Do you have a cite for this, particularly your claim about Wide Receivers? I don’t think that’s remotely true.
Nope. No cite. Null hypothesis.
Care to explode it?
In 2013 97% of NFL cornerbacks were black. 84% of wide receivers were black. 84% of centers were white. If genetics had 0 impact on sports distribution and it were purely culture you would expect a lot less disparity in distributions between positions. The fact is in sport at that level the numbers don’t lie. Again if it were culture driving people into sport and genetics had 0 impact whites wouldn’t dominate centers and blacks wouldn’t dominate the speed positions. Why don’t we see the same extreme dominance at the center position if strictly cultural? The answer is obvious.
I don’t think there is a single Asian cornerback in the league. When the primary attribute is speed and power you’d think someone from India or China would have the attributes that an NFL coach could mold into a cover corner.
Actually they are distinct. There just happens to be a lot of overlap. But it’s elementary to see that just because a set has a non null set intersections that it does not follow that the sets are identical. So yes, you can claim that the properties of each set have distinct characteristics. The mere fact that you can look and assign a large proportion to each set accurately is proof there are distinct properties.
You clearly don’t know youth. You also clearly don’t know professional sports. Logically you could look at NCAA participation rates and prove most of what you say as wrong.
This has been discussed many times on these boards. The speed positions in football are absolutely dominated by blacks. Just do a Google image search for “NFL wide receivers” and you let me know if you see either blacks or whites dominating the results. Not scientific, but that will give you a feel for the blacks’ dominance at the opposition. You can do the same thing for “NFL running back” and you’ll get similar results. This really is not news.
Oh, I see octopus provided the info. Yeah, it’s that lopsided.
Well, there are some Pacific Islanders.
OK, you don’t have a cite. I didn’t think so. We can then reject your claim as just the opinion of some random guy on the internet.
Why would you think that? American football isn’t much played in either place.
Once again you are confusing folk science with actual science. But then, the peer reviewed journals are accepting papers. When was it that you were planning to submit yours again?
You have provided no evidence that the difference is genetic. There has been some evidence, at least, put forward that it is sociological.
Also, you still persist in grouping all “blacks” even though there are vast groups in that category who have no ancestors in common; groups that are reproductively isolated. Why would “blacks” have traits in common that don’t step from common ancestry? Slaves in New Orleans and slaves in Kentucky did meet to bear children.
Your statistic can be explained in (at least) two ways, and you don’t have a working model for the “genetics” explanation.
But since the claim was about the same random guy on the internet, why would you reject it?
My location is logged here as San Diego. I talk, lots, about San Diego. If people ask, “What’s it like in San Diego,” I often answer.
What conceivable “cite?” could I offer to back up my claim that I live in San Diego?
If octopus says he’s not an Olympic-level swimmer…why do you think it makes sense to “reject” this claim?
If he said he was an Olympic-level swimmer, then we might ask for some backing. But what possible logic do you have for insisting he is, because you reject his claim that he isn’t?
Prove you aren’t a murderer… (Hell, far as that goes, prove you are!)
That claim isn’t the problem. The difficulty is the claim that he is not an Olympic-level swimmer due to genetic limitations.
As corner back? Or linebacker/safety. I don’t recall seeing any Pacific Islanders playing corner in NFL. Ever. As of this year there is not a white starting cornerback in the NFL. It must be that culture. The same sorta culture that lets Sherpa’s deal with the altitude so well. They just “want it” more.
And you have the genes to beat a prime Mike Tyson in boxing? If you trained til you were 20 and you were fighting a Mike Tyson who trained til he was 20 he’d whip you in boxing probably 999/1000. That’s the difference in genetics. And for some populations you can say their genetics provide a definitive advantage in certain physical activities, even if medians or means are the same, at the outliers.
The linked paper about the tribe in Kenya with regards to distance running is an excellent example that is as close to proof as you can find without being able to control for all variables in humans.
John Mace is just being silly. Noone is obligate to provide definitive proof where it does not exist. Yet we can be fairly certain, i.e. 99.999999% that since sport relies on the physical body interacting in the physical world, and that humans are in no way supernatural and are constrained by the laws of physics that biology has an impact.
Again, in the year 2015, there is not one starting non-black NFL cornerback. If outcome were solely based on the culture of participation we would not have that result, nor the dominance of whites as centers. We’d have equal numbers in each position since biology is obviously of no factor. Unless it’s the culture of whites all of sudden to focus primarily on being an NFL center as their means of escaping poverty. Nah, white culture says “NO!” to being a receiver or a cornerback. Such an undignified position, but center yeah. That appeals to us white guys. The 100% cultural argument fails when examining football alone.
Regarding the Kenyan runners. Here’s another link. How One Kenyan Tribe Produces The World's Best Runners : Parallels : NPR Though NPR is probably some crazed, racist source and you might want to take it with a grain of salt.
This reminds me of the debate about pay and gender on this board. The general topic, first, is political correctness and the treatment of statistics. Anyway, during that debate it came up that specifically in Silicone Valley, among individuals with a graduate degree, if you had a graduate degree and worked in Silicone Valley and were male, you would earn 70% more than a female. Lots of people said, correlation does not equal causation, or, maybe they are comparing graduate degrees in Mathematics to graduate degrees sociology, other similar comments. I think those comments are all valid in most cases but a 70% difference is a HUGE difference. To cast that aside is almost as bad as saying "correlation does not equal causation ".
In other words, casting aside an obvious significant statistical difference is just as bad as relying upon faulty methods of analysis.
So, if someone points out that the vast majority of Running Backs or Wide Receivers are Africa American, I don’t think the best response is to automatically label it as “junk science” and dismiss the claim as a racist observation.* It may very well be a racist observation but I don’t think it can be simply dismissed by proclaiming it as being a racist observation.
*Ironically, a friend of mine who was concerned about this issue showed me a peer reviewed article and it stated that the only statistical or empirical thing they could establish was that, the more likely you were to think blacks were better at sports, the more likely you were to hold other racist views.
And here is an excerpt form that NPR article.
Why am I not surprised?
Am agreeing with you in questioning how can it be a racist observation. I think it’s funny that noticing statistics is racist. Is noticing that most Olympic female gymnasts are under 30 ageist? No. No it’s not.
Well, it’s a volatile politically charged topic. We are not talking about what brand of paint sells the best at Home Depot. Most people feel strongly about race relations, most people today are against anything that sounds like racism or promotes racism. I think that is as it should be. But it is not a topic that inspires mundane and boring debates.
I guess the point is… people who notice statistics and race the most… tend to be more racist. The whole adage that whatever is on your mind, that is what you will wind up observing. I’m working under the edit window here. If you want me to try to find that old article (from the post above) I can but I doubt I can find it. It was several years ago on a different board buried in the middle of the article.
OK, here is a question:
If blacks are better at sports: football, basketball, baseball or track… and it is because they were selected for size and strength and stamina, well, what do physical characteristics that make one good at growing and picking cotton or sugarcane or tobacco or any similar crop or similar activity… how does proficiency in those physical characteristics translate into being better at football or basketball or the 100 yard dash?
I understand what you are saying. This is obviously anecdotal but even as a child watching the Olympics are other sports I’d wonder why you’d see different compositions of people in different sports. The swimmers looked different from track and track looked different from the skiers when the winter Olympics came along.
Plus I’ve always lived in a diverse, usually lower income area and being aware of racial issues comes with the territory. I was sometimes the affirmative action pick in pick up games of basketball. So I’ve heard it all and I’ve actually found it’s pretty easy talking with black Americans about this very subject. More so then seemingly educated white Americans.
My argument and I think sometimes it’s not perfectly understood is that with multiple entangled, non-linear variables which you will NEVER be able to control for because we don’t have duplicate Earth’s you will never be able to precisely attribute what portion of an output is due to a particular input. It’s just the nature of chaotic systems. But to claim that one particular input has absolutely no effect on the output because it suits a political philosophy is the exact thing people critique the AGW deniers on.
And it’s also funny asking for a standard of proof that the one demanding could never supply themselves. That’s merely sleight of hand in order to distract from the weakness of their own argument. It is somewhat effective, granted.
I agree. What is your reaction to my last post, post #158?