100 Blog Posts – A Reflection on HBD Blogging And What Lies Ahead
This is my 100th blog post. Upon reaching this milestone, I thought that this would be a great time to take moment to look back at my experience as a blogger in Human BioDiversity (HBD) and share my thoughts on the things to come.
1. The Beginning
2. Fertility
3. Immigration and the economy
4. Cliodynamics
5. Homosexuality (the “gay germ” hypothesis)
6. Health wisdom and obesity
7. Eugenics
8. The Future
9. Support me
The Beginning
What an adventure this has been! In writing this blog, I’ve learned a great deal about human nature, genetics, and a variety of topics. I’ve uncovered a variety of truths about humanity – many of them truths just waiting to be found – “low-hanging fruit” in the words of Greg Cochran.
I’ve always suspected genetic roots of behavior. This suspicion was solidified upon reading Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate. There I learned of the existence of an enduring human nature – an enduring human nature that makes it impossible to “train” people out of certain undesirable behaviors. That was a great revelation in itself, but one of my biggest takeaways from that book was that established beliefs – even beliefs held by many experts – can be dead wrong. One of these was the belief in power of parenting.
This belief was the subject of my very first blog post (Taming the “Tiger Mom” and Tackling the Parenting Myth), and is something that I still argue about to this day from time to time.
It turns out that parenting doesn’t matter as much as we think. Indeed, short of extreme abuse or neglect, parents don’t affect how their children turn much at all. This includes not only children’s intelligence or their broad personality traits, but their life outcomes (including the things that “really” matter), like how much they earn, or whether or not they get in trouble with the law. This even includes how fat or thin they become, as was the subject of my second post (Should Parents Lose Custody of Obese Kids?). It also doesn’t matter if they grow up with a father present or with a single mother. It doesn’t matter if their parents are gay or straight. All those things are symptoms, of the true causes, not causes in themselves (the true cause being heredity).
Knowledge of this accustomed me to the reality of holding an unpopular, but nonetheless true, belief. If only I had any idea what was to come!
Thanks to the knowledge of the heritability of behavior, I’ve long held the suspicion that heredity was responsible for persistent differences between human races. In their books, both Pinker and Harris went to great lengths to assure us that the differences between racial groups didn’t have genetic roots, but I still knew it was possibility. Then one day I stumbled across the article “Getting Darnell Off the Corners: Why America Should Ride the Anti-Drug-War Wave” by John McWhorter. McWhorter claims that it is the War on Drugs that leads to the maladies suffered by the Black community, such as poorer educational attainment, higher crime rates, and more poverty than American Whites. One of the commenters there, in a moment of frustration which I am all too familiar with today, left a comment noting the lower average IQ of Blacks with respect to Whites. Another mentioned that Blacks do poorly across the globe. I decided it was time to take racial differences seriously and looked into the evidence on that matter. Eventually, I found the late Arthur Jensen’s and the late J. Philippe Rushton’s paper responding to Richard Nisbett’s book Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count:
In this, I discovered that the evidence for genetic roots to racial differences in intelligence and behavior was far more robust than I was led to believe. Voracious curiosity ensued, which led me to the site VDARE.com, and particularly, the work of Rushton, Richard Lynn, and especially Steve Sailer. There I found a whole hidden world of knowledge that lay suppressed in the popular culture. I spent quite some time getting to know this topic, and the people who talk about it.
Particular among them was the blogger known as “HBD Chick“, who runs a neat data-rich blog. I found her hypotheses to be far more comprehensive and convincing explanations for the great variety of human behavior than the “standard” HBD theory favored Rushton and Lynn. HBD Chick’s main hypothesis proposed that human mating patterns, particularly historical rates of consanguinity, imposed an important selective pressure on human populations, and those pressures were important for what we see today, particularly the degree of kin-altruism (as opposed to extra-familiar altruism). She noted that Northwestern Europe, in a region roughly enclosed by the Hajnal line, was unique in that it had a long tradition of marrying outside the family. This had big implications for the evolution of Northwestern European behavior. In particular, their attitude on the societal common good. I spent a good amount of time getting to know her stuff.
I eventually wrote a succinct summary of HBD Chick’s findings: An HBD Summary of the Foundations of Modern Civilization.
My research into HBD led me to the work of physicist Gregory Cochran and anthropologist Henry Harpending. Their book The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution further opened my eyes. It is a treasure trove of information on the topic, and I wondered how I got along without it. I regard this book to be the definite sequel to Pinker’s The Blank Slate. Cochran and Harpending take natural selection’s impact on mental modules to its natural conclusion. Within, they argue that evolution has in fact sped up since the dawn of civilization, as expanding populations provided more mutations and more opportunities for specialization. I continue to follow their work on their blog, West Hunter.
Fertility
Cochran, Harpending, and HBD Chick taught me that understanding human behavior and human behavioral differences is actually a wide open field, with many gaps in our knowledge waiting to be filled. One of them centered on the issue of sub-replacement fertility in the modern developed world. That is, modern people were having fewer children than is necessary to maintain the population (about a lifetime number of 2.1 children per childbearing woman). Also discussed commonly in the HBD world was the issue of dysgenic fertility, where less educated (and hence, lower-IQ) individuals are having more children than the most educated. Since IQ is highly heritable, it stood to reason that, left unchecked, this would reduce the average IQ of the population over time (whether signs of this are already visible is a hotly debated topic right at this moment). I sought to see what I could find on this.
I found quite a bit. I found that, at least in America, fertility is highly correlated to political orientation. In my monster post Liberalism, HBD, Population, and Solutions for the Future, I detailed a breakdown of fertility rates as gleamed from the General Social Survey (GSS). I noted a distinct directional skew in fertility rates, with conservatives greatly outbreeding liberals. Indeed, conservative fertility is not sub-replacement. This appears to be closely linked to education; matched for IQ, conservative women are much less likely to pursue lengthy education; they are more oriented to marriage and motherhood. This pattern first seemed to appear in earnest in the post-World War II Baby Boom, but really got going in the following generation – with the arrival of birth control – as my later posts found (The Liberal/Conservative Baby Gap: Time Depth). EDIT: Added the chart:
Indeed, I found that the liberal-conservative baby gap couldn’t be completely accounted for by reduced desire for children, since liberals want far more children than they end up having (see my post Expectations and reality: a window into the liberal-conservative baby gap). Indeed, in writing that post, I found a paper that showed that fertility could also be traced to personality differences (particularly, those scoring higher on the trait “openness to experience” have significantly fewer children). In short, is seems a distinct mindset is being selected against in today’s world.
Continuing my investigation into fertility, and expanding on Steve Sailer’s “affordable family formation” theory, I found that in the developed world, fertility rates could be inversely correlated to population density (see Another Tale of Two Maps). In short, the more crowded the area, the fewer children people tended to have. This is likely partly due to higher costs of living in denser areas. Indeed, put together with my previous findings, this suggested that a type of “population cycle” has come to exist in high-latitude advanced societies. These peoples respond to the forces brought to bear by population pressure, limiting or accelerating their reproduction accordingly. Indeed, the up and down cycle of population growth that ensued through the Great Depression, the Baby Boom, and the “demographic transition” that followed was a response to economic circumstances. When citizens are wealthy – that is, when affording that car that house with the white picket fence, and the 2.3 kids is easy – fertility is high. When affording these things is hard, fertility is low. This implies that the “gloom and doom” associated with sub-replacement fertility then is largely misplaced, made glaringly evident by overcrowded Japan (see my post Why sub-replacement fertility is not necessarily all that bad). Fertility rates in the developed world will rebound as time progresses, as is already evident in Eastern Europe.
If there are demographic challenges facing the developed world, the question becomes what, if anything, to do about them. I had my own ideas about what could be done, such as curbing immigration and encouraging high-IQ fertility (see Solutions, Again). I noted that liberal policies, such as paid maternity leave, have proven generally more effective in accomplish that goal than the more conservative ideas that permeates the Dark Enlighment-sphere. Steve Sailer blogged on my post (Steve Sailer: iSteve: JayMan on Danish fertility) which noted that the nation of Denmark may have in fact accomplished these goals (see A Success Story?).
Owing to the relationship between wealth and fertility, I have suspected children were related to happiness. The modern world is a buzz with the concept of happiness, and how one finds it. I thought that the solution was right under our noses: spouse, car, the house with the white picket fence, the 2.3 kids – in short, the “American dream”. It has been said that happiness in America peaked in the 1950s – right in the middle of the Baby Boom. As well, I have heard that colonial Americans were quite happy, despite having fairly rough lives. They also bred like rabbits. I set out to see if happiness and fertility were related, and sure enough, they are:
As I detailed in my post A Tale of Three Maps, in Europe there is a distinct positive association between reported happiness levels and fertility rates. My next post on the matter, Fertility and Happiness: A Global Perspective finds that this pattern is indeed global, particularly in the developed world, with fertility rates and reported happiness levels correlated at r2 = 0.55 in developed countries:
The apparent contradictory conventional wisdom, that kids subtract from happiness, turns out to be rubbish. Properly conducted longitudinal studies find the exact opposite. Part of the reason people in modern societies are less happy than they’d like to be (though Anglo-Celts are apparently in general quite happy) is because the rat race is getting so much harder – or at least harder than people would like (also, mentioning the rat race, see this brilliant metaphor for the rise of modern humanity after the birth of agriculture by Greg Cochran, House O’Rats).
Armed with this finding, I decided to prod some of my slow-breeding liberal friends (I mean friends I know personally) to reproduce, and wrote Another reminder… summing up the state of affairs, and where their behaviors would lead if left unchecked:
But then it turned out that my post was found by some actual liberals, who didn’t like my “problematic assertions.” I can only hope that wasn’t representative of how the truth of the matter will be received by most people. Greg Cochran later made his own post on preserving civilization for the future (Sustainability | West Hunter).
Unfortunately, this illustrates the rarity of people with my way of thinking (liberal race realists), but fortunately, not the absence.
Immigration and the economy
I’ve mentioned the economic boom and bust cycle, and its relationship to fertility. I wondered why this economic cycle it existed in the first place. Then I ran across this post by Dennis Mangan, Spot the Correlation: Wealth vs. Immigration, where he featured a neat little graphic:
That, coupled with this post by Steve Sailer illustrated the depressing effect immigration has on wages:
What we’ve learned since the early Victorian Era is that the world works in ways more responsive to intelligent effort than was imagined by Thomas Malthus:
High wages can often spur technological advances that more than make up for their costs.
The key to economic prosperity is not low wages but high human capital.
In contrast to Dickensian England, with its Scrooge-like obsession with cheap labor, Americans traditionally enjoyed high wages because the country was underpopulated relative to its natural resources. This inspired American entrepreneurs to invest in labor-saving innovations, which, in a virtuous cycle, allowed even higher wages to be paid.
In short, immigration increases the supply of labor relative to the demand for it. And when the supply of labor is too high, its “price” must be low. Hence, immigration depressed wages. The stagnant real wages and growing wealth inequality we’ve seen is driven in good part by the large influx of foreigners into the country. Peter Turchin wrote a nice series of posts detailing the mechanics of the situation in 20th and early 21st century America:
The End of Prosperity: Why Did Real Wages Stop Growing in the 1970s?
Cutting through the Thicket of Economic Forces (Why Real Wages Stopped Growing II)
A Proxy for Non-Market Forces (Why Real Wages Stopped Growing III)
Putting It All Together (Why Real Wages Stopped Growing IV)
More on Labor Supply (Why Real Wages Stopped Growing V)
Edit: My own commentary on the matter was to note that liberals aren’t universally for continued mass immigration. For one, there was the organization Progressives for Immigration Reform. Then there is the venerable old school leftist Ralph Nader. The point is that being against immigration isn’t incompatible with liberal principles, especially if you have any compassion for those on the bottom of our economic pyramid, who are most heavily impacted by competition from immigrant workers. Please see my posts Liberalism and Immigration and Here’s an idea.
Cliodynamics
Turchin researches an interesting area called “cliodynamics”, that is, understanding the forces behind historical trends. One of his unsettling findings is an apparent roughly 50-year cycle of between flare-ups of violence and social unrest which seems to occur in America. Unfortunately, according to this cycle, we are due for an upswing in 2020s, as was the subject of my post Dark Times Ahead? The much missed M.G. noted that many of the spikes in Turchin’s graphs could be correlated to eras of Black liberation:
The biggest spikes on Turchin’s graph are ‘racially motivated violence,’ around the 1870 and 1920. I have a hypothesis that when Afros in America have been granted a new freedom/right, they’ve often reacted with a wave of violence. During Reconstruction, with the slaves freed and the Euro South under northern occupation, black-on-white violence jumped (and was the origin of many lynchings).
The ‘Great Migration’ of southern Blacks to the industrial north began around 1910, after which crime spiked in northern cities. (Incidentally, many segregation laws date to this era–abolitionist northerners had a sudden change of heart when the objects of their affection moved in next door.) Authors at that time speculated black crime in the North came from this ‘new freedom’–moved from the countryside to the big, anonymous city and free from the vigilant, often violent surveillance of the southern White, the Black ‘gave in to every impulse.’
1960s, again, we see the biggest black riots occurred after the landmark 1965 Civil Rights Act. Black criminality in cities exploded during this era of de-segregation; it wasn’t until the harsh clampdown in the 80s and 90s that it was brought somewhat under control.
I suspect something similar is happening now with the black flash mobs and general intensification of black-on-white violence since Obama’s inauguration. A few such attacks have been accompanied by cries such as ‘it’s a black world now’ and ‘we president now’; I suspect the sentiment is widespread. We’ll see if this current wave is just a blip, if it continues or intensifies.
Since there doesn’t seem to be a similar event comparable to the end of slavery of the enactment of Civil Rights occurring today, if M.G. is correct, then Turchin’s cycle may not continue. However, I would like to add there is another element may be involved in the apparent cycle of these unsettled times. That is a clash between the historical regional nations of America:
Perhaps, as Turchin notes, 50 years is enough time for people to forget the scars of the previous battles these regional nations fought (particularly the long-time rivals “Yankeedom” and the Deep South).
Homosexuality (the “gay germ” hypothesis)
Last year, Greg Cochran reiterated what I have called his “gay germ” hypothesis, that is, that obligate male homosexuality is caused by a pathogen, likely a virus. Through a lot of erudite discussion, and not without much contention – including from me – Cochran deconstructed every alternate explanation for homosexuality. Homosexuality was long an evolutionary mystery, as one would think that lack of interest in the opposite sex would be highly counterproductive in a Darwinian sense. And it turns out that this is correct. Between the low concordance between identical twins (Cochran noted it as 25%; subsequent study has shown that that number is even lower, at 11%), the lack of compensatory selection, the absence of the trait in hunter-gatherers, Cochran was led to believe that a pathogen was only explanation (see Greg Cochran’s posts on the subject). I have come to agree, and indeed, I noted a possible connection between this pathogen and the behavioral trait of homophobia (see A Gay Germ? Is Homophobia a Clue?). Homophobia appears to be oriented towards keeping gays away from children, which may suggest a sensitive period for infection that may exist in childhood. Indeed, in the height of irony for the “born that way” meme about homosexuality, homophobia appears to be much more heritable, being closer to 50% heritable. Homophobes are far more “born that way” than are homosexuals (also see this recent article by Sean Thomas: Homosexuality is natural. Fine. But what if homophobia is natural, too?)
Health wisdom and obesity
My quest to uncover the truth and test the veracity of the conventional wisdom led me to another topic, that of diet, exercise, health, and weight. I came across an interesting post by comedian Tom Naughton detailing a distinct national differences in cardiovascular disease deaths. There seemed to be a clear pattern, at least in Europe, that moved from southwest to northeast:
The pattern roughly follows that of ancestral relationship. It seemed obvious to me that a partial genetic explanation was likely (A Fat Problem With Heart Health Wisdom). This pattern could not be fitted to exercise habits (Exercise, weight loss, and keeping you alive – yet another tale of maps), but I did find a striking association between this pattern and climatic zones (And Yet Another Tale of Two Maps). In short, it appears that areas that were colder historically have much higher rates of cardiovascular death, and vice versa. The cause of this is unknown, but it may have something to do with dietary adaptations.
Indeed, the regional association with health doesn’t just exist for cardiovascular disease, but the highly sensitive topic of obesity. See A Fat World – With a Fat Secret? In short, obesity is hardly everybody’s problem, as people within countries with high obesity rates might believe. Instead, it follows a distinct regional pattern, with countries in the New World resembling their ancestral nations in the Old World:
There appears to be a distinct variation in the genetic propensity to obesity of different peoples in the modern environment. Peter Turchin has suggested that this may be related to historical grain/carbohydrate consumption. The peoples who seem to have the least problems adapting to modern diets, East Asians, have also had a long history of rice consumption. Perhaps they have the most physiological and psychological adaptation to grain-rich diets. By contrast, you see progressively more problems as you move to peoples who have had less time to become adapted to modern diets. In the future, I will test this hypothesis quantitatively.
My most recent projects turned back to the obesity, health, diet and conventional wisdom thing. A fundamental flaw with most of the advice commonly given is that it is based on methodologically poor studies, as called attention to by John Ioannidis. The fundamental problem is the enormous over-reliance on observational studies, which have no way to disentangle cause and effect. As Gary Taubes put it (quoted in my post Gary Taubes on Obesity and Bad Science):
Another problem endemic to obesity and nutrition research since the second world war has been the assumption that poorly controlled experiments and observational studies are sufficient basis on which to form beliefs and promulgate public health guidelines. This is rationalised by the fact that it’s exceedingly difficult (and inordinately expensive) to do better science when dealing with humans and long term chronic diseases. This may be true, but it doesn’t negate the fact the evidence generated from this research is inherently incapable of establishing reliable knowledge.
The shortcomings of observational studies are obvious and should not be controversial. These studies, regardless of their size or number, only indicate associations—providing hypothesis generating data—not causal relations. These hypotheses then have to be rigorously tested. This is the core of the scientific process. Without rigorous experimental tests, we know nothing meaningful about the cause of the disease states we’re studying or about the therapies that might work to ameliorate them. All
we have are speculations.
Upon learning this, I started to question how good the research that supported the notion that exercise was important for health, the wisdom of dietary advice, the actual health hazards posed by obesity. The suspicion dawned on me that the connection between mortality and obesity could be mostly, if not entirely, a result of IQ.
And sure enough, I found something that strongly suggested this. It turns out that the venerable Satoshi Kanazawa did a study that found, in a White British sample, IQ measured in childhood predicts obesity at age 51. I discussed this in a post, that is currently experiencing decent readership thanks to the Geoffrey Miller fiasco: Obesity and IQ
The next logical step was to ask the question of how well IQ correlates to shortened lifespan. And I did that with my 99th post, IQ and Death. Looking at a meta-analysis of several studies of IQ and mortality, it was found that IQ is associated with longer lifespan. Indeed, at least one study in the meta-analysis did look at other possible attenuating factors. It found that IQ was by far the strongest predictor of death. Indeed, “marital status, alcohol consumption, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, pulse rate, blood glucose, body mass index, psychiatric and somatic illness at medical examination) was negligible (10% attenuation in risk)!”
The association between obesity and shortened life, and perhaps most health problems, is mostly, and perhaps entirely, a result of obesity’s association with IQ. As I have noted, and as I have been embroiled in a little controversy over, the “conventional wisdom” on diet, exercise, obesity, health, and death is pretty much bullshit. As we see with both the recent study on sodium restriction (no evidence sharply limiting sodium has a benefit), and obesity and weight (evidence of the effect of obesity and death is weak), additional findings are demonstrating this point. Clinical trials prescribing exercise have found it to be completely ineffective for weight loss on its own. Long term, diet fare little better, this includes low-carb diets. Better still, going past weight loss, there is little good evidence that diet and exercise improve the thing they claim to improve: health. Studies have found that exercise negatively impacts some people, and studies claiming to show that exercise benefits some people have thus far failed to show that it actually leads to longer life. And most damningly, a study that took the conventional wisdom and applied it to a population with a properly controlled clinical trial, a study on the effects of diet and exercise on diabetics, failed to show any reduction in cardiovascular mortality:
The study randomly assigned 5,145 overweight or obese people with Type 2 diabetes to either a rigorous diet and exercise regimen or to sessions in which they got general health information. The diet involved 1,200 to 1,500 calories a day for those weighing less than 250 pounds and 1,500 to 1,800 calories a day for those weighing more. The exercise program was at least 175 minutes a week of moderate exercise.But 11 years after the study began, researchers concluded it was futile to continue — the two groups had nearly identical rates of heart attacks, strokes and cardiovascular deaths.[…]
But the outcome is clear, said Dr. David Nathan, a principal investigator and director of the Diabetes Center at Massachusetts General Hospital. “We have to have an adult conversation about this,” he said. “This was a negative result.”
Even if diet and exercise offer no health benefits, there’s the aesthetic benefits to weight loss. But even still, this suffers from the problem of having no known reliable effective solution. It does no good to note that past environments led to lower obesity rates in the Anglo world (as I’ve heard repeatedly), because we are no longer in the past environment! We don’t know what, exactly, changed from the past environment (though there are some guesses, like my own: Fun Facts About Obesity, though what, exactly, is the problem is still very much far from clear), and even if we did, we have no idea how to change it to one that leads to more thinness. Despite the doctors and others that rant on about the “obesity crisis”, it may be that there is no solution, and that may be no big deal – aesthetics and controversial tweets notwithstanding.
And this brings me to the Geoffrey Miller Twitter kerfuffle. Miller’s now infamous tweet (for 15 minutes anyway, until we’ve move on to something else), that obese Ph.D. hopefuls somehow lack the willpower to complete a dissertation because they lack the willpower to refrain from eating carbs, has started a firestorm. Now, it is true that there are fewer obese people in the upper reaches of society in general, and in academia. Blogger Staffan has recently made a post complementing my own that gets at why this is. Obesity is correlated with impulsiveness, so, in that manner, obese people, do, on average, have less “willpower”. Now, where Miller was wrong, as I pointed out to him, was regarding this being true in an absolute sense. This would mean there are NO obese Ph.D. holders anywhere (and there shouldn’t be any who smoke, drink, do drugs, etc…). Since that’s clearly not the case, that’s a poor selection criterion, and shouldn’t be used as one. Is it even predictive in a statistical sense? Well, I did say that what he said does have some statistical truth. Of course, this means with respect to the general population, not with respect to Ph.D. candidates. As Razib Khan notes, all the other markers that Ph.D. candidates have, including their GRE scores and body of work signal both their IQ and determination. But Razib also noted that concerns in academia and other establishments about obesity aren’t about ability, but conformity. It is indeed a type of willful discrimination against the obese. They don’t just seek conformity on body weight; they do this for a lot of things. Just look around academia and see if you can find many regional accents…
That said, this brings me to the example of the witch hunt that is on going. Needless to say, though Miller was wrong, this doesn’t mean he needs to be shut down, as academics before him have been. Indeed, very recently, at least two academics have been “disciplined” for putting forward politically incorrect, but true statements. One of course was the infamous Jason Richwine case, who was forced out of his position at the Heritage Foundation for his doctoral dissertation noting the lowered average IQ of Hispanics, and the ensuing cost to social problems Hispanic immigrants will bring. Also was (again) Satoshi Kanazawa, who’s page and posting over at Big Think were removed.
Eugenics
On the topics of debating the merits of HBD, there was a flash of interest in prospect of eugenics via embryo screening. Kevin Mitchell wrote a lengthy post criticizing this prospect, to which I had a few things to say. Razib Khan’s response to the topic summed up the situation quite well:
Kevin makes the accusation of elitism against those academics, such as Steve, who support selection for intelligence. Let me suggest something here: Steve has much to lose in a selfish zero sum sense because he’s already rather assured of intelligent offspring. He’s smart. His wife is smart. Standard quantitative genetics implies that even if they regress to the mean his offspring will be quite bright. There may not be much more juice to squeeze out of that genetic background. It may be very different for a couple with more average endowments. So sorry to turn this upside down, but personal eugenics may in fact be a boon for the ugly, stupid, and psychologically unstable, because it gives them a opportunity to close much of the gap with those who were lucky in the genetic lottery. Some of you may object to terms such as “ugly,” “stupid,” or “psychological unstable.” But people with these issues have to deal with them in their day to day. One can make all the platitudes one wants to make about “inner beauty,” but very few people live by this ideal. (Emphasis in original.)
The Future
So that was my history in HBD, an up-to-the minute account. But what lies ahead? For my next 100 posts, I have several ideas in mind. One post will be to address a serious issue in the HBD world: how will the world react to knowledge of HBD? Greg Cochran mentioned something of the sort about his pathogenic hypothesis of homosexuality (Heads exploding | West Hunter). More recently, HBD Chick thoughtfully discussed a comment of mine on this prospect (hbd fallout | hbd* chick). This is a serious question I plan to examine.
As well, I’d like to revisit the concept of attractiveness, and the notion that Europeans have the most attractive features (see this recent post by anthropologist Peter Frost on the topic: Evo and Proud: Just for show?)
Also, I still have the upcoming post discussion the historic ethnonational divisions between the different American regions, as detailed in David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed and Colin Woodard’s American Nations.
Additionally I plan to take a critical look at the “hygiene hypothesis“, the idea that lack of exposure to dirt and infectious agents in childhood, thanks to our sanitary environment, is pushing a rise in allergic reactions in today’s people. I remain unconvinced, but I’d like to take a look into it and see if there’s anything there.
Support me
And finally, if you’ve enjoyed reading my blog, I’d ask you to please support it. Running this blog takes quite a bit of time, and I am at a point in my life with rapidly expanding responsibilities. I’ll be more than happy to take anything you have to offer, as every little bit helps. In addition to the use of PayPal, I’ve added support for Bitcoin, please see to the right. And to the bottom, there is a button for Flattr for those who prefer. Thanks for your support!
I’ll leave off with the closing music from the score of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (the real one), which premiered 31 years ago yesterday (you must go to YouTube for it to work. I suggest popping it out into a new window):
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Great post!
Does this mean that you will be writing the book that introduces this field to the public? You certainly seem to be one of the best writers in the HBD bunch. I’d be happy to help out as an editor and proofreader as I’m sure others would be too.
Thank you! Hey you never know. I’ll be sure to hit you up on that, though…
Yeah! Who’s gonna write The Book?
Probably it should be a collaborative effort, actually. One person would lead to too much iconoclasm: it would be better to have samples across the HBD community. Unless that one person is a proponent of ‘vanilla’ HBD, like Sailer.
Oh, also – I know of an academic publisher that might release it…
Bitcoin seems rather bubbly these days, don’t you think?
Long and fruitful blog future, Jayman 🙂
Much could be written about the suppression of HBD ideas and data in popular culture. It makes the value of anonymous speech very clear.
Thanks for blogging, JayMan. Your blog consistently provides a lot of great information and introduces a lot of fascinating ideas. Keep it up!
It’s been a great 100 posts, Jay. I’ve read all of them. I appreciate very much the existence of this blog, one of the few places where liberalism and HBD intersect. I have always valued analyzing the world through data, science, and reason, and in my teen and early college years was led to believe that this was the “liberal” approach; that conservatives were evolution-and-science-haters who let their preconceived philistine notions influence the ideas they belatedly stopped fighting. Only late in my college years did I realize that liberals can be just as anti-science if it contradicts something they want to be true.
This is probably just a feature of people.
It feels to me like liberalism has become very angry, lately, and anyone who doesn’t spout particular words or platitudes or satisfy a particular litmus test is automatically ‘the enemy’, even if they actually support the same things.
Since I don’t actually like hanging out with conservative racists, I’m very thankful for your blog, for the existence of other data-driven liberals.
I read through the LJ conversation about your post about how liberals should try to have kids. It was sad how little interest anyone there had in actually engaging you in conversation or considering your points. They had pre-decided that your points were evil and that was that. I feel like the rational, scientific approach just doesn’t work with these people; perhaps a simpler response of “hey, as a black guy, I’d rather live in a country with more liberal whites than conservative whites,” would have gotten through.
Anyway, I was thinking about your pioneer hypothesis and homosexuality (again), and it occurred to me that it seems that more intelligent people are more androgenous, while less intelligent people seem more sexually dimorphic. If we assume two environments, one with a high resource to population ratio (country) and one with a high population to resources ratio (country,) then the country population should have higher/earlier fertility and thus be less intelligent (less time for brain development,) while the city population should have lower/later fertility and be more intelligent (people who can amass more resources will have more kids, after all.) One way to achieve earlier/later puberty/higher or lower fertility would be for one population to be more dimorphic than the other, ie, the city population more androgynous. This ought to be measurable, say, by comparing testosterone levels or average heights or things like that.
Anyway, if we accept my premise that smart men tend to be more effeminate, and smart women more masculine, than the average background population, then it seems logical that more homosexuals would be found in this population. (Especially if we accept my theory that “homosexuality” is one aspect of an observable cluster of traits like counter-clockwise hair whorls and more “feminine” brain development in gay men (sexual preference is simply the trait people tend to focus on the most; we could just as easily, if we weren’t so obsessed with sex, focus on math ability and classify folks into math or not-math,) anyway, we could say that homosexuals possess a number of cross-gender traits, that is, they’re a population in which sexual dimorphism is extremely low.)
And once you live in a population with low-dimorphism, traits like ‘male’ and ‘female’ might stop mattering so much to your brain, because they’re less obvious–an effeminate male and a masculine female might be equally appealing. This would explain both the liberal and the city-connection between homosexuality, and why it doesn’t appear in (some?) hunter-gatherer populations. Likewise, homophobia might be a matter of uncanny valley for people from populations with greater dimorphism.
Anyway, there does seem to be some evidence that gender-nonconformity and intelligence are correlated, eg: http://www.academia.edu/724556/Gender_Nonconformity_Intelligence_and_Sexual_Orientation
Be well, and I’m looking forward to the next 100 posts. 🙂
I think we can all here related to that. 😉
Yup.
Have you seen what Peter Frost had to say about that?
Thank you. I try.
Yes, unfortunately.
Quite possibly. In essence, that was what I was saying. Another way to look at it, there’s a reason I’m in deep in “Yankeedom” and not in the Deep South.
I wonder if that’s true. It seems to be the case for men (less testosterone in more intelligent men), but is it true for women? I remember you suggested that intelligence in a way can be linked to slower development, so increased neotony perhaps?
The key problem is that city populations generally didn’t replace themselves; they needed to be continually replenished from migration from the outside. This remains true today. So I don’t see too much evolution going on in cities themselves.
My guess is selective migration (think New York City’s Greenwich Village or San Francisco) and higher disease load in cities as the culprits behind the urban-homosexual link.
I think the liberal-urban thing is probably self-assortment, especially conservative self assortment out of cities. Conservatives don’t seem to care for crowded spaces, and avoid cities as much as possible (see here). (For the record, not all liberals like cities – my fiancée and I are pretty strong liberals and we both enjoy our rural living. But then we also believe in HBD, so.)
Maybe the gender-conformity thing is an example of Kanazawa’s Savanna Hypothesis at work? I’d like to see this replicated with larger, more representative samples.
*Reading Frost’s essay now* Thanks for the link. I think part of the change has to do with audience/balance of power. When trying to convince people, when in the minority, a side must appeal to “logic” and “science” and so on. When in power, a side must only stay in power.
“Quite possibly. In essence, that was what I was saying. Another way to look at it, there’s a reason I’m in deep in “Yankeedom” and not in the Deep South.”
I find that when I use lots of words, folks not in agreement with me–especially those looking for something to disagree on–are much more likely to miss my point.
Intelligent women in my experience seem more masculine, but that may be influenced by having attended a “tech” school. If you look at, say, Caltech women, many of them are quite androgynous. And smart people seem to not only have fewer “oopsies” when it comes to their sex lives, but less raw desire. http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/04/intercourse-and-intelligence.php
There is a correlation between cities and intelligence, at least on a national level. Clearly intelligence is necessary to establish cities in the first place, and pre-social safety nets, they could be rather Dickensian places. Smart folks from the countryside could do quite well for themselves in cities, but stupider folks very likely died out. I suspect the transition from predominantly rural to predominantly urban living in Western societies over the past 300 years or so actually had a significant effect on IQ by eliminating those who simply didn’t have the brains and self-control to live in cities.
That city populations aren’t self-sustaining doesn’t in itself mean there can’t be evolutionary pressures at work in them; intelligent people are dying out, too, due to low sex drive/desire for children, but something largely genetic still created them. Androgyny may be the link between both longer/better brain development and low reproduction, and homosexuality might be one particular expression with that. Of course, multiple factors could always be involved.
Anyway, congrats on your little one. 🙂
Thank you!
Yes I’ve seen that. It is interesting; one wonders if low sex drive is a pro-monogamy thing?
Probably not. Urban living didn’t really get going until the Industrial Revolution, when people came to work in factories. Before that, most of now developed world’s population was overwhelmingly rural.
But since the population was constant being replenished from the outside, any selection going on in cities would be overwhelmed by the influx of rural genes.
Think of the cities, though, as a bottleneck: many folks arrive, but only some make it big–the skills that are successful in the cities are not necessarily the same as in the countryside. The more people move to the city, the more the non-city-adapted people die off.
One does not have to live in a city, though, to live in a resource-scarce environment–much of the European “countryside” has been very densely populated with no new land to be had for a long, long time. Excess children are not useful when you simply cannot obtain anymore food.
For those who didn’t emigrate to America or elsewhere, the only way to get more resources was to be smarter, as you’ve discussed. And to develop more intelligence, we may need to delay puberty to give brains longer to grow.
“Yes I’ve seen that. It is interesting; one wonders if low sex drive is a pro-monogamy thing?”
Jay, have you seen this article over on Neuropolitics about sex drive and political orientation? (Or “Sociosexuality”, as they put it): http://neuropolitics.org/
To sum, conservatives (esp women) have *more* sex, but fewer partners, and unsurprisingly, want more children. Liberals have *less* sex, more partners, masturbate more, like the idea of threesomes or group sex more, have fewer children, and self-report as gay more. They conclude, in short, that liberals have a more social sexuality, while conservatives are more focused on reproduction.
Thanks, I’ve seen it. The one flaw is that it doesn’t break down the results by race. We don’t know if it’s political alignment or race talking…
Ah, one more thing – was that you Jayman, who once wrote that he considers blog entry on why Slavic have “childish” features?
Hmmm, don’t think so…
Congratulations on the 100 posts; here’s to 100 more!
Thank you everyone on the congratulations! I greatly appreciate your readership and input! Here’s to another 100 indeed!
In reference to what Amber said. Amber suggested a link in humans between degree of ‘masculinisation’, ‘feminisation’, intelligence, homosexuality, and sex drive.
I don’t necessarily believe that higher iq individuals are more likely to be homosexual. From Wikipedia “LGBT Demographics of the United States”: “A Gallup report published in October 2012 by the Williams Institute reported that 3.4% of US adults identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. Minorities were more likely to identify as non-heterosexual; 4.6% of blacks, 4.0% of Hispanics and 3.2% of whites.” I don’t know how reliable these stats are, but if we assume they are correct then if higher average iq rates correlated with higher average rates of homosexuality these figures ought to be reversed.
Moreover, the difference in testosterone levels between blue collar (lower average iq?) and white collar (higher average iq?) men is statistically significant but not huge, I think I read somewhere about 20%. And yet a man’s testosterone level can fluctuate by a similar percentage regularly anyway due to external factors, eg different times of the day; in response to eating a meal; doing exercise; lifting weights; sleeping; good nutrition versus poor nutrition; playing a competitive sport; watching your team play; looking at an attractive woman (or a picture of one); etc. I think to have a massive effect on ‘masculinity’, as measured by aggression, sex drive, etc. there would need to be a far higher increase in testosterone level occurring (for example when bodybuilders use anabolic steroids or synthetic testosterone I believe that it causes a 700% rise in testosterone level, or similar).
My personal suspicion is that the higher aggression levels and supposed higher sex drive of lower iq men versus higher iq men is far more due to differences in personality traits, eg introversion versus extroversion, level of impulsiveness, dopamine level, etc. And that this is in turn due to differences in the brain with regard to the dopamine receptors and/or serotonin receptors density and sensitivity. And that higher iq men may HAVE a high testosterone level, high sex drive, or potential high aggression level, but they are better able to keep it under control or channel it into something else more productive rather than starting fights with other men or trying to sleep with lots of the women they meet. And having a more introverted personality rather than extroverted is a part of that. And with their higher iq they may get more of their ‘dopamine fix’ from reading books, learning, etc. Whereas a lower iq man could only seek their ‘dopamine fix’ more from less intellectual activities, which could include sex, violence, alcohol, drugs, food, acquiring status symbols, etc.
Also, I think that in the pre-natal environment, when a foetus is exposed to androgens in the womb, the level of androgen exposure will determine the future physical and mental characteristics of the child, with some initial characteristics already fixed and further characteristics setting in at puberty. However, for both males and females what I think occurs is that everyone has a degree of mental ‘masculinisation’ or ‘feminisation’; and a degree of physical ‘masculinisation’ or ‘feminisation’ on a scale. And in certain cases where the male brain is more ‘feminised’ the male is more likely to identify as bisexual or homosexual, and where the female brain is more ‘masculinised’ the female is more likely to identify as bisexual or homosexual. I do think that there could be a correlation between a greater percentage of lower iq men being from the slightly more ‘physically masculinised’ end of the spectrum, and a greater percentage of higher iq women being from the slightly more ‘mentally masculinised’ end of the spectrum. But overall I suspect there is a pretty balanced distribution of mental and physical masculinity versus femininity between both genders, whether low or high iq.
Hi, Chris, you may find the study I linked to on gender non-conformity and intelligence interesting (I’ll post the link again to avoid confusion: http://www.academia.edu/724556/Gender_Nonconformity_Intelligence_and_Sexual_Orientation ) “Gay men had significantly fewer NART errors than heterosexual men and women (controlling for years of education). In heterosexual men, correlational analysis revealed significant associations between CGN, NART, and FSIQ scores (elevated boyhood femininity correlated with higher IQ scores). In heterosexual women, the direction of the correlations between CGN and all IQ scores was reversed (elevated girlhood femininity correlating with lower IQ scores).”
I suspect that homosexual identity is only a particular, culturally-influenced manifestation of gender-nonconformity, but a more androgynous population might make it more likely.
I didn’t mean to measure, say, hormone levels between intelligent and unintelligent men, but the difference between intelligent men and intelligent women compared to the difference between unintelligent men and unintelligent women–that is, one group’s spread may be larger than the other’s.
Likewise, I would be cautious in comparing across races–homosexual or gender non-conforming folks of a particular race or ethnic group may be more intelligent than other members of their group, regardless of how they compare to other groups. (The same goes for any measure of sexual dimorphism you happen to pick.)
Of course, there could very well be multiple causes. 🙂
It’s probably just a germ… 😉
@chrisdavies09:
Actually, Satoshi Kanazawa did a comprehensive look at homosexuality and IQ and found that higher IQ people are more likely to claim to have same-sex attractions.
But, Kanazawa himself admits that the association he could entirely due to the fact that smarter people are more likely to be forthcoming about their same-sex attraction, not necessarily more likely to have them. Furthermore, the pattern he found operates primarily with women. For men, there was little difference.
I’d expect that Cochran’s “gay germ” hypothesis would predict that they’d be no relationship between intelligence and homosexuality.
I think serum testosterone levels are less important than sensitivity to testosterone…
Possibly, though I’d suspect it’s not quite so simple.
I’m not so sure how big a role this plays
Maybe in a tropical environment, such as sub-Saharan Africa, with abundant food resources and easy year-round subsistence farming, but high parasite load and high infant mortality rate, there was less selection for males with higher iq and high levels of conscienciousness, and more selection for males with more aggression, greater physical strength, stronger immune system, and higher sex drive, etc. And that there was a greater degree of polygyny and promiscuity, and this ensured that men with the ‘best genes’ fathered the most offspring to compensate for the higher parasite load and infant mortality rate. With the abundant food resources in such an environment, females could produce more offspring (especially to compensate for the infant mortality rate), and could provide for their offspring more or less themselves and didn’t need a loyal, hard-working or nurturing male to pair with long-term. And over time this resulted in a more sexually dimorphic population. [For example, Bantu tribes in Southern Africa practice agriculture and are more polygynous, more promiscuous, produce more offspring, and are also more sexually dimorphic than hunter-gatherer tribes like the !Kung who practice monogamy, pair-bonding, and produce fewer offspring].
But maybe, if it is true that homosexuality occurs at a greater frequency among Black Americans than White Americans, it could suggest that in a tropical environment where larger numbers of offspring were produced, homosexuality was advantageous as a natural check on excessive population growth and was therefore selected for?
Conversely, in a colder, harsher environment perhaps there was a greater selection for monogamy, long-term pair bonding, smaller numbers of offspring, greater investment in offspring, and higher iq and conscientiousness level [maybe Northern Europe, or parts of East Asia] due to the scarcity of food resources, greater difficulty in practicing year-round agriculture, greater need to hunt for food, colder climate, etc. And maybe in this type of environment, if homosexuality occurred, it was not selected for as a means of preventing over-population like in the tropical environment, but perhaps as, in a population of more intelligent and more conscientious men, there was a risk that some of these men may possess these traits but also lack the necessary aggression to be a good hunter, as their brain could be too ‘feminised’..? I don’t really know if any of this is true, these are just some random hypotheses of mine.
Some people, such as Greg Cochran, believe homosexuality may be caused by a pathogen.
Perhaps future surveys or studies should also attempt to find out if there is a difference in rates of homosexuality between populations of Southern European origin versus Northern European origin, either in Europe or America, as the term ‘White American’ covers people of too many different origins. Also, in Africa, Middle East and Asia we can safely assume that true rates of homosexuality are likely to be vastly under-reported for cultural reasons.
I would personally be very cautious about extrapolating from populations within the US to populations elsewhere, especially when those populations might not be related to us, (EG, the Bantu in SA are not the ancestors of the black folks in America,) without more detailed knowledge than I have of the rates of homosexuality in those other populations–there’s just so much “social pressure” and possibly ‘environmental factors’ which affect whether and how people sexually self-identify.
Homosexuality as a means of reduced fertility just doesn’t really work out, IMO. Fertility is generally a zero-sum game–if I happen to have zero children, and so there are more resources, then everyone else can just afford an extra kid. The food gets eaten, the high-breeders continue existing, and my genes are eliminated.
However, I could see homosexuality as a natural result of an environment in which people simply have sex with more partners. Men do not seem all that picky about partners, and will copulate with things like crude vinyl dolls, sofas, or watermelons. In an environment where ‘promiscuity’ is not punished and sexuality is more social, people may happen to have sex with members of the same sex when it happens to be useful/possible. In environments where monogamy is selected for, people who are more sociable in their sexuality may be selected against.
Of course, I should note that there are big differences in tribes within relatively small regions of Africa on this subject.
I agree that homosexuality rates in other populations is a subject which could use more study.
Precisely.
I’m not so sure about that one…
@chrisdavies09:
It’s not clear that it does.
Secondly, that’s a group-selection type explanation. Cochran has explained why that’s implausible.
Ok, thanks for that. There is an awful lot of stuff which I am still learning in regards to evolutionary biology, that, aside from my amateur interest in molecular anthropology, I am still very much new to. When I’m less busy there is a lot of material which I need to read up on. I also just read this, from Stephen Pinker, which explained it well: http://edge.org/conversation/the-false-allure-of-group-selection
Oh, just found a mention of sexual dimorphism and political orientation: “We have previously made the proposal (2005) that conservatives of both genders were more sexually dimorphic than liberals. This proposal implicated a higher ratio of testosterone to estrogen in the conservative male, and a higher ratio of estrogen to testosterone in the conservative female. The liberal males and females had lower ratios.”
http://neuropolitics.org/defaultjul12.asp
When I work my way back to 2005, I can update again. 🙂
“Oh, just found a mention of sexual dimorphism and political orientation: “We have previously made the proposal (2005) that conservatives of both genders were more sexually dimorphic than liberals. This proposal implicated a higher ratio of testosterone to estrogen in the conservative male, and a higher ratio of estrogen to testosterone in the conservative female. The liberal males and females had lower ratios.”
I’ve read many times that in the US liberals have higher IQs than conservatives and the sexual dimorphism might have something do with that. When you are in touch with your “masculine side” as a woman, and your “feminine side” as a man, you can see things from the other perspective more. Seeing things from other or new perspectives, mulling them over and grokking them is a sign of higher intelligence.
Intelligence and novelty-seeking go hand-in-hand; it’s difficult to imagine someone being intelligent and not craving new information on various subjects. And openness to novelty is an important feature of liberal psychology; conservatives, by contrast, tend to want things to stay the same.
Indeed.
“I’ve always suspected genetic roots of behavior. This suspicion was solidified upon reading Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate. There I learned of the existence of an enduring human nature – an enduring human nature that makes it impossible to “train” people out of certain undesirable behaviors. That was a great revelation in itself, but one of my biggest takeaways from that book was that established beliefs – even beliefs held by many experts – can be dead wrong. One of these was the belief in power of parenting.
This belief was the subject of my very first blog post (Taming the “Tiger Mom” and Tackling the Parenting Myth), and is that I still argue to this day from time to time.
It turns out that parenting doesn’t matter as much as we think. Indeed, short of extreme abuse or neglect, parents don’t affect how their children turn much at all. This includes not only children’s intelligence or their broad personality traits, but their life outcomes (including the things that “really” matter), like how much they earn, or whether or not they get in trouble with the law. This even includes how fat or thin they become, as was the subject of my second post (Should Parents Lose Custody of Obese Kids?). It also doesn’t matter if they grow up with a father present or with a single mother. It doesn’t matter if their parents are gay or straight. All those things are symptoms, of the true causes, not causes in themselves (the true cause being heredity).”
NOPE. I don’t buy this at all.
I’ve lived in too many different cultures and societies to think that the way kids turn out is entirely genetic. A lot has to do with parenting and parenting has to do with culture. Yes, nature is a factor, but nurture sure as hell is too.
Speaking as an adopted kid now in touch with her biological family, “culture” and “parenting” certainly had an effect on big things like “did I get to go to school” and “was I traumatized as a child”. It had little long-term effect on things like my interests, personality, and ways of thinking about problems, which are much closer to my bio-family.
I suspect it is much easier to traumatize a child and prevent them from reaching their full potential (whatever that happens to be,) than to exceed whatever they were born with. But some cultures will support an individual’s nature more than others.
Are you sure about that? What percentage of children in developed countries don’t get to go to school?
Fair enough. But what percentage of children have that problem?
That would be good. Because that’s not what I said.
The evidence says no, it doesn’t/
Indeed. But as HBD Chick would say, where does culture come from?
When it comes to parents, no it isn’t.
“One post will be to address a serious issue in the HBD world: how will the world react to knowledge of HBD?”
More women from all over the world will marry African men.
“As well, I’d like to revisit the concept of attractiveness, and the notion that Europeans have the most attractive features”
Not even Europeans find other Europeans the most attractive, by evidence of their high divorce rates and low birth rates. The non-Europeans of the world are largely very attracted to each other and we are marrying, mating and out-breeding the unattractive (to each other) Europeans by leaps and bounds!
I don’t blame Europeans, particularly Northern Europeans for not being attracted to each other. With their thin lips and skin that ages hard and fast making them look 60 at 40. They hit their walls HARD at around 27 and have the shortest sexual shelf life.
Give me chocolate, dark or milk, any day, all day, over that mess.
This would imply that mixed-race marriage are less likely to divorce. It’s not clear that’s true.
Further, if Europeans didn’t find each other attractive, the majority of marriages wouldn’t be within-race…
Really? Are most marriages in the world within race or between them?
That’s complete nonsense.
“Further, if Europeans didn’t find each other attractive, the majority of marriages wouldn’t be within-race…”
Northern and Western Europeans are not marrying anymore. That was part of my point, but not well articulated.
They are getting married just fine. Just not as often as they used to.
Further, the bulk of matings and children are within race, even with NW Euros. Claims otherwise are bullpuckies.
” They hit their walls HARD at around 27 and have the shortest sexual shelf life.”
“That’s complete nonsense.”
Not at all. They hit their walls young, fast and hard because their skin wrinkles early and makes them look old before their time. That is what I mean by “short sexual shelf life” – sexual attractiveness.
Regarding parenting
“The evidence says no, it doesn’t”
I’m not buying this speculative conclusion.
Parenting matters – a lot.
Others’ mileage may vary on that one.
It’s not speculation. Do you know what evidence means?
Not as much as you think.
@Hindu Bio Diversity – Regarding your comments about white women allegedly losing their looks at age 27. I think it rather depends on social background, diet, lifestyle choices, and genetics. I can agree that some lower-class late 20’s white women who smoke, drink heavily, eat an unhealthy diet, and have 3 or more children might have ‘hit the wall hard’ as you put it. And there are those with premature wrinkles from excessive sunbathing or tanning salon abuse. But equally there are many late 20’s+ women who go to the gym regularly, eat healthily, look after themselves, and are still very hot. Plus once women of all ethnicities reach their 30s they rarely look as good as they did at 18-24, it’s not just white women. The city I live in has a very large Indian population, and I can honestly say that their women aged 27+ are not exactly at the peak of their looks anymore either (many of them are obese).
“Regarding your comments about white women allegedly losing their looks at age 27. ”
Women? Where did I specify “women”? I said white PEOPLE.
” I can agree that some lower-class late 20′s white women who smoke, drink heavily, eat an unhealthy diet, and have 3 or more children might have ‘hit the wall hard’ as you put it. And there are those with premature wrinkles from excessive sunbathing or tanning salon abuse. But equally there are many late 20′s+ women who go to the gym regularly, eat healthily, look after themselves, and are still very hot.”
No, their BODIES look hot, NOT their faces.
I can’t count the number of times I have seen a white person from the back and assumed him or her to be in their 20s and then they turn around and BAM! A wrinkly, leathery face. And guess what? Many of them WERE in fact in their 20s.
Example: just the other night I went to a meditation sat sanga and the hostess was a petite, fit, college gal no older than 22. Or so I thought. The closer she got to me the closer I could see she was a very petite, fit 40 year old.
But hold on, here’s where it gets interesting. Her husband/partner/boyfriend/whatever you people call it, was a tall, hot, muscular atheletic Black man with skin as smooth as a babies bottom at about 24 years of age.
I thought to myself, “Dayum! This cougar thing is for real! You go girl”.
Turns out that the husband was 31 and the wife was only 27!
Keep in mind- she’s a health nut! No drinks, no drugs, no cigs, no gmo’s. All organic, yoga, tai chi, you name it!
“Plus once women of all ethnicities reach their 30s they rarely look as good as they did at 18-24, it’s not just white women. ”
Black don’t crack and black people don’t get wrinkles on average (in this country at least) until at least 50, if that. My neighbors are in their 60s and still don’t have ’em.
“The city I live in has a very large Indian population, and I can honestly say that their women aged 27+ are not exactly at the peak of their looks anymore either (many of them are obese).”
Indians do not age any where near as good as black people but also not as bad as whites. They do have an obesity problem and they do need to become more physically active.
However, Indians belong to a culture that glorifies old age and they actually WANT to become old before their time. There are reasons for that which I won’t get into here.
JAYMAN:
“This would imply that mixed-race marriage are less likely to divorce. It’s not clear that’s true.”
In the US white husband/black wife couples have low divorce rates while black husband/white wife couples have high divorce rates.
As far as other types of mixed couples, it varies.
Regarding “evidence”.
The conclusion of the data was speculative.
Indeed. This is more likely a result of the dynamics of the types of individuals that tend to be in those marriages.
The main point, that people prefer to marry in their own race, remains clear.
Please don’t keep telling me you don’t believe the non-effect of parenting just because. You are entitled to disbelieve. Let me know if you have an objective criticism however.
Jayman, their data sample is small. The conclusions were speculative.
Although this is “yahoo”, you can read this;
http://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/health/love-sex/article/-/17582566/do-absent-dads-make-for-promiscuous-daughters/
I’m going to start editing your comments if you keep making statements where it’s clear you either didn’t read or are ignoring the evidence.
And here you can read this.
Here’s more junk “science”
http://m.now.msn.com/smarter-people-drink-more-study-says
These “studies” are nonsense.
How is it junk science?
Look, merely reporting a finding you find unbelievable doesn’t make something “junk science.” You need to point out the flaws in their methodology.
And you can’t be serious pointing me to that Sailer blog about …. high school!
There is no science behind that and they are talking about Americans. You really think the rest of the world is as hung up on high school social life well into their old like *some* Americans might be?
This is what I mean. That kind of thing doesn’t qualify as “science”. Hell not even “junk science”.
A few Americans who have never moved passed their teen years psychologically talked to a few other Americans who also haven’t.
Whoop Di Do!
And about never moving beyond boyhood, watch this;
“How is it junk science?
Look, merely reporting a finding you find unbelievable doesn’t make something “junk science.” You need to point out the flaws in their methodology.”
Seriously bro? Regarding the “Drinking More Makes You Smarter” – Where’s the “science” in the following;
“Go ahead, order that second beer: You deserve it because you’re so smart. According to the greatest study in the history of science (we’re only slightly exaggerating), smarter people tend to drink “more frequently and in greater quantities” than their duller, drier peers. In two studies conducted in the United States and United Kingdom, children’s intelligence was measured and categorized in five groups ranging from “very dull” to “very bright.” When the study participants were assessed later in life (the Brits checked in from their 20s to their 40s) the “brighter” kids were the ones who emptied more glasses more often. Why? No one is exactly sure yet. Anybody want to drink on it?”
1. How did they measure the intelligence?
2. An extremely small group of kids in a mere 2 countries out of hundreds of countries on this planet, whom they determined somehow were “brighter” (we don’t know how they determined that or what they mean by “dull” and “bright”) end up drinking more in adulthood and thus a universal claim of “smarter people drink more” is concluded?
Are you kidding me?
If that’s what you consider “hard science” then I question YOUR intelligence.
The paper is here.
With IQ tests, as usual.
The sample size in each was ~10,000 for the UK, and ~15,000 for the U.S.
But indeed, you’re correct, since these are both Anglo populations, we can’t quite generalize to the rest of the world, yet.
Watch it…
“But indeed, you’re correct, since these are both Anglo populations, we can’t quite generalize to the rest of the world, yet.”
You can’t generalize to the rest of the world AT ALL.
And you can’t even generalize to the rest of the Anglo population – at all.
There are so many other factors to be controlled for.
That’s why “studies” like this are junk pop science.
Pure fluff.
You certainly can. Look, enough with your nonsense remarks. Please keep the discussion intellectually all together.
“You certainly can.”
No you certainly cannot
What methods were they using to “measure intelligence”?
What was the definition of “intelligence” that they used as a priori?
What other lifestyle factors were controlled for, if any?
Please see my page:
HBD Fundamentals: On the reality of IQ
Kanazawa controlled for many factors known to be correlated with IQ (socioeconomic status, education) and found that IQ still predicts drink (or perhaps honesty about such). That’s all he claimed to show, and his data do indeed show this.
I hope you write about middle eastern iq.
@Hindu Bio Diversity – “No, their BODIES look hot, NOT their faces.
I can’t count the number of times I have seen a white person from the back and assumed him or her to be in their 20s and then they turn around and BAM! A wrinkly, leathery face. And guess what? Many of them WERE in fact in their 20s.”
But do you live in a sunny location? Maybe your observations apply to twenty-something white people in somewhere like California. Just because you see young white people with leathery skin in your part of the world, doesn’t mean it is true of young white people around the world. I live in the UK, and I rarely see young white people with ‘leathery’ skin as we have insufficient hours of bright sunlight here. Young Brits who have lived and worked in Spanish holiday resorts for a number of years may end up like this however. The main issues which lead to premature aging among young white Brits are smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, drug use, poor diet, and stress. I do see a lot of younger smokers with ‘crows-feet’ wrinkling around their eyes, etc.
But Chris, my friend, that is part of the point. White people of Northern and Western European descent (as well as Northeastern) have thin, translucent skin that does not weather well in weather. That is why their skin shows the ravages of time (even a short time) more.
There are some exceptions.
Jayman, several weeks ago I made a comment on a survey you posted on your blog that purportedly divined the political leanings of the test participants. The following link is an example of the bias in so many surveys.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130811005342.htm
@boboin:
The findings are interesting, even if they spin them in a decidedly PC way.
“It turns out that parenting doesn’t matter as much as we think. Indeed, short of extreme abuse or neglect, parents don’t affect how their children turn much at all. This includes not only children’s intelligence or their broad personality traits, but their life outcomes (including the things that “really” matter), like how much they earn, or whether or not they get in trouble with the law. This even includes how fat or thin they become, as was the subject of my second post (Should Parents Lose Custody of Obese Kids?). It also doesn’t matter if they grow up with a father present or with a single mother. It doesn’t matter if their parents are gay or straight. All those things are symptoms, of the true causes, not causes in themselves (the true cause being heredity).”
– OK. Since you’ve got a kid now yourself, Jayman, why not test this all out? Don’t abuse or neglect him, but don’t do much in the way of guidance or education either. No taking him to museums or science centers. You don’t even have to enroll him in school. Too much input after all. Just teach him very basic reading, writing and arithmetic, up to a minimal functional level. When he’s a teen do not, I repeat do not, attempt to teach him any ethics around sexuality. We’ll all check back on the experiment right here on this blog in the year 2034.
You game?
Will flouride lower your baby’s IQ?
http://themindunleashed.org/2014/02/harvard-study-confirms-fluoride-reduces-childrens-iq.html
This makes so much sense. Great thought.