Jason Soon: for some strange reason the later generation Asian-Americans are more alienated from US
culture than Asian-Australians are from Australia.

I would say that this is partly because Australia is a younger country than America, with a less defined
culture and national traditions and symbols, and is more secular, all of which make it easier for Asians to
fit into the nation and society.

Really it’s as much about social class and education as anything. In my experience, middle class blacks with educated parents are much more likely to have conventional names like “Jason” and “Jennifer” than the stereotypical urban black names like “Kareem” and “Tamika”. (When I taught high school I had a male student named “Dilaudia,” pronounced something like “Da Lawday”) For black people, having a conventional American name might be subliminally perceived as a marker that he or she doesn’t come from the ghetto and had a stable family background that respects education and the work ethic. Perhaps the people reviewing the resumes aren’t so much prejudiced against black *people* as they are against black urban *culture* as they perceive it.

It seems the representation of minorities, especially blacks, decrease proportionately as the military unit becomes more elite. No different to the civilian world in similar g demanding roles. Military sociologists suggest institutional discrimination and racism. I read elsewhere that the Navy Seals have employed black geneticist Warren Lockette, known for his integration efforts that increased diversification into two Midwestern medical schools, to help bring more blacks into the SEALS.

“Only 13 percent of the Pentagon’ s highly trained special-operations forces are racial minorities. Of the 8,775 Army, Navy and Air Force commandos, 1,180 are classified as minorities.

n Less than 15 percent of the Army’ s Special Forces and Rangers personnel are soldiers of color, compared with about 40 percent of the entire Army.

About 11 percent of Navy SEALs, whose headquarters are in Coronado, are minorities. “We are underrepresented (with minorities) compared to what we’ d like,” acknowledged Rear Adm. Eric Olson, the Navy’ s top SEAL.

Eight percent of the Air Force’ s special-tactics and pararescue groups, the military’ s smallest commando force, are minority members.

The greatest disparity appears in the ranks of black servicemen.

The Army Special Forces, known by distinctive green berets, has 234 African-American officers and soldiers in a force of 5,200 men. Blacks make up 4.5 percent of the Green Berets, compared with nearly 24 percent of the male soldiers in the Army.

The Navy has only 31 blacks among its 2,299 Sea-Air-Land, or SEAL, commandos, less than 2 percent of the force. African-Americans constitute nearly 17 percent of the male personnel within the Navy.

And, the Air Force’ s special-tactics groups have only eight blacks in a force of 472 men, less than 2 percent. Servicewide, about 14 percent of the Air Force’ s male personnel are African-American.”

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/military/commandos/20000917-0010_mz1n17rank.html

Adifferent point of view on afffirimative action concerning theMich Law school, who cares about lawyers they really dont produce anything except expensive paper anyway, so what difference does it make if a few more or minorities.

Both government policy and cultural values, which are mutually supportive, and technological and economic progress, which is to a large degree autonomous, all contribute to low fertility. Low fertility amongst whites – or East Asian or any other high performing cognitive group – is not inevitable. Prosperous whites like the Mormons have a fertility rate well above replacement.

As for the comment regarding the insignificance of white extinction, and the comparison with Aborigines and Intuits, the two later are the result of Paleolithic cultures that tragically but inevitably could not remain unchanged after white settlement, and especially with the aborigines, cognitively incapable of competing or adapting. I agree with Unadorned that whites themselves are committing cultural suicide, and this is only not a concern only if one has a nihilistic utilitarian view of culture. Unlike the Inuit and especially the aboriginal cultural demise, the white decline is not an inevitable and tragic clash between an advanced and primitive culture, but an ideological deconstruction of the Western racial and cultural identity through immigration and other means. Only the west has this contempt for its own culture, race and existence.

I do think that Australia and Canada are in a better position than the US or Europe precisely because a lot of their immigrants are high IQ East Asians and Indians, with a low fertility rate not much different to the white majority.

Although there is a lot of skilled immigration at present into the US, at some point in the future this may be reversed and US whites, and perhaps Asians, like South Africans at present, will migrate to Canada and especially Australia.

So when does MTV show Clone High?

The Australian Aborigines are the best of much evidence that disputes the Out Of Africa thesis. The best evidence, is that Aborigines are a trihybrid race, as suggested by Tindale and Birdsell in the 1940s. The first migration, was Negrito,some 60 K years ago or earlier, the remnants of this ancient migration remained in North Queensland even into the 20th century.

http://www.sydneyline.com/Pygmies%20Extinction.htm

A later migration, called by Birdsell and Tindale, the Murryians, was a more primitive hominoid,the Kow Swamp variety, whose morphology is far closer to Homo Erectus than Homo Sapien, and would be classified as such but for the age as recent as 10000 years ago. The Kow Swamp type can be seen to have developed from Homo Erectus in Java, of which examples in Ngandong have been dated as late as 30000 years ago or even more recent.

Check out this startling link. It is a must see.

http://home.twmi.rr.com/canovan/kowswamp/kowswamp.htm

The last migration was more advanced possibly from an Indian region(Part Caucasoid). This is when the Dingo was introduced and tools and other technology advanced greatly. The Tasmanian Aborigines cut off from the mainland, did not received this influx, and so remained part Negrito and Kow Swamp type (Homo Erectus that had hybridized with more advanced types either in Java or Australia or both, but still very primitive morphology). The Erectile features that are strongly evident in Kow Swamp variety and to a lesser degree in Tasmanians, can be still seen in Modern Aborigines.

Thanks John, I checked out your link

Tacky journalism indeed. But I agree there has been much worse. In Australia journalists have long concentrated on Mungo, as opposed to far more interesting finds at Kow Swamp. Either way the Out of Africa thesis is untenable.

How can people like Klein explain Homo Sapiens in China well over 100000 years ago, or the continuity in mongoloid features found in these fossils. How can they explain the Homo Erectus looking Kow Swamp fossils in Australia that were prevalent only 10000 years ago?

They are looking for an ancient migration to Australia. Look to the Adaman Islands Queensland rainforest and other areas where there are Negritoes. This in no way supports their thesis for it does not explain the existence of other types, such as Kow Swamp man, from which modern aborigines are in part derived, who arrived from Java after Mungo man, but far more primitive in morphology. Nor does it explain the morphological continuity in East Asia. Apart from this what of the conspicuous genetic, physiological, cognitive and sociological differences between the different varieties of man – Homo Erectus, Neanderthal, Negroid, Capoid, Mongoloid and Caucasoid – all of which were walking the earth thirty thousand years, with everyone man on earth ultimately (and in part directly in the case of the aborigines at least) evolved from the first, and is a mix of the later subspecies.

Henry is right that the Aborginals of Australia had essentially Neanderthal technology, not part of any “creative explosion”. Moreover it is interesting that the apparent creative explosion of advanced behaviour around 50000 years ago is given a genetic basis – the emergence of a gene that allowed fluent speech – yet the far greater disparity in civilizational achievements of whites and East Asians compared to others like Africans and Aborigines must only be explained environmentally.

The reviewer does not consider that educational opportunity may reflect underlying differences in IQ. Black African countries lack the cognitive capital to maintain well-resourced schools and even when externally maintained by a high IQ minority like in South Africa and Rhodesia, there are intrinsically few intelligent students able to reach high educational level. Similarly, in countries where whites are a majority and there is equal educational opportunity, like the US, average wealth and other socioeconomic indicators correlate strongly with IQ in a Black, Hispanic, gentile white, East Asian, and Ashkenazi Jew continuum.

The higher GDP of Singapore and Hong Kong compared to Taiwan is because the first two were both former British colonies 🙂

As well as effecting political development, I have been wondering for a while is consanguinity largely responsible for the lower IQ’s in India, Pakistan and the Middle East. I have read it does reduce intelligence, and over dozens of generations surely the cumulative effect would be sizeable. Of coures with Jews, who were less consanguinous anyway, eugenic mating would have outwayed any negative effect(in relation to intelligence). In contrast, the great consanguinity, along with black miscegenation amongst Arabs may have far outwayed the eugenic effects of concubinage, a practice that may have greatly boosted East Asian intelligence. Any thoughts?

I have to respectively disagree with Razib as a late multiregionalist convert: a 30,000 year old Cro-Magnon man could walk down the main street of London, and look not much different to any other white man.: he would not be mistaken for a Chinaman or black. A Cro-Magnon skull (and other features) is far similar to the modern English skull than Chinese, Negro, or Aboriginal skull. Indeed the Cro-Magnon’s had a larger cranial capacity than present Eureopeans.

I’m not sure how people can maintain that broad racial groups were not evident 10000 years ago or earlier. If you mean that that the English, a mixture, of at least Paleolithic Caucasian, Neolithic Mediterrean, Celtic, German Belgae, Picitish, Roman, Anglo/Saxon/Jutish, Viking, Norman (Nordic-Gallic-Roman), and Huguenot of course this mixture was not apparent 10000 years ago but that does not mean that you cannot make broad disctinctions between Caucasoids, Negroid, and Mongoloids. I would argue it is likely the basic proto-types popululation groups were visible 30000 years ago, Homo Erectus (strongly evident in Oz aborigines), Neanderthal (probably slightly evident amongst Caucasians), Capoid, Negroid, Caucasian, and Mongoloid. I understand that inward directing teeth in the Chinese and other features can be traced back to Peking man 500000 years ago.

I take your point about the Neolithic Revolution: Britain was swamped by Neolithic Iberians which largely shape the modern Irish phenotype, but Neolithics did not racially have the same impact on Germans and Scandanavians, where the neolithic revolution occured more by technology transfer rather than mass immigration. Nevertheless Neolithic Mediterranean’s still fall in the broader Caucasoid spectrum, distinguished from Mongoloids, Negroids, and others.

On ancient Caucasians in America, Kennwick man, has not been the only find. Others include the 13000 year old Peñon skull found in New Mexico, the 12,500 year old Monte Verde site in Chile, the 9400 year old Spirit Cave Mummy in Churchill County, Nevada , and others. DNA distinguishing US Indians with Mongoloids, evidence also stengthens the above evidence. Pre-Clovis and Clovis stone tools are found in America; similar to those in North Western Europe, but have never been found in Siberia.

For obvious political reasons the anthropological community have suppressed the issue in coalition with Native Indian groups.

That Chris Stringer does not find such evidence convincing is further proof.

The bigger the schween the lower the IQ and vica versa.

While Australia does not have the problems of the US and Europe with hordes of low IQ, culturally incompatible migrants, with the consequent crime increase, and irredentist threat in the US, immigration still destroys the cultural homogeneity of the nation.

A nation is a macrocosm of a family, the people have a real natural status as related kin from a larger family, sharing a common language, history and culture. If there is no cultural commonality, then an artificial unifying force must impose, like communism, or liberalism, both materialist ideologies that deny the fundamental transcendental truth that can be seen in Nature – not just amongst humans – that people (or chimps or dogs) are not equal in capacity (ergo democracy is false, an erroneous legitimacy); men and women are different; races are different, and not equal; and humans require meaning above material, one that can be found only, as a rule, within the natural communities of family and ethno-cultural community.

I live in Australia. A nation like a family requires a history to give it meaning, knowledge of itself and desire to extend beyond the present generation. How can there be a history in Australia if we all come from different lands, speak different languages.? What is the commonality? There is only two neither, distinctive to Australia: ideology for the elite, and its derivative, mass cultural, superficial hedonism and materialism, a non-culture, of talk shows, Big Brother, commercialized sport, and pop music: cultural nihilism. For the Elite it is either an ideological commitment to free-market liberalism and materialism, placing material wealth over culture and race, a material “liberty” from the natural unions that give us meaning; or on the Left, a doomed quest to end the inequality amongst people, sex and races that will always exist. Note the Elite identify and loyal to an “international community“, behind their cant is contempt (truly a lack of understanding and refusal of responsibility) for their own underclass.

Chinese in Australia still can continue their Chinese traditions, because there still is a China, not just a State, but an intact ethno-cultural homogeneity, with a common history and traditions, more permanent than any alien ideology could suppress, and now flowering brighter now Marxist rule is transforming into Singaporean style authoritarianism. The Vietnamese, Lebanonese, all others but Western countries appear to understand the importance of ethnic-cultural homogeneity, and are willing to preserve the integrity of their culture. Yet Australia, no longer ethnically homogeneous and an shrinking majority ethnicity (no longer culture), can have no common culture. Once Australians defined themselves as both British and Australian, and part of European Christendom, heir to Ancient Greece and Rome. Members of Society – necessarily a minority where there is diversity of talent – saw themselves and were educated in this historical cultural context, a base of Latin and Greek overlaid by a millennia of English culture – prose, verse, music, art and religion – a shared tap root branching to more recent colonial tradition. Now our historical knowledge and link with previous traditions has been severed, leaving the most recent growth stricken, only able to survive through artificial succour by parasite, but without natural sustenance and form will soon rot, unless saved by re-graft back to the whole. Similarly concussed memory loss leaves a man helpless, lost without the knowledge accrued through his life, from his earlier interaction with the natural environment and a culture and technology resultant of accumulated layers of learning and discovery since civilization began.

One must only protect and understand one’s own culture, before others, no less than one’s own family before others. If not, we are parasitically enjoying tastes of other cultures, not yet destroyed by Globalization and multiculturalism, or looking back to the past, to Shakespeare and great painters, but supporting cultural and economic policies that destroy the very ability, the cultural depth, to create these art works that we selfishly enjoy but would not if previous generations had similarly neglected their duty.

The historical memory of erstwhile Anglo-Saxon Australia has become a shame-ridden anti-white propaganda. The air is pregnant with soft-totalitarian propaganda more insidiously effective than in any Red state; all our premises are based on Liberal ideology whether it be Bolshevik Leftism or Menshevik Liberalism. Whereas East Berliners could turn the television on and see greater liberty to the West, we can only look back on a history scarcely taught and only though a twisted prism.

As Mr. Yeagley alluded, multiethnic immigration destroys the cultural diversity ordained by nature, only Orwellian doublespeak calls it multiculturalism. No real family is unrelated, sharing no history but a false ideology, where sisters wage war, brothers told to be feminine, and children they are not ignorant and can make family decisions. A so-called Democracy, with no common culture or ethnicity is an atomized community, a neutron star where everything is crushed into a conglomerate mass, near impossible to escape the ignorance and propaganda that has turned the people into dumb cattle, with a centre struggling to hold, and at worst, a collapse that would leave truly nothing.

> I’m of Chinese descent and China could sink into the sea …If Western culture is as durable and universalist as I and many others think it is then it will survive for the same reason why it was forged in a crucible where free choice was maximised (the decentralised environment of feudalism competing church and state and other loyalties)

Universalism is based on false premises, outside the West other races have kept their natural conciousness. That you care nothing for China does not invalidate the such loyalty, the very whose you admire evolved over 10 centuries, and survived only because it had a real culture unity, real communities not based on a common language, culture and ethnicity, not just abstract ideological construction. There are good evolutionary biological reasons not to reduce the human race to one brown race, unlikely though, as only the West, is suffering this most extreme blindness.

I think that rapid technological, economic, and communications advances since the beginning of the industrial revolution have indeed alienated us from a natural existence, and must be reigned in to the point where they do not violate the institutions that hold civil society together those of family, nation and a transcendental reverence the Natural Order and World, a moral and spiritual framework that religion has traditionally provided. I am not against technological advance per se if it improves the race and culture: I am not necessarily opposed to technological eugenics such as embryo selection, and though extremely wary and would prefer otherwise would not automatically reject cloning.

I make a distinction between, Western and modern, the West one could say has existed since 8th or 9th century, although Razib may argue that Islam is part of the Western tradition. Obviously the transformation to the current perverted modernism was gradual with roots stretching back centuries. There is an individualism that appears to be inheritant in Nordics – one that lay dormant under feudalism, but remerged and strengthened with the Renaissance, (German Lombardians), Reformation, and Enlightenment – which is dangerous without the balance of strong social institutions of family and ethno-cultural nation. In the US, the cultural decay that inevitably comes with Democracy was noted by Tocqueville as early 1830.
The postmodernism, racism, feminism, of the 1960s cultural revolution was just the peak.

There is a intrinsic value in the Roman, and especially Greek writings, which express a subtlety complexity, and of depth of understanding into the human condition. The very fact that European scholars and students studied the ancient texts for centuries gives them meaning. Our legal system is Roman, as is our system of Government; the Greek Philosophers and metaphysicians were first to use abstract thought to a new level greatly influenced subsequent Western thinkers, and were cognizant of realities that we have now forgotten.

I’m not surprised you don’t like Austin; the themes in Austin tend to appeal to female readers. I’ve read two Austin books and largely enjoyed them, more for the writing style and historical context, but it too is not my favorite theme.

The beauty of art is firstly its intrinsic genius, secondly relevance to the observer.

A child’s drawing is only of interest to his mother, a photo album to the family pictured – or family historians; Shakespeare, like Austin and Wagner, have more relevance if one is connected through a common race, culture and knowledge and appreciation of these facts.

The complex harmonies, and melodies of Mozart required genius to produce, and while you may not like Wagner, his genius too is widely recognized. But there it only in their cultural context that they can truly be appreciated, reflecting a cultural depth – the mythic themes of Wagner, and music complexity that one could spend a lifetime exploring, not something one can do with any top ten hit. While Amstrong may not have had the genius of Mozart or Wagner he was certainly very technically gifted, and not subversive (I don’t think) or anarchistic or bland like so much contemporary music. I enjoy listening to him, but suspect, and quite naturally, he would have or should have more relevance to blacks. I can turn to my own tradition.

Zika: American music, with enormous influence is from African sources, is winning. (Music is one of our strongest exports).

What of the social and cultural impact of this music, even more the cultural, social and political changes that have produced such a society where this music is seen as art?

>I don’t want to get into Australian culture, which is about 200 years old and had a very dodgy origin. When I do think of Australian culture, besides the good beer I think of the populist radicalism that Dan complains about, but which I like.

Australian culture is indeed dodgy, radical, founded on utilitarian philosophy, and disconnected British people from their land and history. Ideally it may have been better to have left Australia as a National Park, focused on culture and race quality rather than quantity: the Romans, Greeks and dog breeders ealier still knew what Galton developed only in more detail, genius though he was. In reality, strategically unrealistic, with the French and Germans hot behind, no good either for biological diversity, there would be no aboriginals now.

Music is peripheral, as I said the underlying policies are the key, although if you can’t recognize a decline in culture and moral standards I don’t know what more I can say. The main point is that the premises underlying multiethnic immigration, and Liberalism generally, are FALSE, contravene the Nature Laws understood by most of the great minds, including the founding fathers of America, Burke, and Aristotle. As they are based on lies, eventually the internal contradictions will cause the system to collapse, such as with Communism, merely a more radical form of Liberalism. Liberalism, will take longer, but already the culture has collapsed. A Civil society that once propagated the ideals of natural pride, honour, propriety, piety, and modesty has largely disappeared, destroyed by the shibboleths of Democracy, diversity, and liberty, and materialism; with the backbone of civil of society broken, collapse is only averted by the external support of the bureaucratic state, aided an Orwellian media, artificially interfering and supporting the patient while the internal cancer spreads, while the public is distracted and confused by the distracting superficialities of politics, commerce and mass culture, and media propaganda; a society underpinned by falsehood.

Culture is built on the layers of ancient thought, and must be exercised to remain strong: the Greeks had a higher culture than us, understood more truly human nature. Technology that we glorify is a hollow shell: you can teach a chimp to drive, but the car was built only because of the genetic superiority of the race, which, when climate allowed, developed a true culture reflecting this potential; a culture that worked in tandem with nature and reality, that built on the past not rejecting wisdom to celebrate postmodernist ideological fabrication, and as such was able to develop, in different manifestations, over thousands of years.

Humans have to live in larger community beyond the family, tribes or nations. Better to have them based around a fundamental truths like common race, culture and language and differences in sex rather than an artificial ideological bureaucratic construction like modern Western states, which must perpetuate lies – ability, race, and sex differences don’t exist or played down – in order to maintain its external integrity and prevent the unrest that must inevitably occur.

By rejecting a real natural identity for a falsity, leaves us vulnerable to other groups that retain their natural kin loyalties. Those ethnic groups, such as those with origins around the Middle East, with strong religious, cultural and racial loyalties, do not see themselves part of Universal Western civilization; they have a stronger loyalty that allows some to plan beyond the present generation, others to suicide for their kin: unthinkable in the secular West unified by hollow construction, obsessed by trivialities of sport, celebrity, materialism and short term politics.

Race originally denoted a flow or movement like a horse race or mill-race, a phylogenetic continuum, (R. Pearson, ManQuat, Sum 02). A race must have loyalty to its own people, otherwise, it is not a continuum, and like a family who has no loyalty, will not plan in the long term, live only in the present, and celebrate materialism, hedonism and careerism at the expense of future generations. Of course, like families, races are not static, but they must slowly evolve and build on the past. But surely it is preferable to have a number of rich races and “living” cultures in the world than “multicultural” states that are shallow, with only historical cultural riches that are undecipherable or misunderstood by the brainwashed, uneducated masses, and unlearnt, misconstrued or degraded by an elite, ashamed of its white heritage – easier than truth, responsibility and repentance; an elite having polluted their own country with unrestrained capitalism and democracy, spreads the virus to other cultures so they too can enjoy the blandness of McDonalds, the hollow privilege of democratic representation; but of course no pressure to accept immigrants, for only the West is the target, only it is racist, already has no culture, and evermore no race and homeland to recover.

I am interested to hear the middle ground; I know my ideals are far from present reality, much would have to change. I’m also aware on a number of different levels it is easier for me to have these views than many, but that does not mean they are or not true. At present I only see the middle ground may, may work long term if we reach a higher genetic potential through eugenics or more remotely or impossible to quantify, cybernetics such as a singularity. Even if a reasoned middle ground is sustainable, is it desirable for everyone? Maybe we should have both multicultural and ethnically homogeneous homelands. But there must be some of the latter if racial diversity is to survive. Surely it is evolutionary preferable to have more than one race which could terminate through disease etc, but more over intrinsically preferable to have this diversity. One only values and is aware of uniqueness if there is an other.

I agree Razib about Roman Repulic and its slowness, but I think only works when genetically similar, Celts, Belgae, Anglo-Saxons, Nordics. It is unworkable, or destructive to absorb ethnicities that are so genetically different, especially when the notable phenotypal differences are IQ and important behavior characteristics. Also those who have a larger homeland elsewhere, like Germania, should stay where they more properly belong.

As an afterthought, like you Razib, I like the Nordic type, although Western women have been polluted by feminism. But culture can change, the gene pool is permanent. What a tragedy, if this diversity, the 10s, even many 100 of K years according to Neand-CroMag continuum and general multiregionalist theory, is lost. Japanese girls also are attractive, their government and people understand of cultural and racial importance, their economy may slumber, birthrate fall for a while, but what hollow success is economic growth if you no longer who you were.

Ahhh, had just written a decent reply to GC (no offense taken)then my computer crashed, I have to go now but be back. Must learn to save.

>GC: To boil down our disagreement to one point – do you agree that individualism, rather than clan membership, is what makes the West exceptional?

The rapid technological and commercial advances in the West from the late Middle Ages, that led to economic and military superiority and domination over the much of the world, was only biologically possible because of genetic uniqueness, a high cognitive capacity as heirs to Cro-Magnon man. This superior cognition was both stimulated and destroyed by environmental conditions. Stimulated by the end of the ice age that allowed larger communities to develop and farming, literature. Unlike the large river basins and plain of China that allowed a larger more homogenous population to develop, the Middle East and Mediterranean was close to Africa and Asia Minor; while Europe was thickly forested, divided by the Alps, with no natural barriers to the East. Such conditions provided for much cultural interaction especially to the South and East; the rise and fall of Empires, and racial intermixture. There were Dark Ages, but all cultural achievement was not lost in these troughs; each new civilization was an aggregate, a new layer to previous cultural attainment and technological discovery – Egypt, Minoan Crete, Mycenae, Greece, Rome, Western Christendom. Proto-Western individualism developed in Greece and Rome, was submerged under Feudalism only to flower in the Renaissance, encouraged by political leaders in the many competing small states.

This individualism, did indeed lead to technological innovation, economic growth and imperial expansion – and great artistic and philosophical achievements – that we enjoy now; but this individualism – indeed itself a natural reality, the desire of individual expression, biologically routed in our individual uniqueness and capacity for free will, an expression that must be recognized and exercised as much as biological group commonality and sexual and biological difference. It is a fine balance. One could say that kin and group loyalties amongst Semitics are destructive; though properly their business, it becomes mine when my own welfare or existence, or that of my family, race or those who I care about, is threatened.

The reverse pathology, when individualism dominates over other loyalties is the Western disease – which Nordics may be genetically predisposed, needing a strong understanding of human nature and communal ties to balance their strong individualism. What is the destruction reaped by Western individualism: the able denying their superiority capability necessary for long-sighted leadership, and cultural leadership necessary to create real cultural enrichment as opposed to mass culture and mocking political postmodern art designed to deny true creative genius. Related, but more directly destructive is the denial of racial difference, allowing hordes of low IQ immigrants, even when their religions are openly hostile, or their presence must necessarily bring crime and racial tension, and when a simple calculation of immigrant numbers and differential fertility must lead to loss of homeland and eventual racial dilution thus extinction. China meanwhile, has probably come from a lower base (Anglo Saxons, still more cro-magnon’s had a much larger cranial capacity; Catholic celibacy, dysgenic warfare, and differential fertility for a century and a half, have reduced IQ and other attributes greatly. Orientals, meanwhile, according to the best anthropological evidence have increased IQ steadily through prehistoric and historic times, through racial intermixture from whites, as evidence from Tarim Basin, and especially through polygamy, and the brutal consequences of favoring males that gives females greater reproductive choice, to the point where their IQ is much higher than the related Eskimo and North American Indians, with an average higher IQ than whites, but a distribution pushed rightwards, disproportionately higher in the visuospatial subcomponent. The Orientals eventually acquired and improved Western technology, without experiencing the atomizing and destabilizing consequences of excessive individualism and ethno-cultural heterogeneity.

>gc do you agree that nonwhites can be quite “Western” (i.e. like myself, Jason, and Razib) and that whites can be quite non-Western (i.e. like the addled leftist terrorist sympathizers)?

Anyone can feel Western if you mean modernist: multiculturalist, democratic, globalist; these are just ideas, albeit false. (Democracy, as understood by Burke, can only work to a degree with a very limited franchise, such property, high education, and a healthy civil society, ethnically and cultural homogeneity, preferably with the balance of monarchy and a hereditary aristocracy, interested in continuing their lineage and order in the realm not short term interest.) As an individual, it may be even possible to feel Western in its original pre-industrial/liberal sense such as purely felt in 1750, and still not completely subsumed by modern ideology – to enjoy a degree of individual freedom, but also aware of the cultural history – for example feel British with loyalty to the monarch, local and national community, Christian, and fondness for British history and land, as well as a wider European identity, a common Greco-Latin heritage and continued continental cultural interaction – but truly one must realize that this very richness and meaning can only be created by a real historical identity based on near racial homogeneity, and common culture, not based solely on propositional citizenship or ideology.

>Razib: the groups you mentioned made little or peripheral contributions to the roman republic.

I meant that since 500 BC, Britain was populated by a wave of invaders with similar racial origin: the Anglos, Saxons, Jutes, similar culturally and genetically to the later Norse, ancestors to the Normans; the Celts only somewhat more distant in genes and culture, the Belgae in between; only the Iberian Neolithic substantially different, and still well within the Caucasian cline, a now extinct or Mongolized Mediterreranid subrace; with the Picts and Beaker people an unknown quanity, perhaps in between Celts and Iberians. I’m not sure in Britain whether the Paleolithic substratum was Nordic, Alpinid or Mediterranean. Compare Rome, populated by the second century by Arabs, Celts, and Nordics, and Negroes, too different to ever assimilate or feel deep cultural unity, only a nominal citizenship; such artificiality led to Roman decadence and infertility, far from the patricians who built the Republic who were proud of their historical lineage and united to countrymen by a shared history. Any racial mixture is culturally destabilizing, but sustainable if the groups are genetically similar, and the input small and gradual, with no abrasive cultural differences like hostile religions, and if there is no continuing external source of racial and cultural identification, like Germans under Rome, and Mexicans and Arabs today.

>Razib: there is overlap between the two populations though they differ as organic wholes because of their sum variation

As you alluded the sum variation of the organic whole of any two groups is different, but I disagree that there is an “overlap between two populations” except on certain phenotypes like IQ or height. The sum genetic variation of an Australian Aborigine, Nigerian, Korean, and Swede would not overlap, and no one would ever mistake any individual in one of these groups for another; no Swede has the distinctive oriental eyes of the average Korean, primitive cranial morphology of an aboriginal, or dark skin of a Nigerian. The sum genetic variance of the outlying individuals in the three ethnicities is closer to their respective ethnic group centers than any individual sum variance from the other two groups. Of course some traits are more important for socioeconomic success like IQ and conscientiousness but identity is wider than that. A thousand lion and tigers of the same intelligent, and bred similarly docile, the two types would be still different, though they are genetically similar enough to breed, even if infertile. That said, high IQ and behavioral congeniality makes Orientals more compatible immigrants than more closely related Arabs, although there remains the problem of unshared communal heritage and hence shallow identity.

>Razib: might admit those whites who exhibit behavioral tendencies that mirror the black mean

I don’t understand. Why go to so much trouble to mimicking the very diversity nature has given us? It is like the Government allocating children to parents from a general lot, because all babies have a human “right” not to be restricted to any one “rearer” and every adult the right to be a “rearer”; (Natural ascriptive roles, those that are born into, not chosen, become nominal, able at whim to be prescribed and defined by the state). Or the government allocating partners to all adults based on a bureaucratic formula of compatibility.

Also reversion to the mean will ensure that parents who have been chosen for having qualities like IQ to mirror the host population will have children that will revert back to the mean of their ancestry, so a black African couple both with 110 IQ would have on average children with a IQ 90 (midday between 70 population mean and parents IQ) as opposed to whites 105.

>Razib: most mythic organicists tend to overemphasize the myth portion a bit

Maybe, but surely much of the alienation, banality and depravity of Western modernity is because of a lack transcendental identity, to ideals above the utilitarian and material, to nation and family. Some sort of reverential spirituality seems also to be necessary for a meaningful existence, even if not traditional religion; note the religious intensity of secular ideologues – the peace activists, globalists, multiculturalists and feminists – filling the psychological requirement once filled by spirituality – their fervor only increasing as evidence mounts that their utopia is unworkable, contra nature – the natural difference in ability, race and sex, and the transcendental unions of family and ethno-cultural nation.

Razib: And it is the complex features that interest me. While some have asserted that a clear & well delineated number of races can be defined by classical phenotypic traits (color, skull form, hair form, etc.)-I am more interested in complex traits that show great overlap between “races.” This blog has tended to focus on “intelligence,” where it seems clear to me that the mean g between various populations are naturally different, some of this overlapping with classical races. But my rejection of organic mythic conceptions of race grounded in ideal types is due the fact that complex traits that are defined by mental functions are not so sharply differentiated even if they are statistically significant. It is these higher mental functions that define our humanity despite our preoccuption with cosmetic forms.

Razib, these complex traits that overlap I too find fascinating. However I think that they are sharply differentiated on a large scale. Of course there is great individual difference in traits between Nigerians, Koreans and Swedes – although in some traits there is no overlap – but when aggregated in a population of millions these differences are averaged out, leaving a distinct national character. I reject the word “humanity”, we define ourselves within the largest whole (the earth), and in relation to an other, as different civilizations, nations, races, religion, ideologies false though they may be. It may be possible to create a new Jewish-White-Oriental-Brahman uber race with the very questionable morality of draining every third world country of its intelligent people, as immigration does at present, a permanent dysgenic effect outweighing short term contributions back to families. Yet in reality we find many of these people are naturally (& allowed to be) proud of their ethnicity, and ALL but whites have homelands, which act as a persisting reference point for identity and tradition; whites have only a history that is scarely taught, and largely propaganda. Multiculturalism and continuing immigration from various different countries means there is no cultural commonality between people. There cannot be a rich culture with a shared history, mythology, values, symbols, because everyone has and it continually coming from different origins. If a school has children from ten different nationalities, all the syllabus has to be culturally neutral, drained of any meaning – necessarily culture replaced by propaganda – books, films, all subtly or explicity drumming in the importance of diversity, equality, anti-racism, feminism. Look at newspapers from 1850, 1900, 1950, 2000, see the gradual then rapid decline in standard – (also the result of false egalitarianism and democracy, but it is all interlinked). It may not be your intention, but muliticulturalism, and continuing immigration from different ethnicities must destroy the very diversity that we find interesting in the first place! A homogenized world, with little cultural or ethnic differentiation. The cultures and history that you are so admirably familiar with will be a richness lost. Of course, this won’t happen globally, because every other country outside the West understands the importance of cultural homogeneity. So, in effect, it is just about destroying the West, or more properly, the white race. Why does this matter, is the common nihilism? Why does it matter if I die, my family, or the world blows up because, there are other individuals, families, and probably other life in the Universe? It matter because it is at least 30,000 maybe 100,000s of thousands years of differentiation, and diversity lost. As well as objectively as one of the few highest expressions of life on Earth, it matters ontologically, in the loss of being, just as we cry about Pandas or whales becoming extinct. There is nothing new or outlandish about most of these conclusions: it was the common wisdom for 5000 years until last century.

Razib: seems to me that historians have swung too far away from diffusion, partially in the fear that they are devaluing the indigenous culture.

I strongly agree, both in terms of cultural and genetic diffusion, and in pre-history as well. This ties in to Wells and OOA vs MRE, jigsaws I’ve been mulling over for a while. The continuity in East Asia (Solo to Kow Swamp) and Asia (Peiking to Present East East Asians with Caucasoid gene flow through prehistory to historic times, made sense but I couldn’t work out Europe. Now it makes sense, knowing the phenotypic continuum between early, late Neanderthals, Early then later “Cro Magnon”. Some, but not all, genetic evidence suggest OOA, but it is methodologically very questionable, and focuses on mtDNA; y-chromosomal research, by a group including Cavalli-Sforza, “distinguishes a previously unknown deep, apparently non-African branch”.
http://www.rdos.net/copies/y-study.htm
Under this scenario, being recognized by people like Fred Smith, Alan Templeton, Wolpoff, large brains Neanderthals must have hybridized with Africans periodically over a period over at least 80000 years; we know there was contact, that there would be no interbreeding is a contradiction of the basic sex impulse that exist in man and animals. Of course all this has very non-PC implications.

A fascinating and extensive site on this topic and good picture;
http://www.rdos.net/eng/asperger.htm

Jason Soong: Dan – all these diversities and cultures you mention matter only because there are individuals who derive subjective utility from (i.e. value) their existence. They don’t matter independent of the individuals who derive value from them.

A nation’s culture has a value that transcends the individual, both in development and design. In development, a culture develop over many generations, relying on cumulative collective widom; no generation is wise enough to disregard the lessons of previous generations, as do today’s modernist/postmodernist deconstructionists. Often things we do are a result of cultural lessons later forgotten. In design, a culture, if to last, is constructed not foremost to provide utility or value or even protection to the individual directly, but to provide the highest cultural expression of the group, and to protect the group from internal or external destruction. These three are a compromise: the Athenians in love with their Polis maximized cultural expression; their wisdom and art lives on in their prose and verse and indirectly as a core influence in later thought, but physically – biologically and politically – they would have survived longer under a Spartan militarized society or if they had ceded some power to a larger federation. The Romans created a large bureaucratic empire, which could defend itself externally for a long period, yet the artificially of propositional citizenship was not ultimately sustainable; it denied the differences of race, and created a degenerate ruling class, who indulged rather than reproduced. Germans (Continental and Anglosphere), Lombardians and Nordics, outlasted Rome and Greece because they did not create a large mulitethnic empire with resultant dysgenic admixture and differential fertility, and so until the 20th century retained their racial character.

Jason: How will the West best progress? Yes, it will best progress by, as you put it, braindraining the rest of the world, converting their brains over to Western ways and mingling them altogether. What is the cause of the alleged decline in standards you talk about? It is caused by the fact that the market has increased the purchasing paper of people of average or below average intelligence now whereas before media was determined by the spending power of the elites. Is this good or bad? As long as I can read GeneXP and the NY Review of the Books, do I care if people of average intellects get their fill from reading other things and watching crap on TV? No, not really, the market is just serving different tastes.

Progress is usually shallowly defined materially, or falsely ideologically like increasing minority achievement, more female representation in typically masculine areas, wealth distribution to end poverty. Material progress – wealth, faster computers, better communication, even health – is only progress if the ends are not just hedonism, avarice, or an anesthetic existence under a therapeutic state, but real progress: a better understanding of ourselves, society, and the larger external world. Decline in writing standards is undoubtedly multicausal, but has much to Universal Democracy, TV, egalitarianism, affirmative action, Marxist teacher unions, education geared only for specialized careers, and much more. Changes in the market just reflect underlying causes. It is bad because, the very people who watch crap on TV are not, in our society, differentiated from the more industrious, intelligence, educated, and cognizant. Society once meant only the educated, intelligent, honourable, not everyone could join, now mass culture infects and drags down everyone. Politics is dumbed down, far-sighted policy is impossible, and the public – as the politicians, and the media themselves – can be manipulated. The broad historical knowledge necessary to understand the world scarcely exists, too many intelligent people are wasted working 70 hours after paying taxes to pay for the poor to profligate – all short term profit – then need to tune out in front of the TV or a pulp book. They and the nation would be better off marrying earlier, working and acquiring less, having more children, getting involved in their local community, understanding more. The nation should be the master not the slave of the market; culture should not be dictated by a market (which can be manipulated),nor to advance false ideology, appeal to simplistic emotion at expense of reason, or the basest instinct; culture should be to advance real understanding. The degradation of standards reflected in the press is part of a larger cultural breakdown not limited to the lower class, which may or may not effect us as individuals, but the dsygenic fertility, incompatible immigration, resultant crime and squalor will effect our descendents.

Neanderthals were not primitive, just bad PR: they had larger brains, made birch pitch tar that can be only made at 300-400 degrees C, they made flutes, buried their dead, probably more intelligent than any race today.

The “typical” Neanderthal was a pathological 50 year arthritic. The typical Cro-Magnon also was not typical. What we find is a continuum, a cline where early Neanderthals become less robust more Cro-Magnon – with more African features like longer limbs smaller noses – this continues down though Mesolithic then modern Europeans. Mongoloid genes coming from the East also probably had an effect. Nordics, Scots, (the genes for red hair have been traced back 200K, where are they in Africa?), Basques, Irish, Jews and Armenians, Kurds may be more Neanderthal. Europeans have features that are not found in Africa, but in Neanderthals. There would have been more Neanderthal impact on the flow on the Y-chromosone; Neanderthals were more intelligent and much, much stronger, but could be outbred; Africans far more than Neanderthal females would have been impregnated. It was a long process over at least 80,000 years, the admixture would have been slow. There would have been some, and has been in historic times, gene flow back to Africa.

Last year Templeton, in a genetic study in Nature “Out of Africa again and again”, using “ten different haplotype trees (MtDNA, Y-chromosomal DNA, two X-linked regions, and six autosomal regions)”, showed migrations out of Africa at 1.7, .84-.42 and .15-.08 myr, and considerable genetic interchange between populations throughout this period.

http://www.rdos.net/eng/asperger.htm and elsewhere

The OOA thesis is even more shaky in East Asia, you can trace flat faces, inward teeth and other Mongoloid features back 500K to Peking man; there has been a lot of white gene flow in prehistory and history, seen in fossils, that have moderated these feature and brought Asians and whites closer together.

Yet in Australia it becomes completely unstuck. Aboriginal skeletons are either robust or gracile, (current aborigines are a varying intermixture) the robust, many late as the Holocene, are closer in cranial morphology to Homo Erectus than modern Europeans or Orientals. Homo Erectus skeletons have been found in Solo, Ngandong, in Java which has been dated at 25 000 to 50 000 years old.

Amost all media presupposed OOA, or mentions MRE as a theory amongst a few scientist but then for the rest of the article/documentary presupposes OOA. All talk about Anatomically Modern Humans as if there was no differentiation. It is all PC, justifying the mythology of human equality.

I wonder how Kurds and Basques would go on IQ tests? They must be pretty tough to survive so long relatively unhomogenised. They may have suffered all sorts of dysgenic affects, warfare, inbreeding, etc.

There was a dysgenic decline in Greece, you are right in that there was also disunity, between and within the various Poleis, partly my original point, because they chose an political body that could achieve a higher cultural expression, unlike Sparta geared for war.

Rome fell because there were too few Romans left, because they became degenerate, spurned parenthood, and built an empire where Romans were a minority. It had to and did collapse.

The Germans outlasted Greece and Rome because they remained culturally homogenous and retained their genetic capability. The biological capacity of Greece and Rome declined, due to dysgenic fertility, immigration, admixture, black miscegenation. Galton’s estimate of the IQ of ancients Greeks, converted into modern terminology, was around 120 compared to their present 93 (from memory). Still there is still some capacity left, there is a Greek Doctor Evangelos G. Katsioulis who has a 6 sigma IQ; he also has blue eyes. Rome and Italy had a dysgenic decline, absorbed alot of races included many blacks, the South later occupied by Muslims with more dsygenic admixture; Rome was reinvigorated by the German Lombards settling in the North: it is no coincidence the Renaissance was in these northern cities, there still is a north south division. And yes the Lombardians speak Italian, but they kept (largely) their racial qualities, while Romans, the Patricians, where absorbed. Survival depends on retaining genetic capacity – largely but not exclusively a high average, low and maximum IQ. Once the genetic capacity of a nation drops relative to other groups, like Greece, it is impossible, eugenics aside to reach the former potential.

The Germans in Britain did essentially retain their character. The genetic difference between the Celts, Belgae, Anglo-Saxons, Norseman, and Normans was not great, and it was the Nordic Saxons who were most numerous and the English still express this character. The Welsh and Irish reflect mostly the Iberian character, a mixture of Mediterranean with some Alpine; the Celts were a ruling class, and had less genetic input, although the Celtic language was to dominate. The Scots gene expression comes the Picts, some Celt and a lot of Viking blood, and Anglo-Saxon in the lowlands. The character of Britain, as an aggregate, falls in the Germanic northern European Group, different to Mediterranean. The English/American Empire has been dominate for 350 years, and England regionally strong for several centuries earlier. This is pretty successful (in one sense), but I agree that history will judge its sustainability, and in that I am fearful.

Fascinating Zizka to learn about such Basque achievement, I must read up on it more. They are a marvelous people, Paleolithic survivors, and sole inheritors of an ancient Pre-Indo-European language. I would say that Spain suffered from the dysgenic effects of Muslim rule and black admixture, then from dysgenic immigration of intrepid men (mostly) to the New World, many to die from disease and warfare, the surviving now mestizo/mulatto in varying degrees along a racial/economic cline. The Spanish fertility rate, CIA Factbook states 1.16 in 2002, is among the lowest in the world; this will be an increasing strain – I believe there is also political pressure to accept more Arabic immigration.

Zizka I agree; this is no end of history.

This may help in solving the problem, from author in ultra High IQ society Megafoundation. The rest is on the link, didn’t know if I should copy it all out, no time to put in my own words.
http://www.megafoundation.org/Ubiquity/DaCapo.html

“I wanted to know if it was possible to cross a human being with a chimpanzee and obtain a viable offspring. I knew of course that man has 46 chromosomes and the chimpanzee, like the other great apes, has 48. But I also knew that the horse has 64 chromosomes and the ass has 62 and they can still be crossed to produce a mule with 63. That implied that a difference in chromosome compliment might not be the barrier to breeding that it first appeared to be. I also knew that the DNA sequences of man and chimpanzee were identical at 99 out of 100 base pairs. The possibilities for a viable cross, therefore, looked reasonably good – good enough at any rate to justify spending some time in a library researching the matter.

At first I considered trying to find out if anyone had actually carried out such an experiment. Mankind’s sexual propensities being what they are, I wouldn’t have been surprised; there’s a good reason for syphilis being named for a mythological shepherd. But I finally discarded this approach as unproductive; I found myself chasing rumors of Bigfoot and yetis, rather than securing information I could trust. So I eventually turned to experimental genetics for my data, and there I found the answer to my question”…….

From someone who takes the easy option of throwing the Nazi taunt loosely, Slayer’s hostility to the possibility of having black heritage was amusing. Razib, if I am correct interpreting you, I think you’re the closest when it comes to the Spanish and black genes, not none but very little, from the Berbers and the much smaller numbers of Arabs.

Black gene flow into Arabs, mostly through the Slave trade – see below
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v72n4/024771/brief/024771.abstract.html

Source on small sub-saharan heritage in Berbers, though these are modern Berbers, the Berbers who populated Spain may have different characteristics:

“In summary, one-third of Mozabite Berber mtDNAs have a Near Eastern ancestry, probably having arrived in North Africa 50,000 years ago, and one-eighth have an origin in sub-Saharan Africa.”

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v64n1/980656/980656.html

It was just a passing point about Spain hurriedly written, and I gave more emphasis to the dysgenic immigration to the New World. There was a possible ambiguity in my post; I meant that Spanish speaking Central and South Americans, not the Spanish are mestizo/mulatto in varying degrees along a racial/economic cline”. I don’t know a great deal about Spain and was forgot the extent of the Berbers influence. Also Lynn states Spanish IQ as 99, quite high, close to North European. Spain’s relatively low GDP could also be explained by culture and religion, though this may be in part the result of sociobiological reasons – interesting how Protestantism is predominant in North Europe. A couple of years ago I read somewhere in a National Interest, I think one of the 2000 editions, about how Protestantism tends to lead to higher GDP for various reasons, I won’t try and remember all the arguments. Note: this is not an attack on Catholics; in many ways I prefer their traditional collective approach.

I’m probably too late on this thread but would like to make a few quick comments

Jason Soon: Was it because of the eugenic practice of encouraging rabbis to have large families as suggested by Robert Nozick? and just what the hell happened to the arabs? was it the narrower forms of islam after the fall of the tolerant caliphs that dumbed them down or what?

Part of the answer must be black admixture, but it does not completely or even mostly explain the 15 or so point different below European whites. I have not seen anyone else make this point, but consanguinity may have a lot to do with it, given the high inbreeding rates amongst Arabs, and it generally accepted that consanguinity has an intelligence depressing effect, surely there would be a cumulative factor, although obviously is must plateau out eventually.

Razib: I’ve often asked and wondered out loud on this blog about a question that gets at me-the nations that have the highest IQs today, those of northern Europe and eastern Asia, were not the first to be “civilized,” and in fact, lagged for a reasonable amount of time after the first flowering of higher culture in the valleys of the Nile, Tigris & Euphrates and the Indus.

Isn’t the fact that these areas large river basins important, and largely open, non-forested land. In the North tribes were be smaller, had less contact with other tribes. The middle East was the cross roads of the world, and the Mediterrean also provided a maritime route for intercultural exchange. Also people often forget about the Megalithic cultures, going back to before 3000 BC, they must have had a large degree of organization and advancement to construct the stone chambers, monuments and mounds, all across Europe (and by their at least part white relations in America such as the American stonehedge)
http://www.stonehengeusa.com/
http://www.jsonline.com/news/state/mar02/24849.asp
http://www.people.virginia.edu/~lf5b/peopling.html
Razib: Greg Cochran has asserted that the United States has been in positively dysgenic since the late 19th century (and the West as a whole). But civilization hasn’t collapsed…yet.
Civilization can be held up artificially for a while, but socially there has been a great decline, and many of the functions formerly undertaken by civil society are controlled by the State, enhanced by technology. Technology advances because, unlike culture, does not have to be exercised to the same degree. Discoveries and advancements are additions to the cumulative knowledge, and only a few very smart people are needed in this role. A more advanced computer may be simpler to use, although high tech jobs are sucking all high IQ people from areas like teaching where they were formerly and creating a cognitive elite. Morals, standards, protocol, knowledge, and tradition must be exercised, though if forgotten can be relearnt from books, but with dysgenics the population may not be capable of this former expression. Even in a very low average IQ country like South Africa a high IQ minority can hold the infrastruture of civilization together, although there will be necessarily be shanty towns or the very least simple housing and a great wealth disparity, because the minority cannot be taxed out of existence; the ANC is trying its best to do this.
Razib: Past speculation about dysgenesis is often empty and slap-dash, so I won’t get into specifics. But, doing a thought experiment, I think it is plausible that welfare benefits that favor dysgenesis carry within them the seeds of their own destruction, and a future re-equilibration of the mean IQ. As social order collapses and resources become scare, perhaps intelligence once more becomes selectively fit, and the fabric of society stitches itself back together…and the cycle starts again. Over time this function oscillates around the mean IQ and gives one the illusion that human mental capacities have not changed over the past 10,000 years.
At least in historic times we have had similar cycles but I would characterize it a little differently. It has been a cycle that has drain intelligence in one groups, then moving onto the next. We have not seen the Eyptians, Greeks or Romans restored to their glory; the cycles rather though history have been high IQ tribal people, not exposed to dysgenic and admixture, progressively taking the baton of civilization. While the Egptians were breeding with the Nubians, the Greeks and Romans importing Slaves and abstaining parenthood, the Germans were living in a more tribal extistance, spurning civilization for the land. In contrast the Orientals were able to build a sustainable eugenic civilization, they were a larger people, practiced polygamy, not celibacy, probably less dysgenic warefare too. Robert Graham, and others have observed that civilization itself is typically dysgenic. Not just in terms of intelligence, it also weakens people. When the Celts became Romanised they forget their tribal roots (I believe Sir Arthur Keith has written about this) and were unable to resist the Anglo-Saxons (and the Romans the barbarians generally); yet five centuries later it was the Anglo-Saxons, now Christians, and in larger Kingdoms rather than tribes, who yielded to the Norsemen. It is true that few people are required to make a great Civilization; Athens had less than 20000 and maybe 45000 male citizens. This gives me hope. Yet if nothing changes civilization in the West will be lost, America in 2100, 600m-1Billion people, nearly half Hispanic, and 10-15% black and the whites themselves declining in intelligence; in Europe the EU will provide the infrastructure for a Islamic Republic. Yet all these things are entirely preventable. No one is saying if civilization falls through dysgenics then if will never, never arise again, but that’s not the point. Why let if fall? When it does arise it will because of action, which could have been taken much earlier. And if the West does become what I’ve outlined by 2100 then if there is to be an American Renaissance, then it could be much more potentially bloody than it would have been if measures have been undertaken earlier – like in Galton’s life period, in the 1960s when the immigration floodgates opened and the welfare state spread, or now rather than later.

For those who don’t know, Richard Lynn, author of IQ and the wealth of Nations, had recently written two books on this subject, Dysgenics and Eugnics.

For information on difference between the Castes:

http://batzerlab.lsu.edu/Publications/Bamshad%20et%20al.%202001%20Genome%20Research.pdf

Both mtDNA but particuarly Y-chromosonal genetic analysis shows the Upper Castes closer to the European Gene pool, and particuarly Eastern Europeans. Autosomal biallelic polymorphisms results place the Upper Castes as less than half the genetic distance from Europeans as lower Castes.

I thought Nisbett said Asian-Americans are in between Westerners and Asians in terms of personality. Anywho, I wonder if more individualistic, less conformist Asians are more likely to migrate long distances (America, Hong Kong) away from the mainland, whose personality is then passed to their children. (sort of like the migration theory for IQ, smarter people are more likely to migrate long distances) I am suggesting that there may have been personality differences between Hong Kongers and Chinese mainlanders before the British arrived. Being half-Asian myself, I do notice that even Asian-Americans (even the ones born here)and Westerners noticably think and reason differentely, though not as extreme as Nisbetts East-West comparison. (not that any one way is superior to the other)

Sure, if they convince the higher IQ blacks to make more babies and the lower IQ blacks to make none.

I wonder if anyone here has read “The God Theory” by Bernard Haisch. It is written by a scientist with impressive credentials who believes that religion and science can coexist, and that it is even rational to believe in a God. Although his main arugments are that the laws of Physics are “just right” for life to even exist, his other arguments are still convincing.

I was a center/forward in high school but stopped growing at 6-3. If I’d grown to 6-7, I’d have gone to college on a scholarship, but at 6-3 I was just one of the many, and no amount of effort on my part would have made up for my basic lack of height and speed. So it’s safe to say that there are basic predictors of success that we cannot affect by will or training.  
 
But take it up another level of competition and you see that dynamic change. If everyone has met those basic qualifications, then subtle differences become profoundly important. And when you move from individual measurables into a team endeavor, then intangible factors become even more significant.  
 
So the issue here is not whether or not Google should hire liberal arts graduates with so-so grades, but whether it finds the right mix of brilliant, trained and creative engineers and mathematicians. Since these traits can be hard to spot in an interview or a resume, using an algorithm is an interesting solution. One-size-fits-all solutions simply produce poor fits, and neither GPA nor mysterious personality testing is enough in and of themselves.

Razib wrote “Indo-European languages are just too similar” 
 
This is a debated point among linguists. Linguistic glottochronology has fallen out of favor, so at present the primary arguments for the mounted pastoral nomad hypothesis rest on linguistic paleontology not lexicostatistics or glottochronology. What is needed is objective criteria for debating language separation which for the present is wanting. This is a fundamental problem for much of historical linguistics. Historical linguistics can however tell us much about the material culture, beliefs etc. of the early IE speakers.

Has Eco ever identified himself as, or given us reason to believe that he is a conservative (aside from his being intelligent and witty)?

I’m not sure I get the ‘steve sailer is jewish’ joke, can someone explain it to me?

Oh, wow.

Thanks for mentioning my blog, Steve. Now I have an excuse to update it more than once every eight months. Actually, what’s more interesting than the original post are the vitriolic comments that have appeared today. Oh well. I guess there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

On the first one – truth – I think it’s arguable whether that your description of the New Atheists applies to Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens. But Dennett, who I count among the New Atheists, clearly describes religion as a natural phenomenon (he wrote a book about it, afterall).
On Importance – no doubt that it is an important psychological factor in warfare, but I think most progressive atheists (myself, anyway) think that killing and dying in the name of gods are not socially productive. So in addition to noting, observing and acknowledging, I would add that we should counter this important aspect of religion.
Lastly, on the New Atheist polemicists – Again, no argument that there is an element of this. Nonetheless, as noted under “Importance,” there are very sensible reasons for countering detrimental aspects of religion, and creating an atheist community to support a more rational society.
Madalyn Murray O’Hair, who I believe was founder of American Atheists, said “An Atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An Atheist believes that deed must be done instead of a prayer said. An Atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated.”
I hardly believe that that is polemics, even if it takes a bit of discussion of sensitive topics.

dennett does a better job, but he seems not to have a very good mapping to span the norms which he avows, which are basically as ‘militant’ as dawkins, the truths he acknowledges. e.g., if religion is a virus of the mind like the cold, too many of the new atheists seem intent on blood letting so as to have a psychological affect instead of focusing on prevention and future vaccinations.
Aside from the exaggeration (bloodletting?), I partly agree. Discussing only the aspects of religion as a mindless meme misses much of the socially functional aspects of religion. For me, I tend to think that you cannot effectively discuss religion without first reading Atran and Boyer.
but what about someone like john brown, who killed and died to free slaves? isn’t the issue not that people kill and die for gods, but that these acts so often are at counter-purposes to the norms we (theists & atheists) share?
Point taken in return. Also, point taken on atheism and religion vis-a-vis.
but i think we need to approach it with a little bit of subtly. it is an empirical fact that hospices and medical care were often associated with religious institutions, dating back to 2,000+ years.
Yes, which is why secular alternatives to such care centers would be a fantastic development. You also say that “that is, religionists are humanists just as atheists are humanists” – on the religionists, this is not universally the case. You allude to this by mentioning the fatalist tendency of religionists, which I would argue falls outside the spectrum of humanist ideas. However, religionist care at care centers does usually focus on the quality of patient care, which is a good thing that secularists in general and atheists specifically tend to overlook, I’ll admit.
And I don’t know about “replacing one simple idea with another.” For me, replacing irrational (albeit socially-functional) logic with rational and socially functional logic is definitely not a simple task.
Cheers.

religion is not about truth on any fundamental level, but a bundle of various elements bracketed together.
I read that slightly differently, thinking that Razib may have been describing Pascal Boyer’s argument that religion is about a bundle of various *cognitive* elements. Moreover, religion actually works !better! when working with counterintuitive and self-contradictory statements. Thus the difference between truth (i.e. fact) and Truth (i.e. superstitious claims that are not be questioned).
In this way of reading what Razib wrote, he wasn’t talking about what religion is to the believer, but the ways in which religion actually works, from the standpoint of evolutionary psychology and cultural anthropology.
Razib – Is that about right? (Can you tell that I’m fascinated by the topic, and how we can be so well adapted to religion and it can be so absurd at the same time!)

On Sam Harris’ and Dawkins’ positions on criticizing religious moderates, I think that they’re on solid ground in voicing their criticism – the problem is that most of us can’t do that on a daily basis. We just have no choice but to find the common ground with religious moderates, which is indeed a substantial common ground. That is, while becoming a critic may not be an effective strategy for the rest of us, the critic is a necessary player.
this is important because what i’m getting to is that some new atheists switch between a deontological stance and a consequentialist one. i.e., is it about Truth at the heart of it, or is it about opening up a free space for dissenters from ‘orthodox’ religious dispensations?
Why does it have to be an either-or? I tend to think that the convergence of multiple perspectives makes for a *stronger* argument, not a weaker one.

Care to demonstrate that religion has little to say about moral questions and is little concerned with them?

he said it had little to do with morality, not that it has little to say about it. that’s a very important difference. that being said, i do think that broadly construed religion and morality have had a lot to do with each other, but, religion and morality are not necessarily connected, and it seems anthropologically that a moral sense preexisted any sort of formalized religion.
I would add to that a bit – organized religion is an authoritarian mindset in its social structure. There’s a decent amount of research done in the past 50 years documenting that authoritarian followers will happily do things that they would otherwise consider morally reprehensible, if an authority from within their belief system tells them it’s okay. This is true for both religious and political authoritarianism.
Bottom line is that people will commit atrocities if an authority that they trust orders it – yet another reason why strong religious inclinations should be confronted.

No, I don’t think that authoritarianism is an exclusive or defining attribute to religion, but it does represent the structure of religion as a sociological phenomenon, right?
What you suggest about religion enhancing certitude is a different albeit related topic to what I’m suggesting. i.e., certitude, or strength of conviction without regard to evidence or credibility of that evidence, is a defining attribute of faith itself, not the social structure of the faith or the (im)morality of various actions.

However most fundamentalist Christians aren’t members of those groups but are members of very loosely aligned “non-denomenational” groups which switch allegiances rather quickly. To the degree there is ‘authority’ it is primarily by persuasion not authoritarianism.
“Rabbis,” “clerics,” and “pastors” most certainly do fit the bill for authority figures in the non-denominational Christian, Jewish, and Muslim groups that you mention. Even religions not of the Judeo-Christian mold have spiritual leaders at the center of their community. The only exception is folk religion (non-organized or tribal religion), and even that is debatable. So yes, the authoritarian social structure of organized religions is quite solid.
It seems to me that religions make lots and lots of factual claims – then use faith as their justification for them and argue that you should accept them on those grounds. Science is not compatible with that.
Indeed.

and I believe that mass media and modern information technology is resulting in less assimilation of Muslims to liberal norms than would otherwise be the case.
So it’s the fault of the West’s mass media that the Muslim world is, on the whole, shockingly illiberal?? If we respect them, they’ll be nice??
With all due respect to you, that’s a load of crap.

Ponder,
Actually, by citing a Dutch filmmaker, Razib does appear to say whose mass media that he was referring to. The rest of his post however invokes the mass media in the general sense, implying the mass media to which this Dutch filmmaker belongs. Moreover, Razib doesn’t distance himself from his post’s title as far as I can tell.
I guess it just isn’t clear to me what the main thrust of this post is.

Ponder,
Ohh… you may be right there. It still isn’t crystal clear that that is what Razib meant, but it does make a heck of a lot more sense.
Sorry Razib! 😉

The Tibetan movement is a national liberation movement of an oppressed minority. The TYC congress has always been an dissident group, disagreeing with the TGIE on a number of issues, and hardly represents Tibetan refugees as a whole, let alone Tibetans inside the TAR. I haven’t detected much if any “balance” here, so I’m off to another blog. Do you think that the Xinhua and the foreign press have the same weight, and that one has to weigh one side in each hand to find this so-called “balance”? Interesting idea, but I don’t get it. Goes nowhere toward any kind of truth.

I simply believe that many of the psychological characteristics which prime one for finding god plausible are present in those who consciously assert that they donÂ’t believe in gods. For example many atheists may feel unnerved in cemeteries despite a materialist world-view; the psychological response may be a result of social conditioning, but it is also possibly a cognitive reflex at an intersection of environmental inputs (think snake aversion as something similar). 
While I agree that that is the case and it’s fascinating, the opposite is true also of many people who do outwardly assert that they believe in gods. That is, many believers have confirmed that they have their crises of faith, or find it difficult to belief in the power of prayer, miracles, etc., although they admit so reluctantly.  
 
That just points to a spectrum of variation within humans with respect to religiosity, indicative of stabilizing selection… *cue functionalism and group selection parts*…

different parts of the mind can “believe” in different things. 
 
Point taken. 
 
remember, the model i’m alluding to posits that most of the variables which result in the distribution of the phenotype are fixed by other selective and functional drives. 
 
You say “distribution of the phenotype,” I say “spectrum of variation.” Tomaytoes, Tomahtoes.

Most white kids I see still listen to Rock or Indy especially in the suburbs and some parts of the city away from the inner cores. I see that many white kids seem to listens to everything or just rock or indy music. When I was growing up in the 80’s, everyone I knew listened to rock soft hard heavy metal even if a lot of them turned pop. I see early rock and roll very close to some country western music. Bill Haley and Elvis tried to be Country types singers but it didn’t work for them. They combined elements of swing jazz. Early jazz, some of it came out of folk music from the irish and scottish. They technology of music started to change a bit with new instuments in the 20’s with early jazz. They weregreat white jazz bands that were considered the best years ago people like Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey. Later on to rock and roll. Blacks have a roll but not all of it. I do not like jiving singing! They sound like they are whinning or screaming. Moat white singers did not do that. They sang normal to me. Today, with the media, they are pushing the jiving singing all the time. Black music is very different from white music. White Jazz or Big Band Jazz was so different from Black Jazz. The white kids that are imitating black rappers are soo unhappy and they are looking to rebel. Thanks to the media of the 90’s, they replaced the bad boy image of Heavy Metal like Guns and Roses. Black kids do it as well but not all! The media through videos are selling the gangsta pimp looks. They started here in the US in the early 90’s and it took hold all over by the late 90’S. I thought it would never go to England and other parts of Europe but it started in England in the late 90’s and it it taking root now for the past 5 to 6 years. I think they have more popularity in England than in the US but other parts of Europe, not much. I think a lot of it is contibuted to the break down of the family. In England, I think it broke down entirely, not all. In America, they families are gnerally strong. Of course in the suburbs or in higher economic area. Lower economic white or black areas here in the US, the rap and hip hop is very popular in those areas more than the nicer areas. In Italy and France as well as other parts of Europe, the families are strong as well as traditions. I have taught in Europe many years and in England in 04 and 06 and taught Europeans teens from summers of 00 to 07 in England and Ireland. They still love rockish sounds but they like dancing to trance techno sounds but not so much rap and hip hop. England like I said because of the family structures of 75 to 80 percent I think collapsing, rap and hip hop gangsta look is becoming popular but many of the kids I have taught there still like rockish sounds as well. The media is brainwashing many people esecially our youth for the greed of money. The greaser to the heavy metal looks lasted a long time from the 50’s to the mid 90’s in America. 40 years is not bad but the media starting in the 80s in the black communities but the white communities in the 90’s like areas like eminem’s area, they sold gangsta rap. 10 to 15 years not bad but people are talking about changing the inages. I hope people get serious because this is serious. America’s families are still strong about 65 percent is very, about 20 percent semi strong but about 10 to 15 percent are weak to very weak or disfunctional. Does anyone notice when they are, they seem to listen to rap and hip hop. I know I am saying a general statement but I think I am right. Black music? Well I know like many Black Jazz singers or bands. I prefer the white ones they play in many old time movies or movies today based on that time. I never like rap and hip hop. I thouht it was soo silly and dumb but I do believe it was born out of ignorance and exploited by corporate america and MTV for money. I listen to Rock and some new bands I like like Angels in the Airwaves, Cold Play, Alanis Morrisette and the Goo Goo Dolls. I love my 70’s and 80’s Van Halen, the Cure, New Order, ACDC, Journey, Boston, Go Gos and more. My music tastes keep evolving as I get older like many of you would as well but many still won’t find the courage to do so because you still somehow do not think it is cool. I always liked Classical when I was a kid. Kids say it is boring but music from Staw Wars, Lord of the Rings, Gladiator, Indiana Jones, Harry Potter. Most kids I teach 3rd 4th or 5th and teens in the summer say yes they like that type of classical. I get the soundtracks! I also like Enya. I like music traditional music from all over Europe. Irish English and Italian Russian and Austrian are all fun. Period films when they have dances, waltzes. I find it fun. Powerful Operas! I like Peggy Lee. Musicals from Sound of Music and more. These are all white types of music and singing people! Black singers I have liked. Nat King Cole but when I first heard him sing, I thought he was white like the 50’s black band, the Platters! I think you all know the white sounds of singing to the black sounds jiving! Sorry I never liked it. I do not like Raggae. I do not know how to spell it.

Note that Bernardine Dohrn spent time at the Sidley Austin firm where Michelle Obama started. I am not sure that the dates overlap though.

I think it’s an interesting finding. However, some criticisms: 
 
Intuitively, one would reason that heat and weather become less of an issue given that people spend less and less time outdoors (i.e. people are air conditioned for the majority of the day). 
 
The types of intelligence required to thrive in a rural and urban setting are vastly different, and the ability to quantify those differences has escaped psychologists for decades. The ‘put a yuppie on a tractor’ bit. This could potentially weaken the IQ findings. 
 
Degrees earned by whites also poses a problem. It would be interesting to see how this correlation looks if results are normalized for the # of prestigious universities in each state (measured by some kind of impact factor?).  
 
The white crime rate would also be interesting to compare to state unemployment rates. Given that employment rates would probably be higher in colder, more urban centres (assuming of course that employment is a function of economy, and not temperature), it only makes sense that a higher proportion of people commit crimes in hotter states with lower employment rates. 
 
I get the whole ‘tropical disease’ point of view. It’s interesting, but there are so many angles here. And with the advent of Google, one can find a correlation in just about anything: 
 
http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2008/07/petabyte_scale_dataanalysis_an.php

Fair enough razib and agnostic. You make good counter-arguments, and I’m no social-scientist or statistician. But I still say there’s not that much to discuss until we add in a more direct link to support the ‘pathogen’ hypothesis. I must admit, I have no interest in doing the analysis myself, but does the CDC keep any useful records regarding west nile, malaria, etc…? Or are we talking just a general ‘blah’ feeling about being humid? I’m Brazilian, and I have to tell you, I love heat and humidity.

My bad didn’t read your latest post agnostic… so basically your hypothesis is irrefutable, because it could be anything. Well that’s no fun.

Wait a sec… what if you were asked to decide solely on temperature which states suffer from the heat IQ deficiency.  
 
Make 3 groups, one hot dumb group, one medium not-so-dumb-group, and one cold smart group or however you want to split it. 
 
If you did a one way ANOVA on the IQ scores of the three groups, would the P-value be significant? Because then you’re using your model to make predictions… maybe even you could try your hand at other climatically similar countries.  
 
Given the traveling patterns of individuals, and the lack of screening for unknown microbes, would you expect ‘unknown microbes’ to proliferate in other climates similar to the US? 
 
And how do these predictions hold up for Canada? Do people in Yellowknife have higher IQ’s than people in Toronto or Vancouver? Very interesting post which raises a lot more questions than answers. 
 
However I do take issue with one thing you said agnostic. Your data does not make anything irrefutable, you are only presenting data which suggests a lack of support for a null hypothesis. Significance is not ‘proof’.

One aspect of modern civilization, is the aspect of hygiene. The microbes you speak of would have to cause ‘asymptomatic’ (i.e. no explosive diarrhea) behavioral changes, and have to be extremely resistant to many of the antibacterials commonly used in our society. As a biochemist I can vouch for the danger super-bugs, and for the complexity of immunology…  
 
I can say it’s unlikely, but I’d definitely be intrigued by this new facet of microorganism… You’re proposing a sort gene outside the organism, which frankly I just find… cool.

Great stuff trajan23, thanks

There was a white child born in St. Augustine before Virginia Dare:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mart%C3%ADn_de_Arg%C3%BCelles

airtommy,
there is a significant difference between people who organize to help themselves, and people who organize to get money from others.

Having read Hawks’ critique, I’m not sure what the big deal is. Hawks, being a good Scientist, is a natural skeptic. He then trots out a list of standard caveats, applicable to all research, and applies them to this paper. Good. And now what?
Until further research is done, the original paper is a suggestive datum, no more. The critique, however, is nearly non-informative.

I have exactly the same problem with 8.04 and my laptop. WiFi works for some minutes until the connection is dropped. It works perfectly well with XP, all the rest being equal. Using the windows driver made no difference.
I am convinced that it is a problem with the network manager, so my hopes are in 8.10

Lindsay Graham for President? I would never vote for that woman.

"Hostile, well-informed individuals are a dying breed in America."- so true, there may be a few here though- Steve I would not count as one though, too mild-mannered

Byron "Whizzer" White- what a man, do they still make 'em like that? I put him up there with Jack Buck, Chuck Yeager and old Viking coach Les Steckel

No chance most Americans agree with Sotomayer…. most people are too busy to worry about this bs…of course, that's the problem

HBD is incompatible with a normal society where everyone feels justice has been served. HBD will ravage trust and instill bitterness.

Americanism is built on the expired concept of free will; men can choose to be successful or not. Hard work got you those top scores Mr. Ricci? Nope genetics did. How “free” will white Californians feel with a distinct class of people ruling over them? Get ready for a awkward, rancorous caste system.

@Anon with the Amren link.

Wilkinson writes Chinese will be about six percent of the total Australian population by 2030. This is reasonable and "traditional Australians" might want to not offend China. Just make sure the military and medical profession is not swamped.

AA will do great harm to this country and expose women and minorities of being incapable-why should anyone interested in seeing America collapse and Whites angry wish it to go away?

AA is leverage to use against liberals.

What we need is not an end to AA but more laws protecting Freedom of Association.

Mass-murdering gangster Whitey Bulger seemed to have a pretty high IQ. His brother was president of the UMass system (mostly as a way to get him out of the way politically). His right hand man Kevin Weeks had 2 brothers who went to Harvard (the father was more proud of Kevin…).

Of course, there have been serial killers with high IQs such as Ted Bundy and Joel Rifkin. Of course, the ultimate example is Ted Kazynski with his 175 IQ (giving up a career as a math professor at Berkeley to become a one man revolutionary).

He's all right on things green, but on war he's total doofus or as I call it, BSI. I do like that Brooks split. Everyone else but Bergan is preaching to the converted.

Learn about BSI here.

http://klogtheblog.wordpress.com/2009/10/12/thomas-friedman-is-bsi/

Why does Behe think his arguments are not being refuted over and over?  
 
Maybe they haven’t been refuted. I certainly haven’t been impressed by his critics. The best ones “refute” i.d. only by postulating a mechanism that can theoretically create irreducibly complex cellular structures. And the worst ones ridicule him for being a creationist, which he isn’t.  
 
variants of the God-of-the-Gaps argument 
 
True, but it’s an important gap: than Darwinism can’t explain most life on Earth. Maybe someday scientists will be able to explain how e.g. flagellum evolved, but they can’t now. Maybe that’s why so many get ticked off at Behe, for airing their dirty laundry.

Gladwell is a great storyteller but a bad sociologist. For this he is able to earn a much better living than many great sociologists. I'm sure there is a Gladwellism to explain why.

One of the Gladwell's common errors is to assume all other variables are constant. When is that ever the case, especially in sociology?

Fact is a good QB on a great team will have a much better career than a great QB on a bad team. Sports fans argue about this all day but Gladwell just ignores this dilemma and casts his faith on a linear regression chart.

To improve analysis of this particular question one must take into account not just the draft position of the QB but how many quarterbacks were selected before him? It is one thing to say Tom Brady was drafted in the sixth round. It puts this pick in a whole different perspective to see he was the seventh QB drafted. In other words, the pros still thought at the time he was the seventh best quarterback in the world! That is a far cry from simply saying he was just one of many elite players.

TomV, yes I meant to say the pros considered Brady the 7th best QB in the draft pool, which in theory includes 6 billion people less children and those already in the NFL.

Even as a backup Brady was a success, holding a job million of young males wish they had but with only a few openings per year. Luck allowed him to get the chance to perform when he did but that does not prove he would not have succeeded otherwise. Consider Steve Young who had to wait several years for Montana to play out his contract with the 49ers. Despite or because of the wait he too excelled when his chance came.

Get a grip, folks. Malcom Gladwell is just the Canadian version of Joel Osteen. His gospel is uplifting at best and innocuous at worst. If it is upsetting that people who should know better adopt Gladwellisms as truth than target and correct them.

To his credit I find Gladwell to be apolitical and cautious in his prescriptions. He appreciates the important of self-determination and he is reluctant to buy wholesale into big government social engineering. When he writes that being successful requires luck and work he means both.

Does Gladwell practice bad science? Yes. But so do many sociologists, pundits and politicians. Unless and until Gladwell concerns himself with saving the world we ought to consider him an artist and leave it at that.

Must add David Brooks to the roster of incoherent New York Times favored pundits.

In this recent column he determines that investing for the future does not require self-discipline but rather the foresight of knowing the in the future one can steal an even greater share of national wealth.

To be honest I struggle to paraphrase what he said since it is incomprehensible.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/opinion/17brooks.html?_r=1

The standard thing these days is for Americans to scold each other for our profligacy, to urge fiscal Puritanism. But it’s not clear Americans have ever really been self-disciplined. Instead, Americans probably postponed gratification because they thought the future was a big rock-candy mountain, and if they were stealing from that, they were robbing themselves of something stupendous.

"Drafting college players was usually safer than drafting high school players."

The number of high school players drafted relative to college players in the first round was strangely high in the early years of the draft (say from 1965-1980). (I wonder if a large part of that was just a bias old-timers and scouts had against college players in those days, i.e. they couldn't mold them as well into big leaguers, or the college guys were seen as not serious enough about baseball if they chose college over pro out of high school, etc.) By 1984, when James analyzed the draft, this had largely already changed to about what's been the case since (a slight majority of college players taken in the first round, probably an average of about 17/30 over the past 25 years).

"High draft pick high school pitchers, I believe, were especially likely to flame out."

My hunch is that this is largely a myth. Pitchers in general are a bit more high risk/high reward, but if anything, more high-profile college pitchers drafted high (like top 10-ish I'm thinking) have "flamed out" (or at least had very short stays in the bigs) in the last 20 years.

Of what I'd consider (roughly) the 18 best pitchers in the majors now (in terms of who'd be drafted highest in fantasy, more or less) that come to mind, a majority of them (10) were not only picked in the first round of the draft (top 30), but OUT OF HIGH SCHOOL. That's amazing I think. These 10 are: Greinke, Wainwright, Beckett, Hamels, Cain, Billingsley, Halladay, Sabathia, Kershaw, Carpenter.

If we exclude Felix Hernandez and Johan Santana (non-US so not draftable) we are really dealing with a sample of 16 and not 18. Of my remaining six, Verlander and Lincecum were first round out of college, Haren was 2nd round out of college, and Peavy, Lee, and Webb were lower round picks.

"it also had to do with the usefulness of college statistics v. high school statistics. If a prospect hits .350 for the Rice Owls, you can conveniently look up how that compares to what Lance Berkman hit at Rice (.385) and what Berkman is hitting in the majors (.299)."

Still, compared to minor league stats, I'd say college stats have a much lower correlation with big league stats. Just because of the metal bats and the variation between players of being able to adjust. Lots of the heaviest college hitters have no future in the pros and all the scouts know it at the time.

Steve,

It seems to be news today that in 20 years white children will be a minority. The CBS radio newsreader had the temerity to say, "What will the minority be called when it is the majority?"

To which I would respond, "What do they call them in Texas and many other Southwest towns?"

Our culture is changing. Actually, it has changed quite a bit since we were kids. Just as it changed quite a bit from the time our parents were kids. So I don't know if we have the right to bemoan this change or just accept that the things we value are not considered as worthy by those who come after us.

Annoyed – I have completely missed the story about the US bomb design that was allowed stolen, and about that Syrian ship.
Any links?

Bush (W) purposely quit golfing so much while president, to not be seen as slacking off. He's now apparently doing it all the time now that he's out of the spotlight. I don't see Obama doing the same after his presidency ends. Quite the opposite; I bet he only sets foot on a golf course for a fundraiser (if that) in 2014.

What are the odds the Patrick Ewing WOULD be drafted first by the Knicks and Lebron James WOULD be drafted first by the Cavs?

The good player moves by the Lakers and recently by the Celtics can be credited to good management who was willing and ready to pounce when a good deal came their way. But the luck of the lottery ball yielding the "best" result for the NBA marketing chiefs in at least two cases makes one wonder.

Sublime, Scowspi:

I tend to disagree, a division of Ukraine is the more likely outcome. The economic benefits of an integeration of “New Russia”(south and east) with Great Russia are overwhelming. Russia could save billions just by running south stream across the Crimea to Bulgaria. An interesting take on the topic of this post – “Gathering the Russian Lands” was published by Philip Longworth:

Russia: The Once and Future Empire From Pre-History to Putin (Hardcover)
~ Philip Longworth

This is a very difficult subject to discuss on any level but I can point out a few facts that might help in the discussion.

As someone who lives in a city with substantial Mexican and Negro ghettos, and has had to catalogue not only the numbers of violent crimes but also the particular details of each crime, I can say that while there is a tragic rise in crime in certain areas of the Mexican neighborhoods, it pales in comparison with what is going on in the Black neighborhoods. It is painful to have to say this but the sheer savagery of Black crime, the details of which would disturb anyone, with its near-total lack of remorse for the victim, its viciousness, its seeming (dare I write this?) “glee” with the violence of the crime itself makes the relatively stupid-type crimes committed by Mexcians seem almost innocent.

This is not a pleasant thing to have to point out, but it is reality.

Indian own quite a few companies in Dubai. Google Manu Chhabria.

Raz, (you don’t mind if I call you Raz, do you?;) Can you give insight as to how a trait or behavior can only be 50% heritable or 80% due to gene variance? How can a phenotype be *sometimes* genetic? What else could it be since we’re nothing but genes and bacteria? Is it due to gene *expression* variance? Is it due to junk DNA variance? I just don’t understand how a trait can be genetic half the time and the other half of the time it happens to be cause by environment yet is expressed the same way. It seems like it’d have to be purely cultural (something we wouldn’t instinctively do without prior knowledge) or purely genetic. I’m probably missing something big but that;s why I want to learn.
Also, did you see this cool video where these little creatures can repair their own DNA using scraps from other downed organisms?

and here’s a funny cat. thanks for all the great work over the years.

miko, thanks a lot for the info. i really really enjoyed the wiki article as well. i think i made a truly key understanding when i read one of the lines in particular:

“A more useful distinction than “nature vs. nurture” is “obligate vs. facultative”….”

this is where i was confused. Am I correct in saying that heritability is showing the “genetic sensitivity” amongst a population for a particular phenotype? Meaning, a trait with lower heritability is a gene or set of genes/proteins that are *more* sensitive to environmental/cultural pressures? general intelligence is less influenced by environment where as neuroticism or political inclination is more influenced by environment? is this correct? and do I need to add anything?

1st link is a gold nugget if i’ve ever seen one. nice link digging, razib. thanks

ok, thanks a lot Razib. i think i’m slowly understanding the basics.

I’m a tad worried that’s a bit over my head….but I ordered this last night:

is that good enough? Also, I’m sifting through this talk with DS Wilson:

he seems like the king of evo-bio. any qualms with DSW?

Razib! did you see this one?:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100414152138.htm

I’m guessing it’s not a new idea or you’d have linked to it already but it’s new to me. Awesome! Now all we have to do is make it legal to do this on humans;)

thanks, razib! excellent link today. and thanks for linking to GNXP classic cuz sometimes i forget to visit;)

yes! two gold nuggets in there for me, especially. thanks for the Frontal C. link cuz i forget to go there sometimes, as well

oh, man, good one razib. i got some laughs outta that one:)

don’t even bother, raz. these hand wringers aren’t worth debating – too much granola stuck in their ears

Z, you see this one?:
http://www.physorg.com/news191141879.html

wow

3/5 nuggets bookmarked for later! thanks, Raz. good digging

one intelligence gene link found:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100422164633.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100422164633.htm

nother good one