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Do Fathers Who Exercise Have Smarter Babies?

nytimes.com

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Re: Do Fathers Who Exercise Have Smarter Babies?

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I conceptualize of it is that evolution is still almost entirely Darwinian, but that there's also a ton of other stuff that happens. Without wanting to get political, I think a good analogy would be human gender and sexuality. The statement that there are two human sexes, male and female, and that they seek each other out for the purpose of mating explains somewhere around 95% of what you see in humans. But h…

A slight mismatch in your analogy is that G&S studies doesn't explain anything, they just categorize it. They aren't proposing any mechanisms.

There is definitely serious research into the causal mechanisms of homosexuality and transgenderism.

Re: Do Fathers Who Exercise Have Smarter Babies?

#62

So that would imply that people who actually must exercise for their job (construction workers) would have smarter children, on average? And how would that be measured if the child gets stuck in a poorly performing school and no real academic challenges?

Exercise for work and exercise done for play may have different outcomes though. I remember reading George Sheehan’s Running and Being and he says dockworkers etc don’t seem to get the same health benefits from their work exercise. There’s something unique about it being for play.

Importantly, mice are exercised by being forced to run in wheels, i.e., cardio.

There have been studios in humans showing that cardio exercise has mental benefits, presumably in part due to increased blood flow to the brain. And anecdotally, among knowledge workers like lawyers and doctors, cardio exercise is disproportionately over-represented compared to average populations.

Re: Do Fathers Who Exercise Have Smarter Babies?

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exercise for work and exercise done for play may have different outcomes though. I remember reading George Sheehan’s Running and Being and he says dockworkers etc don’t seem to get the same health benefits from their work exercise. There’s something unique about it being for play.

Importantly, mice are exercised by being forced to run in wheels, i.e., cardio. There have been studios in humans showing that cardio exercise has mental benefits, presumably in part due to increased blood flow to the brain. And anecdotally, among knowledge workers like lawyers and doctors, cardio exercise is disproportionately over-represented compared to average populations.

The last bit is interesting. But ya have to wonder which came first...the runner or the knowledge worker. Know what I mean?

Re: Do Fathers Who Exercise Have Smarter Babies?

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a well known fact that mice and humans promdominantly share the same genome, so this research should be taken with more than grain of salt, methinks.

Isn't that also true of me and corn?

~85% with mice, ~60% with bananas. I suspect corn is more like a banana than a mouse.

Re: Do Fathers Who Exercise Have Smarter Babies?

#67
post #48
post #42

How do you even define smart? Is it quantified by the IQ tests? Does smartness include the factor of social skills(EQ) and how someone may present himself or herself in a social situations. How do you decide what's smart and what's not smart?

Why do social skills have any preferred treatment over any other skills? I'd say smart is best measured by IQ.

What do you exactly measure by comparing IQs? A person who does not do well on math test can become much more "successful" than a person who does. How does IQ really correlate with success?

Re: Do Fathers Who Exercise Have Smarter Babies?

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A slight mismatch in your analogy is that G&S studies doesn't explain anything, they just categorize it. They aren't proposing any mechanisms.

There is definitely serious research into the causal mechanisms of homosexuality and transgenderism.

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