100% CB being black is not a cultural coincidence.
Missed the point.
Height may be more variable based on environment, but put different groups in identical environments, and the average height of the dutch will be higher than that of the japanese.
That environment plays a role is a copout style of argument, people are worried that even IF we create a more equal society and more equalized opportunity, that there would be a factor that is BEYOND the capacity to normalize because of genetics.
We accept that reality for something like height FAR more than something like intelligence, but once you acknowledge it for height it stands to reason that a variable trait like intelligence is subject to the same sorts of differential averages.
People cannot cope with that possibility, and so reject it out of hand. Simply acknowledging that athletic ability can have a genetic component opens the flood gates for analysis in other arenas, and they’d REALLY rather not go there in the first place.
They aren’t my groupings. I probably would have a hard time drawing an exactly precise circle around any sexual reproducing species, race, ethnic group, etc. I can’t even tell you when a pebble becomes a rock.
That said I’d group people into those with vestigial tails and those without. But it’s not up to me. How about you ask the US government?
That’s it entirely. It’s also why people who are scared of the subject deliberately and obviously employ fallacious arguments with hypocritical standards.
Citation needed. Seriously, you keep making claims like this, and we keep pointing out where bias might have gotten into the mix, providing evidence that cultural factors play a significant role. Where’s your evidence that there is, in fact, more of a genetic factor? The pygmies comparison is fundamentally flawed, because we know “pygmy” is a cohesive genetic grouping, held together by a significant shared phenotype. “Black” gives us nothing but melanin levels to go off of, which is a particularly useless phenotype, considering how varied “has black skin” leaves everything else. So seriously, please provide some evidence for your position, and stop just saying “Nuh-uh” and plugging your ears when other people provide evidence! There have been no less than three people in this thread pointing out tangible examples of racial selection in recommendations for position. Why is it so hard to believe that cultural factors are key to ensuring that those people who train for the cornerback position tend to be black?
Give me a cite that it’s 100% cultural. You can’t. Not a decent one so don’t be hypocritical. I never once said “more genetic.” I said a genetic. I never claimed any ratio. It could be 90-10 or 10-90. Or any other pair of numbers that are each between 0 and 100 and together sum to 100 all numbers in base 10 which itself is in base 10. I’m probably not being precise enough… Anyways, stop misrepresenting my words.
You are using a strawman if you are saying anyone is saying an individual’s ability to play a professional sport is 100% culture. Rather, people are saying genes and race do not neatly overlap in such a way that you can say Black are innately faster, or whatever the claim is.
Do you understand the difference a small, isolated genetic cohort like Pygmies and “Black people”, which ironically includes Pygmies?
Why not? First, it hasn’t always been 100%. Julian Edelman played CB fairly recently for the Pats when they had injuries. Second, we are talking about roughly 60 people. There are plenty of careers where the “best” 60 people all have some common trait. For example, in recent years, 100% of punters and kickers were White, as are/were 100% of NHL goalies. I would bet a wildly disproportionate percentage of the top professional video game players, mathematicians, drummers, professional race car drivers, and skydivers are men (probably White men). Does it make sense to conclude that men are genetically predisposed to do well in those pursuits? Further, if Blacks are genetically gifted to speed positions, why aren’t most soccer strikers Black? Why are Blacks dominating comparable sports like rugby (to football), tennis, or volleyball (to basketball)? Why doesn’t the advantage carry over, and since we can see that it doesn’t despite similar pressures and incentives, shouldn’t we conclude the determinative factor isn’t genes?
The only reason you see this as unlikely to be culture is because you think athletics are more about innate skill than any other pursuit when that is generally not the case. Yes, it’s hard to play pro basketball when you are a little person. That is not the issue despite your comments about Pygmies. Bad genes can certainly be a disqualifying factor in athletics, but they can be in any pursuit. You don’t see many Pygmy obstetricians either, but that doesn’t seem as compelling because you haven’t attached an irrational significance to it as you have with athletics.
You missed the point. Height is a quantifiable, relatively fixed data point. Running fast is an acquired skill that builds upon innate gifts, and is dependent upon largely external factors. There are 1000 ways to destroy or magnify the latter. Usain Bolt’s height was largely fixed at birth barring certain rare conditions or extreme environmental factors; his speed was and is not. If he decides to binge one winter, and ends up gaining 20 pounds of fat, he almost certainly goes from setting records to be someone no one cares about. That’s the difference, and the reason the contention that disparate heights are between races is less problematic than arguing an acquired skill is fixed based on largely phenotypic features. Even putting aside the fact that racial groups aren’t terrible informative about individual, underlying genetics, skills honed over decades are not just based on your genetic potential. Further, you certainly cannot work backwards to make that assumption based on the makeup of a sports league at a given point.
No, not really. It’s a possibility, but it’s less likely given what we typically consider intelligence often acquired wisdom, understanding, and problem solving skills. It’s the byproduct of adaptive skills, not the expression of genetic potential by and large.
I suppose some people say that, but most people don’t consider because there is little evidence of it being the case.
Sure but notice the bait and switch.
Are there genetic components to athletic ability? Yes, of course.
So we can say blacks are better at X? No, because that’s a much stronger statement, while at the same time being less precise.
In most cases, we don’t know what specific genes may confer an advantage, so even if one group performs better, cultural factors may be the decisive component. Where we can find specific genes, usually all we can say is “This population has a greater prevalence of this gene than that population”.
“Black people” as a group is far too diverse a group to make such statements (and it’s kinda arbitrary where you draw the lines between “races” scientifically speaking).
But then after that, yeah, I’d rather not go there. Because broad sweeping statements about “races” aren’t just inaccurate, they would not even be useful in any way if true. They are appealing only to those with an agenda.
You do realize that the US government isn’t endorsing or advocating the concept of “race” as a biological category, right?
The government includes a bunch of commonly recognized racial/ethnic categories on forms and so forth precisely because they’re important sociocultural categories. Nobody’s denying that racial classification has a big effect in social and cultural phenomena. But that’s not the same thing as saying that race is a valid genetic category.
So yes, if you’re going to claim that broadly defined traditional racial categories are genetically meaningful, then you need to specify exactly what genetically meaningful criteria you’re using to define each category.
Criteria such as, say, “descended from Yoruba and Hausa African populations with no more than 45% admixture of ancestry from European populations” are genetically meaningful (although still very far from totally precise or comprehensive). Criteria such as “categorized as ‘black’ on a US government form” are not.
Wow, you really don’t get it. Nobody is asserting as fact the claim that these racial differences ARE 100% cultural.
Maybe they are and maybe they aren’t, but as has been pointed out over and over again in this thread, the point is that the subject is so complicated and our knowledge of it is so rudimentary that nobody knows to what extent, if any, these differences in outcomes at the level of racial category are due to genetic factors.
The notion that such differences are 100% cultural is the null hypothesis. That’s the statisticians’ term for the default assumption that any statistical claim has to be tested against.
Science initially assumes that racial differences in social outcomes are 100% cultural NOT because we’re asserting it as fact or refusing to believe otherwise, but simply because that’s the null hypothesis. It’s up to the people who are claiming to have evidence for genetic causes for these differences to show that their evidence contradicts the null hypothesis in a statistically meaningful way.
Attempting to handwave away this unwillingness to compromise on scientific rigor by accusing scientists of being “scared of the truth” is not a valid rebuttal.
No. You asked why we don’t object, I told you why.
Over multi-generational time? I don’t think so.
Pebbles are rocks.
These last few posts confirm what I was saying more than anything I have said.
No one wants to link genetics with intelligence when it comes to different populations of people.
Average height can and does vary between populations. That is not controlled by a single gene, and yet it still varies. But intelligence? Nah, “I” am a good liberal egalitarian, and because “I” value equality I presume NATURE builds that into the variation between populations in intelligence as well. Nature, that dumps on Dana Reeve with Cancer after spending YEARS dutifully caring for her crippled husband leaving her to die a year later with an orphaned son while Stalin lives to an old age. That nature, THAT is a guarantor of equality in intelligence between populations? If we see any differences consistently over time, it must be due to societal factors, or racism, or slavery, or distribution issues, or schooling, or culture, but different population genetics? No, can’t be that, that has nothing to do with anything, not even a little.
This is a childish expectation born out of a desire to stick ones head in the sand and pretend that the thing we all clearly value and think makes people BETTER, MUST be doled out in equal measure between all populations. I find this an insane belief.
Nigerian immigrants to the US in modern times are smarter on average than the average black person in the US that has roots from the slave trade. Because nigerians are inherently smarter? no, because the selection of nigerian immigrants to the US is NOT a random sample of the nigerian population, it’s more of the cream of the crop.
People seem to think these average differences are only claimed to be between races, it’s about populations in general, including intra racial populations. The US indian population is brighter because the indians that are selected to migrate to the US are more of the cream. And as such, part of the reason they do so well is because of what they are born with in terms of greater natural aptitude, not just how hard they work or cultural differences.
None of the people who argued against what I said above can STAND this logic, this expectation I have that populations are not EQUAL in intelligence. They presume they can explain away all the differential results in the averages because of environmental factors. Because that makes more logical sense? No, because it’s more emotionally comfortable for them, because it lines up with what they prefer reality and the universe looks like. It’s a ridiculous way to look at the world.
I WANT nature to be egalitarian in how it doles out intelligence. I’m mostly black, with about a quarter Korean. I was not super bright, but did ok in school, a bit over one standard deviation above the mean on the SAT. Again, nothing special, but not terrible. The school I went to (mostly black/hispanic)? The average SAT was in the mid 700s. Not for each of the math and verbal portions. That is COMBINED. That was the average score, was that just a function of the school being lower quality? Or did it have ANYTHING to do at all with the students that populated the school?
I want it to just be a function of the environment, but I do not presume nature behaves like a liberal fantasy world. WE have to be the ones to shape nature to our will. WE have to be the ones to find a way to better equalize the aptitude of those not gifted in the genetic lottery, and pretending it’s all about environment when a LARGE chunk of it is not sends society as a whole down a rabbit hole that can NEVER solve the problem.
How very Lamarckian of you. Just eat your wheaties pygmies, and you too will grow to be just as tall as the children of nba stars !
Don’t worry, the genes have nothing to do with your height!
Well what I’ve said repeatedly (and no-one has replied yet), is no-one without an agenda cares.
Whether the group that someone arbitrarily puts me into is smarter on average doesn’t make me any smarter / more stupidisher. And I’m not going to judge people based on their group membership; I’ll judge them as individuals.
So why should I care how different groups stack up?
OTOH, trying to find genetic correlates of intelligence (independent of their distribution in different ethnic groups)…now that’s something potentially useful.
Ah, the classic “outlier” argument.
If you see a bright member of X group they must be creme de le creme, not typical. So I don’t need to drop my feeling that “those people” are dummies.
Every time I’ve seen someone go into some detailed analysis of why there are differences between populations, people like you toss in uncertainty and doubt into the analysis, in an inevitable move to retreat into the null position laid out above because the “proof” offered does reach some insane standard of certainty. It’s like arguing against the existence of god. Give a thousand reasonably answers, but because I can’t give a proof for the nonexistence of god, then the premise that he does not exist can’t be taken seriously.
The goal posts are inevitably moved to cater to peoples own preferences in the outcomes, I find widespread dishonesty people engage in tiresome.
Tell me, what evidence would you find convincing that intelligence is not equal between populations?
Average test scores is clearly not enough, so what is it?
Control for income? That’s been done, we still find differences in the averages.
So what would you accept? If the answer is you can’t think of anything, then cut the pretense and admit you are not being an honest actor here when you ask for proof when you can’t think of a single thing that would be powerful enough to sway you.
Talk about moving the goalposts - Japanese are not pygmies. Japanese and Dutch are basically first cousins, genetically, compared to the genetic distance between a pygmy and an NBA all-star (of any race)
People should not care about group characteristics when it comes to intelligence or expectations. Everyone should be treated and judged as an individual regardless of the group realities. I think everyone agrees with that. But social policy is often tethered to discussions of group characteristics. Further, societal biases can stick to members of a group whether an individual from that group shares the assumed characteristics or not. This is how the world works, how the brain deals with observation and expectation. Stereotypes are often based on real observations in the world, and the single greatest force for destroying negative stereotypes is to prove them wrong. When just as many black people are scoring as high on tests and getting into elite colleges as asians, then the negative perceptions of them being less intelligent on average in the back of peoples minds will dissolve away. Pretending it is not so won’t do the trick.
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I was using extreme examples to prove a point. But just to clarify, do you really think the average height of a japanese man is the same as the average height of a man from the netherlands?
If we raised a thousand Dutch males and Japanese males from birth in an identical environment, you expect the average height of each group to be identical? Yes or no?
The obvious answer in my mind is that of course the dutch average height will be higher because of genetic differences, thus giving a clear example where genetic differences can produce different averages, but are you really rejecting this example?
Not currently, no. But then, the average height of a Dutch man now is not what the average height of a Dutch man was even 100 years ago.
No. What’s the significance of the question, though? I’m not claiming there isn’t a difference now, I’m saying the difference isn’t inherent to genetic difference - that there’s no glass heigt ceiling for Japanese but not Dutch, when viewed as a multi-generational change. The increase in Japanese height post WWII, and in first-generation Japanese immigrants to Hawaii, bear this out.[
That is your problem. Some of it is. Not all of it, some of it. That diet/environment accounts for 0-99% of the variation is irrelevant, if only the tiniest sliver of height is influenced by genetics, then you will see differences between populations due to the portion of the genes that differ between populations and influence height.