# If one race is faster, more athletic, stronger in sports - what's bad? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 22, 2016, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-one-race-is-faster-more-athletic-stronger-in-sports-whats-bad/746836 "2016-02-22T21:35:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 249
**Author:** ![brickbacon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@brickbacon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brickbacon)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2016, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-one-race-is-faster-more-athletic-stronger-in-sports-whats-bad/746836/249 "2016-03-01T01:46:24Z")
> [@Salvor](#): > > “Inherently” is a loaded term (probably why you keep using it) How is it a loaded term? It basically means inborn or a characteristic attribute. > [@Salvor](#): > > Which is exactly how the stats line up when it comes to sat scores, iq scores, blacks in elite institutions vs asians (incidentally, the black african population is over represented in colleges based on population, why? Not a random sample of the African population). You realize the Asian population is not random sample either? > [@Salvor](#): > > Learned prejudice? Ok, call it that if that makes you feel better. Accurate observations do make me feel better. > [@Salvor](#): > > Most of the time when I am in my car and choose to pass someone driving in front of me going 10mph slower than the flow of traffic, it’s an older person and not a younger person, with the exception of when they are on their phones instead of driving. Repeated observations Yes, but you are pointing out an observation that has a clear causal link. People tend to drive slower as they age for a variety of obvious reasons. That makes perfect sense as would pointing out that people with dentures tend to be older. The things you are talking about are closer to stereotypes like Asian people being poor drivers. There is no known causal link, and observations tend to just be confirmation bias. The fact that you just notice a bad Asian driver doesn’t make the stereotype any more true. And even if it were objectively true, there is no basis to assume it’s genetic. > [@Salvor](#): > > Yes or No? In the above case, no. In general, if you are applying the same logic to a stereotype based on biases, then you are wrong. > [@Salvor](#): > > Also, less interaction among members of minority groups increases the signals and perceptions of the members of the groups one does interact with, because the averages are less ironed out and more lumpy. Here it’s true that smaller sample sizes can make observations less reliable So then you agree that these prejudices are not effectively bolstered by observations since there frequency and rigor of observations are not such that anyone can draw a conclusion about a given group? > [@Salvor](#): > > that’s not the case for stats like test scores and educational attainment over millions of people in the US, there are consistent differences that have persisted across decades of social interventions. It’s not crazy to assume some of the causes of that are innate in origin. It is when you can go back mere decades to see the complete opposite. Many people on your side try to link IQ and National GDP. However, you need only go back a few decades to see countries like Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea, etc. as economic backwaters. In the 1950’s, 78% of Korean were illiterate. How do you think their test scores would have compared to Americans? Now the obvious change has been that they, as a country, embraced education. It wasn’t genes that changed, it was the culture and environment. There is NO genetic explanation for changes like this, and example of this kind are numerous. And even if you wanted to argue that these “smarter than average” Asians were always capable of such feats, the lessons of history tell us that the expression of those intelligence genes is largely based on being in a productive environment that will foster it. > [@Salvor](#): > > Muslims are terrorists is a gross overstatement. Muslims are more likely to be terrorists (of the sort that murder others - not talking property crimes) is not an overstatement at all, it’s absolutely true and divined by tallying up the numbers of murders and filing those differential rates of terrorist activity away. You disagree? Depends on what you mean by terrorism and how far back you want to go. That said, you are soft selling the issue. When people like Trump want to ban ALL muslims from entering or leaving the country, you are not making an argument based on relative harm from a microscopic percentage of bad people. You are essentially arguing all or most of them are bad. > [@Salvor](#): > > While I think most violent acts of terror are committed by muslims, that was a case where a religious jew did the same thing. That was a counter example of my assumption that mainly muslims are the ones doing the terror that leads to violence and murder. But it’s also just ONE example, if we got a similar incidence rate for jews and christians and buddhists and atheists that we were getting from muslims, then I’d alter my view that muslims are more likely to turn radical and kill people than other religious observers. That’s what I mean by having an observational view of the world. Do you think Muslims think the same acts you think are terrorism are in fact terrorism? Do you think Israels (or Russian or US) acts of aggression are considered terrorism to them? This one reason making a bald observation that Muslims are more likely to be terrorists carries a relatively unfair and myopic judgement of what is and isn’t terrorism. > [@Salvor](#): > > Intelligence is more about ones capacity to pick things up, make connections, and learn, especially as it relates to the speed at which these things occur. A Savant that learns to read and write by age 2 is what I’d consider more intelligent than a normal kid who did the same by age 5. If you think the above, then you have no understanding of how most people use the term. The former might be considered more precocious, but plenty of really smart people don’t pick things up quickly or do things early. > [@Salvor](#): > > What you are describing is knowledge, you do not have to be hyper intelligent to be extremely knowledgeable, an above average student who reads more than a smarter student who reads less might well have acquired more skills and knowledge than the smarter kid. Yes, and most outside observers will judge the average student to be more intelligent. > [@Salvor](#): > > But that is not what intelligence is, it’s the ability to learn, not what you have learned, or how much you have learned. Hello? We judge the ability based on the process of actually learning something. No one cares if some kid is imminently _capable_ of learning; they care what he knows. Imagine for a second that Einstein was locked in a room alone until he was 25. He has no access to books or people from whom he could learn. When he leaves, would the first people he speaks to think he was intelligent? Of course not. > [@Salvor](#): > > You can reference learned skills and facts and behaviors, but those are not the actual things that makes one more or less intelligent. Again, this is what an outside assessment of intelligence is typically based on. This is why John Kerry is typically considered to be smarter than George Bush despite them having fairly similar academic records. You can make some pie in the sky argument that we are not judging “raw intelligence” or whatever, but that doesn’t really hold up to cold reality. > [@Salvor](#): > > One metric I have is how many concepts you can juggle in your mind at once. And again, you are displaying how out of your depth you are. Being able to juggle concepts is a learned skill by and large. This is why a basic demonstration of this idea (memory) can be honed with practice. > [@Salvor](#): > > Identical twins have more similar performance outcomes than regular non twin siblings. Need I say more? Twins have closer environments and experiences as well. This doesn’t speak at all to there being genes that largerly determine intelligence in broad groups like “Asian”. > [@Thick as a Brick](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thick-as-a-brick/98556/4): > > The basis of my opinions are not perfect, but they seem to me a lot more grounded in observational reality than yours. But they aren’t in reality. That is what you keep missing. You are looking at a snapshot in history and then making up a story to fit your preconceived notions. This is why yours isn’t the working theory of most experts. Because it doesn’t explain why Canadians and Russians dominate hockey or why almost all of SE Asia went from having terrible test scores and rampant illiteracy to being near the top. It doesn’t explain any trend we see; it’s just guesses based on spitball “observations”. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-one-race-is-faster-more-athletic-stronger-in-sports-whats-bad/746836)._