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The Goat?
A friend of mine, a man-in-tech of eminently WASP background of moderately liberal orientation in case you care, has been bemoaning the downstream consequences of the floundering of Marissa Mayer of Yahoo!, the confused direction of 23andMe under Anne Wojcicki, and finally, there is Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. These are three separate cases. I don’t believe that Mayer ever had a high probability of success at Yahoo!; it was a legacy of the late 1990s that had never managed to pivot and find a new direction. Even a company with as many resources as Microsoft has been having difficulties finding domains where it can both be dominant and produce growth. Yahoo! never had the success of Microsoft, and so doesn’t have as much margin.
Of course long odds does not mean that a turnaround was impossible. I’m old enough to remember when Steve Jobs came back to Apple and many people shrugged, as it looked inevitable that the firm’s future was in diminishing returns on the margins of the consumer and educational PC market in the shadow of Microsoft and PCs (at one point Microsoft was making more profits on sales of Apple computers than Apple because of the Office productivity suite from what I recall). Obviously it didn’t play out like that. If Marissa Mayer had turned around Yahoo! she’d be a genius. If she failed, as she seems likely to at this point, there will be some sort of exit strategy where she will save face, and there will be no threat to her solid position among the firmament of American oligarchs. The likes of Mayer are seeking glory like the Roman Senators of yore. Only a few will go down in history as men or women of renown, but all will die rich and comfortable.
As Marissa Mayer is a beautiful and intelligent woman who will reproduce above replacement, of course I was always rooting for her. Beauty and intelligence are good. In some measure ambition is as well. And when was being coldly analytic an insult? I couldn’t care less about Yahoo!, as it’s irrelevant to the American economy as a whole. But I cared a bit about Mayer’s success, though I was always pessimistic. Probably some of the same dynamic applied to my attitudes toward Elizabeth Holmes, who seemed smart and attractive, though I didn’t pay attention closely to her claims or business. The issue which many, including Steve Sailer, have suggested, and which my friend agrees with, is that because of the cultural expectation that the tech sector promote “diversity”, Holmes went somewhat under the radar due to dampened due diligence. An extreme case of this sort of thing occurred with Jayson Blair at The New York Times, where Howell Raines admitted that as a liberal white Southerner he was inclined to treating Blair “gently”. Ballooning of reputations and media hagiographies of tech visionaries are not without precedent (it’s a substantial proportion of the copy of glossy business magazines), but some have wondered if Elizabeth Holmes’ story was just too good to inquire too closely. Not only did she fit the stereotypical motif of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs (e.g., Stanford dropout attempting to “disrupt” a sector with innovation), but she also served as an exemplar of a young woman who falsified the idea that the sector was doomed to remain a man’s game.
With 23andMe and Anne Wojcicki, I have no idea what’s going on, but it is, and always has been, confused. I found out from inside sources what happened with the initial FDA letter, and what I can say is that it wasn’t part of the plan in any way but a total f**k up. 23andMe has a high valuation, and an incredible database, and seems totally pivoting to the health market, shaking off its past in recreational genetics (read: genealogy, etc.). But from what I’ve heard Ancestry has surpassed, or is close to surpassing, 23andMe’s database (speaking of, as of this writing Ancestry has a 20% of sale, on checkout at Amazon). I wonder if 23andMe isn’t getting a bit overconfident, as Ancestry is going to shift into the health space too.
Obviously biases are real. CEOs tend to look a certain way. They’re far taller than average. And in Silicon Valley they’re disproportionately white males, as in the rest of corporate America (though less so). The die is probably loaded in favor of white males in relation to getting to the top of management. I’ve had enough experience in “industry” (i.e., the real world), as they would say in academia, to know that “corporate culture” often does have connotations which exclude particular groups naturally. If, for example, you are a business person in South Korea, the marathon drinking sessions are going to disadvantage many women and teetotalers. I think one of the reasons that Asian Americans, and in particular East Asians, are under-represented in management roles in Silicon Valley in relation to their representation in engineering positions has to do with personality, cultural norms (e.g., Asian parents not emphasizing sports and the sort of comradeship that it engenders and translates into the business world), and just the “look” (too many Asian American engineers are short and not fit).*
But I think the example of Elizabeth Holmes suggests that shifting the playing field a bit in business journalism does no one a service. The next time a young blonde attractive woman makes a pitch to investors no doubt one prior that is going to rattle in their brains is going to be “is she going to be another Elizabeth Holmes?” That’s just a cognitive bias. Though privately people will likely state this openly.
Speaking of cognitive biases, I’m about halfway through The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter. Yes, it’s as good as readers have told me. But, I’ll be honest and state that I knew most of it already in the generality, though not the ethnographic details (for example, I did not know that Inuit ate deer feces like “berries”; thanks for that Joe!). Part of this has to do with the fact that I’ve kept up on the author’s research since 2004, when I encountered his models of skill decay in Tasmanian Aboriginals. And, I’m familiar with the fields of cultural evolution more broadly. Additionally, I’ll bring it up in my review, but I think that he wrote at an unfortunate time when it comes to drawing lessons from human genomics, because some of his assertions have been falsified! (he wrote the preface in January of 2015, a year ago).
Reading The Secret of Our Success after I finished Consciousness and the Brain was also pretty lucky, as some of the assertions made in the former book seem much stronger and robust after the background provided by the latter. In the near future I plan to re-read both Origin of Mind: Evolution of Brain, Cognition, and General Intelligence and The g Factor: The Science of Mental Ability. Sometimes re-reading is about refreshing, but I don’t feel that in this case I understood human evolution well at all when I read these previously.
Steve Pinker has something out in The Wall Street Journal, Steven Pinker on New Advances in Behavioral Genetics:
But new studies looking for small effects of thousands of genes in large samples have pinpointed a few genetic loci that each accounts for a fraction of an IQ point. More studies are in the pipeline and will link those genes to brain development, showing that they are not statistical curiosities. The emerging picture is that most behavioral traits are affected by many, many genes, each accounting for a tiny percentage of the variance.
When Pinker says that studies are in the pipeline, he’s thinking of concrete studies which are in review, and which will blow your minds (though the usual suspects will obfuscate and ignore).
In relation to Steven Pinker, he gets a lot of hate and dismissal. Even Joe Henrich in The Secret of Our Success uses him as somewhat of a foil, though in a good-natured manner (Henrich and Pinker are now colleagues at Harvard, so collegiality is probably for the best). I still think that for writing The Blank Slate alone Steven Pinker will go down in history as an important thinker (though The Language Instinct was the most revelatory book of Pinker’s for me).
When I run TreeMix I often get gene flow edges from Africans or to Africans from a region of the graph basal in eastern Eurasians. I ignore these because they don’t make sense. But they don’t make sense because I’m missing something in the bigger picture. I’m sure a year or two years or three years from now it will all make sense. Just filing this away as results which I can’t make heads or tails of, but which are telling us something with Delphic clarity.
On to genetic data sets. I’ll post on this soon. But the 1000 Genomes are a disparate bunch when it comes to South Asians. The Tamils and Telegu speakers have three Brahmins each in them. Also, both groups have rather endogamous low caste populations as a small subset, distinct from the broader mass. The Gujaratis are highly structured, with a large cluster of Patels, but also various other groups in the mix in a cline out toward Northwest Indians (so I assume middle castes and Guju Brahmins). The Punjabis, sampled from Lahore, are also strange, because they exhibit a very extreme cline, from near the Gujaratis all the way toward West Asian/European populations as far as Pathans. Does this have something to do with people of Muhajir background or mix identifying as Punjabi? Finally, the Bengalis are curious, because they are different from the other South Asian groups in exhibiting minimal structure. These were people sampled in Dhaka, but the cluster is very tight, except five individuals who are closer to the South Indian groups. Two of these five have sample numbers adjacent, so I wondered if they were collected together. Unlike the other Bengalis these individuals don’t seem to have substantial East Asian admixture. I have no idea what group this might be, but I have a hunch that they’re derived from an endogamous caste (probably Hindus) who migrated to the area of Bangladesh in the last few hundred years from another region of South Asia. Finally, I have to note that the Bengali populations exhibit far fewer individuals with long runs of homozygosity than the other South Asian groups. Less than the Punjabis or South Indians, which stands to reason since these groups engage in high levels of consanguinity. But also lower than Gujaratis. The implications of this later….
Xinjiang Seethes Under Chinese Crackdown. I wish the media would explore the relationship of Uighurs, and Hui Muslims, in Xinjiang (the latter are called Dungans in Central Asia). That would get at the ethnic vs. religion tensions. Though in China proper the Hui are often proud of their Islamic identity, in Turkestan their affinities to the Han group, both physically and linguistically, become salient. Because of their Muslim religion and martial character the Hui/Dungans were often used as enforcers of Chinese hegemony by the Manchus. A somewhat greater number of Muslims in China are Hui than Uighur.
I stole my kids’ candy-canes. It was for their own good! Am I a bad person? Christmas was fun. My wife read Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, but I did not (aside from a chapter Bryan Caplan asked me to read to check for any issues). I don’t need selfish reasons to have more kids. I like kids. Christmas was fun when I was a kid. But it’s more fun by far when you have kids. 
Watching my ~1.5 year old son sit down with his new board book is pretty awesome. The world is his oyster. Or at least toy truck.
I haven’t read the GCTA isn’t all that paper in PNAS. Yes, it’s not titled that, and also, am I a bad person? Yaniv Erlich is a good person, as he has read and responded. The Twitter reaction seems to be skeptical, but cautious. The reality is when the great Alkes Price or Michael Goddard weighs in we’ll know if this is simply a pretender to the throne.
A big deal at some point: phenopredict21.
Uncovering the genetic architectures of quantitative traits. On my “to-read” after the GCTA-sucks papers. (if you don’t know what GCTA is, shame on you! Read this: GCTA: A Tool for Genome-wide Complex Trait Analysis).
Edge, 2016 : WHAT DO YOU CONSIDER THE MOST INTERESTING RECENT [SCIENTIFIC] NEWS? WHAT MAKES IT IMPORTANT? To some extent if it doesn’t match =~ /CRISPR/ somewhere I’m underwhelmed. Did you see In vivo genome editing improves muscle function in a mouse model of Duchenne muscular dystrophy?
Michael Shermer: Murdering the facts about Homo naledi? Shermer also parrots those who criticize the H. naledi team for not publishing in Nature or Science. I happen to have been in Washington, D.C., when Lee Berger gave a private presentation on the findings over two years ago. And he already told me that the key was getting this research out quickly, and, dumping the data out there so that others could have access to it. It’s not just about H. naledi, it’s about changing how palaeoanthropology is done.
For those of you in Houston, I know that Cooking Girl has better Yelp reviews than Mala. Doesn’t deserve it in my opinion, though I’ll have to sample Cooking Girl more than once….
Also, I’ve spent some time in Austin, TX, recently. I lived in Portland, OR, years ago. Those who say that Austin is like the Texas version of Portland seem to totally capture it.
* I say Asian Americans, because internationals have obvious cultural handicaps in an American corporation.
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I like Yahoo for its key word news feed – nothing else like it as far as I know. If she fails, at least she’s left us with something to remember her by:
Hi Razib, all,
Came across a paper that I was curious to see people’s thoughts on:
National income inequality predicts women’s preferences for masculinized faces better than health does
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/278/1707/810.short
I came across it because one of the authors is Michael Kasumovic, a researcher who’s focus is usually sexual selection among spiders, though he also did this paper which I think most people here probably saw.
Insights into Sexism: Male Status and Performance Moderates Female-Directed Hostile and Amicable Behaviour
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0131613
Came across a paper that I was curious to see people's thoughts on:
National income inequality predicts women's preferences for masculinized faces better than health does
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/278/1707/810.short
I came across it because one of the authors is Michael Kasumovic, a researcher who's focus is usually sexual selection among spiders, though he also did this paper which I think most people here probably saw.
Insights into Sexism: Male Status and Performance Moderates Female-Directed Hostile and Amicable Behaviour
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0131613Replies: @Razib Khan
the masculine face lit. in psychology has been kind of not robust from what i know. not super impressed with the figure and this sort of national comparison in terms of causality fwiw.
I was looking through The Secrets of Our Success at the bookstore yesterday. While it looks interesting, I was wondering how much new info there will be having read so many books in this general area recently.
I looked at a book by Dehaene the other day about neuroscience of reading and was really impressed. Even though this is more in my area, I think there is a ton to learn from his work. I usually avoid brain books for my pleasure reading, but feel I should read all of his stuff.
I read Jensen’s book on g about a year ago based on your recommendation. It is fantastic.
Also skimmed a new autobiography by John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival. I really feel for the guy: a pop-music genius who was teamed up with three jealous and untalented guys, and was also exploited by his music company. His description of the creative process of songwriting is really interesting.
Currently reading the Pulitzer prizewinning biography of Oppenheimer. Really interesting, and a nice complement to the Rhodes books about development of atomic and hydrogen bombs.
That African signal in East Asia is picked up by haplotype analysis. Here’s a quick comparison of Chromopainter chunks donated by Sub-Saharan Africans to some European, Near Eastern and East Eurasian populations. The aggregated differences are not huge but may be consistent with the observed migration edges.
(Original run by Anders Pålsen here: http://fennoscandia.blogspot.no/2013/04/updated-world-analysis.html)
Wong & Khrunin et al (2015) also picks it up using high coverage sequences, so it should not be a genotyping issue. Another ghost population?
ADMIXTURE also may pick something like that up (for example k=3 in figure S4: http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1005602) but, if it is related, likely in exaggarated form.
In terms of profits and subscribers, Ancestry.com is the BIG KAHUNA in the “Recreational Genetics” market both in the USA and Worldwide. Using both Genealogical Data and Genetic Data, neither 23andme nor FTDNA can come anywhere close to them.
Consumers involved with any of these companies need to be aware that their aggregated “Recreational Genetic” data has been / will be used / could be used by BIG PHARMA and the Drug Industry. All it takes is a change in the Terms and Conditions which most consumers never read.
Ancestry.com has issued its third dividend since sale to Permira in 2012. Permira, a European private equity firm with ties to people like Mr. Damon Buffini at the Wellcome Trust, got back nearly all of its investment in Ancestry.com LLC after nearly three years.
Based in Provo, Utah, Ancestry.com has a database of more than 16 billion historical records and more than 2.1 million paying subscribers. Subscription fees accounted for 83 percent of its total revenue.
Ancestry.com had said on August 10, 2015 that it is in the market with US$835 million in loans that it plans to use to repay debt and fund a cash dividend to its shareholders. Proceeds from the US$835 million in loans were used to fund a $215 million special dividend to Ancestry.com’s shareholders.
North Provo, Utah-based Ancestry.com is a genetic genealogy website (or as Razib might say: “recreational genetic genealogy” as opposed to “professional human population genetics” with more than 16 billion records that “recreational” subscribers can use to research their heritage. Ancestry.com reported that its second quarter 2015 revenue grew nearly 9 percent to $169.4 million on $13.7 million in net income. Adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter 2015 was $67.3 million.
In 2012, Permira led a consortium to buy Ancestry.com in a $1.6 billion deal. The deal closed in December of that year. Total equity in the transaction, which includes rollover from management and private investors, came to $685 million.
Permira owns 50 percent of Ancestry.com. Three Permira representatives sit on Ancestry.com’s seven-member Operating Committee, according to the company’s website. http://corporate.ancestry.com/about-ancestry/leadership/operating-committee/
The current $215 million dividend is the third payout Ancestry.com has issued since the Permira-led group acquired the company in 2012. Ancestry.com paid out a distribution in September 2013 and another in February 2014 for a combined $400 million. In all, Ancestry has paid out more than $600 million in dividends.
News of the dividends comes as Permira has put Ancestry.com up for sale via an auction, Reuters reported in May 2015. Permira was reportedly seeking bids of $2 billion to $2.5 billion, Reuters said. Could a founder of Google or a founder of 23andme or a founder of Amazon.com be bidding on Ancestry.com? Could it be Razib? Don’t ask that question to anybody who is a mere “recreational investor” … instead look to “professional investors” for clues and investment wisdom.
Permira used its fourth fund to invest in Ancestry.com. Permira Fund IV collected 9.6 billion euros ($10.6 billion) in 2006. Last year, the European private equity firm’s fifth buyout fund raised 5.3 billion euros ($5.9 billion). Permira IV LP is producing a 6.3 percent net IRR and 1.3x investment multiple as of December 31, 2015 according to the California Public Employees’ Retirement System. The fifth fund, a very young pool, is generating an -11.9 percent net IRR and 0.9x investment multiple.
If all this insider information is a bit too much for you, then you are for sure a “Recreational Investor” reading a blog aimed at Radical Conservative minded people interested in genetics.
What about the disaster at Reddit with Chairman Pao?? Female and Asian-American. Women can be good employees but they are not innovators or leaders. Same with Asian-Americans.
The marathon whisky and Soju sessions in Korea are overstated; in any case, few younger Ameriicans (Asian american or otherwise) can deink larg quantities of Whisky. Koreans are pretty poor in drinking themselvs and can be easily outdrunk by Indians.
I agree with the importance of both The Blank Slate and The Language Instinct, and also recommend Pinker’s other two language books: Words and Rules and The Stuff of Thought, which delve deeply into how relatively small facets of language provide deep insights into how our minds work.
But fundamentally, I think Pinker’s superpower is that he is unabashedly a proponent of many facets of HBD and is still a well-respected public intellectual. As a recent example, his piece some months ago about how colleges and universities should base admissions policy on cognitive abilities (aka IQ, as measured by standard tests) would have led to tarring and feathering of just about anybody else.
i don't think he's unabashed. his public position is cautious and open about human biological diversity in its more controversial form, that of group differences in heritable behavioral traits. pinker rather has been instrumental in keeping the idea that we have a human nature, and some things, like sex differences, are universal in a fundamental manner because of our biological inheritance. secondarily, he has also mainstreamed ideas from behavioral genetics, which focuses on individual differences, though the group differences are what people get worked up about. it's important to distinguish these things, because the reality is over the past generation parts of the cultural left have been hostile to BOTH human biological universals, and, behavioral genetics. HBD is basically an non-starter and just something that's not even on the table as worthy of consideration.Replies: @Sean
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_alcohol_consumption_per_capita
South Korea 12.3 liters per capita per annum.
India 4.3 liters per capita per annum.
Of course, this doesn’t factor in the male vs. female ratio among drinkers, religion (% of Muslims), etc.
But whatever the South Koreans may think about the “manliness” of binge drinking, the Indians should take pride in imbibing far less and being more sane about heavy alcohol consumption.
I have a friend in in the Army and boy does he love his drinking and cigarettes.Replies: @Twinkie
Here is something I don’t understand. From what I can tell, among Asian-Americans Koreans are the tallest and the most athletic. They are also overrepresented at West Point (and in the army officer corps), which, unlike most universities, actually emphasize and inculcate leadership and command presence. Koreans, along with Filipinos and Vietnamese (who are also well-represented in the military though in the lower ranks rather than in the officer corps), also display high rates of social and civic assimilation.
Yet, it appears that there are many more prominent Chinese and Indian CEOs in the United States than is the case with Koreans. So, while I broadly agree about the height, sports, leadership, and such cultural factors, I do wonder whether there must be something else powerful at work. Perhaps a strong mercantile tradition? (i.e. Koreans didn’t have any prior to the 1960’s, and one can argue that they still don’t.)
Yet, it appears that there are many more prominent Chinese and Indian CEOs in the United States than is the case with Koreans. So, while I broadly agree about the height, sports, leadership, and such cultural factors, I do wonder whether there must be something else powerful at work. Perhaps a strong mercantile tradition? (i.e. Koreans didn't have any prior to the 1960's, and one can argue that they still don't.)Replies: @Razib Khan
korean americans are republican christians. the other two groups are neither christian nor republican (especially indians/south asians). perhaps the culture politics in tech, where u’d expect asians to be numerous, are such that it works against koreans?
What about within the Indian diaspora? Aren't Punjabis, for example, some of the tallest and the most "martial" among Indians, yet are not as well represented as Southern Indians in the upper echelons of the tech industry?
Also, the corporate culture of East Asia - Northern Chinese, Japanese, and Korean - is pretty militaristic/authoritarian/seniority-based. I would suspect that is not a corporate culture that translates well to the United States. Meanwhile the Southern (and diaspora) Chinese corporate culture is more mercantile, less militaristic. Taiwan and South Korea have had similar economic development trajectories (garrison state politics combined with export orientation economies), but in Taiwan, unlike in South Korea, corporate development has been more along small- to medium-sized businesses, not giant Zaibatsu or Zaibatsu-like conglomerates. I think there may be more Taiwanese-American CEOs than Korean-American CEOs.Replies: @Razib Khan, @Binger, @A4
NY Post: Mayer spends money like Marie Antoinette
http://nypost.com/2016/01/02/marissa-mayer-is-throwing-around-money-like-marie-antoinette/
I didn’t think about the politics/religion angle. That’s definitely something to consider. I *actually* know a handful of devout Christian tech executives whose religiosity was an obstacle and a discussion point in hiring decisions at a couple of companies (Google was one).
What about within the Indian diaspora? Aren’t Punjabis, for example, some of the tallest and the most “martial” among Indians, yet are not as well represented as Southern Indians in the upper echelons of the tech industry?
Also, the corporate culture of East Asia – Northern Chinese, Japanese, and Korean – is pretty militaristic/authoritarian/seniority-based. I would suspect that is not a corporate culture that translates well to the United States. Meanwhile the Southern (and diaspora) Chinese corporate culture is more mercantile, less militaristic. Taiwan and South Korea have had similar economic development trajectories (garrison state politics combined with export orientation economies), but in Taiwan, unlike in South Korea, corporate development has been more along small- to medium-sized businesses, not giant Zaibatsu or Zaibatsu-like conglomerates. I think there may be more Taiwanese-American CEOs than Korean-American CEOs.
The small size of the Taiwan's population probably has something to do with it.Replies: @Twinkie
What about within the Indian diaspora? Aren't Punjabis, for example, some of the tallest and the most "martial" among Indians, yet are not as well represented as Southern Indians in the upper echelons of the tech industry?
Also, the corporate culture of East Asia - Northern Chinese, Japanese, and Korean - is pretty militaristic/authoritarian/seniority-based. I would suspect that is not a corporate culture that translates well to the United States. Meanwhile the Southern (and diaspora) Chinese corporate culture is more mercantile, less militaristic. Taiwan and South Korea have had similar economic development trajectories (garrison state politics combined with export orientation economies), but in Taiwan, unlike in South Korea, corporate development has been more along small- to medium-sized businesses, not giant Zaibatsu or Zaibatsu-like conglomerates. I think there may be more Taiwanese-American CEOs than Korean-American CEOs.Replies: @Razib Khan, @Binger, @A4
i don’t know that much about south asians really and their stereotypes (i grew up among white people 😉 but i’ve heard that north indian types represent more in marketing and front of the house stuff and south indians on the technical side. but that’s from one friend of mine who is much more indian in his cultural orientation. also, re: south indians, a disproportionate number are the same upper caste groups which migrated to the cities of the north to address shortages in talent in civil service positions in the colonial period (i believe nadella and pichai are both s indian brahmins, though i’m not 100% sure).
punjabi, and particularly sikh, militarism is not something that special to them. remember that the british armies were mostly bengali and tamil. but sikhs in particular were loyal during the mutiny, and were privileged and considered loyal and martialized (not that they weren’t after the mughal years!). but i think re: personality there’s not that big of a gap between the groups, though they are more raucous. also, re: height, it seems that the big gap is west to east, not north south. i’ve seen data that south indians from kerala are nearly as tall. kerala is a region where public health is good, and the diet is not not vegetarian (kerala hindus even eat beef!).
I think both of you have a romantic view of CEOs as tall, fair, handsome chaps who make dashing decisons, whereas in reality, almost all the CEOs I saw are old bald men who spent like 40 years in the same industry. Most decisions are made by bubbling options via email and meetings through hundreds of underlings, with CEOs acting as mouthpieces. Given that most Asians arrived in the US in 70s/80s, it may be a few years before there are sufficient CEOs of Asian origin.
There are a negligible number of Elizabeth Holmes look alikes in industry; most of them look like your grandfather. The demands of quarterly reports and analyst expectations have made most CEOs primarily stock watchers; actual day-to-day running of the company has long moved down in the organizations.Replies: @Razib Khan, @Twinkie, @AG
Twinkie, Razib:
I think both of you have a romantic view of CEOs as tall, fair, handsome chaps who make dashing decisons, whereas in reality, almost all the CEOs I saw are old bald men who spent like 40 years in the same industry. Most decisions are made by bubbling options via email and meetings through hundreds of underlings, with CEOs acting as mouthpieces. Given that most Asians arrived in the US in 70s/80s, it may be a few years before there are sufficient CEOs of Asian origin.
There are a negligible number of Elizabeth Holmes look alikes in industry; most of them look like your grandfather. The demands of quarterly reports and analyst expectations have made most CEOs primarily stock watchers; actual day-to-day running of the company has long moved down in the organizations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Height_discrimination#In_business
there have been a fair amount of surveys of fortune 500 CEOs. there are certain physical (including voice quality/depth) and personality traits which are well over-represented.Replies: @Karl Zimmerman, @Anonymous
So that's the generality. I question whether that applies as strongly to the tech sector (or something like the show business on the corporate side). My suspicion is that the tech sector selects for somewhat different traits than the traditional main street corporate America.
Most CEOs are not on magazines cover. They tend to be old near retirement unless you are entrepreneurs like Zuckergerg.
I think both of you have a romantic view of CEOs as tall, fair, handsome chaps who make dashing decisons, whereas in reality, almost all the CEOs I saw are old bald men who spent like 40 years in the same industry. Most decisions are made by bubbling options via email and meetings through hundreds of underlings, with CEOs acting as mouthpieces. Given that most Asians arrived in the US in 70s/80s, it may be a few years before there are sufficient CEOs of Asian origin.
There are a negligible number of Elizabeth Holmes look alikes in industry; most of them look like your grandfather. The demands of quarterly reports and analyst expectations have made most CEOs primarily stock watchers; actual day-to-day running of the company has long moved down in the organizations.Replies: @Razib Khan, @Twinkie, @AG
90% of CEOs are above average in height
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Height_discrimination#In_business
there have been a fair amount of surveys of fortune 500 CEOs. there are certain physical (including voice quality/depth) and personality traits which are well over-represented.
This kinda suggests that Asians are relegated to beta status, because they're pretty invariably seen as some stripe of nerd in the high-school pecking order anywhere there is substantial integration. That said, there are many schools in suburbs in California and New Jersey where most of the students are South or East Asian today. One would assume that in a more heavily Asian environment Asian-American kids will feel more free to take on other social roles, including more "broish" ones. So we might see more Asian-Americans come forward in the next generation.Replies: @AG
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Height_discrimination#In_business
there have been a fair amount of surveys of fortune 500 CEOs. there are certain physical (including voice quality/depth) and personality traits which are well over-represented.Replies: @Karl Zimmerman, @Anonymous
I can’t remember if I read it in The Nurture Assumption or her other book, but I know Judith Rich Harris noted one study that found that height at age 16 is more predictive of adult earnings than final adult height. Her conclusion was the “height advantage” in business is not about how height is seen by others, but by internalizing an identity as an “alpha” in the teenage years. Even if you shoot up six inches freshmen year of college (as my father did) it can’t erase having learned to defer to the “bigger and stronger” during your formative years.
This kinda suggests that Asians are relegated to beta status, because they’re pretty invariably seen as some stripe of nerd in the high-school pecking order anywhere there is substantial integration. That said, there are many schools in suburbs in California and New Jersey where most of the students are South or East Asian today. One would assume that in a more heavily Asian environment Asian-American kids will feel more free to take on other social roles, including more “broish” ones. So we might see more Asian-Americans come forward in the next generation.
http://uk.china-info24.com/british/tic/ht/20150826/203367.html
Information here for Han dynasty was average height of entire empire. Northern Hans were actually close to six feet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiahu
Even prehistorical site revealed tall Chinese ancestors in northern China.
Today, only northern Chinese countryside might still have some village preserved the similar height. All of my male direct relatives (northern han) have height above 6 feet. During world war 2, winning Japanese never received any respect in northern Chinese eyes due to their unfortunate short stature.
汉 Han is highly respected words in East Asia due to many factors including military victories over barbarian (especially northern Hun, 夫胡兵五而当汉兵一, "明犯强汉者，虽远必诛" ), physical features. A respected Chinese man is often called "大汉, 汉子, 好汉"
If modern han Chinese ever achieves their Han Ancestor height, there is hope.Replies: @AG, @Erik Sieven
This question (completely off-topic but hope that is okay on an open thread) was prompted by the MR comment thread on your Iran TFR observation.
Can Razib or anyone on this thread tell me if there is a good explanation for the hatred of Iran among many Americans – a good number of republicans and even Garry Kasparov – or Israelis? This seems to be there even among people who are well aware of the Shia-Sunni disctinction, so it can’t be just ignorance or an anti-Muslim attitude. This article makes a strange claim of existence of a “reigning Islamic fundamentalist axis of Turkey-Israel-Saudi Arabia” – while this seems crazy too, it is the only explanation I have heard of that seems to sit in well with what seems to be an obsessive hatred of Iran in the US.
i think some conservatives still have residual russophobia that's analogous. the pundit matt lewis talked about this explicitly, wondering what was up with trump's putin-love when conservatives like him grew up hating the commie russians. personally, i think this sort of reflexive hatred is juvenile, though i understand the emotional basis.
I think in some sense, Iran is like Cuba. Iran was a moderating, secularizing nation-state that was a key pillar in U.S. foreign policy in the region. American idealism holds that the natural and positive trend is to become more like it. Both Cuba and Iran were countries that jilted the U.S. and became revolutionary anti-American regimes. There is a betrayal aspect, with people still arguing about how or why Iran was lost. Most anti-Iranian hawks appear to believe that Iran will return to the fold if the regime is overthrown.
Can Razib or anyone on this thread tell me if there is a good explanation for the hatred of Iran among many Americans - a good number of republicans and even Garry Kasparov - or Israelis? This seems to be there even among people who are well aware of the Shia-Sunni disctinction, so it can't be just ignorance or an anti-Muslim attitude. This article makes a strange claim of existence of a "reigning Islamic fundamentalist axis of Turkey-Israel-Saudi Arabia" - while this seems crazy too, it is the only explanation I have heard of that seems to sit in well with what seems to be an obsessive hatred of Iran in the US.Replies: @Razib Khan, @PD Shaw
first, iranians care more about america than americans do about iran, except for people with preoccupations in the region (this includes zionists as well as some sunni muslims with a arab orientation). the reasons historically the iranian gov. feeds anti-americanism is well known, but this is going to have a reactive effect on the USA. so we hear ‘death to america’ etc. and we think iran is the enemy. if you washed away the history of the 1980s (especially the hostage crisis with the embassy) iran has more in common values wise with the USA than most arab countries, though less than turkey. but i think part of it, aside from realpolitik (the israel-saudi hostility to the reemergence of iran as a great regional power, as opposed to a revolutionary pariah), is just that we’ve historically been on different teams, as stupid as that sounds (also, the iranian gov. has recently still sponsored terrorism in places like saudi arabia, argentina, as well as being a patron of groups like hezbelloh which are enemies of our allies).
i think some conservatives still have residual russophobia that’s analogous. the pundit matt lewis talked about this explicitly, wondering what was up with trump’s putin-love when conservatives like him grew up hating the commie russians. personally, i think this sort of reflexive hatred is juvenile, though i understand the emotional basis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Height_discrimination#In_business
there have been a fair amount of surveys of fortune 500 CEOs. there are certain physical (including voice quality/depth) and personality traits which are well over-represented.Replies: @Karl Zimmerman, @Anonymous
Okay, I’m in a job where I meet a lot of CEOs (and other high-level officials). I sit in their offices and never talk business. Many of the companies you’ve heard of and quite a few (most, actually) of them are tech. I’m a background investigator working for the USG. From my experience a lot of CEOs are big into sports (sports memorabilia around the office– more pro than collegiate level), are exercise/fitness devotees (even when the seem somewhat out of shape), big into family, and very personable. Sometimes they are aloof, but always courteous. And the better educated they are (the more elite and higher level) the nicer they are.
Thank you very much, that was very clarifying; it hadn’t even occurred to me to think of it from the 80s’ perspective though that is so natural to do (though Kasparov’s view still confuses me).
I think both of you have a romantic view of CEOs as tall, fair, handsome chaps who make dashing decisons, whereas in reality, almost all the CEOs I saw are old bald men who spent like 40 years in the same industry. Most decisions are made by bubbling options via email and meetings through hundreds of underlings, with CEOs acting as mouthpieces. Given that most Asians arrived in the US in 70s/80s, it may be a few years before there are sufficient CEOs of Asian origin.
There are a negligible number of Elizabeth Holmes look alikes in industry; most of them look like your grandfather. The demands of quarterly reports and analyst expectations have made most CEOs primarily stock watchers; actual day-to-day running of the company has long moved down in the organizations.Replies: @Razib Khan, @Twinkie, @AG
As Mr. Khan pointed out previously, height correlates well to leadership roles in the corporate world. For that matter, height, along with attractive appearance, correlates well to leadership roles in the military. Some twenty years ago, I read a study made of naval officers in the U.S. that found that officers who were deemed to be handsome advanced more quickly up the ranks than others of similar qualifications and experience. And of course people tend to rate attractive people (which I would assume includes being tall) as being more capable and competent than their peers who are less so. That’s just how the cookie crumbles with us humans. Most people like/follow the tall, attractive, athletic people with a “command presence.” And I think there may even be moderate correlations between IQ and physical attractiveness.
So that’s the generality. I question whether that applies as strongly to the tech sector (or something like the show business on the corporate side). My suspicion is that the tech sector selects for somewhat different traits than the traditional main street corporate America.
also, look at it from the iranian perspective. ok, it makes sense we back israel due to our jewish community and the fact that it started out a socialist secular european country. but saudi arabia??? after the revolution iran sort of became a pariah state, and we backed all of its enemies, including those as unsavory as saudi arabia and saddam’s iraq in the 1980s. our ally/frenemy pakistan sponsors sunni groups like the taliban which spill over into iran’s near-abroad client groups, like committing genocide against persian speaking shia groups like the hazara. they got reasons to be pissed. when america fights, it can fight dirty. we killed their nuclear scientists after all, and fucked with them in all sorts of ways.
Thanks again, it all makes much better sense to me now.
Can Razib or anyone on this thread tell me if there is a good explanation for the hatred of Iran among many Americans - a good number of republicans and even Garry Kasparov - or Israelis? This seems to be there even among people who are well aware of the Shia-Sunni disctinction, so it can't be just ignorance or an anti-Muslim attitude. This article makes a strange claim of existence of a "reigning Islamic fundamentalist axis of Turkey-Israel-Saudi Arabia" - while this seems crazy too, it is the only explanation I have heard of that seems to sit in well with what seems to be an obsessive hatred of Iran in the US.Replies: @Razib Khan, @PD Shaw
I was 11 years old when the Iranians seized the U.S. embassy, and just about every night for over a year, we would watch newscaster Ted Koppel give an update of where matters stood that day. We tied a yellow-ribbon around a tree in the front yard in remembrance of the hostages, but neither before or since were my parents ever demonstrably political. I think the dress and religious medievalism of the clerics make them good “villains.”
I think in some sense, Iran is like Cuba. Iran was a moderating, secularizing nation-state that was a key pillar in U.S. foreign policy in the region. American idealism holds that the natural and positive trend is to become more like it. Both Cuba and Iran were countries that jilted the U.S. and became revolutionary anti-American regimes. There is a betrayal aspect, with people still arguing about how or why Iran was lost. Most anti-Iranian hawks appear to believe that Iran will return to the fold if the regime is overthrown.
I think both of you have a romantic view of CEOs as tall, fair, handsome chaps who make dashing decisons, whereas in reality, almost all the CEOs I saw are old bald men who spent like 40 years in the same industry. Most decisions are made by bubbling options via email and meetings through hundreds of underlings, with CEOs acting as mouthpieces. Given that most Asians arrived in the US in 70s/80s, it may be a few years before there are sufficient CEOs of Asian origin.
There are a negligible number of Elizabeth Holmes look alikes in industry; most of them look like your grandfather. The demands of quarterly reports and analyst expectations have made most CEOs primarily stock watchers; actual day-to-day running of the company has long moved down in the organizations.Replies: @Razib Khan, @Twinkie, @AG
Agree with you.
Most CEOs are not on magazines cover. They tend to be old near retirement unless you are entrepreneurs like Zuckergerg.
The Theranos narrative always seemed a bit fishy to me. The idea of using a benchtop device to get accurate and reliable biochemistry results from miniscule quantities of blood is, to me, one of those extraordinary claims that requires extraordinary evidence, and that evidence is thin on the ground, IMO.
People sometimes compare Holmes to Steve Jobs (and her clothing choice would seem to encourage such a comparison) but the “technology readiness” ladder Theranos has to climb in order to be successful is necessarily much taller than anything Apple has faced. I think the WSJ is correct in pointing out that the public has been somewhat bamboozled by Holmes’ story (the nobility of her cause, dropping out of Stanford to pursue her dream, etc.) as well as by Theranos’ heavyweight board of directors.
This kinda suggests that Asians are relegated to beta status, because they're pretty invariably seen as some stripe of nerd in the high-school pecking order anywhere there is substantial integration. That said, there are many schools in suburbs in California and New Jersey where most of the students are South or East Asian today. One would assume that in a more heavily Asian environment Asian-American kids will feel more free to take on other social roles, including more "broish" ones. So we might see more Asian-Americans come forward in the next generation.Replies: @AG
Height definitely matters. Tall always commands a lot of respect, which can be translated into leadership quality. Unfortunately modern Han Chinese are much shorter than their ancestor Han 大汉. According to tomb record, Han Chinese were tallest during Han dynasty. The terracotta soldiers height (5’11”)from Chin dynasty , immediate predecessor to Han dynasty, was actually reflection of real men height during the era. Since guys from Han empire looked taller than other ethnicities in east Asian, 大汉 da han (big men) was respected by people nearby.
http://uk.china-info24.com/british/tic/ht/20150826/203367.html
Information here for Han dynasty was average height of entire empire. Northern Hans were actually close to six feet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiahu
Even prehistorical site revealed tall Chinese ancestors in northern China.
Today, only northern Chinese countryside might still have some village preserved the similar height. All of my male direct relatives (northern han) have height above 6 feet. During world war 2, winning Japanese never received any respect in northern Chinese eyes due to their unfortunate short stature.
汉 Han is highly respected words in East Asia due to many factors including military victories over barbarian (especially northern Hun, 夫胡兵五而当汉兵一, “明犯强汉者，虽远必诛” ), physical features. A respected Chinese man is often called “大汉, 汉子, 好汉”
If modern han Chinese ever achieves their Han Ancestor height, there is hope.
The historic numbers show a minor difference between the average height today and in ancient times. That being said, the ancient Chinese were taller when compared with foreigners during the same period, which interestingly, is contrary to the current situation. That was due to the constant and dreadful disasters from the end of the 19th century. The average height of Chinese barely increased and even registered negative growth.
If world back 2000 years, likely CEO might be a 大汉. The fortune has changed.
South Korea 12.3 liters per capita per annum.
India 4.3 liters per capita per annum.
Of course, this doesn't factor in the male vs. female ratio among drinkers, religion (% of Muslims), etc.
But whatever the South Koreans may think about the "manliness" of binge drinking, the Indians should take pride in imbibing far less and being more sane about heavy alcohol consumption.Replies: @Dain
I wonder if South Korea goes hard on alcohol because little else is legal. Not weed, and certainly nothing stronger. Even in the black market that must exist there on some level, prices would be prohibitive given the country’s size and relative isolation.
I have a friend in in the Army and boy does he love his drinking and cigarettes.
No, I think there is some penchance toward extremism among Koreans, whether by culture or genetics or some combination thereof. When they take to something, they seem to go all insane about it (prime example, for a long time South Korea had the longest work week among industrialized countries; supposedly the joke among some expatriates in ROK was something like "What do Koreans think of Japanese? Answer: Good workers, but lazy"). I don't think it's coincidence that there is a significant ethnic Korean presence among the Yakuza leadership in Japan, and the murder rate in South Korea is three times that in Japan or Singapore (though hardly high by international norms).
Non-Korean Asian-Americans who attended West Point sometimes talk about how Korean-Americans dominate the "Asian scene" as such there and are extremely hardcore about everything they do, including athletics such as boxing and martial arts as well as other extra-curricular activities, e.g. drinking and partying with girls. Even the parents get into it, with the West Point Korean-American Parents Association.
http://uk.china-info24.com/british/tic/ht/20150826/203367.html
Information here for Han dynasty was average height of entire empire. Northern Hans were actually close to six feet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiahu
Even prehistorical site revealed tall Chinese ancestors in northern China.
Today, only northern Chinese countryside might still have some village preserved the similar height. All of my male direct relatives (northern han) have height above 6 feet. During world war 2, winning Japanese never received any respect in northern Chinese eyes due to their unfortunate short stature.
汉 Han is highly respected words in East Asia due to many factors including military victories over barbarian (especially northern Hun, 夫胡兵五而当汉兵一, "明犯强汉者，虽远必诛" ), physical features. A respected Chinese man is often called "大汉, 汉子, 好汉"
If modern han Chinese ever achieves their Han Ancestor height, there is hope.Replies: @AG, @Erik Sieven
Quote f rom the link.
The historic numbers show a minor difference between the average height today and in ancient times. That being said, the ancient Chinese were taller when compared with foreigners during the same period, which interestingly, is contrary to the current situation. That was due to the constant and dreadful disasters from the end of the 19th century. The average height of Chinese barely increased and even registered negative growth.
If world back 2000 years, likely CEO might be a 大汉. The fortune has changed.
I have spoken highly of The Secret of Our Success in the comments here before, but I did indeed mention that having familiarity with the author’s previous output (much of which is available for free on his website) makes the book’s content much less novel.
One thing I liked about TSOS in comparison with Turchin’s Ultrasociety book is that, judging from the remarks at the very end of his book, Henrich is much more cautious about the ability of humans to direct their own cultural evolution, whereas Turchin is very optimistic about applying his findings. Linked with this is Henrich’s relatively apolitical stance, whereas Turchin wears his views on his sleeve. I found this aspect of Henrich’s writing very refreshing and honest. Most research really isn’t going to translate into immediate results.
But fundamentally, I think Pinker's superpower is that he is unabashedly a proponent of many facets of HBD and is still a well-respected public intellectual. As a recent example, his piece some months ago about how colleges and universities should base admissions policy on cognitive abilities (aka IQ, as measured by standard tests) would have led to tarring and feathering of just about anybody else.Replies: @Razib Khan
But fundamentally, I think Pinker’s superpower is that he is unabashedly a proponent of many facets of HBD and is still a well-respected public intellectual. As a recent example, his piece some months ago about how colleges and universities should base admissions policy on cognitive abilities (aka IQ, as measured by standard tests) would have led to tarring and feathering of just about anybody else.
i don’t think he’s unabashed. his public position is cautious and open about human biological diversity in its more controversial form, that of group differences in heritable behavioral traits. pinker rather has been instrumental in keeping the idea that we have a human nature, and some things, like sex differences, are universal in a fundamental manner because of our biological inheritance. secondarily, he has also mainstreamed ideas from behavioral genetics, which focuses on individual differences, though the group differences are what people get worked up about. it’s important to distinguish these things, because the reality is over the past generation parts of the cultural left have been hostile to BOTH human biological universals, and, behavioral genetics. HBD is basically an non-starter and just something that’s not even on the table as worthy of consideration.
http://uk.china-info24.com/british/tic/ht/20150826/203367.html
Information here for Han dynasty was average height of entire empire. Northern Hans were actually close to six feet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiahu
Even prehistorical site revealed tall Chinese ancestors in northern China.
Today, only northern Chinese countryside might still have some village preserved the similar height. All of my male direct relatives (northern han) have height above 6 feet. During world war 2, winning Japanese never received any respect in northern Chinese eyes due to their unfortunate short stature.
汉 Han is highly respected words in East Asia due to many factors including military victories over barbarian (especially northern Hun, 夫胡兵五而当汉兵一, "明犯强汉者，虽远必诛" ), physical features. A respected Chinese man is often called "大汉, 汉子, 好汉"
If modern han Chinese ever achieves their Han Ancestor height, there is hope.Replies: @AG, @Erik Sieven
If there are actually physical characteristics which make it ceteris paribus harder for East Asian to succeed as CEO´s I would guess that height is not the most relevant feature, it is probably rather how gracile somebody is built, a good indicator for this is grip strength / the firm handshake.
I am a couple of inches above six feet in height, and I am pretty gracile even for an East Asian (I have very thin, girly wrist bones). But people always remarked that I was "a huge Asian guy." I also have excellent grip strength and can crush most guys' hands, from doing Judo for over forty years (there is a lot of grip fighting in Judo, and more often than not, whoever gets the first grip on the other guy ends up throwing the other guy on his head). Doing Judo also gave me a very thick neck (comes in handy when your opponent is trying to choke you), so people don't see my thin bones, they see my height and thick neck (and my 3-4XL head size) and go "This guy is huge!"Replies: @Anonymous
judging by the people in the gym, east asians don’t have s. asian skinny fat problems. those bras be jacked up.
I think those "bras" are probably using PEDs.
I've seen South Korean specops units firsthand, and while those guys are superb athletes and really mean, bad mofos you don't want to run into in an alley at night, they don't look "jacked." They look like this: http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/gallery/100108/GAL-10Jan08-3506/media/PHO-10Jan08-197480.jpg
Or this: http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/54aea87869bedd0241c2714b-3500-2504/rtr4kirx.jpgReplies: @Anonymous
i don't think he's unabashed. his public position is cautious and open about human biological diversity in its more controversial form, that of group differences in heritable behavioral traits. pinker rather has been instrumental in keeping the idea that we have a human nature, and some things, like sex differences, are universal in a fundamental manner because of our biological inheritance. secondarily, he has also mainstreamed ideas from behavioral genetics, which focuses on individual differences, though the group differences are what people get worked up about. it's important to distinguish these things, because the reality is over the past generation parts of the cultural left have been hostile to BOTH human biological universals, and, behavioral genetics. HBD is basically an non-starter and just something that's not even on the table as worthy of consideration.Replies: @Sean
John Gray pointed out that for declines in violence, Pinker seems to be arguing for an altruistic ideology as casual factor.
In recent history of USA presidential election, it is very much like male beauty contest of candidates height. Ross Perot was unlikely to win if he had became major candidate. John McCain also suffer image disadvantage comparing to Obama. People naturally felt tall guys as protectors, stronger, big brothers. The feeling is subconscious resistant to rational reasoning. Small guys really have hard time to achieve such nature feeling for average folks. They had to work much harder like Napoleon or Lenin. Maybe people still have doubt about those poor guys. President Lincoln on the other hand felt like a natural leader.
Almost across all cultures, women naturally seek taller men as potential mates due to this subconscious bias.
I was personally elected as class presidents twice in my life (middle school, college) though I openly rejected offer. My classmate always felt I should be. Such examples happened to my male family member numerous times.
Do tall people truly make better leader in term of intelligence and strategy? I doubt it. But psychologically they do make better leaders due to respect from average height majority, which makes policy implementation easier to subordinates.
I have a friend in in the Army and boy does he love his drinking and cigarettes.Replies: @Twinkie
Little else is legal in Singapore too, but you don’t see the very polite and orderly Singaporeans getting plastered out of their minds, driving like maniacs, and harassing Russian (or any blonde, white) women on the streets of Singapore (confusing them with prostitutes), as is occasionally the case with Korean sararimen in the streets of Seoul.
No, I think there is some penchance toward extremism among Koreans, whether by culture or genetics or some combination thereof. When they take to something, they seem to go all insane about it (prime example, for a long time South Korea had the longest work week among industrialized countries; supposedly the joke among some expatriates in ROK was something like “What do Koreans think of Japanese? Answer: Good workers, but lazy”). I don’t think it’s coincidence that there is a significant ethnic Korean presence among the Yakuza leadership in Japan, and the murder rate in South Korea is three times that in Japan or Singapore (though hardly high by international norms).
Non-Korean Asian-Americans who attended West Point sometimes talk about how Korean-Americans dominate the “Asian scene” as such there and are extremely hardcore about everything they do, including athletics such as boxing and martial arts as well as other extra-curricular activities, e.g. drinking and partying with girls. Even the parents get into it, with the West Point Korean-American Parents Association.
I am very skeptical of this assertion. People note height right away. They don’t register bone density or thickness as quickly or at all.
I am a couple of inches above six feet in height, and I am pretty gracile even for an East Asian (I have very thin, girly wrist bones). But people always remarked that I was “a huge Asian guy.” I also have excellent grip strength and can crush most guys’ hands, from doing Judo for over forty years (there is a lot of grip fighting in Judo, and more often than not, whoever gets the first grip on the other guy ends up throwing the other guy on his head). Doing Judo also gave me a very thick neck (comes in handy when your opponent is trying to choke you), so people don’t see my thin bones, they see my height and thick neck (and my 3-4XL head size) and go “This guy is huge!”
http://www.tradingcarddb.com/ViewCard.cfm/sid/3358/cid/866894/1993-Score-289-Eugene-ChungReplies: @Twinkie
Older East Asian men do get that thin everywhere but big-bellied look. And of course East Asians start developing obesity-related problems at a lower BMI threshold.
I think those “bras” are probably using PEDs.
I’ve seen South Korean specops units firsthand, and while those guys are superb athletes and really mean, bad mofos you don’t want to run into in an alley at night, they don’t look “jacked.” They look like this:
Or this:
But weren’t those Bengali units mostly drawn from specific, selected Muslim, Rajput, and Sikh groups (e.g. the Bengal Lancers), and were not representative of the totality of the region’s population?
I love Keralan cuisine!
What about within the Indian diaspora? Aren't Punjabis, for example, some of the tallest and the most "martial" among Indians, yet are not as well represented as Southern Indians in the upper echelons of the tech industry?
Also, the corporate culture of East Asia - Northern Chinese, Japanese, and Korean - is pretty militaristic/authoritarian/seniority-based. I would suspect that is not a corporate culture that translates well to the United States. Meanwhile the Southern (and diaspora) Chinese corporate culture is more mercantile, less militaristic. Taiwan and South Korea have had similar economic development trajectories (garrison state politics combined with export orientation economies), but in Taiwan, unlike in South Korea, corporate development has been more along small- to medium-sized businesses, not giant Zaibatsu or Zaibatsu-like conglomerates. I think there may be more Taiwanese-American CEOs than Korean-American CEOs.Replies: @Razib Khan, @Binger, @A4
What ethnicity were they? I actually know some *extremely* devout Muslims who work at Google, and have encountered zero hostility. I wonder if the animosity is toward religious Christians, as opposed to everyone religious.
I am a couple of inches above six feet in height, and I am pretty gracile even for an East Asian (I have very thin, girly wrist bones). But people always remarked that I was "a huge Asian guy." I also have excellent grip strength and can crush most guys' hands, from doing Judo for over forty years (there is a lot of grip fighting in Judo, and more often than not, whoever gets the first grip on the other guy ends up throwing the other guy on his head). Doing Judo also gave me a very thick neck (comes in handy when your opponent is trying to choke you), so people don't see my thin bones, they see my height and thick neck (and my 3-4XL head size) and go "This guy is huge!"Replies: @Anonymous
No, former NE Patriots offensive tackle, Eugene Chung, is one huge Korean-American. Standing 6’4″ and weighing 295, he’s the biggest Korean I’ve seen.
http://www.tradingcarddb.com/ViewCard.cfm/sid/3358/cid/866894/1993-Score-289-Eugene-Chung
I have an enormous head, because I have a huge skull. Chung looked like his cheeks are ready to swallow his eyes!
The biggest East Asian I ever saw in person was in Japan, but a Korean: Hong Man Choi, former Korean folk wrestling champion and a sometime kickboxing/MMA fighter: http://mma.uno/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/32822815.jpg
I think he had gigantism or something like it.
I think those "bras" are probably using PEDs.
I've seen South Korean specops units firsthand, and while those guys are superb athletes and really mean, bad mofos you don't want to run into in an alley at night, they don't look "jacked." They look like this: http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/gallery/100108/GAL-10Jan08-3506/media/PHO-10Jan08-197480.jpg
Or this: http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/54aea87869bedd0241c2714b-3500-2504/rtr4kirx.jpgReplies: @Anonymous
They seem to be about the average size of a Navy SEAL.
And as Stew Smith, former Navy SEAL turned physical trainer, states:
That goes double for the Army Special Forces (Green Berets). Those guys are often pretty ordinary looking. Very fit and tough, and generally quite smart and sophisticated, but pretty normal looking.
“When I run TreeMix I often get gene flow edges from Africans or to Africans from a region of the graph basal in eastern Eurasians. I ignore these because they don’t make sense. But they don’t make sense because I’m missing something in the bigger picture. I’m sure a year or two years or three years from now it will all make sense. Just filing this away as results which I can’t make heads or tails of, but which are telling us something with Delphic clarity.”
Shaikorth has noticed it also.
The phenomenon is clear when looking at HLA haplotypes.
One such example is A*33:03-B*58:01-C*03:02 which is found in Gambia and other West African populations. The frequency and diversity of recombinants of all of its allelic components is greatest in West Africa. However the full haplotype is also found in Oman, UAE, Baluchistan, Pakistan, China, Korea, and also in Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan Aborigines. It also turns up at lower frequencies in Turkey, Balkans, N.Italy, Austria.
There are several HLA haplotypes shared between Africans and eastern Eurasians.
I live in Houston and I love Yelp reviews. Thanks for the tip.
Also, I have for a long time realized you are a great thinker, but tonight it hit me that you are also a brilliant writer. I think the reason I hadn’t noticed this before is that I was concentrating so much on what you were saying that I didn’t notice how very, very well you were saying it.
He is cautious. Pinker shies away from outright controversy and never openly challenges the biggest American taboos. But he also assumes that intelligent readers can see between the lines. It isn’t entirely honest IMO, but it sure beats what usually comes out of our universities. I’m a big fan of Pinker, BTW, but I don’t think he’s a revolutionary thinker so much as he is brave and clever.
American whites. With one of them, it was apparently quite clear cut: the tenor of the discussion was along the lines of “If he believes in all that creationism stuff, we can’t have someone like that here at Google. We can’t have anti-science types at a tech company” (never mind this particular individual has had a flourishing career in the tech industry beforehand). I heard it from one of the participants, a very senior executive, of the hiring discussion. And apparently this particular Christian candidate wasn’t the first one to be rejected on religious grounds.
How would they ever find out his theological positions? In this day and age creationism does seem a little fringe. There are a lot of smart 9/11 truthers, but would you really feel comfortable with their judgments on a lot of/most things? What about geocentrism? It is first cousin to flat earthism. And there are very smart, scientifically literate geocentrists, e.g., Wolfgang Smith (graduated Cornell at 17 with degrees in math, physics, & philosophy; Ph.D., math from Columbia; was professor at MIT, UCLA,...). I think it has more to do with companies not frowning on oddballism.Replies: @Twinkie
http://www.tradingcarddb.com/ViewCard.cfm/sid/3358/cid/866894/1993-Score-289-Eugene-ChungReplies: @Twinkie
No what? I wasn’t saying I was the biggest East Asian in the world. I was expressing skepticism over the “gracile… grip strength” comment, because others always seem to note my height and neck musculature and not my very thin bones.
As I recall, he was a pretty good prospect out of college (I know he practiced Judo at some point – I remember him talking about it helping his football game in an interview), but flamed out badly in the NFL, mostly because of recurring injuries. I don’t think East Asians are supposed to get that obese. It wouldn’t surprise me if his body (bones) couldn’t handle the weight and the collision with that weight.
I have an enormous head, because I have a huge skull. Chung looked like his cheeks are ready to swallow his eyes!
The biggest East Asian I ever saw in person was in Japan, but a Korean: Hong Man Choi, former Korean folk wrestling champion and a sometime kickboxing/MMA fighter:
I think he had gigantism or something like it.
I’ve seen Navy SEALs in person too when I was stationed in the Tidewater area of Virginia. They are a bit bigger than the South Korean specops guys, in height, weight, and musculature. But, no, they don’t look like comic book superheroes as in movies.
That goes double for the Army Special Forces (Green Berets). Those guys are often pretty ordinary looking. Very fit and tough, and generally quite smart and sophisticated, but pretty normal looking.
I hate Google but I can sympathize with them on this.
How would they ever find out his theological positions? In this day and age creationism does seem a little fringe. There are a lot of smart 9/11 truthers, but would you really feel comfortable with their judgments on a lot of/most things? What about geocentrism? It is first cousin to flat earthism. And there are very smart, scientifically literate geocentrists, e.g., Wolfgang Smith (graduated Cornell at 17 with degrees in math, physics, & philosophy; Ph.D., math from Columbia; was professor at MIT, UCLA,…). I think it has more to do with companies not frowning on oddballism.
I wonder what would happen if a right-leaning company excluded homosexual "oddballs."
Return of need for “Culture” as a vital variable.
Looking at the Wiki definition of “Culture” it is almost laughable to see how the author(s) dance around the need to explain how cultures are long maintained. Without referring to the (forbidden) notion of a genetic underpinning. The co-evolution of genes and culture is impossible within the PC mindset. Culture thus becomes more ephemeral. The basis of the landmark “Brown vs Board of Education” made the Behaviorist Nuture-only hypothesis the law of the land. Thus at once eliminating the longitude component of Culture.
The writ of our Supreme Court did not extend to Europe. Culture there still seems an important variable. And so the ability to attatch certain behaviors to different ethnic groups.
from the Guardian on the German NYE assaults:
“Andreas Scheuer of the Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party of Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU, accused the media of exercising too much caution and forming a “cartel of silence”.
“I appeal to everyone that we report with clarity and truth,” he told the German broadcaster Deutschlandfunk. He said at a time when people were concerned about the future of German society, after so many refugee arrivals, that it was wrong to “pussy-foot around with the truth” rather than “reflect reality”.
Kristina Schröder, a former family minister from the CDU, said it was high time for Germany to deal with the cultural differences. “For a long time it was taboo, but we must grapple with masculinity norms that legitimise violence in Muslim culture,” she tweeted.”
Adopting a more European approach to the American ethnic clashes allows one the opportunity to see what we label as “Racial” differences are actually differences in African based and Northern European cultures. Specifically, perhaps one can reframe our understanding of the confrontations underlying the “Black Lives Matter” movement as differences in the way Kristina Schroeder discusses. As there being differences in the masculinity norms contained within Afro-American culture.
Culture seems to imply a relatively successful adaptation to the environment of a certain time and place. Radical changes in the environment over time or relocation can make strong commitment to one’s culture a bar to adaptation and thus severely detrimental.
The current Oregon standoff is another example of Multicultural strife in America The roots of which are so nicely outlined in “Albion’s Seed” A wonderful source-book in the actual longevity of cultures embedded in the American matrix.
How would they ever find out his theological positions? In this day and age creationism does seem a little fringe. There are a lot of smart 9/11 truthers, but would you really feel comfortable with their judgments on a lot of/most things? What about geocentrism? It is first cousin to flat earthism. And there are very smart, scientifically literate geocentrists, e.g., Wolfgang Smith (graduated Cornell at 17 with degrees in math, physics, & philosophy; Ph.D., math from Columbia; was professor at MIT, UCLA,...). I think it has more to do with companies not frowning on oddballism.Replies: @Twinkie
They didn’t. Because he was, and is, a devout Christian, they assumed he was some sort of a young earther, notwithstanding his excellent educational and professional credentials. He is a creationist in the same way I am – he believes the spark for the “Big Bang” was divine in origin. He is not a Biblical literalist. And he is exceptionally congenial, so he’d fit in anywhere.
It’s sad that what used to be, and probably still is, the mainstream cosmological view about the foundation of the universe and life on earth is now “oddballism” in certain quarters of our society. Furthermore, it’s sadder still that such “oddballism” is to be suppressed in those same quarters.
I wonder what would happen if a right-leaning company excluded homosexual “oddballs.”
What about within the Indian diaspora? Aren't Punjabis, for example, some of the tallest and the most "martial" among Indians, yet are not as well represented as Southern Indians in the upper echelons of the tech industry?
Also, the corporate culture of East Asia - Northern Chinese, Japanese, and Korean - is pretty militaristic/authoritarian/seniority-based. I would suspect that is not a corporate culture that translates well to the United States. Meanwhile the Southern (and diaspora) Chinese corporate culture is more mercantile, less militaristic. Taiwan and South Korea have had similar economic development trajectories (garrison state politics combined with export orientation economies), but in Taiwan, unlike in South Korea, corporate development has been more along small- to medium-sized businesses, not giant Zaibatsu or Zaibatsu-like conglomerates. I think there may be more Taiwanese-American CEOs than Korean-American CEOs.Replies: @Razib Khan, @Binger, @A4
“, but in Taiwan, unlike in South Korea, corporate development has been more along small- to medium-sized businesses, not giant Zaibatsu or Zaibatsu-like conglomerates.”
The small size of the Taiwan’s population probably has something to do with it.
I really think the underlying organizational cultures of the respective countries play a strong role.
Were they Jewish? Seems strange that they would be ok with devout Muslims, but not devout Christians.
Perhaps PC reflexes taking over? I’ve noticed that White liberals make allowances for Muslims that they would never make for White Christians.
The small size of the Taiwan's population probably has something to do with it.Replies: @Twinkie
Unlikely. Singapore has an even smaller population than Taiwan, yet its corporate culture is more authoritarian than that of the latter. Some people, with good cause, even argue that the state of Singapore is a giant corporation (akin to Japan, Inc. or Korea, Inc.).
I really think the underlying organizational cultures of the respective countries play a strong role.
Who are the “they” here? The people who make the hiring decisions? I have no clue. One of the high ranking executives told me about all this. He is a “generic” white American.