Races and subspecies





However, it is terminologically inconvenient to call two kinds two species when there is a large cline between them. The middle east makes it inconvenient to define blacks and whites as two species. Therefore, Darwin defined humans as one species, this being a fact about preferred scientific terminology, not a fact about the world.  It is convenient to call it a species difference when the cline is small, as between coyotes and wolves, and convenient to call it a subspecies (race) difference when the cline is large, as between whites and blacks.

There is a large cline between Californian spotted owls and barred owls.  It is frequently hard to tell the difference. Male and female owls don’t care about the difference, if there is one.  Owls from the same nest, brothers and sisters, are apt to be assigned to different species, one brother spotted, the other barred, if the observer does not know they are from the same nest.  It is as if we tried to divide humans into blue  eyed, green eyed, and brown eyed species.   Some owls have spots, some have bars, and most have spots that are kind of like bars, or bars that are kind of like spots.  However, it is politically convenient to declare them different species, because that gives the greenies power over the loggers, and the urban elite hates those redneck loggers.

From time to time a proposal is floated to clarify the difference by killing off  “hybrids”, which is to say kill off owls whose spots are suspiciously like bars, or whose bars are suspiciously like spots.  This, however, might be difficult to explain to those rednecks whose lives have been destroyed to protect the owls that were just shot.

Humans are one species so that Darwin did not have to draw a line across the middle east, and spotted and barred owls are two species so that our elite can make rednecks suffer.

16 Responses to “Races and subspecies”

  1. VXXC says:

    And yet live in wood houses.

  2. This clearly shows that environmentalists are racists!

  3. spandrell says:

    Politics is local.

  4. RS says:

    The two owls are interfertile, but they won’t ultimately clinize unless the hybrids have reasonable fitness.

    If the hybrid has fitness, say, 0.77, where pure individuals average 1.0, they will probably continue to diverge. Ultimately to the point of non-interfertility. Because 0.23 is too great a fitness hit. It will create strong(er) selection against hybrid mating propensity, and the instinct against such mating will gradually increase.

    Of course that’s a nice clean example ; in reality the two parental types may not have equal fitness, so complexities ensue.

    If almost all the hybrids are sterile with both parental types, ie have fitness zero, then non-interfertility is already locked-in, even though it is not attained yet.

    The fact that hybrids, back-crosses, etc exist is not very meaningful per se. It’s meaningful if you know how abundant those intermediates are, and how fit.

    • jim says:

      They are already clinized, and have been for a very long time. It as if a martian looked at a Norwegian and a German, and said “ah, two different species,” assuming that all the lands between Germany and Norway were empty And then they did more studies and found no empty lands, that there never had been any empty lands, but also found it impossible to say, “one species”

  5. etype says:

    First of all, Darwinism is a Anglo propaganda, not real science, but science ‘as done by’ a herd of brainless cattle. Darwinism has been completely disproved at it’s foundations (not by ID – you wish…) and the rest of it is a collections of stupid syllogisms intended to signify thinking… in preference to actually doing any.
    Darwinism was invented by the British ‘press’ in order to prevent public knowledge of a prior working theories of evolution which is backed a few thousands of years of animal husbandry and observation,’ Lamarkism’ – and “Mendalism’ which lays out the rules of heredity in mathematical terms that are still the standard used today.
    ‘Darwinism’ is another British attempt to retard human knowledge and reduce it to mechanistic syllogisms, that are incorrect but easy to transmit to other subintellects – like Newtonism…. (the British are famous for plagiarizing other prior work as if the island was a type of North Korea, creating a substandard hacked together copies, and using network effects, credentialism and propaganda to hide the obvious theft.)
    The basis of the ‘Catherdral’ is right there Jim – Darwinism is an utterly false collection of myths kept current by ‘groupthink’ and foisted on the public for their ‘moral benefit’. Notice how Dawkins/Hitches go after religious ID simpletons? It’s because this is the only debate they could possibly win, and often it’s too close to call, because ID makes more sense than Darwinism.
    Have the British ever invented anything, or just stolen others work? Why no music, no arts, no architecture, nothing from these people but intellectual theft? What they invented and perfected is what the DE twits call the ‘Cathedral’. The British realized if you are good a lying and theft, you are good at everything.

    • jim says:

      The truth of Darwinism is obvious to anyone who reads Darwin, and you have failed to make any counter arguments, or propose any alternative.

    • jim says:

      So, your alternative to Darwinism is?

      Lamarck proposed evolution and common descent, but failed to propose a plausible mechanism.

      Darwin proposed a mechanism so compelling that evolution and common descent necessarily followed.

      Natural Selection.

      Nothing in biology makes sense except as a result of natural selection.

      • etype says:

        Thank you for your reply Jim,
        Lamark proposed natural selection five different ways to Sunday…he just didn’t pretend he’d thought of it, or assign to it nursery rhymes such as ‘natural-sexual selection/survival of the fittest…etc.’ Jim, ‘natural selection’ has been explicitly written about and known for thousand of years by husband-men and breeders, well before Darwin enlisted the mass of ill-educated, discernment-incapable British chattering classes and the press who had no other way to relieve themselves of ignorance but by parroting whatever the jingoists say.
        But more important – Lamark was RIGHT on the inheritance of acquired characteristics, Darwinists WRONG, (this has been completely proven and yet Darwinist still pretend they have a credible theory…and pretend the last 100 years of research has never happened.)

        Lamarks theory on evolution was RIGHT, he did not reduce the origins of organic life to nursery rhymes, but had the discretion to not overreach and propose any grand unifying theories such as Darwin… (following Darwinists more at fault for this than Charles)… he with Mendel proposed algorithmic processes that are actually demonstrable.
        Darwinists is not only outrageously wrong, but completely disproved by information theory and the physics of thermodynamics – no admittance of the fact, not a peep, is made. Does this claque have any honour or adherence to TRUE scientific practices – or is it just a mob of office seekers, posers and climbers? The latter obviously. Nothing you can say Jim, can overlook this very seriously indication of Darwinisms vast intellectual dishonesty.
        The behaviour of Darwinists themselves – like the British who cleave to it, no scientific school puts forward such an imposing front of scientific rigour and propriety – behind which lies nothing but an overwhelming avarice and ambition completely unrelated to science of any type. The effect of Darwinism (the surface effect is the self-preening, auto erotic, masturbatory presentation of oneself as one of the elect holding off the faith crazed masses from soiling Saint Darwin’s precious relics – ‘natural selection) is ridiculous. Which is why a school of theoretical biology ‘Darwinism’ works the press attacking common lower class folk’s faith, something it has no business commenting on – if not for the fact it is a bankrupt theory sustained by intellectual sleeze.

        Darwinism is a type of Leninism or Marxism spread by the British, it is scientific colonialism. A complete tissue of lies -nothing to do with empirical science – empiricism means to the British a propaganda coup to reinforce the impression they have ever in their existence thought of an idea they haven’t stolen, and twisted to matieral advantage, while silencing true science devised for the purposes of knowledge. The effects of Darwinism on every aspect of society has been untold misery and error – from pedagogy to immigration policy. Darwinism, like the British themselves is a blight.
        Excuse my over stressing the plague-like aspects of British civilization Jim, but on reflection it does seem that way.
        Thank You.

        • jim says:

          Lamark proposed natural selection five different ways to Sunday

          If he had, you could give me a page number.

          I have read Lamarck. He proposed evolution and common descent, but proposed no plausible mechanism for evolution, without which the proposal is implausible.

          Darwin, on the other hand, proposed the mechanism, natural selection, which makes sense out of biology. As Newton made sense of the solar system, Darwin made sense of biology.

          Lamarks theory on evolution was RIGHT

          But, missing an explanation, missing natural selection, implausible and unreasonable.

          The Scientific and Industrial revolutions were thoroughly English (and, of course, Scottish)

          Without England we would still be on horse power.

          • etype says:

            Jim: You ask me for a page number – then state he gave no plausible mechanism for evolution – then claim you’ve read Lamark? How does one make a case for evolution without suggesting a plausible mechanism? It beggars the mind Jim. Then you end off stating the Scientific and Industrial revolutions, etc. and without England we would still etc. by horsepower. You’ve never read a book in your life have you? This full-out-retard act IS the contribution the British have made to the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions. The fact you need to rely on a full-on retard act to defend British ‘science’ speaks for itself.

            • jim says:

              The plausible mechanism for evolution is natural selection. Lamarck fails to propose natural selection, without which evolution is implausible.

  6. etype says:

    Jim you’ve never read Lamark, I doubt you’ve read Darwin either. ‘Natural Selection’ says everything and nothing. This is why above I say Darwinism is a brain disease – a collection of syllogisms or mantras that allow one to assume anything while knowing nothing.

  7. MJB says:

    Stephen Meyer, a PhD (Cambridge) in the history of science,
    presents an argument based on scientific analysis of the question of mutation/selection with an ample consideration of what is known to be true about cellular molecular biochemistry and genetics.

    Meyer asks the reasonable question, can the random mutation/selection theory work at the biochemical and genetic level, given a limit in time and the nature of random shuffling of genetic material to make specific and complex, functional proteins.

    Meyer takes the time to show that there isn’t enough deep time since the big bang to make the mutations that would produce the complex proteins for an armadillo, or a human.


    • jim says:

      Typical protein length, four hundred or so amino acids.

      Typical mutation rate two mutations per hundred million bases.

      Assume we initially start with a random protein that has some very slight affect on some function.

      Assume a population of twenty million.

      Every generation, there will be four hundred mutant variants on the protein. Some of these will perform the function slightly better than others, some slightly worse. Assume “slightly better” has a selective advantage of one percent. Then a selective sweep (most people in the population get the slightly better version) takes 1600 generations.

      So, in the first sixteen hundred generations, every amino acid will have been optimized relative to the background of the original protein. It will be a fairly functional protein, no longer very random, the result of selective sweeps trying every variation at every position on the protein. The protein will look designed.

      After a few hundred thousand generations, the protein will look polished.

      Of course, I am assuming full recombination, and typically we have restricted recombination, but the reason we have restricted recombination is that we no longer have much need to evolve new proteins. Rather we evolve changes in when and how existing proteins are expressed, and quite small variations in existing proteins.

      But, on the other hand, a non sexually reproducing population does not have any recombination.

      So, let us assume bacteria, which don’t reproduce sexually. Now we can only optimize for one position at a time, but, on the other hand, we have hundreds of generations in a single year. So in ten years, will have optimized the protein at one position. In four thousand years, optimized at every position.

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