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gjm comments on Stupid Questions, 2nd half of December - Less Wrong Discussion

2 Post author: Bound_up 23 December 2015 05:31AM

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Comment author: gjm 12 January 2016 01:38:54PM -1 points [-]

That is the very definition of race. That is what the term means.

I think there are a number of people on LW who will dispute that; who will say something like this. "Yes, there are fuzzy popular uses of the word and if you take them too seriously you will say silly things. But it is also the case that there are important genetic differences between human subpopulations, and that these correlate to some extent with those fuzzy popular ideas about race."

That seems to me to be a position that is not at all refuted by saying that popular use of "race" is fuzzy and that the things commonly called "races" don't correspond to well defined biological groupings. (It might be refuted by other means, but that would be more work.)