6 ms·

If you think it is not possible for race be related to job performance you must not have watched much NBA basketball.

jklinger410 7y ago
es ist verboten "bad science"
gurkendoktor 7y ago
Or Sherpa people carrying luggage up Mt Everest... There's a difference between acknowledging some correlations, and using them as statistical tools in the job market. The latter is thankfully illegal or at least frowned upon.
- DocTomoe 7y ago
  When they built New York's skyscrapers, they hired predominantly people from the Mohawk tribe to do riveting a three hundred feet above ground because they lacked fear of heights. At what point does a correlation become useful as a statistical tool?
  - gurkendoktor 7y ago
    Every proven correlation is immediately useful as a statistical tool! But we also don't jail people when there's an 80% chance they're guilty. Not everything is about efficiency.
3131s 7y ago
The best athletes are extremely intelligent and driven people. The over-representation of black people in athletics is most definitely related to their under-representation in other fields.
- MuffinFlavored 7y ago
  I think it is less "intelligence" and more "naturally physically talented"
- setr 7y ago
  Given how small a population “best athletes” is (..by definition), I somehow doubt this.
- oh_sigh 7y ago
  Or it might just be because basketball is the preferred sport of a lot of black people in the US, so they are more likely to play it and become good at it. If you look at hockey, it is mostly white. That doesn't mean being white gives you an advantage in playing hockey. It just means way more white people enjoy hockey compared to black people.
  - bsder 7y ago
    > If you look at hockey, it is mostly white. That doesn't mean being white gives you an advantage in playing hockey. It just means way more white people enjoy hockey compared to black people. I suspect it's more that playing hockey implies a certain socioeconomic stratum (hockey is an expensive sport).
    - Baeocystin 7y ago
      You can play a pickup game of hockey with something to thwack around as a puck, a stick, and some skates, all of which are dirt cheap. I think it's kind of a stretch to make any socioeconomic predictions when the much simpler correlate is that hockey is cheap and easy to play (and thus will have a larger talent pool to draw from) when you live where local ponds freeze over in the winter, and those parts of the country are predominately white.
      - ABCLAW 7y ago
        Did you grow up with any competitive-level hockey players? The sport is a VERY large time and finance drain on a family.
        Baeocystin 7y ago
        That's a bit of a non-sequitur. High-end-competitive-level anything is a tremendous time and money sink. But that doesn't mean that the majority of the people that play the sport in question need to be wealthy to participate at the rec-league levels.
- cambalache 7y ago
  Nah, intelligence is orthogonal to sports skill, that is, it is not correlated. Plenty of dumb and smart sportsmen. Now, mental fortitude, self-belief, ability to perform under pressure, now those things I believe. But none of them are strongly correlated with intelligence.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- masonic 7y ago
  I haven't read pertinent studies in awhile, but it used to be that all top sprinters were of West African ancestry due to a disproportionate amount of fast-twitch muscle fibers in the leg muscles.
komali2 7y ago
You can't make effective prediction off this stereotype. It is useless. There is nothing inherent in "being black" that leads to greater basketball performance. Also, define "black," good luck. Being tall, maaaaaybe. But not perfectly so, and there's no useful correlation between tallness and race, considering that the NBA generally just selects for the most skilled basketball players. Then you get into all the cultural influences that totally shoot any genetic arguments out of the sky, and really just makes trying to do any, uh, science, around genetics and the NBA pointless. In my experience (as a southerner) it's typically just a sort of dog whistle kind of psuedoscientific attempt to set the groundwork that race can be related to other things, such as likelihood to be a criminal, hence why I jump on this argument whenever I see it. Apologies if that wasn't your intent. In short, "race" (good luck defining even one) is not related to job performance.
- MuffinFlavored 7y ago
  Aren't blacks genetically predisposed to larger twitch muscles (faster reaction times, etc.)?
  - komali2 7y ago
    Yea, happy to explore this. First, what do you mean by "black people?"
    - cambalache 7y ago
      In America?, any person self described as one, or with a significant (25%+) component of the Niger-Condorfanian cluster as per [1]. I agree the definition is arbitrary but all definitions are. The same with "tall" people. We could discuss all day long who is or isnt tall, or we could define tall as being at least 6ft 2in or whatever. [1] https://science.sciencemag.org/content/324/5930/1035 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/324/5930/1035
      - komali2 7y ago
        This is a good faith attempt and I appreciate that. First, from your link: >Our data also provide evidence for shared ancestry among geographically diverse hunter-gatherer populations (Khoesan speakers and Pygmies). Would we say that pygmies, being considered black, would be likely to make it into the NBA? Second, can we guarantee that people who self identify black, would agree that the definition of someone else's "blackness" is legitimate? Whose definition do we "choose" to then move ahead with "and these sorts of black people are more likely to get into the NBA?" Given that it's not well agreed upon (is Obama black? Steph Curry? Not as cut and dry as you might assume. Are they "black enough" to have NBA advantage?) Third, based on your tallness: why draw the line as 6'2"? There are shorter players that were Great. So, how do you deal with (relatively frequent) exceptions? "Tall people are more likely to get into the NBA, except when theyre short but grew up next to a court" ? And the tall People that aren't good at basketball? "Tall People are good at basketball except when they're not" ? And when they're too tall to the point that it's detrimental to their health and can't even play basketball? Fourth, arbitrary. Exactly. It is arbitrary, and thus I argue scientifically impossible to have a rational discussion about blackness and its influence on likelihood to enter the NBA. Or, rather, develop an effective predictor algorithm based on genes alone. We could have interesting sociological conversations about basketball courts in predominantly black neighborhoods, black NBA stars inspiring black kids, self-propagating cultural memes about blackness and basketball skills, etc. But we won't get any really good information that allows us to say something like "black people are better at basketball" to where it will be true.
bofadeez 7y ago
It's a politically-motivated, Luddite-like mentality with respect to the technology available via psychometric analysis on identical twins.
bofadeez 7y ago
"According to twin studies, the Big Five personality traits have substantial heritable components explaining 40–60% of the variance" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5068715/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5068715/ Trait conscientiousness and IQ predict job performance. Stop being Luddites with this technology.

es ist verboten "bad science"

Or Sherpa people carrying luggage up Mt Everest... There's a difference between acknowledging some correlations, and using them as statistical tools in the job market. The latter is thankfully illegal or at least frowned upon.

DocTomoe 7y ago
When they built New York's skyscrapers, they hired predominantly people from the Mohawk tribe to do riveting a three hundred feet above ground because they lacked fear of heights. At what point does a correlation become useful as a statistical tool?
- gurkendoktor 7y ago
  Every proven correlation is immediately useful as a statistical tool! But we also don't jail people when there's an 80% chance they're guilty. Not everything is about efficiency.

3131s 7y ago

The best athletes are extremely intelligent and driven people. The over-representation of black people in athletics is most definitely related to their under-representation in other fields.

MuffinFlavored 7y ago
I think it is less "intelligence" and more "naturally physically talented"
setr 7y ago
Given how small a population “best athletes” is (..by definition), I somehow doubt this.
oh_sigh 7y ago
Or it might just be because basketball is the preferred sport of a lot of black people in the US, so they are more likely to play it and become good at it. If you look at hockey, it is mostly white. That doesn't mean being white gives you an advantage in playing hockey. It just means way more white people enjoy hockey compared to black people.
- bsder 7y ago
  > If you look at hockey, it is mostly white. That doesn't mean being white gives you an advantage in playing hockey. It just means way more white people enjoy hockey compared to black people. I suspect it's more that playing hockey implies a certain socioeconomic stratum (hockey is an expensive sport).
  - Baeocystin 7y ago
    You can play a pickup game of hockey with something to thwack around as a puck, a stick, and some skates, all of which are dirt cheap. I think it's kind of a stretch to make any socioeconomic predictions when the much simpler correlate is that hockey is cheap and easy to play (and thus will have a larger talent pool to draw from) when you live where local ponds freeze over in the winter, and those parts of the country are predominately white.
    - ABCLAW 7y ago
      Did you grow up with any competitive-level hockey players? The sport is a VERY large time and finance drain on a family.
      - Baeocystin 7y ago
        That's a bit of a non-sequitur. High-end-competitive-level anything is a tremendous time and money sink. But that doesn't mean that the majority of the people that play the sport in question need to be wealthy to participate at the rec-league levels.
cambalache 7y ago
Nah, intelligence is orthogonal to sports skill, that is, it is not correlated. Plenty of dumb and smart sportsmen. Now, mental fortitude, self-belief, ability to perform under pressure, now those things I believe. But none of them are strongly correlated with intelligence.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
masonic 7y ago
I haven't read pertinent studies in awhile, but it used to be that all top sprinters were of West African ancestry due to a disproportionate amount of fast-twitch muscle fibers in the leg muscles.

komali2 7y ago

You can't make effective prediction off this stereotype. It is useless. There is nothing inherent in "being black" that leads to greater basketball performance. Also, define "black," good luck. Being tall, maaaaaybe. But not perfectly so, and there's no useful correlation between tallness and race, considering that the NBA generally just selects for the most skilled basketball players. Then you get into all the cultural influences that totally shoot any genetic arguments out of the sky, and really just makes trying to do any, uh, science, around genetics and the NBA pointless. In my experience (as a southerner) it's typically just a sort of dog whistle kind of psuedoscientific attempt to set the groundwork that race can be related to other things, such as likelihood to be a criminal, hence why I jump on this argument whenever I see it. Apologies if that wasn't your intent. In short, "race" (good luck defining even one) is not related to job performance.

MuffinFlavored 7y ago
Aren't blacks genetically predisposed to larger twitch muscles (faster reaction times, etc.)?
- komali2 7y ago
  Yea, happy to explore this. First, what do you mean by "black people?"
  - cambalache 7y ago
    In America?, any person self described as one, or with a significant (25%+) component of the Niger-Condorfanian cluster as per [1]. I agree the definition is arbitrary but all definitions are. The same with "tall" people. We could discuss all day long who is or isnt tall, or we could define tall as being at least 6ft 2in or whatever. [1] https://science.sciencemag.org/content/324/5930/1035 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/324/5930/1035
    - komali2 7y ago
      This is a good faith attempt and I appreciate that. First, from your link: >Our data also provide evidence for shared ancestry among geographically diverse hunter-gatherer populations (Khoesan speakers and Pygmies). Would we say that pygmies, being considered black, would be likely to make it into the NBA? Second, can we guarantee that people who self identify black, would agree that the definition of someone else's "blackness" is legitimate? Whose definition do we "choose" to then move ahead with "and these sorts of black people are more likely to get into the NBA?" Given that it's not well agreed upon (is Obama black? Steph Curry? Not as cut and dry as you might assume. Are they "black enough" to have NBA advantage?) Third, based on your tallness: why draw the line as 6'2"? There are shorter players that were Great. So, how do you deal with (relatively frequent) exceptions? "Tall people are more likely to get into the NBA, except when theyre short but grew up next to a court" ? And the tall People that aren't good at basketball? "Tall People are good at basketball except when they're not" ? And when they're too tall to the point that it's detrimental to their health and can't even play basketball? Fourth, arbitrary. Exactly. It is arbitrary, and thus I argue scientifically impossible to have a rational discussion about blackness and its influence on likelihood to enter the NBA. Or, rather, develop an effective predictor algorithm based on genes alone. We could have interesting sociological conversations about basketball courts in predominantly black neighborhoods, black NBA stars inspiring black kids, self-propagating cultural memes about blackness and basketball skills, etc. But we won't get any really good information that allows us to say something like "black people are better at basketball" to where it will be true.

bofadeez 7y ago

It's a politically-motivated, Luddite-like mentality with respect to the technology available via psychometric analysis on identical twins.

bofadeez 7y ago

"According to twin studies, the Big Five personality traits have substantial heritable components explaining 40–60% of the variance" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5068715/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5068715/ Trait conscientiousness and IQ predict job performance. Stop being Luddites with this technology.