Right. But you couldn't come up with a rational racial classification system where Obama is an Amerindian or an Australian Aborigine or whatever. You could argue Obama is somewhat ethnically Southeast Asian thru his ex-stepfather, but not racially Asian.https://twitter.com/Rongwrong_/status/1140308030183157762 …
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Replying to @Steve_Sailer
I corrected that tweet in a follow-up, by the way: It's not that Obama *could* be white, rather that he *really is* white, regardless of our beliefs or practices. Similarly, there *exist* races defined solely by hair color, and Obama *really* does belong to the Dark-Haired race.
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Replying to @Rongwrong_
Nah, as Darwin told Huxley in 1857, we talk about external racial characteristics to get hints about genealogy. E.g., 19th century anthropologists often guessed that the pygmy negritos of the East Indies were racially related to black Africans. But, genetics says they aren't.
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Replying to @Steve_Sailer
Sorry, I was still paraphrasing Glasgow's "basic realism" argument. Glasgow argues via thought experiments that in ORDINARY race talk, genealogy is not part of the "core semantic commitment" for the word "race" but visible characteristics are...
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Replying to @Rongwrong_ @Steve_Sailer
Yet to hear an ordinary conversation that doesn’t lay it fundamentally on genealogy
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Replying to @paul_hundred @Steve_Sailer
If I remember correctly, everyone (except Spencer?) agreed with Glasgow in *principle* that ordinary conversations aren't enough to determine the ordinary, operative meaning of a word like "race." You have to do a counterfactuals stress-test to get "core semantic commitments."
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Glasgow et al. asked people questions like (paraphrasing from memory), "What if George, a black man, invented a machine that turned him completely white in appearance. Would George still be black?" A substantial proportion of people said no.
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This is a self-contradictory premise. Completely white in appearance means he's got a white-typical skull size and shape - does his brain slosh around in his larger cranium? Does bone density count as part of appearance?
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