5 ms·

Here's an explanation for why foot speed and intelligence are inversely correlated: "Upper body strength is relatively equally distributed between the races, b

Here's an explanation for why foot speed and intelligence are inversely correlated: "Upper body strength is relatively equally distributed between the races, but footspeed most definitely is not. So, tailbacks, wide receivers, and defensive players have a need for speed, so they are disproportionately black. I haven't checked recently, but in most recent years since Jason Sehorn's retirement, none of the 64 NFL starting cornerbacks at the start of the season were white, and none of the 32 starting tailbacks were white. (For some reason, this never gets as much publicity as the perceived lack of black quarterbacks.)" "As we all know, there is about a 15 point difference IQ gap between whites and blacks, so positions that are black dominated tend to have lower average IQs than positions that are more integrated (or that are white monopolized, such as placekicker and punter)." ( read the whole thing http://isteve.blogspot.com/2008/07/graphical-data-analyst-ben-fry-takes.html http://isteve.blogspot.com/2008/07/graphical-data-analyst-be... ) This seems like a much more plausible explanation of the facts than the "closer to the ball" theory. Are we really that scared of "things you can't say" not to point out something that is obvious to anybody who watches football?

akd 18y ago
> For some reason, this never gets as much publicity as the perceived lack of black quarterbacks. The reason is that quarterback is the most glamorous and well-known position. This explanation doesn't explain why there is a lot of publicity about the underrepresentation of women in science -- "scientist" is definitely not a glamorous profession.
falsestprophet 18y ago
(I noticed all of the comments you contributed to this community are effectively unsubstantiated racism. I suspect I am wasting my time replying, so I will keep this brief.) "foot speed and intelligence are inversely correlated...'[black people are faster and dumber and white people are slower and smarter]'" You are missing the point entirely. While there is an inverse correlation between footspeed and intelligence in this extremely limited dataset, this evidence does not suggest there is a general inverse correlation because there are many many too many confounding variables. Look all you want, you won't find data that supports your conclusion. There is a fundamental biological reason for this fact; no data suggests there are fundamental genetic differences between the races that result in the expression of differences in intelligence or footspeed or any other significantly complex trait. This is because behaviorally modern humans evolved only 50,000 years ago. Modern humans were crafty and mobile enough to inhabit most corners of the world. We have not been isolated for sufficient period of time to establish the differences you are looking for. We all are effectively the same version. (However, there are some uncomfortable questions that could be asked about Indigenous Australians because of their early and extended isolation. But, I don't know enough to draw any conclusions.) I will gamble there is a significant inverse correlation between education and racism. edit: I don't think we ought to tolerate racism here simply because it is dumb.
- tyn 18y ago
  The only comments I see from the parent's parent are the ones in this thread. So how come and you noticed what you say you noticed?
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- lexlibra 18y ago
  The existence of a racial gap in IQ is simply not in dispute. It shows up in SAT scores, it shows up in military IQ tests during times with a draft, and it shows up in numerous psychological studies. See for instance this paper from Brookings Institute, which is about as mainstream liberal as you can get ( http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/dickens/20060619_iq.pdf http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/dickens/20060619_iq.pd... ) The only question is if the difference or environmental or genetic. I'm not positive what causes the difference myself. If you put a gun to my head and forced me to make a bet, I'd probably say a substantial portion of the gap is genetic in origin. For evidence of this, I'll point you to this article in Slate (a very mainstream news source): http://www.slate.com/id/2178122/entry/2178123/ http://www.slate.com/id/2178122/entry/2178123/ no data suggests there are fundamental genetic differences between the races that result in the expression of differences in intelligence or footspeed or any other significantly complex trait. Percent of body fat, physique, testosterone levels, and brain size have all shown to be correlated with race. Men of West African decent have broken 10 second barrier on the 100m dash 134 times. No member from any other ethnic group has ever broken 10 seconds. Meanwhile, East Africans routinely monopolize gold medals in the long distance events ( 10,000 meters, marathons). Can you think of any non-genetic explanation for this? Examining the physiques of West Africans versus East Africans makes the genetic explanation pretty obvious. Studies of IQ highly correlate with latitude. People of northern Chinese and Mongolian origin score higher than the Vietnamese. In limited studies, Intuits score higher than Native Americans from Central America. 60,000 years is actually quite a long time, and the skills necessary to survive harsh northern winters are very different than those needed to survive in tropical jungles. I will gamble there is a significant inverse correlation between education and racism. I'd agree with you there. But note that education is an industry. And just like Coke tries to convince you that drinking coke will make you cool, the education industry tries to convince you that there is no problem that cannot be remedied just by spending more on education. In academia, freedom of thought about the issue of IQ is simply not allowed (see Larry Summers and James Watson). For the record, I am Ivy league educated myself. I would love it if the IQ gap was environmental, and we could figure out the formula for making it disappear. I spent a fair amount of time working for charities in the inner city. But I believe that we must try to get an accurate view of reality, even if the truth might be unpleasant. Willfully denying evidence helps nobody. FYI, I specially created this account to post on this thread, because I was scared of being called a racist and didn't want that tarnishing my normal account.
gruseom 18y ago
You seem to be assuming that intelligence and IQ are the same thing. Is that what you meant? Just to be clear, I believe in speaking frankly about race, so am not objecting to that aspect of your post. But I'm skeptical of attempts to bottle up something as grand as "intelligence" into a single metric. For example, I read somewhere that the original Stanford-Binet had to be modified because women were scoring higher than men (so it obviously needed correcting). That's a pretty compelling detail, if true. (I don't remember where I first read this, but a little Googling brings up http://www.beyondsatire.us/?q=node/18 http://www.beyondsatire.us/?q=node/18, which is hardly definitive but does have an interesting author.)
- weiser 18y ago
  Intelligence is a grand notion indeed. Check out the notion of multiple intelligences http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligences http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligence... IQ scores are useful for assessing mostly logical intelligence, and to some extent visual spatial intelligence.
- lexlibra 18y ago
  Intelligence is certainly very complicated. For the sake of this discussion, I was taking intelligence to be "intelligence as defined/measured by IQ tests". Perhaps I was being sloppy and should have used a different word.
  - gruseom 18y ago
    "Intelligence as defined/measured by IQ tests" is just a verbose way of saying "IQ".
wumi 18y ago
"Remember, these are averages, and all groups overlap. You can't deduce an individual's intelligence from her ethnicity. The only thing you can reasonably infer is that anyone who presumes to rate your IQ based on the color of your skin is probably dumber than you are." http://www.slate.com/toolbar.aspx?action=print&id=2178122 http://www.slate.com/toolbar.aspx?action=print&id=217812...
- lexlibra 18y ago
  Of course. The original post was dealing with averages, and that's what I was trying to explain.
quews 18y ago
As a long time (silent) reader of Hacker News posts and comments, this comment easily ranks as one of the most offensive, and perhaps the most disturbing. The notion that race fundamentally has anything to do with intelligence should offend any sane, rational, science-minded person who is even just scarcely familiar with the history of the pseudo-science of eugenics and the countless studies debunking it many claims. However, more offensive than that, I find the fact that this comment is still here and in fact, up-modded, as offensive to the very core… What the comment says implicitly is that “Blacks are dumber than Whites - DUH.” If he had simply typed this, perhaps the comment would have been removed or at the very least down-modded to oblivion so that my reading it would have been my own damned fault. But what is astonishing (and inexplicable, considering the great number of comments I have read on this forum, lauding and praising the seemingly high intellect of the people who frequent this forum) is that because the poster had the guile to conceal his ignorant comment with more words, not only was this comment given credibility, but many had the sheer audacity to up-mod this nonsense. This is sobering… But what really woke me up, was realizing that the utterly ignorant comment was in response to PG – who is by all accounts the de-facto host/role-model here. I figured I would scroll down a short distance and see the straight-forward, no nonsense rebuttal I have seen him give to comments much less deserving of a dressing down – no such luck. I shuddered. To think that this is the same man who writes all those essays wherein the common thread is a brutal application of logic – why the silence here, when given what amounts to a perfect lead-in? Why not quickly question if it is even possible to test for intelligence? Why not describe what such a test might look like if it is indeed possible? Why not suggest that a time delineated test full of arithmetic might be the worst candidate for such a test (as it implies that computers would then be said to have such intelligence in spades)? Why not question the deep-sinking stereotypical association with speed-in-calculation ability with intellect? Why not? Let me not speculate as to why not. Let me just say to all who know better, but said and will continue to say nothing – SHAME.
- edw519 18y ago
  As a long time (silent) reader of Hacker News posts and comments, this comment easily ranks as one of the most offensive, and perhaps the most disturbing. Perhaps you should be a little less silent. If this comment is any indication, your contributions could significantly improve the quality of our community. Don't leave it to the rest of us.
radu_floricica 18y ago
Oh damn. I tried to write an comment about how I agree in principle but this is not the place for the discussion, but re-reading your comment I realized I was wrong. It's a pertinent argument and has my upvote.

akd 18y ago

> For some reason, this never gets as much publicity as the perceived lack of black quarterbacks. The reason is that quarterback is the most glamorous and well-known position. This explanation doesn't explain why there is a lot of publicity about the underrepresentation of women in science -- "scientist" is definitely not a glamorous profession.

falsestprophet 18y ago

(I noticed all of the comments you contributed to this community are effectively unsubstantiated racism. I suspect I am wasting my time replying, so I will keep this brief.) "foot speed and intelligence are inversely correlated...'[black people are faster and dumber and white people are slower and smarter]'" You are missing the point entirely. While there is an inverse correlation between footspeed and intelligence in this extremely limited dataset, this evidence does not suggest there is a general inverse correlation because there are many many too many confounding variables. Look all you want, you won't find data that supports your conclusion. There is a fundamental biological reason for this fact; no data suggests there are fundamental genetic differences between the races that result in the expression of differences in intelligence or footspeed or any other significantly complex trait. This is because behaviorally modern humans evolved only 50,000 years ago. Modern humans were crafty and mobile enough to inhabit most corners of the world. We have not been isolated for sufficient period of time to establish the differences you are looking for. We all are effectively the same version. (However, there are some uncomfortable questions that could be asked about Indigenous Australians because of their early and extended isolation. But, I don't know enough to draw any conclusions.) I will gamble there is a significant inverse correlation between education and racism. edit: I don't think we ought to tolerate racism here simply because it is dumb.

tyn 18y ago
The only comments I see from the parent's parent are the ones in this thread. So how come and you noticed what you say you noticed?
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
lexlibra 18y ago
The existence of a racial gap in IQ is simply not in dispute. It shows up in SAT scores, it shows up in military IQ tests during times with a draft, and it shows up in numerous psychological studies. See for instance this paper from Brookings Institute, which is about as mainstream liberal as you can get ( http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/dickens/20060619_iq.pdf http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/dickens/20060619_iq.pd... ) The only question is if the difference or environmental or genetic. I'm not positive what causes the difference myself. If you put a gun to my head and forced me to make a bet, I'd probably say a substantial portion of the gap is genetic in origin. For evidence of this, I'll point you to this article in Slate (a very mainstream news source): http://www.slate.com/id/2178122/entry/2178123/ http://www.slate.com/id/2178122/entry/2178123/ no data suggests there are fundamental genetic differences between the races that result in the expression of differences in intelligence or footspeed or any other significantly complex trait. Percent of body fat, physique, testosterone levels, and brain size have all shown to be correlated with race. Men of West African decent have broken 10 second barrier on the 100m dash 134 times. No member from any other ethnic group has ever broken 10 seconds. Meanwhile, East Africans routinely monopolize gold medals in the long distance events ( 10,000 meters, marathons). Can you think of any non-genetic explanation for this? Examining the physiques of West Africans versus East Africans makes the genetic explanation pretty obvious. Studies of IQ highly correlate with latitude. People of northern Chinese and Mongolian origin score higher than the Vietnamese. In limited studies, Intuits score higher than Native Americans from Central America. 60,000 years is actually quite a long time, and the skills necessary to survive harsh northern winters are very different than those needed to survive in tropical jungles. I will gamble there is a significant inverse correlation between education and racism. I'd agree with you there. But note that education is an industry. And just like Coke tries to convince you that drinking coke will make you cool, the education industry tries to convince you that there is no problem that cannot be remedied just by spending more on education. In academia, freedom of thought about the issue of IQ is simply not allowed (see Larry Summers and James Watson). For the record, I am Ivy league educated myself. I would love it if the IQ gap was environmental, and we could figure out the formula for making it disappear. I spent a fair amount of time working for charities in the inner city. But I believe that we must try to get an accurate view of reality, even if the truth might be unpleasant. Willfully denying evidence helps nobody. FYI, I specially created this account to post on this thread, because I was scared of being called a racist and didn't want that tarnishing my normal account.

gruseom 18y ago

You seem to be assuming that intelligence and IQ are the same thing. Is that what you meant? Just to be clear, I believe in speaking frankly about race, so am not objecting to that aspect of your post. But I'm skeptical of attempts to bottle up something as grand as "intelligence" into a single metric. For example, I read somewhere that the original Stanford-Binet had to be modified because women were scoring higher than men (so it obviously needed correcting). That's a pretty compelling detail, if true. (I don't remember where I first read this, but a little Googling brings up http://www.beyondsatire.us/?q=node/18 http://www.beyondsatire.us/?q=node/18, which is hardly definitive but does have an interesting author.)

weiser 18y ago
Intelligence is a grand notion indeed. Check out the notion of multiple intelligences http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligences http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligence... IQ scores are useful for assessing mostly logical intelligence, and to some extent visual spatial intelligence.
lexlibra 18y ago
Intelligence is certainly very complicated. For the sake of this discussion, I was taking intelligence to be "intelligence as defined/measured by IQ tests". Perhaps I was being sloppy and should have used a different word.
- gruseom 18y ago
  "Intelligence as defined/measured by IQ tests" is just a verbose way of saying "IQ".

wumi 18y ago

"Remember, these are averages, and all groups overlap. You can't deduce an individual's intelligence from her ethnicity. The only thing you can reasonably infer is that anyone who presumes to rate your IQ based on the color of your skin is probably dumber than you are." http://www.slate.com/toolbar.aspx?action=print&id=2178122 http://www.slate.com/toolbar.aspx?action=print&id=217812...

lexlibra 18y ago
Of course. The original post was dealing with averages, and that's what I was trying to explain.

quews 18y ago

As a long time (silent) reader of Hacker News posts and comments, this comment easily ranks as one of the most offensive, and perhaps the most disturbing. The notion that race fundamentally has anything to do with intelligence should offend any sane, rational, science-minded person who is even just scarcely familiar with the history of the pseudo-science of eugenics and the countless studies debunking it many claims. However, more offensive than that, I find the fact that this comment is still here and in fact, up-modded, as offensive to the very core… What the comment says implicitly is that “Blacks are dumber than Whites - DUH.” If he had simply typed this, perhaps the comment would have been removed or at the very least down-modded to oblivion so that my reading it would have been my own damned fault. But what is astonishing (and inexplicable, considering the great number of comments I have read on this forum, lauding and praising the seemingly high intellect of the people who frequent this forum) is that because the poster had the guile to conceal his ignorant comment with more words, not only was this comment given credibility, but many had the sheer audacity to up-mod this nonsense. This is sobering… But what really woke me up, was realizing that the utterly ignorant comment was in response to PG – who is by all accounts the de-facto host/role-model here. I figured I would scroll down a short distance and see the straight-forward, no nonsense rebuttal I have seen him give to comments much less deserving of a dressing down – no such luck. I shuddered. To think that this is the same man who writes all those essays wherein the common thread is a brutal application of logic – why the silence here, when given what amounts to a perfect lead-in? Why not quickly question if it is even possible to test for intelligence? Why not describe what such a test might look like if it is indeed possible? Why not suggest that a time delineated test full of arithmetic might be the worst candidate for such a test (as it implies that computers would then be said to have such intelligence in spades)? Why not question the deep-sinking stereotypical association with speed-in-calculation ability with intellect? Why not? Let me not speculate as to why not. Let me just say to all who know better, but said and will continue to say nothing – SHAME.

edw519 18y ago
As a long time (silent) reader of Hacker News posts and comments, this comment easily ranks as one of the most offensive, and perhaps the most disturbing. Perhaps you should be a little less silent. If this comment is any indication, your contributions could significantly improve the quality of our community. Don't leave it to the rest of us.

radu_floricica 18y ago

Oh damn. I tried to write an comment about how I agree in principle but this is not the place for the discussion, but re-reading your comment I realized I was wrong. It's a pertinent argument and has my upvote.