Comment by Dylan16807 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Dylan16807 | Hacker News Reader

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>The average proportion of nucleotide differences between a randomly chosen pair of humans (i.e., average nucleotide diversity, or pi) is consistently estimated to lie between 1 in 1,000 and 1 in 1,500 (refs. 9,10). This proportion is low compared with those of many other species, from fruit flies to chimpanzees11, 12, reflecting the recent origin of our species from a small founding population13.

>In other words, approx90% of total genetic variation would be found in a collection of individuals from a single continent, and only approx10% more variation would be found if the collection consisted of Europeans, Asians and Africans.

>The pi value for Homo sapiens can be put into perspective by considering that humans differ from chimpanzees at only 1 in 100 nucleotides, on average14, 15.

> Clustering of individuals is correlated with geographic origin or ancestry. These clusters are also correlated with some traditional concepts of race, but the correlations are imperfect because genetic variation tends to be distributed in a continuous, overlapping fashion among populations.

I'm not sure how this supports your point. What species are separated by a pi value of 1 in 10000 or less?

http://hydrodictyon.eeb.uconn.edu/people/fry/MolEcol.pdf has a table of π for subspecies of the song sparrow (Melospiza melodia). The smallest value on that list is 0.00095 or 1 in 1052.

The next smallest values are 0.00171 and 0.00204 while the largest is 0.00800 .

For the rock pigeon (~12 recognized subspecies), π = 3.6E-3 (1 in 277) says http://www.chinabird.org/news/Science-2013-Shapiro-science.p... .

Mice (three main lineages) also have a larger value of π than humans, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2219490/ :

> This study allows us to compare patterns of DNA sequence variation in mice to patterns seen in humans, the only other mammalian species for which extensive population samples of DNA sequence variation have been obtained. Levels of variation on the X chromosome in mice are nearly identical to levels of nucleotide diversity at X-linked introns in humans (π = 0.07%; Hammer et al. 2004), although levels of variation on the autosomes appear to be roughly twice as high in mice (π = 0.26%: Table 4) as in humans (π = 0.11%; Li and Sadler 1991; Aquadro et al. 2001).

These are yet more examples which demonstrate that human genetic diversity, despite the many claims by MustardTiger, is not greater than "virtually all subspecies distinctions made in the animal kingdom".

>I'm not sure how this supports your point

Why not? What subspecies has more than 10% of the species wide variation? I can't find any. This is what I meant. Just to report facts you have to try to couch it in politically correct disinfo. "This will make it sound like races aren't real, even though the data clearly shows they are". Just like "we're 99.8% the same DNA!". Yeah, but most of that DNA is also the same as a banana's. What matters is the differences, not the basic requirements for life.

>What species are separated by a pi value of 1 in 10000 or less?

I said subspecies. I won't be able to continue this conversation unfortunately, "you are submitting too fast". HN doesn't seem to approve of discussion.

> What subspecies has more than 10% of the species wide variation?

So you're not saying that the racial differences are large in absolute terms of how many genes are different, you're saying that they're large relative to the low overall genetic diversity of humans? That might be true[1], but that's because the denominator for a relatively new species is small, not because the numerator is large.

Also to me, a layman, if only 10% of our intra-species genetic diversity is between races that sounds like a pretty good case for disregarding race in the vast majority of situations.

> I said subspecies.

You said "The genetic distance between human races is greater than many species, and virtually all subspecies".

[1] What are the numbers for canis lupus, giraffes, etc. so I can compare?

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