Racial differences...

[Centurion1]

If anyone says that blacks are meeting athletic because they just are I will find you and kill you.

That assumption is my biggest pet peeve, probably because I'm an athlete

[Kadagar_AV]

If anyone says that blacks are meeting athletic because they just are I will find you and kill you.

That assumption is my biggest pet peeve, probably because I'm an athlete

Thank you for your time. Clearly you put a lot of thought into that reply. Rest assured though, I am fairly confident that this thread will not lead to murder. So you are an athlete, I could never have guessed. You don't by any chance also happen to be coloured in a rather darker shade, or is that too much of an assumption?

Clearly you furthered the debate here, well done you!














EDIT: Banging head against keyboard in frustration was obviously not a very successful way of typing, so I had to fix some minor spelling mistakes.

[Hax]

Is the fact that africans excel at long distance running only a cultural question?

No.

Is it important? No.

Does this mean that non-blacks aren't as athletic as blacks? No, not necessarily, as Centurion1 quite eloquently explained.

[Kadagar_AV]

No.

Is it important? No.

Does this mean that non-blacks aren't as athletic as blacks? No, not necessarily, as Centurion1 quite eloquently explained.

So... research into the area as to how mankind can enhance their performance is not of interest?

It is not important to study the very foundation of our being?

Would you mind elaborating your point?

[Hax]

quite eloquently explained.
So... research into the area as to how mankind can enhance their performance is not of interest?

It is not important to study the very foundation of our being?

Would you mind elaborating your point?

No, that's not what I meant! I think that we should research the structure of humans and the differences in race and the influence of geographic location. But what you're doing here is calling back the age-old "nature vs nurture" debate. What I meant is that we should not pay heed to those findings too much, in case we go too far and fall back in social darwinism and eugenetics.

[Rhyfelwyr]

Maybe there are some differences, but at the end of the day there don't seem to be any major differences beyond physical appearances, so I wouldn't get too hung up on it.

[Kadagar_AV]

Maybe there are some differences, but at the end of the day there don't seem to be any major differences beyond physical appearances, so I wouldn't get too hung up on it.

So, you claim that there might be some differences, but that science at large shouldn't bother.

Clearly you have a brain for science.

[Louis VI the Fat]

If anyone says that blacks are meeting athletic because they just are I will find you and kill you.

That assumption is my biggest pet peeve, probably because I'm an athlete

Blacks are meeting athletic because they just are.



Athletic achievement at the very highest level requires a lot of hard work, on top of an exactly right constellation of genetic factors. Maradona would never have become the world's greatest Basketball player. We will not see a woman as the world's weight lifting championship. (But, should we develop training and food enough to swim 200 kilometers, this might see a female champion, with the male competitors dropping death along the way).

Specialised athletics is a genetic freak show.

[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: