this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2025
263 points (96.1% liked)
Casual Conversation
3139 readers
149 users here now
Share a story, ask a question, or start a conversation about (almost) anything you desire. Maybe you'll make some friends in the process.
RULES (updated 01/22/25)
- Be respectful: no harassment, hate speech, bigotry, and/or trolling. To be concise, disrespect is defined by escalation.
- Encourage conversation in your OP. This means including heavily implicative subject matter when you can and also engaging in your thread when possible. You won't be punished for trying.
- Avoid controversial topics (politics or societal debates come to mind, though we are not saying not to talk about anything that resembles these). There's a guide in the protocol book offered as a mod model that can be used for that; it's vague until you realize it was made for things like the rule in question. At least four purple answers must apply to a "controversial" message for it to be allowed.
- Keep it clean and SFW: No illegal content or anything gross and inappropriate. A rule of thumb is if a recording of a conversation put on another platform would get someone a COPPA violation response, that exact exchange should be avoided when possible.
- No solicitation such as ads, promotional content, spam, surveys etc. The chart redirected to above applies to spam material as well, which is one of the reasons its wording is vague, as it applies to a few things. Again, a "spammy" message must be applicable to four purple answers before it's allowed.
- Respect privacy as well as truth: Don’t ask for or share any personal information or slander anyone. A rule of thumb is if something is enough info to go by that it "would be a copyright violation if the info was art" as another group put it, or that it alone can be used to narrow someone down to 150 physical humans (Dunbar's Number) or less, it's considered an excess breach of privacy. Slander is defined by intentional utilitarian misguidance at the expense (positive or negative) of a sentient entity. This often links back to or mixes with rule one, which implies, for example, that even something that is true can still amount to what slander is trying to achieve, and that will be looked down upon.
Casual conversation communities:
Related discussion-focused communities
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
We are all different, I don't know how you can deny that. And some differences can depend on where your ancestors are from.
If it's not "race" then is there another way of describing it?
In animals we call it breeds. Sounds weird.
I think as an advanced species we should be capable of ascending beyond the descriminating behaviour based on origin. I know it's possible as I can. Seeing other people first reactions to meeting people get described with race undertones is alien to me and feels disrespectful.
Well the problem with trying to subdivide humans is that
A) it's actually really really hard to do, so hard in fact that it's impossible and is a pseudoscience B) it basically always results in comparison. Which gets bad REALLY quickly because suddenly there is a better or worse, an inferior and superior.
I'm not saying we aren't different, I'm not saying that.
But, as far as species, we ARE all the same. You, your sister, your neighbor, your great great great grandfather. We all have our differences and generic differences, but they're infinitesimally small, we are just VERY good at telling the differences because we're so used to staring at the same face over and over.
There's just so much crossover and mixing and volatility. People can change from one to the other or halfway and stuff, there's no clarity. Like, me, for example: I'm a mix that people look at me and get very wrong 95% of the time. And then if I have kids with somebody that doesn't have the exact same mixed heritage with me, it's like... Wtf do you even call me?
And then if you learn some anthropology and learn that long thin limbs and people are from hot climates close to the equator, and short ratioed people are from further (surface area to mass ratio, keeping warmth) away from the equator where it's cold.
Like.... You can be vague and descriptive a little about it, but when you realize that reality is just that we're all the same species, with no limits to interbreeding, it makes so much more sense.
Let's say you take a pale-ass white guy and strand them near the equator for ten years outdoors. Does that guy suddenly become a different breed or race or whatever you want to call it? No.. it's the same person, the same species, even if he looks different - he just adapted and his body is like "holy fuck it's hot and I'm trying my best to not get skin cancer and the right amount of vitamins from the sun".
And same thing for brown skinned people (let's just say Mexican natives). You take a young couple with darker brown skin, and move them to norway or somewhere cold with VERY little sun (latitude). They are going to lose melatonin in their skin and become paler. Let's say they have kids and you inbreed them for a few generations. They will get progressively more pale, and start to look more adapted to the region, likely even take on regional issues.
And the reason why is because we're all the same type of monkey. (Not actually monkey because that's a different offshoot, but primate; we're great apes!).
I mostly agree with you. And I commend your principles.
Some of your examples need improving is all I'll say.
Like sending a white guy to the equator for a decade. Okay fine, they go dark skinned. But bring him back up north and he is white again. Send a super dark skinned guy far north and he will get somewhat paler, so it works both ways. But they retain that difference because they are different.
We have developed differences mostly based on our origin in the world, be it Asian, African, Egyptian, Indian, etc, but we are such an internationally mixed people the differences are meaningless.
Actually, yes, and actually, no.
If you take a white person and put them in the equator for multiple generations, they'll turn brown. If you try to put the result back north, it'll take them multiple generations to get pale again.
There isn't really an inherent difference between us. There are small mutations or diseases that can kill, like Alzheimer's, but those are all basically incidental. Your genes can change, that's what evolution is.
We ALL came from Africa, anyway, and then settled down in various places for a while, adapting. The longer people have adapted, the more they've adapted. But it doesn't set anything in stone, and everybody still retains that ability to adapt.
That's basically evolution lol if you go down that route then we are all plankton, animals and all.
There you go the key to all of this is "meaningless differences" justification to divide people, then make one group appear less than human, then exploit, steal from and murder the savages for the profit of the few.
Racism is a taught trait. Children aren't racist until their peers or guardians teach them their racist world view. I think we agree on almost all points, I just don't think it is pseudoscientific.
Yeah humans are actually all pretty close genetically compared to other species. And "race" as defined by society isn't even a good predictor of genetic similarities, so for example if you take random people A and B who are black, and person C who is white, B and C will often be more closely related than A and B.
Also as a sidenote, we are monkeys. Apes are now considered to be a type of monkey taxonomically.
Whaaaaat... Looks it up
Breeds are defined by organizations that determine breed based on lineage, followed by conformation. They do not align across different countries. Dogs have the AKC, CKC in America. They don't follow the same definitions. It also causes lots of issues to classify things like this and leads to bad decision making by lots of people. Even as it is now, there's no clear definition for things like Pit Bulls. There's also a ton of health issues that arise from defining breeds and trying to follow this logic.
Humans are not controlled and bred based on these things so a Breed Standard would not be possible. There is simply a continuous line of people.
Perform a cluster analysis on dogs - they will kind of fall into clusters because we bred selectively for them. But humans, which have not been selectively bred even in smaller geographic regions, would not provide decent clustering results based on race categories.
Without good clustering, whatever groups you make have more inaccuracies than accuracies in your grouped statements. (Border collies are high energy, greyhounds are lazy > 65% true at best) this is because of the insane complexity of DNA and the lack of selective breeding artificially limiting the DNA diversity. Plus other stuff.
You've never had infants around other infants.
We all have the same child. They all act the same behavior is the same.. Patterns are the same Etc..
Humans don't really start to develop in different directions and speed until they are like 18 months old.
Our coloring and physical features might not be the same.. but the basic operating system and internals are all the same across humanity.
Yes I agree, this is human. Just the same as all dogs wag their tail and bark. Like other posters have said, the differences are subtle and we are all more the same than different.