Fallacy from college

This is one I’d heard in college and it stuck with me. Basically the gist of it was, it’s hard to quantify exactly how many “races” there in humanity given the vast seemingly diverse populations that exist in the world, therefore, race doesn’t exist. Something about the framing of this argument say wrong with me, and was wondering if there are any fallacies at play here, and if so, what are they exactly? 

This is like saying it is hard to quantify exactly how many ice cream flavors there are therefore ice cream flavors don't exist.

Just because one cannot count items in a category doesn't mean the category doesn't exist.

argument of the beard is the specific fallacy here.

The argument you're referring to seems to make the case that because it's challenging to precisely quantify the number of races within humanity, therefore, race does not exist. This line of reasoning contains multiple logical issues and fallacies. Let's break them down:

1. **False Dichotomy (False Dilemma)**:
- The argument presents a binary choice: either we can precisely quantify the number of races, or race does not exist. This ignores the possibility that race could exist as a social construct or a spectrum even if it's hard to quantify. The reality is more nuanced than the binary options presented.

2. **Argument from Ignorance (Ad Ignorantiam)**:
- This fallacy occurs when it's argued that something must be true because it has not been proven false (or vice versa). In this case, the argument implies that because we cannot definitively state the number of races, race must not exist. The lack of a clear definition or count does not inherently disprove the concept's existence.

3. **Equivocation Fallacy**:
- The term "race" could be used in different contexts—biologically, socially, or anthropologically. Conflating these different interpretations without clarifying can lead to misleading conclusions. The argument might be using the term inconsistently or ambiguously.

4. **Conceptual Confusion**:
- The argument may also suffer from conceptual confusion, conflating the difficulty of defining or categorizing something with its non-existence. Many complex concepts (like love, intelligence, or even species) are hard to precisely define, yet they are recognized as existing in some form.

5. **Appeal to Complexity**:
- This reasoning might unduly emphasize the complexity or difficulty in defining races, suggesting that because it's complex, it must be invalid. Complexity does not negate existence; many scientific concepts are complex yet valid.

It’s important to recognize that race, as commonly discussed, is largely understood to be a social construct rather than a strict biological classification. The difficulty in quantifying races might speak more to the limitations and variability of social constructs than to the non-existence of the concept itself.

Basically it is a non-sequitur. Race theory has been pretty much debunked all together as bad science and only has some possible use in classifying certain ethnic and regional medical similarities in certain peoples and tribes.

There are a whole bunch of reasons why race theory is false and not just because it is impossible to quantify the races.