To the extent you can agree on a test for race, it will be useful for prediction. Obviously some tests (actual genetic heritage) will be more interesting that others “lol what’s ur skin color”.
I would suggest that most people do have a common test for race. It is something along the lines of, “To what extent does this person match a small set of specific physical characteristics?” For someone to be “black” in many places in modern America, it means that their skin tone is relatively dark, their lips are big, their nose is wide, and so on. But of course, this tends to fall apart under close scrutiny, and is complicated by a lot of cultural baggage, like the fact that “white” is the default, so those of mixed-race are often identified with (or themselves choose to identify with) their minority identity. A prominent example is President Obama, who has few of the physical characteristics of the stereotypical “black” person. This is why it is a very sloppy and pretty useless label, and even though most people agree on a “test,” it remains so.
Saying that race is a good predictor of such things is roughly equivalent to saying “black people are dumb” or whatever (with suitable disclaimers of probabilisticness that really should not be needed on this site). Call that simple minded if you like; I’d rather be right than high-minded.
Of course, it’s absolutely better to be right. But it’s very difficult to determine whether you are right or wrong without rigorous definition of your terms and inquiry. You think that race correlates with other traits, and I agree—but only with strong caveats and reservations, particularly when it comes to questions of causation. That’s why I began by asking: what do you mean by “race”?
EDIT: You appear to be engaged in several other discussions along these lines, so please just let me know if you consider this one is too parallel to the others to be useful. It can be difficult to explain yourself to several people all at the same time, I know.
See this for my full opinion on all of this. Anything I said that contradicts that is deprecated.
The quick version of what I mean by “race” is those things that are both heritable and clustered with visible and genetic markers. Not exactly the classic definition of “race” because it includes memetic heritage as well as genetic.
I would suggest that most people do have a common test for race. It is something along the lines of, “To what extent does this person match a small set of specific physical characteristics?” For someone to be “black” in many places in modern America, it means that their skin tone is relatively dark, their lips are big, their nose is wide, and so on. But of course, this tends to fall apart under close scrutiny, and is complicated by a lot of cultural baggage, like the fact that “white” is the default, so those of mixed-race are often identified with (or themselves choose to identify with) their minority identity. A prominent example is President Obama, who has few of the physical characteristics of the stereotypical “black” person. This is why it is a very sloppy and pretty useless label, and even though most people agree on a “test,” it remains so.
Of course, it’s absolutely better to be right. But it’s very difficult to determine whether you are right or wrong without rigorous definition of your terms and inquiry. You think that race correlates with other traits, and I agree—but only with strong caveats and reservations, particularly when it comes to questions of causation. That’s why I began by asking: what do you mean by “race”?
EDIT: You appear to be engaged in several other discussions along these lines, so please just let me know if you consider this one is too parallel to the others to be useful. It can be difficult to explain yourself to several people all at the same time, I know.
See this for my full opinion on all of this. Anything I said that contradicts that is deprecated.
The quick version of what I mean by “race” is those things that are both heritable and clustered with visible and genetic markers. Not exactly the classic definition of “race” because it includes memetic heritage as well as genetic.
I will reply there. Thank you.