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Comment by rthomas6 | Hacker News Reader

To be clear, you're claiming that Europeans are genetically superior to Africans?

The conclusion "colonization is beneficial" might have supporting evidence, even if the cause (genetics) was grossly incorrect.

So basically the genetic term, outside of individuals and perhaps families, is always, as a matter of moral principal, negligibly close to zero? Because...?

because, correlation does not imply causation. If after some thought you don't understand what this means, you unfortunately never will.

Correlation is not causation, and correlation does not logically imply causation, but correlation is evidence of causation [1] which in a looser English context could be taken as a sort of implication. Many correlations aren't worth digging into, but others are, so you can't just dismiss all of them outright with "correlation doesn't imply causation."

[1] http://oyhus.no/CorrelationAndCausation.html

Please do not consider comments out of context and reply. That's just ...bad form. In the context of the comment I was replying to, my reply was just a simple way of saying that beyond the scope of direct genetic influence (a.k.a: outside of individuals and perhaps families, as the comment put it) attributing genetic causation to observed phenomenon is simple correlation. Well, that's all I have to contribute.

He's claiming white domination generally resulted in a better standard living. Like how income equality doesn't necessary mean everyone is worse off. Even if the rich get a bigger slice of the pie, the pie may get bigger, thus standard of living is higher for everyone.

You can no more be genetically superior than just 'better'. It's a meaningless proposition since it doesn't specify 'better at what'.

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