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non_radical_centrist  2mo ago (astralcodexten.com)   2537 thread views

How Should We Think About Race And "Lived Experience"?

astralcodexten.com

I'm generally a fan of "blurry" definitions where something can qualify as X if it fulfills a few of many criteria. I think trying to create hard rules around blurry areas like race and culture is fool's errand, and Scott does a great job laying out how overly strict definitions can go wrong.

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Any of us can download publicly available genetic data, run a PCA on Europeans, East Asians, and Sub-Saharan Africans to get a clean triangle with each of the three populations on a node.

I have not performed this exercise, but my understanding is that the first two PCs you'd use as the axes of this plot will usually explain a negligible percentage of the total variance in a genomic dataset. PCA will always rank axes by variance, but that doesn't mean the top few PCs are any good, in an absolute sense, at reducing the data dimension while preserving structure. Even if the PCs that let us reliably identify these clusters happen to be the relatively 'best' PCs we could use to collapse the multidimensional data onto a graph, they could still suck, in an absolute sense.

Depending on the publication, they can get up to 30% from the first two PCs, although it can be low like high single digits.

Regardless of the number, they're not sucky nor negligible when you can do a PCA using 5,000 random SNPs from 300 random individuals (100 individuals each of the three populations of Europeans, East Asians, and West Africans) and get a clean triangle. Pick another 5,000 random SNPs from another 300 random individuals and you'll get another clean triangle. Rinse and repeat. Quite robust.

If anything, it's a testament to how different genetically Europeans, East Asians, and West Africans are, that one can get consistent, clean separation in such low dimensionality (e.g., 2), robust to using different individual and different loci. One can always add more PCs to get more total variation captured, but it's just unnecessary for separating those three populations.

I have not performed this exercise, but my understanding is that the first two PCs you'd use as the axes of this plot will usually explain a negligible percentage of the total variance in a genomic dataset.

that is, assuming 1 gene corresponds to 1 trait and all traits are equally important. But suppose some trait (say, amount of melanin in skin) is determined by 10 genes and one population has 35% frequency of dark allele and other population has 65% frequency of dark allele. Most genetic variation is within populations but looking at their resulting color, they are visibly distinct. Height or intelligence are much more polygenic.

There are lots of genes related to immune system in which variants are no worse or no better, they just make it harder for germs to jump from one individual to another, and selection will favor diversity in this gene. Other genes would be selected in one direction and can reach fixation. Pick traits you are interested about, and then estimate how much PCs explain it.

The original argument was about - is there a genetics-related meaning of "race", or is it just a social construct?

I'd argue that race is, genetically, as real as the color of a fruit or vegetable. If you had huge matrix with tens of thousands of low-level properties of various fruits, the 'color' variable would explain very little of the total variance, but color is still a property worth discussing, a common kind of variation. The question of how much of traits we care about race 'explains' is a different one with a higher bar for evidence, but the PC does show that "race" does have some meaning, even if a weak one. It rebuts "race is a social construct" when itself used as a rebuttal to more substantial arguments about race.

Undoubtedly there is a genetics-related meaning of race, in the sense that there are identifiable genetic markers that discriminate (heh) between people of different racial categories.

I should have made clear in my reply above that I was specifically questioning the implication, in the post I was replying to, that a PCA plot showing distinct racial clusters can rebut 'the old feel-good rhetorical device" that there's more genetic variation within than between. It does not necessarily do this, in the situation where the PCs showing those distinct clusters themselves explain a negligible fraction of overall variation.

But that's fine! Rebutting "more variation within than between" does not seem not necessary for race to have a genetic basis.

genetic differences and variations exist, but race as a category is socially defined. Socially defined does not negate usefulness (as with many systems in our society). Money is a social construct, but we don't consider it useless. The genetic variation and differences are real, but you also need to keep in mind most of these broad claims about IQ or even physical characteristics fail to take it a step further and discuss the numerous factors that influence such differences (socioeconomic, environmental, cultural and geographical).

genetic differences and variations exist, but race as a category is socially defined. Socially defined does not negate usefulness (as with many systems in our society). Money is a social construct, but we don't consider it useless

This is technically true, but I think what you mean to do is imply that the social construct "race" doesn't map perfectly onto "ancestry / genetics" in a way that affects our interpretation of things like "race and IQ are related". I think "race" and "ancestry" are close enough that it's not important to clarify you mean "ancestry's effect on genetics" when you say "race".

mind most of these broad claims about IQ or even physical characteristics fail to take it a step further and discuss the numerous factors that influence such differences (socioeconomic, environmental, cultural and geographical).

The sophisticated ones don't! It is true that BasedHitler1488 on twitter has a very inaccurate view of the literature on the heritability of IQ or the association of that with race, but that's pure a weakman.

The science on the topic of the heritability of IQ and physical characteristics among individuals is extremely clear and mainstream, and directly deals with factors "socioeconomic, environmental, cultural, and geographical!"

The race-causes-iq-differences arguments are not scientific consensus. Imo this is mostly because saying 'black people are dumber because genes' is something that most existing Americans, including most smart ones, (for various reasons) have extremely strong negative reactions to. But they do directly deal with "socioeconomic, environmental, cultural, and geographical" too.

For some intro reading, check out JayMan: https://jaymans.wordpress.com/jaymans-race-inheritance-and-iq-f-a-q-f-r-b/ https://jaymans.wordpress.com/hbd-fundamentals/

Note that JayMan is black!

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