Race is the Case.

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Circle is a social construct with no geometrical meaning:

 

 

A certain type of smug individual is fond of asserting that "race is a social construct, with no biological meaning." 

 

Is there, exists there, a single individual who actually believes this (no, hook them up to a polygraph lie detector, millions more, billions, believe in Jesus, none actually believes this)?

 

Why do they say it?  What do they mean?  Once you strip away the jargon, aside from a few (ask them about "gender") they believe something like the following:  in the Platonic World there exist true circles, triangles and squares. In the real world we ask and cannot answer questions like "what is the true length of the coastline of Great Britain?" 

 

It is a fractal, it is unanswerable.

 

Just as in the real world we won't in our long lives come across a mathematically perfect circle whose circumference (perimeter) is exactly equal to Pi out to an infinity of decimal places, we will not come across even by accident, the "perfect race." It will be "a fractal." Or a limited fractal.  Call it fractaloid.

 

A fractaloid.

 

An even more pernicious, available to the malicious, problem lurks in the shadows though. (ask them about "gender".) It is what we must call the Unpleasant Professional, akin to Jonathan Hoag, Effect:  reality itself is all "socially constructed."  There is a line in the story where it is asked, what if there is no real world, only what we consent collectively to imagine? 

 

In so many words (these are not the exact words).

 

This is the quantum gray fog pseudoscience. And it is frighteningly pervasive among whom think of themselves to the extent they do (most don't) among the most obdurate of the "hard" scientists. Who, if you squeeze them, are silly gander, or goose too, the goose is loose in science, it's true, soft core inside their buggy exoskeletons. 

 

In the foggy quantum nebulous what?-world of Jonathan Hoag people can be in two places at once:

 

 

 "with no biological meaning" is just so much meaningless flatulence by the way. An actually absurdly idiotic phrase.

 

It really is a contender for the most misleading, smarmy, obsequiously cowardly toadying up to the worst most Maoite sickly Stalinist elements of our culture.

 

Just stop it, you cowardly invertebrates! 

 

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