Do our resident conservatives and republicans truly believe women are biologically suited to be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen?

[kentonio]

Here's a hint. It's not 'subjective', nor is it 'arbitrary', and it's already being done by the scientists you despise!

I would certainly imagine it's being done you tool, because despite the definition of a 'species' being a human invention, it's also a really handy categorization to use. What is actually relevant here however is that those same scientists would laugh in your lying little face at the idea that evolution doesn't exist.

Whatever creationist. At least I believe in the existence of the human species.

You also believe in giant sky fairies who torture their own children to death to supposedly pay for the made up sins of people who haven't even been born yet. I'm supposed to be impressed by the ridiculous **** you believe?

[kentonio]

DP

[snoopy369]

Yes, they do. It's *exactly* analogous. They have a range within the genome. We can look at the genome of an animal and tell that it is a cat, just by looking at the genetics, 100 percent of the time. This isn't even difficult with the technology today.

I am arguing that we should treat species the same way that we do colors - establish lines and definitions and apply them. That way we do have an empirical standard for cats, and dogs, whatever. The best part about that is that you could program computers to use these rules. No arbitrary human bull**** classifications based on fuzzy appearances.

I'm probably largely arguing your side of this [not the big picture, just this specific issue], so don't argue with me However, you're entirely incorrect in this particular post. There is no one set of genes that defines 'cat'. Since each individual's genome (and I mean individual organism, not species) is unique and changing, over time there would be new cats that had slightly different alleles of genes (even limiting to just the basic genes that generally define cats), including new alleles that didn't previously exist; eventually biologists would define a new species, 'Felis Mercuris' or something, that was distinct from 'Felis catus'. But that point in time would be arbitrary, and some of the previously-defined 'Felis Catus' organisms would now be 'Felis Mercuris'. Which would also be fairly aribtrary. Both definitions would have been correct.

Color is an innate, specific property: wavelength of light. Species is _not_; it is a classification. Basic high school biology, Ben. The classification is based on a collection of physical properties, but it is not a single physical property or even a consistent set of them. It is _not_ defined by genetics, but by observation. There are _not_ a specific genetic definition for any given species. Over time that will likely change, but only from a description point of view - ie, 'this species is generally defined as having the following alleles...', sort of like 'this species is red haired and flies'.

[giblets]

Then there's no such thing as a human species either.

Welcome to creationism.

Creationists don't deny the existence of a human species you ****.

[kentonio]

I'm probably largely arguing your side of this [not the big picture, just this specific issue], so don't argue with me

It's fair to note that Ben has actually argued with himself in previous threads, so this should come as no surprise.

[snoopy369]

Fair enough.

[Ben Kenobi]

Snoopy, I don't even see why this is a controversial issue. This isn't even a science vs creationism argument.

[snoopy369]

It's not a controversial issue (and nor is creationism, in the real world). You're simply factually incorrect about something you don't really know anything about.

[Sava]

Ben is a horrible person.

[notyoueither]

They did differentiate markedly from the population in Eurasia though, to the point they lacked the genes to survive/attenuate a lot of diseases common there.

That might be because they left Eurasia prior to the advent of agriculture, the domestication of animals, the appearance of those diseases in human populations and the subsequent development of resistance to those diseases.

They also lacked certain abilities to metabolise alcohol.

[Kidlicious]

Kid, you miss the point here. You're right that color perception can be misleading - ie, I can think something's one color and you another, because of the function of our eyes and brain - but ultimately color is an actual physical property; we simply assign gradations to it. IE, a machine can read the color of emitted light and tell you what color something is based on the definitions generally agreed on by color scientists, or whomever would make such decisions. A single physical property defines this - the wavelength of light emitted or reflected from a light source or object. You're more than welcome to argue over whether 490NM is blue or green, but that single line you draw between the primary colors defines it as one or the other. Yes, you can define it more specifically as 'turquoise', but then you're just pushing it back - ok, is 485NM turquoise, or aquamarine? Each is easily defined, once you agree on the explicit lines in the sand.

On the other hand, species have no such explicit physical property. There simply isn't one thing, or even one combination of things, that definitively identifies something as "species X" versus "species Y". Scientists agree on a certain set of definitions - in general, a set of organisms capable of reproducing and forming new organisms of the same type that are viable and fertile - but that's not really based on their physical properties; it's more of a definition based on observation. There isn't some amount of DNA change that defines a new species, or some particular measurable physical property. It's all biology, and as such is fuzzy and vague.

Hence my argument that in one way this is a good way to see species - as a continuous spectrum, where you define lines arbitrarily that separate colors/species, based on some codified logic, but nothing that at the end of the day is really important (ie, you certainly can argue over colors; and to the extent that it's no ta good way, it's because color is more tied to the physical realm. Species is solely an organizational definition that exists to make scientists' jobs easier. Color is a real physical property (albeit the name for said color is not).

This really is meaningless babble. I was merely pointing out that the analogy that kentonio used doesn't really work because color is a perception. A species is not a perception. So it's a bad analogy.

[Guynemer]

You're simply factually incorrect about something you don't really know anything about.

Snoopy, I'd like to introduce you to Ben.

[DaShi]

And Ben was talking about how he wanted to make out with snoopy in that other thread.

[N35t0r]

[Edit:] x-post, this is in relpy to nye. I have to remember to update threads before replying if I've been doing something else.

Yes. Which is a marked genetical dissimilarity. Had the Americar remained isolated, there would have been more differences.

[Ben Kenobi]

You're simply factually incorrect about something you don't really know anything about.

How am I factually incorrect here? Since we've been recently discovering the full genetic code of different species, we've been finding that some of the links that were based on physical similarities are in fact, not true. This is what we would expect.

You're argument is basically this:

"species aren't empirically defined ergo they cannot be successfully empirically defined.".

That's actually an argument against biology as a physical science, btw. If we can't accurately define what a species is, why are we putting one of the pillars of biology based on them? It makes no sense to me.

All I'm arguing here is that species are real, they pertain to the substance of animals and that we can accurately define them in an empirical fashion. And people say I'm not the scientist? For realz?