What defines a species Veeky Forums?

Where we define the mathematical cutoff is entirely arbitrary. We designate a certain narrow margin, based on fuckall but an arbitrated decision- nothing more than what's decided to be reasonable by a counsel of people.

On top of this, we can't even test all individuals within a population and make a lot of assumptions regarding homogeneity. I do admit that the systems in place are accurate based on how they're set up- but they're all set up, and have the inherent arbitration of the base definitions set by human judgment.

What shithole country are you in where you're getting told that there's some inherent mathematical cutoff of genetic variance that defines a species, rather than a cutoff aided by available data and mathematical modeling that is arbitrated by a counsel of scientific officials?

The limits would be the genetic distances between how many groups you set, and how differentiated those groups were. Let's say you wanted to see if a population of animals could be divided into two populations (k=2). You would use bayesian modeling to see if those animals in those two populations were similar to each other and different from the other groups genetically.

Here's what happens when you try to do it for humans, before /pol/ goes autistic. No, it never reproduced what we call 'race.' The authors tried to go up to k=12, but some groups were too genetically similar, like europeans, middle easterners, and indians would always be grouped together.

science.sciencemag.org/content/298/5602/2381.full

The cuttoffs are based on observable data from the population you're studying. If you don't understand anything about bioinformatics and you just want to a racist shithead that hurls insults rather than learns, I'm not here to teach you. Just go back to /pol/

Okay, I can see there's a misunderstanding here. It's not racist to bant about educational disconnect across varying countries' curricula. I took sort an aggressive stance because I'd assumed you were one of those /pol/tard "Race is absolute, see science says so hurr" trolls, based on the assertion that it's not arbitrary being the primary argument- This was my bad for making such an assumption.

They're based on the observable data, I'm not saying they aren't, but it's still a census of people that determines the cutoff for how different populations are to be determined separate species.

I'm interested in bioinformatics, but I'm not very well versed in it. For my degree I focused on molecular bio, with some experience in biostats, so I know how the basic modeling is done (although I'll plead ignorant to the exact mechanisms of the larger system models).

But you can say the difference between the jackals is bigger than between thehumans. You can see the humans mate with eachother. I think we can use differnt measures for educated ideas about variations between animals.

And desu nothing makes sense without simplifications.

...

If you debunk the idea of species as made up are you saying its not useful?

lel, saved

Oh yeah, I'm not trying to say at all that it's arbitrary therefore meaningless, just trying to highlight and denote the contiguous nature of biology, by the mere fact that biological code is all written in the same language and stems from the same stuff.

The systems we have for biological classification are all incredibly useful tools for dealing with pragmatic issues of conservation, biological produce, behavioral analysis, and anything where species lumping is useful, I just wanted to give a little commentary about how there're flaws and drawbacks (contemporarily and historically) to how we classify due to no ""inherent"" black-and-white distinction between populations as creationists might believe. I in no way mean to say that species is a bullshit made up concept- but that it's an incredibly useful made up concept.

I'm sorry I addressed you adversarialy at first- I just figured from the tone and use of 'brainlet' that you were just a /pol/ troll, which I've become increasingly tired trying to reason with over the past few weeks in discussions on climate science, biology, and other such things I'm very interested in.

I 'ad a giggle

Iff youve really read that article youre being very disingenuous. It doesnt say that at all. It does show race clusters and ive seen them in other articles too.

I see... so you consider Europeans, Middle Easterners, and Indians to all be white? That's what the data shows on figure 1.

Go back to reddít

Why? It's a pretentious echo chamber full of tools and bandwagoners, it's difficult to find any actual meaningful discourse or dissent, along with the other many problems like underage fags, a requirement for political correctness, yet a contradictory desire to be edgy. Reddit a shit

That's funny because everything from "there're" to the spacing to your apologizing screams reddit.

I space it doublespace because otherwise it's painful to read blocks of text. There're is the contracted version of "there are". I was apologizing because I was genuinely impeding the process of actual conversation by hurling insults instead of talking about the idea, and wasting time in the process. I furthered the apology after another response because it was finally apparent that we didn't even disagree fundamentally, it was just an issue of how the language was presented.

How are you so familiar with reddit anyways?

My nigga
Good to see another on Veeky Forums

why don't you go there since you fucking LOVE to talk about it and spacing

retard

You don't need to explain why you write the way you write, I'm just telling you you write like a redditor.
Reddit spacer detected.

"What is epistemology" the post

>Almost everything regarding biological classification is purely the result of human simplification and arbitration, and the distinction between life forms isn't all that special. There's a form of nihilism that sets in often, but it's for the most part combated by the autistic pleasure derived from the natural mysteries of biogenesis and tracking evolutionary pressures and trends to determine in a weird roundabout way how different genes arise on an atomic level from a macroscopic ecosystem level.

>your head

>I'm interested in bioinformatics, but I'm not very well versed in it. For my degree I focused on molecular bio, with some experience in biostats, so I know how the basic modeling is done (although I'll plead ignorant to the exact mechanisms of the larger system models).
I focused on ecosystem science. What do you think about biosemiotics?

I think biosemiotics is an incredibly interesting approach to understanding ecosystems, and evolution at large. I'm not too well versed in it, but it's struck me as a kind of unique way to frame evolutionary patterns based on the focus of a sort of communication rather than- or maybe, more accurately as a footnote of "selection pressures".

In studying biology I've focused more on the molecular, cell, developmental, genetics, etc. side of things, but for any pragmatic approach, the macroscale study of patterns and mechanisms that arise lead often to shocking revelations about how things might work on a molecular/biochemical level.

To sum it up, I think it's an interesting field/approach. Ecosystem shit in general, by the way, is some dank shit, shame it doesn't get much of the limelight in terms of how it's seen in science, or in the media. I live in the pacific Northwest of USA, and there's a huge crisis with salmon numbers due in large part to ocean acidification causing shellfish to not form shells, creating a chain reaction throughout the food web, dropping salmon considerably. Useful, interesting shit.

Good post