Thank You Colibri
I’ve told you once or twice before
I allways appreciate you logging onto one of my threads and giving an explanation
Or cleaning houses, doing laundry, shoeing horses, building houses… Slaves were used for all types of works, not just farm work. But let’s say, for the sake of a stupid argument, that picking cotton was representative of “slave work”. How would that translate into “being good at sports”? You don’t need to be a sports physiologist to see the hole in that argument.
I agree with the second paragraph but not with the first, specifically the comparison to animals.
It’s true that you need intense and consistent breeding to produce the kinds of changes that animal breeders produce, but that’s because the scale of change that animal breeders are trying to produce dwarfs the types of changes that are being contemplated here. No one is suggesting that the differences between blacks and whites are remotely comparable to the differences between - for instance - beef/dairy cattle, or egg/meat poultry or the various breeds of dogs or horses etc. These are very small differences being discussed, and you would require a much less intense program to produce them.
That said, there doesn’t seem to be much evidence that there was any sort of widescale eugenics at all, so there’s reason to be skeptical of these claims. But I don’t think you can show much by pointing to how intense of a breeding program is required for animal breeding.
OK, then outline for us a breeding program, designed to select for a specific trait, that involves hundreds of thousands of individuals.
I’m not certain what you’re asking for.
But if slaveowners routinely controlled mating of their slaves in order to produce “better” offspring, and there was a widespread belief that bigger/stronger parents would produce “better” offspring, then you would expect that bigger stronger slaves would have, on average, more children than smaller/weaker slaves. Which would imply (after some regression to the mean etc.) that the percentage of bigger stronger slave children would be higher than it would be in a comparable population that had not been interfered with in this manner. Not remotely higher enough to produce a separate breed of people, of course, but if you were measuring for the percentage of big/strong people in the population, there would be some disparity.
Intensive breeding involves getting rid of the undesirable offspring. Slaves were too valuable to do that.
But even if you don’t have “intensive breeding” you could still have a (smaller) disparity produced by less intensive breeding.
If they did this, they would see their slave population dwindle very quickly and then they’d be dealing with a small population. But you’re already saying they are picking a small % of the population to breed together. If they have a large population of bigger, stronger slaves, then they don’t need to breed for it. They need to breed the weaker traits out, and those weaker traits are in… you guessed it… a small population.
You can’t get around the idea that if you don’t control the breeding tightly, and work with a small, genetically similar population, you aren’t going to get the trait you want.
A small disparity in a small population.
What you’re essentially saying here is that it’s very unlikely that any sort of eugenics program happened. That’s fine with me. I’m not claiming that it happened, and I expressed skepticism in previous posts to this thread including my first.
All I’m saying is that the hypothesis is not based on anything as extreme as some people have suggested would be required, because the phenomena that are being explained are not as extreme either. So you can’t refute it by pointing out the level of breeding control that would be required to produce truly extreme phenomena, e.g. separate breeds of animals. That’s all. You want to say it’s unlikely that there was any sort of breeding control at all, that’s fine with me and something I’ve noted myself in an earlier post.
No, that’s not all I’m saying. I’m also saying that you have failed to outline a breeding program that can work with a large population. If you don’t keep culling the population every generation, you’re not going to breed for the trait. Even if you start with a large population, you will quickly find that the individuals you want represent a small population. But as soon as you present you breeding program, we can discuss whether it will work or not. All we have so far is hand-waving.
It’s not too short if certain conditions apply. A small founder population with little to no gene flow with outside groups can result in huge changes to gene frequency in just 5 or 6 generations. Or no change at all.
But that would only change frequencies within that target population (say, African slaves on a particular island), not with a larger population such as “all African slaves in the Americas.”
Population genetics is weird.
Well you’re not going to get much more than handwaving from me. I’m not saying any such program ever existed. Most likely it didn’t.
If it were the case that slaveowners managed to encourage Big Guys to have more offspring on average than Little Guys, then the percentage of Big Guys in Generation 2 would be higher than in Generation 1, and the percentage of Little Guys in Generation 2 would be lower than in Generation 1.
Could this have happened in isolated instances? Possibly, e.g. a guy who had two males slaves and one female or the like. Did this happen on a widescale enough basis to make a difference in Generation 2? Unlikely.
Which explains why the greatest basketball player in the world was so successful at baseball when he tried it…? :dubious:
Why? You haven’t done anything to prevent the short slaves from producing more offspring. Intensive breeding is just not that easy and starting from a diverse gene pool makes it even more difficult.
Inky Lautman tried to play baseball? :dubious:
Then why are you posting in GQ, where we’re supposed to be dealing with factual answers to questions?
If you’re saying to could have happened in isolated places, then I guess you’re withdrawing your objection to Colibri’s first point. The fact of the matter is that if you want to change a low-frequency trait into a high-frequency trait, you have to start with a small population (that is, the ones with the low-frequency trait) and carefully control the breeding. Otherwise, the low-frequency train will continue to be… low frequency.
I said “if”. I underlined the word. I gave an example of how such a thing might theoretically come to pass (guy with more male slaves than females marries off only the biggest ones).
Don’t know what more I can say - that might be as much effort as I’m willing to put into the theoretical possiblity of something that I don’t think happened anyway.
No, I still object.
I noted that historically it’s unlikely to have been more than isolated. But in order to have the effect that we (ostensibly) see today it would not have to be as pervasive as creating a new breed of animal. So the hypothesis can’t be refuted by comparing to breeding animals.
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Well, MJ batted .202 in 127 games in one season of Double-A ball. There are a hell of a lot of guys who work all their lives to try to play professional baseball, never make Double-A in the first place, and bat less than .202 once they get there. I get the point that he wasn’t major-league baseball material, but he accomplished much more than most of us amateur ball players could ever dream of.
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Right. He is also very good at golf as well. No, he can’t make the PGA tour but he can beat the overwhelming majority of serious amateur golfers. Michael Jordan is a pretty terrible example to use to demonstrate specificity to a single sport. He is a pretty incredible all-around athlete with enviable skills in other sports that are very different from his main game. The only worse example I can think of is Bo Jackson who played both major league football and baseball during the same period and made the All Star team in both sports. He was also a star track and field star in college competing as a sprinter, hurdler, jumper, thrower and decathlete.
Vanishingly few people are super-athletes like that but general athletic skills tend to be positively correlated with one another and often strongly if the basic skills required cross over enough. That is why many people described themselves as ‘athletic’ rather than ‘soccerish’. They are good at many athletic endevours while others are the opposite.