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They should compare staff positions instead, as coaches and water boys probably display regular IQ patterns.
I'm not sure what you mean here. Do you think the average NFL coach is not of above average intelligence? That job is far too competitive for that to be true.
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(I noticed all of the comments you contributed to this community are effectively unsubstantiated racism. I suspect I am wasting my time replying, so I will keep this brief.) "foot speed and intelligence are inversely correlated...'[black people are faster and dumber and white people are slower and smarter]'" You are missing the point entirely. While there is an inverse correlation between footspeed and intelligence i…
The existence of a racial gap in IQ is simply not in dispute. It shows up in SAT scores, it shows up in military IQ tests during times with a draft, and it shows up in numerous psychological studies. See for instance this paper from Brookings Institute, which is about as mainstream liberal as you can get ( http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/dickens/20060619_iq.pd... ) The only question is if the difference or envi…
Elevation, and sheer numbers. Kenya is at elevation, and people are poor, so there are thousands upon thousands who get into long-distance running hoping it will be a way "out". Of course living at elevation does lead to genetic changes as well (e.g. Tibetans), but you can't discount the effect of much larger numbers of people to choose from for a given discipline.
Jet Li is representative of the best in China, not of the average Chinese person. African-Americans enroll in sport at a very high rate. Combine widespread economic disadvantage with a "cultural" push toward sport or entertainment and there's a bigger talent pool to choose from.
As for sprinting vs. long-distance running, sprinting requires more muscle and hence a more concentrated diet. And, generally, steroids. Kostas Kenteris didn't break 10 seconds for the 100m (10.15) but did do the 200m in 19.85 which means he ran 100m of it in less than 10s. The West African link is a cultural artifact of U.S. slavery. "Blacks" of West African descent are also of "white" descent. (Note that modern West Africans are not setting sprinting records.) Greater physical capabilities are a byproduct of an inhumane "sorting" or "filtering" system that killed large numbers of slaves through physical hardship. Not to mention the distasteful but real application of selective breeding to slaves by slaveowners.
So, yes, there are genetic differences -- but there always are between different people. The biggest factor IS environmental. For proof of that, consider how strong and muscular you COULD be if you dedicated your life to it instead of sitting at a computer all day. For most sedentary people you can easily be in better shape at 40 than you were at 20 simply by working at it instead of playing video games. Your genetics determine certain kinds of potential, but when it comes to brain genetics, it's not clear what potential really means; you may create something incredible even though your numbers on a test weren't as good as someone else's. Interest and enthusiasm that lead to sheer dedication get you farther than mere intelligence, because there's always so much work to be done.
And then there's the ever-popular, "if you're so smart, how come your life sucks?"
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I wouldn't be so sure. In sports, performance is dictated by reflex. Mistakes are eliminated by constant practice, not by ruminating over past errors. So I would expect that the players who are most optimistic would have the best performance, because they derive pleasure from their successes, quickly forget their failures, and are thus most likely to practice.
Mistakes are not eliminated by constant practice unless you practice not making mistakes. If you just keep repeating yourself, you'll just learn to optimize around your mistakes and never reach peak performance. This happens to musicians a lot.
It may not be anything so complicated as smarter people being closer to the ball. It looks to me as if there is an inverse correlation between IQ and the running speed necessary in a position. So the simplest explanation for this pattern is that running speed and intelligence aren't highly correlated, and you can't simultaneously optimize for both. E.g. you can pick a smart guy to be your center even if he's slow, be…
The chart doesn't really support this. Cornerbacks are normally required to be a bit faster than receivers, who in turn are normally faster than tailbacks. In those cases, the Wonderlic scores are proportional to the foot speeds. Also, there are different kinds of running speed (e.g. quickness, lateral speed, straigh-away speed) which this doesn't take into account.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The existence of a racial gap in IQ is simply not in dispute. It shows up in SAT scores, it shows up in military IQ tests during times with a draft, and it shows up in numerous psychological studies. See for instance this paper from Brookings Institute, which is about as mainstream liberal as you can get ( http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/dickens/20060619_iq.pd... ) The only question is if the difference or envi…
I have no problem with facts. If there is currently an IQ gap between races, then that's a fact. We can study the reasons, that's fine too. But it's the potential for assigning social roles to certain groups because of some "natural" disposition that I find troubling.
But I also think a lot of damage can be done by avoiding talk of genetic differences. The media, politicians, and educational institutions have been telling black people that the problems in the black community are all a result of racism. This has created a hostility towards whites that only harms the cause of economic advancement.
Interesting. Yet in this study the Wonderlic is keyed to position, not performance in that position. We know that people largely stay within their positions, and we know that metrics like the Wonderlic and the drafting Combine strongly influence both draft decisions, and fielding decisions. We know that such metrics are designed to correspond with existing ideas: in this case, that quarterbacks were smart and tailbac…
I didn't like Gladwell's talk because he ignored baseball: teams like Oakland and Boston have started to understand what metrics do work in assessing player performance (Michael Lewis wrote about this in detail in " Moneyball "). By ignoring something because it doesn't fit in his neat theory, Gladwell loses credibility on this topic.
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I'm not sure what you mean here. Do you think the average NFL coach is not of above average intelligence? That job is far too competitive for that to be true.
Err, I mean: Instead of comparing linebackers and centers, compare different types of staff on the teams, viz, coaches and water boys, etc.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have no problem with facts. If there is currently an IQ gap between races, then that's a fact. We can study the reasons, that's fine too. But it's the potential for assigning social roles to certain groups because of some "natural" disposition that I find troubling.
I agree. I think that's why so people ( including me once upon a time) want to avoid talking about genetic explanations for the IQ gap as long as there is any possibility of it being environmental. But I also think a lot of damage can be done by avoiding talk of genetic differences. The media, politicians, and educational institutions have been telling black people that the problems in the black community are all a r…
Regarding the second part of our post:
1) if black communities are still feeling the negative effects of slavery and discrimination, then we should recognize this, regardless of its effects on economic advancement (ie, tell the truth, even when it hurts)
2) the phrase "telling black people that" really bothers me because it subtly implies black people can't figure it out without help
3) maybe it's because I live in Texas or maybe because I'm a minority, but I sense more hostility from whites towards blacks than vice versa
4) I haven't seen any research that has tied racial hostilities to lack of economic advancement in the US. You could actually argue the opposite since US became an economic powerhouse after WWII, and racial tensions were very high then
It may not be anything so complicated as smarter people being closer to the ball. It looks to me as if there is an inverse correlation between IQ and the running speed necessary in a position. So the simplest explanation for this pattern is that running speed and intelligence aren't highly correlated, and you can't simultaneously optimize for both. E.g. you can pick a smart guy to be your center even if he's slow, be…
Here's an explanation for why foot speed and intelligence are inversely correlated: "Upper body strength is relatively equally distributed between the races, but footspeed most definitely is not. So, tailbacks, wide receivers, and defensive players have a need for speed, so they are disproportionately black. I haven't checked recently, but in most recent years since Jason Sehorn's retirement, none of the 64 NFL start…
Just to be clear, I believe in speaking frankly about race, so am not objecting to that aspect of your post. But I'm skeptical of attempts to bottle up something as grand as "intelligence" into a single metric. For example, I read somewhere that the original Stanford-Binet had to be modified because women were scoring higher than men (so it obviously needed correcting). That's a pretty compelling detail, if true.
(I don't remember where I first read this, but a little Googling brings up http://www.beyondsatire.us/?q=node/18, which is hardly definitive but does have an interesting author.)
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The malnutrition explanation doesn't really work in the NFL. Even the "small" players weigh 220 pounds. Regarding size, speed and intelligence, even though they are huge, most NFL linemen will have a faster 40 than most math graduate students.
That's a good point. I somehow didn't consider it before. I guess if they're in the 99.5th percentile of size, very very few of them will have any traits that cause lower height. I agree that at 40 they will be faster. But for short bursts of speed, or for a run that requires frequent changes of direction (e.g. because you're being chased around) the higher IQ people will have a 'speed' advantage due to mental rather…