Statistically, humans are chimpanzees as p < 5%.
Of course, accepting such a thing requires valuing science over theology.
Of course, accepting such a thing requires valuing science over theology.
2. What matters is whether or not we can reproduce with chimpanzees. We can’t, so we’re not chimpanzees.
In terms of reproduction, my understanding is that modern populations suggest that our recent ancestors could mate with Neanderthals. And did.
Of course reproducing is a messy criterion beyond that. Children and old women and just some regular folk can’t reproduce but are people nevertheless. And in vitro and surrogacy are another can of worms.
Confidence based on what math?
Species isn't based on raw percentage of matching DNA. Nor is that how p values work.
> In the extreme it is 23andme emphasis on “18% Welsh but I thought I was English” as scientific. Every report ought come back as 98.8% Chimpanzee if it was science.
That calculation is comparing only the genes that differ between the references, and weighting them across 100% to give an easy to understand result.
If you added a chimp into the reference pool, they'd show up as less than 1% every time.
If you added a chimp into the reference pool, and removed all the human samples except welsh, then the test would say "on a scale from chimp to welsh, you are >99% welsh". But that's a matter of lacking the data to be more precise, not because the method is fatally flawed.
The place where flaws might come in is when the source data is mis-labeled, not because the math is wrong.
> Sure there’s a little science. But mostly it is theology. A belief that humans are especially special masquerading as science.
No it's not. It would do the same thing with chimps. Put a bunch of them in the 23andme database and then a sample chimp will come back as 25% this area chimp, 40% this area chimp, 34% this area chimp, 1% match to humans.
Maybe "welsh" is too fine of a distinction to determine. But you can easily tell the difference between that general area vs. native american vs. subsaharan african ancestry.
Even if they were born in Belize, South Africa, or Trivandrum.
But uh my main point was to explain how the issues have nothing to do with distinguishing chimp from human, and there is no reasonable metric that would say they're the same species, and I wish you wouldn't ignore my main point to talk instead about the definition of welsh.
Do you really think this or are you trolling statisticians?
In the extreme it is 23andme emphasis on “18% Welsh but I thought I was English” as scientific. Every report ought come back as 98.8% Chimpanzee if it was science.
Sure there’s a little science. But mostly it is theology. A belief that humans are especially special masquerading as science.
1. Having far less facial and bodily hair than all primates to the extent that we are forced to utilize clothing to survive all the seasons in most of the biomes we occupy.
2. Substantially reduced general strength - a chimpanzee boasts the equavilent of 3 of us.
3. The lack of opposible thumbs on our feet which prevent us from using all four limbs with the required dexterity to climb or exercise fine motor control.
4. Being able to constantly stand and travel upright and boasting an incredibly efficient running gait.
5. The most powerful throw in the animal kingdom.
6. The ability to sweat which combined with the previous two differences would make humans an incredibly dangerous pack animal even without the next difference.
7. Substantially higher intelligence to the point where there is a qualitative as well as quantitative difference in general intellect between even the dumbest of us and a chimpanzee, even if they might be able to outperform the dumbest of us in certain domains.
8. Bit of a silly but interesting factoid - boasting the largest penis of the primates by a large margin.
Even having a few of these would probably be grounds for speciation, never mind all 8.
Marriage customs are a common means of enforcing discriminatory societal practices (miscegenation, same sex, other religion, etc.). The logical structure of the objection is consistent with all of those…they are plug and play for chimpanzees.