Andreas_Giger comments on Humans in Funny Suits - Less Wrong
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The non-obvious differences can still be ascertained -- it is not as if one has to get there via the superficial differences.
It's a weak correlation. if I wanted to ascertain someome's intellgece formally, i'd use therir academic record, or an IQ test. if I wanted to do so informally, I'd talk to them. If all I had to go on was their height or skin colour, I would suspend judgement, because the infomation is too weak to be worthwhile. I dont want false confidence.
But racists do it the other way round. They argue that Bush is smarter than Obama just because he is white (Someone actually said that to me)..They don't even bother paying attention to the way the two men speak. They discard higher quality information in favour of lower.
If it's not superficial, its not racisim: its xenophobia. The various Balkan factions hate each other just fine even though outsiders can't detect the differences
Equating racism with discrimination based on skin colour and calling all other forms xenophobia will only make you confused.
Many species are divided into taxonomical subspecies (races) which clearly differ in terms of intelligence, or aggression, or sociality, or whatever. The question isn't whether races are different, but whether homo sapiens can reasonably be divided into such subspecies. That's a scientific question, but several of your statements such as "racism is crazy" and "if it's not superficial, it's not racism" strike me as naïve and motivated by some weird sense of moral superiority instead.
Then quote the science.
I don't understand what you want me to quote, or why. Can you be more specific?
"The question isn't whether races are different, but whether homo sapiens can reasonably be divided into such subspecies. "
Well.can it?
Current scientific consensus amongst those who seem to be the least driven by ideological agenda is "no", except of course if you talk about extinct subspecies. Surely you know this?