What if race wasn't fictional?

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DarthMetaKnight
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10 Mar 2018, 6:06 pm

Mikah wrote:

What if class wasn't fictional?

A very small portion of the world's population would own half of the world's wealth. They would control the earth's natural resources and they would ruin democracy by funding warmongering candidates.

Hmmm... Why does that sound familiar?

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Mikah
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10 Mar 2018, 6:13 pm

Your divisions of humans into haves and have-nots is not useful to biology unfortunately. It's a socially constructed illusion you've been suckered into.

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The_Face_of_Boo
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10 Mar 2018, 6:17 pm

You got it all wrong.

In this world, a class would something like Paladin, Druid, Mage...etc.

Chronos
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10 Mar 2018, 6:26 pm

DarthMetaKnight wrote:

What if race wasn't a social construct and it actually was real?

Like ... what if the earth, in addition to humans, also had orcs, taurens, night elves, ect?

I actually think that separatism would be necessary in such a world. After all, the Neanderthals became extinct in the real world once true humans showed up in their land. I don't think that separate intelligent species would get along well in real life.

We don't know why neanderthals became extinct. They were probably an at risk population to begin with. When populations are small it does not take much for them to be wiped out. One group could have succumb to an illness while another might have experienced a famine. War between different groups could have broken out over scarce resources. At one point populations might have become small enough that remaining neanderthals might have just joined human groups and that might be why neanderthal DNA is found in humans today. Neanderthals occupied a significantly smaller area than humans. That alone causes them to be more susceptible to exctinction. Humans seem to have a tendency to spread out.

DarthMetaKnight
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10 Mar 2018, 6:42 pm

Mikah wrote:

Your divisions of humans into haves and have-nots is not useful to biology unfortunately.

It isn't exactly useful for biology, but it is useful for sociology.

People from different social classes have the same hardware, but they use different software. We all have the same neurological structure, but some of us become addicted to power and some of us do not.

Race isn't useful from a biological perspective, though it is useful from a sociological perspective. The races are all born with the same biological hardware, but we are treated differently by society and so we acquire different software.

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DarthMetaKnight
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10 Mar 2018, 6:45 pm

The_Face_of_Boo wrote:

You got it all wrong.

In this world, a class would something like Paladin, Druid, Mage...etc.

There would be kings and peasants too.

That's what most medieval fantasy epics get wrong. A realistic medieval fantasy epic would be pretty depressing because most people would be covered in faeces.

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Mikah
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10 Mar 2018, 7:23 pm

Well that was a boring troll. Time for a serious comment.

DarthMetaKnight wrote:

Race isn't useful from a biological perspective

This doesn't mean what you think it means DMK. It certainly doesn't mean:

DarthMetaKnight wrote:

The races are all born with the same biological hardware

I will try to explain using dogs. There are hundreds of breeds of dogs, all of them with different "hardware", different abilities, different looks, different talents, different behavioural patterns. If humans decided to group all these hundreds of breeds into five main categories, roughly based on looks, this is "race". A geneticist notes that there is actually huge genetic variation (hello?) within these broad categories and notes quite correctly that this is not useful to him.

You can craft a technically accurate (but misleading) statement saying that the concept of race is not useful from a biological (or at least a genetic) standpoint.
You cannot say there is no meaningful biological difference between human ethnic groups (scientists are very careful not to say this) or proclaim every ethnic group has the same talents and abilities.
You can't even say the races have the same biological hardware. Clumsy as race is from the point of view of a geneticist, somehow humans have created visual racial groupings with significant measurable differences - actually if you do the maths, it would be proof-of-God levels of bizarre if there were no differences on aggregate.

It's a sneaky trap you've fallen into, crafted by mad egalitarian anti-reality propagandists, if you seek truth about the world, be sure to avoid similar ones in future.

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SabbraCadabra
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10 Mar 2018, 11:12 pm

Daniel89 wrote:

This is essentially the plot of that Will Smith film Bright.

I saw that trailer, and said "Oh no, they're making a Shadowrun movie. With Will Smith in it. Oh no, it looks awful. Oh...'Bright'?? I guess Catalyst thought their movie sounded awful too, and denied them the rights to use the Shadowrun trademarks." =)

Unfortunately, it did poorly (understatement), which really hurts the chances of a real Shadowrun movie ever coming out. At least we will always have Johnny Mnemonic.

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10 Mar 2018, 11:40 pm

Chronos wrote:

We don't know why neanderthals became extinct.

Apparently, their genetic coding may not be entirely lost:

Quote:

The team developed a method to identify relationships between ancient DNA found in modern humans, and found that interbreeding between modern humans and Neanderthals "occurred at least three distinct times in modern human history."http://www.wired.co.uk/article/dna-analysis-humans-neanderthals-breeding

Chronos
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11 Mar 2018, 3:06 am

Pepe wrote:

Chronos wrote:

We don't know why neanderthals became extinct.

Apparently, their genetic coding may not be entirely lost:

Quote:

I noted that they interbred with us.

cyberdad
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11 Mar 2018, 3:56 pm

The Neanderthals and Denisovans are simply a subpopulation of Homo Sapiens separated by 100.000 yrs otherwise they would not be able to breed and produce the current population of Homo sapiens in Asia, America and Europe

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11 Mar 2018, 6:30 pm

Mikah wrote:

You cannot say there is no meaningful biological difference between human ethnic groups (scientists are very careful not to say this) or proclaim every ethnic group has the same talents and abilities.

How do you get from meaningful biological difference to talents and abilities? Meaningful biological differences I know are things like increased prevalence of sickle cell anaemia in some populations exposed to malaria because being heterozygous for that variant of the hemoglobin gene confers resistance.

You do know that the original question was a hypothetical world in which there could be no dispute about differences existing? You promptly turn it into a dispute about difference in this world. Why?

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11 Mar 2018, 8:34 pm

cyberdad wrote:

Using DNA, Africans are pure homo sapiens. Europeans are interbred with Neanderthal. Basque people are interbred with another unidentified DNA source. Chinese are interbred with another dissimilar hominid. Okinawans interbred with yet another. There are more hominims than that (Australia, Caucuses, Java, etc.). The skeletons of these hominids contained no DNA from Homo sapiens. DNA results from human origins studies reveal updated results every year. Humans are one species, but not one breed.
Do any of these hominins still exist in the world? Bigfoot, Yeti, Leprechauns, Trolls?

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Pepe
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11 Mar 2018, 9:01 pm

Mudboy wrote:

Humans are one species, but not one breed.

Woof!

Daniel89
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11 Mar 2018, 9:38 pm

Mudboy wrote:

cyberdad wrote:

It is believed that Africans also interbred with earlier species of humans but because of the environmental conditions there are no remains of these species.

Pepe
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11 Mar 2018, 11:44 pm

Chronos wrote:

Pepe wrote:

Chronos wrote:

We don't know why neanderthals became extinct.

Apparently, their genetic coding may not be entirely lost:

Quote:

I noted that they interbred with us.

Not with me!...
I'm not that desperate... :mrgreen:

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