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Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
Open source projects are by their nature intended to be welcoming, pulling in contributions from many different volunteers. But in reality, open source and the tech industry in general often lack diversity. Speaking at the Open Source Leadership Summit in February, Mozilla's Chief Innovation Officer Katharina Borchert told the crowd that working to bring ethnic, gender, and skill diversity to open source projects isn't just the right thing to do because of moral grounds, it's the right thing to do to make projects more successful.
Me, I beg to differ. Pretty sure success has to do with the diversity of thought/ideas rather than genetic diversity.
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Diversity Makes Projects More Successful
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There will be big changes for you but you will be happy.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 31 2017, @06:47AM (6 children)
Yes, they can make high probability guesses about geographic origin. But geography is not race.
Is someone from Nigeria a different race than someone from Somalia?
Is someone from ireland a different race than someone from germany?
The reason they can make geographic predictions is because individual genes mutate via natural selection in response to local conditions after a few generations. But those specific genes don't say anything meaningful beyond the specific characteristic that was selected for - like thin nostrils for people living in cold and dry climates. So what if there are 100 genes that are common to the basque region of spain? Out of 3 billion genes those 100 don't mean anything, they have no predictive value for understanding any of the people with those 100 genes.
That's not "race" its just the genetic equivalent of a few grains of sand on a beach.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 31 2017, @08:46AM (1 child)
Geographic isolation is precisely what creates race and, given sufficient time, even distinct species sharing a common ancestor.
Here [nih.gov] is an interesting paper on the topic that I think fairly covers a lot of these issues. Perhaps one of the most relevant quotes is:
Thus the answer to the question “How often is a pair of individuals from one population genetically more dissimilar than two individuals chosen from two different populations?” depends on the number of polymorphisms used to define that dissimilarity and the populations being compared. Given 10 loci, three distinct populations, and the full spectrum of polymorphisms the answer is nearly one-third of the time. With 100 loci, the answer is ∼20% of the time and even using 1000 loci, equation M46 ≅ 10%. However, if genetic similarity is measured over many thousands of loci, the answer becomes “never” when individuals are sampled from geographically separated populations.
Perhaps more interesting is comparing humans and dogs. I assume you "believe" that there are different breeds of dogs. That this is a question of belief is such an absurdity, but as is the nature of identity politics. Yet the difference between dogs and not even other dogs, but wolves, is in many cases a fraction of the genetic difference between different humans. The thing about genetic diversity is that small changes can have enormous changes on the species. And genetic divergence does not end after a few generations with some superficial changes, as you seem to be implying. It continues so long as the groups are split and in the longrun would render the groups unable to procreate among each other as speciation occurs. We all share common ancestors. Not only homo sapien, but e.g. homo sapien and felines - you just have to go back a bit further.
The uncomfortable truth is that anybody would readily acknowledge there are vast differences in physical appearance between individuals. The issue is that, while uncomfortable, it is simply irrational to try to argue that the differences end there particularly in light of centuries of existential evidence to the contrary. This isn't to say that we ought discriminate but when one starts with a flawed premise, that all people are more or less identical, your actions drawn from such premise are going to be flawed and lead to little more than frustration and failure for all involved. In other words there certainly can be 'blue' rocket scientists, and 'green' professional athletes. Yet we shouldn't necessarily aim to see a 50/50 blue/green split of rocket scientists or professional athletes. Encourage and train everybody in a diverse field of options, and let people find their niches themselves without giving any particular fanfare to one choice or the other.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 31 2017, @03:25PM
Dog breeds have been specifically inbred for thousands of years to select for certain physical characteristics. The analogy doesn't hold for humans.
The predictive power of using race to determine other characteristics besides outward appearance (which is a circular argument) fails because there is too much phenotypic diversity within racial groups.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_domestic_dog [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 31 2017, @10:58AM (2 children)
Yes, they can make high probability guesses about geographic origin. But geography is not race.
More than close enough for me, particularly given the destructive blow up they'd receive if they did claim ethnicity rather than geographic origin.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 31 2017, @08:48PM (1 child)
> More than close enough for me, particularly given the destructive blow up they'd receive if they did claim ethnicity rather than geographic origin.
Of course its enough for you, you are pretty fucking stupid after all.
Unable to argue with the facts, you just assert that your politics is the truth.
Don't you ever try to make an argument based on science again.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday April 01 2017, @02:48PM
> More than close enough for me, particularly given the destructive blow up they'd receive if they did claim ethnicity rather than geographic origin.
Of course its enough for you, you are pretty fucking stupid after all. Unable to argue with the facts, you just assert that your politics is the truth.
So are you claiming that ethnicity has nothing to do with geographic origin or that scientists won't get dog piled if they say that there's a genetic element to ethnicity?
And what is "politics" here? Making an argument that didn't fit with your biases. Sounds like a label that has nothing to do with the real deal.
Don't you ever try to make an argument based on science again.
Pretty dumb thing to say even considering the "fucking stupidity" I supposed did was a science-based argument. Instead of feebly attempting to discourage me from making science-based arguments, I have a better idea - how about you give science-based argument a try? It'll be good for you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 31 2017, @03:12PM
I think I have a red car. There is another car, of a slightly different color, with an owner who thinks he has a red car. Is one of the two cars not red?
Are we really to argue over this?
There is even a famous supreme court opinion that applies: "I know it when I see it." (having to do with something being obscene or not)
We can identify a race as well as we can identify a red car.