Just so long as we're clear that this is storytime and not science, sure.

What does that mean? You reject natural selection as "storytime and not science"?

What is being rejected is not evolution by natural selection. What is being rejected is untestable, just-so stories invented to explain why certain biological traits evolved. Or, as is the case here, to explain traits that are assumed to have evolved in certain populations

The premise was more that we can say with near-certainty that there are non-visible genetic differences between the races without even knowing specifically what these traits are or the extent to which they have diverged. We know this based on our understanding of genetics, natural selection, migration patterns, randomness, and the passage of time.

It would actually be quite the story if the races were somehow identical in all of these traits.

Both of these positions are untestable. One, however, is extremely likely while the other would be a miracle even in the wildest fantasies of the wokest progressive.

Your "extremely likely" scenario is the "cold winter theory", which is problematic for many reasons including the myriad of historical instances where hot-climate civilizations outpaced cold-climate civilizations.

So? Why do you think that should be impossible?

How would you explain how geographically distant groups in radically different conditions could, over millennia, converge on all of the exact same non-visible traits without even minor variations? I truly can't imagine a way that this would be possible aside from the infinitesimally unlikely product of completely random chance.

You're not even telling a coherent story at this point. The "cold winter theory" isn't merely that the populations are different (though: again: when you look at the molecular evidence and the way genes propagate, it's nowhere nearly as clear as you'd think), it's that the cold winter populations are smarter. But you have to literally ignore most of human history to reach that conclusion. Somehow, in this view of the world, evolution only kicked in a couple hundred years ago. Seems unlikely!

Your fantasy is that every human group - no matter the genetics of the founding nomads, no matter how many generations they have had to diverge, no matter the selection pressures of their environment or even random chance, no matter how visibly different they have become over millennia of genetic differentiation - are all exactly, perfectly, indistinguishable in any and all non-visible traits (just because it would be "problematic" otherwise?). That is absurd.

Some may excel in some areas, some in others, some may generally be good at more things than others. That is entirely natural and expected.

I think it is reductionist in the extreme to say "Europeans smarter because Winter cold". I never said that. I would say that it's a reasonable explanation for some of the aggregate behavioural differences we can observe (both "good" and "bad") between Danes and Congolese, for example.

These are difficult to quantify, but in every attempt we seem to find that there are differences evident between disparate ethnic groups. IQ is the most commonly discussed one, while we also have statistics around criminality, sexual behaviours, family structure, academic achievement, income and wealth, addiction, mental illness, etc.

So much of this involves the brain - a physical organ with structure largely determined by genetics. We can physically observe the varying size and shape of the brain and its regions among different groups. There are various mental and intellectual conditions that we know affect certain ethnicities at higher rates than others. Why wouldn't there be myriad tiny variations that influence behaviours and potentials, to varying extents? Why wouldn't you assume that? How is it that you are so sure that everything we can't see inside this black box must magically be identical, even as so much that we can observe is not?

I, frankly, don't know what one stands to gain by denying these differences. It's genuinely confusing and irrational behaviour to me.

I have no idea what you're talking about or who you're arguing with. You brought up the "cold winter theory". "Cold winter" is very funny. It's just a very funny theory put forth by a huckster white supremacist. Where do you hope to go from there?

Whatever the rest of these arguments are, I'm not invested enough in this thread to drag this out.

Cold winters. Tell it to the Abbasids! I guess some of them had kind of cold winters sometimes? Maybe that explains it.

It's a shame you couldn't follow along. Perhaps your ancestors' Winters were too comfortable.

My illiterate ancestors were beating the shit out of each other in cold northern Europe while hot-clime civilizations were inventing algebra. Can't say enough how funny the cold winter theory is.

Intergenerational concussion? That's a new one.

You're so caught up on "the cold winter theory". I'm telling you that you can completely let it go. It's one (pretty good) theory to explain one selection pressure that may have contributed to some of the aggregate divergence we see across races.

Even if you started with two seperate genetically-identical groups in identical environments, over enough generations you would expect at least some variation to emerge due to random chance (accidental deaths, mate selection, DNA recombination, cultural practices, etc). That is the point I would like you to take away from this exchange.

it's a pretty good theory! I'm losing it. Where do you think written language came from?