Cyprus-Forum.com

[Cap]

I wish it was otherwise, I really do.
But it is what it is and until I'm convinced otherwise...

I've done 360 degree shifts in opinion over the course of a lifetime concerning various topics and I'll admit I'm wrong when and if sufficient evidence is presented.
Tsuk, I apologize, but I need more than just feel good theories.

Yes it's taboo, but I too desperately want it to be different.

[Get Real!]

Do you really expect people to watch a 1 hour video about something that “hurts like a bitch, but the truth always hurts” ?

And if you’ve done 360 degree turns weren’t you right back where you started?

[kurupetos]

:? Do you really expect people to watch a 1 hour video about something that “hurts like a bitch, but the truth always hurts” ?

And if you’ve done 360 degree turns weren’t you right back where you started?

I reckon he means gradually, not at once.

[tsukoui]

Cap I watched the video, and it did make me think, in fact I am grateful because it forced me to clarify my position.

I am going to start with statistics then move through mathematics and logic to philosophy, watch very carefully, there is nothing up my sleeve

Firstly, what I liked about the video was it did not make any inference regarding what we should do with the information presented.

Let's start with the content then. The guy uses statistics and talks about averages. Ok, so far so good. However, there is a clear warning here, they are averages, thus it would be wrong to treat someone based on an average. That is racism. You cannot infer because a person is "Black" that they have the correlated traits described. You would be grossly offensive to someone to do so. This is the first lesson of anti-racism, we should treat people as individuals and I'm sure you would agree with that.

Next, we come to the definitions used in the statistics themselves. It is a fact that the "races" are not well-defined sets. For a definition of well defined see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well-defined and if you still don't understand, I'll try and explain later. The fact that "races" are not well defined means that we cannot use classical logic to reason with them. However, and this is a refinement of my understanding that came about from thinking about your video, we can use fuzzy logic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic. We can define "races" as fuzzy sets. But here is the catch, this means that we are no longer talking about absolute truths but about part truths. Thus if we are not justified to treat someone as an average, how much more so are we not justified to treat someone as an average that is only partly true.

Finally, the philosophical argument. Do things exist until we have defined them? There is a wealth of philosophical debate about this, stemming from the nature of reality to the nature of language, to the nature of mind. Some of my favourites are Lakatos and Feyerbend. I recommend in particular you read "Proofs and Refutations" by Lakatos as it will help you to understand the problem of being "well defined" at a deeper level than even is possible mathematically. The question remains open. Could it be that if we forget a definition it ceases to exist? It is certainly philosophically possible. I am not asking you to follow me up to this point of denying the existence of "race" in order to make the definition and its fuzzy consequences disappear. It is enough for you to realise that it is a fuzzy definition and so anything said about it is only partly true. In fact, I do explicitly make use of a "racial" definition in saying that Cypriots are a distinct "race" from "Whites" and we can produce all sorts of correlations to prove it (at least in a fuzzy sense .

So to return to the video, what are we to do in response to it.

Well we can take the position of denying it exists and try to forget it in the hope that this will change reality.

Or we can start to ask some interesting questions.

For instance, if it is (partly) true that "Blacks" have on average higher testosterone, one could ask how on earth did traditional African societies function. The answer is that they were adapted to the needs of their inhabitants. Thus we can say that modern society is not adapted to the needs of "Black" people. This is where ideas of institutional racism come in. One could argue that modern society was designed by "Whites" to fit their needs. Thus, if we are serious about eradicating racism, we need to design a new society that meets the needs of all its inhabitants.

Another question is that since it claims African Americans have an average IQ one standard deviation above Africans, are we not justified in saying they are two different "races"?

I think I'll stop there.

But let me ask you one more question, what would you do as a "Black" person when faced with such a video?

[tsukoui]

For instance, if it is (partly) true that "Blacks" have on average higher testosterone, one could ask how on earth did traditional African societies function. The answer is that they were adapted to the needs of their inhabitants. Thus we can say that modern society is not adapted to the needs of "Black" people. This is where ideas of institutional racism come in. One could argue that modern society was designed by "Whites" to fit their needs. Thus, if we are serious about eradicating racism, we need to design a new society that meets the needs of all its inhabitants.

In fact my conclusions should all be prefaced by "partly true" and thus "partly false" and "on average".

You see what a slippery slope this whole business of "race" is.

Ignoring these caveats is as bad as ignoring the concept of "race" altogether, if not worse.

I say worse because, evolution offers a way by which partly true/partly false average "racial" differences can change, and re-defining what is important to us allows us to throw some definitions into the dustbin of history, whereas you cannot change mathematics so easily

[kurupetos]

After reading tsukoui's posts, I feel sleepy.

[Get Real!]

After reading tsukoui's posts, I feel sleepy.

Anesthesiologists around the world have started to use Tsukoui’s posts for anesthesia instead of medicine. They claim it’s much more effective than the strongest drug and the only side effect being that the entire theater crew may fall asleep if the patient reads it aloud.

[Oceanside50]

I wish it was otherwise, I really do.
But it is what it is and until I'm convinced otherwise...

I've done 360 degree shifts in opinion over the course of a lifetime concerning various topics and I'll admit I'm wrong when and if sufficient evidence is presented.
Tsuk, I apologize, but I need more than just feel good theories.

Yes it's taboo, but I too desperately want it to be different.

and your conclusion Cap?…. that Cypriots are the master race…yes or no?….

[Cap]

No.
That's not the issue.

[Oceanside50]

what is the issue?