Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

[mdk]

MCSO has been doing immigration and immigration–related enforcement operations even when it had no accurate legal basis for doing so.

@Fabricant451

I recall there being a federal lawsuit against Arizona, brought by the Obama admin, for their enforcement of immigration law. Then again I also recall Obama admin having the highest rate of deportation in (recent?) history, so it's not like they were totally scuttling the whole border-security effort.

Anywho. I don't wanna sound like I'm endorsing the methods here. The concept I have in my head is, here's this old curmudgeonly let's-just-assume-he's-a-racist guy is out there doing his job. The court, and not the legislature, tells him that he has to do a different thing, and he says "no, the law says I do X," so he does X. The court predictably convicts him of doing X, and Trump then pardons him for doing X. That part and only that part makes perfect sense in my head.

X, assuming your assessment is on the level, is pretty gross. I mean people have been pardoned for worse, but not in the first year of the first term of a presidency. That's an odd tactical decision. The only way I can make sense of the administration's message here is if I assume that equation above -- "If X is the law, we do X." Still shaky though.

More generally, I fall into that camp where like, if California wants to set California policy, I think that's swell. I'm not in California, they can do what they want. Federal lawsuits to muscle state policy are, by their nature, offensive to me, and that is probably endearing me to the wrong moral side of this case. That's my bias, that's the only reason Sheriff Joe has my tacitly-implied non-condemnation here. I don't wanna sound like an apologist.

[Penny]

Having probable cause beyond just "It's a car full of Hispanics in a county that is 31 percent Hispanic" is a good start.

@Fabricant451

Sure it sounds good on the surface but where does it end? Not hassling every Middle Eastern looking person at the airport? Not banning immigration from predominantly Muslim countries? It is a slippery slope.

[FreeElk]

Sure it sounds good on the surface but where does it end? Not hassling every Middle Eastern looking person at the airport? Not banning immigration from predominantly Muslim countries? It is a slippery slope.

@Penny

That sounds suspiciously like a left-wing 'down with the bourgeoisie' attitude, like the Nazis. Using popular policies like that to get in power and next thing you know there will be concentration camps popping up and Poland will get invaded.

Hiding

@The Harbinger of Ferocity

[Andreyich]

I mean, it's the Muslims who have concentration camps these days.

[Dolerman]

[Penny]

Poland will get invaded.

@FreeElk

How did you... I mean, nothing to see here.

[mdk]

I mean, it's the Muslims who have concentration camps these days.

@Andreyich

these days

Um....

[Andreyich]

<Snipped quote by Andreyich>

<Snipped quote>

Um....

@mdk

Nice dude

[Dolerman]

To clarify, because I feel like I have to -- I don't buy any of that bullshit about racial intelligence traits or whatever.

@mdk

But the concept most certainly is scientific, there most certainly are differences between different racial groups and to deny so is to deny evolution really. There are most certainly differences in IQ for one thing.

@Andreyich

Don't mean to disturb the bromance but....Wew Lad

[Andreyich]

<Snipped quote by mdk>

<Snipped quote by Andreyich>

Don't mean to disturb the bromance but....Wew Lad

@Dynamo Frokane

Nice dude. Do you actually have anything productive to add or are you making some retarded bait that I'm not quite understanding yet?

[mdk]

<Snipped quote by Dynamo Frokane>
Nice dude. Do you actually have anything productive to add or are you making some retarded bait that I'm not quite understanding yet?

@Andreyich

bro. Bro. We're defeated. Pack it in, we just lost the internet.

[Polymorpheus]

.

[Andreyich]

Mind = Blown

[Dolerman]

>retarded bait

>not quite understanding

pick one

If you believe in races, you're a racist.

@catchamber

Nah just not very sciencey.

[Polymorpheus]

.

[Dolerman]

<Snipped quote by Dynamo Frokane>
racism: racial prejudice or discrimination

discrimination: the quality or power of finely distinguishing

It's also not very sciencey, because Goku is somehow black, and Papa Smurf is somehow white. Even the color blind can tell you that's wrong.

@catchamber

My irony radar has always been notoriously weak, I'm not sure what position you are taking here.

And I'm pretty sure goku is an alien, so he's no more 'asian' than superman is 'white' if we want to get nitpicky.

[Polymorpheus]

.

[Dolerman]

I find the idea of believing in races to be a counterproductive waste of time.

@catchamber

Ah okay, well it was only because

If you believe in races, you're a racist.

@catchamber

Sort of read a little sarcastic.

But fair enough, genetically I don't believe in races either, I recognize them as a social concept, but in reality they hold about as much weight as the concept as historic periods, arbitrary grouping to make something complex appear simple.

[The Harbinger of Ferocity]

The most that can be said about races is that they are statistically biased toward certain positive and negative qualities by their genetic makeup. However, these are generally not significant enough to consider them anything other than minor variations; they are not even distinct enough to be categorized as separate subspecies, which would be one of the largest breaks for that argument. They are, as one imagines, regional variations that have adaptive qualities to favor that environment they found themselves in. In the more modern era, these are not generally that important - technology takes the place of many of these biological advantages, but not always - yet there are outliers that would be considered remarkably beneficial. This also works in reverse in the sense that disadvantages are mostly mitigated.

It also is worthy to keep in mind that speaking only from a pure numbers perspective, the vast majority of people will have roughly the same number of advantages and disadvantages regardless of race; people are more likely to be average than anything else. Certainly some traits will be more useful now than they were before, that is just the reality of things, such as having a bias (but not exclusivity) toward a higher than average intelligence and upper threshold of it, but it regularly will not be significant enough to matter. There are too many other factors when dealing with humans that are more likely to change that outcome. It is easier to say, measure the success of average mountain lions in their predation than measuring the success of average people doing so, even with access to primitive tools to establish a baseline from.

Even if we took an example to an extreme, it is unlikely to have every day proof in action. Over an aggregate long term this is true, but the human dynamic is outpacing evolutionary design. You are more likely to see your exceptional or above average of any race do better than those par for the course who have just a less pronounced advantage. This is more to the advance of technology, culture, society, et cetera.

In short, yes, race does technically exist as well as it does influence positive and negative, speaking only to natural potential, but what it accounts for in modern factoring is not really all that large. The individual themselves have significantly more power than that.

[Dolerman]

The most that can be said about races is that they are statistically biased toward certain positive and negative qualities by their genetic makeup. However, these are generally not significant enough to consider them anything other than minor variations; they are not even distinct enough to be categorized as separate subspecies, which would be one of the largest breaks for that argument. They are, as one imagines, regional variations that have adaptive qualities to favor that environment they found themselves in. In the more modern era, these are not generally that important - technology takes the place of many of these biological advantages, but not always - yet there are outliers that would be considered remarkably beneficial. This also works in reverse in the sense that disadvantages are mostly mitigated.

It also is worthy to keep in mind that speaking only from a pure numbers perspective, the vast majority of people will have roughly the same number of advantages and disadvantages regardless of race; people are more likely to be average than anything else. Certainly some traits will be more useful now than they were before, that is just the reality of things, such as having a bias (but not exclusivity) toward a higher than average intelligence and upper threshold of it, but it regularly will not be significant enough to matter. There are too many other factors when dealing with humans that are more likely to change that outcome. It is easier to say, measure the success of average mountain lions in their predation than measuring the success of average people doing so, even with access to primitive tools to establish a baseline from.

Even if we took an example to an extreme, it is unlikely to have every day proof in action. Over an aggregate long term this is true, but the human dynamic is outpacing evolutionary design. You are more likely to see your exceptional or above average of any race do better than those par for the course who have just a less pronounced advantage. This is more to the advance of technology, culture, society, et cetera.
In short, yes, race does technically exist as well as it does influence positive and negative, speaking only to natural potential, but what it accounts for in modern factoring is not really all that large. The individual themselves have significantly more power than that.

@The Harbinger of Ferocity

Well put Cat-Man, though a slight comment on the fact that while extremely broad phenotypical attributes exist, these don't match up well with what we consider race in today's world (going by the very American concept of 5 races). So while there absolutely is diversity, these don't really boil down to white, black, Asian, Eskimo etc.

The reason that human races aren't useful is that they're actually only looking at a couple of phenotypic markers and (a) these phenotypes don't map well to underlying genetics and (b) don't usefully model the underlying populations. The big thing that racial typing is based on is skin colour, but skin colour is controlled by only a small number of alleles. On the basis of skin colour you'd think the big division in human diversity is (and I simplify) between white Europeans and black Africans. However, there is vastly more genetic diversity within Africa than there is anywhere else. Two randomly chosen Africans will be, on average, more diverse from each other than two randomly chosen Europeans. What's more Europeans are no more genetically distinct overall from a randomly chosen African than two randomly chosen Africans are from each other.

This makes perfectly decent sense if you consider the deep roots of diversity within Africa (where humans originally evolved) to the more recent separation of Europeans from an African sub-population.

So the issue is more with the concept of race itself and how we as a society attempted to group people when our understanding of genetics was still very primitive.

EDIT: It's also worth noting that while humans are indeed animals, the way humans have evolved is fairly unique when compared to other species our human specific discoveries of social societies and medicine largely offset 'natural selection' from their introduction into human life. Meaning that it was no longer just the most physically superior who were breeding.

There is also the concept of genetic drift which is very high in humans for the same reason, we retain mutations a lot easier because we have a greater ability than any other species to keep ourselves alive.

So yes the arbitrary 1900s grouping of races is defunct at this point, its a very very simplified phenotype grouping and doesn't hold up well.