Man and Superman
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1) The first example is identical twins Otto and Ewald, who pursued different sports and developed rather different physiques through their sports training.
http://thesameffect.com/check-out-identical-twins-otto-and-e...
(I learned about this case from a local professor who teaches courses in human behavior genetics. He uses this case as an example to correct misunderstandings about genetics.)
2) The second example is that Usain Bolt was once thought to be too tall to be a successful sprinter.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00v9bs4/profiles/usain-bolt
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/49040-usain-bolt-why-the-...
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/recycled/200...
The simple fact is that athletic training reshapes bodies and makes what seems impossible possible after all.
By the way, I find it a bit silly that those articles about genetic differences concentrate on sports so much. Somehow it is much easier for people to swallow that our bodies are shaped by our genes, that it is to accept that a large part of our mental makeup is as well, despite strong scientific evidence for it. For the same reason I think any notion of "fairness" in this context meaningless, genes make every one of us who we are and we have vastly different capabilities concerning all activities, from chess playing, through math problem solving, to sports and entrepreneurship. There is no fairness at all in any human activity.
[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/08/the...
Countries as large as the US, India, China, etc., have large enough populations that someone in them should match the "genetic ideal" to excel at a certain sport. It is economics that prevents them from doing so. Either their country or culture doesn't value the sport and thus doesn't spend money on it, or they must spend too much time earning to feed themselves that they can't train.
Or that particular person has just never tried the sport. Or there are people who are actually more genetically suited to the particular sport but are discouraged from trying because they hear the current theories on what makes a genetically suitable athlete for that sport.
All we know is that Kenya as a country has the ability to produce excellent marathon runners. To heap all of that on "genetics" is grossly short-sited.
People in my hometown love baseball. The next town over they love football. My hometown has never produced a professional or semi-pro football player, and the next town over has never produced a professional or semi-pro baseball player. But they each have had one or two people at least show up on the rosters of a professional team in their favorite sports. That's a difference of 11 miles, with highly mobile people who do intermarry between towns.
There can be significant enough differences in the culture of particular communities to allow for varying sports values. I would expect smaller towns to tend to emphasize one sport over all others, to the point that the townspeople in large part will live and breath that sport in a way that people in larger communities with more diverse sports options would not.
Within a breeding population, height tends to follow a normal distribution. Depending on the standard deviation, there will be a few Japanese taller than the average Dutch. But there will be far more Dutch than Japanese among the very tallest men. This is a simple example, but in a sport where height matters, like basketball, there will be far more Dutch who are good at it than Japanese, and far more Japanese than pygmies.
Certainly culture matters, especially in sports where intelligence matters more and raw physical talents matter less. But genetics also matter.
- http://suite101.com/article/why-are-the-dutch-so-tall-a55753
Yes, it could be said that the Japanese do not value basketball because they have historically not found success in it on the international scale, which would be because of their genetic predisposition to being shorter than even the Chinese. Genetics shape culture and culture can reinforce genetics. But it's not all about genetics. That's my entire point: there is no single variable that can claim why Kenyans run so well. But people want to say that it's genetics that make a good marathoner. That's just not the case, it takes both genetics and environment.
This is not a novel concept, but for some reason when it comes to lay people talking on the internet about sports, they don't want to admit it. The world is complex, there are shades of grey, nothing is black and white.
Try as they might, achondroplastic dwarves will never make it to the NBA, and severe, congenitally retarded people will never have a significant, active contribution to human knowledge.
These are off course extreme examples. There are several ways to be a good basketball player, or to become an intellectual (athleticism is less open to variety).
But for an equal amount of work some people will end up better at some tasks than others.
If Bolt had pursued cricket, rather than athletics, he would have looked different, too, but that does not mean he isn't a genetically good fit for a sprinter. Now, if you had a pair of identical twins where both trained identically, weren't hit by different strokes of luck/misfortune, but got wildly different physique, that would have been an argument.
As to your second argument, the fact that we do not know what genetic makeup makes a fast sprinter does not imply that there is no genetic makeup that makes a fast sprinter.
1. Chess is a game traditionally considered to be strongly co-related to IQ (which is strongly heridetary), but a survey of Grandmasters find that they have generally average IQ. What they did have a lot of, was years of experience and dedication, and also probably very good memories.
2. Basketball is a game where height (which is also strongly heridetary) is very important (the average height of a NBA player is 6' 7"). What are the odds of a man who is 5' 7" becoming a great world-class player? Sure, you could name some guy who fought all odds to rise to the top. But the key word here is odds, and genetics plays a huge role in stacking up the odds.
In the end it all becomes a horrible mess.
In then end I tend to think the genetics must have an impact all over society and culture, and, well, that's that.
Go to 1:00.45 unless you want to here about Gaelic Football etc.
Personally, I think there are huge genetic variations between individuals. I could never possibly train hard/effectively enough to compete with someone like Bekele or Gebrselassie. I also think it is kind of hard for most people (non-athletes) to understand this fact unless they have personally spent years training hard themselves.
That said, these huge genetic variations only set the ceiling of what you are capable of. This is why I think that for the majority of people who participate in sports, it is in fact a very fair endeavor. Even up through the D1 level, I think hard work can more than compensate for most genetic disadvantages. It becomes more difficult as you start to approach world-class, but for 99% of people who are athletes of some form, anyone you would locally compete against can be defeated simply by working harder.
It may not be fair in the sense that I might have to run 80 miles a week vs my competitor running 30 miles a week to achieve the same result, but in the end, all that matters is who has a faster time or a better score. Maybe that bothers some people, but it doesn't bother me.
It also sets how fast you can get there.
But I wouldn't subscribe to this definition of fairness. Fairness seems more about everyone playing by the same set of rules in the sport. If you start including genetics into the rules then it would become unfair, purely by defining it that way.
But seriously... I am all for sport enhancements from now on. We really need to do lots of tests with RNA based genetic modification. (I predict that Chinese companies will earn fortunes by curing lots of diseases in ten-fifteen years.)
Honestly, looking at the sacrifices some sportspeople have to make in other areas of their lives, I'm not sure I'd even want the advantages if they were offered me. I mean I love martial arts, dancing, swimming, archery... but I'm not sure I'd want to live the sort of life necessary to become the best in the world in any of them. When did sports become about winning, rather than having fun and making friends?
Two thousand years ago or so (maybe more), when prize money and sponsorship deals became a thing.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7942...
Our LIVES are determined by 2 factors:
1. Genetics
2. The environment in which our genetics are applied (social, economic, ecologic, etc.)
Everything in our lives is caused by these two. So no, there is no real free will and nobody is ever treated fairly.
And yes, our entire culture is still medieval with regards to accepting this fact and taking it into account.
What they have in common is having enjoyed the opportunity to express their unique abilities and the will to develop them to an elite level. A high red blood cell count won't make a Trinidadian into a world class cross country skier.
On the other hand, an interesting question would be about improved homo sapiens - we will start to improve ourselves as a species at some point (simply because there are so many imperfect things to improve), and at that point 'unupgraded' athletes probably won't be competitive at all.
Usually these advantages can't be quantified, they can hardly be predicted. It takes a lot of math to do that for a population of athletes... and then the top performer gets injured.
No, they don't. In fact, we're so aware of it that we have an entirely separate category for athletes that lack a Y chromosome.
Of course there are "big wins" in genetics. But they are the exception, not the rule. If you see someone smarter or faster than someone else, chances are genetics has next to nothing to do with it. Still we hear genetics mentioned in this context all the time.
At top of sports, every single one of them has all the "nurture" stuff close to maximum - not identical, not maximum, but with no huge differences in the training and preparation. If you see "someone faster than someone else", then if those 'someones' are a gold medalist vs an amateur - sure, genetics have little to do with it; but if those 'someones' are a gold medalist and 4th place... then genetics (or possibly doping) are everything; the 4th place runner did everything else pretty much the same as the top one.
Why don't we just change the rules so everyone wins?
What happens, though, when the most innately talented (Armstrong, Rodriguez, Barry Bonds) also go in for enhancement?
Also I don't believe it matters at the top level. Even with high heritabilities, the top performers will probably share the same "genetic" advantages.
Did you even read the article? Sometimes it feels like when the headline is simple like that people feel like they can skip the thing completely and just post the most concise, one-up retort they can muster.
Want to stay fit? Do some bodybuilding and some swimming.
Want to focus your mind tactically? Plan your app empire.
Hackers need to find creative ways to destroy the sport industry, just as PG urges us to find creative ways to destroy Hollywood.
Sports exist because some people find them fun. If you don't, don't worry. They're purely optional.
Also, sports are one of the few times that people log off from their computers. That's another huge loss in revenue for us hackers.
Spectator sports exist because we like to witness competition, and ideally direct, short-term competition between equally matched people. It sets up a fascinating situation - you have two intelligent, capable, experienced players, more or less equally matched, and both have every expectation that they will win a fair fight. Moreover, you agree with both assessments. And yet, they put themselves in a situation where there can only be one winner. Is that not an exciting premise for entertainment?
Also, I get more of a kick from movies, even sport movies, in that short-duration time period you mention.
I guess you don't find sex fun either?
That is incorrect. If sports were fair, then everyone would win. Sports are specifically not meant to be fair, the entire point of the competition is to reveal which competitor is superior to the others.
The rules that we have against performance enhancing drugs are not about having an advantage over other competitors. We don't have similar rules governing how much weight training a particular athlete may do, or how clean their diet may be. They are about establishing rules by which universal play can be governed. The rules of the game define the game. If you play by a different set of rules, you are playing a different game. If the Tour de France did not have a rule against excessive[1] steroid use, then using steroids would not be cheating. But, the Tour de France with steroids is not the Tour de France, it's a different race entirely.
As a culture, we associate healthful living with physical fitness, and we associate sports accomplishment with physical fitness, therefore we make the huge leap of associating sports accomplishment with healthful living. Even sans-drugs, sports accomplishment doesn't necessarily equal healthful living, especially in the cases of ultra-marathons increasing risk of heart attack and the head trauma of American football increasing the chance of dementia. But we still make that association, so as a culture we tend to value sports that at least pay lip service to maintaining the image of athletes as healthy. Though, it's important to point at that we are inconsistent in that regard: certain performance enhancing drugs are allowed in horse racing, and why shouldn't pain killers be considered performance enhancing, if they allow the athlete to perform better than they would without them?
Our culture shapes the rules we choose for our games, the rules define the game. Cheating is not about "gaining an unfair advantage". It is an unfair advantage for the New York Yankees to have the very best sports doctors in the league, but it is within the rules of the game, therefor it is not cheating. Much of sports strategy is about finding ways to find unconventional play within the rules to give oneself an unfair advantage. Cheating is violating the social contract of the game: "we've come here today to engage in a competition and these are the rules by which we will evaluate the competition".
[1] steroid use rules are often defined in terms of testosterone levels, and the limits are frequently well, well above the levels expected for a healthy male. The rule is thus, "no high testosterone", not actually "no steroids", and it has become standard practice in many sports to try to cycle a steroid usage to peak testosterone levels just below the limit. This takes significant personal experimentation and blood testing to see exactly how the individual body reacts to the drugs and over what time frame. But don't expect the difficulty to mean that people aren't doing it: they are. When you see an athlete testing positive for steroids, it is not a question whether or not they were using steroids or that others were also using it, it's a matter of them not following their regimen properly.
The way he's using "fair" is more like "If sports were fair, then the guy who works hardest would win." Equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome.
Sports are fair in the sense that everyone has the opportunity to do everything they can within the rules. The rules are numerous enough and vague enough (being that they are written by people in human languages) that there are a variety of interpretations and paths through which one can play. No one person can explore the entire depths of the rulebook.
But it is not fair in the sense that any one particular path through the rulebook will be as effective as any other path.
That seems very obviously not true, unless by "primadonna athletes" you mean "the vast majority of athletes". Athletes face opportunity costs just like the rest of us, and different athletes come to different priorities. They aren't robots.
For instance, stories about pro athletes coming to training camp out of shape are very common. An article I recently read about Andre Miller comes to mind. Andre Miller is a basketball player that most would say fits the archetype of "wily veteran" rather than "primadonna". How does he train? http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/15542/the-secrets...
"I have no regimen," Miller says. After the season ends, so does Miller's working out -- no weights, no cardio, no nothing. "I really don't pick up a basketball." Eating right also falls by the wayside. "(My diet) isn't healthy at all," Miller says. "Hamburgers, hot links on the Fourth of July, all that." To control his weight, however, Miller uses old-fashioned discipline. "I starve myself," he says. Seriously? "Yeah, I'm just starting to learn about calories and all that."
Yep, that's the guy who owns the active NBA record for consecutive games played. And he competes against players like Kobe Bryant and Steve Nash who are famous for their impeccable training regimens.
Another example... literally every female athlete who gets pregnant is hurting her chances for victory. Yet tons of them do it.
That isn't clear-cut. There are rumours that getting pregnat was used as a form of doping. See http://www.snopes.com/politics/sexuality/doping.asp, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_doping
Read about myostatin. It's a protein that inhibits muscle growth.