Originally posted by dadudemon
I think you accidentally a word, here. I think I know what you're trying to say (correct me if I've interpreted your words, incorrectly). We'll have to agree to disagree.
I believe that was the word.
Originally posted by dadudemon
If you take a look at the history of when scientists decided to separate out the Bonobos and Chimps as separate species, you'll see that humans could easily be separated into different species for the same reasons (skull shape differences, size differences, etc.).*
None of which are consistent with modern scientific studies.
Originally posted by dadudemon
If you also consider that bonobos and chimps diverged 1.5-2 million years ago and T-rex (the dinosaur) had a life-span of about 5 million years (yet, it is still considered the same species), you also see a similar issue. I should note that the evolution of chimps and humans diverged about 5-7 million years ago so the T-rex species probably was hitting its absolute limit before paleontologists start labeling "newer" specimens as a different species from the older ones.
Also, to the previous point you made about species producing fertile offspring and this not being compatible with the lion/tiger reference; that's not strictly true because female ligers are fertile and capable of reproducing with either of their parent species. Tigons are also similarly fertile, and there's even a video clip on youtube of a male lion's coupling with a female tigon/tiger hybrid(it looked like a normal tiger).
Anyways, apart from the genetic difference, tigers and lions are anatomically and behaviorally almost identical species of big cat, and the difference between them from a sociological point of view is about the same as the difference between bonobos and chimpanzees.
Originally posted by dadudemon
I am not saying that humans and chimps are the same species. I am not saying that bonobos and chimps are the same species. I am saying is the genetic variation between Bonobos and Chmips is very similar to the genetic variation among humans and we see significant differences in their generalized behavior. Could some of those differences in human populations be due to genetic differences similar to Bonobos and Chimps? Of course it is possible as some research even seems to support that. Not everything should be blamed on environment but let me make it clear that genetics certainly do not absolve a sapient species of their actions (there are exceptions such as the mentally handicap).
Originally posted by dadudemon
This cuts to the heart of your point:Bonobos and Chimps are definitely not "two completely different species." Bonobos and Chimps are "Two extremely similar species who share a similar genetic variance that humans share with each other." The genetic variance between the two shows that the taxonomic differentiation, when it comes to the naming, can just as equally be applied to humans and humans could be grouped and labeled as different species. That's crazy talk. We don't do that to humans because we are such a new species, still.
Still, if you're actually serious about this discussion, you should refer to my Richard Dawkins comment on the previous page. I think that guy's(Dawkins' peer) work would best support your argument(though imo it is still based on a flawed premise).
Originally posted by dadudemon
Actually, I was going to bring this point up to support my position! lol!I was thinking of a species of badgers (I think) that had greater genetic variance than Chimps and Bonobos but are considered the same species and can breed just fine, too.
Additionally, your point about humans being "practically clones of each other" can be almost equally applied to chimps and bonobos due to their genetic variation being similar to our own genetic variance.
Also, the mapping and comparison of the human genome, over the last 10 or so years, has shown us that the high school classroom facts (I was told the same thing, in high school), such as humans not being very genetically diverse, is just not true. We are definitely not like virtual clones of each other. It used to be believed that a single troop of closely related chimps had more genetic variation than the entire human race but that is definitely not true (depending on the troop, of course) as we now know. I believe that fact (which can be relegated to factoid, now) was debunked in 2005.
However, while we're discussing clones and levels of genetic similarity, I should bring up the fact that physiological variation has been shown to exist even between identical twins(who are pretty much naturally created clones). There have been cases where one twin was taller than the other, one had different hair color, or a mole the other didn't have, or skin tone etc.
But anyways, even if we were to take your argument at face value, your point about Arabs still does not stand because based on human genetic clustering, both Bedouins and Palestinians are most similar to a number of European ethnicities, more so that some Europeans are to each other:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_clustering#Clusters_by_Rosenberg_et_al._.282006.29
Originally posted by dadudemon
Also, I should point out that humans (Homo sapians sapians) is a very new species compared to chimps.*The divergence of their two populations occurring 1.5-2 million years ago supports the endeavors of the scientists from the 1930s to separate out the species. So, due to modern genetic science, the 1930s opinions were at least partially substantiated with the results on their genetic dissimilarities.
I don't understand why Middle Eastern people are thought of as the most violent considering human violence has occured all over the civilised world. What makes them so special?
Also, genetics does not make someone violent. Violence comes from a combination of genetics and environment.
They did a study on mice where they wiped out a learning gene and the mice didn't learn very well until they were put in a more enlightening environment and they over came that defecit. Genes give us different ways of responding to our environment and genes get turned on and off depending on the environment.
Even if dadudemon found his evidence for Middle Eastern people to have a violent gene that all other groups of humans don't, it wouldn't make them more violent unless their environment causes that gene to be active. Something like a war based on territory and ideology, for example.
Originally posted by RaisenOkay so you either ignore or completely misunderstood my sentence (a COMBINATION of genetics and environment). I also elaborate this in that same post.
really? you are making his point. some things that seem racial are simply just true
Some things that seem racial are simply just true? I agree. Some people have differently coloured skin to other people. Some also have different facial structures such as eyes and noses, and some people with black skin have a tendency towards curly hair too.
......but that's it.
Originally posted by Shakyamunison
That’s politics, get over it!
Wait, how come USA can be impartial in matters of Israel when it also have history of destroying other nations and killing millions without sufficient justifications such as Iraq, Libya and Vietnam. So-called champion of human rights. 🙄
Originally posted by Time Immemorial
You can't sell ice to an Eskimo because he has had enough of it. I think same goes for Israel/Pakistan. I think its time one side wins already, let them slug it out.
Pakistan is not Palestine.
Originally posted by jaden101
The best solution is to just turn the entire middle east shit hole into a glass sheet. Every ****ing one of those countries is a complete and utter shambles.
Entire Middle East is not a shit hole. Some of the most developed and stable Islamic countries are in Middle East such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and UAE. Why should they pay the price for problems in other nations?
Originally posted by queeq
Do any of you know what's going on both sides?Israel builds a huge wall blocking the Palestians from having a normal life. Plus they're BUILDING settlements on the lands that are part of the State of Palestine. Plus they use their heavily armed forces to retaliate. They do not wish to stop building settlements, they don't trust Palestinian border control or police to manage security in the Palestian Authority so they feel free to exercise that in their way, which is pretty rough.
On the other side we have Hamas and the Palestinian demands. Hamas wants to drive Israel into the sea, destroy them utterly. They demand the lands of their people back they owned prior to 1948 (when the UN - the WORLD decided for a Jewish Homes State in this area - this was not conquest!) which are now within Israeli borders. They also demand a return of ALL Palestinian refugees from Jordan and Lebanon (some five million by now with all their offspring since 1948) and demand they can settle on 'their' former lands within the borders of Israel. (and since Israel is a democracy, the Jews would be outnumbered by Arabs/Palestinians and that would result by election in the end of a JEWISH state).
Now, this is kind of the stalemate, flavoured with some 60 years of violence back and forth and feeling of hate, revenge and threat over some three generations.
There can only be peace when both parties start compromising on their demands. The question is: who's willing to make the first step.
Personally I'd like to see Israel stop building settlements on Palestinian lands and even consider moving the Israeli's living there at this moment, since Israel is the stronger party here. Then the Palestinians should acknowledge the State of Israel and drop their claims on lands within Israel's borders and the return of the Palestinian refugees TO lands with Israeli borders. That would at least be a clear acknowledgement from both sides to the right of existence of both lands.But I tell you, I don't think any of this will happen. Not anytime soon.
There are additional issues/observations:-
1. Unconditional support of US to Israel.
US should put pressure on both sides to come to terms with each other, instead of motivating Israel to continue its expansionist tendencies that add fuel to fire by vetoing every resolution that is presented in UN to condemn Israel's actions and make it accountable for its wrongdoings.
2. Wastage of time and fueling hatred
Hamas was founded in 1987. Israel had ample time to settle the dispute prior to formation of this group, now the process have become more difficult. Palestinians eventually got fed-up and supported Hamas.
Originally posted by Robtard
1) You go out of your way to vilify Israel by insisting it goes out of its way to target random schools and hospitals.2) If you actually read what I said, I in fact do not "blame" Palestine. I blame Hamas, who does horrible actions and common Palestinians suffer because of it. Palestine allowing Hamas to exist is not helping their cause; it hurts it; they should do something about it.
3) Hamas does target Jewish children on purpose as a form of mind-****-warfare and they couldn’t give two shits about Palestinian children, if they did, they'd not use them as meat-shields and use schools as weapon's depots.
4) Then there’s the glaring fact: If Hamas had the military capabilities to wipe out Israel, it would not hesitate, as this is their outwardly spoken goal. While Israel does have the military might to wipe the Gaza strip clean; yet they don’t. That should tell you something. IIRC, Hamas does not compromise.
What was Israel thinking earlier? Waiting for a group like Hamas to form so that it would find a new justification to continue its expansionist designs?
Its easy to blame Palestine for every issue, how about a bit of focus on history?
Originally posted by Omega Vision
In an ideal world, Israel and Hamas would forge a real ceasefire brokered by the UN, Palestinian Authority, Arab League, and USA and the terms of this ceasefire would be the unconditional disarmament of Hamas and the unconditional withdrawal of all Israeli settlers from Palestinian land (what constitutes Palestinian land might take a lot of debating, but the simplest way would be to revert the borders back to pre-1948 dimensions) and the return of both Palestine and Israel to John Kerry's peace treaty negotiations with the final aim of making Palestine a genuine country recognized by the entirety of the UN.At this point I have no idea how Israel thinks it will be safer and more secure with Palestine not as a real centralized country with international recognition.
Originally posted by It's xyz!
Also, genetics does not make someone violent. Violence comes from a combination of genetics and environment.
Do you agree with my other point I was making? This statement makes me think you do.
Originally posted by It's xyz!
Even if dadudemon found his evidence for Middle Eastern people to have a violent gene that all other groups of humans don't, it wouldn't make them more violent unless their environment causes that gene to be active. Something like a war based on territory and ideology, for example.
This isn't necessarily true. It isn't so binary like that.
What you would see, however, is a greater occurrence of violence from the "violent-having-gene" people compared to the population average. It would act more like a sliding scale than an absolute "environment influences everything" or "genetics influence everything."
Basically, unless a people becomes perfectly enlightened as to how their genes influence their behavior, and develop mitigating techniques to control the entire set of negative traits to become back in line (or do better than) with the population average, they will always experience the negative influences of the genes on their behavior.
The best comparison I can come up with are fictional: Vulcans. No humans have reached the level of enlightenment that they have, but it would have to be at that level of enlightenment and control in order to completely shuck off their genetic influences.
Also, my sister participated in some research that addresses something that you talked about:
Originally posted by It's xyz!
...it wouldn't make them more violent unless their environment causes that gene to be active.
This is partially true. Some traits do not or cannot exist as purely genotypes. Some traits do not or cannot exist as phenotypes. In some instances, a species can carry a genotype, but no phenotype for that trait, for generations. And then an environmental influence causes the phenotype to be expressed (this was the crux of her research).
Still, other traits are always expressed as phenotypes but to varying degrees. And then there are some genotypes that are never expressed unless we start to play god in a lab and discover it (these are the funnest discoveries in genetics, imo).
It is more likely that, due to the complexity of our social behaviors, we never really stop expressing some behavioral traits but they just vary in strength for "subject to subject." Such as this violent behavior. There are definitely multiple genetic factors that influence violence: not just the "warrior-gene" that that article talked about. Many genes do not express as simply 0 or 1 (binary, as I called it, earlier). This is what I meant by a sliding scale, above.
Originally posted by Epicurus
Considering the number of times they have had their collective butts kicked by Israel in direct warfare, I'd say there could be good reason for this "lukewarm" attitude.But seriously, why do the military forces from Middle-Eastern countries suck so much? IIRC, there's a story going around that 2 mid-level Pakistan Air Force pilots who had been "loaned" to the Jordanians and the Syrians during the 6Day war, allegedly had a higher kill count of Israeli fighter aircraft in direct combat than all the other Middle Eastern air combatants combined.
Israel always had backing of powerful Western nations, funding and weapons pouring in. Yes, Israeli troops did prove to be capable because they fought with the mindset of "survival at stake." Motivation can change the situation.
Just look at ground realities of Germany versus USSR front in WW-II. Germany had superior war machine but USSR motivated its entire populace to resist the invasion with the mindset of "survival at stake" and USSR also benefitted from funding and weapons that poured in from other allies to help it resist the invasion. Weather conditions also played a role since Soviets were in advantageous position to tolerate extreme winter, genetics at work.
Collapse/dissolution of Ottoman Empire in 1918 paved way for formulation of many smaller nations and the Empire's resources got split among these smaller nations. These nations were now operating for the first time independently and not surprisingly lacked in knowledge of modern warfare doctrines and preparedness/industrial capabilities. This is the reason why Arab nations did not perform well in some conflicts.
Some arab nations did focus on flexing their military muscles with passage of time such as Egypt and Iraq with support from USSR. They became a match for Israel, at-least theoretically. Around 1990, Iraq was noted to possess 4th largest military in the world. However, Gulf War demonstrated incredible disparity between Industrial capabilities and military doctrines of USSR and USA around this time, USSR had been in decline with passage of time since it did not paid attention to promote its market value in the same manner as USA did. USA, in contrast, had established its market value globally and learned valuable lessons from the Vietnam war, it absolutely revolutionized its military doctrine and pioneered the concept of digitalized warfare during 1980s.
Currently, Saudi Arabia is flexing its muscles. However, Saudi now understand that it needs its own industrial capability to become genuinely strong in the future.
---
Pakistani pilots participated in the 3rd Israeli-Arab conflict that occurred in 1973.
Originally posted by Epicurus
*shows*I believe that was the word.
[QUOTE=14833446]Originally posted by Epicurus
[B]Not really. That practice of human racial classification was actually pretty popular in the States and much of the western world prior to(and prevalent for some decades even after) the American Civil War of 1863. It was known as phrenology, and much of it was based on the same skull shape and size differences.None of which are consistent with modern scientific studies.
Really?
I don't think so. I don't think we are even talking about the same things, at this point.
Let me give you an example:
The T'rung people vs. Northern European people. These are not races (as XYZ tried to boil my point down to...I did not nor do I want to entertain the discussion of race). This is just simply a collection of people that have evolved in specific geography/clime for a period of time and it has resulted in significant physical and behavioral differences (we like to call these behaviors "culture" but just call them "behaviors" in animals...but biologists are starting to drop the "human-elitist" approach and I am seeing animals sometimes referred to with the label of "culture"😉.
To give an example:
Western European vs. The Tibetan-Burman people (T'rung's):
http://www.scs.illinois.edu/~mcdonald/WorldHaplogroupsMaps.pdf
Their skulls can generally be identified, anthropologically, and assigned a specific geographic and location. This is the same for Chimps and Bonobos. So if you had a decent anthropologist come across a Western European Skull from the 1500s and a T'rung skull from the 1500s, he or she would far more likely place them into the correct geography and identify the "ethnicity" of the people. This is also true of Bonobos vs. Chimps for particular biologists. In fact, when the arguments over separating out Bonobos and Chimps occurred, they were still some confusion because they looked so similar.
But it wasn't just the skulls that helped them separate out Bonobos and Chimps. It was also the size of the Chimps vs. the Bonobos. The Bonobos are smaller in height and relative volume (Chimps are thicker). Physiologically, they have less testosterone than the Chimps, too. Besides actually giving birth, there are no breeding limitations between the two groups (if a very large Chimp male impregnates a very small Bonobo female, the female may have difficulty birthing the slightly larger (than other Bonobo babies) hybrid.
http://pin.primate.wisc.edu/factsheets/entry/chimpanzee
http://pin.primate.wisc.edu/factsheets/entry/bonobo
How does this compare to our Western European and T'rung peoples? Extremely similar. The T'rung have less testosterone (on average), are shorter in height - much more so than their Western counterparts (and in an even greater contrast than Chimps and Bonobos), have much less mass (both relative mass and absolute mass), and have differentiated skulls shapes. These are all very similar things that separate Chimps from Bonobos but there is a larger size contrast among the humans that I'm comparing.
This all very thoroughly proves the point I was making: they are very good parallels.
The reason Chimps and Bonobos seem to vary less than humans is humans expanded much farther, around the entire freakin' globe, than the two Pan species. So we would expect to see, in a much shorter time (evolution) frame, greater differences within the human species compared to the Pan species.
Originally posted by Epicurus
I am pretty sure that no biological life form is capable of having a lifespan ranging in several millions of years, much less an ancient carnivorous dinosaur. I am guessing you probably meant something else when you wrote the word "lifespan" in retrospect to the T-Rex, but whatever.
The word lifespan, in that context, does not refer to an individual speciman's lifespan but rather, the chronology that you can find the species in strata. If you need to replace the word "lifespan" with another word for it to be comfortable to read, please do so. But I think you are understood exactly what I meant. If not, let me know, and I can try to better explain that.
Originally posted by Epicurus
Also, to the previous point you made about species producing fertile offspring and this not being compatible with the lion/tiger reference; that's not strictly true because female ligers are fertile and capable of reproducing with either of their parent species. Tigons are also similarly fertile, and there's even a video clip on youtube of a male lion's coupling with a female tigon/tiger hybrid(it looked like a normal tiger).
This is not true: both Tigons and Ligers have fertility issues. That's what I said the following:
"Notice I said, "fertile offspring." That's because they [Bonobos and Chimps] are so genetically similar that they can easily produce fertile offspring."
Emphasis mine. This was an indirect reference to the fact that both Tigons and Ligers have issues producing fertile offspring.
"Ligers and tigons are hybrids, and as such most of them are sterile, because the parent species (lions and tigers) have different numbers of chromosomes (this means that the hybrid cannot produce functional sex cells). Occasionally, there will be a fertile female liger or tigon, which can be bred back to a male lion or tiger, but there are no fertile male ligers or tigons. Certainly a liger and a tigon could mate, but since the male, at least, would be sterile, there would be no cubs."
http://www.liger.org/could-a-tigon-and-a-liger-mate-and-have-fertile-offspring/
Again, emphasis mine.
Originally posted by Epicurus
Anyways, apart from the [1]genetic difference, [2]tigers and lions are anatomically and [3]behaviorally almost identical species of big cat,
I labeled your points to make it easier to discuss them.
1. The genetic differences are very significant. The reason why Bonobos and Chimps easily produce fertile offspring is due to them being extremely similar, genetically. Compare and contrast this with Tigers and Lions. Tigers and Lions diverged from each other quite a long time ago (millions of years). Lions, Leopards, and Jaguar's are more genetically similar to each other than the lion and tiger are.
2. No they are not almost identical. Almost identical would be, say, fraternal twins.
Here is a list of differences between lions and tigers (use the chart to show the similarities vs. the differences):
http://www.diffen.com/difference/Lion_vs_Tiger
At best, we could say that the lion and tiger are similar. They are definitely not "almost identical."
3. Behaviorally, they are very different. These difference are due to the different habitats that they evolved in. Tigers are much less social animals than lions. There is no such thing as a "Tiger Pride." In fact, tigers and lions are perhaps the greatest contrast, out of the big cats, behaviorally.
Originally posted by Epicurus
and the difference between them from a sociological point of view is about the same as the difference between bonobos and chimpanzees.
This is not the case. While the Chimpanzees are more aggressive and violent, they are very similar, socially, to Bonobos. The differences between the two are what I am focusing on, here. But they still behave very similar to each other:
http://pin.primate.wisc.edu/factsheets/entry/bonobo/behav
http://pin.primate.wisc.edu/factsheets/entry/chimpanzee/behav
In fact, some biologists are getting irritated with people focusing on how much they differ when they do not differ in behavior all that much (such as incorrectly assuming bonobos are peaceful when they are, in fact, not so peaceful : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3353342/Bonobos-not-all-peace-and-free-love.html ).
Originally posted by Epicurus
Fair point, but I doubt that it adds much to the argument here.
That was me conceding a potential point of contention: the debate around separating out Bonobos and Chimps. The biologists in the 1930s made the correct call by separating them out because we found out (very recently, in fact) that the two groups diverged 1.5-2 mya which is generally a very good rule to follow when separating out groups of closely related animals into "species."
Originally posted by dadudemon
The T'rung people vs. Northern European people. These are not races (as XYZ tried to boil my point down to...I did not nor do I want to entertain the discussion of race). This is just simply a collection of people that have evolved in specific geography/clime for a period of time and it has resulted in significant physical and behavioral differences (we like to call these behaviors "culture" but just call them "behaviors" in animals...but biologists are starting to drop the "human-elitist" approach and I am seeing animals sometimes referred to with the label of "culture"😉.
Are you trying to say that all groups of people are just acting based on innate genetics, and claiming that cultures don't exist? =/
Originally posted by Epicurus
So what exactly are you trying to say? Because what I gather from your posts is basically an underhanded way of saying that different races of people should be classified as different (sub)species of human, simply because of the similarity of genetic difference between two different primate species and different ethnicities the overall human species.
I prefer to leave it at my original words. To paraphrase myself, there are definitely genetic differences between different humans located in different geographies. Some of these differences in genetics could contribute to differences in aggression and violence.
Notice that those words do not contain things such as "species", "subspecies", or "ethnicities."
Originally posted by Epicurus
You're also not taking into account the fact that the human population is orders of magnitude bigger than the chimpanzee and bonobo population put together, and how such a large sample space may or may not affect even the the most marginal variance or standard deviation done in any statistical survey to ascertain genetic variations among people across the globe.
Was it you that said that chimps had greater genetic variance in a single troop than the entire human race did? If that's the case, then we would see greater variations among chimps, alone, than humans. That's simply not the case, as I discussed, prior. The situation is more nuanced than that. Not only is that factoid incorrect, humans show greater variation in physical appearance than chimps (or bonobos). That's because we've been evolving in different climes than chimps (we've covered this "genetic variance" topic to death, already...I don't think I need to recap).
Also, you've commented on statistics and I wanted to reply to that avenue. There are definitely more than enough "samples" in the populations between bonobos and chimps to make comparison to another population of species: humans. Note that in my words, here, "population" "sample" are being used in the statistical sense. Both (the Pans genus) sets of populations have more than enough individuals to make a proper comparison. If there were fewer than 1000, we might start to entertain that possibility (but, even then, there are other methods that would allow an "apples to apples" comparison with powerful statistical significance...then there are entirely different methodologies of approaches to statistics that allow very small sample sizes, such as Bayesian Statics). But there are over 100,000 of each. If "Estimating" sample sizes, to obtain statistical power, is an entire branch of statistics.* Basically, 10,000 observations (number of organisms) is more than enough to give you a highly accurate sample. You do not need anything more than that (but, in biology, you would need to make sure you properly sampled from all of the species' habitats, if you're comparing genetic differences...that would mean we would need to properly random sample 1000 bonobos (or proportional samples to the population in each habitat for a total of 10,000) from each of their 10 habitats to compare and contrast their genetics if our desired sample size was 10,000 bonobos). And you can definitely make powerful comparisons with even smaller samples without too much confidence lost.
Originally posted by Epicurus
So you are trying to say that Arabs and Europeans are 2 extremely genetically similar species. Don't know if that last part about crazy talk is sarcasm or you being serious, but anyways.
I am definitely saying that humans are extremely genetically similar, even in the most extreme examples (similar to Bonobos and Chimps but just slightly less dissimilar than chimps and bonobos). But the differences, clearly, are the focus. Can these genetic differences account, at least in part, for statistically significant differences in behaviors? Yes, I was being serious with that last part: we wouldn't dare separate out humans into different species like we do the Pan genus. In fact, we should belong in the Pan genus...but humans gonna be arrogant, yo.
Originally posted by Epicurus
I already linked to all the attempts which have been made at taxonomically separating different groups of humans, and how they have been debunked by actual science.
You did not need to point that out as the focus of this discussion has never been on "species", as I stated to XYZ. But your efforts are appreciated and I enjoyed the read.
Originally posted by Epicurus
Still, if you're actually serious about this discussion, you should refer to my Richard Dawkins comment on the previous page. I think that guy's(Dawkins' peer) work would best support your argument(though imo it is still based on a flawed premise).
I agree with you, here. However, I think the idea of mine is far too...devoid of genetic facts to make a proper comparison. I also think genetics are far more nuanced than just boiling them down to 1 or 2 aggression genes. It is probably a myriad of behavioral genes mixed with environment that determines human aggression. That's my opinion, at least.
Originally posted by Epicurus
Which is why I said in comparison to other animal species. Of course I don't literally believe that we are clones of each other. If that was the case, then anyone could provide organ transplants to anyone, along with blood transfusion etc. Judging from the photos you've posted on these forums, I am guessing you're a huge guy. 6'4"-6'5", 240-280 lbs? Based on that I can definitely state for sure that I am not your clone.
That's why I said "We are definitely not like virtual clones of each other." Note that that does not say "exact clones of each other" or "literal clones of each other": it says "like virtual clones of each other."
I'm 5'10", 206lbs, by the way. But, who knows! We could be organ donor matches for each other. inlove
Originally posted by Epicurus
However, while we're discussing clones and levels of genetic similarity, I should bring up the fact that physiological variation has been shown to exist even between identical twins(who are pretty much naturally created clones). There have been cases where one twin was taller than the other, one had different hair color, or a mole the other didn't have, or skin tone etc.
Yes, as much as it pains me to admit it, XYZ was definitely right about environment playing a large role on how we develop as humans (both physiologically and behaviorally). I just think there is anywhere from a dash to "two huge scoops" of genetics involved in human behavior.
Originally posted by Epicurus
But anyways, even if we were to take your argument at face value, your point about Arabs still does not stand because based on human genetic clustering, both Bedouins and Palestinians are most similar to a number of European ethnicities, more so that some Europeans are to each other:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_clustering#Clusters_by_Rosenberg_et_al._.282006.29
I would say, based on your link, that it says differently than what you're trying to indicate (correct me if I'm wrong in my interpretation of what you're trying to say, here):
"African Somalis are genetically more similar to the people of Saudi Arabia than to peoples of Southern or Western Africa. Saudis are more similar to Somalis than to Norwegians. Ethiopians of Africa are more similar to Azeris or Jews of Eurasia than to Bantu peoples of Africa."
Additionally, Arabs and Jews are "essentially the same people" which is where I got the idea that, perhaps, Arab peoples may have something genetic about them that makes them more aggressive than the average human:
http://epiphenom.fieldofscience.com/2009/01/shared-genetic-heritage-of-jews-and.html
Anyway, do you think we covered the topic thoroughly, enough?
*This branch is of particular interest to myself because of my political interests. I think the "scientific" polling they do, as it relates to politics or political discussions, if grossly flawed and in need of a major overhaul. Rasmussen seems to do the best, generally, out there but they are even significantly flawed. A conspiracy theorist would indicate that they are flawed on purpose so people do not know that a race is not close, at all, to keep people voting (I heard this, somewhere, before...where did I read it? Seems plausible but, like all conspiracy theories of that caliber, they are generally pretty ****ing stupid).
Originally posted by Mr Al Saif
Stop comparing people to animals, anyone can see how racist you are being. This is sickening!
Sorry, we, too, are animals.
Deal with it.
Originally posted by Lek Kuen
Are you trying to say that all groups of people are just acting based on innate genetics,
No. In fact, I've directly commented on this, priorly, which indicated something significantly different than your question implies of your understanding of my position, so why would you make this incorrect assumption?
I was making a commentary about how biased our labels are when we study humans vs. other animals. We seem to put humans on a pedestal that we really shouldn't. I comment further on this by indicating we should probably be under the Pan genus but we are not. It was a 2-part post.
Originally posted by Lek Kuen
and claiming that cultures don't exist? =/
Yeah, that's definitely not it. You're way off, here.
Go back and read my two part post to Epicurus (I had to take a break and come back and continue posting).