Saturday, March 27, 2010

Kidneys

Whiz kidsOn those rare occasions when I remember obscure or interesting facts, someone may ask me, “How d’you know that?” In response I always tap my forefinger against my temple and solemnly answer: “Kidneys.”

At this point in our conversation my interlocutor will generally back away, look at his watch, and suddenly remember that he has an urgent prior appointment elsewhere.

My reference is actually to an old joke, one that made the rounds when I was a kid, but which is too politically incorrect to be told nowadays. It concerns the annual visit of a school superintendent to Special Class. The teacher had taken great pains to prepare her charges for the occasion, and had drilled them in the proper identification of body parts.

One particular boy named Jimmy did especially well when called on by his teacher. “Show me your elbow”, she said, and he tapped his elbow.

“Where is your ear?” Jimmy pulled at his ear.

“Now your ankle,” and Jimmy bent over and grabbed his ankle.

The process continued through the rest of his anatomy, and Jimmy answered all the questions promptly and correctly. The superintendent was impressed, and said, “My, my, Jimmy! That was very good. Tell me: how do you know all these things?”

Jimmy smiled at the superintendent, pointed his finger at the side of his head, and solemnly answered, “Kidneys.”

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

I bring all this up because of recent discussions here — on threads that are too numerous to find and link — about race, evolution, IQ, and human intelligence. Rather than tackle the issue of race and IQ, which Fjordman has addressed more than adequately, I want to take a step back and undertake a broad-based evaluation of IQ from a Darwinian standpoint. After reading all the statistical data and demographic analyses, only one conclusion can be drawn:

Intelligence is overrated.

ProdigyRemember: I’m dealing with this issue from a Darwinian point of view. For the sake of argument, we’ll assume that nothing is at play here except for natural selection based on random genetic variation — no God, no “higher power”, no teleological framework, no divine plan. Just a big vat of all-natural protoplasm contending against itself in the glare of a cold, unheeding universe.

Under the rules of this game, there is only one measure of success: survival. It doesn’t matter how charming or good or beautiful any particular species is. The only important factor is whether a given individual can survive long enough to pass on his genome.

Those are the rules. The survivors win. And the winners are by definition “the fittest”.

This is where the Eugenicists missed the mark: there’s no second-guessing evolution. If you “cull the herd” by eliminating imbeciles, and engage in selective breeding to improve the bloodline, the survivors are indeed “the fittest”. But if all your schemes fail, and the morons and cripples reproduce by the millions while brilliant and refined folk like yourself languish — surprise! All those lumpen unwashed lowbrows are still “the fittest”.
- - - - - - - - -
Once again: the only measure of success is to survive and spread your alleles. From a Darwinian perspective, nothing else matters.

Brain Now we return to the topic of intelligence and IQ. Based on the empirical evidence, couch potatoes with navel jewelry and tattooed private parts who wear their hats backwards and are literate solely in l33t — if at all — are the fittest of our species. They remain stubbornly fecund, and somehow manage to raise their numerous offspring to child-bearing age — which, for the demographic in question, seems to average about 14.5 years.

You and I, on the other hand, for all our refined sensibilities and university educations and appreciation of Mozart, are evolutionary toast.

If the great unwashed have an average of 3.2 children per unmarried slatternly woman, while the latte-drinking literati have 0.6, what selective advantage does high intelligence confer? If IQ is heritable (and all the evidence says it is), then what in blue blazes is the evolutionary point of a high IQ?

To make matters worse, the allegedly intelligent people of the Glittering Classes are providing the wherewithal for the booboisie to continue propagating. The high-IQ elites provide the money, personnel, and technology to keep those of more limited intellect alive, comfortable, and healthy through their multiple parturitions. The best and the brightest are non-breeding themselves into a genetic dead end whilst enabling the success of their evolutionary competitors.

I mean, really, how smart is that?

Forget the IQ tests. Our genes are screaming at us: “Dumb! Dumb! Dumb!”

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Smart kidThis doesn’t mean that intelligence as measured by IQ has no survival value at all. Obviously, it must have done some good for the tribes of Europe and Northeast Asia, because they became the dominant human groups on the planet.

But look at what’s happening now. Check out what the very intelligent people of Israel and Europe and Japan and Canada and the USA have managed to do to themselves. Even the Chinese have forcibly constrained their own reproduction. All these populations are dwindling, while the numbers of less intelligent peoples are still growing exponentially.

Obviously, at some point all this much-vaunted intelligence ceased being an evolutionary advantage and became a disadvantage. Every objective indicator tells us that past a certain point high IQ negatively impacts survival of the genome, and is being selected against.

Evolutionarily speaking, a high IQ is overrated. We are prejudiced in our admiration of it. Our preferences are irrelevant sub specie aeternitatis. Brontosauri no doubt preferred the company of their own kind and disdained the tree shrews, but the tree shrews won in the end.

The bottom line is that the highest-IQ people have the fewest offspring, and this has been true for generations. Our fifteen minutes are almost up.

It’s the kidneys, stupid!

104 comments:

Zenster said...

Quite clearly, neither intelligence nor conciousness are essential to survival. Elsewise, how is it that bacteria, and all other lower life forms, abound in such numbers as to make humanity look so insignificant?

It's long past tea to re-ignite the will to survive in people of functional intelligence. Keep in mind, that definition does not include ivory tower intellectuals but only those who have a sufficient measure of wisdom and willpower to actualize the intelligence that they possess.

At present, that one condition disqualifies a dismaying portion of modern Western civilization and therein lies the rub.

Homophobic Horse said...

"Under the rules of this game"

Hey look a teleological thingy.

The word verification of this post was "bless".

Fjordman said...

Look, Baron, I wrote this on another thread: What we have on the planet today is a totally unprecedented situation where almost all of the peoples with the highest average IQ, that is, Europeans and Northeast Asians, have stagnating or declining populations. In contrast, some of the most technologically and economically backward peoples and countries on the planet have booming populations. Does that mean that the global average IQ is currently lower than it was a century ago? Quite possibly yes. What kind of long-term effect will this trend have on world civilization? This question is the single greatest taboo today. Nobody wants to ask that question, but it will sort itself out eventually. You cannot fool nature.

Does this mean that we have arrived at the point of "survival of the least fit?" No, because what matters is the survival of the survivors. If your people and your genes survive then you are, biologically speaking, most fit. It's not a beauty contest. Since whites and Northeast Asians fail to reproduce at replacement level you could speculate whether there is a negative correlation between IQ and survival. At least, Northeast Asians are not allowing themselves to be replaced by primitive tribes, as we do, but they have the rather significant advantage of not being continuously stabbed in the back by their own media, academia and political leaders.

In fact, if we look at the really long lines of history, Europeans created the modern world. For better or worse, the great dividing line in human history will be the European expansion from the late fifteenth until the twentieth century. In many ways it is only appropriate to talk about “world history” from this period on as European civilization was the first civilization to have a truly global impact and interconnect all regions of this planet into one integrated network.

This benefited us briefly in terms of sheer numbers following the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, but after this our inventions have caused a massive population boom in the Third World. As a result, although whites have largely created the global technological civilization we now see, our share of the global population has plummeted to well below what it was before the European colonial era, and it continues to fall every single year. I don't understand why these Third World peoples are whining about "exploitation." The truth is that billions of them live more comfortable lives now than they did a few centuries ago, whereas Europeans did not, ultimately, demographically benefit from this at all as an ethnic group.

We should remember, however, that you cannot extrapolate today’s trends into the future. As Conservative Swede has pointed out, the massive population of sub-Saharan Africa is entirely dependent upon aid and support from the white West. As soon as the West is no longer willing or able to support African peoples who hate us, we could witness the greatest mass starvation in human history. Personally, I suspect that the global population of 7 billion people or more is unsustainable and could collapse within the coming two centuries. This is an extremely sensitive subject, but it needs to be raised.

The Observer said...

Baron, this was exactly the same point I tried to get across at the “death of democracy” thread a couple of days ago. From a Darwinian point of view the fittest individuals are the ones who are most prolific in passing on their genes.

Muslims in the west have chosen a very clever strategy in which the indigenous people of the west are made to look after their wellbeing, which in a Darwinian perspective, indicates that they have outsmarted us. It would actually be fair to say that they have mentally enslaved us.

If you think about it the indigenous people of the west should strive to do everything in their power not to fund and contribute to their own governments which seek to annihilate them through demographic means. Our taxes goes towards bringing foreign people into our countries, and still we think we’re doing a good dead as productive and taxpaying citizens even though that is clearly not the case. The smart thing would be to sign up for the doll and create so much pressure on the welfare coffers that the governments would be unable to fund this madness.

If people stopped paying taxes and refused to allow their governments to squander it on third world immigrants and Muslims we wouldn’t be in this position.

Michael Carr - Veritas Literary said...

God, that was depressing.

Baron Bodissey said...

Fjordman --

I agree with everything you say. I wasn't arguing with you in this case -- if anything, I was arguing with people who took your thesis and extended it into regions where it doesn't properly fit.

And yes, the current demographic situation could well be an anomaly. I tend to think it probably is. When the number of white people of European extraction dwindles to the point where they can no longer support (with foreign aid and welfare) the less intelligent peoples, what happens then?

There are literally billions of people whose very lives depend on the genius, creativity, and industriousness of a dwindling band of well-educated ethnic Europeans.

Whatever is contrary to the Tao will not last long.

Baron Bodissey said...

Kritisk borger --

Yes, I agree with what you say, too. Whatever IQ measures, it is obviously not the kind of intelligence that leads to demographic ascendancy.

From an empirical standpoint, the Arabs and other Muslims are the most successful of all human groups. They are like mistletoe on the tree of the West, with no roots in the ground and no ability to produce their own sustenance. Yet they have not only implanted themselves in our social organism, they have also persuaded the organism that there is nothing wrong with their presence, and that it in fact is to be desired and encouraged.

This is an amazing accomplishment, when you think about it, to have organized a parasitism of this magnitude with the willing aquiescence and encouragement of the host. As far as I know, it is the only time in history that such a thing has occurred.

Objectively measured, that makes them pretty damned smart.

Baron Bodissey said...

Historically speaking, Muslims have been saprophytes as well as parasites, drawing their nourishment from the corpses of once-vibrant societies. Egypt and Iran are examples, and the death and draining of Lebanon is right now proceeding before our very eyes.

These things are easy to see once one has spent a little time reading history and observing the parallels. We've no excuse for failing to act: the shape of things to come is quite obvious.

Anonymous said...

The problem with this analysis is that it only deals with a short time horizon. Yes, in the world as it currently stands, intelligence is overrated. But suppose the less-intelligent sort of human being outbreeds the more-intelligent, and largely replaces them. Then what? Then, civilization collapses, carrying capacity collapses, agriculture collapses, desertification increases dramatically, and once a new equilibrium is reached, there are far fewer humans left on the same planet.

At that point it will be clear that intelligence was the one missing factor.

You have to take that into account.

Baron Bodissey said...

Rollory --

You have to take that into account.

No, I don't. That's the long-term view. I'm only engaged in a current snapshot.

In the long term, every species becomes extinct. If you look at it that way, no characteristic gives a selective advantage, and no adaptive strategy is successful.

A species may succeed spectacularly in its niche, and then fail and become extinct when environmental conditions change. We have changed our environment so much -- perhaps we have created an environment that is inimical to our own survival.

It's also possible that adverse conditions will cause us to speciate over the next few thousand years, leaving us with heirs who bear only a passing resemblance to us.

My analysis only applies to a short-term period, say from the Industrial Revolution to the coming collapse. I make no claim on any time frame outside of that.

Rocha said...

Baron,

That's why i like to use the damned word... beware, take the kids out of the room! Eugenics and Dysgenics.

Our world is now dysgenic, that is it makes human quality to decline instead of improve. What's the beneficts today of great athetics? Do professional athletes have more kids? Whats the benefict of beauty? Do very beuatiful people (specially women) have more kids? Intelligence? Health?

Every thing that makes our temporary (in a genetic and historic viewpoint) success in earth diminishes our fecundity FROM the last two centuries or so. Is it a new thing? No. it was known already in the early XX century. Madison Grant wrote about it (Yes, he WAS very racist, but still worth a read with discrecion), Lothrop Stoddart wrote about it. At the time people talked about positive and negative eugenics ( positive being voluntary and negative imposed by the state), negative eugenics was used en masse by the germans in WWII, so eugenics faded from our society.

I would recommed:
Passing of a Great Race by Madison Grant
The Rising Tide of Color by Lothrop Stoddart
Personal Beauty and Racial Betterment By Knight Dunlap

Camelot said...

A question:

What is then the explanation for the West's demographic crisis? Is it just women liberation/feminism and modern birthcontroll? Is it lack of cultural consciousness? Is it failed (familiy) politics?

The most common answer, I guess, is the first mentioned of the above: women becoming career hungry and "revolutionary". But are there other reasons as well?

Some of you might have mentioned it already in other posts, but I haven't had the time to go through it all.

jeppo said...

I don't think that a stagnant or declining population is a bad thing in and of itself, even in a Darwinian evolutionary sense. If the Japanese population declines from 128 million today to about 100 million by 2050, it may very well be a good thing for that country AS LONG AS IT REMAINS 98% JAPANESE.

Japan is extremely mountainous, smaller than California and almost completely bereft of natural resources. The smaller the population sharing that country, the better off they would theoretically be, again provided that they remain the same homogenous, high IQ, hard working and disciplined people that they are today. Would Tokyo be a worse place to live with "only" 25 million people in 2050 rather than the 35 million living there now? Probably not.

In contrast, the fastest growing regions of the world like Africa and the Mideast are destined to become even more hellish than they are now, and even more dependant on the largesse of others just to stay alive. Their high birth rates are a huge weakness for them, not a strength, and if the developed world ever cut off aid they would die of starvation and disease by the hundreds of millions.

The unwashed masses of the fast growing Third World may end up conquering the dying and decadent West, but only because we've surrendered our patrimony without a fight. We could stop the invasion anytime we choose to, and the Third Worlders couldn't do a damn thing about it. But, alas, we probably won't.

Regardless of what happens to us though, the future belongs to the stagnant population of intelligent, industrious and, crucially, ethnocentric Northeast Asians, not the exploding population of dim-witted and lazy Third Worlders, who will end up being little more than easily exploited economic serfs under the whip of their Northeast Asian masters.

The Observer said...

Camelot, it doesn’t matter what has caused this situation; the only thing that matters is that we’ve allowed it to happen without putting up a proper fight. Now that makes us weak.

Baron Bodissey said...

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Zenster said...

Fjordman: As soon as the West is no longer willing or able to support African peoples who hate us, we could witness the greatest mass starvation in human history.

This could just as readily happen if America, Canada and Australia − all recipients of Islam's hateful overtures − halted their exportation of wheat to the MME (Muslim Middle East). In fact, such a passive-agressive scenario seems almost more likely than any military reprisal against Islam.

The sub-Saharan region's own dependency upon Western aid is stark testimony with respect to Africa's willing toleration of tribal-style leadership and its concomitant corruption.

This is the wild card that lurks beneath the surface of our era's conflicts. A simple analogy lies in China's persistent meddling in the MME. As Beijing continues to supply armaments and purchase oil from terrorist nations like Iran, they exacerbate the instability of global oil supplies.

Enough destabilization will see the price of bunker oil rise to a level whereby it is no longer cost effecient to export container loads of Chinese manufactured garbage, alias consumer products, around the globe. When that happens, look for a swift reversal of China's fortunes.

The same pertains to the MME. Should Islam take over the West and force a reversion to Iron Age feudal systems, anticipate a swift decline in agricultural productivity that will more than decimate populations thoughout the food-barren MME.

This is just one of numerous ways that Islam sows the seeds of its own destruction. There are so many of them that Islam's doom is literally foreordained. It is merely a question of whether Western nations will have enough wit to sidestep the inevitable shrapnel of Islam's eventual implosion.

Camelot said...

kritisk borger,

That is a very fatalistic thing to say. If we're at all interested in fixing the problem, then the first task should be to find the source of the problem.

I guess I just haven't come to the point yet where I say "let's just all sit back and wait for the End to come".

Zenster said...

jeppo: The unwashed masses of the fast growing Third World may end up conquering the dying and decadent West, but only because we've surrendered our patrimony without a fight. We could stop the invasion anytime we choose to, and the Third Worlders couldn't do a damn thing about it. But, alas, we probably won't.

None of that changes how a Third World takeover of the West would be much the same as gorillas wresting a starship's helm from its human crew. What could they do with it?

Look no further than the Palestinians taking control of those greenhouses handed over to them by Israel. Does that veritable patch of Eden currently produce anything more than arms smuggling tunnels?

If ever there were overweening ambitions, Islam's top the list.

Anonymous said...

"My analysis only applies to a short-term period, say from the Industrial Revolution to the coming collapse. I make no claim on any time frame outside of that."

Then - by your own choice of timescale - it's completely outside the bounds of evolutionary analysis.

Baron Bodissey said...

Then - by your own choice of timescale - it's completely outside the bounds of evolutionary analysis.

Nope. Wrong again.

My analysis is a snapshot of the present moment, which means it describes what is evolutionarily successful right now. It's not a prediction.

The evidence tells us that within homo sapiens, stupid people have the selective advantage over smart people -- at the moment.

All that could change very suddenly. The economic basis of Western prosperity could collapse (very likely). Western men could grow a collective set of nads and stop the current insanity (less likely). An asteroid could strike the earth and reduce our species to a condition in which intelligence once again brought selective advantage (not very likely).

Or things could continue as they are, with Westerners giving away the store lock, stock, and barrel, until all the wealth and the white people themselves are gone. As to what would happen after that, it's anybody's guess.

dienw said...

Once again: the only measure of success is to survive and spread your alleles. From a Darwinian perspective, nothing else matters.

Under these terms, rape is a positive act: multiple, successful rapes are more likely to produce offspring than a decent, intelligent guy trying to compete with either a Jesse James or a CEO. Under these terms rape would be moral behavior; so would killing any offspring your future mate might have had before you: lions do it so why shouldn't the new male arrival.

Afonso Henriques said...

Ok Baron, I think you are confusing what can and what cannot be compared. Like Dinnossaurs versus Plants.

... Or for that matter ants versus Humans.

As you notice, Europeans and Northeast Asians have become the dominant peoples in the World. Both Europeans or East Asians actually have the power to erradicate all their competitors if they so want to do it. But they do not because they are not interested in that.

Imagine a world without Europeans. Do we have any doubt that China would rule the world? Or do you think they would develop an "intellectual desease" as you claim Marxism is?

But lets consider what higher intelligence can do. Look at Europe. Look at the Marxists, the Socialists and the Leftists in power in Brussels. They are a minority but they have become the dominant group in Europe.
Look at the Jews in the U.S.!!
They managed to become the dominant elite while manipulating the majority European populace into buy MTV and Mexican Immigration. It doesn't matter that they don't like any of each. They have to swallow it.

---------------------------

I say that it's not the sheer quantity that makes you a winner in Darwinian terms. It is your ability to crush and eliminate your competitors so that you become the dominant group.

Thus, quality is always superior to quantity. And quantity only wins when it is so overwhelming that it can actually erradicate those of higher quality.

So, in the end, quality (high IQ) is more important because ir alows you to eliminate your enimies despite their enormous quantity.

Quantity devoyed of quality, on the other hand, is only capable of winning when the higher quality is extinguished:

Thus the British conquered India.
And thus the Indians were not capable of expelling the British of India, the British opted to go away due to the impossibility of few high IQ British controling a vast number of low IQ Indians.

There was a victory for English and no Victory for the Indians.
The Indians got independence, but it was still one nill to the Britts.

Dymphna said...

@njartist:

Yes, in the amoral calculus of this particular view -- i.e., a Darwinian one -- rape does increase one's own...umm, increase. Islam has used that particular method of transmission for more than a millenia now.

If we were talking about what makes for an optimal world taking into account the good, the true, and the beautiful then rape is an abomination.

This essay is not about virute, it is about mere survival. That is why I think Americans (and Icelanders) find religion so important: it addresses those questions to the satisfaction of many.

Survival is all according to your genes. According to your intellect, there may indeed be situations in which survival is not the be all and end all.

But that's another discussion, yes?

KingM, above, found the essay depressing. I can't say I blame him, though it doesn't describe my reality, or probably his. Nonetheless, it is important to discuss such topics, queries outside our comfort zone. Ironically, our survival may depend on it.

Baron Bodissey said...

njartist --

None of what is described here is either moral or immoral. A pure Darwinian analysis recognizes no morality -- what survives and reproduces is the fittest. It's descriptive, not normative.

As for whether multiple rapes could be a selective advantage -- under some circumstances they might not be, such as when the fathers or brothers of the victims catch the rapist and remove him from the gene pool.

Better to devise a system where a man is allowed to breed with as many females as possible, with full legitimacy granted to the acts. That's what the Arabs have managed to construct. As a result, the alleles of the House of Saud are among the most successful on the planet.

Baron Bodissey said...

Afonso --

You are not getting the point here, in a major way.

Nothing is being said here about political success or failure -- nothing about conquering or ruling. This is solely about genetic success or failure.

For example: the Irish have been very successful at spreading their genes massively all over the world, without ever conquering anything. In fact, they were gravely oppressed most of the time they did it.

Genetic success is only partially correlated with political dominance.

Anonymous said...

Neither of my posts were wrong or inaccurate.

What you've done is describe the situation as it stands and then say "intelligence is not useful". Not useful when? Why? For what? When you're falling past the 5th-floor windows, you can say "intelligence is not useful here". It is technically true but practically not a meaningful statement: intelligence would have been very useful in not choosing the 10th-story rooftop to be trying to catch butterflies, but when at the 5th floor, intelligence is just one of many many things that is not useful. This doesn't mean it might not become useful if you survive the landing without smashing your head or spine, or that it would have been useful if properly applied to prevent the situation in the first place - or that a case can be made that it isn't useful enough to outweigh an obsession with butterflies. But there's not much to be learned from looking at the 5th-floor situation except "yep, we're falling".

If you're going to talk genetics, limiting yourself to a very brief period of history with a number of features that are highly unusual is cherrypicking data in the worst manner. It leaves you with results that don't mean much of anything, and statements that are so obvious as to be empty of significance. Yes, stupid people are outbreeding smart people. Anybody who looks at demographics knows this. So what? Does the statement have any significance when divorced from an analysis of the consequences?

Afonso Henriques said...

After reading Fjordman's comment I got the idea we're not living in the same world.

Effective success cannot be measured in IQ or sheer numbers.
But if we want, we can look at the sheer numbers.

We have 1 billion Chinese,
1 billion Indians,
1 billion Muslims...
Probabily 1 billion Africans world wide.

And, according to my calculations... 1 BILLION Europeans. (250 million in North America + 650 millions in Europe and more than 100 millions in Russia) And only in the Brazil-Argentina axis we have another 100 million...

So, in sheer numbers we're doing pretty much good. Not as good as used too, but still pretty much good. Okay, those who are Indo-European lovers or pan-Mediterraneanists may wonder how come the "European Civilisation" and "White Race" lost Central Asia, Persia, North India, Turkey and the whole of North Africa.

But to me, it is remarkable how those of European extraction - considering Europe such a small part of the inhabitable portion of the World, and such an inhospitable one, at that - were able to repell the invasion of Huns and the Yoke of the Mongols from the East, were able to keep the Arabs South of the Mediterranean and regain Hispania, or to expell the Turkish hordes from the Gates of Vienna and almost send them back across the Bosphorous.

And it is remarkable that, despite Albania-Turkey and some region from the Caucasus up to the Volga in the Southern region of Russia, the Continent of Europe seems to have as a whole kept its "purity".

Up untill recently, only the Gypsies and the Jews have been able to introduce themselves into Europe, but even they couldn't get a State of their own in Europe.

-----------------------------------

Now I'd like to say that due to this invasions I believe that the North Western Europeans have been prety much favoured, because they were able to evolve calmly. And I know that the takes on race of North Western Europeans will probabily be different from mine.

I have met even some anti racist NW Europeans who seem to believe somehow subconsciously that anything South of Northern France and East of Danzig or Vienna isn't really white. Or it is a worst kind of white.

I have nothing against this as I believe this to be some kind of Germanic sub conscient identification - which to me makes a lot of sense and is somewhat justified.

So we have to know if we're talking about "Europeans" or if we're talking about predominantly "Germanics" because if you only count Germanics, then the concept of a Europe that is just German Nations plus Italy (as it was when the Turks controlled the Balkans, the Arabs Hispania and the Slavs had no Nation of their own) seems different to this wow so non Germanic Europe. Not to mention the sheer rise in numbers of the other non Whites. In and outside predominantly Germanic countries.

(will be continued)

Afonso Henriques said...

(continuing)

The point I wanted to make is that success must be measured by some other factors. Let's take into account PIB per Capita.

There are three regions in the world which are high in GDP per Capita:

1) The North Atlantic, including even the Baltic States, Poland, Hungary, Croatia and Greece in Eastern Europe.

2) Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.

3) Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. And if we're real about it, we can surely include coastal China.

4) We have a minor region in Oceania with Australia, New Zeeland but also Singapore and Burnei...

And that's it. Those are the regions which are dominant and which have achieved a certain level of material wealth that alows life not to be a miserable hell to the majority.
We have the interesting intrusion of the Arab states which were colonised and whose revenue comes mainly from each rich soil instead of their human endeavours.

Coincidentally, these areas also seem to be the areas in which Civlilisation and Culture peaks.

As I've said, we have one billion Chinese. More than 100 hundred Japanese in Japan...

We have almost 1 Billion Europeans in the North Atlantic region...

In sheer numbers, no one is beating us, really. Specially if we take into account that Europe is so small, so fragile and so difficult to master. If we take into account that the most privilegged of the NW Europeans, the English, were able to fricking conquer and colonise to entire continents: North America and Australia.
If we consider that Russians are a majority from Moscow up to the Pacific in the Far East, not forgetting Siberia.
If we aknowladge that the Portuguese and Spaniards controlled the Seas and the World for Centuries and even created some Civilised interesing places downunder and cities like São Paulo, Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro. Areas which Europeans dominate and even if they are turned into a minority weill continue to dominate (Rio de Janeiro).

It's because of this that I find ridiculous to say that because there are 4 billion people with an average IQ below 100 it means that those 2 billions with an IQ above average are losers. It really does not make sense, even if we take into account sheer numbers.

The problem of Europe is not that we are less fit.
There are many intelligent people who go to waste because they are merely intelligent and they don't know what to do with that intelligence. As there are many beautifull women who live miserable lifes because they didn't know what to do with that beauty. As there are great athletes who never win a thing because they lack the will to invest in their innate capabilities.

Baron Bodissey said...

Rollory --

Yes, you're right that I'm limiting myself to a relatively short period of time, genetically speaking -- about 250 years or so. But that's long enough for major genetic changes to occur. Under catastrophic circumstances, species can become extinct in less time than that. And this may constitute human-generated catastrophic circumstances for homo sapiens -- it's still too early to tell.

I chose to concentrate on the last 250 years because that is when the human population exploded, growing by an order of magnitude during that time, with a doubling rate that has decreased from more than 100 years to under 50 years. This is indeed a period of great genetic success for our species, but during that time the proportion of the higher-IQ portion of the population has dropped relative to the lower-IQ portion.

I can't spot the long-term significance of all this -- I'm a lousy prognosticator -- but I can observe it.

As for the consequences -- I'd be interested in your speculations. I haven't drawn any hard and fast conclusions of my own based on what I've observed here.

mace said...

Baron.

The mechanism that drives evolution is not,in fact, 'survival of the fittest' but 'elimination of the unfit', the survivors are simply 'fit' not the 'fittest'.So there's no puzzle really, why the world is over-populated with dead-heads.Parasitism is a very successful survival strategy-as long as the host can(or will) tolerate the parasites.

Afonso Henriques said...

"The evidence tells us that within homo sapiens, stupid people have the selective advantage over smart people -- at the moment."

Baron, yes I agree.
But it really doesn't matter. Because our superior IQ gives us an enormous strenght and organisational capacities.
Thus we're like in an Island with lots of competitors and one women. We are the strongest but all the others are more attractive. The girl may prefer to reproduce with them but, in the end, if we do not get killed or severely hurt, we have all the power to eradicate the other competitors and reproduce.

Concerning the Irish, your example that was more in tune with the initial post, I have to say that it's not really like that.

The Irish spread out of Ireland. The truth is that the Irish failed in the British Isles. The Irish before the potato famine were about one third of the population of Greater Britain.
Today the inhabitants of Ireland are 10% of the inhabitants of Greater Britain.
And if we consider the protestants in Northern Ireland to be ethnically English, as I do, then it is evident that the Irish failed incredibly in the British Isles.
So, if we consider that the English are higher IQ / Quality than than the Irish and that the Irish are higher quantity in Ireland, then, despite Irish being numerically superior in Ireland, are a loser group - less quality.

I don't mean to offend Irish or English. I like both.

P.S. - You say that this was a time of great genetic success for our species? Perhaps.
But I truly fail to look at it that way. You see Baron, it's not better to have Africa overpopulated with lots of people dying from starvation.

As I see it, the age of great genetic success to out species started when we took over our predators. When we crushed our competitors. After that, we haven't done much. We haven't conquer Mars, the Moon or the Oceans.

What the hell! As they say in Geography class: Humanity has increased its numbers sharply but despite higher densities in certain areas in America, no one wants to live in the Sahara, or in Northern Scandinavia.

So, he have not acomplished much. We have come to dominate our environment (eliminate competitors). But still, we haven't step up towards new environments as a species, being that the Sahara, Northern Siberia, the Pacific Ocean or another new Planet!

So, who cares if humans are 6 billions instead of 2? We're just overpopulating the globe and creating more wars and global warming...

Afonso Henriques said...

Mace, thanks a lot for saying in 15 words what I tried to say in 1500:

"The mechanism that drives evolution is not,in fact, 'survival of the fittest' but 'elimination of the unfit', the survivors are simply 'fit' not the 'fittest'.So there's no puzzle really, why the world is over-populated with dead-heads.Parasitism is a very successful survival strategy-as long as the host can(or will) tolerate the parasites."


Interesting information, the word verification is "buraco", hole in my language.
Now that is not raising my moral...

Anonymous said...

Intelligence isn't overrated. By fitter, Darwin meant better adapted to the local environment and intelligence is one of the things that make you better adapted.
Basically, the 'survival of the fittest'is the process through which those heritable traits that make it more likely for an organism to survive and reproduce become more common in a population over successive generations. Now, if you don't fully understand genetics and social conditioning and how they blend together, you might be willing to say that intelligence is maladaptive, but as someone who is fairly good with statistics, I can tell you that correlation isn't equivalent to causation.


Baron, 250 years isn't enough to produce the king of dramatic changes in the people's way of thinking that we have now. What we are experiencing is the end of a cultural cycle. If you study the end of Rome or of Greece, they showed the same characteristics as we are showing now. I wrote about this on another post on GoV, so I won't rewrite this, but birth rates are related to that and other factors about which I talked before in different places, including on here, if I'm not mistaking. Oh, and another thing, merely 150 years ago, do you know what the birth rates of white Americans were? If I'm not wrong, they were putting even the current African birth rates to shame. Also, I would help curb the population growth(related to the ads) - cut foreign aid by 100% tomorrow.

Camelot, there are a lot of reasons. It's like one of those National Geographic documentaries about disasters - only a single factor isn't enough. It's our tax system, no fault divorce, feminism, public retirement provisions, urbanization.

jeppo, what's keeping the Japanese from dumping their surplus population on another place though and gaining more resources?

Zenster, we pay for our oil with food, mostly. When the oil will end, the food for the Middle East will end. From what I recall, Saudi Arabia said it will need foreign aid after the oil ends to make up for the lost revenue. That made me crack up. What you don't get is that the Chinese have the manufacturing capacity and they don't get paid in imports for their exports, they get paid with iOUs. They'd be better off if they stopped exporting as much and let the yuan appreciate and consume their goods themselves.

njartist, from a Darwinian sense, nothing is bad - rape, slavery, genocide, a man killing the babies of another man. Science isn't normative though, it's descriptive. You are falling into the is-ought fallacy. And Baron picked the house of Saud, but the best example for your dilemma is Genghis Khan. The man raped his way across the world and now 0.5% of the men alive today have his yDNA(this is the DNA inherited paternally and is irrelevant with who the man breeds with - for example, if I'd have a son with an African man, my son would have a 100% African yDNA; if I'd have a daughter, she'd have almost 100% of my mtDNA) and 8% of the men in Asia.

Afonso, we are doing horrible. Only 2% of the population are white women of child bearing age or younger. This means merely 150 million and in 50 years, the number will probably be under 100 million with the current demographic trends. In demography, only fertile women are relevant.

Baron Bodissey said...

RV --

You're on the ball here, but you're still not quite using the sole-criterion standard for evaluating evolutionary success. Nothing is significant beyond the transmission of alleles to a new generation. Everything else is notes to Plato, as it were.

By fitter, Darwin meant better adapted to the local environment and intelligence is one of the things that make you better adapted.

"Fitter" is simply semantic shorthand for "having genetic characteristics which have survived in competition with other genomes which have been exterminated."

Intelligence is only better-adapted if its genes are passed on and tend to predominate. Current circumstances indicate that this is not the case.

The rest of it -- analysis of causes, projection into the future, etc. -- is up for debate, but, empirically speaking, intelligence is losing out at the moment in the genetic competition.

correlation isn't equivalent to causation.

I'm not arguing causation, but only the statistical distribution of genes that confer high intelligence in humans. Their incidence is declining relative to the rest of the population. This is true, it's a fact, and it can be looked up in the relevant literature.

What we are experiencing is the end of a cultural cycle.

Yes, I agree with this. The increased doubling rate of the population cannot continue. There will be a population crash. Whether it is mild -- caused solely by declining birthrates -- or catastrophic -- dieback, famines, epidemics, the behavioral sink -- has yet to be determined.

The behavioral sink is already in place in most major urban populations of humans. So the outlook is not all that good for the "mild" version.

What I'm trying to get at here is that we need to look beyond the "Gee, aren't we white people smarter?" meme. Intelligence got us into the current mess, and it may or may not get us out of it.

And, based on the contribution of intellectuals to the last hundred years of human history -- particularly in Europe and Northeast Asia, where the smartest people reside -- I stick by my assertion: intelligence is overrated.

The Observer said...

Just as a by note, it’s probably worth mentioning that one consequence of Norwegian women waiting to give birth until they’re in their 30’s has been an unexpected increase in the amount of children being born in the country to Norwegian women.

This is due to IVF treatment being made more available and presented as an option to mature women and those who’re having problems falling pregnant the natural way.

IVF treatments often leads to women giving birth to twins and triplets, and thus having more children than the previous average, which for Norway was 1.75 or thereabouts.

I would expect that the current trend in Norway can also be found in other western countries.

Rocha said...

Since the thread it's about Kidneys i will post something interesting i found in Steve Sailer Blog:

Average IQ by state 1960:

Montana 104.9
New Hampshire 104.5
Connecticut 104.3
Idaho 104.3
Nevada 103.8
Massachusetts 103.7
Minnesota 103.2
Iowa 103.2
Virginia 103.1
Oregon 102.7
Washington 102.7
New Jersey 102.6
New York 102.5
Michigan 102.4
Kansas 102.2
Ohio 101.9
North Dakota 101.8
Illinois 101.7
Texas 101.6
Missouri 101.4
Vermont 101.3
Oklahoma 101.1
Utah 101.0
Colorado 100.8
Wyoming 100.6
Wisconsin 100.5
Maine 100.4
Nebraska 100.4
California 100.1
Pennsylvania 99.9
Hawaii 98.9
New Mexico 98.9
Delaware 98.8
Indiana 98.4
Rhode Island 98.1
Florida 97.4
Arizona 97.4
Maryland 97.2
Mississippi 96.9
Tennessee 96.6
West Virginia 95.6
Kentucky 94.2
Alabama 93.4
North Carolina 92.7
Louisiana 91.9
Georgia 91.5
Arkansas 89.1

Anonymous said...

Baron, you won't see a slow settling of the population without famines, sadly. All countries who aren't self-sufficient or having something to trade for food will implode if a bigger war breaks out or a civil war in Europe takes place. Or if somehow we will not be led by traitors.

Intelligence didn't get us in the current mess. It was the fact that we were rich and controlled the world. If by the contribution of intellectuals, you exclude science, then I agree with you, but these were just the early terms of cultural decay that started before the 1960s. It's just that before it wasn't that visible.

And you do argue causation. If you say that intelligence is maladaptive, you argue that it causes lower birth rates. And no, fitter is what I said it means - you can look it up in the scientific literature. The lower birth rates we are experiencing is actually one of the signs of cultural collapse. This has always been the case in history for civilizations that followed the pattern that we are on. My hope is that after the upcoming collapse we will adopt sanity, instead of moving deeper into insanity(which can actually happen, we can get into full blown communism or something).

Anonymous said...

Camelot,

IMO, it's deeper than women's lib and birth control, though not as deep as many people here think. The main cause of both the demographic crisis and mass immigration is absolute individualism (in the social, not economical, sphere).

In the liberal moral perspective the basic unit of the human society is the individual, and the entire liberal morality is based on and derived from the wellbeing of the individual. In the conservative moral perspective the basic unit of the human society is the family, or at least there is a balance between the importance of the individual and the importance of the family. You can see how the difference regarding this basic concept, the basic unit of human society, produces two different moral sets, with the liberal exclusively individual-based morality causing the entire current condition of the West.

In a society where the family is an important value parenthood is looked upon favorably and with respect, having children is seen as a natural and important purpose of human life and is the norm, and not having children is seen as an aberration. In an individual-based morality where only the individual is important, what could be the purpose of having children, of sacrificing so much of yourself for other individuals? In a society like that creating a family doesn't have any moral value, it's neither moral nor immoral, it's neither socially encouraged nor discouraged, both marriage and parenthood are just two other individual lifestyle choices like choosing to go to college, choosing to live in the city or in the suburbs, choosing a profession, choosing a hobby. Needless to say there are no gender roles (which I'm not sure is necessarily a bad thing, but never mind), a man and a woman are individuals, each complete in itself with no need to create a new unit together since the individual IS the basic unit, and the only unit that matters, that has moral value. A special interest or a hobby has costs in time, money, and attention and efforts diverted from other activities and goals. The hobby of having children is particularly consuming in these regards - children are a financial liability, they consume so much time and efforts they make it difficult to simultaneously develop and maintain a career, they make it hard to compete in the market, they hurt your sex life, you don't have much free time for fun and other hobbies either, so why choose this hobby? If family and children don't have value in themselves, they're just a matter of individual priorities and lifestyle.

Continued below...

Anonymous said...

Continued...

A family is a group, with blood ties too. In a society where both the individual and the family are important it is conceivable that other, larger, groups could be important too, such as your people, your country, your culture. In a society where only the individual is important, what could be the importance of any group? Quite to the contrary - considering any group important is likely to be seen as contradictory to the importance of the individual since it excludes individuals outside the group and places demands and restrictions on individuals inside the group, so if only the individual has moral value, valuing a group could be seen as immoral. In this moral framework it's immoral to restrict the immigration of individuals to your country just because they don't belong to your group, whether this group is an ethnic group, a cultural group or simply the group that currently inhabits your country.

Even when it turns out that many individual immigrants belonging to a certain group cause a lot of damage, it is immoral to restrict the immigration of individuals from this group because this is collective punishment, it hurts also individuals that don't cause damage. So the moral thing to do is to keep allowing people of this group to immigrate and then deal with the ever growing number of individuals that just happen to cause damage, as ineffective as this strategy must turn out to be in the long run.

It's the absolute value placed exclusively on the individual that is the root of the entire Western condition.

Continued below...

mace said...

rebelliousvanilla,

Please don't say the 'oil supply will end', it won't,I see this fallacy so often.When the oil supply falls,the pricing mechanism will ration oil and direct industry into other alternatives,gradually.Oil will never really run out,the question is actually what are consumers prepared to pay for it? I'm sure everyone's a fan of the market here. You will have to base your Armageddon scenario on some other catastrophe.I'm an oil crisis skeptic.
The Japanese have tried dumping their surplus population on other countries and it really didn't end well for them.

Most people who post here are so Western-centric,the internal state of Western civilization has probably little to do with its relative decline,China and India are returning to their usual positions as the dominant world economies after a short, 500 year interruption.Relax.


Rocha,

Jeez,

Where do the people in Arkansas come from?

Anonymous said...

Continued...

IMO, this situation doesn't require a drastic revolution and return to the pre-Enlightenment, and according to some even pre-Christian, age. I disagree with both the Marxists and the far-right that if we start from a certain set of values then we'll inevitably and deterministically arrive at a very specific preordained destination. I think there is some ideological space and variety in every turn and since we are conscious beings we are capable of evaluating the situation, our societies and our moral values and choose between different courses.

IMO, only a relatively minor readjustment is require. It's quite easy to see that if the current Western ultra-liberal values will be adopted by the entire humanity it will cause humanity to extinct since the entire humanity will stop reproducing at a level necessary for replacement. It's also becoming more and more evident that mass immigration is a failure. So it shouldn't be terribly difficult to argue that a society based on ultra-liberal values simply isn't working, that the family and the group are also important. And that is the only readjustment that is required. If the values of family, group, preserving your culture and country are re-introduced to society and education, alongside the importance of the individual (not instead since this will bring fascism back. What is required is a balance), then birth rate could be restored and a good basis to stop mass immigration and the fallacy of multi-culturalism. I realize that won't satisfy those here who want to return to an order where white male Christian property owners have a monopoly on power and all the rest are excluded (and then why wouldn't women, poor, minorities and gays join together to fight back, i.e. vote en mass for the Left?), but just stopping mass immigration and going back to replacement level birth rate will satisfy most of us. This moral alternative still exists in the mainstream, at least in part of mainstream conservatism, though it's shrinking away with the Leftist monopoly on education, the media and popular culture.

Even liberals are capable of reevaluating their stands and value system. Like Jonathan Haidt, a professor of psychology and a liberal that had to spend some time in a far more traditional society in India without judging it, as part of his research, and as a result came up with a new perspective on moral psychology that challenged his own liberal value system. That's his theory in a nutshell. And a short lecture on liberal and conservative morality.

Should warn you, though, that Haidt is a Jew, and as well known in this forum the goal of The Jew is to compete with and dominate the white race including the destruction of the white race through the importation of blacks, Hispanics and Muslims en mass while drugging the gullible white masses with Jew-made cheap entertainment so they won't notice, and the occasional genocide of Christian Serbs whenever possible, so you should be wary of any idea coming from The Jew.

Armance said...

Our situation is much worse than any other previous important civilization in history. The Roman Empire fell, but its cultural legacy has never ceased to exist because Europe was invaded and inhabited by Germanic and Slavic tribes, people belonging to the same Indo-European stock, the same as before the legacy of the dying Greek city states was taken over by the Romans. There was a continuum (with periods of turmoil, but no less a continuum) between ancient Greece, Rome, the Middle Ages, Renaissance and so on - so much that the Italian city states of the Renaissance and the American Founding Fathers were inspired by the philosophy and governance of the Mediterranean antiquity.

But now, the people who will replace us are Pakis, Somalis and Mestizos. This is not a change of civilizational paradigm - but the end of the world as we know it. Not transformation - but cultural and racial oblivion.

We won't have even the consolation of a Monastery of Lindisfarne. Because a group of Irish-Celtic monks can adorn, venerate and defend with their own lives the Latin version of the Bible - the language of the Romans. But a bunch of Pakis are only able to use a precious manuscript to light their waterpipes.

Anonymous said...

It's true that when judged on an individual level high IQ is not an evolutionary advantage, but it's different if you look at society as a whole.

The great advantage of the human species, aside of developed brains, is the ability to cooperate as a group, and a large group at that. In this context a well organized society is an advantage to all the individuals sharing it.

In a well organized large society there is professional differentiation. Most of the professions and required jobs in such a society not only do not require very high intelligence, but will put great stress on such individuals due to their constraints, repetition and lack of significant intellectual stimuli. In a society of Einsteins who will drive the cabs, work the fields and the machinery at factories, bake bread, deliver the post, build houses, do the cleaning and so on? In such a society, at least until everything can be done by machines (which, if at all possible, is a very long way from where we are technologically), only a minority of high-intelligence people is required. You need few people that can design a machine and a large number of people that will run these machines in factories. Thus a natural model that produces a small number of geniuses and a large number of average people is an evolutionary advantage for everyone.

Besides, geniuses tend to get too abstract and detach from reality, which without the support of a more common-sensic social structure is indeed a great disadvantage. Just look at the Western intellectual elites and their insane ideas about how to run Western society.

jeppo said...

Zenster wrote: "None of that changes how a Third World takeover of the West would be be much the same as gorillas wresting a starship's helm from its human crew."

LOL, good analogy. But in our case it's the humans *voluntarily* ceding control of the starship to the gorillas. And any human who happens to point out that the gorillas are steering the starship straight towards the sun will be mercilessly shouted down by the other humans as a reprobate species-ist.

Rebelliousvanilla asked: "jeppo, what's keeping the Japanese from dumping their surplus population on another place though and gaining more resources?"

They tried that in the 1940s with the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. It ended with two of their cities reduced to nuclear isotope-riddled craters.

Caroline Macafee said...

Evolution works on populations as well as individuals. The Western reproductive rate has gone down in response to over-population, as people (intelligent people) have consciously sacrificed their reproductive opportunities for the greater good of the group. Rather naively they have identified that group as humanity at large. Let's hope it doesn't turn out to be a tragedy of the commons.

Sean O'Brian said...

Hi Afonso,

And if we consider the protestants in Northern Ireland to be ethnically English, as I do

They're not ethnically English. They're ethnically Scottish - with the exception of the westernmost settlers of Fermanagh who are descended from English Catholics - and the word Scot just means Irish. It's true that there is a partial admixture of English and Irish ancestry but that is throughout all of Ireland. The Catholic middle-class in the south are the descendants of the Anglo-Norman invaders - and the product of their (genetic) union with the Gaels.

Overall the dividing line in Northern Ireland is more religio-cultural than racial. Protestants in NI celebrate "Britishness", not Englishness. The nearest thing to Irish Evangelical Protestantism outside of Ireland or Scotland is in Appalachia. As for NI itself, I was up to Belfast recently and the only way to describe it is "Brirish". Even on the surface the Irishness of the place sticks out a mile though at the same time it is clearly a British city as well. Very strange, I guess that's what Dublin must have been like a hundred years ago.

Afonso Henriques said...

Rebellious Vanilla,

"Afonso, we are doing horrible. Only 2% of the population are white women of child bearing age or younger. This means merely 150 million and in 50 years, the number will probably be under 100 million with the current demographic trends. In demography, only fertile women are relevant."

Well... you pretty much go directly to the point, don't you?
So let's adress what really matters!

You have to recall Rocha's saying about Warriors and Breeders.

Genetically speaking, man are dispensible. Mean are not worth much. Women, on the other hand are pretty much the key to evolutionary success.

Thus, for us the only thing that matters is White females of fertile age or younger.

I've heard that 2% and I think it's B.S. I thought that untill now because I just made a quick calculation and got to the number of 150 to 200 million European women of fertile age or younger living in white majority territories.

So, Europeans are 15%~18% of the world population and European women potentially able to reproduce are 2%~3% of the world population.

It just show how precious are European women. But it is not that shocking. You see, for every 5 Europeans there is one European women able to reproduce. It's a false question... Up to 25% of Europeans are women capable of reproducing! That's pratically half the women.

The problem is that for every 5 Europeans, those 4 who are not European women of fertile age or younger (the potential boyfriend or husbands, the older family, the fathers, mothers, grandfathers or grandmothers - or even just the friends or old bitter women who failed to reproduce [radical feminists]) are not invested in protecting that so precious European women of fertile age or younger.

And those so very important women do not really care about reproducing.

But in a way, that's your main chanting here: Men start being men and women start being women again. So I am preaching to the choir.

So, we're not really doing that bad in an evolutionary prespective.
Our failure are in that we have given up. While reading Sloter Djike today he quoted someone (Italian or French I think) who said something that expresses the reason of the problem here, which is not evolutionary:

"Europe gave up love for life."

Rebellious Vanilla, you and I here share pretty much the same opinions, and it makes no sense to say that we are the less fit because we have give up love for life.
There's nothing in our genes that cointains willingness to give up life.

(Although I have heard some very interesting theories which claim that Europeans are inherently apocalyptical)

(Still, I say that being apocalyptical and believing the world will end tomorrow does not mean suicide and to give up living)

Afonso Henriques said...

""Fitter" is simply semantic shorthand for "having genetic characteristics which have survived in competition with other genomes which have been exterminated.""

Exactly!
But higher Intelligence has not been exterminated nor is it on the verge of being exterminated.

On the contrary, higher intelligent groups can physically erradicate lower intelligent groups if and whenever they want.

Actually, we're forgetting that even in lower intelligent groups there are people who are very much intelligent.
And in the Austral Africa it seems to me that those black Africans with higher intelligence are indeed on top and are indeed capable of amassing power and procreating like hell. Or so it seems to me through my contact with people from Angola and Mozambique. Television says that in South Africa the same happens.

----------------------------

I remember one thing... Blonde hair! Let's equal blonde hair with intelligence.
Here in Lisbon blonde hair is rare. But when I was to school despite being only a minority of some 10% of the girls... the four or six highest sex symbols I recall (cheerleaders like) were overwhelimngly blonde.
And I don't even prefer blondes!

So it appears to me that in in school-girly-society blonde hair was an important genetic trait to evolutionary matters.
So important that depite being rare, a disporportionate amount of those in "powerfull positions" had it. And were "rewarded" with power.

So, blonde hair here was "important".
In real evolutionary terms worldwide, intelligence is much more important.


I hope I have written in an intelligible fashion.

Zenster said...

doom-and-gloom: The main cause of ... the demographic crisis ... is absolute individualism.

Closer examination might reveal another culprit. Modern Liberalism's over-exaltation of all things individual has encouraged an unhealthy disconnection from humanity's overarching survival instinct.

True long term survival resides in the propagating of one's own DNA. There are abundant examples of how Liberal values all too frequently defy such simple survival, acceptance of Multiculturalism and mass immigration being among them.

This misplaced exaltation of individualism has illegitimately foreshortened the accepted scope of survival down to a single lifespan. That notion is one which all previous generations of humanity would not even deem worthy of discussion. Additionally, in defining actual survival, any healthy individual would find the exclusion of genetic propagation equally unacceptable.

Much of this goes directly towards how Liberalism may well be a form of mental illness but that is grist for another essay altogether.

Placing this notion within the context of your own argument, perhaps it is better to say that; Absent any successful introduction of monozygotic cloning, lone individuals are incapable of bearing offspring. Therefore, human society's most basic sub-unit is the reproductive heterosexual couple.

As is so often the case, once all hair-splitting and qualification is done with, we are in a state of violent agreement.

Afonso Henriques said...

Sean O'brien,

thank you for bringing a more detailed picture of Northern Ireland.

"Overall the dividing line in Northern Ireland is more religio-cultural than racial. Protestants in NI celebrate "Britishness", not Englishness."

Yes, you're right. And they are not English. It is indeed complicated.
However what I wanted to focus on is that it is an ethnic conflict, which in this case derives from colonialism and transfering different populations (don't matter how similar).

Rocha said...

Mace,

Arkansas is populated by germans, americans (that how southerns defined thenselves in the census map) and blacks.

While blacks would get the medium IQ down and while i don't know the particulars i imagine that it has to do with education, a lack of good education does substract from one IQ.

Michael Servetus said...

I don't know how many people I will offend here by quoting the bible but it was too fitting to pass up. Here is an excerpt from that old book of Romans that seems fitting.The part that gets me, is the hindering the truth. How do you arrive at a point that you hinder the truth to your own detriment? Well here it is, it is an interesting process dileneated here. Notice the because of verse 19.How it stars a process begining with rejecting God and morality, at very least the traditional norms of morality and notions higher authority. It all inter4rstingly ties in with evolutionary theory as well. Consider the similarity between the worshipping of beasts and creatures and lower animals and evolution. I'm just saying. I know that to my evolutionary hominid brethren this is anathema but oh well.


For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hinder the truth in unrighteousness; 19 because that which is known of God is manifest in them; for God manifested it unto them. 20 For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without excuse: 21 because that, knowing God, they glorified him not as God, neither gave thanks; but became vain in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened. 22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, 23 and changed the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.

24 Wherefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts unto uncleanness, that their bodies should be dishonored among themselves: 25 for that they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.

26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile passions: for their women changed the natural use into that which is against nature: 27 and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another, men with men working unseemliness, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was due.

28 And even as they refused to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up unto a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting.



Isn't this what it is all about. What is not fitting. Doing what is not fitting, what just doesn't seem rational and right. We scratch our heads in wonderment at the suicidal and self hatred of this genration of perverse "elites". But isn't this the path, here described, the path that they have taken? Isn't it first their moral confusion, there wilful breaking of the moral compass and murder of their own conscience the head of all these resulting confusions of order?

The beginning of education, a good one at least, is moral. Has anyone considered moral IQ.

Michael Servetus said...

Obviously, at some point all this much-vaunted intelligence ceased being an evolutionary advantage and became a disadvantage. Every objective indicator tells us that past a certain point high IQ negatively impacts survival of the genome, and is being selected against. --Baron



"...Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools"...

Anonymous said...

doom and gloom, I agree about the individualism thing - you actually put it really well(do you mind if I post your comment on my blog?). But children wouldn't be a liability if you couldn't leech on the children of others. It's like there would be no property rights - having property would be a liability since you'd work for it and others would just take it.

About oil, I agree, I just used the saying as such because I was too lazy to explain that the shortage of oil and switch to alternative energy sources would hurt oil producers to such a degree that they won't afford food. Also, food production involves oil in terms of fuel and for the chemicals that allowed the agricultural revolution. So food will become a lot more expensive too and people will be priced out of the market.

Another thing, rejecting equality, exacerbated individualism and non-discrimination is more or less returning to the pre-French revolution values and rejecting a part of the Christian ethics. By returning to that point, I don't mean reinstating slavery and rolling back everything. It's just rejecting the values produced by that time. And minorities, most women, gays have an incentive to keep this going. They will fight it regardless.

Armance, the situation as it is won't be maintained, just like the Roman empire end situation wasn't maintained.

jeppo, it ended that way for different reasons. The British Empire, the French and Spanish did dump their excess population on other places. It's just that the Japanese didn't know how to do it properly.

fogbraider, overpopulation is a myth. As technology evolves, you can sustain a larger number of people. Also, even if you reach the population peak, the ones who aren't 'fit' so to speak will be the ones losing out.

Afonso, Europeans are 11% or so of the world population and the mean age for Europe is 45 for the whites, while 40 for white Americans and it's the same for Canada and Australia too. This means that out of those 11%, half of the people are past reproduction age, which leaves us with 5.5%. Half are men so it's 2-3% of women of reproductive age.

Oh, and I do want to have children since I've been around babies - before I didn't really care. With women it's the same as with politics. If you reach a critical mass of women who have a lot of children, the others will too. I'm thinking of having in between 3 and 6 children if I do find a place that is proper to raise a family in. Maybe after having the first one would make me change my mind though. My problem is that staying at home and cooking bore me to death and I would have to do that and in the same time find something intellectually stimulating that I can do from home like day trading stocks. :P

About blonde hair - men are attracted to fair features, this is why. I kind of won the genetic lottery here. :D

Zenster can I quote you too?

Dave said...

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the movie "Idiocracy", where an "average Joe" gets put to sleep for 500 years.

He wakes up in a decrepit world of imbeciles obsessed with sex, fart jokes, and guys getting kicked in the balls. Unable to express their feelings any other way, they swear constantly.

Can Joe reach the Time Masheen and get back to 2005 before he gets arrested for "being a dick"?

Zenster said...

rebelliousvanilla: Zenster can I quote you too?

Please send me an email via the Baron. I promise to reply.

Rocha said...
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Rocha said...

Afonsinho =D
Tudo certinho?

You touched an interesting point. While blondness it's not on itself an inteligence trait it is indeed in Latin America and where it's not so common. Men prefer blondes and Women prefer dark skin (Fair Women, Dark Men: The Forgotten Roots of Racial Prejudice ~ Peter Frost), since men in possitions of power (where IQ has more value) can choose more, they end with blondes (and fairer women when in other races) more frequently and we end with a disproportional number of blondes (or fairer in other races)in the elites (that's not only blondism, eye color and height also follow suit). All this was "eugenic" (these traits improved quality and fertility success) now are dysgenic, since they pose a hinder in fertility.
Since blond people end having less kids blondism is dissapearing together with intelligence.

Just a note, even in nordic countries (England, U.S.A, Germany, Etc) it's a known fact that blondism and eye color is recceding in whites since at least the end of the XIX century, at the time the scare helped creating the nazis and the nightmare in europe. But i think it's time to get past it and treat it as genetic impoverishment.

Just a addendum, while i'm married to a green eyed blonde and i'm father to a blue eyed blonde girl (my boy will be born in July), i do prefer brunettes... =]

no2liberals said...

This is an interesting discussion.
I am reminded of the movie Idiocracy.
The smartest man in America saves the day...at the start of the 26th century.

Afonso Henriques said...

Yes, Idiocracy, the movie...

Rocha, I mentioned the example of blondes back at school to show that a "successfull" trait can't be measured by numbers.

Picking on what Rebellious Vanilla said - I'm starting calling you just RV, I'm considering you a regular here - in the History of Portugal and Spain we have always created ways to have a surplus of women and a deficit of men, in relation to sheer numbers.
And this I think is not only eugenics as it is also pan European, well, the methods may be pan European but the drive to this is present in the whole of Humanity.

I think this is so because there are always an amount of men who would better, in the words of 50 Cent: Get rich or die trying.

We had the Reconquista which killed a lot of men and which created a permanent Miltar-Religious power: The various Christian militar Orders.
Then we had the empire and colonisation. The Portuguse Navegadores and the Spanish Conquistadores.

This meant that there was a surplus of women in Hispania. But usually they had no political power.

I actually believe that an orderly society is one that puts some of their men to death, weather it is through the military or through conquest and colonisation.

Or even through the classical dangerous professions or police forces. A society that overprotects it's men has something wrong with it, because life will not overprotect the future fathers of a family...

I think an healthy society should vallue those men who are willing to risk their lives more than those who do not.

"With women it's the same as with politics. If you reach a critical mass of women who have a lot of children, the others will too."

You couldn't possibly let the fashion pass you by, hm?
(kidding)

"My problem is that staying at home and cooking bore me to death..."

Come on! You're evil if you think that it would bore you to death in the company of your very own children. Of course it wouldn't!

Although I'm the real evil one because I don't like babies or think they're cute. They're a pain in the ass.
However small children, when they are innocent and start behaving like humans instead of spoiled aliens untill they become cynic teenagers, small children are a lot of fun.

Unknown said...
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Unknown said...

Baron, you missed one important thing. European whites, Asians, Indians (Hindus), Iranians, Semites, North Africans - I find all of them to be on roughly same level of development. Given cultural differences, only group of people with obviously lower average IQ than the rest of humanity are blacks. And at that, we are all still the same species, so one can not judge only on that basis. There are retarded whites, there are also very intelligent blacks.

My point is this: smart breed with smart, stupid breed with stupid, regardless of culture or race. I think the problem you described is real, but it is more general, and it is present even in modern, developed countries without immigration.

That said is obviously from Darwinian point of view, of course I think it is valid to talk about cultural "DNA" as well.

Just my 2 cents.

Anonymous said...

Dave, one of my teachers said that my country is already an idiocracy and that the West is really close behind us. He recommended that movie for all of us. lol

Zenster, I want to quote your comment on this op-ed and put it on my blog. You want me to email you for this? :)

Rocha, intelligence and blondeness aren't dysgenic. You are using the terms improperly. Our problems aren't genetic at all. And men in my country seem to prefer brunettes too and dark hair and eyes combined with fair skin(funny enough, even a friend had a remark about how men prefer fairer women and she's not really the scientific type who reads studies).

Afonso, it's not about the men dying. It's about the confidence in one's way and culture, which leads to not bending forward to all the claims made by others, which yes, can lead to war.

Ha, it's not about fashion. It's that most women(at least I do) have a soft spot for children, which leads us to wanting them if we are around them. Holding a baby, singing a lullaby and so on make you want to have one of your own. :P

EileenOCnnr said...

Sean O'Brian said: "They're ethnically Scottish - with the exception of the westernmost settlers of Fermanagh who are descended from English Catholics - and the word Scot just means Irish."

You're confusing the terms 'Scoti' and 'Scot'. Scoti, indeed, referred to the native Irish and is a Latin (Roman) word. Some of the Scoti (Irish) did go on to settle in western Scotland (and in that way become "Scottish"), but it was not the descendants of those people who settled in Northern Ireland during the Plantations.

The Scots (not Scoti) who settled in Northern Ireland were mostly from the Scottish Lowlands, an area of Scotland populated by a group of people who are a mix of Brythons and Angles.

Quite a different group of people altogether (not so different as a native Irish person and a native Zimbabwean, but still different), and the broad dividing line between the Protestants and Catholics in the North is, indeed, a racial one. (Of course, the two groups are each a mash-up of different populations -- like you pointed out, there are English Catholics in the North, too -- and even some Norman ones!)

EileenOCnnr said...

Alfonso Henriques said: "However what I wanted to focus on is that it [the conflict in Northern Ireland] is an ethnic conflict, which in this case derives from colonialism and transfering different populations (don't matter how similar)."

Exactly right!

PapaBear said...

In the old days, having lots of kids was an economic benefit. Children could tend crops and pull weeds from an early age. When the parents were old, the eldest son would inherit the farm or business in exchange for supporting the parents in their old age.

In the inner cities, there is an incentive to have children. Besides welfare benefits, old people in the inner cities NEED strong sons to protect them from inner city predators.

For middle-class professionals, children are perceived as a net drain. The expense of college is high, and children are not needed to support parents whose 401K investments are doing well.

EileenOCnnr said...

Dymphna said: "Survival is all according to your genes. According to your intellect, there may indeed be situations in which survival is not the be all and end all."

Replication is all according to your genes. (Just a small nit-pick there.)

And, your intellect is in the service of your genes. It is a product of your genes, so it cannot be otherwise. There's no escaping biology!

If our intellect does not serve our genes well enough, well then -- those genes will be selected out of the gene pool. And bye-bye intellect.

Nice discussion, Baron! You are right -- IQ is not guaranteed to be the be all and end all when it comes to the ultimate survival of the fittest. The smartest of us (humans) may well be selected out. (Although that will, I don't doubt, result in doom & gloom for large parts of the rest of humanity as several have already pointed out here.)

Anonymous said...

aku, the Northern European countries have been built by Europeans in large part. Hell, I'm Romanian and my country has a HDI bigger by 100 or more than the developed countries of Northern Africa. I mean, sure, they're not abysmal, like Sub Saharian Africa and they are able to maintain a civilization. Actually, all those groups aren't as countries founded and built by European descent people. Out of those groups, besides Ashkenazi Jews and NE Asians... I won't really go into it. Also, IQs can be high and bifurcated, for example. Intelligence is a multigenic trait. You also miss outbreeding depression, the regression of IQ to the mean of the group and so on.

PapaBear, those people will have a rude awakening when their 401Ks will be worthless since most people are invested in crap. Funny how all these bad effects of having a kid are created by the government.

Baron Bodissey said...

aku --

I did not intend to leave any group out -- not Hindus, not Persians, not Armenians. Nor black people, actually -- there are plenty of brilliant black people, even if the mean IQ of Africans is lower than other groups.

The fact is that people with high IQs have fewer children than people with low IQs, and this is true now across all races and cultures. Check the statistics and see if I'm right.

Unless I miss my guess, it's correlated with industrialization, and even more closely correlated with socialism.

Baron Bodissey said...

Re: Idiocracy --

I haven't seen the movie, but I can recommend a science fiction novella (or maybe a short novel, not sure) on approximately the same topic. It's called "The Marching Morons", and was written by Frederick Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth back in the '50s. It describes a dystopian future in which a tiny cadre of intelligent people slave 24 hours a day behind the scenes to maintain the technology to keep many millions of morons alive.

It has a very politically incorrect ending.

Unknown said...

Baron, I think this is your best post. Do I get an inkling that you may think the battle GOV is fighting is already lost? I believe it is, but I still enjoy reading your blog.

One other thing that I don't believe anyone has mentioned is that the future may be oscillatory with regards to intelligence. Disgenics produces a world where intelligence is again a reproductive advantage. Eventually, there are enough intelligent people to produce a world where the unintelligent out breed them and the cycle repeats.

Anonymous said...

Zenster,

"Violent agreement" seems appropriate considering what "peace process" means these days.

"Closer examination might reveal another culprit. Modern Liberalism's over-exaltation of all things individual has encouraged an unhealthy disconnection from humanity's overarching survival instinct." "This misplaced exaltation of individualism has illegitimately foreshortened the accepted scope of survival down to a single lifespan."

It's not another culprit, it's another outcome of the same culprit. The absolutism and exclusivity of this single principle of the individual, while negating all other principles rather than balancing it against other important principles, is a form of extremism responsible for many ills, a list too long to summarize in a couple of blog comments and deserving serious research.

For instance, I think it's also a major cause of the clinical depression epidemic in Western countries.

Unknown said...

rebelliousvanilla, true, there are observable differences, but I did say roughly, and also, take the timescale into account - modernity is rather recent development, in fact too recent to jump into conclusions. Also, what about cultural differences, some civilizations in comparison to the West are less creative but more stable. West is creative and dynamic but also instable, often insane and self destructive. Take the Chinese for example, it seems that they are, if less creative, in fact more intelligent than Europeans. Or India - true, lately they have terribly deteriorated - but their past achievements are nothing short of breathtaking.

On the other hand, in comparison to the others, Sub-Saharan African Black societies show lack of long-term planing abilities.

Baron, I do not need to check the stats. And I guess your guess is right. I think that actually may be the human predicament, the rules of the game. Something like a negative feedback loop.

Anonymous said...

RV,

You can use my comment on your blog if you want to.

"Rejecting equality, exacerbated individualism and non-discrimination is more or less returning to the pre-French revolution values and rejecting a part of the Christian ethics."

Here's where we disagree. I don't reject equality, I reject certain interpretations of it.

For instance, I don't reject equal opportunity and free education for all (basic education - primary school and high school. High education should depend on ability). I think social mobility is good for both the individual and society. In a society with rigid social classes based on hereditary principle rather than merit, if at some point the elite degenerates it will take the entire society with it. Equal opportunity and adequate education can select talented individuals from the lower classes or the poor and elevate them to the elites. However, I reject the principle of equal outcome since it requires a dictatorship with vast regulatory powers to impose such an improbable order on the market and on society, and because it simply doesn't work for various reasons.

I reject the principle of equality in immigration laws, but not the principle of equality between existing citizens of the country. I support moderate nationalism. For me the purpose of nationalism is the self determination, independence and sovereignity of a group that considers itself and is recognized as a People. Nationalism is anti-imperialistic and allows a People to have a great degree of control over its own fate rather than live under the yoke of others. For that purpose a People needs a territory. Mass immigration of people from other groups into this territory will cancel the ability of that People to govern itself, create its own laws and direct its own fate. However, a majority of said People is enough to acheive this purpose even if there are minorities of people from other groups. These minorities should have equal rights, except in regards to immigration into the country (for instance, unlimited requests for family reunions that in large numbers constitute mass immigration).

The situation is particularly absurd and ironic when it comes to Muslim mass immigration since they are not some small stateless People like the Roma, but 1.3 billion people with huge territories, at least 57 states and fighting to get some more (in Nigeria, for instance). Lebanon is the only country in the Middle East where Christians were a majority and could rule themselves rather than live under the Islamic yoke. Now it has a Muslim majority, and thanks to birth rate difference the Christians will become progressively marginalized. I don't see a reason why Muslims should get the opportunity to become a majority also in the Netherlands, Norway, France and the UK. Enough is enough. How many countries do they need? Other people need some space too.

I also don't reject individualism and the importance of the individual, but just the current extremist view of it and the thoughtless and reckless negation of all other principles.

So I'm not in favor of repealing the Enlithenment, and don't agree that by accepting its values we are doomed to take them to their utmost expression and absolute application. I'm for finding a balance between different necessary and desirable values. And in the end living in a healthy, sustainable, free, but cohesive society benefits the individual as well. When you need a Ministry for Social Cohesion to try and ease the constant social frictions, something isn't working.

Michael Servetus said...

It seems to me that according to this evolutionary logic everyone who is dominated by another has a lower IQ. Which is hard to believe but it does seem to follow.
This would apply to all those who copnsider themselves a part of the race with higher IQ's for this reason.
So most of us here I would venture to say, cold not even do a mechanics work on a automobile and the fact that others of our shared race, whihc is happily determined by genes and skin color, not by IQ itself. Those of high IQ not being considered one separate race to themseves based on IQ purely. For obvioulsy there are the lower whites and the many who are the "economic serfs" of the other higher whites who actually have suoper high IQ, thus low IQ becomes relative.
How many here have invented any of the latest technology or been aprt of that process, I dare say very few.
If I think about this, then it seems , that although it can be hypothetically argued that many individuals belonging to the higher IQ races -- which is claimed to be evidenced by techonolgy-- never actualise their latent ability because they develop in different ways and because of diminished need or exposure, resulting in lower standing. The same can be argued about other civilations and races to a large extent.
If many, in fact most people belongin to these races are ruled and managed by others, who have outwitted them, outsmarted them and gained mastery in many respects over their destiny, then how can itr be argued that they are any different than "savages or tribes people" of thirld world countrues, when most of us are in one way or another, consumers and not always producers. In our own enviroment being simple hunter gatherers and cavedwellers, not the dominant and superiror.

I too consider myself intellectual and smart but there are a great many things I do not know and have no passion to know. But one thing I do know is that liberalism is a mental disorder.

Zenster said...

Baron Bodissey: It's called "The Marching Morons", and was written by Frederick Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth back in the '50s.

Well tie me to a hog and throw me in the mud! I thought that I had read all of the collaborations by Kornbluth and Pohl. Their output was some of the funniest and most topical stuff of their time. During the golden age of Fantasy & Sci-Fi cover art, Ballantine Books published "Search the Sky", "Gladiator at Law", "The Wonder Effect", "Wolfbane" and "The Space Merchants".

By some accounts, "The Space Merchants" is the most translated science fiction story in the entire genre's history. It is also a deeply cynical and, in some ways, predictive novel of an ageist future society completely dominated by the most rapacious commercial practices. Think "1984" as written by Madison Avenue in its heyday.

I'll have to find a copy of "The Marching Morons". It's sure to be a gem.

rebelliousvanilla, I'm obliged to presume that you wish to excerpt my second comment in this thread. If that is the case, please consider linking it to my GoV essay, "Blood for Water". That work provides some background for the observations made in my comment.

doom-and-gloom: For instance, I think it's also a major cause of the clinical depression epidemic in Western countries.

I would certainly concur. The "marooning" or "atomizing" effect of having over-emphasized individualism has led to a fundamental disconnect between ordinary people and both their families and society at large. While mobility has played a role in this, urban anonymity is much more to blame.

People continue to opt for the psychological convenience of that anonymity even as it erodes their own mental health. One merely need examine how few genuine friends that most people have to understand this. The inability that most people have with respect to entertaining guests and providing the most basic levels of hospitality in their home are additional symptoms of this same malaise.

Michael Servetus said...

The absolutism and exclusivity of this single principle of the individual, while negating all other principles rather than balancing it against other important principles, is a form of extremism responsible for many ills, a list too long to summarize in a couple of blog comments and deserving serious research.
----doom and gloom

There you go. I agree enthusiastically or violently.

Michael Servetus said...

Someone mentioned the movie "Idiocracy" , which is about a man of average IQ who becomes the smartest man on the planet. But of greater interest is selkections from Aristotle works on Politics which deals with issues of slavery and human nature.

Rocha said...

rebelliousvanilla,

I'll star calling you RV too like my Lusitan friend. I do not think that blondism and intelligence ARE dysgenic, i think that they BECOME dysgenic in the XIX century or a little before. Why it become dysgenic? Because somewhere in time these traits become to hinder instead of improve chance of reproducing. Since dysgenic is something that lower genetic value or the ability to propagate the term is not misplaced. If people with these genes start to reproducing again the trait would become eugenic.

Look, Peter Frost states men prefer ligh skin, blondism almost always comes with it, blondes if they are sufficient rare men will turn just to skin color (then Asian men turn to light skinned women, even in subsaharan africa blacks will given the choice choose lighter skinned black women), if Romenia is as predominatly brunette as i think it is you got your answer.

Intelligence is dysgenic because it produces (now) less offspring (below replacing), blondism is dysgenic because it's a beauty female trait (have you noted that men are less likely to be blonde?)
and beauty traits makes you less fertile (since a higher proportion of blondes end in niches that are even less fertile).

Sad but true.

Anonymous said...

doom and gloom, equal opportunity isn't equality. And again, all these work within a different framework, they don't if they're made the paradigm of a society. All these things have a purpose and that is maximizing that society's values. I agree though, people should be promoted based on merit, I wasn't implying that or that the law should apply only to some.

There's no such thing as free education. It's funny that you pointed out my oil fallacy and you use this one. You mean education provided by the state with the money it extorted from taxpayers.

Also, you can't support the equality in between the citizens of a country(especially if citizenship is awarded on a civic basis) and not support equality in immigration because if you do the former, you have no logical basis to reject the second. Social liberalism is merely the child of the classical one. The classic liberalism(of which I am a fan, more or less) can work only within a different framework, but the liberal one. Our current situation wasn't concoted by some evil scientist in a lab. On the other hand, I don't see why minorities wouldn't have equal civil rights - if they actually serve the interests of the majority, the majority would have little reason to not want them there.

Same with individualism. It's a great concept as long as it works within the framework of another principle. The problem is that if you accept the principles as UNIVERSAL TRUTHS, then you have the problem. Applying the principles due to their benefits is a completely different cup of cake.

Rocha, something is dysgenic if it's a defective gene, not if the people with that gene reproduce less. Something becomes dysgenic if their environment changes and it becomes a disadvantageous trait. Why is being blonde and intelligent today a disadvantage? They're actually both advantageous non-defective traits. Things don't become dysgenic and eugenic based on how people reproduce. For example, the reproductive patterns of humans now are dysgenic since desired traits like intelligence will be less common in the future due to intelligent people having less offspring. This doesn't make intelligence dysgenic. You are using the terms improperly. :) About blondeness, considering men usually prefer blondes, blondeness is an eugenic trait. And what I meant to say is that men in my country PREFER brunettes OVER blondes. I don't know why, I just noticed this. I also saw some studies did that men prefer brunettes as life partners, I just didn't care that much to perform some research on my own and read a lot of studies.

Baron Bodissey said...

Dingo --

Thank you.

Yes, I believe the incidence of human intelligence may well be oscillatory.

Intelligent people have created a hothouse environment which is extraordinarily effective at breeding and maintaining stupid people. For some reason, they have also developed a form of collective insanity which makes them believe that this is all to the good, but that they are worthless and should stop breeding themselves.

This madness is of necessity self-limiting, and will pass, probably within a generation.

Unfortunately, when the system that maintains the rest of the population in careless ease ceases to function -- which most likely will occur when the welfare state collapses -- the majority of people will suddenly find themselves in an environment in which they are manifestly "unfit".

The consequences after that are dreadful to contemplate. But one of the results will be an increase in the proportion of high-IQ people relative to the total population.

Rocha said...

RV,

Well i still stands by my definition and you for yours lets not tire our fingers with it.

"Something becomes dysgenic if their environment changes and it becomes a disadvantageous trait."

That's just what happened in the west.

"Why is being blonde and intelligent today a disadvantage?"

Intelligence is dysgenic because populations with it produces (now) less offspring (below replacing), blondism is dysgenic because it's a beauty female trait (have you noted that men are less likely to be blonde?) and beauty traits in general makes you less likely to be fertile (since a higher proportion of blondes end in niches that are even less fertile).

They're actually both advantageous non-defective traits.

YES THEY ARE! =D

"Things don't become dysgenic and eugenic based on how people reproduce."

I'll use your words to state what i think.

"For example, the reproductive patterns of humans now are dysgenic since desired traits like intelligence will be less common in the future due to intelligent people having less offspring."

So if these people genes will more likely dissapear because of one trait (intelligence) that trait is now defective and being defective it is dysgenic.

"About blondeness, considering men usually prefer blondes, blondeness is an eugenic trait."

Men prefer blondes because blondism (and light skin) mimic youth and youth in females is related to fertility.

"And what I meant to say is that men in my country PREFER brunettes OVER blondes. I don't know why, I just noticed this."

That's common if blondism is rare, blondism being too "expensive" men just turn to light skinned brunettes, elite men though will still get blondes...
That's according to Peter Frost (again Fair Women, Dark Men: The Forgotten Roots of Racial Prejudice)

Rocha said...

How wonderfull is internet!

The guy Peter Frost has a blog
http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/

And what i find there of most interesting?

Africans are now migrating in substantial numbers to CHINA!
Since africans have lower IQ (Please people i'm not stating that individual blacks aren't smart i know several) it fits here...

Anonymous said...

Rocha, I'm using the scientific definition though and you fail to understand what eugenic and dysgenic mean. I give up though, I'm not going to argue science anymore since it bores me to death. Just look the terms up along with the difference in between correlation and causation.

I saw the Africans moving to China thing. What's funny is that they had this anti-racism protest and the Chinese crushed it with the police. I guess some nations on Earth are sane.

laine said...

"IVF treatments often leads to women giving birth to twins and triplets, and thus having more children than the previous average, which for Norway was 1.75 or thereabouts.

I would expect that the current trend in Norway can also be found in other western countries."

This is not a good solution as multiple births especially to older mothers run a much higher risk of damage to the babies even with very expensive care that is another drain on the commonweal. Those babies who survive whether disabled or miraculously not are known as "million dollar babies", a far cry from women giving birth to healthy babies in the field and continuing to plow.

In addition, non-white women fresh off the boat have exactly the same rights to assisted reproduction should they need it, paid for in all Western countries except the USA, soon to change with Obamacare so it's a wash.

Anonymous said...

RV,

I wasn't the one making the point about the oil :-)

As for the rest of your points, I support recognizing a plurality of principles and values that are necessary or desirable (of course, we can ask desirable for whom and for what reason, but I'm just trying to outline the general idea right now), and since some of them conflict with each other what I would look for is a balance between them rather than denying one in favor of the other.

This is why I can accept equality of the minority citizens within a country while rejecting equality in immigration without being inconsistent. I consider the importance of the individual a desirable value. On the other hand, I consider national self determination important as well (including, of course, to the individuals within this group that wants to be independent). It's easy, for instance, to demonstrate how with the lack of national self determination, for instance in a world under a global government, the world will actually be dominated by the most populated civilizations and small Peoples will become defenseless and threatened minorities living always at the mercy and good will, or lack thereof, of the world's majorities. Jewish, Roma, Kurdish, Amazigh (Berber), Assyrian histories should serve as prime examples for the results of lack of national independence. The same can happen to any other small People like the Swedes, the Dutch, the Japanese if they'll lose their countries, no one is immune. So what I'm looking for is a balance between the importance of the individual and his/her wellbeing, and the importance of the group and its survival, independence and self government as a group with distinct identity and cultural characteristics - neither of these values is absolute and neither cancels the other, but a compromise should be found where both are least harmed. Equality within the state and inequality in immigration into the state is such a compromise.

If the individual is the only principle or is exalted above all in a way that cancels any conflicting value, then you would be right - then accepting the principle of equality of all human beings almost inevitably leads to both equality within the state and equality in immigration into the state. However, if we recognize that the individual doesn't exist in a vacuum, but is also a part of a group, and that it's important that a group would be able to govern itself and not be completely subjected to the power of larger or stronger groups which leads to oppression and often to extinction, then this second principle puts a limit to the absolute application of the first principle without creating inconsistencies. It's a compromise, not an inconsistency.

The same method can be applied to other conflicting values - balance rather than making one absolute at the expence of the other.

Anonymous said...

doom and gloom, sorry, for some reason I thought it was you who said the oil thing and I was too lazy to double check. :)

And if we follow your principles, Pakistanis in the UK have the right to ask to form a different country out of British territory. The way I see it, it's about if it benefits the ethnic people who have that territory and I say this as someone who wants to emigrate. A while back, I would have agreed with you, but it's common sensical to me now that if I want to move to someone's country I'm the one that has to sacrifice, not them. For example, I want to move to Iceland because it seems like a country with a young nation that isn't affected by mass immigration and it's outside the EU(at least for now). I'd have no legitimacy in making judgements about how they should run their things at their expense to accomodate me. I'd be a guest in their country. the only reason why I criticize things about other countries is when they do things against the founding principles of their country(for example, in the US) and what their founders were about or if what they do doesn't benefit them. For example, I find circumcision to be mutilation and that it should be banned - I won't move to Israel and start campaigning for it because it's not in my country. But in the same way, I can want it banned in my country and if people are offended by it, it's not my concern nor it should be. In the same way, I could care the less about what Muslims do in Saudi Arabia.

So things should be done in the way in which it benefits the native population - which is the way it was until the 20th century. Obviously, I mean this in a sane way, not in the let's kill all the minorities way. :P If it doesn't benefit the ethnic British to have me immigrate there, I find it common sensical if they want to throw me out, especially since most people have their own countries. The thing is that more or less equal rights benefit a society for different reasons that I won't get into since it's a whole theory. But granting equal rights to people who displace you or people who are hostile towards you is plain idiotic. Same with charity and altruism - they're good when it benefits your group, they're bad when it benefits a hostile group. I don't know how to explain it exactly right now so I hope you understand what I'm trying to say.

wildiris said...

Baron. Hope I’m not too late to this thread. This discussion ties back to that old thread on The Enemy Within. I’m not going to assert that I have “the” answer, but I have found a way to look at this question that not only makes sense out of it all, but also makes a whole lot of other puzzle pieces fall into place in questions not seemingly related to the question of IQ.

Try to look at the question from the point of view of AI, memes and collective consciousness. It is the memes that are important. Our bodies are just carriers for the memes and the vehicles by which they reproduce themselves. From the pov of the memes, individuals are expendable. So trying to use the survivability of individual humans as a metric of the worth of IQ is not an approach that’s going to yield any sensible conclusions.

First, the most useful definition of IQ I’ve found is that it is a measure of how many moves ahead in the game you can play. Minds that are low on the IQ spectrum, while not susceptible to the more toxic memes, are not going to survive well and will be culled via Darwinian selection. But minds that are high on the IQ spectrum tend also to be the ones most susceptible to becoming carriers for the most toxic memes.

The most powerful and useful memes are those that are creative in nature. The most toxic memes are those that are parasitic in nature. In the western world today, it is the parasitic memes that are in ascendancy, and the minds that prove to be the most suitable carriers for these memes are often the higher IQ’ed among us.

Ironically, it is the more spiritual or religious individuals in our society that are most attuned to what is going on and correctly see the conflict with Islam as a spiritual battle, i.e. the creative vs. the parasitic.

Afonso Henriques said...

Interesting last comment...

Michael Servetus said...

@wildris
Interestingly high iq doesn't exempt you from susceptibility to bad memes. We see now that a specific form of intelligence is very open to bad memes, which makes it stupidity. so high iq is not the end all be all. It has its own susceptibilty factor and now is become like evil genius. This puts new value in simple good. I think Pascal said the heart has its reasons that the minds knows not .
Religion requires the identification of and and aggressive rejection of bad memes, it also demands repentance and conversion to a preset unchanging form of men's truths, which it seems serve as a form of defense.
What distinguishes religious people is a passion and aggresiveness that are healthy, but not just any religious impulse works for our ends. Today's liberalism exhibits a religious tenacity which resists as well but it resists that which is in my view the truth and good.
It is a specific good that it needs yet rejects specificity.

Michael Servetus said...

In my comment above where it reads men's truth, it should be meme truth

Rocha said...

Baron,

About the IQ development in the last thousands of year read:

http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2009/11/does-civilization-select-against.html

wildiris said...

I am not an apostle of the memes concept. On the contrary, I consider myself a devout Christian of the subspecies, Confessional Lutheran. But if you think in terms of memes and collective consciousness, it is amazing how many disparate aspects of human behavior end up falling out with simple explanations.

One thing I find intriguing is that for every concept that I find in memes, there seems to be a corresponding spiritual one in the Christian faith. There definitely is something going on here. A secular person will speak of the culture wars. A religious person will speak in terms of good versus evil. Both of these ways of thinking are equivalent to seeing things in terms of a battle of two incompatible memes.

Memes are one of those things like the Anthropic Principle, when you think about them and what they imply, they just make you stop and go, hmmm?

I’m not going to say that the conflict between the West and Islam is a spiritual war, but I can say that the kind of abstract thinking that a Christian uses to understand the spiritual world is the same kind of abstract thinking that one needs to be able to do in order to see that the cultural conflict between the West and Islam is something that is being played out on a much larger “cosmic” level than just the day-to-day physical world we live in.

In Hoc Signo Vinces† said...

In hoc signo vinces

@wildiris

mneme sensitivity is more important than IQ.

wildiris said...

4Symbols, if that was a question and it was in reference to the health and material well being of a community or society, then my answer would be yes. But it depends on what one means by sensitivity.

A community of high IQ'ed individuals who's thought patterns have been captured by self destructive memes will go down in flames. While a community of average IQ'ed individuals, which has a religious outlook that reinforces the creative memes while blocking the parasitic memes, will be grow and prosper.

Baron Bodissey said...

wildiris --

I have no argument with what you're saying. In fact, my whole point is to try to open up the debate to include points similar to yours.

I was trying to help us get beyond the self-congratulatory "we white people are so smart: look at our IQ -- and IQ is heritable!"

Using the same arguments as the population geneticists, I demonstrated that high IQ, as a heritable characteristic, is manifestly detrimental to the evolutionary prospects of those who carry it -- but speaking from a purely genetic standpoint.

There is plenty of evidence that most important evolutionary changes are now occuring in the meme-space -- the world of ideas -- rather than in the genome.

However, if we continue on our present course, we will do so much damage to both our physical and social environments that genetic evolution will likely return to the fore. At that point, stupidity (and other harmful genetic conditions) will be culled out once again.

As Yorkshire Miner likes to say: we live in interesting times.

Anonymous said...

Baron, IQ doesn't mean that you are reasonable or smarter. It means that you have a higher capacity to use reason. Obviously if you have improper tools due to your education or you're lazy, you will not be smarter than someone with an inferior IQ that worked their behind off to grasp certain things. So yes, just patting on our back that we are intelligent is moronic to say the best. We need to also put that to good use.

But you make the statistical mistake of confusing correlation with causation. Basically, in order for your theory to be true, you'd have to prove that high IQ people have less children due to the high IQ being a maladaptive trait, not just show the correlation. For example, just stating that people in countries with bigger retirement provisions have less kids is irrelevant unless you can show causation, not just correlation. Basically, all this is a fallacious argument. I agree that high IQ is correlated with lower birth rates, but it's not the IQ itself that causes them. For example, just because the number of firemen correlated with the size of the fire, it doesn't mean that the firemen cause the fire to get bigger, which is basically the mistake I think you are making.

Also, ideas are a product of ones genome. Still, the course we are on is merely a cultural decline, just like it happened before. The biggest problem related to intelligence and why it's not selected for is the fact that governments force intelligent people to share the products of their intelligent with other people who just free ride. If society would redistribute beauty, then the same effect would happen related to beauty. But all this will come to an end, I think.

Baron Bodissey said...

RV --

You're revisiting arguments we had here earlier, but I'll reiterate what I said before. I'm not confusing correlation with causation because, I am not suggesting causes.

I simply observe that the incidence of high-IQ genes relative to the total human population is declining. Therefore, based on the definition of the terms involved and the commonly accepted premises of population genetics, high-IQ genes are being selected against, and are therefore an adaptive disadvantage.

This is based solely on premises, and the definition of terms. I cite no particular cause. I merely observe what is occurring.

Consider the indigenous Tasmanians. They are no more. They died out. Their genes are no longer in the human gene pool.

Therefore the Tasmanian genome represented traits thar were not adaptive. The Tasmanians were not among the "fittest". They did not survive.

That description does not involve a discussion of causes, just an application of commonly accepted terminology.

Likewise with my discussion of high IQ.

Aliens from Mars could be dusting all the smart people with stupid powder, for all I know.

Anonymous said...

Baron, you are not using the accepted premises of population genetics, this was my whole point. For a trait to be selected for or against it must CAUSE, not merely CORRELATE with a reproductive advantage or disadvantage(you can look it up if you don't believe me, but I wanted to go to med school when I studied genetics in highschool so I'm sure I am right). For example, you can make show causation in why the moths in the UK became darker or why salamanders(I think that's how they're called in English) changed colours based on natural selection for traits related to the geographic environment they live in when they were separated.

Baron Bodissey said...

Rebellious one --

I most certainly am using the accepted premises of population genetics. However, I am confining myself to statistical descriptions, and not analysis of causes.

Here I will assert only three things: a principle, a deduction based on that principle, and an explanation of how data are obtained in order to reach a deductive conclusion.

#1. The Principle (a definition): If a genetically-determined characteristic in a population declines or disappears, then it has is said to have been "selected against".

#2. First Deduction: Such a characteristic is deduced to have conferred a survival disadvantage to the species that possessed or possesses it, based solely on the evidence of its decline or disappearance.

#3. Method of Determination: The above is determined by statistical observation of the genetic material of a population during a long enough period to observe the genetic changes that occur; i.e. that the trait existed, and that its incidence then decreased or disappeared during the period for which data were gathered.

If you don't agree with the above three statements, then there's no point in our arguing any further, becuase it means we inhabit different universes with different premises, as far as the statistical basis of natural selection is concerned.

What I said above applies to trees, bacteria, moths, or human beings -- anything that has DNA and reproduces itself is covered by these descriptions.

I am defining my terms and establishing my premises and methods here, and then making one single deduction.

I make no declarations about causes or anything else. I do not claim anything about why this happened, or how the incidence of the characteristic might change in the future.

Anonymous said...

Baron, in science, usually correlation is more or less irrelevant. I will give you an absurd example. We have the species of aliens called Daniellites(since I discovered them, obviously). Now, this species has two sub groups, one is green skinned and one is red skinned and the green skinned and they are inhabiting on a red planet. The green skinned one is smarter and has other phenotypical traits that make him a better hunter, which leads to the green Daniellite having higher fertility rates. Now, from another planet a species of Lululites migrate to the red planet of the Daniellites and since the red Daniellites have a suitable camouflage, the green Daniellites get completely distroyed by the Lululites. Now, if we follow your theory, we can say that being a smarter and better hunter alien led to the destruction of the green Daniellites since the correlation is there, even though the maladaptive trait was their colour and this was the thing that lead to their extinction. Or let's suppose they ate different foods and the other species ate all the food of the green ones. Was their higher intelligence who was malapdative or their digestive system? Correlation is irrelevant.

For example, your theory would have ground if people preferred to mate with retards or if higher intelligence CAUSED lower fertility rates or higher mortality rates and so on.

Baron Bodissey said...

RV --

I'll concede that genetic drift can be responsible for a change in the observed incidence of a trait -- that is, that the incidence of a trait that is neither maladaptive nor beneficial can vary within a population due to factors that have nothing to do with natural selection.

But a relatively large change in incidence over a relatively short period of time would not suggest genetic drift, but would instead make a geneticist suspect a selective pressure against the trait, and cause him to look for the environmental factors that mitigate against the survival of individuals with the trait.

Anonymous said...

Baron, I wasn't talking about genetic drift. The point is that if a trait is maladaptive, it CAUSES lower reproduction rates in the people who exhibit it and it's sexually selected against. It's not the other way around or you get to my alien example.

And I agree with the 2nd part of your post, but suspicision doesn't do much in science - he has to prove that the certain trait causes lower fitness. For example, look at the moth. Due to the environment, the darker coloured one had a camouflage advantage so they selected against the fairer moths(long story short). Them being fair CAUSED the ordeal.

Also, people are more complex due to cultural things too and because we don't simply act purely on instinct.

Baron Bodissey said...

RV --

OK, finally something we can agree on:

Also, people are more complex due to cultural things too and because we don't simply act purely on instinct.

This is my main point. I didn't come out and state it directly because I prefer people to think about the implications of what I say.

My goal is to direct discussion away from a preoccupation with genetically-based intelligence, by demonstrating that such a characteristic (as represented within human DNA) is manifestly no longer being selected for.

And that is precisely because evolutionary pressures are now more noticeable in the larger cultural information-space, as opposed to the DNA information-space.

With that, I hope we can wrap this discussion up, because if I haven't made my point clear by now, I probably never will.