Heh every1,

I just remembered a conversation with my biology teacher last year about horse breeders only allowing winning horses to have children. Contemplating that, I came up with 2 ways to explain this phenomenon:

1. Genetic "talent" in a pure sense doesn't actually exist or is very limited, some people just respond better to the conventional training methods/how they're told to train and as a result are perceived to have more "talent". If every1 figured out the best training method for them, every1 would be similar in skill

2. Genetic "talent" does play a significant role, just do your best with what you're given

Thoughts? Agree/disagree?

IMO, it depends a bit. Are we talking talent with regards to learning techniques (motor behaviour, if you will) or with strength, endurance, etc?

With technique, there has been suggested something called "specific motor abilities" which are supposed to be pretty much genetic, and won't respond much to training, however, no one can answer where these actually are. When you are born (or before that, really) your nervous system is very undeveloped, you just have the basic structure (which is probably genetically determined) but after that your CNS starts to develop based on both genetics and envoronment. It's a pretty well known theory that we learn by the CNS changing. So if I for example kick a fotball a certain way many times and it works great, there will be changes in my CNS, making that specific technique more likely to happen the next time I want to kick a ball. Now, since these things develop based moslty on what you do, then environment and behaviour would have big impacts here. Now, could some people's CNS respond quicker? If that's the case, they could learn a given technique quicker (but that would go for both a correct and an incorrect technique) however, if you ask anyone where this would come from, they probably wouldn't be able to answer.

With regards to strength/endurance. A lot of people use twin studies to argue that genetics play a big role. They refer to studies in which twin pairs who have usually been separated at birth (thus had different environments) respond very similar to the same training stimuls. Now, this would support that genetics play a part in who responds to what kind of training, but sometimes they further use this to say that genetics plays a big role in determining the amount of response to training in general. What they forget, however, is that their study only tests one kind of training stimuls. Maybe the twin pairs who didn't respond so well to that specific stimuls would respond better to another type of training? Some people have a naturally high percentage of fast twitch fibers, and will have a good potential for getting good at "fast" sports, others might have a high percentage of slow twitch and will have a good potential for getting good at "slow" sports. (bear in mind, that fiber type can probably be changed to some degree if you train)

But if you look at a lot of BBers PLers, etc, you will see that they were small and weak when they were kids. A lot of people think that the BBers and PLers who are good now must have been the strong kids in kindergarden aswell, but it's not always so. Now, you could think of this two ways. Either, they were small, got motivated to get bigger and stronger, and they did so, blowing many people with "good genetics" out of the water. Or you could think that they really had good genes, but were small because of bad nurture (not enough food, training, etc). Regardless, both training and nutrutre probably play a role in training response.

With regards to CNS development, now a days people pretty much say it's nature and nurture. Try to google "probabilistic epigenesis". Gilbert Gottlieb's theory of probabilistic epigenesis is interesting to read. You should be able to find stuff about it if you just google.

It follows Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest. It doesn't mean that it should be strong, just that the children inherit traits needed for the next generation. So if male horse A is fast, and female horse B is fast, then child horse C will probably be fast too.

Just look at people, for example. You see Darwin's theory in working everywhere. Those who are thin, typically have children who are thin. Those who are athletic, typically have children who are athletic.

But then one can argue that such traits are learned and acquire, rather than genetically pre-disposed. While this is true in certain sense, it is also true that you acquire genetic features from your parents that allows you to learn/acquire abilities such as running fast, or sitting around all day and doing nothing.

So if you want fast horses, you better start the baby horses right with two parents who are fast, rather than two parents who are slow and having children that can be slow but can be made fast. Would you rather spend three years training a slow parent's child to run fast? Or would you rather have a fast child who requires to be trained in half the time because they acquired whatever genes from their parents that make them fast? So fast horses will probably have fast children. Not always true, but nearly all the time.

The tl;dr version of it is that basically you acquire genes from your parents that allows you to learn abilities that your parents learned as well. It doesn't mean you'll automatically be your parents, just that you're more than likely will end up just like your parents.

Number 1 is definitely false. Number 2 true; simple.

It's a simple phenomenon. Breeding horses with desirable traits will make it more likely that the conceived horse will be similar to the champion horse, and possibly even better. It's like breeding two average joes from the street compared to the fastest man and women, obviously the latter is a better choice for the goal.

That's not really what Darwinian selection is Dallen, Mendelen genetics would be a better description. In regards to the horse, it's not about how long it takes for the horse to be competitive, but how good it can get. Any horse can be trained to improve speed, but the genes are responsible for how good the horse can get.

Applying specificity in animal performance to general human performance is stupid. Like Karky said, there are many types of ways a human can gauge performance.

I believe that if you were born a normal healthy baby, you had the genetic potential to be anything, physical performance wise. What you end up becoming is a result of nurture. In humans, nurture is a very general term that applies to not just environmental factors, but psychological aspects that are inherent to everyone. Maybe when you were a kid you just really hated running and gravitated towards gymnastics or whatever. Maybe you didn't like heights or going fast, so you never got into riding/climbing sports.

And what about how behaviour/environment can affect gene activation *gasp!*

Oh shi-

You mean sometimes they aren't separate? That both nature and nurture are, to an extent, interconnected? That there is no reason to differentiate the two to opposing opposites?

mind=blown!

Well, I can't talk specifically about x gene, etc, but they are interconnected to an extent. I'm trying to find the place I got this from, it was one of Gilbert Gottlieb's reviews on his own probabilistic epigenesis theory. Can't find it though. I will be able to find it easier when I get back to Trondheim where I've got my motor behaviour book.

But IMO, there is way too much talk about genetics this and genetics that. A lot of people come here and say they got bad genetics because they are skinny. Did they do an extensive gene test? I don't think so. Just because you're skinny doesn't mean you have bad muscle building genetics, you could just not be eating enough.

Genetics will never trump the law of thermodynamics/energy conservation. Fat and skinny people don't seem to make this connection and instead use the genetics excuse to make blanket excuses.

Excuse me, and what knowledge do you have? Breeding any particular species with good traits will most likely produce offspring with similar traits which are desirable - so long sexual production occurs. From my recent recollection, both horses and humans have sex, therefore I must be right. If you deny this then your either ignorant or stupid, or more likely, both.

"believe that if you were born a normal healthy baby, you had the genetic potential to be anything, physical performance wise. What you end up becoming is a result of nurture"

Were did you get this false paradigm? This cannot be further from the truth. More accurate would be: what you end up becoming is a result of nurture, which in turn is determined by genetics. I wonder why black people are so good at athletics, according to your theory, it's because they try the hardest, if white people wanted to, they could be just as good. See the absurdity?

Genetics will never trump the law of thermodynamics/energy conservation. Fat and skinny people don't seem to make this connection and instead use the genetics excuse to make blanket excuses.

Again, your using the fallacious straw man argument and red herring. No one in this thread mentioned anything about blaming genes for their current state. Likewise, no one has asserted a golden trump. The only reasonable thing mentioned, which you seem incomprehensible to, is that genes play an important role for many characteristics, and while nature is unequivocally important, it is restricted to what it can work with, even if the differences are micro.

Yeah, the environment can't change the genes themselves and genes are important. Though, I don't think that all top athletes are there just because of their genetics (not saying you're saying so, matt, just making a general argument), IMO, nature (how much and hard you train, how motivated (you could probably argue that genes play a role here, though) you are, if your are brought up in an environment where physical activity is encouraged, etc) plays a bigger role in eventually deciding how we turn out.

damn, that post had more parenthesis than Chillen's posts

Except humans are not race horses. There are too many variables that determine what "human performance" is. In race horses, there is one. Racing fast.


Ah, yes, using racist arguments to back up what you describe to be my noncogent claims. Way to go, asshole. Black people are good at sports like track, bball, etc because of socioeconomic factors. Why aren't swimmers black, if they are such superior physical specimen? And gymnasts? Because it costs lots of time and money, and parental involvement to develop into a good swimmer or gymnast. There's always a place to run and a place to bounce a ball even in the most economically challenged areas. I'd say your argument is guilty of false analogy as well as arguing from ignorance.


Fallacious is not a word. But good trolling, bro. 10/10, I raged.

Also, see: **** you, Matt.

Oh yes and the blacks argument was also guilty of the hasty generalization fallacy. Logic rules-- if you know how to use it. You sir, do not.

This paragraph alone shows your misunderstanding of the subject. Anyway, I was talking about speed, where did anyone else state "human performance"?


Trying to poison the well? Another blatant fallacy by yourself. More pointless questions, you should know the difference between swimming and running. Once again, according to you, the majority of black runners should have been poor prior to becoming a professional runner, and that the reason why black people dominate white people in track is because all white people are rich, or at least not poor. I'd say your guilty of being an ignoramus.



Digging yourself into a bigger hole, that word actually exists. Don't bother writing back because everything you type is gabage. Cheers...bro