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Topic: Beat All Your Rivals SOC

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betarhoalphadelta

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Re: Beat All Your Rivals SOC
« Reply #252 on: December 02, 2025, 06:22:12 PM »
FYI there's no hard and fast rule that says that jocks are dumb and that smart people can't be athletic.

There's a positive correlation between intelligence and athletic ability. 

The problem we run into with collegiate/professional sport and with the ridiculous geniuses is that we're dealing with long tail problems. 

Even if there's a positive correlation between IQ and athletic ability, running a 4.38 is a "long tail" thing. And if you can run a 4.38, nobody cares if you're a Rhodes Scholar or if you're dumber than a dog. Likewise if you have an IQ of 160, you're in the long tail. At that point nobody cares if you can run a 4.38 or if you're Stephen Hawking. 

So we see dumb collegiate/professional athletes and dweebish uber-nerds, and assume that the correlation actually runs opposite to the reality. That there's an either/or involved. There isn't. 

OrangeAfroMan

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Re: Beat All Your Rivals SOC
« Reply #253 on: December 02, 2025, 08:04:08 PM »
The tip-of-the-bell-curve guys in athleticism tend to be dolts, though.  No? 

I believe the "best RB ever" if there was a way to truly know that, probably couldn't stay eligible on his high school team. 

“The Swamp is where Gators live.  We feel comfortable there, but we hope our opponents feel tentative. A swamp is hot and sticky and can be dangerous." - Steve Spurrier

betarhoalphadelta

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Re: Beat All Your Rivals SOC
« Reply #254 on: December 02, 2025, 08:35:51 PM »
The tip-of-the-bell-curve guys in athleticism tend to be dolts, though.  No? 
No. They should roughly fit the bell curve in intelligence, with a slight bump due to correlation. 

It's going to be VERY rare to see someone who is at the high end of the curve in both. But that's just odds. If you define "high end" as the top 2%, the chances that someone would be both is probably not far off 2%*2%, meaning 0.04% of the population will be in the top 2% of athleticism AND the top 2% of intelligence. Or slightly above that due to the correlation effect, but not high enough above that to be meaningful from an anecdotal perspective. 

The point is that collegiate or professional athletes aren't the top 2%. They're the top 0.01%. They're so high on the athleticism side that we don't care if they're dolts. The statistical odds would be that the top 0.01% athletically would be average IQ, not dolts. 

OrangeAfroMan

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Re: Beat All Your Rivals SOC
« Reply #255 on: December 02, 2025, 09:04:19 PM »
No. They should roughly fit the bell curve in intelligence, with a slight bump due to correlation.

So once you're out at 3+ standard deviations, the averages don't break down?  Idk about that.

The guy with a 160 IQ isn't even out playing pickup basketball with his friends, is he?  Much less being of average athleticism.

There's a positive correlation between intelligence and athletic ability.


This is all fine and good for the middle 2/3, but do things not start getting sideways, so to speak, the further you get out towards the outliers?!?  The kid who is athletic enough to be the starting WR on the HS football team, but isn't even on the team isn't off the team because he's busy with the chess club, lol.  
“The Swamp is where Gators live.  We feel comfortable there, but we hope our opponents feel tentative. A swamp is hot and sticky and can be dangerous." - Steve Spurrier

FearlessF

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Re: Beat All Your Rivals SOC
« Reply #256 on: December 02, 2025, 11:11:05 PM »
Not true. A lot of these kids are really smart.
a lot being 10-20%
"Courage; Generosity; Fairness; Honor; In these are the true awards of manly sport."

bayareabadger

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Re: Beat All Your Rivals SOC
« Reply #257 on: December 02, 2025, 11:24:01 PM »
The worst engineer I've ever worked with was a Stanford grad.  He believed he was better and smarter than everyone despite his near-constant failures.  He got horse-traded to another team, I guess the other team's boss owed mine some favors.  His replacement was an MIT guy, much much better.
That sounds like a Stanford grad. Uninteresting, self-important walking rugby shirts. (Pay no attention to who I grew up rooting for)

bayareabadger

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Re: Beat All Your Rivals SOC
« Reply #258 on: December 02, 2025, 11:24:55 PM »
Jones made himself the poster boy for all of this by saying the quiet part out loud. Krenzel was the poster boy for the other side with his medical studies. He went on to use his name to sling insurance around Columbus, after an unsuccessful stint in local sports talk radio.
A buddy grew up in the Columbus are and always found the Krenzel thing hilarious.

bayareabadger

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Re: Beat All Your Rivals SOC
« Reply #259 on: December 02, 2025, 11:33:48 PM »
FYI there's no hard and fast rule that says that jocks are dumb and that smart people can't be athletic.

There's a positive correlation between intelligence and athletic ability.

The problem we run into with collegiate/professional sport and with the ridiculous geniuses is that we're dealing with long tail problems.

Even if there's a positive correlation between IQ and athletic ability, running a 4.38 is a "long tail" thing. And if you can run a 4.38, nobody cares if you're a Rhodes Scholar or if you're dumber than a dog. Likewise if you have an IQ of 160, you're in the long tail. At that point nobody cares if you can run a 4.38 or if you're Stephen Hawking.

So we see dumb collegiate/professional athletes and dweebish uber-nerds, and assume that the correlation actually runs opposite to the reality. That there's an either/or involved. There isn't.

I heard someone say about the youth-sports-scholarship-chasing industrial complex: 95 percent of what gets you a college athletic scholarship, at least at a modestly high level, has nothing to do with anything you did. It's how god made you. 

Of course, you'll probably balance out a bit smarter from kids who can make it, but you'll also possibly have people who appear less smart because they're held to a lower standard in some things or more focused on the finer points of their craft. 

 

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