4 ms·
The idea that skin color or athletic ability is "heritable" but not intelligence seems an idea more motivated by our cultural stance of anti-intellectualism tha
by jey 19y ago
The idea that skin color or athletic ability is "heritable" but not intelligence seems an idea more motivated by our cultural stance of anti-intellectualism than by any data. If you want to be politically correct you must assume that everyone has the same intellectual potential, but you don't have to make that assumption for athletic ability.
This cultural convention affected me even as I was writing this comment: I hesitated to write "intellectual potential" in the previous sentence and had written something indirect like "potential in this area" at first.
/although i wonder what an "executive function" is. :\
- Tichy 19y agoI am not sure about the athletic ability? Of course somebody who is taller is more suited for basketball than somebody smaller, but in general? The smaller guy might be better suited for some other task. It is just that the brain seems to be a fairly universal tool, we don't really know aspects equivalent to being tall or small that would apply to the brain yet, or do we? It rather seems that parts of the brain are exchangeable, as could be seen from the blind guy who learned to see things with his tongue (machine would translate images to impressions on the tongue). So what would be the problem of less intelligent brains? Synapses working slightly slower? Less neurons - but why can't you grow them by training (like muscles)? Or what? On the other hand, clearly intelligence is 100% genetic: no matter how much you nurture a pig, it will never go to harvard.
- nickb 19y agoAthletic ability is highly genetic. It has to do with what ratio of muscle fibers you have and all of the research so far suggests that it's genetic. http://sportsmedicine.about.com/cs/exercisephysiology/a/aa080901a.htm http://sportsmedicine.about.com/cs/exercisephysiology/a/aa08...