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That question presupposes that a) those two things are orthogonal, and b) that you know the answers to the latter queries. If you don't, and if lineage correlates to interests and aggression, then who someone's father is can be eminently worth caring about.
Are you trying to suggest that a "white man" would never wish death upon another "white man"? If I "pressupose" i do so with ample reason. Nor do I believe that you can extract more accurate answers to the latter queries from the color of one's skin thai I can from context clues like how someone speaks, how they dress, and to what God or gods they pray too.
So as with Opt-Out I pose the question again, do you really believe that I should care more about who's someone father is than whether that person shares my interests?
In the nicest possible way, you seem to be aggressively working to misunderstand the point.
I am saying, and the point is very clear, that the colour of one's skin and other matters of parentage is a big context clue.
The only context clue worth paying attention to? No, obviously. More relevant at some times than others, depending on the availability of other context? Yes, obviously. But you seem to be so offended by the statement of an obvious fact that you reach immediately for attempted gotchas that don't make sense.
And "in the nicest possible way" you seem to be tying yourself in knots to avoid answering the question.
It's only a "gotcha" if you think you might be in the wrong.
I answered the question above and you ignored it. No, it is stupid to care about whether someone's daddy was a gangbanger if they are currently pointing a gun at you. You no longer need to calculate their likely propensity for violence and aggression, because you are currently discovering it for yourself. Would have been pretty good for you if you'd had the wit to think about these things in advance but, hey, too late now. Empricism, baby.
If you have ground truth information, you don't need prediction. If you know somebody well, and you know he's a great guy, you have no reason for caring about his parentage. If you are, say, devising an immigration strategy, or whether to trust somebody you don't know well, or predicting the behaviour of a group of people, then you need lots of context and throwing some of the most predictive information it is possible to obtain on principle is stupid.
Oh, well. That's me told, then, eh?
I agree and yet I have seen 6tjk Opt-out (and for a moment as it appeared you) argue otherwise. The question was a bit of High Energy Particle Ethics intended to cut through all the hedging and the bullshit to get at what you truly believe.
Then I apologise for the sarcasm. I admit I personally distrust such questions as a debate tool: in my opinion they only make sense from the questioner's viewpoint, so they end up coming across as 'have you stopped beating your wife, yes or no, don't evade the question' even when that is not intended.
What I suspect is actually happening is that people are factoring in reversion to the mean. If a girl's family are all obviously aggressive and mentally-ill, you should think very hard about having children with her even if you've known her long enough to know that she is genuinely darling because genetically the odds are good it won't turn out well.
The same to my mind applies to asylum seekers. Then you're dealing with complex group genetics but you still have to weigh the likelihood that a genuinely great guy might end up replicating the kinds of people and culture that they left to escape.
These are all fair points.
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