racial height differences poll

[ApostateAbe]

What is it about their diets? Is it the rice? MSG? Ramen?

KFC, Chinese foods, high vegetable intake. Some Chinese in the North of China are as tall as Dutch people. In the South they get smaller. However this is changing.

https://ourworldindata.org/human-height/

...

Children of immigrants are taller than their parents. Still not as tall as whites on average ("some" doesn't matter), so it doesn't answer the question of what explains the racial height differentials. Do we really think that Asians can get as tall as whites by changing their diets? It really is a weird perspective in my opinion that, in spite of the high heritability of height, an average white person can go to Japan and say, "If only you feed more children more animals, your boys can be just as tall as me." I expect it would provoke a laugh, though every father wants to have tall boys.

 

[Bronzeage]

It's well documented that the Germanic Tribes were taller than the Romans. Some Roman commanders thought this was an advantage and tried to form Legions of men all over 5'10. The Roman diet of bread, fruit, vegetables and olive oil produced bodies that were compact and strong. The northern Europeans depended more upon meat and this produced tall lean bodies. One would be hard pressed to find a great genetic difference between a Roman and a German.

There has long been a racial stereotype of Asia women which portrays them to have slender hips and small breasts. However, once the immigrate to the United States, their granddaughters grow up to be as well endowed as any blue eyed cheerleader. Even though their parentage is all Chinese(or other Asian nation), by the 2nd generation, they have assimilated enough American culture to grow up on an American diet, high in sugar, fat, and meat protein.

This points to the downfall of observational genetic analysis. People who happen to look similar to everyone else, also happen to eat what everyone else eats and live in the same environment as everyone else. It's easy to mistake environmental effects for genetics.

As for intelligence and brain size, that's a hard sell, since no one has yet to devise an intelligence test which is not dependent on cultural bias. The idea of determining intelligence of people long dead is silly.

"It's well documented that the Germanic Tribes were taller than the Romans."

I accept that. I don't yet accept that they were on average six feet tall. In the ancient world, that would make them giants.

"One would be hard pressed to find a great genetic difference between a Roman and a German."

The diet explanation is plausible, but the genetic explanation is not out of the question, as there was and there remains differences in allele frequencies between the two groups, as between any groups of differing geography. Today, Germans have a two-inch height advantage over Italians. As within-group heritability of height is 0.9, the most probable explanation remains a genetic difference.

"There has long been a racial stereotype of Asia women which portrays them to have slender hips and small breasts. However, once the immigrate to the United States, their granddaughters grow up to be as well endowed as any blue eyed cheerleader. Even though their parentage is all Chinese(or other Asian nation), by the 2nd generation, they have assimilated enough American culture to grow up on an American diet, high in sugar, fat, and meat protein."

This is another extraordinary claim! Maybe it is based on your own personal observations, but they do not match my own. Maybe the boobs of third-generation Asians are bigger than first-generation, but almost certainly not as big as whites.

"...no one has yet to devise an intelligence test which is not dependent on cultural bias."

The myth of the cultural bias of intelligence tests is really just a myth, as cultural bias is measurable in many ways, it is roundly disconfirmed, and intelligence researchers on all sides of the race debate are on the same side when it comes to that popular myth. If you would like more details, I can write a new post on it. I can also write a new post on the correlation between intelligence and cranial capacity.

Yes, we need a thread titled, "Is bigger better?"

 

[skepticalbip]

Here is a "Through the Wormhole" episode (the first part anyway) that seems to address the OP. It is moderated by Morgan Freeman so everything in it must be true...

 

[ApostateAbe]

Here is a "Through the Wormhole" episode (the first part anyway) that seems to address the OP. It is moderated by Morgan Freeman so everything in it must be true...

Great video, but it is about racial intelligence difference, not racial height differences.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Speak plainly and tell me what you really believe.

I believe you're making a subjective judgment that you cannot support with anything like objective science.
You jump from different diets to calling them 'bad' diet choices.

You believe that a man's height has nothing to do with what makes a man sexy. I take that back, you can't possibly believe that.

You know, if you're actually going to 'take it back' you would use the little backspace key to remove your statement, rather than try to use it for effect.

But anyway, different body sizes and styles have different advantages in different environments. Submarines and fighter jets are rather extreme examples, but I'm just trying to show that it's kind of stupid to use such subjective values to try to determine scientific conclusions.

 

[ApostateAbe]

I believe you're making a subjective judgment that you cannot support with anything like objective science.
You jump from different diets to calling them 'bad' diet choices.

You believe that a man's height has nothing to do with what makes a man sexy. I take that back, you can't possibly believe that.

You know, if you're actually going to 'take it back' you would use the little backspace key to remove your statement, rather than try to use it for effect.

But anyway, different body sizes and styles have different advantages in different environments. Submarines and fighter jets are rather extreme examples, but I'm just trying to show that it's kind of stupid to use such subjective values to try to determine scientific conclusions.

Your general perspective is guided by the blank slate. You think there can be no patterns of human thinking except those that are easily malleable, so, if there are tendencies of thought among people, you are likely to dismiss them as not scientific but "subjective." That is unfortunate, because the field of evolutionary psychology provides a wealth of accurate knowledge especially relevant for politics and ideologies. The female preference for taller men is nearly a human universal (I expect the only exceptions are the Pygmy tribes), and there is perhaps no conclusion more strongly established in the field, as it a pattern that applies not only to humans but to all sexually dimorphic species: if the males are bigger than the females, then either the males have sexually selected smaller females, the females have sexually selected bigger males, or both (for humans it is both). If humans evolved in navy submarines, then, yes, it would be different.

• Pierce, 1996, "Body height and romantic attraction: A meta-analytic test of the male-taller norm" via https://www.sbp-journal.com/index.php/sbp/article/view/832
• Pawlowski and Jasienska, 2005, "Women's preferences for sexual dimorphism in height depend on menstrual cycle phase and expected duration of relationship" via https://evoecogroup.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/pawlowski-jasienska_2005.pdf
• Pawlowski et al, 2000, "Evolutionary fitness: tall men have more reproductive success" via http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v403/n6766/abs/403156a0.html
• Higgins et al, 2002, "Attitudes to marriage and sexual behaviors: A survey of gender and culture differences in China and United Kingdom" via http://standyourground.com/forums/index.php?topic=8753.0
• Pawlowskia and Koziel, 2002, "The impact of traits offered in personal advertisements on response rates" via http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090513801000927

 

[iolo]

I think things are culturally conditioned, since we lack instincts. Big men are sexier if you've been trained to find being dominated sexy. Many of our public schoolboys, under similar conditioning, give themselves over to Miss Whip and her equivalents, since they can't have prefects any more.

 

[ronburgundy]

KFC, Chinese foods, high vegetable intake. Some Chinese in the North of China are as tall as Dutch people. In the South they get smaller. However this is changing.

https://ourworldindata.org/human-height/

...

Children of immigrants are taller than their parents. Still not as tall as whites on average ("some" doesn't matter), so it doesn't answer the question of what explains the racial height differentials. Do we really think that Asians can get as tall as whites by changing their diets? It really is a weird perspective in my opinion that, in spite of the high heritability of height, an average white person can go to Japan and say, "If only you feed more children more animals, your boys can be just as tall as me." I expect it would provoke a laugh, though every father wants to have tall boys.

Diet during critical periods (prenatal, birth to 5 years, and early puberty) has massive impact on height. Asians not only consume far fewer calories overall, but they consume far far less milk, animal proteins, and complex carbohydrates (rather than the simple carbs of rice and rice noodles) than US kids do.

The near 3 inches taller that South Koreans are than North Koreans is almost certainly due mostly to the bad diets of the impoverished North Koreans under repressive communism. And rural Chinese are 3 inches shorter than Chinese in Beijing. Those within race (but between diet) differences in height are larger than the height differences between white Americans and the overall population of mainland China. BTW, childhood illnessness (and thus all environmental factors that impact such illnesses) also stunt height development.

So, we know beyond reasonable doubt that at least a large part of the difference is diet and other environmental factors. The fact that children of Asian immigrants in the US are still not exactly as tall as white Americans does not implicate genetics, because those kids still eat diets shaped by their parents culture.

It would't be surprising if their was a genetic component to the Asian-Caucasian height gap, but it would also not be surprising if it is was entirely diet.

The only thing I know for sure is that you don't know the answer to your own question, but don't seem concerned that you lack the evidence for the answer you presume to be true.

 

[DBT]

Physical activity is probably also a factor. Working long hours in the field takes more energy than those who work in an office or factory.

 

[Peez]

ApostateAbe:
I expect there is a Nobel Prize waiting for whoever discovers...

I doubt it.

...this combination of bad diet choices.

What bad diet choices? Is there something bad about being (say) 158 cm (5' 2") tall?

Peez

 

[Peez]

ApostateAbe:
Children of immigrants are taller than their parents. Still not as tall as whites on average ("some" doesn't matter), so it doesn't answer the question of what explains the racial height differentials.

Environmental effects can be carried forward over generations (in other words, even if diet entirely explained the height differences, we would not expect those differences to disappear in one generation). Even ignoring cultural differences in diet here in North America, your height may depends to some extent on the size and nutritional state of your parents.

Do we really think that Asians can get as tall as whites by changing their diets?

Leaving aside the lumping of "Asians" and "whites", no I don't think this. It might be the case, but I don't know.

It really is a weird perspective in my opinion that, in spite of the high heritability of height, an average white person can go to Japan and say, "If only you feed more children more animals, your boys can be just as tall as me." I expect it would provoke a laugh, though every father wants to have tall boys.

You do not seem to understand heritability. I gather that you are referring to narrow-sense heritability, but correct me if I am wrong. It is quite possible to have very high heritability for height and yet still have a difference in average height between populations entirely explained by differences in diet.

Peez

 

[untermensche]

Height is trait that can easily be manipulated through sexual selection, with the given that an "adequate diet" is available so that near full genetic expression is possible.

There are many such traits in animals that are easily manipulated.

All one has to do is look at dogs and one can see how external traits can be manipulated.

Average heights of any group are just the result of random chance, a combination of sexual selection with available nutrition over time.

These external traits have to be contrasted with things like functional systems, like the mammalian visual system, something that has changed very little in millions of years.

And another such system is the human cognitive system.

Not a trait, like height, easily manipulated by sexual selection.

 

[Peez]

Height is trait that can easily be manipulated through sexual selection, with the given that an "adequate diet" is available so that near full genetic expression is possible.

There are many such traits in animals that are easily manipulated.

All one has to do is look at dogs and one can see how external traits can be manipulated.

Average heights of any group are just the result of random chance, a combination of sexual selection with available nutrition over time.

These external traits have to be contrasted with things like functional systems, like the mammalian visual system, something that has changed very little in millions of years.

And another such system is the human cognitive system.

Not a trait, like height, easily manipulated by sexual selection.

I think that this is overly simplistic. First, to be clear, sexual selection is the antithesis of "random chance" (depending, I suppose, on how one defines "random chance"). I am not aware of any evidence for selection favouring taller or shorter humans in specific areas, but I have no a priori reason to reject the hypothesis that such selection occurred in the past.

Second, body size is an important trait, correlated with many other traits, and it certainly is "functional" (again, depending on how one defines "functional"). I would also warn against classifying traits as 'external' or 'internal'.

That being said, your basic point is valid: many traits are complex and constrained, and so tend to resist selection much more than simpler, less constrained traits. This does not mean that our visual systems or cognitive systems cannot evolve, indeed the evidence is that cognitive systems at least have evolved substantially over the past few million years. The important point is that we have no good evidence that cognition has evolved differences among human subgroups. Personally I am open to the possibility that there are subtle average genetic differences in various aspects of cognition among groups of humans, but I see absolutely no good evidence that this is the case, and the efforts I have seen to promote the hypothesis that there are such differences have been infantile.

Peez

 

[Trausti]

Height is trait that can easily be manipulated through sexual selection, with the given that an "adequate diet" is available so that near full genetic expression is possible.

There are many such traits in animals that are easily manipulated.

All one has to do is look at dogs and one can see how external traits can be manipulated.

Average heights of any group are just the result of random chance, a combination of sexual selection with available nutrition over time.

These external traits have to be contrasted with things like functional systems, like the mammalian visual system, something that has changed very little in millions of years.

And another such system is the human cognitive system.

Not a trait, like height, easily manipulated by sexual selection.

I think that this is overly simplistic. First, to be clear, sexual selection is the antithesis of "random chance" (depending, I suppose, on how one defines "random chance"). I am not aware of any evidence for selection favouring taller or shorter humans in specific areas, but I have no a priori reason to reject the hypothesis that such selection occurred in the past.

Second, body size is an important trait, correlated with many other traits, and it certainly is "functional" (again, depending on how one defines "functional"). I would also warn against classifying traits as 'external' or 'internal'.

That being said, your basic point is valid: many traits are complex and constrained, and so tend to resist selection much more than simpler, less constrained traits. This does not mean that our visual systems or cognitive systems cannot evolve, indeed the evidence is that cognitive systems at least have evolved substantially over the past few million years. The important point is that we have no good evidence that cognition has evolved differences among human subgroups. Personally I am open to the possibility that there are subtle average genetic differences in various aspects of cognition among groups of humans, but I see absolutely no good evidence that this is the case, and the efforts I have seen to promote the hypothesis that there are such differences have been infantile.

Peez

When you consider the high heritability of intelligence, that genes have been identified which predict academic success, and the persistent achievement gaps among human subgroups, this seems like an unavoidable conclusion.

http://www.pnas.org/content/111/42/15273.full.pdf

 

[GenesisNemesis]

I think that this is overly simplistic. First, to be clear, sexual selection is the antithesis of "random chance" (depending, I suppose, on how one defines "random chance"). I am not aware of any evidence for selection favouring taller or shorter humans in specific areas, but I have no a priori reason to reject the hypothesis that such selection occurred in the past.

Second, body size is an important trait, correlated with many other traits, and it certainly is "functional" (again, depending on how one defines "functional"). I would also warn against classifying traits as 'external' or 'internal'.

That being said, your basic point is valid: many traits are complex and constrained, and so tend to resist selection much more than simpler, less constrained traits. This does not mean that our visual systems or cognitive systems cannot evolve, indeed the evidence is that cognitive systems at least have evolved substantially over the past few million years. The important point is that we have no good evidence that cognition has evolved differences among human subgroups. Personally I am open to the possibility that there are subtle average genetic differences in various aspects of cognition among groups of humans, but I see absolutely no good evidence that this is the case, and the efforts I have seen to promote the hypothesis that there are such differences have been infantile.

Peez

When you consider the high heritability of intelligence, that genes have been identified which predict academic success, and the persistent achievement gaps among human subgroups, this seems like an unavoidable conclusion.

http://www.pnas.org/content/111/42/15273.full.pdf

Dude, the Ivory Tower makes you ignorant. I thought we've been over this.

 

[untermensche]

Height is trait that can easily be manipulated through sexual selection, with the given that an "adequate diet" is available so that near full genetic expression is possible.

There are many such traits in animals that are easily manipulated.

All one has to do is look at dogs and one can see how external traits can be manipulated.

Average heights of any group are just the result of random chance, a combination of sexual selection with available nutrition over time.

These external traits have to be contrasted with things like functional systems, like the mammalian visual system, something that has changed very little in millions of years.

And another such system is the human cognitive system.

Not a trait, like height, easily manipulated by sexual selection.

I think that this is overly simplistic. First, to be clear, sexual selection is the antithesis of "random chance" (depending, I suppose, on how one defines "random chance"). I am not aware of any evidence for selection favouring taller or shorter humans in specific areas, but I have no a priori reason to reject the hypothesis that such selection occurred in the past.

Second, body size is an important trait, correlated with many other traits, and it certainly is "functional" (again, depending on how one defines "functional"). I would also warn against classifying traits as 'external' or 'internal'.

That being said, your basic point is valid: many traits are complex and constrained, and so tend to resist selection much more than simpler, less constrained traits. This does not mean that our visual systems or cognitive systems cannot evolve, indeed the evidence is that cognitive systems at least have evolved substantially over the past few million years. The important point is that we have no good evidence that cognition has evolved differences among human subgroups. Personally I am open to the possibility that there are subtle average genetic differences in various aspects of cognition among groups of humans, but I see absolutely no good evidence that this is the case, and the efforts I have seen to promote the hypothesis that there are such differences have been infantile.

Peez

What is simplistic?

Height can be manipulated merely by women choosing men over a certain height more often to have offspring with.

Over time average height will rise.

And the distinction is not between internal and external traits.

The distinction is between traits and systems.

Like the visual system or the cognitive system.

Systems resist evolutionary change while traits readily can be changed by many methods, sexual selection being one.

 

[untermensche]

When you consider the high heritability of intelligence...

Yes, humans inherit human "intelligence" an undefined conglomeration of capacities.

This is not news.

The question is, how much does this human intelligence actually differ among humans?

Are IQ tests merely magnifying glasses exaggerating very minor differences?

While all of human "intelligence" exists within a very small range, with a minority of outliers.

 

[Peez]

untermensche:
What is simplistic?

Dividing traits into those that will evolve and those that will not.

Height can be manipulated merely by women choosing men over a certain height more often to have offspring with.

It is a bit more complex than that, but yes that is the essence of it.

Over time average height will rise.

That would be the obvious prediction.

And the distinction is not between internal and external traits.

That is what I said, you were the one who stated "All one has to do is look at dogs and one can see how external traits can be manipulated."

The distinction is between traits and systems.

This makes no sense to me, but see below.

Like the visual system or the cognitive system.

What is the definition of "system" that you are using? It does not seem to be the one that biologists use.

Systems resist evolutionary change while traits readily can be changed by many methods, sexual selection being one.

That does not make sense to me, but this may be because I am not clear on what you mean by "system".

Peez

 

[Peez]

Trausti:
When you consider the high heritability of intelligence, that genes have been identified which predict academic success, and the persistent achievement gaps among human subgroups, this seems like an unavoidable conclusion.

What, exactly, "seems like an unavoidable conclusion"?

Peez

 

[DrZoidberg]

What is the primary cause of the average height difference between whites and Asians in the USA?

I thought everybody agreed it's epigenetic?