When little differences matter a great deal

When little differences matter a great deal

In the comment below Clark alludes to the fact that Jonathan Haidt kept reiterating that even if there were differences between populations due to recent evolution, if it was due to selection on standing variation upon quantitative traits then the between group variation would be dwarfed by within group variation. He didn’t quite say it like that, but I’m sure that’s what he meant. For example, there is now evidence that alleles which can explain the small height difference between Northern and Southern Europeans have been subject to natural selection. Most of the variation obviously remains within the groups; you can’t guess that someone is Italian or Dutch just based on their height. There are many tall Italians, and many short Dutch. But on average there are differences between the groups which can be attributed to genes, and those genes seem to have been targets of selection.

This is good as fair as it goes…but small average differences may not necessarily be marginal. That is because sometimes you select from the tails of a distribution. For example, if you want to ascertain which population will produce more N.B.A. players, …

Razib Khan