Open Discussion Thread
I’ve started this page as a place for open discussion. If you have a question, a request, or something that you want to bring to my attention, and it doesn’t fit anywhere else (or you want somewhere current), put it here.
I can’t guarantee you’ll get fast service from me. I’m having a hard time keeping up with my other stuff as it is. 🙂
A couple of updates worth mentioning here. I’ve disabled the comments at my JayMan’s Race, Inheritance, and IQ F.A.Q. (F.R.B.). Invariably, my pages and posts, with my declarative assertions they feature, attract (wittingly and unwittingly) bullshit-peddling commenters, and I don’t want a 100-comment long back and forth there. As such, I’m removing some of the comments from there, and they may appear here, eventually. As well, if you have something to say about my F.R.B., put it here.
JayMan's Blog 
Hey JayMan,
Thoughts on the Solutrean hypothesis? And also what do you think about the legends of the ‘white gods’ or South America?
The Solutrean hypothesis is horseshit.
Do you have anything on the Out of Africa theory? Is it still largely accurate, or has it been debunked?
Of course it’s accurate.
Like you, I have taken on the task of arguing against the stupidity of white nationalists. Do you have links to any articles that prove its accuracy?
Hmmm, I stumbled upon your blog in an unusual way. I had noticed a guy’s post about how white leopards or panthers can, for the most part, only be reproduced through inbreeding. Thus, I found myself somehow on your blog reading about European clans. Responding to the Out of Africa framework, I’d have to say it’s on target. According to my research, and I know this seems like hyperbole, but every high culture on the planet literally derives from Black cultures. From Africa to Asia to the Americas, the first big-building projects, not to mention the earliest people, were Black cultures. http://leslester.blogspot.com
One for JayMan from The Guardian yesterday:-
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/aug/07/being-bilingual-good-for-brain-mental-health
(I downloaded the 2010 study about bilingualism supposedly delaying the onset of Alzheimer’s. It is of course substandard; sample sizes of n=200, & observational study with several variables not controlled for)
Hey JayMan, I know you’re into philosophy a bit; question.
What do you think about these responses from Hochman to Sesardic on the biological reality of race?
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369848616300140
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10539-011-9249-3
Thanks for your time.
Jayman,
As much as we may hate to admit it, HBD and clannishness does somewhat reinforce the white nationalist ideology, at least somewhat. If the only non-clannish peoples are Europeans (within the Hajnal line) and the Japanese, then it does logically seem to imply that deportation or segregation is called for in our increasingly diverse USA, does it not?
It’s not looking good for us non-whites Jayman. Not good at all.
The Japanese are only non-clannish toward other japanese, thats what makes them stand out. They have the perfect balance.
Also, the only way I think the values of the white nationalist will ever be mainstream is if they start inbreeding and reproducing rapidly, displacing the mostly out-bread majority of whites. If they don’t then universalist and leftist tendencies will continue to dominate.
You supporting Trump?
Do humans have free will?
No.
Things to look forward to when HBD becomes mainstream, Jayman:
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-toll.html
I would like to pitch a blogpost for your site. Is there a standard process / email adress?
Subject: Neuropsychology of emotion, decisions, evolution. Kind regards.
Thanks for the suggestion. My email is at the top right.
The problem with that idea though is that we currently have a pretty poor understanding of such things. Apparent new breakthroughs are often quickly overturned by new discoveries.
Jayman, thoughts on the rising tide of white nationalism/alt-right? I’m beginning to think separation is inevitable at this point.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/
Jayman, what do you make of Satoshi Kanazawa”s Savanna Hypothesis? Over time, I have noticed that nearly all of his claims about higher IQ in his book The Intelligence Paradox tend to fall flat when applied to non-W.E.I.R.D. populations as well as non-whites in the west. It makes absolutely no sense that more intelligent people would be worse at evolutionary “familiar” activities than dumber people.Nor, when looking at non-white and non-NW Euro populations do you see any strong link between higher IQ and leftism, homosexuality, vegetarianism, monogamy, and drug use. The only thing that does seem to be universally linked with higher intelligence is secularism.
Any thoughts?
Pretty much. All of claims rely on WEIRD populations.
Also, Kanazawa’s statements about IQ and fertility also don’t add up when considering history. He apparently failed to note that it is only in the last few decades that IQ became negatively linked with women. Also, didn’t you post some data on your twitter and this site that shows that in most societies today that men of all IQ levels have equal fertility rates on average?
If higher IQ is so maladaptive as he claims then there is no way it could have been strongly selected for in the last 10,000 (especially by the Ashkenazi). Kanazawa seems to be one of those evo-pychologist that mistakenly assume that evolution stopped or slowed down since agriculture when the opposite is true.
JayMan, I think we may have found a potential treasure trove of information relevant to possible selection pressures in medieval and early modern Japan!
Here’s a Google Books entry on “Japan’s Industrious Revolution: Economic and Social Transformations in the Early Modern Period,” by Akira Hayami: https://books.google.com/books?id=Z-1rCQAAQBAJ&dq=%22Economic+and+Social+Transformations+in+the+Early+Modern+Period%22&source=gbs_navlinks_s
The table of contents looks VERY promising. I stumbled upon this while searching for whatever I could find on shōen (Japanese “manors”) and peasant migration during Tokugawa rule.
It was a post on Shinto at the neoreactionary blog Bloody Shovel that got the wheels in my head turning. The author, spandrell, a fluent speaker of Mandarin and Japanese, is very knowledgeable about East Asian history. His piece is short and worth a read: https://bloodyshovel.wordpress.com/2014/11/26/shinto/
My gut also tells me that rice farming played some small role in the evolutionary path of the Japanese (à la the “rice theory” of regional variation in modern Chinese psychology). Anyway, I hope the book proves a major help to you, hbd chick, Peter Frost and others!
Cheers.
Good find! Thanks!
Hey Jayman, what do you make of this clown?
https://www.madinamerica.com/2016/06/reared-apart-twin-study-mythology-the-latest-contribution-part-1/
Its so infuriating that people like this get support.
Multiple methods of inquiry produce the laws of behavioral genetics. That’s why they’re laws. So he’s fighting a lost battle.
Anything on India IQ potential? I know India scores low now, but with proper nutrition/less inbreeding what do you think genetic potential is? Anatoly Karlin believes somewhere in the 95-97 range.
I doubt it. I’d guess 85-90 at most.
What makes you say that?
What is the average I.Q. of Brahmin Hindus? I heard it around Ashkenazim level.
Interesting blog and a lot to go through!
I agree with you regarding the no-free-will position. I believe Kant would see it as a ‘synthetic a priori’ truth. That is, it flows from the very notion of causality. (Kant in fact believed in free will as a moral necessity, but relegated it to the noumenal [unknowable] realm.)
Regarding the utility of IQ measurements, I would mention that Marilyn Vos Savant remarked in an interview, “Women and blacks have accomplished nothing.” And indeed, men have vastly outperformed women in almost every creative and academic field. For example, there hasn’t been even a single great female composer (and if IQ scores don’t correlate with superlative musical ability, so much the worse for the tests). So what is going on? David Stove, in his article “The Intellectual capacity of women”, points out that claiming that women have been suppressed simply begs the question as to their status in the first place. There’s no doubt that the de facto suppression of women can account for some of the discrepancy in accomplishment. But all of it? Really? I would suggest that, at the very least, men have a greater degree of passion or “sticktoitiveness” than women. Van Gogh was obsessed with painting. Apart from the occasional visit to the brothel, that’s all he did. And the musicologist Charles Rosen wrote that Beethoven’s music was “the result of a labor and meditation almost unparalleled in the history of music.” I just don’t see this kind of creative monomania among women. But aren’t women distracted by raising children? Yes, But can this distraction (plus the aforementioned suppression) account for all of the difference? One would think that since women make up half the population, and have enjoyed a fair degree of liberalization in recent decades, maybe a couple of them would have risen to the very top in the more abstract fields, like physics, math, and music. But that hasn’t been the case. Perhaps they do have the sheer cognitive ability. But the facts on the ground suggest that IQ tests are missing something of importance when it comes to superior accomplishment.
You are right. IQ test don’t not account for personality and temperament traits, which influence the likelihood of creative genius.
Creativity probably has to do with more than personality, even.
Jayman, I remember reading a twitter post from you that asked why don’t all non-mongoloid women have big breast and stated that it was impossible to know. However, you stated that the reason why not all women have big butts is do to sexually antagonistic selection. That doesn’t sound too probable to me. Can you elaborate?
One reason some women have high waist-hip ratios is masculinizing genes. They’re selected against in women but selected for in men so they stick around.
Sorry to bother you but I have a question. What do you make of this claim?
http://akinokure.blogspot.com.es/2013/03/primitive-mans-sex-life-was-free-of.html
I think this (and most of Agnostic’s post in general) is mostly a load of nonsense as well as the accompanying bicameralism hypothesis. What is your take?
Also, notice his tendency to downplay any signs of non-reproductive sexual behavior in animals.
Correct, most of Agnostic’s posts are nonsense. Modern hunter-gatherers are indeed insightful to ancestral behavior but only limitedly so; they too are just as removed from their ancestors as we are. Non-reproductive heterosexual sex is hardly mysterious since sex not only serves the role of reproduction directly, but serves to strengthen emotional bonds between male and female.
About the liberal-conservative baby gap, I would count the Left out just yet. There is still the phenomenon of people born to conservative families turning liberal at later ages (which is more common than the opposite) and the fact that the left still runs western media. With the advances in technology I’m pretty sure the elites will eventually notice their lower fertility rates and find methods to incentivize liberals to reproduce.
On a related note, one fact that many HBD blogs fail to notice that even though Mormons and Christian fundamentalist have much higher fertility rates now, Christianity on the whole continues to decline at a slow but noticeable rate with Millennials being the least religious generation of Americans ever. Also, these ex-Christians aren’t joining new faiths nor are their children if they have any, which explains how the descendants of God fearing Victorians could be atheistic SJWs. These are just some reasons why I’m doubting a massive turn to the Right in America, any thoughts?
Children generally don’t switch political views away from their parents.
Selection is acting for increased conservativism and religiosity, but the rate is slow and could conceivably reverse in the future.
Any chance of a Yeyo Twitter stream? His stuff on female intrasexual competition via feminism (as well as conservatism) is great, not that I’m ignoring the Hajnal line or anything.
Not a bad idea.
Do you think hybridization or mutation played a greater role in hominid evolution.
Mutation is a given as it drives evolution. But hybridization between human groups and with archaic hominids also appears to have played an important role.
There are articles supporting the idea that DNA from male sexual partners becomes assimilated into the female partners body and can affect the woman and the offspring of a subsequent male partner. Do you agree with this? If so, could you elaborate on this process.
That of course is nonsense.
Thanks, J.
What do you make of Donald Trump? As an HBD-aware liberal, do you think his 4-8 year run and President would be beneficial for America?
What is your view on the effects of peer groups?
Largely nil, except for language.
Jayman, Do you consider Psychiatry a legit science? After reading your “Features and Bugs” article on this site I’m starting to understand what the anti-psychiatry folks are talking about: that many if not most “disorders” are determined by cultural and moral bias rather than biological evidence and that therapy is a scam.
Psychiatry is valid to the extent that it helps patients. This is generally not to the extent that most practitioners believe.
Jayman, in your page about the worldwide distribution of personality you pointed out that Arctic peoples (who tend to be hunter-gatherers) have some of the highest suicide rates in the world. Also, I’ve once came across data suggesting that hunter-gatherers are overrepresented in suicide rates in both Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. This would be a huge blow into the myth of the noble savage: not only were primitive humans NOT more peaceful, they were also weren’t any happier. Any thoughts?
Good observation. I wonder what the time depth of that pattern is…
Jayman, do you believe there is anything problematic about career women, or it this another matter where the Alt-right/manosphere is way off base?
(Isn’t “problematic” a SJW word?)
The real answer is whether it is or not it is what is, and won’t be changing any time soon.
I don’t like the word “problematic” either, it feels of hypersensitivity. I for one don’t by the idea that female self-reliance is somehow dysgenic. Its an idea most popular with resentful beta men that can’t seduce/appeal to most women, so the want to limit their options to make their mating success easier
By-buy, the-they typos
What do you think of Anatoly Karlin’s Sino-triumphalism via eugenics?
Jayman, do you believe there is any strong link between social status and suicide in America? All data and research I’ve seen tends to be inconsistent, suggesting no link at all.
Probably not. But I’d have to look into it.
Jayman, what do you make of the claims of this website?
http://www.mygenes.co.nz/index.html
http://www.mygenes.co.nz/lungshu.html
Notice the tendency to play-up shared environment.
Whitehead is good at pointing out the weakness of genetic factors in explaining homosexuality but poor at everything else. In the second link especially he seems to misunderstand the reason twin studies were developed in the first place (falling back on genetically and otherwise confounded correlational studies).
My comment didn’t appear, is their a problem?
Hey JayMan, what do you think of this site? I think they build a good case and it’s an easy read.
https://mapbiology.wordpress.com
Hi JayMan! I have been reading some of your posts for a while, and as someone new to HBD, I still have a few questions before I could be convinced of your quite “extreme” view.
In one of your posts about the fast change in acceptance of homosexuality, you were talking about the genetic potential which is unlocked in response to certain changes in the environment. Doesn’t this open the possibility that other traits or characteristics, which likewise show strong heritability, could change like this as well?
From here one can ask whether the heredity of some specific trait even has much meaning in a wider sense, if different preexisting genetic responses can be triggered by various environmental stimuli. You have stated yourself that heritability =/= immutability, which I assume also includes environmental interventions?
For example, with IQ, it might be true that genetics determines most of the variance in the current environment, but is there conclusive evidence that as such it’s impossible to tailor programs that suit people’s genome in order to make full use of their genetic potential?
Thank you in advance for your time!
Yes, but the range of phenotypes that show this is fairly small.
It’s called school :). Our education system is already one massive intervention. Everyone is living up to their genetic potential. Past that, there is not much more we can do.
Was there evidence that societal acceptance of homosexuality can invert as dramatically before it started to happen? Or that obesity would become as widespread as it is today?
It seems to me that as all estimates of heritability are only markers of differences between people in a given environment attributable to genetics, they are not indicative of an individual’s “total phenotypic range”, and as such a complete proxy for environmental mutability.
That my country, Sweden, and Portugal and Spain, scored practically the same in the most recent PISA survey and that our close neighbours Finland and Estonia topped the charts (with Estonia’s Baltic neighbours scoring below all the aforementioned nations), all the while there supposedly being a genetic difference in scholastic ability between N and S Europe (and by extension other countries), doesn’t seem to indicate that this ability is as environmentally immutable as these heritability estimates suggest.
You realize that sampling issues and demographics (and test norming) are all issues in any national IQ test, including the PISA, right?
Well, I’ll you that the range of environments that are found by SES brackets here in the U.S. don’t seem to modulate the heritability of IQ, for instance.
Gross environment matters but that’s far from saying anything goes.
You realize that sampling issues and demographics (and test norming) are all issues in any national IQ test, including the PISA, right?
Well, I’ll you that the range of environments that are found by SES brackets here in the U.S. don’t seem to modulate the heritability of IQ, for instance.
Gross environment matters but that’s far from saying anything goes.
After doing more reading and research I’ve come to the same conclusion as you have, though it was admittedly not an easy pill to swallow at first. Anyway, thank you for the work you’ve put into this subject, your blog is what first go me interested in it as well.
Hi Jayman. @Yeyo was made a comment on twitter about the Victorian ages making a comeback. The problem with this is that there is no real evidence that people in the Victorian age were in any major degree bigger prudes on average than modern Westerners today. They seemed to be no more or less sexually active and receptive than contemporary Whites:
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ug97/blues/simmons.html
https://digitalcommons.denison.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1043&context=articulate
https://interestingliterature.com/2012/12/26/ten-myths-about-the-victorians/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/11364833/Stern-fathers-religious-zealots-and-prudes-How-we-got-the-Victorians-wrong.html
Besides, women outside the Middle-East are not dressing any more conservatively, pornography doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon, music videos and popular entertainment aren’t getting any less skimpy, and prudeness doesn’t seem to even be the main motive behind contemporary leftist politics on sex. So I don’t agree with the perception that we are returning to a repressive era when repressive era wasn’t even relatively repressed to begin with. People don’t seem to be any more or less sexually active or gratified now compared to a century ago:
http://gssq.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-male-sexual-deficit-social-fact-of.html
what are your thoughts?
Jayman, one thing I’ve notice about the myth of Group Selection (despite being debunked numerous times by Dawkins, Pinker and others) is that it is equally appealing to both the far-left and far-right. Leftist love it because it allows them to deny the obvious selfishness of all living things and justify their egalitarian utopian dogmas and pathologically altruist urges. The Alt-right loves it because to them it justifies their White nationalist fantasies (which were never truly realized in any culture in history). It’s like these people are motivated ENTIRELY by their normative desires, not by any honest view of the science. Any thoughts?
More on Japan: The Ties That Bind: Kinship, Inheritance, and the Environment in Medieval Japan – Kevin L. Gouge (2017)
PDF: http://kevingouge.com/PHD.pdf
Author’s website: http://kevingouge.com/wordpress/
Gouge focuses on the ruling warrior class, so we don’t know if other segments of society practiced this loosely consanguineal, more corporate mode of kinship organization. Cited works by Haruko Wakita might contain clues.
Ron Unz has noted that samurai made up a good chunk of the total population for much of their history. We know downward mobility among samurai really kicked in during the Edo period, but it’s unclear whether preceding periods saw any trickling down of individuals or families from warrior to non-warrior status.
Overall, Gouge’s analysis sounds a lot like current news coming out of Japan:
https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Japanese-companies-the-adopted-son-rises2
https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2017/04/many-adoptions-in-japan-are-not-about-raising-children/
Hi,
I am interested to know what HBD has to say about ethnicity ( race) and criminal behaviour. Here in Australia we pride ourselves on “being the most successful multicultural society” in the world and that this is a good thing. It is often the case that a hoary old chestnut will raised its head and some politician will say that some ethnic group is is “bad” because they cause more crime ( are prone to more crime).
More broadly any tendency to corruption and values that are anti- social. Much is made of culture ( and I am one of those who do) and that human behaviour that is good for the human condition, not just our local group, is something that all human groups can/ should pursue.
My concern with reading a number of posts here is that we seem to conclude that Race is genetic i.e. there are fundamental differences in the way people behave based on membership of a racial group e.g. you mention people getting into a position of power and immediately pursuing ripping off of people etc. This fits with the idea that all blacks are prone to criminality for instance. Conversely it might fit with that all whites are prone to racism!
For me a definition of racism is a belief that one race is inferior to another on genetic grounds e. g not as intelligent , more inclined to sexual deviance, more inclined to criminality. How can I stand for human development and equality if I know that genetically this is true?
Am I too despair that HBD has the facts on this and that yes we must conclude that in fact the racists are right – if we want a “better” world we must focus on breeding with white people or at least within our own race.
I am interested to know more about HBD. Besides yourself and HBD Chick are there any other HBD Bloggers you recommend?
West Hunter
Razib Khan
Clear Language, Clear Mind (Emil Kirkegaard’s blog).
Wondering if someone a little more statistically competent can help me in interpreting this data from a large twin study. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4056448/
“Psychological well-being and self-esteem loaded most strongly on Factor 1, which was highly heritable (h2 = .79).”
Does this imply that genetics can account for 79 % of reported self esteem and psychological well being? Factoring in measurement error wouldnt this bring the correlation to near perfect?
Thanks for any help.
Yes it does
Wondering if someone a little more competent in statistics can help me interpret some of the data from this large twin study. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4056448/
They found that:
“Psychological well-being and self-esteem loaded most strongly on Factor 1, which was highly heritable (h2 = .79).”
Does this imply that genetics account for 79% of self-esteem and psychological well-being? Considering measurement error as well, wouldn’t this likely bring the number to a nearly perfect correlation?
Thanks for any insight
As far as I can understand, it is not saying that factor 1 had complete correlation with self-esteem and psychological well-being, only that the latter two loaded most strongly on it when compared with the other measures. Table 2 gives the heritabilities for well-being and self-esteem as .50 and .35 respectively, quite much lower than .79.
Jayman, what do you think of Terror Management Theory (TMT)? After learning about Evolutionary Psychology, Behavior Genetics, HBD & such, TMT has since come across to me as just another example of obviously bullshit, utopian blank-slatist thinking. Ernest Becker was essentially to me just another Freud, with the only differences that he replaced “sex” with “death” and rejected any consideration for biological instincts.
Any thoughts?
Hi Jayman,
Just read your Gay Germ Theory post over at unz.com and had a question. Whenever I read these theories about the causes of homosexuality, one thing I never see addressed is the fact that, throughout history, most gay men have been passing along their DNA the old fashioned way – hetrosexual mating. It’s a relatively recent thing, and still not common worldwide, that a gay man can just anounce that he is gay publicly and live that way. Even the ancient greeks, though famous for their homosexuality, still mostly got married and had kids. If homosexuality were gene based, wouldn’t that be enough to explain it’s continued existence?
Actually this has been addressed. Gay men would have lower overall fitness than heterosexual men even if some of them reproduced. The genes for homosexuality would slowly disappear over time. Homosexuality certainly wouldn’t stand at 3% prevalence today. Something more than genes have to be involved.
Hi again, thanks for getting back to me. You say it has been addressed, could you point me in the direction of any good online articles, blog posts, etc. that deal with the issue. Thanks.
Interestingly, some of the most inbred ethnic groups in the world are exceptionally intelligent: Ashkenazi Jews and, without knowing their mean IQs, Bengali and Tamil Brahmins and Kayastha.
Ashkenazi are not really inbred.
@Jayman Maybe not inbred but perhaps closely related? I remember listening to WFAN and they actually ran radio ads for a study on genetic diseases in the Jewish community. And it makes sense they’d run a radio ad on that station where about half the callers are Jewish guys from NY/NJ.
Michael. One reason Ashkenazi Jews have such high IQ is because women are the gatekeepers of reproduction. In the Jewish community smart men are high value men and women want to have their babies, and those high IQ genes get passed on, often through several women after the men are dragged through the divorce machine and get suckered into a second marriage.
If you’re a Jewish man of average intelligence(especially blue collar) you’ll have a harder time finding a Jewish female who wants to marry you. These men are often the Jewish guys who marry a non-Jewish woman because they women in their community don’t want their offspring.
Hello Jayman, being half Jamaican, have you ever thought about checking your 100 meter time? Just kidding.
Seriously, it seems like northern Europeans have high IQ’s and places like Vienna were intellectual hubs for a long time.. Today Asians and northern Europeans have the highest IQ’s. Some people think starchy carbohydrates made brains grow over the centuries. For Asians, white rice increased IQ’s. For northern Europeans alcohol mainly. What do you think of this?
I think there is a lot to this.
I’ve been enjoying your articles on the American Nations, especially the maps. I wondered if you might have a list of US counties by nation, or perhaps those that establish the borders of each nation. If so, could you share it? Thanks again.
I do not. Colin Woodard might. It’s fairly easy to infer from the maps though. I can draw a larger version of the map that has the counties clearly delineated. One day. 🙂