It is rather bizarre.
The ONLY way for Hominid branching to be possible is through RACE. Yet you have a professor deliberately teaching junk science which completely DESTROYS the theory of human evolution by saying RACE DOESN’T EXIST. Do you guys REALLY want … to be known as a University teaching nonsense which destroys Human Evolution?
…
i am only a HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATE AND EVEN I KNOW WITH 100% CERTAINTY THAT THIS IS JUNK SCIENCE
Gosh. I’m only a university professor of biology, not AGuyWhosYoutubeChannelGetsMillionsOfViews with a high school diploma, but I thought the key ingredients for speciation were reproductive isolation and subsequent divergence by drift and/or selection. Not “race”, which is a sociologically loaded term that is poorly connected to any legitimate scientific concepts. Does this guy really think that humanity is poised for branching into 3 or 5 or 7 or 63 (or whatever the current tally of ‘races’ is nowadays) species? Is the unit of any potential speciation event in our future likely to be what we label as ‘race’?
Does anyone know who AGuyWhosYoutubeChannelGetsMillionsOfViews actually is? I’d love to watch some of his videos. I’m sure they’re…entertaining informative amusing irritating.
so, wait:
Some university professor says that our current racial constructs have no valid biological underpinnings…and that equals no evolution?
Ah, Ing! What a confusing academic career you must lead!
“I am a celebrity on the Internet! But I won’t say which (gotta be coy, c’mon).
My HS education in evolutionary theory was exhaustive and thorough.
INTERRACIAL MARRIAGE DESTROYS EVOLUTION!!!one”
Has anyone labelled this new logical fallacy?
“I am right bc I have a YouTube video which has millions of views!”
Argument from Hits?
The intellectual accomplishments of white people never cease to amaze.
I smell Duning-Kruger
Dunnig-Kruger, according to the blessed wiki:
[emphasis added, based on “High school only, but 100% certain…”]
Anthony K:
Argumentum ad epopulum?
my spelling aint werking today, misspelled “Dunning-Kruger” twice in a row. ;-(
Ogvorbis@7
Beat me to it. :D
This is (part of) why I have impure thoughts about you. Often.
@3 Seems like an appeal to authority based on popularity, a twofer fallacy? But, YouTube popularity and the way it inflates the channel owner’s view of their own authority does seem to warrant its own lexical distinct label.
Maybe: “Tubeflation Fallacy”
for the life of me I have never understood what the selective pressure that would involve race going forward since about the only differences are mostly superficial. Is the suggestion that humans will evolve by sexual selection and diverge like the Birds of Paradise.?
uncle frogy
cangerofbits:
Yet another example of a Pharyngula comment that, taken of context, excites my puerile inner 13-year-old.
unclefrogy:
So the future of humanity looks like a Dr. Seuss book?
Somebody, I think it was Dawkins, wrote that two siblings can wind up as ancestors in two different species. Not sole ancestors, mind, but when the divide comes, somewhere back up the line were siblings that split.
It made my brain hurt, and I haven’t written it right. But it serves as an example of race not being needed for speciation. Of course, any two “races” had sibling ancestors, too.
The variations that we could call “races” are related to the possibility of speciation, but the variations are not distinct, and cannot be clearly defined. If complete separation were to occur, and two species were to develop, there would be no distinct points at which one could say the different groups were different races, and then different species.
It amuses me that a great many of the “race” fans are happy to lump all of sub-Saharan Africa into one race. The genetic diversity within that “race” makes a trivial mockery of any differences outside it.
Ogvorbis @7:
Argumentum ad ePopulum it is!
The claim makes as much sense as Dr Seuss but I was referring to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birds_of_Paradise
uncle frogy
Though with human attitude toward sex and its place in our behavior I see no clear preferences within or between any arbitrary grouping that you can imagine
If anything we seem pretty indiscriminate
uncle frogy
unclefrogy:
Oh, I got that. I was just, in my limited little mind, combining Birds of Paradise and humanity and, in my mind, it looked like the Dr. Seuss people with body hair/feathers and weird top knots and such. Sorry for my poor writing.
THAT’S HOW BAD IT IS GUYS
@unclefrogy, #19:
I should say.
Did he think we were some sort of cretins? Did he think we wouldn’t notice?!
It’s “AGuyWhoseYoutubeChannel…”
no I got it also. I just added a link in case some others may not ever heard about them.
What I end up writing down is not always as clear as what I write in my mind.
uncle frogy
I’ve had the misfortune to meet somebody who tried to tell me humanity was a ring species. Or rather, he had the misfortune to meet me. Whichever.
So why exactly do you all believe this guy has a youtube channel with megahits?
Sincerely,
ATeenageGuyWhosHandsomeAsAGodAndHasAnIqOf250
Would anyone arguing that the scientific origin of new species involves “race” please start by giving us a scientifically testable definition of “race”?
rthearle:
Anyone with access to the internet (and basic computer skills) can create a YouTube video. And get megahits. It’s not hard to believe at all. Having a YouTube video is a mundane claim that doesn’t really need much proof to back it up. We’re not talking about someone claiming that they can part the Red Sea.
For reference where I work has nothing to do with the teaching part of the Uni we’re attached to. This guy I can only presume is mass mailing anyone connected or has focused in on the most obscure branch imaginable to pester.
I wheezed with laughter!
♥
For comparison, Gangnam Style has over two gigahits. <Homer Simpson>So far!</Homer Simpson>
Looks like a standard attempt to divide and conquer liberals by forcing a wedge between race and evolution. Unfortunately for him/them race is simply a casually tossed about catch-all term that really doesn’t have any meaning in terms of biology or evolutionary theory.
For the record, there is a scientific equivalent of “race”: subspecies. And it’s fairly well defined. It’s just that Homo sapiens doesn’t have any.
And also for the record, it’s also possible to have speciation without geographic isolation, though it’s sure easier that way.
@33 johnharshman
That’s why they want laws against interracial marriage. They want to evolve into homo adolphus.
That’s the last straw. I’ve given him the benefit of the doubt over and over again, but this makes me lose any remaining shred of respect for Justin Bieber. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a shrine to dismantle.
Ragutis:
Not so fast. Bieber claims he was forgiven of all his sins by Jesus. Your shrine can stay intact!
I don’t remember who said it, but it also applies to ‘races’: “There are no such things as ‘species’, only local breeding populations.”
Miley Cyrus has megahits on her YouTube videos. That doesn’t mean we have to pay any attention to anything she says (except on the topic of tongues).
He’s right! There are lots of races!
There’s the Boston Marathon, the New York Marathon, the Houston Marathon, Toronto Waterfront Marathon… and don’t even get me started on auto racing or horse racing…
*puts hand to ear*
Wait, their talking about “race” as though it is a species of primate? Well that’s just fookin ridiculous!
Never mind…
He seems to think that because it’s theoretically possible for humans to branch into separate species, and because such branching happened in the past with our ancestor species, therefore it must also be a fact that the current population of humans actually has branched into meaningfully separate populations, regardless of the state of the evidence.
Likewise, he seems to view the rejection of a specific claim of branching to be a rejecting of the very notion that organisms can branch at all. I think that’s how he gets from rejection of racism to rejection of evolution.
It’s hard to tell for sure since he’s so bad at clearly explaining himself. Then again, these positions are so mind-bogglingly stupid that it may be best if he doesn’t explain it too much. If he should ever regain his senses, he’ll want a way to pretend that that’s not really what he meant.
High school graduates telling us that without racism, all science is wrong!!!
THAT’S HOW BAD IT IS GUYS
“Subspecies” isn’t well defined at all, and whether H. sapiens has any depends on (surprise! surprise!) your species concept – keyword H. s. neanderthalensis and perhaps H. s. idaltu.
Pen:
Well, we do tend to wear a lot of them on our fingers.
Menyambal:
That was my first thought on reading that rant and is the best evidence that race is a highly arbitrary social construct.
militantagnostic:
And other body parts like toes and penises (latex for the latter is much better, IMO than metal).
Anyone using caps that often, should be immiadately dismissed.
THAT’S HOW BAD IT IS GUYS