5 ms·

Why English speakers dominate sprinting events

23 points by occam 18y ago

josefresco 18y ago
Lame, I'm sorry but I don't accept his conclusion at all.
- maxklein 18y ago
  Why?
- byrneseyeview 18y ago
  I think the word "Lame" should be reserved for responding to an essay on language, history, human genetics, sports, and culture with a one-word sentence that disagrees without reason or evidence. Lame.
  - ReverendBayes 18y ago
    Ok, how about expounding this way: Unevidenced, unfalsifiable hypothesis presented as an explanation, with all the rigor of an armchair Olympics viewer armed with a 6 pack. Lame.
- abstractbill 18y ago
  I thought it was somewhat far-fetched, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it was lame - it's an interesting idea at least.
maxklein 18y ago
The reason for this: The best sprinters in the world come from West Africa. Say what you want, this is simply true. I'm going to go through a series of logical steps, and I would like you to see if I can get you to agree with my conclusion The biggest time survival of the fittest comes into play is during a war. When a war happens, the people unfit to fight in the war get pruned out of the gene pool. West Africa has a landscape that is different from most of the world - the bush. The bush is what happens when humans live near a jungle - they trim down the trees, and low vegetation tends to grow. In East Africa, you tend to have savannah and grasslands which can be walked through. You cannot walk through a bush. West African wars have tradditionally been fought with machetes. Not with spears, not with guns, not with swords, but with Machetes. A machete is a proximity instrument, and the best way to defeat someone in a machete fight is to be the one to strike first. A west African war looks this way - all the men paint themselves in black, and walk at night through the bushes till they are near a village. A village is usually cleared of grass and bush, so there is no cover. When a whistle is sounded, the men burst out of the bush and run at high speed towards the village, winning the war by force. The men in the village have a few seconds to prepare, and they do so by grabbing their machetes and running as quick as possible away, then circling back. Traditional west African wars are high speed dashes with heavy instruments, in the night, and with lots of fire. It's the perfect enviroment to have gene pool selection for dashes. Contrast this with East Africa, where the savannag lead to Bows & Arrows and Spears being used as war weapons.
- kul 18y ago
  I like the theory except the need to depend on machetes as part of the cause. Machetes are a very recent invention in the timeline of evolution. Maybe there were faster, scarier predators around in that area.
  - maxklein 18y ago
    Then you obviously are not up to date with your biology. How many generations does it take to breed a new race of dog? Machetes and big knives have been around in Africa for longer than that amount of Generations. Metalwork is very old in Africa.
- pchristensen 18y ago
  To support this: "Runners of West African descent—which includes Jamaicans as well as most African-Americans—seem to be built for speed: In 2004, they held all but five of the 500 best times in the 100-meter dash. (East Africans, such as Kenyans and Ethiopians, rule the long-distance field.) Several biological factors may be coming into play here. One study conducted in Quebec in the 1980s found that black West African students had significantly higher amounts of "fast-twitch" muscle fibers—the kind that are responsible for short, explosive bursts of action—than white French Canadians did. (So far, there is no evidence that even extensive training can turn slow-twitch muscles into fast-twitch ones, though moving in the other direction is possible.)" http://www.slate.com/id/2197721/ http://www.slate.com/id/2197721/
- biohacker42 18y ago
  Faulty reasoning and crap evidence. If what you say is true why is the tiny island of Jamaica vastly dominant instead of any of the MILLIONS more west Africans in west Africa? Further more natural selection is rarely as neat and tidy as described. Why didn't west Africans evolve superb night vision, to see the men painted black? Why didn't they evolve supreme hearing, to hear the sneaky approach? While it may be possible west Africans are faster due to genetics, your evidence and theories are bit too neat.
  - maxklein 18y ago
akuafo 18y ago
why is this story listed on hacker news?
- rkts 18y ago
  Someone ought to write a script that scans every submission for the words "startup," "Paul Graham," and "Y Combinator" and posts some variation of "Not Hacker News!!!!!" whenever it doesn't find them. At least it would save you all some effort.
  - silentbicycle 18y ago
    Somebody probably already has.
  - mechanical_fish 18y ago
    I think that's a great idea. ... Okay, I'm joking. A bot which votes automatically is a bad idea. But, in all seriousness: Perhaps every single article should come with a tiny button to press, with a label: "I believe this article is offtopic for HN". This suggestion has been made thousands of times by now. The counter-argument -- a good one -- is that enabling the downvoting of articles empowers gangs of organized downvoters to kill content from the site for arbitrary reasons. Everyone knows the kind of trouble that causes. But that presumes that the downvote button is hooked up to something in the site's software. It doesn't need to be. Just display a tiny number that is the number of accumulated downvotes. Let the people who read each article, and decide whether to upvote it or not, choose whether or not to ignore that number. In the absence of this feature, the users reinvent it for themselves, as we have seen again and again. You may ask why the people who wish to express disapproval of an article can't just write a thoughtful post that explains why, instead of clicking a little DOWNVOTE button. The short answer is that to acknowledge a troll is to feed the troll. The longer answer is that some trolls are much more subtle than others: The ones who use rude one-liners are easy to spot, but there are others who will suck you into endlessly circling, long-winded, bad-faith arguments filled with chaff. You'll refute something, and they'll respond with a mixture of inaccurate and irrelevant bullet points; and you'll introduce good points of your own, and they'll be ignored in future posts; and if by some miracle you create a really compelling counter-argument, the troll will go away for two days and then come back, advancing the same argument that he did two days ago, as if the counter-argument had never existed. You can't avoid such people by engaging them -- engagement is what they want. You have to learn their reputations and politely but firmly avoid them. Which I do. But that doesn't mean I want to sit idly by while effluvia overflows the front page of HN. The site could really use a "cold shoulder" button. [EDIT: Okay, I promoted this crazy idea to its own submission: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=281431 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=281431 ]
omouse 18y ago
Not Hacker news.
- abstractbill 18y ago
  I find the "cure" (endless threads about things not being hacker news) much worse than the disease.
  - omouse 18y ago
    I did it because I saw some comment http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=280676 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=280676 mentioning it. My poor attempt at humour, heh. I forgot some exclamation marks too!
    - abstractbill 18y ago
      Ah, my apologies then, it's rather easy to miss that kind of humor in this medium.
seano 18y ago
I think the answer is somewhat more obvious. Look at the facilities, coaches and funding available for athletes in the USA, Jamaica, and Britain compared to West Africa.
- bokonist 18y ago
  He wasn't comparing the USA/West Indies/Britain to West Africa. He was asking why USA/West Indies/Britain/West Africa do so much better than Brazil and other non-anglophone countries.
Tichy 18y ago
What about doping? Another throwaway idea: racism still exists, so the blacker somebody looks, the more likely they'll have to resort to desperate means like allowing dangerous medical experiments on their bodies (doping) to still have some success in society. (I am not claiming this is the explanation, just want to point out another possible explanation).
- occam 18y ago
  That doesn't explain why west Africans are so strong at sprinting but very weak at distance running, while east Africans are the opposite (dominant in distance running, very weak sprinters), nor why whites are somewhat competitive in the middle distances but not sprints and long distances.
  - Tichy 18y ago
    You have to be careful with "explain" - sure you can "explain" anything with a presumed genetic disposition. That is in general not really a proof, only yet another theory. I just wanted to point out that there are alternative explanations. For example, Europeans tend to be really good at soccer, whereas Americans suck at it. Is it genetic? I highly doubt it, since the European genes are readily available in the US. It has a cultural reason (simple statistics - popular sports - higher percentage of kids trying it - higher percentage of talents being discovered).
    - Tichy 18y ago
      I want to add to this a question, because I truly don't know: who are the kids picking up running 100m distances as their main sport? What is their motivation? I can imagine why people get into team sports, for example, but I can't imagine a huge number of people go into 100m running out of intrinsic self motivation, simply because it is so much fun to run 100m? So maybe the "system" matters much more for 100m running than for most other sports. The system being things like "scholarships in exchange for sports", the way talent gets identified and promoted, and so on. Just saying that this would be another aspect that might distort the statistics. I recently heard the quote "Jamaica is too small to have their own drug testing agency"...
msie 18y ago
Quite a controversial author: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Sailer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Sailer
rms 18y ago
https://www.23andme.com/gen101/variation/speed/ https://www.23andme.com/gen101/variation/speed/
jazj 18y ago
Jesus, we're linking Steve Sailer now? This place really is getting worse than Reddit.

23 points by occam 18y ago

josefresco 18y ago

Lame, I'm sorry but I don't accept his conclusion at all.

maxklein 18y ago
Why?
byrneseyeview 18y ago
I think the word "Lame" should be reserved for responding to an essay on language, history, human genetics, sports, and culture with a one-word sentence that disagrees without reason or evidence. Lame.
- ReverendBayes 18y ago
  Ok, how about expounding this way: Unevidenced, unfalsifiable hypothesis presented as an explanation, with all the rigor of an armchair Olympics viewer armed with a 6 pack. Lame.
abstractbill 18y ago
I thought it was somewhat far-fetched, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it was lame - it's an interesting idea at least.

maxklein 18y ago

The reason for this: The best sprinters in the world come from West Africa. Say what you want, this is simply true. I'm going to go through a series of logical steps, and I would like you to see if I can get you to agree with my conclusion The biggest time survival of the fittest comes into play is during a war. When a war happens, the people unfit to fight in the war get pruned out of the gene pool. West Africa has a landscape that is different from most of the world - the bush. The bush is what happens when humans live near a jungle - they trim down the trees, and low vegetation tends to grow. In East Africa, you tend to have savannah and grasslands which can be walked through. You cannot walk through a bush. West African wars have tradditionally been fought with machetes. Not with spears, not with guns, not with swords, but with Machetes. A machete is a proximity instrument, and the best way to defeat someone in a machete fight is to be the one to strike first. A west African war looks this way - all the men paint themselves in black, and walk at night through the bushes till they are near a village. A village is usually cleared of grass and bush, so there is no cover. When a whistle is sounded, the men burst out of the bush and run at high speed towards the village, winning the war by force. The men in the village have a few seconds to prepare, and they do so by grabbing their machetes and running as quick as possible away, then circling back. Traditional west African wars are high speed dashes with heavy instruments, in the night, and with lots of fire. It's the perfect enviroment to have gene pool selection for dashes. Contrast this with East Africa, where the savannag lead to Bows & Arrows and Spears being used as war weapons.

kul 18y ago
I like the theory except the need to depend on machetes as part of the cause. Machetes are a very recent invention in the timeline of evolution. Maybe there were faster, scarier predators around in that area.
- maxklein 18y ago
  Then you obviously are not up to date with your biology. How many generations does it take to breed a new race of dog? Machetes and big knives have been around in Africa for longer than that amount of Generations. Metalwork is very old in Africa.
pchristensen 18y ago
To support this: "Runners of West African descent—which includes Jamaicans as well as most African-Americans—seem to be built for speed: In 2004, they held all but five of the 500 best times in the 100-meter dash. (East Africans, such as Kenyans and Ethiopians, rule the long-distance field.) Several biological factors may be coming into play here. One study conducted in Quebec in the 1980s found that black West African students had significantly higher amounts of "fast-twitch" muscle fibers—the kind that are responsible for short, explosive bursts of action—than white French Canadians did. (So far, there is no evidence that even extensive training can turn slow-twitch muscles into fast-twitch ones, though moving in the other direction is possible.)" http://www.slate.com/id/2197721/ http://www.slate.com/id/2197721/
biohacker42 18y ago
Faulty reasoning and crap evidence. If what you say is true why is the tiny island of Jamaica vastly dominant instead of any of the MILLIONS more west Africans in west Africa? Further more natural selection is rarely as neat and tidy as described. Why didn't west Africans evolve superb night vision, to see the men painted black? Why didn't they evolve supreme hearing, to hear the sneaky approach? While it may be possible west Africans are faster due to genetics, your evidence and theories are bit too neat.
- maxklein 18y ago

akuafo 18y ago

why is this story listed on hacker news?

rkts 18y ago
Someone ought to write a script that scans every submission for the words "startup," "Paul Graham," and "Y Combinator" and posts some variation of "Not Hacker News!!!!!" whenever it doesn't find them. At least it would save you all some effort.
- silentbicycle 18y ago
  Somebody probably already has.
- mechanical_fish 18y ago
  I think that's a great idea. ... Okay, I'm joking. A bot which votes automatically is a bad idea. But, in all seriousness: Perhaps every single article should come with a tiny button to press, with a label: "I believe this article is offtopic for HN". This suggestion has been made thousands of times by now. The counter-argument -- a good one -- is that enabling the downvoting of articles empowers gangs of organized downvoters to kill content from the site for arbitrary reasons. Everyone knows the kind of trouble that causes. But that presumes that the downvote button is hooked up to something in the site's software. It doesn't need to be. Just display a tiny number that is the number of accumulated downvotes. Let the people who read each article, and decide whether to upvote it or not, choose whether or not to ignore that number. In the absence of this feature, the users reinvent it for themselves, as we have seen again and again. You may ask why the people who wish to express disapproval of an article can't just write a thoughtful post that explains why, instead of clicking a little DOWNVOTE button. The short answer is that to acknowledge a troll is to feed the troll. The longer answer is that some trolls are much more subtle than others: The ones who use rude one-liners are easy to spot, but there are others who will suck you into endlessly circling, long-winded, bad-faith arguments filled with chaff. You'll refute something, and they'll respond with a mixture of inaccurate and irrelevant bullet points; and you'll introduce good points of your own, and they'll be ignored in future posts; and if by some miracle you create a really compelling counter-argument, the troll will go away for two days and then come back, advancing the same argument that he did two days ago, as if the counter-argument had never existed. You can't avoid such people by engaging them -- engagement is what they want. You have to learn their reputations and politely but firmly avoid them. Which I do. But that doesn't mean I want to sit idly by while effluvia overflows the front page of HN. The site could really use a "cold shoulder" button. [EDIT: Okay, I promoted this crazy idea to its own submission: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=281431 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=281431 ]

omouse 18y ago

Not Hacker news.

abstractbill 18y ago
I find the "cure" (endless threads about things not being hacker news) much worse than the disease.
- omouse 18y ago
  I did it because I saw some comment http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=280676 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=280676 mentioning it. My poor attempt at humour, heh. I forgot some exclamation marks too!
  - abstractbill 18y ago
    Ah, my apologies then, it's rather easy to miss that kind of humor in this medium.

seano 18y ago

I think the answer is somewhat more obvious. Look at the facilities, coaches and funding available for athletes in the USA, Jamaica, and Britain compared to West Africa.

bokonist 18y ago
He wasn't comparing the USA/West Indies/Britain to West Africa. He was asking why USA/West Indies/Britain/West Africa do so much better than Brazil and other non-anglophone countries.

Tichy 18y ago

What about doping? Another throwaway idea: racism still exists, so the blacker somebody looks, the more likely they'll have to resort to desperate means like allowing dangerous medical experiments on their bodies (doping) to still have some success in society. (I am not claiming this is the explanation, just want to point out another possible explanation).

occam 18y ago
That doesn't explain why west Africans are so strong at sprinting but very weak at distance running, while east Africans are the opposite (dominant in distance running, very weak sprinters), nor why whites are somewhat competitive in the middle distances but not sprints and long distances.
- Tichy 18y ago
  You have to be careful with "explain" - sure you can "explain" anything with a presumed genetic disposition. That is in general not really a proof, only yet another theory. I just wanted to point out that there are alternative explanations. For example, Europeans tend to be really good at soccer, whereas Americans suck at it. Is it genetic? I highly doubt it, since the European genes are readily available in the US. It has a cultural reason (simple statistics - popular sports - higher percentage of kids trying it - higher percentage of talents being discovered).
  - Tichy 18y ago
    I want to add to this a question, because I truly don't know: who are the kids picking up running 100m distances as their main sport? What is their motivation? I can imagine why people get into team sports, for example, but I can't imagine a huge number of people go into 100m running out of intrinsic self motivation, simply because it is so much fun to run 100m? So maybe the "system" matters much more for 100m running than for most other sports. The system being things like "scholarships in exchange for sports", the way talent gets identified and promoted, and so on. Just saying that this would be another aspect that might distort the statistics. I recently heard the quote "Jamaica is too small to have their own drug testing agency"...

msie 18y ago

Quite a controversial author: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Sailer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Sailer

rms 18y ago

https://www.23andme.com/gen101/variation/speed/ https://www.23andme.com/gen101/variation/speed/

jazj 18y ago

Jesus, we're linking Steve Sailer now? This place really is getting worse than Reddit.