There's no evidence at all. Even when attempting to do research on this, the political backlash could destroy any scientist's career. No official evidence will ever be collected because of this.
I only speak from personal experience. I know many chinese people both born here and born abroad. I am also chinese and born in the united states. I am telling you, honestly, from a purely anecdotal standpoint: I think there's a chance it's genetic.
Edit: Just to keep things from getting out of hand, and more balanced I want to state this fact: Statistically, it is far more likely for a serial killer to be a white caucasian male then it is for a serial killer to be of any other race. Do I think this is a cultural thing? No. I'm leaning towards genetics. But that's a purely anecdotal opinion as there's no evidence pointing in either direction.
> Even when attempting to do research on this, the political backlash could destroy any scientist's career. No official evidence will ever be collected because of this.
This is really offtopic, but I think you're wrong. There are two ways to do such research - the proper one and the racist one.
The proper one is to link specific genes to specific behavior. This presumes that you screen individuals in the study for those genes. Then you are not being racist, because existence of those genes is rarely 100% coinciding with culture or skin color. Research like that is quite common, if there is a reason to think there is indeed a link (for example there is a genetic study of above average intelligence in Ashkenazy Jews, they were extremely homogenous group and yet they don't all share the genes that has been shown to have the link).
The racist way is to match skin color or culture to behavior. This is scientifically useless, because you don't show any actual genetic link, and it only serves for stirring racial hate (you could pick any indirect attribute from many, like eye color or facial hair, so why pick skin color?). Such studies are rightfully being rejected by real scientists.
Why would those things be genetic? If there were a "serial killer gene" or a "cheater gene", those traits should manifest themselves in all kinds of obvious differences in behavior - which we do not see. It's hard to imagine a protein causing such complex differences in behavior while affecting nothing else.
You don't have to go to the absurd "cheater gene" degree. Note this is not at all scientific, but rather trying to point out how easy some small genetic things might push society and culture in particular directions.
Suppose instead that a few traits like:
- Social Intelligence
- Impulse Control
- Desire for Retribution
have normal distribution with slightly different peaks in different populations.
A population with high social intelligence and low desire for revenge might tolerate more cheating(since people only cheat when they can get away with it) than one with low impulse control and high desire for revenge, where cheating might spark a shootout.
You probably don't have to move those distributions much to start seeing pretty large changes in things like mass shooting demographics, or who cheats.
What's the other explanation then? Culture? Why don't we see higher rates of serial killers in other races born in the United States?
It's very possible for many differences in behavior between races to be genetic in origin, in fact it's the more logical hypothesis versus the alternative which states genetics doesn't influence behavioral differences between races.
Think about it. If genetics influences physical traits from height, skin color, facial features, and even athleticism, what black magic in this world makes it so that genetics doesn't even touch behavior or intelligence?
>It's hard to imagine a protein causing such complex differences in behavior while affecting nothing else.
It's impossible to logically deduce a conclusion from the bottom up. We simply currently don't have enough knowledge to know how proteins scaffold the entire human neural network. With highly limited knowledge, we can only look at the problem from the top down. That being: genetics is known to influence physical traits, therefore it is logical to conclude that it also influences mental traits.
> If genetics influences physical traits from height, skin color, facial features, and even athleticism, what black magic in this world makes it so that genetics doesn't even touch behavior or intelligence?
Because we have no evidence that such is the case on a culturally grouping level.
There is no genetic concept of "Chinese". It literally doesn't exist.
You're making this about the possibility of genetics impacting behavior, when the real issue is you thinking cultural boundaries exist in genetics. They don't.
There's no concept of humanity on the atomic level. It literally doesn't exist. One configuration or mishmash of atoms we call rocks are no different then the mishmash we call humans. Try, without using any high level concepts or groupings, to define what configuration of atoms signifies a rock and what configuration signifies a human.
If you go low enough on any topic the boundaries between categories become vague and the definitions become extremely complex. It's very hard to define what a human is in terms of atoms. The same goes for race, it's very hard to define, at the genetic level what is chinese, and what is not, but the category and boundary exists at all levels, and we can't ignore it.
I've heard of your argument before. They say that the delta in genetic differences between two people of different races is the same as the delta of two people, of the same race, therefore race doesn't exist. This argument is flawed. I believe the "genetic" definition of race is immensely more complex than simply the delta of genetic differences. Here's a more accurate definition: People of the same race have a higher probability of sharing certain genetic traits.
So let me redefine my argument in way you can understand. The people who we label as "chinese" who share similar physical/genetic traits, I believe will be more likely to also share a behavioral genetic trait that makes them more likely to cheat.
I'm sorry, you misunderstand -- the people we label as "Chinese" do not share similar physical/genetic traits.
Common misconception that they do, but there is very little genetic consistency across cultural boundaries, and when such a thing does exist, it's quite noteworthy.
first paragraph from above page:
"The relationship between race and genetics is relevant to the controversy concerning race. In everyday life many societies classify populations into groups based on phenotypical traits and impressions of probable geographic ancestry and socio-economic status - these are the groups we tend to call "races". Because the patterns of variation of human genetic traits are clinal, with a gradual change in trait frequency between population clusters, it is possible to statistically correlate clusters of physical traits with individual geographic ancestry. The frequencies of alleles tend to form clusters where populations live closely together and interact over periods of time. This is due to endogamy within kin groups and lineages or national, cultural or linguistic boundaries. This causes genetic clusters to correlate statistically with population groups when a number of alleles are evaluated. Different clines align around the different centers, resulting in more complex variations than those observed comparing continental groups."
In short it's saying genetic traits can be statistically correlated with population groups (race) but variations of traits that are different within population groups can actually be more complex than those observed when compared with people outside of their race.
This is literally exactly my argument. Supported by wikipedia at the very least.
I do not accept the given definition of race from this page, as it presumes the term "race" is in any way scientific or rigorously defined when in actuality it is not.
What we "tend to call" race is not defined, despite this wiki page's attempt to do so.
This wiki page is the reflection of the general opinions of the scientific community. You can redefine any word to have any definition that fits your universe, but when communicating with other people, we must go with general consensus.
A word not having a rigorous definition means it cannot be discussed scientifically. Hence the actual problem of studying the existence of life, e.g. is a virus alive?
>A word not having a rigorous definition means it cannot be discussed scientifically.
Life is discussed scientifically in many contexts yet it is not unequivocally or rigorously defined. In fact there's an entire field based on the study of life. It's called biology, aka the study of life. If a scientific field can stem from a word that does not have a rigorous or unequivocal definition, then it can be discussed scientifically.
I'm getting pretty tired too. You choose not to accept the facts even when a scientific description proving my point is thrown in your face. Ideas need evidence for support, you have presented me with ideas, but no evidence.
The folks in the field are in agreement with me, (see the old wikipedia link I sent you). You got nothing, only empty claims.
I'm getting tired of this conversation, so I'll just leave you with the idea that words carry different definitions in different contexts. There is no scientific context by which "race" is currently known. You can choose to accept that, or you can continue to deny that, it doesn't really matter to any of the folks who work in this field.
I only speak from personal experience. I know many chinese people both born here and born abroad. I am also chinese and born in the united states. I am telling you, honestly, from a purely anecdotal standpoint: I think there's a chance it's genetic.
Edit: Just to keep things from getting out of hand, and more balanced I want to state this fact: Statistically, it is far more likely for a serial killer to be a white caucasian male then it is for a serial killer to be of any other race. Do I think this is a cultural thing? No. I'm leaning towards genetics. But that's a purely anecdotal opinion as there's no evidence pointing in either direction.