Racial differences...

[Centurion1]

It is cultural more than anything for football and basketball

[A Nerd]

I once saw that if your ring finger was larger than your middle finger (or perhaps index vs. middle), this meant that genetically you were a better athlete than those without such a phycial trait. I don't know however, if this had anything to do with ethnicity. I am your average athlete...soooo....

[Louis VI the Fat]

I once saw that if your ring finger was larger than your middle finger (or perhaps index vs. middle), this meant that genetically you were a better athlete than those without such a phycial trait. I don't know however, if this had anything to do with ethnicity. I am your average athlete...soooo....

Yes, people with longer ring fingers than index fingers are far better athletes.


Mostly, I presume, because the former are male and the latter female. (Yes, have a look at you boy/girlfriend's hands - the fingers are of different lenght. I had never even noticed it until I had read about it.)

It is cultural more than anything for football and basketball

White men can't jump!

[Centurion1]

I have a higher vertical jump than anyone at my school and could dunk the end of freshman year

[Louis VI the Fat]

I have a higher vertical jump than anyone at my school and could dunk the end of freshman year

Way cool. Me, I've never even got close to being able to dunk.



The thing is, a small difference can make a huge difference at the very highest level. Take the two nearly identical bell curves below of 'dunking capacity', with 'litlle jump capacity' on the left, and 'Michael Jordan' on the right (the 'gifted area'). Neraly half of all reds are better than nearly half of all blues. But, because the top of the one curve is slightly more to the right than the other, in the top and bottom percentiles, and even more in the top 0,001%, the differences between the two groups are huge, even if the averages are very close indeed. This explains why specialised, 'single determining factor' athleticism at the top is so monocultural.

In the picture below, imagine that 'NBA level basketball' would require a gifted capacity of 130 or higher. It now becomes clear that even though red and blue don't differ all that much, at NBA level, blue is very dominant:

[Centurion1]

Heresy! The gods will strike down your blasphemy

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Way cool. Me, I've never even got close to being able to dunk.



The thing is, a small difference can make a huge difference at the very highest level. Take the two nearly identical bell curves below of 'dunking capacity', with 'litlle jump capacity' on the left, and 'Michael Jordan' on the right (the 'gifted area'). Neraly half of all reds are better than nearly half of all blues. But, because the top of the one curve is slightly more to the right than the other, in the top and bottom percentiles, and even more in the top 0,001%, the differences between the two groups are huge, even if the averages are very close indeed. This explains why specialised, 'single determining factor' athleticism at the top is so monocultural.

In the picture below, imagine that 'NBA level basketball' would require a gifted capacity of 130 or higher. It now becomes clear that even though red and blue don't differ all that much, at NBA level, blue is very dominant:

This is by far the best explanation I have seen of the phenomenon, both for sense and clarity.

To be honest, I don't understand why there is such an aversion to admitting that people from one place are predisposed to be better at something than people from another. It's quite clear that the human species has adapted to different environments and diverged in some fairly marked ways.

Key example: Black people are much less likely to get skin cancer, and probably other cancers as well, as a knock on.

[Centurion1]

because it invariably turns into social darwinism. Race A is smarter than Race B, etc.

dont ge tme wrong im a fan of letting all facts be known but that is inevitably always what happens

[Louis VI the Fat]

This is by far the best explanation I have seen of the phenomenon, both for sense and clarity.

Cool, innit?

There are lots of fun statistics to be had with bell curves. or example, it is possible that the peak of the red curve is to the right of the blue one, but that the blue has a larger spread. In this case, despite the reds being more talented, in the extremes, the blues are the majority.

I've always wondered whether this isn't the difference between men and women in many aspects. Women are so overwhelmingly 'normal'. Most of the imbeciles and geniuses I know are men. What's more, even more rare are female combinations of the two: the clever idiot, and the confused genius. Or, as that 70's book title read: There are no female Einsteins because there are no female Jack the rippers.