Hypothetical Island Experiement

[calcbandit]

I agree, except think they should just be Africans.

[soon2bepro]

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That being said, I think African Americans would be a better bet to win out because this seems like a very harsh physical environment and they've been selectively bred for centuries to be top-notch physical specimens.

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Interesting that you say "African Americans", which have only been around for a couple centuries, but more especifically, a couple centuries is nothing in terms of evolution. Physically, humans today are pretty much the same they were several thousand years ago.

In any case, Africans haven't just evolved to be more physically active, they've evolved to fit the african enviroment. The physical advantage I think would probably be in a race that has evolved in a similar enviroment to that of the hypothetical island.

That being said, if you consider how important evolutionary traits are in determining the power of any given groups of humans, as opposed to the importance of adquired knowledge which is passed on from generation to generation, you'll see that the race with the best chance at winning in this hypothetical game will be the one that contains the highest percentage of people with vast knowledge and experience in the areas they will need to (and will be able to) exploit given the island settings and available time.

I will need the questions I asked above answered, but in most of the scenarios I think caucasians will be the favorites.

[AWoodside]

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That being said, I think African Americans would be a better bet to win out because this seems like a very harsh physical environment and they've been selectively bred for centuries to be top-notch physical specimens.

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Interesting that you say "African Americans", which have only been around for a couple centuries, but more especifically, a couple centuries is nothing in terms of evolution. Physically, humans today are pretty much the same they were several thousand years ago.

In any case, Africans haven't just evolved to be more physically active, they've evolved to fit the african enviroment. The physical advantage I think would probably be in a race that has evolved in a similar enviroment to that of the hypothetical island.

That being said, if you consider how important evolutionary traits are in determining the power of any given groups of humans, as opposed to the importance of adquired knowledge which is passed on from generation to generation, you'll see that the race with the best chance at winning in this hypothetical game will be the one that contains the highest percentage of people with vast knowledge and experience in the areas they will need to (and will be able to) exploit given the island settings and available time.

I will need the questions I asked above answered, but in most of the scenarios I think caucasians will be the favorites.

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I actually said African Americans and not Africans for a reason. I think you underestimate the affect a few centuries can have. Your right about a few centuries being nothing on evolutionary time scales in a certain sense. This is way to short a time-scale to make any drastic changes in a species... but it is ample time to significantly distort the frequencies of traits already present in the population.

Consider: When I said African Americans I meant specifically descendants of American slaves. This population of people has gone through some of the most intensive selection pressures in recent history, both engineered and accidental.

The first great selection mechanism was the ride over on slave ships. Often-times as many as two thirds of the people on a slave ship would die on the way over, two thirds! You had to be extremely physically fit, resilient to disease, and in many instances aggressive to even make it to US shores.

Once here a slave had the pleasure of having who he mated with dictated by his masters. Just like other farm animals, African American slaves were selectively bred for size, strength, and stamina; pregnancies that weren't sanctioned by the plantation owners often resulted in forced abortions and severe punishment for the involved parties.

I think this is a very compelling argument for why, in the US, African Americans are very disproportionately represented in most professional sports, and why I would wager on them in this island scenario.

[Max Raker]

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I think all races are equal in their own ways, and no race will come out on top or dominate the other.....

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The first statement could be true and the second one still false.

[Metric]

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The catch is that each race was composed of criminals that hated every other race, the elite business men and women, scientists, whores, survivalists, or basically every niche of society.....

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I suspect that the answer depends on how you choose the concentration of various experts, survivalists, general know-nothings, and criminals. Representative of world population, US population, or have you selected all populations to be identical in this way? If the latter, I suspect the answer is the role of a fair die. If the former, the answer is probably very far from the role of a fair die, with the best bet depending on the representative population you choose.

[BobK]

If Devon is the island I'll put my money on the Inuit.

[IrOnLaW]

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Four questions:

1) 75-100 for each race, or total?
Lets make it 3500 for each race

2) What sort of food is available? What about predators?

Every sort of food you could think of, this island is huge and is mult-terraine. It's probably a third the size of Austrailia

3) How big is the island, and what sort of physical barriers separate a group from each other?

The island is seperated into different types of environments..... A Desert, a rainforest, mountains, pretty much every terrain found on Man vs. Wild except for the Alps
As I said earlier, approximately 1/3 the size of Australia


4) Is cooperation between members of different races forbidden?

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There could be cooperation, but lets treat these races as more like different armys, the greeks, persians, romans for example.... So there could be corruption between the two....

Now that we're getting into this.....

[soon2bepro]

Yeah I guess caucasians then. As long as you choose the contestants randomly among all living, adult members of each particular race.

Caucasians have the highest average intelligence, and with this number of people it would make a large difference. The only reason why other races could have an advantage is if the races don't get in trouble with each other and the sole purpose is to reproduce the most in the least number of years. And as we know, education and intelligence usually mean less offspring.


Just to clarify, this isn't racism, it's simply statistics. I'm not saying caucasians are inherently more intelligent, I'm just basing my arguments in the fact that they are in average more intelligent/educated in today's society.

[Shadowrun]

You need more intelligence to beat people up with sticks?

This is all about survival skills, so you need some level of intelligence (dont play with bears etc.) but i dont think having a higher IQ (if this is true in any way) will help you.

[carlo]

The guys with vowels at the end of their names will quickly civilize the whole bunch. They understand the economics of extortion, intrinsic justice, and will accomplish a Pax Romana.

After the children are regulated and civilized the preachers with a book in one hand and a gun in the other will bring forth rights , laws, philosophy and will effectively legislate the demise of the gonzos.

But its not over as the monkeys of privilege will wear their suits, take over and squueze the miscreants legally, and call it Las Vegas, city of button counters who prove that you can indeed squeeze blood out of a turnip.

Next step, a barren land, a literal puff of air in the wind of "never was".