[continued from previous message]   
      
   >>>>>> likely have the genetics to be superior in many traits compared to those   
   >>>>>> that left Africa 60,000 years ago.  It wasn't racial inferiority that   
   >>>>>> broke the color barrier for many white southern colleges that began   
   >>>>>> recruiting African American athletes for their alumni driven sports   
   >>>>>> programs.  It is sad, but when I started as an Assistant Professor at   
   >>>>>> the University of Arkansas in 1996 African Americans were a small   
   >>>>>> minority on campus with nearly all of them involved in the sports   
   >>>>>> programs.  Desegregation was 3 decades in the past, but that is just how   
   >>>>>> it was.  Today African American quarterbacks are fairly common.  It is   
   >>>>>> sad that this has not always been so.   
   >>>>>   
   >>>>> Sad indeed.  Many bright young black QBs have shown that blacks can be   
   >>>>> as good as whites at managing and leading a team effectively, contrary   
   >>>>> to what used to be popular belief.   
   >>>>>   
   >>>>>> My take is that once Africa gets it's act together and implements a good   
   >>>>>> universal education program coupled with decent nutrition that the world   
   >>>>>> will benefit from the brain power that gets uncovered.   
   >>>>>   
   >>>>> True, but it's doubtful that the entire two-standard deviation   
   >>>>> difference between Africans and American whites can be eliminated by   
   >>>>> environmental factors such as nutrition and education.   
   >>>>   
   >>>> There are likely other cultural factors involved.  Neither of my parents   
   >>>> went to college.  Higher education was never discussed in our house.  I   
   >>>> had gotten to know my brother's Fifth grade teacher that had an interest   
   >>>> in nature like I did, and I would spend time in his classroom because he   
   >>>> had all kinds of taxidermy and some live animals.  He told me that I   
   >>>> could become a biologist, and that they paid people to do that type of   
   >>>> thing, but I had to go to college.  College seemed so impossible that I   
   >>>> gave up on the notion, but my parents did not.  A few years later they   
   >>>> told all their children that College was a possiblity.  At the time I   
   >>>> was not a very good student, and I was in classes like remedial English   
   >>>> in Junior High School, but when I entered High School my class counselor   
   >>>> told me that I had to get good grades to get into College.  Since I had   
   >>>> done so poorly in Junior High school they put me in the C level classes   
   >>>> (there were A, B, and C level classes for the basic education classes).   
   >>>> My C level English instructor thought that I shouldn't be in his class   
   >>>> because I was doing A level work.  He checked my file and told me that   
   >>>> my IQ level meant that I should be in the gifted program at the High   
   >>>> School.  He got me transferred to all A level classes.   
   >>>>   
   >>>> I eventually got accepted to UC Berkeley and started my science career   
   >>>> in their undergraduate research program.   
   >>>>   
   >>>> You also have examples like Watson with significant African genetics.   
   >>>> If you check the the population genetics of African Americans, a lot of   
   >>>> them that can be identified as African Americans are not very African.   
   >>>> The Average African American has over 25% non African genetics.  A 23   
   >>>> and Me study on self identified African Americans (around 100   
   >>>> individuals out of 6500) had less than 2% African genetics.  They were   
   >>>> 98% out of Africa genetics.  The 23 and Me mean African genetics (73%)   
   >>>> was close to the 1000 genome estimate of the African Americans used in   
   >>>> that population.   
   >>>>   
   >>>> Have African Americans just inherited all the wrong out of Africa   
   >>>> genetics, and guys like Watson just happened to inherit some good   
   >>>> African Genetics?   
   >>>   
   >>> Yeah, there was a lot of white/black admixture among the Africans who   
   >>> were brought over from Africa and enslaved, as should be evident by   
   >>> just looking at African blacks and African-American blacks.   And   
   >>> although the *average* black IQ among African Americans is depressed   
   >>> by one standard deviation relative to American whites, *individual*   
   >>> blacks can rise to eminence in cognitively demanding fields despite   
   >>> this statistical trend.   
   >>   
   >> My company was involved in increasing the protein component in the   
   >> African Children's diet.  We were involved in starting a program that   
   >> would give school children one egg a day to supplement their diet.  It   
   >> took a while to find suitible places to start the program.  We needed to   
   >> have at least dirt roads passable by trucks that would be needed to   
   >> bring in feed for the birds, and we needed someplace with access to feed   
   >> ingredients so that the feed could be manufactured and shipped to the   
   >> farms.  We needed an established political climate and not one involved   
   >> in civil war.  We needed to dig wells to provide a constant supply of   
   >> water, and it turned out that we couldn't just provide water for the   
   >> animals, but the villages needed a water supply too.  In fact, we were   
   >> working with the charitable organization specializing in digging wells   
   >> and providing drinking water.   
   >>   
   >> We built the farms and trained the farmers, had people on site to make   
   >> sure their first efforts were successful.  They were set up with farm   
   >> and animals, and in return the farmers would donate enough eggs to the   
   >> school so that each child would get one egg a day.  The children were   
   >> sent to school because they got one meal of mostly carbohydrate and some   
   >> beans, otherwise they wouldn't be sent to school and would likely be   
   >> working at home or in the fields.  After just one year the students that   
   >> got one egg a day were significantly taller than their peers, and their   
   >> test scores were better across the board.  This was just after feeding   
   >> their brains with a few grams of protein for a year while those brains   
   >> were still growing.  Environment is very important.   
   >   
   > Would you claim that, because of those results, that height has no   
   > genetic component?   
      
   It has always been known that height has a significant environmental   
   component.  The average height of the Japanese increased 10 to 12   
   centimeters on a Western diet after World War II and it seems to   
   continue to increase as more of the population's diet changes.  How many   
   standard deviations is that?  Not only that, but height has a much   
   larger heritability in the narrow sense (additive genetic component)   
   than something like IQ.  This just means that progeny are more like   
   their parents in height than they are for something like IQ.  The twin   
   studies measure heritability in the broad sense, that does not relate to   
   what actually is transmitted in terms of phenotype to the offspring   
   because broad sense heritability includes additive and non additive   
   genetic components.  Non additive component is just the genetics that   
   you have that if you transmit it to your progeny that genetics may not   
   have the same effect in them because dominance or gene interactions that   
   will be different in your progeny from what they do not inherit from you   
   or do inherit from the other parent.  This could mean that something   
   like IQ already has a lower accurately measurable genetic component, and   
   environmental variation is likely more significant than it would be for   
   a more highly heritable trait like height.   
      
   I just put up a thread on Herasight genetically selected embryos, and   
   one of the comments was that for one family their top IQ embryo had a   
      
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