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Over at The Genetic Literacy Project Jon Entine has a post up, Usain Bolt’s Olympic gold proves again why no Asian, white–or East African–will ever be crowned world’s fastest human. Fifteen years ago Jon wrote Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports And Why We’re Afraid To Talk About It, so he knows something about this topic.
Actually, I think Jon is wrong on this. Better drugs and biological engineering mean that I suspect at some point in the near future the fastest “human” alive is going to be non-African, and, if I had to bet, Chinese. But you know what Jon meant.
There is a lot of detail in Jon’s post because he knows a lot about this topic. But at the end of the day the specific details are less important than the general theoretical framework, which makes it unsurprising that a single group of humans who are genetically related dominate sprinting. Unlike figure skating, sprinting is entirely objective. All that matters are physical inputs. Second, unlike swimming, which is also objective, sprinting seems to have pushed very close to the boundaries of what non-modified or drug-enhanced individuals are capable of. To my knowledge there’s no expectation of a Fosbury Flop in sprinting.
Therefore, sprinting is selecting for raw ability. Training is not irrelevant, but the issue with training is that others can train too. What can’t be mimicked is raw ability due to one’s biological aptitudes and abilities (again, excepting bioengineering). Let’s assume that Olympic caliber sprinters are among the 10,000 fastest humans on the planet, because not all people with the aptitudes become sprinters. Assuming a normal distribution, that’s about five standard deviations above the human norm. I suspect I’m being conservative. Someone like Usain Bolt is probably a six standard deviation unit human. Google tells me that a fit human can run the 100 meter dash in 13.5 seconds. The world record is about 9.5 seconds. The absolute range here is not incredibly large. Small differences in the mean across populations suggest that when you select for extreme individuals those small differences will make all the difference.
If sprinting was less objective, then there would probably be more equality in outcome. I suspect judges would be biased for various reasons, and one set of nations or people of a particular ethnic background dominating a field can get quite embarrassing. But sprinting is rather objective, and the socioeconomic obstacles are low. Given basic nutrition, and the ability to huff it, you have a shot. What matters is the magnitude of your ability.
One peculiar thing population genetics teaches us that non-adaptive traits are more heritable. This is due to the fact that selection tends to remove variation, selecting for fitter individuals. Humans are good runners, there are entire evolutionary theories based around our biomechanical modifications and adaptations. But there’s really no benefit in running in bursts of 10.5 in the 100 meter dash vs. 9.5. We’re not that sort of ambush predator. There’s probably some heritable variation in burst ability, but it’s small, and not visible in any normal set of tasks among large groups of humans.
But modern competitive sports at the Olympic level is not selecting for normality, it’s selecting from outliers. It isn’t that West Africans were guaranteed to be the best sprinters, it’s just that a priori it shouldn’t be surprising that in such a non-adaptively beneficial trait as running a few seconds faster in the 100 meter dash some populations had the genetic die loaded in their direction.
Note that I’m not denying any sort of selective or adaptive argument. There’s a fair amount of evidence that there is some selection in favor of greater height in Northern Europeans vs. Southern Europeans, which probably explains why Lithuanians are more prominent in basketball in relation to their numbers than Italians. But the selection wasn’t for basketball, and the fact that there is heritable variation suggests that selection wasn’t that strong and unidirectional….
Humans vary. Populations vary too. When you select from the tails of the distribution, the differences between populations are going to be very noticeable. If a sport is objective, and pushing its limits, it will select from the tails of the distribution.
Does this mean that intelligence, at least past a certain point, is not adaptive? I mean I can tell a just so story that points to some real disadvantages for high IQ.
so yes.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4200-cleverness-may-carry-survival-costs/Some more interesting thoughts and observations on intelligence and environment/climate adaptations and interactions, and how it affects survival:- http://thecross-roads.org/race-culture-nation/25-the-myth-of-east-asian-intellectual-supremacy
Do more intelligent human beings intentionally locate to more harsh and less inhabitable environments, because they would be outcompeted by their less intelligent peers in more accommodating and less harsh/less difficult-to-survive-in environments?
Is White flight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight the avoidance, by more intelligent individuals/groups, of direct competition with less intelligent humans, which they would lose?
Is fight the more dominant survival instinct/mechanism in less intelligent human beings, and flight the more dominant survival instinct/mechanism in more intelligent human beings?
California to Idaho Relocation- Top 5 Reasons People Make the Move
https://www.buyidahorealestate.com/blog/california-to-idaho-relocation-top-5-reasons-people-make-the-move.html
heritable quantitative traits are ones which are less likely to have been subject to strong continuous unidirectional selection because genetic variation remains. intelligence is a heritable quantitative trait.
so yes.
I don’t think the much more diverse make-up of most team sports is because they are ‘not objective.’ I think it’s because they reward a variety of athletic and mental skills. Basketball is unique among major team sports in rewarding height over virtually any other skill of factor.
Agreed, but I think people overlook how specialized athletes like Usain Bolt are. A popular meme/joke here is
“Congratulations Mr. Bolt on winning the 100m dash. Now Let’s see you run a half marathon (21km).”
Is it wrong to think that sprinters get more hype than they should? Yes, Bolt’s “threepeat” deserves praise, but compare this to triathletes. How about the traits necessary to compete in a triathlon versus the singular ability to dash just a bit more?
i wasn’t talking about team sports above for that reason.
Sprinting is selecting for a raw ability. I say something more important as a raw ability as it was more important to human survival–male upper body strength. This is a much more meaningful raw ability than sprinting. In the totality of nature, bi-pedial human speed is pathetic. Distance running yes, but not sprints. I would look to where weight lifting medalists have come from instead to find superior physical human beings.
Hopes pinned on genetically gifted among cookie-cutter athletes
http://m.medicalxpress.com/news/2016-08-pinned-genetically-gifted-cookie-cutter-athletes.html
When you says “non-adaptive traits are more heritable” doesn’t this assume that enough time has passed since the original mutation(s) to allow the allele(s) involved to go to fixation? In the case of human intelligence, might certain minimum levels be adaptive, and might those levels change over time, either positively or negatively, since modern humans haven’t been around that long while the human environment has changed a lot. E.g., the Iceman’s lifestyle strikes me as requiring more intelligence than that of the typical Millennial navigating the world with his (or her) smartphone.
I’ve probably got this all wrong.
Razib is not talking about superiority or inferiority. He is talking about difference. This is a scientific post, not a moral one.
to erelis, it's OK, having a small penis is not that big of an issue :-)
appreciate this comment. you are much nicer than i am!
to erelis, it’s OK, having a small penis is not that big of an issue 🙂
So did the idea that an anti malarial adaptation -> sprinting ability not pan out?
I had a little bet with myself that all the future Chinese 100m gold medal winners would have ancestry from the ex-malarial regions in the south.
#
height, IQ etc – could they not be under balancing selection as both would need more energy / resources?
a sequence something like
1) average balancing selection for average HG height range due to average dietary inputs across most of the world (broad range)
2) particularly unusual region/environment selecting for height -> random mutations -> height genes spread among that population
3) environment changes in that region -> no longer have the diet to support the higher level of height balancing selection -> population comes back under average balancing selection -> height gradually reduces as frequency of height genes drop (or not if the genes simply don’t function without the dietary input i.e. they are only potential height genes)
4) modern diet intervenes before the height reducing selection is complete so those populations with the earlier height genes (or frequency) from the earlier time shoot up – other populations with the modern diet grow too but not as much because they don’t have those specific height genes (or frequency)
just an idea but if so the peaks of modern height would be somehow tied to that specific ancestry
Fair enough. You mention basketball at one point, and talk about “modern competitive sports at the Olympic level,” so I don’t think I was merely being obtuse in thinking you were trying to make a broader point. But since all your analysis focused on an individual sport that is overwhelmingly based a single monolithic ability, maybe I should have known that the other things were irrelevant to you.
Neandertals were pretty stumpy in the leg department. But are also currently suspected of being “dash-hunters”. Could they beat “us” (quondam Africans, apparently) in the 100 m.?
http://www.science20.com/curious_cub/short_legs_neanderthal-84035
All that means is “we don’t really know that much about what neandertals got up to in the day job (as opposed to being orderly museum specimens)”.
I’d pay money to watch Usain turn in from an early spring 24-hr fell-running event (with scree, and forest). Somewhere well behind the Nepalese, I suspect.
And we’re probably all “dumber” than premodern humans, in that sort of event, or lifestyle. But they’d be shit at calculus, so yar boo sucks, what losers.
Cleverness may carry survival costs
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4200-cleverness-may-carry-survival-costs/
Some more interesting thoughts and observations on intelligence and environment/climate adaptations and interactions, and how it affects survival:
– http://thecross-roads.org/race-culture-nation/25-the-myth-of-east-asian-intellectual-supremacy
Do more intelligent human beings intentionally locate to more harsh and less inhabitable environments, because they would be outcompeted by their less intelligent peers in more accommodating and less harsh/less difficult-to-survive-in environments?
Is White flight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight the avoidance, by more intelligent individuals/groups, of direct competition with less intelligent humans, which they would lose?
Is fight the more dominant survival instinct/mechanism in less intelligent human beings, and flight the more dominant survival instinct/mechanism in more intelligent human beings?
California to Idaho Relocation- Top 5 Reasons People Make the Move
https://www.buyidahorealestate.com/blog/california-to-idaho-relocation-top-5-reasons-people-make-the-move.html
- equator, too much light, dark eyes
- north, less light, light eyes
-far north, less direct light but after reflection off snow, ice and water etc maybe too much again? dark eyes better again?
(military put camo paint around the eyes on arctic training to reduce reflection into the eyes to prevent snow blindness - caveat, that's why they say they do it - only assuming it works)
This sounds similar to things that Gerd Gigerenzer and his followers say. Gigerenzer is a psychologist who has written books with titles like Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart.
Jason Collins (Evolving Economics) is a fan. E.g.,
https://jasoncollins.org/2014/12/02/the-power-of-heuristics/
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4200-cleverness-may-carry-survival-costs/Some more interesting thoughts and observations on intelligence and environment/climate adaptations and interactions, and how it affects survival:- http://thecross-roads.org/race-culture-nation/25-the-myth-of-east-asian-intellectual-supremacy
Do more intelligent human beings intentionally locate to more harsh and less inhabitable environments, because they would be outcompeted by their less intelligent peers in more accommodating and less harsh/less difficult-to-survive-in environments?
Is White flight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight the avoidance, by more intelligent individuals/groups, of direct competition with less intelligent humans, which they would lose?
Is fight the more dominant survival instinct/mechanism in less intelligent human beings, and flight the more dominant survival instinct/mechanism in more intelligent human beings?
California to Idaho Relocation- Top 5 Reasons People Make the Move
https://www.buyidahorealestate.com/blog/california-to-idaho-relocation-top-5-reasons-people-make-the-move.html
I don’t know so much about cold but if eye color is connected to sun light then there might be three bands
– equator, too much light, dark eyes
– north, less light, light eyes
-far north, less direct light but after reflection off snow, ice and water etc maybe too much again? dark eyes better again?
(military put camo paint around the eyes on arctic training to reduce reflection into the eyes to prevent snow blindness – caveat, that’s why they say they do it – only assuming it works)
Not as good as a strip of bone with tiny horizontal slits gouged out with a flint.
In the atlantic boreal zone, I suppose it's so goddam gloomy all the time that fortuitously inheriting big round googly pale eyes from our ancestor Gollum won't blind/kill us. So we kind of get away with it. Like being the color of yogurt, or (shudder) even ginger ...
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4200-cleverness-may-carry-survival-costs/Some more interesting thoughts and observations on intelligence and environment/climate adaptations and interactions, and how it affects survival:- http://thecross-roads.org/race-culture-nation/25-the-myth-of-east-asian-intellectual-supremacy
Do more intelligent human beings intentionally locate to more harsh and less inhabitable environments, because they would be outcompeted by their less intelligent peers in more accommodating and less harsh/less difficult-to-survive-in environments?
Is White flight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight the avoidance, by more intelligent individuals/groups, of direct competition with less intelligent humans, which they would lose?
Is fight the more dominant survival instinct/mechanism in less intelligent human beings, and flight the more dominant survival instinct/mechanism in more intelligent human beings?
California to Idaho Relocation- Top 5 Reasons People Make the Move
https://www.buyidahorealestate.com/blog/california-to-idaho-relocation-top-5-reasons-people-make-the-move.html
rushton was full of a lot of shit. i had some email correspondences with him where i told him to stop it, and he refused, even when i pointed out to him how he was full of shit. he said a lot of brave and courageous things that people didn’t want to hear, yeah. but he was also mendacious when it suited him. i guess he wasn’t a saint, but a human. but whatever.
second, we know the ancient genetics of light eyes. it has nothing to do with nordics. it predates nordics, who are a mongrel race that emerged in the last 4,000 years. we know this because of ancient DNA. additionally, it looks like the oca2-herc2 mutation was present in the near east during the paleolithic too….
please refrain from extensive quotations in the comments. it will make me think you are as stupid as sean.
Roger that.
- equator, too much light, dark eyes
- north, less light, light eyes
-far north, less direct light but after reflection off snow, ice and water etc maybe too much again? dark eyes better again?
(military put camo paint around the eyes on arctic training to reduce reflection into the eyes to prevent snow blindness - caveat, that's why they say they do it - only assuming it works)
Thank you, interesting point!
I made a similar post over on Steve Sailor’s HBD post today.
Sprint swim times as defined by the 50 and 100 meter freestyles with one very small exception have not improved since 2009. That was the last time that the non water permeable Polyurethane full body suits, that were introduced in 2004, were allowed to be worn in competition. Without some kind of human enhancements, I believe we may be very close to the end of the line in sprint swimming speed progression as well.
50-meter swim progression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_record_progression_50_metres_freestyle
100-meter swim progression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_record_progression_1500_metres_freestyle
FYI – 50-meter freestyle Gold Medal winner Anthony Ervin doesn’t do anywhere near the same amount of training as mid to distance freestyler Katie Ledecky nor should he as it would be detrimental to pure speed to train like Katie.
PS I’m a former swimmer and coach. In the last 25 years swim training, with technology (video analysis, biomechanical analysis, VO2max testing and training etc) has come to the masses. In the sprint world of swimming we may have approached the limit. Additionally coaches know what to look for, there is a prototypical swim body (Michael Phelps), when a coach sees a kid that looks like they might have it, they get a lot of attention.
https://notpoliticallycorrect.me/2016/05/30/white-men-cant-jump-thats-ok-black-men-cant-swim/
When they expanded team player numbers, and instituted unlimited substitution in American Football, African Americans became advantaged as they had genetic inheritances favoring quick, explosive bursts of power and movement. But they lacked the same level of endurance traits of the white players. If change of possession substitution (once out, you can’t get back in until CoP) were instituted, and team player numbers lowered, whites would again more populate the game.
- equator, too much light, dark eyes
- north, less light, light eyes
-far north, less direct light but after reflection off snow, ice and water etc maybe too much again? dark eyes better again?
(military put camo paint around the eyes on arctic training to reduce reflection into the eyes to prevent snow blindness - caveat, that's why they say they do it - only assuming it works)
“-far north, less direct light but after reflection off snow, ice and water etc maybe too much again? dark eyes better again?”
Not as good as a strip of bone with tiny horizontal slits gouged out with a flint.
In the atlantic boreal zone, I suppose it’s so goddam gloomy all the time that fortuitously inheriting big round googly pale eyes from our ancestor Gollum won’t blind/kill us. So we kind of get away with it. Like being the color of yogurt, or (shudder) even ginger …
Whites (form US Merica) have only populated games because they used the Rule of Law to prevent participation from others and this was the reason for them to do as they did. When you engage in this type of behaviour, one can guarantee a result to one’s benefit all the time explicitely having power to prevent others from participating. Let’s face it. Having the opportunity to engage in a task vs passing laws to prevent others access are part and parcel of the modus operandi of pre-1970’s USA. So when people talking of making America great again, it is this pre 1970s crap that scare people!
When you rely on true natural selection, this means that only the most capable will end up being part of the game plan.
Do you feel lucky?
Well, do ya?
When you rely on true natural selection, this means that only the most capable will end up being part of the game plan.
.
Do you feel lucky?
Well, do ya?
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4200-cleverness-may-carry-survival-costs/Some more interesting thoughts and observations on intelligence and environment/climate adaptations and interactions, and how it affects survival:- http://thecross-roads.org/race-culture-nation/25-the-myth-of-east-asian-intellectual-supremacy
Do more intelligent human beings intentionally locate to more harsh and less inhabitable environments, because they would be outcompeted by their less intelligent peers in more accommodating and less harsh/less difficult-to-survive-in environments?
Is White flight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight the avoidance, by more intelligent individuals/groups, of direct competition with less intelligent humans, which they would lose?
Is fight the more dominant survival instinct/mechanism in less intelligent human beings, and flight the more dominant survival instinct/mechanism in more intelligent human beings?
California to Idaho Relocation- Top 5 Reasons People Make the Move
https://www.buyidahorealestate.com/blog/california-to-idaho-relocation-top-5-reasons-people-make-the-move.html
Decisive action requires consideration of limited alternatives and smart people often out-smart themselves by complicating matters.
This sounds similar to things that Gerd Gigerenzer and his followers say. Gigerenzer is a psychologist who has written books with titles like Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart.
Jason Collins (Evolving Economics) is a fan. E.g.,
https://jasoncollins.org/2014/12/02/the-power-of-heuristics/
Not as good as a strip of bone with tiny horizontal slits gouged out with a flint.
In the atlantic boreal zone, I suppose it's so goddam gloomy all the time that fortuitously inheriting big round googly pale eyes from our ancestor Gollum won't blind/kill us. So we kind of get away with it. Like being the color of yogurt, or (shudder) even ginger ...
I know this is partially tongue in cheek, but my understanding is that light irises really are more sensitive to bright light. One can easily see how this would result in heavy selection against light eyes in more equatorial climates during hunter-gatherer times. A moment’s issue with sun glare could easily result in not being able to throw a spear at prey (or an enemy tribe member) resulting in you missing more meals – or perhaps even dying. I would expect though once agriculture was invented that the need for constant visual acuity lessened – crops don’t run away, and don’t try to kill you.
I went to Avignon as a teen (from northwest UK) and had to spend the second day in bed with what I suppose was the holiday equivalent of "welder's flash", just from mooching about the streets, and the odd aqueduct. Wore superdark aviators after that, still could only make out silhouettes for a few days even at sunset with them off. I thought I was going blind.
And all the old grannies sat around on their doorsteps muttering "Boche .." after us, which did nothing to improve my mood.
This sounds similar to things that Gerd Gigerenzer and his followers say. Gigerenzer is a psychologist who has written books with titles like Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart.
Jason Collins (Evolving Economics) is a fan. E.g.,
https://jasoncollins.org/2014/12/02/the-power-of-heuristics/
Maybe, originally the KISS principle was (maybe, still is) predominately intended for smart people?: “Keep it simple, [Smarty]”
– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle#Origin
You’re right there, which is why the La Brana 1 forager/hunter dude, with his assumed George Best baby-blues and brown skin is such a puzzle to me. Maybe you just get used to it.
I went to Avignon as a teen (from northwest UK) and had to spend the second day in bed with what I suppose was the holiday equivalent of “welder’s flash”, just from mooching about the streets, and the odd aqueduct. Wore superdark aviators after that, still could only make out silhouettes for a few days even at sunset with them off. I thought I was going blind.
And all the old grannies sat around on their doorsteps muttering “Boche ..” after us, which did nothing to improve my mood.
This is actually, what my first ever comment on Unz Review and Mr. Khan's blog was about:- https://www.unz.com/gnxp/the-2000-year-selection-of-the-british/#comment-1415185
What he lacked in visual acuity he made up by just being awake for more hours in the day.
How To Turn Your Insomnia Into A Productivity Tool
http://www.fastcompany.com/3025086/how-to-be-a-success-at-everything/how-to-turn-your-insomnia-into-a-productivity-tool
Bolt spent the night before his London win with several Swedish women handball competitors. The performance enhancing drugs in power sports are to a large extent mimicking the effect of testosterone., As Elton John sang
If you cross a load of diverse dog breeds and then select only for speed you will end up with a totally mongrel breed, but one that runs like a greyhound. Nordics have resulted from diverse lines of ancestors mixing, especially in the Bronze age: sure. But just as it would cross my boggle threshold to believe a random mix of dog breeds without the aforementioned selection would produce something swifter than any other breed, I have trouble accepting that the way Nordics look was simply the result of a mix of populations.
cut the crap. you think it's selection. so do i. you know that. it's just that your speculations are really fucking confused to me. perhaps you're the picture of clarity, but the veil of opacity goes over my perception for some reason.
But just as it would cross my boggle threshold to believe a random mix of dog breeds without the aforementioned selection would produce something swifter than any other breed, I have trouble accepting that the way Nordics look was simply the result of a mix of populations.
cut the crap. you think it’s selection. so do i. you know that. it’s just that your speculations are really fucking confused to me. perhaps you’re the picture of clarity, but the veil of opacity goes over my perception for some reason.
I went to Avignon as a teen (from northwest UK) and had to spend the second day in bed with what I suppose was the holiday equivalent of "welder's flash", just from mooching about the streets, and the odd aqueduct. Wore superdark aviators after that, still could only make out silhouettes for a few days even at sunset with them off. I thought I was going blind.
And all the old grannies sat around on their doorsteps muttering "Boche .." after us, which did nothing to improve my mood.
His competitive advantage, in my opinion, was that he slept less.
This is actually, what my first ever comment on Unz Review and Mr. Khan’s blog was about:
– https://www.unz.com/gnxp/the-2000-year-selection-of-the-british/#comment-1415185
What he lacked in visual acuity he made up by just being awake for more hours in the day.
How To Turn Your Insomnia Into A Productivity Tool
http://www.fastcompany.com/3025086/how-to-be-a-success-at-everything/how-to-turn-your-insomnia-into-a-productivity-tool
Great post Razib. You should do one on Europeans and East Asians and strength competitions like Strongman and powerlifting competition.
Like West African blacks and their descendants have the gene that allows for fast twitch fibers, Eurasians have slow twitch fibers that fire off slowly but through different anabolic pathways than fast twitch fibers. Like Africans dominate sprinting and other competitions, Eurasians dominate strength comps.
"Congratulations Mr. Bolt on winning the 100m dash. Now Let's see you run a half marathon (21km)."
Is it wrong to think that sprinters get more hype than they should? Yes, Bolt's "threepeat" deserves praise, but compare this to triathletes. How about the traits necessary to compete in a triathlon versus the singular ability to dash just a bit more?
Marathon runners have different muscle fiber typing. Bolt has fast twitch fibers, they fire off faster so he cannot run a marathon due to that.
Sprint swim times as defined by the 50 and 100 meter freestyles with one very small exception have not improved since 2009. That was the last time that the non water permeable Polyurethane full body suits, that were introduced in 2004, were allowed to be worn in competition. Without some kind of human enhancements, I believe we may be very close to the end of the line in sprint swimming speed progression as well.
50-meter swim progression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_record_progression_50_metres_freestyle
100-meter swim progression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_record_progression_1500_metres_freestyle
FYI – 50-meter freestyle Gold Medal winner Anthony Ervin doesn’t do anywhere near the same amount of training as mid to distance freestyler Katie Ledecky nor should he as it would be detrimental to pure speed to train like Katie.
PS I’m a former swimmer and coach. In the last 25 years swim training, with technology (video analysis, biomechanical analysis, VO2max testing and training etc) has come to the masses. In the sprint world of swimming we may have approached the limit. Additionally coaches know what to look for, there is a prototypical swim body (Michael Phelps), when a coach sees a kid that looks like they might have it, they get a lot of attention.
I wrote an article on swimming and blacks and whites.
https://notpoliticallycorrect.me/2016/05/30/white-men-cant-jump-thats-ok-black-men-cant-swim/
Did you catch Devon Allen in the 110m hurdles? A white guy who also plays for the Oregon Ducks. He came in 5th after nailing quite a few hurdles during the run.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the ability to outrun those who are after you and out to do you harm were an important life skill.
In 1982 I was headed into the Century Mall in Chicago when a black teen rushed out, followed by two twenty-something Hispanic security guards in close pursuit. I watched them head up Clark Street with the teen in sneakers pulling away from the guards in shiny black leather shoes. The shoplifter then turned left at the first corner. It occurred to me that was an important life decision he had just made: if it was a dead end he was in big trouble. But if it were a thru street then he needed to make a series of seemingly random turns until he had lost his pursuers.
Perhaps in forested terrain sprinting is selected for because the pursued individual can get lost faster, while in open grassland, endurance running is the best way to get away.
I'd imagine that kind of dynamic might have some survival advantage in areas with many dangerous predators.
OTOH, if you lie down in the snow ...
Is it not possible that if a lot of alleles are involved, then even after a relatively long time there would be individual variation even in the presence of selection pressures? Suppose that there are 100 genes affecting sprinting ability, each with two alleles, 0 and 1. Sprinting ability is determined by the simple sum of all alleles, with the optimum at 50. Then neither 0 nor 1 is better for sprinting, you’d need 50% of the alleles to be version 1 and 50% version 0. If that is the case, eventually selection will settle with some combination, e.g. the first allele will get fixed at 0, the second at 1, etc., but it must take a very long time. Especially if selection doesn’t invariably favor 50, but sometimes 55, sometimes 45.
I might be totally wrong, but that’s my mental model of selection for intelligence: there’s probably an optimum, but it’s determined by a very large number of genes, and the optimum also changes according to place, time, and SES, and so variation remains even after a very long time.
Thing is if you were trying to create a fail-safe system* (which imo is what evolution is effectively trying to do through its use of probability) then separate balancing selection on individual traits would seem to be a good way of doing it.
And if bell curves were probablistically (lol spelling) the most effective form of balancing and bell curves are a poisson curve (iirc?) with a large n - then over time you'd probably get a large n.
And if balancing selection changed and so the frequencies started to adapt to the change then unless the change was extreme it might take a long while (especially if the genes didn't trigger without a specific input e.g. diet).
(* maybe just me but i find thinking about the driving force in terms of fail-safe rather than currently optimal throws up some interesting ideas about the evolution of intelligence - a shark is optimal but not as fail-safe)
so yes.
Mind you there’s a difference between the claim that “intelligence differences between populations are due to selection/adaptation” and “human intelligence vis-a-vis chimpanzees is to due selection/adaptation.” The latter has to be true. I suspect that the former is at least a little bit true.
In 1982 I was headed into the Century Mall in Chicago when a black teen rushed out, followed by two twenty-something Hispanic security guards in close pursuit. I watched them head up Clark Street with the teen in sneakers pulling away from the guards in shiny black leather shoes. The shoplifter then turned left at the first corner. It occurred to me that was an important life decision he had just made: if it was a dead end he was in big trouble. But if it were a thru street then he needed to make a series of seemingly random turns until he had lost his pursuers.
Perhaps in forested terrain sprinting is selected for because the pursued individual can get lost faster, while in open grassland, endurance running is the best way to get away.
What about the old joke “you don’t have to outrun the bear, you just have to outrun whomever you’re with”?
I’d imagine that kind of dynamic might have some survival advantage in areas with many dangerous predators.
Had a similar thought re swimming vs. track, recently.
My impression of their wiki pages was that swimming records are still being broken all the time, where as sprinting records aren’t (although the men’s 400m from 1999 was just broken!). Seems to me that everyone tries running at some point: if you’ve got the potential to be an olympic-caliber runner, you’re going to know it, almost regardless of where you live. Not the case with swimming.
The implication is that Usain Bolt probably truly is the fastest human ever (well, since we’ve been paying attention), but some unknown guy out there in the world probably would have been a better swimmer than Michael Phelps.
Non West Africans are currently 5% off the pace in the 100m from West Africans. Isn’t it unlikely that there will be a miracle drug regimen that could make up that large a difference, and would not be available pretty quickly to West Africans as well?
Genetic enhancement could do the trick but would be decades away because enhanced babies need 20 years to mature. Even that would assume that geneticists would direct their early efforts to engineering humans for athletics. It seems likely that the early focus on research would be on enhancing intelligence, unless it turns out to be easy to engineer athletic enhancements in parallel and create a bunch of Khan Noonan Singhs. ( BTW, given your name and profession, it tickles me to envision the Ricardo Montalban Khan!!! as one of your descendants )
*If* it turned out to be a side effect of malaria protection then the difference could be the frequency of that protection among different populations with West Africa still having a lot and most places above and below certain latitudes having very little to none.
The exceptions (if there were any) would be places that were both recently malarial and the sort of place where money is put into athletics - which tend to not go together except maybe south China.
In that case it wouldn't mean producing a drug or genetic enhancement it would mean screening people with ancestry from ex-malarial regions to see if you could find any that still had it.
I was hoping the Chinese might have done it this Olympics just for the lulz.
In 1982 I was headed into the Century Mall in Chicago when a black teen rushed out, followed by two twenty-something Hispanic security guards in close pursuit. I watched them head up Clark Street with the teen in sneakers pulling away from the guards in shiny black leather shoes. The shoplifter then turned left at the first corner. It occurred to me that was an important life decision he had just made: if it was a dead end he was in big trouble. But if it were a thru street then he needed to make a series of seemingly random turns until he had lost his pursuers.
Perhaps in forested terrain sprinting is selected for because the pursued individual can get lost faster, while in open grassland, endurance running is the best way to get away.
On the savannah you can lie down for a rest when you’ve sprinted yourself to exhaustion.
OTOH, if you lie down in the snow …
An ability to sprint fast IS adaptively beneficial. The selective mechanism is obvious. When you and your brothers get caught on ‘foreign’ territory stealing figs, the slower runners are more likely to get caught, and death or slavery is likely. The ‘penalty’ of this selection is that bones get denser, and muscles stronger. This won’t matter if your tribe lives in much the same place for many millennia. But it will matter to those who set off to find new territory across the continent, or in far distant lands. They will need to cross rivers, and those who can’t swim will not make it. As they travel, over hundreds of generations, there will be selection for lighter bones, less dense muscles, and larger thoracic air pockets. That’s why we see so many black sprinters and so few black swimmers.
“One peculiar thing population genetics teaches us that non-adaptive traits are more heritable” what I do not understand about this argument is whether it is rather meant in absolute terms or relative. For example considering running 100 m there is obviously some variance among humans and this variance is in large parts heritable. On the side the variance could be even bigger, for example in a alternate universe the normal range for grown up males for the 100 m dash running time could be between 0,5 seconds and 1 minute. So in this alternate universe running speed would be even more heritable and thus following the theoretical argument less adaptive.
Compared to this alternate universe running 100 m is adaptive in the our real universe. Seen from this point of view every human trait is adaptive to some degree. So where is the line drawn between non adaptive and adaptive traits?
Compared to this alternate universe running 100 m is adaptive in the our real universe. Seen from this point of view every human trait is adaptive to some degree. So where is the line drawn between non adaptive and adaptive traits?
Pit bulls are invariably aggressive, so they have been selected for that, not for running fast although in many cases they can run very fast
[this is a complicated issue, and not settled. it looks like “pitt bull” is not even a breed; i know something about canine genetics now… -Razib (thanks for not bringing sexual selection into this, and the long blonde hair of golden retrievers, which you must find fetching!)]
My impression of their wiki pages was that swimming records are still being broken all the time, where as sprinting records aren't (although the men's 400m from 1999 was just broken!). Seems to me that everyone tries running at some point: if you've got the potential to be an olympic-caliber runner, you're going to know it, almost regardless of where you live. Not the case with swimming.
The implication is that Usain Bolt probably truly is the fastest human ever (well, since we've been paying attention), but some unknown guy out there in the world probably would have been a better swimmer than Michael Phelps.
“My impression of their wiki pages was that swimming records are still being broken all the time” sorry for being off-topic, but what really makes me wonder is how they break weight lifting records all the time. Actually I find this a little bit frightening. These women and men lift weights above their head nobody should lift for the sake of their health. Yet they lift even heavier weights all the time. When will this end?
2. Elite competitive sports are not healthy and never have been. See Arrhichion, Phidippides, etc.
Like West African blacks and their descendants have the gene that allows for fast twitch fibers, Eurasians have slow twitch fibers that fire off slowly but through different anabolic pathways than fast twitch fibers. Like Africans dominate sprinting and other competitions, Eurasians dominate strength comps.
This might be true, but they excel (relative to Africans) in weight exercises, like Olympic weightlifting, powerlifting, or strongman competitions, which also require a lot of fast twitch fibers. So it isn’t that clearcut.
FWIW Jon Entine is making a bit of an ass of himself on Twitter right now.
That’s how I tend to see it also.
Thing is if you were trying to create a fail-safe system* (which imo is what evolution is effectively trying to do through its use of probability) then separate balancing selection on individual traits would seem to be a good way of doing it.
And if bell curves were probablistically (lol spelling) the most effective form of balancing and bell curves are a poisson curve (iirc?) with a large n – then over time you’d probably get a large n.
And if balancing selection changed and so the frequencies started to adapt to the change then unless the change was extreme it might take a long while (especially if the genes didn’t trigger without a specific input e.g. diet).
(* maybe just me but i find thinking about the driving force in terms of fail-safe rather than currently optimal throws up some interesting ideas about the evolution of intelligence – a shark is optimal but not as fail-safe)
Yeah but that was true everywhere not just West Africa.
(although now i think of it if there was a cost attached to the sprint gene then as soon as the need changed then people might lose it – so it could be West Africa lost the positive selection pressure most recently – although that makes me think of malaria again)
Genetic enhancement could do the trick but would be decades away because enhanced babies need 20 years to mature. Even that would assume that geneticists would direct their early efforts to engineering humans for athletics. It seems likely that the early focus on research would be on enhancing intelligence, unless it turns out to be easy to engineer athletic enhancements in parallel and create a bunch of Khan Noonan Singhs. ( BTW, given your name and profession, it tickles me to envision the Ricardo Montalban Khan!!! as one of your descendants )
I think it would depend on the cause.
*If* it turned out to be a side effect of malaria protection then the difference could be the frequency of that protection among different populations with West Africa still having a lot and most places above and below certain latitudes having very little to none.
The exceptions (if there were any) would be places that were both recently malarial and the sort of place where money is put into athletics – which tend to not go together except maybe south China.
In that case it wouldn’t mean producing a drug or genetic enhancement it would mean screening people with ancestry from ex-malarial regions to see if you could find any that still had it.
I was hoping the Chinese might have done it this Olympics just for the lulz.
So, intelligence is heritable because it isn’t highly adaptive. This would seem to refute Pumpkin Person, who claims intelligence is the very ability to adapt to circumstances.
"subject to strong continuous unidirectional selection"
I missed the key word "unidirectional" the first time.
This is actually, what my first ever comment on Unz Review and Mr. Khan's blog was about:- https://www.unz.com/gnxp/the-2000-year-selection-of-the-british/#comment-1415185
What he lacked in visual acuity he made up by just being awake for more hours in the day.
How To Turn Your Insomnia Into A Productivity Tool
http://www.fastcompany.com/3025086/how-to-be-a-success-at-everything/how-to-turn-your-insomnia-into-a-productivity-tool
This is just anecdotal evidence by by Dr Lendon H. Smith M.D. [1921-2001], but most other doctors and therapists dealing with hyperactive children, I checked online, observed and reported a similar pattern in the phenotype of their patients. Predominantly light-eyed Nordics.
– http://www.phosadd.com/support%20evidence/lsmith.htm
I wonder what percentage of pioneer stock had lightly pigmented eyes?
– http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11816051
– p. 207 Tahoe Tales of Bygone Days and Memorable Pioneers By Don Lane
I guess this is to be expected from the NY Times:
Blue eyes are increasingly rare in America – Americas – International Herald Tribune
– http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/18/world/americas/18iht-web.1018eyes.3199975.html?_r=0
This study was published in 2007, shortly after the above article was published, but still: Influence of eye colors of Caucasians and Asians on suppression of melatonin secretion by light. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17332164
What kind of effect does and will this have on the pioneering and ”New Frontier” spirit of the United States of America?
– http://www.nasa.gov/topics/history/features/john_f_kennedy.html#.V7YuKTWsQSU
PS: In my above comment, there was a *by* too many. It was just supposed to say: … evidence by Dr Lendon H. Smith M.D. [1921-2001] …
Black athletes dominate SOME sports. You only need watch the current Olympics to see that there are plenty of sports with few or even no black participants.
I always like to read articles by Jon Entine, but the title of one uses inconsistent terms for different biological races. Either he should use terms of geographic origin:
or if he wants to use skin coloration, then he should use more realistic colors (which sound ludicrous):
I think most Americans prefer to use “white” instead of “European” because the latter imply that “whites” are non-native immigrants just like Asians and Africans.
“Caucasian” is a legacy term, which I’m sure that most Americans don’t understand and don’t know where Caucasus is.
Another explanation is that it’s perceived as politically correct to say “white”, but not for different skin colorations.
1. To a first approximation, they don’t. The IWF has reshuffled the weight classes a couple of times to wipe out the old records from back when there was little or no effective drug testing, but the all-time best performances mostly occurred 1984-1992.
2. Elite competitive sports are not healthy and never have been. See Arrhichion, Phidippides, etc.
That study you cited compares light-eyed Caucasians to dark-eyed East Asians and so is confounded to the point of being useless. Do you have any real data?
jason malloy looked at blue vs brown eyed white kids in NLSY. no differences. after that i stopped paying attention to this stuff.
Did he control for TV/computer usage and city dwelling, Mr. Khan?
– https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276058175_Effect_of_Iris_Pigmentation_and_Latitude_on_Chronotype_and_Sleep_Timing
The problem with higher eveningness scores in dark-eyed persons is, that artificial light has somewhat distorted study results.
Outdoor light at night (LAN) is correlated with eveningness in adolescents. Vollmer C1, Michel U, Randler C.
– http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22214237
Across the nation, four out of five whites live outside of the cities and 86 percent of whites live in neighborhoods where minorities make up less than 1 percent of the population. In contrast, 70 percent of Blacks and Latinos live in the cities or inner-ring suburbs. – http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-03-08.htm
Nielsen report confirms blacks watch more TV than any other group [37%] http://thegrio.com/2013/09/27/nielsen-report-confirms-blacks-watch-more-tv-than-any-other-group/
– http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2001098/Black-minority-children-watch-50-cent-TV-day-whites-90-sets-bedrooms–study-finds.html
If light-eyed whites lived in cities at the same rate and were to use their computers and TVs at the same rate as dark-eyed Asians, Hispanics, and Asians do, I am sure their eveningness scores would be higher, and thus their total hours/minutes of sleep per day would be fewer, because their wake-up time would probably not change much, because they are more sensitive to dawnlight, due to their light iris pigmentation.
Phase delaying the human circadian clock with a single light pulse and moderate delay of the sleep/dark episode: no influence of iris color
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2722576/Also, to bring back the discussion to athletics, there is an instance where the NY Times admitted, that not all athletes are created equal:
Hitters With Blue Eyes Are Wary About Glare
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/sports/baseball/in-baseball-blue-eyed-hitters-are-wary-of-glare.html?_r=0PS: Typo in my above comment. It was supposed to say: ...at the same rate as dark-eyed African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians do...
you post too many links.
i can use google scholar too.
I just wanted to add one more bit of information to this discussion, and then I will let it rest, since I tend to get a little carried away and overly obsessed on this particular topic. Thank you for your patience, Mr. Khan:
Phase delaying the human circadian clock with a single light pulse and moderate delay of the sleep/dark episode: no influence of iris color
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2722576/
Also, to bring back the discussion to athletics, there is an instance where the NY Times admitted, that not all athletes are created equal:
Hitters With Blue Eyes Are Wary About Glare
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/sports/baseball/in-baseball-blue-eyed-hitters-are-wary-of-glare.html?_r=0
PS: Typo in my above comment. It was supposed to say: …at the same rate as dark-eyed African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians do…
We’re afraid to talk about it because: Jimmy “the Greek” Snyder.
He talked about it long ago and was fired from his job and run out of polite society.
from post #2
“subject to strong continuous unidirectional selection”
I missed the key word “unidirectional” the first time.
https://twitter.com/surt_lab/status/766028942520180736
https://twitter.com/JonEntine/status/765735190329253888
wow, this guy is a dick! how did i miss him? does he have good judgment or just a contrarian? seems right up my alley
My impression of their wiki pages was that swimming records are still being broken all the time, where as sprinting records aren't (although the men's 400m from 1999 was just broken!). Seems to me that everyone tries running at some point: if you've got the potential to be an olympic-caliber runner, you're going to know it, almost regardless of where you live. Not the case with swimming.
The implication is that Usain Bolt probably truly is the fastest human ever (well, since we've been paying attention), but some unknown guy out there in the world probably would have been a better swimmer than Michael Phelps.
It was only a few years ago that swimmers adopted new suits that significantly lowered drag in the water. The recent crash of world records has probably been because of that.