Looks real to me: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Principal_compon...
Or are you thinking of some ridiculous weakman* version of ethnicity where no ancestors can be shared ever?
* https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweap...
But of course I didn't expect any less from someone who quotes Slate Star Codex of all sources to prove a point.
A what point?
> You're aware the vectors in a PCA are just linear combinations of the observed features, right?
Yes, I am. Do you have a reason to think that means PCA is bad at representing similarity and kinship because of this?
As for the Slate Star Codex source - that wasn't to prove anything, just to define the "weak man" term. I would have used "straw man", but then you'd dig up some idiot that genuinely believes whatever it is you're debunking as proof that it's not a straw man.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intrinsic
>Do you have a reason to think that means PCA is bad at representing similarity and kinship because of this?
I suggest you read up on the definition of "distance" and "similarity" before drinking the PCA kool-aid. You don't get to define an ad hoc distance just because it fits your ideas about ethnicity. But then, I only have the popgen community to back me up on this. What do you have?
>As for the Slate Star Codex source - that wasn't to prove anything, just to define the "weak man" term.
SSC, providing ammunition to online HBD proponents since 2013.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3392282/
https://speciationgenomics.github.io/pca/
https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/jo...
https://www.genetics.org/content/210/2/719
https://www.nature.com/articles/ng0508-491
If that SSC reference bothers you so much, you can look at the Atlantic for a definition of weak man instead: https://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2009/07/the-w...
And I know what intrinsic means, but I don't know what an "intrinsic point" is supposed to be, or what makes my point "intrinsic", as opposed to just a regular point.