Why is Letsrun considered toxic?

Armstronglivs wrote:

Just Another Hobby Jogger wrote:

I hardly agree with anything "toxico" wrote. But in terms of the toxicity on this site, Lance fanboy is contributing to it as much as the other guy. ;)

I take from that that you aren't offended and certainly don't see it as "toxic" for anyone to insistently argue here - as Toxic has done - that race may be a factor in intelligence. This is especially so when such false theories have long been advanced to historically subjugate black people in your country and around the world. I don't apologise for finding such views repellent.

yes. thank you. white people are as smart as asians are as smart as black people

asians are as fast black people are as fast as white people, etc. etc. etc.

we are all the same height

everything is the same. just strange that anybody questions any differences in people who come from different plances.

GIve it a rest people.

rojo wrote:Does that mean that I support what Gruden said? Absolutely not. I used to get mad when I was coaching if guy said, "Don't be a pus**" or "Thats' so gay." I tried to teach them. "Hey I bet you don't realize what you are doing, but that's pretty offensive. Why do we associate a female body part with weakness?"

I assume it had the same meaning you do, but I think it's ambiguous - it could be short for pussycat, i.e. criticising someone for being excessively gentle or mild-mannered. Doesn't that actually make more sense?

not replying to you wrote:

The Letsrun mob is already responsible for one man's suicide.

Who was this? Sad to hear that.

Just Another Hobby Jogger wrote:

I hardly agree with anything "toxico" wrote. But in terms of the toxicity on this site, Lance fanboy is contributing to it as much as the other guy. ;)

Disagreement is understandable, but I’m pretty sure you agree with many things I’ve said. You probably agree with me and most researchers that there is little value in scientifically investigating correlations between race and intelligence. You must agree at least on the exhaustiveness of these three possibilities, as I stated “ it is possible even that black people are more intelligent than lighter skinned people, or the other way round, or that there is no statistically significant difference.

You probably disagree that there is any room for anything but the last option, almost certainly I suspect in good part because of the pressure of signaling virtue and clearly identifying your core beliefs and perhaps to some extent white guilt?

I carry no such baggage of white guilt. I find it unnecessary to compromise scientific integrity and propagate non-science for the sake of greater societal good. People are smart enough to understand that agnosticism does not mean black people are less smart, as Lance Fanboy seems to think because he doesn’t seem capable of distinguishing between Agnosticism and Racism.

Ward Cleaver got tired of getting schooled up and down the Ahmed Arbery thread and came to get schooled up and down this thread instead.

As much as I am not a fan of Armstrong but merely recognize his dubious practices continue, you aren't "agnostic". The correct word would be "ignorant" - which is only a variant of racism when it suggests there may be truth in racially-based theories of intelligence. It is ignorance like yours that helps to perpetuate prejudice.

If you had done the slightest bit of research into the subject, or had any knowledge of history, you would know there is no credible place for agnosticism on this subject. Racist theories have long been been debunked.

"Today, the scientific consensus is that genetics does not explain differences in IQ test performance between racial groups."[1][2][3]

There is the basic starting point which you are too lazy to have informed yourself about. Your claim to follow the scientific method is risible. The general scientific view today rejects racial theories about intelligence. Your so-called "Agnosticism" is a slimy backdoor apologism for racist theories about intelligence. That indeed makes you toxic, as your user name suggests.

toxico wrote:

You probably disagree that there is any room for anything but the last option, almost certainly I suspect in good part because of the pressure of signaling virtue and clearly identifying your core beliefs and perhaps to some extent white guilt?

Well, since I am not white, I cannot possibly have any white guilt.

I have only one question to you. Is it possible to prove the absence of correlation between two variables? If so, what's the research design for that, and how do you prove it? Can you point to any example that succeeded in this attempt?

(I am not talking about the correlation between race and intelligence, but between any two variables.)

What? You write the above as if you know me personally, or follow my postings. That is a little strange if you do. What filth do I post?

I don’t follow pro runners on Twitter, so I have no idea what you mean. I check on one sprinter on Instagram from time to time. But I have no idea what his politics are, and I don’t care. I only follow him for training videos and programming.

I don’t expect people to agree with me at all. In fact, I expect most people to disagree with me. The knowledge that my opinions are held by almost no one in elite levels of our culture, is a fact of life.

I think you assume that you know me, because you think you know my politics.

I agree let's run shouldn't be deleted. But there are some disrespectful stuff I see on the boards. For example the whole "true" American thing whenever Paul Chelimo gets us a medal. I don't mind just scrolling past them most times other times I engage but I am never hurt by it. Because it's the internet. Think about the level of hate a NBA player gets it's waaay way worse.

Again. Not condoning hate speech

Ha ha ha, you are actually stupid enough to think that someone educated enough to be articulate doesn’t even have the ability to look up Wikipedia fluff? That is all you did and that is where from where all your hot wind blather comes from? Let me break it down for you, you ignoramus: you don’t understand science. Proceed stepwise as follows:

1) Go to mommy: First redirect all your gratuitous insults in your post above and all the previous ones to your mommy. She doesn’t seem to have done a good job of getting you a college education.

2) Onus of proof: Have you completed step #1? If not, first do so.

I’m glad to see you accept defeat on your ignoramus stance that the onus of proof is one one claiming absence of correlation, not the one taking an agnostic stance, by finally actually citing some seemingly scientific references. Ooh “science says so”, right? No stupid, it’s just that you think you are on the side of science (that is all good) but you have no understanding of science yourself, so anyone can see through your idiocy.

3) Let’s talk science: Now let’s actually talk about your “scientific” references. First, you haven’t actually read any of them, as I demonstrate below. You just stupidly did the first google search and vomited out a Wikipedia page, of all the reliable sources on this topic. Jesus! So here goes on your “[1][2][3]” references, references that you have clearly not read, presumably because you are too stupid:

On [1]: Do you freaking even understand what this paper is saying, you dumbas$? It’s not a quantitative paper; it has no numbers. It’s a position paper arguing for more research on race vs. intelligence. You want that, don’t you? You must be a neo-Nazi. That paper is not saying anything along the lines that there isn’t any correlation. It’s saying the truth must be found.

Even I don’t think such research makes any sense spending resources on, as I made plentifully clear in my opening p.6 post, you dumbas$ neo-Nazi. It’s advocating for more research to answer open questions on race vs intelligence. Get it?

On [2]: Same deal, non-quantitative position paper, that is arguing agnosticism, not no correlation. This SJW paper could as well be a magazine article, just that it’s Nature. Have you even read it? It’s just 6-8 paras. It is saying that from the various research works it cites, genetics does explain variations in traits that people consider correlated with intelligence. Then, they go on to point out standard shortcomings of any such research (understandable) and cry racism.

There is no claim that genetics does not correlate with intelligence, only that is is too complicated a question to answer. How much of an illiterate dumbas$ can you be? How can someone with so little literacy have so much blathering condescension like you do? Wow, truly astounding.

On [3]: This is a meta paper analyzing previous papers with zero quantitative research of its own. There is no new research in this paper.

Do you understand what I’m saying, stupid? None of the three papers says anything along the lines of “ Today, the scientific consensus is that genetics does not explain differences in IQ test performance between racial groups”.

So you stupidly ask, how could Wikipedia then make an incorrect claim? Because, as I tell my graduate students and undergrads all the time, Wikipedia is not a reliable scientific reference. Students with college degrees know that. Do you not have even a college degree?

Piss off and come back and talk to me when you have acquired the ability to read an actual scientific paper, demonstrate an understanding of the scientific method, and can quote in freaking quotes statements from the paper using words like “race” and “intelligence” and demonstrating a correlation experimentally between the two.

PS: You didn’t think you were the only one who could talk like a sailor, did you cuckyboy? Anyone can, as I amply demonstrated above. Attacking a person is unnecessary if you have a good attack of their arguments, but it’s so much fun to attack the person in addition to their arguments when they are as bone-headed, conceited, offensive, and insulting like you have been in every post of yours.

Just Another Hobby Jogger wrote:

toxico wrote:

You probably disagree that there is any room for anything but the last option, almost certainly I suspect in good part because of the pressure of signaling virtue and clearly identifying your core beliefs and perhaps to some extent white guilt?

Well, since I am not white, I cannot possibly have any white guilt.

I have only one question to you. Is it possible to prove the absence of correlation between two variables? If so, what's the research design for that, and how do you prove it? Can you point to any example that succeeded in this attempt?

(I am not talking about the correlation between race and intelligence, but between any two variables.)

Hi fellow hobby jogger, thank you for phrasing your response in a civil tone. Happy to answer your question, which is indeed a good one.

Yes, it’s easy to prove the absence of correlation between two variables. For example, we have no reason to think that the daily temperature in Shanghai has no correlation with the daily change in the S&P500 and it’s easy to collect a large number of measurements over many different time periods, and simply compute the correlation coefficient between the two vectors of values and find it to be near zero, maybe a small positive or negative. People have done research like this many times to show weak correlation between just about anything and tomorrow’s stock market change (which is why the market is inherently unpredictable).

For human traits, it is similarly easy to show that caffeine doesn’t cause cancer (no correlation). Note that while causation doesn’t imply correlation, lack of correlation does imply no causation. So if you do careful experiments by removing sampling bias and controlling for all non-caffeine related differences (hard in practice), you find no correlation between caffeine and cancer, so it is safe to say that caffeine doesn’t cause cancer.

When you do find a correlation between X and Y however, you can not say whether X causes Y, or G causes X, or if both X and Y are caused by a hidden variable Z.

I realize you didn’t ask about race vs. intelligence, but allow me to talk about it anyway. The challenges herein are threefold: (1) we don’t have a scientific or quantitative measure for what race means; (2) same for intelligence (nope, IQ is a narrow metric and poorly predictive of accomplishments in life); (3) it is near impossible to separate confounding factors (like poverty, historical subjugation, etc) from the effect of race (however defined) on intelligence (however defined).

Here is a straw man experiment you could do to prove no correlation:

(1) Define race as melanin content, which is easy to measure even visually and of course biochemically.

(2) Pick random people, say people whose SSN ends in 19 (arguably uncorrelated with race of intelligence or anything meaningful);

(3) Give them an IQ test and measure the correlation between IQ test scores and skin darkness.

You can see where the above is going. We already know that we will almost certainly find a negative correlation between darkness and IQ. We also know that it is almost certainly in good part because darkness is conflated with poverty, lack of good schooling options, simply test taking practice, etc.

If we can normalize for all the other confounding factors, one could conceivably show a lack of correlation (or possibly the existence of negative or positive correlation) between darkness and IQ. Respectable academics don’t think spending public funding on such endeavors is worth it. In all likelihood, we will find that some people are better at some things while being worse at others. It won’t change our intrinsic collective desire to ensure equal opportunity for everyone and to believe in the equality of all humanity.

Of course, the above experiment even if done well would be melanin and IQ, not race and intelligence, correlation (not causation, just correlation).

toxico wrote:

When you do find a correlation between X and Y however, you can not say whether X causes Y, or G causes X, or if both X and Y are caused by a hidden variable Z.

*meant Y, not G.

toxico wrote:

For human traits, it is similarly easy to show that caffeine doesn’t cause cancer (no correlation). Note that while causation doesn’t imply correlation, lack of correlation does imply no causation. So if you do careful experiments by removing sampling bias and controlling for all non-caffeine related differences (hard in practice), you find no correlation between caffeine and cancer, so it is safe to say that caffeine doesn’t cause cancer.

Oops, another mistake. Should be “Note that while correlation doesn’t imply causation, lack of correlation does imply no causation”.

high school xc coach wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

I take from that that you aren't offended and certainly don't see it as "toxic" for anyone to insistently argue here - as Toxic has done - that race may be a factor in intelligence. This is especially so when such false theories have long been advanced to historically subjugate black people in your country and around the world. I don't apologise for finding such views repellent.

yes. thank you. white people are as smart as asians are as smart as black people

asians are as fast black people are as fast as white people, etc. etc. etc.

we are all the same height

everything is the same. just strange that anybody questions any differences in people who come from different plances.

GIve it a rest people.

Hi Coach, agree with the sentiment of your point. It is not unnatural to find or expect to find some differences between different peoples.

There’s a simple reasons Asian-Americans including Indian-Americans in the US are “smart” and economically more successful compared to Hispanics and blacks. The parents of a significant fraction (not all) of Asians/Indians came here for graduate school and/or their parents sent them to prestigious colleges here because they could afford the world’s best colleges for their kids. There is some combination of inherited nature and nurture that contributed to making them more successful.

A significant fraction of hispanics or their ancestors who came here came here out of poverty, with poor education, and to do relatively unskilled jobs. The ancestors of black people here were forced in as slaves and selected if at all for their ability to do labor.

If you select from one population for their ability to ace at college and another for either their economic desperation or suitability for hard labor, you would but expect to see what we see in the US today. We know well that economic success is highly correlated with having a good college education (even if not absolutely necessary).

Doesn’t mean having flat eyelids makes you smarter. Also doesn’t mean having flat eyelids can not be correlated with being smarter either. If I had to bet,

I’d bet on the former.

toxico wrote:

Yes, it’s easy to prove the absence of correlation between two variables. For example, we have no reason to think that the daily temperature in Shanghai has no correlation with the daily change in the S&P500 and it’s easy to collect a large number of measurements over many different time periods, and simply compute the correlation coefficient between the two vectors of values and find it to be near zero, maybe a small positive or negative. People have done research like this many times to show weak correlation between just about anything and tomorrow’s stock market change (which is why the market is inherently unpredictable).

Umm... how does this prove the absence of correlation? What you show is there is no statistically significant difference between the correlation coefficient and zero. Isn't that an absence of evidence, instead of the evidence of absence?

Hmm, I might be misunderstanding your question. In this temperature-market example, there isn’t a need to “prove the absence of correlation” because near-zero correlation coefficient is the very definition of absence of correlation. In this particular example,

absence of (correlation) evidence is the same as evidence of (correlation) absence. If say today’s temperature in Shanghai caused, i.e., predictively correlated with, tomorrow’s market change, one would be able to make money off of that correlation, but we know we can’t through backtesting research.

Is your point that daily Shanghai temperatures may be impacting the next day’s market but it is not observable in any way? If so, what does “impacting” (as opposed to not impacting) even mean? If something (like God) is by definition unobservable with any experiment or data, then the scientific method can not prove or refute its existence. The only scientifically tenable position on God for example is agnosticism.

In case it helps, here are examples where absence of evidence is NOT evidence of absence:

- UFOs or alien life. Science can’t deny its existence. Denying its existence is much harder than confirming its existence if we ever happen to find damning confirmatory evidence.

- Twin Prime Conjecture in math: we are always able to find ever higher twin primes, so there is no evidence that they are finite in number, but we have no proof that they are infinite in number either (evidence of absence of finiteness).

- Covid virus: We may never find evidence that the covid virus came from a Wuhan lab leak but that is not evidence of absence of the leak possibility.

The race/intelligence example is different: it’s a correlation/causation debate. The superficial (aka bad science) evidence is actually present that black students score less on IQ tests, but in this case, presence of apparent correlation evidence is not evidence of causation, i.e., we don’t know that something about their blackness (like melanin or something else causing or correlated with melanin) is causing the lower test scores. We also don’t have an easy way to rule out correlation between color and lower IQ scores because we can’t do a clean quantitative data analysis like the temperature-market example that has no other confounding factors (by definition). For example, for all we know, white students may actually be stupider, but other factors like their wealth and parental education levels more than compensate for their cerebral deficit. If we didn’t find any overt color/IQ correlation, it would be more compelling to adopt the common sensical null hypothesis that there is indeed no correlation. But if the apparent data suggests otherwise, it’s messier to arrive at a scientific conclusion by teasing apart confounding factors.

We don’t have this dilemma in case of sex differences. Or perhaps we do depending on the metric of focus. We can’t find any statistical difference in average (mean or median) math ability between boys and girls, but boys are found to have more variability and therefore higher 95th or 99th percentile performance as well as lower low percentiles. Does the variability finding mean boy geniuses (like Einstein) will statistically outshine girl geniuses in humanity? We just don’t know. If the apparent data suggests male/variance correlation, we can’t easily rule it out. But most of us would like our daughters to be just as successful as our sons, so it’s easy to adopt the unproven conjecture that they are identical in genius potential.

On contrary, in the case of smoking/cancer, there is both overwhelming evidence of correlation as well as our understanding of how lungs work and observations of smoked out lungs in cadavers that makes us confident that smoking causes(significantly increases likelihood) of cancer.

No, it really doesn't. Every measure of IQ (the best measure of general intelligence) and race shows statistically significant differences of average IQ between groups, with the groups ranking the same way - (from highest to lowest) Asians, Whites, Latinos, Blacks. Every time.

There are two sides to this debate. One side follows what the data clearly indicates, and the other denies the data because it's too uncomfortable so they make up all sorts of faulty rationalizations (i.e. IQ isn't a valid construct, intelligence isn't based on genetics, you can't categorize people by race ect). why it isn't true while calling the other side racists to shut down debate.