person, they both look like average white people with Northwestern European heritage to me. If you had a room with 100 random white people, I guarantee you I couldn't pinpoint to the Aussies or Germans by looks alone.

Race is not defined by genetics. Genetics were used to justify race. Race is also extremely nebulous. According to the US Census, an average Norwegian, Sicilian, Mexican, and Arab are all considered to be white. Again according to the US Census, on average, if you are from southwest Pakistan, you are Asian. If you are from southeast Iran, you are... caucasian? See how stupid this classification is?

I would bet good money that the genetic difference between someone from Iran (White) vs. Pakistan (Asian) is substantially less than someone from Pakistan (Asian) vs. South Korea (Asian).

> As a white person, they both look like average white people with Northwestern European heritage to me. If you had a room with 100 random white people, I guarantee you I couldn't pinpoint to the Aussies or Germans by looks alone.

That sounds pretty racist to me. Would you say the same about people from Uganda as opposed to the Caribbean, or Japan from China? That they all look the same?

There's a loaded grenade of a question.

Here's the thing though, a "white person" from Australia is a blandly generic European, they look like they could of come from Scotland, or Germany .. then of course you can start looking at European Australians and picking out people with deep ancestral roots to Spain, Italy, Serbia | Croatia, etc.

Modern Germany is a greater melting pot of origin stories than it once was - although to be frankly honest much of the population of Neukölln in Berlin look as though they might be from Melbourne, Australia - and they don't look at all like the 'Aryan Race' archetypes certain Germans of the 1920s were so fond of.

Forget "race" - it's a question of whether any family traits and features that started out strongly eveident are still present or not.

The greater truth is that outside of any obvious strong features, Australians come from all over; 25% of the current population was born outside of Australia, and with the exception of indigenous Australians and first settler, early convicts, soldiers that stayed on for land, servant families of the rich, very early gold rush adventurers, etc very few people in Australia are descended from anybody here prior to 1850.

Following 1850 the Australian population quadrupled rapidly from under half a million outsiders as prospecters poured in.

Conversely, the population of Japan largely looks Japanese in origin and it's generally not hard to pick those who don't have several generations there behind them.

The important thing I'm pointing to is that there is no correlation between those haplogroups, which definitely do exist, and what anyone calls race. So when you say that you want to study race VS intelligence, that just doesn't make any sense. If you want to study the heritability of IQ, or variation in IQ between diverse human populations, that's a different matter.

Race is not genetics; genetics are objective reality, race is not. Race is a series of socio-economic labels applied to people based on purely external factors, and highly un correlated with any genetic variation.

I agree with what you’re saying, ultimately I dislike the label. I don’t see where the “economic” part of “socio-economic label” comes in. Race as a social label makes perfect sense to me, because race is used in social contexts mostly as a way to discuss individuals in our daily life. “That [race] man” is expected vernacular, as our social groups tend to be made up of those that are like us, and “race” is a typical exclusion from that. However, it as an “economic” label is far too cultural to for me to accept as a general statement. In certain cultures, say 18th century USA, races such as “Irish” or “African” were seen generally as low-rung groups. However, that’s different nowadays, and was different across cultural borders, so while I would posit everyone understands the social aspects of race, the economic predispositions aren’t something we should be focusing on, as ultimately they are just another social aspect and thus redundant.

Is race a socio-economic concept? Can you explain what you mean by that?

Of course. At best it's based on skin color, eye shape, and hair type. But different countries have different notions of what is a race, or what race a person is. And these also vary historically a lot (e.g. Irish people and Italian people used to be considered different races in the USA). And there is nothing objective about the choice of characteristics attributed to "race".

And finally and perhaps most importantly, no studies of race ever look at any genetics to define the races, they look at the regular proxies. A black-skinned child of a black-skinned mother and a white-skinned father is typically considered "black" even if they are just as black as they are white, genetically (or even more, if the black-skinned parent also had a white-skinned parent).

Its not genetically mediated. Indians are a "race" someone from Assam, someone from Rajasthan, and someone from Tamil Nadu may differ dramatically in terms of their genetic heritage and even racial appearance, simply because they are defined in terms of associations which are not purely to do with genetic lineage.

Right, but this doesn't invalidate the idea that genetic groups exist and that heritability can significantly affect traits such as intelligence.

It simply moves the question to, which genetic groups are correct to create distinctions from. The adage that there is more human genetic diversity in Africa than outside it comes to mind.

>which genetic groups are correct to create distinctions from.

None, because you cannot create a grouping without imposing certain parameters which are non-empirical in nature. Genetic science =! race science. Race as a concept is almost entirely mediated by social concerns and abstractions from concrete reality.

You can create groupings in nature. Biologists do it all the time for all animals. The groupings are by some measure arbitrary, yes, unless you mean to suggest that for example crows are in the same grouping as seagulls, and that even these groupings are invalid?

No, in fact I'm not. But nobody is going to go around saying that a crow is a seagull, you know it when you see it. Its because we ourselves are not seagulls or crows. We are not dogs, we are not animals, except in one specific way. And since you, yes you yourself, are part of the thing you are commenting on (race), there is no way to "purify" your assessment of the thing since your own personal history, which you cannot even be fully aware of, factors into your sectioning of the world.

So we are unable to judge, and therefore the null hypothesis must be that humans are genetically similar enough that trait variation is explained by external factors?

I think we can judge, and also that the null hypothesis should be that humans are evolutionary creatures like all other creatures on the planet, with groupings exhibiting different traits based on the genetic makeup.

No, but we cannot make any pure empirical judgements, just ones that we know are inflected by our particular social histories. Of course different humans have different traits, but IQ is not a measure of individual traits, its a mass measurement that correlates far more strongly with social factors such as nutrition and education than genetic heritage, which is what the article is saying

So do you believe that science as a whole is impossible because it is impossible for us to be truly logical and empirical on every matter?

Logical =! Empirical (there are many books on philosophy you could read on this subject, probably all of them.)

Science is the study of things that aren't logical. Concepts don't have anything to do with natural systems, they are patterns of thinking fixed into definite shapes to be applied to the natural world. It is precisely what we don't know, and what we don't yet know that we don't know, that scientific practice helps us discover. If you trusted in "logic" all the time you'd just get endless mathematical formulas that look cool and feel nice, but don't have anything to do with the universe more than a cat has to do with a ball of yarn that it's playing with. It is always when we discover things that break logic, that real scientific progress is made, not when we mindlessly follow what is "logical."

Absolutely, this is a subject that it would make sense to study. It's much harder to study than "race", though, because you need to do genetic studies on your participants or to design cross-cultural IQ tests (relying on geography as a much better proxy for genetics than skin color is). And in fact, no one is doing it in the area of intelligence, while there is a quite a bit of paper written on "race" and intelligence.