Category Archives: HBD

The Argentine Question

Posted on by

The subtext to the improbable election of Javier Milei revolves around a question that has haunted Argentina for generations. Why is this country such a mess? For as long as anyone can recall, Argentina has been synonymous with South American disfunction, to the point where the name of the country is often used as an epithet to criticize first world countries. There was even a Broadway play based on the life of a famous Argentine lunatic named Eva Perón.

The first place to start is the ruling elite. If you do an image search of “Argentine leaders” you get a collection of images that would answers the same question if you replaced Argentina with Italy or Spain. Like most South American countries, the ruling elite looks like the colonial elite that founded these countries. In some of these countries, they have been ruled by a small set of families since the 16th century when their ancestors arrived from Spain.

In other words, you do not see the Venezuela problem. In some of the more dysfunctional countries in the region, you have indigenous leaders rising up to claim some power, which always ends in disaster. They tend to be Marxists, but the illiterate sort that just understand the theft and violence parts. Venezuela is a rich country in terms of natural resources and location, but the smart fraction was chased off long ago by indigenous lunatics, so it is a basket case.

On the surface, Argentina does not have this problem. The most notorious ruler of the place was the Latin fascist Juan Perón. Anyone who has been around international organizations like the IMF or World Bank knows the sort. Perón was a populist and demagogue, but he was also highly educated and sophisticated. His politics were a populist suit her wore to garner support, but he was a man of the European elite that has run the country since forever.

The point is the ruling class of Argentina is not a lot different from the ruling elites you see in better functioning countries. Perón is typical of the ruling class in that his family tree has Spanish, French and English ancestry. Go through the long list of Argentine rulers and all of them trace their roots to the old country. You never see any references to Africans or Amerindian ancestry. The rulers always look like the sort of people who spend their career at places like the UN or now the EU.

In other words, Argentina is a country rich in natural resources, has a prime location on global trade routes and has an educated and sophisticated ruling class. On paper, it should be one of the more prosperous countries in the New World. Instead, it has been defined by government incompetence, corruption, and some of the most outlandishly terrible economic policies on the planet. Argentina has become synonymous with every failed economic policy to come out of the academy.

One clue as to why Argentina is a mess is the people. The average IQ of the population is 87 according to the most recent data. People will quibble about this score, but it is best to think of these numbers comparatively. Japan clocks in at 106, so that means the Japanese are more than a full standard deviation smarter than Argentines. Even if the measures themselves are not precise, which is surely the case, the margin of error will be similar for every country.

To give this gap some clarity, imagine a population full of people who could test into law school or business school. Assume they have not actually attended college or graduate school, but their test scores indicate they could do it. Now take a population of high school dropouts whose test scores indicate they are going to struggle getting their GED while in prison. That sounds a bit extreme, but the typical prisoner in the United States is going to have an IQ similar to the typical Argentine.

Now, take that collection of smart people and make them the talented two percent of the population and the collection of dumb guys is the population. For starters, the average IQ of the population will not change much. The average IQ of the population jumps about one point with this new smart fraction. Make it the talented ten percent and the average IQ jumps three points. In other words, in our experiment, that smart fraction is not going to change things very much.

The way to think of every human organization is to imagine a man carrying a sack full of ro9cks up an incline. The steeper the incline, the slower his pace. The more rocks in the sack, the slower the pace. The smaller the man, the slower the pace. The man is the smart fraction, while the sack in society. The incline will be the natural resources available to that society. The greater the resources, the softer the incline, while fewer resources gets a steeper incline.

Japan is a big man with a small sack, but facing a relatively steep incline due to Japan being an island nation. Even so, Japan is a rich and modern place due to the large smart fraction and the relatively small dumb fraction. On the other hand, Somalia is a tiny man dragging a boulder up a cliff wall. The smart fraction, such as it was, now lives in Minnesota leaving the rest to make what they can from very little. No amount of clever political theory is fixing Somalia.

This explains why Argentina remains an ungovernable mess. Of course, the good times in the country have often been under non-democratic rule. When you combine democracy with a low-IQ voting base, the result is populist demagogues who promise to use their power to overcome nature. The pattern in Argentina is authoritarianism, followed by democracy, followed by populism, which leads to collapse and the return of the authoritarian to restore order.

Javier Milei is toward the collapse portion of the cycle. This enigmatic weirdo, whose first act after winning election was to convert to Judaism and make a pilgrimage to the Hassidic community of New York, is in the populist tradition. He has decorated his populism with libertarian slogans, but what the voters heard was that he will take from the elites and give to the people. Given the IQ of the population, most could probably not be able to tell a libertarian from a rhinoceros.

Given his backers, there is a good chance that Milei will succeed in pushing through his changes, as they have been done before. He will put the economy on the dollar, and this will stabilize prices for a spell. Then the shortage of dollars will lead to borrowing from his backers in dollars. Those bonds will then be passed off onto American pension funds and other institutional investors. This will continue until the Argentine government can no longer make its interest payments.

What Argentina tells us is what every ball coach knows. It is not about the X’s and O’s, but the Jimmy’s and Joe’s. In the realm of sport, a great coach can only do so much with bad players. His great coaching and brilliant strategy will always run into the limits of his players. In the realm of human society, the political and economic systems will always be limited by the available human capital. it is why the Nordic countries made socialism work, while Argentina cannot make anything work.

There is another useful lesson here for people in the West. The people running Argentina have always known the math of their human capital. This is a truth that is spoken about openly in the homes and offices of the ruling class. Despite the limits it puts on their ambitions, this gap between them and the masses is what keeps them in the elite, ruling over those masses. It turns out that being a smart fish in dumb pond is a pretty good path to the good life.

This is one reason Western elites love low-IQ immigration. It is like an acid on the middle-class, diluting the layer just below them. Sure, mass migration means the subways are unusable and much of the cities are too dangerous for cafe life, but it beats having to compete with smart strivers from the middle ranks. Western elites look at Argentina and envy their rulers. No matter how stupid they are, they never have to worry about being displaced by people with genuine talent.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory, so if you are a griller, take you spice business to one of our guys.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

The Great Dimming

Posted on by

For a long time, it was understood that the success of a people was tied to the quality of the people in terms of their abilities. A highly capable people would do better at the necessary things of society than an incompetent people. Often, moral claims would cloud the view. Maybe one people were chosen by God to rule over the others or maybe the people offended the gods and had been punished as a result. Even so, there has always been a link between talent and results.

Today we understand that Mother Nature does not distribute her gifts equally between peoples or among people. Some people are smarter than others. Some people have cultural qualities that seem to be rooted in their shared genetics. These cultural qualities provide a benefit when it comes to the tasks of society. A people who values hard work and honest dealings will do better than a people who favor sloth or lying. Whether these cultural qualities can be inculcated is debatable.

The blank slate crowd are sure that everything about a human society is a construction of the mind and can therefore be deconstructed. Western society, which has towered over the rest of mankind for more than five hundred years, can be disassembled and then reassembled to put non-Western people in charge. There is no evidence to support the claim, but a great global experiment is underway, nonetheless. There is mass migration from the Global South into the West.

A dozen years ago, Jason Richwine did his doctoral thesis in the topic and found that migration into the United States from the south was decreasing the quality of human capital by reducing the over all IQ of the population. He relied upon the mountain of IQ studies that show the average intelligence of Hispanics to be ten points below the average for Europeans. The usual suspects flew into a rage and had Jason Richwine condemned for heresy.

No one bothered to challenge the conclusions of his study, as that would suggest moral claims can be subject to objective measures. A key component of any religion is that the moral claims are unassailable. The new religion of Diversity, Inclusion and Equity operates like every other religion. Its principles are beyond question. In this case, it means that all people are equally capable and the differences seen between people are due to the racism of white people.

You see this in a response by a writer at Reason Magazine. Ronald Bailey makes no effort to dispute the factual claims of Richwine, as he lacks the intellectual capacity to understand them, much less dispute them. Instead, he draws a parallel between Richwine and eugenicists from a century ago. You see, “eugenics” is a bad word so laying it in the same area as a person makes that person bad. You can then safely dismiss the words of the bad people without addressing them.

Even if you accept the claims in that Reason post, the flow of people from the south into America is having a clear impact on IQ. The claim is that the people coming in will get smarter by standing on the better dirt in the United States, but it will take four or five generations for that to happen. That is roughly a century. While that is happening, the population of low IQ people rises. This is happening rather quickly due to the age distribution of the white population.

For example, using government data, whites have an average IQ of 100, blacks are at 85 and the new people are around 90. This is consistent with what Richwine found in his research and what subsequent research has shown. This is one of those times when the official government position mirrors reality. That means that the average IQ in the United States in 1950 was around 98. By 1980, with the uptick in immigration and decline in white fertility, the average was just over 97.

In other words, with very stable demographics and little immigration, the average IQ in the United States had not changed very much in thirty years. This would explain why the country was able to pull out of the cultural lunacy of the prior decades and turn things around so quickly. There were a lot of smart people. Societies with high average intelligence also have a much larger number of smart people. These are the people who solve the problems made by other smart people.

By 2000, the effects of immigration were showing up in the test scores. The average IQ of the country, based on the new demographic mix, was below 97. By 2020 the average had fallen to below 96. In another decade it will fall below 95 and when the white population is a minority, it will be around 93. Note also that the aging off of the white population lowers white IQ. Not only are white people getting dumber, but old people are dumber than their younger selves.

Imagine a wardrobe made for a man who is 6’5″ and athletic being handed down to a man who is 5’10’ and a lazy person. The latter can pretend he does not like the style, but the reality is the clothes simply do not fit. This is what is happening in America as the people are replaced with new people. The old cultural, political and economic institutions were made for a people with an IQ close to 100. The new people will struggle to operate what they have inherited.

The flat earth people argue that culture is meaningless and the new people will be able to run the country as they like with the same economic results. The only thing that will change is the complexion. Instead of white guys staring at their mobile devices as they walk into traffic, it will be trans-lesbians of color. In fact, the final end of whiteness will unleash the creative energy of the nonwhite people. The result will be the paradise the prophets have long promised.

The trouble is the facts suggest otherwise. Twenty years ago, Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen made the connection between intelligence and economics. In IQ and the Wealth of Nations they showed that average national intelligence corresponds with the over all wealth of society. The usual suspects condemned the book and the authors, while accepting their conclusions. There is a reason the best universities do not draw names from a hat for admissions.

Recently, researchers George Francis and Emil O.W. Kirkegaard have revisited the topic and came to the same conclusion, which is to say there is a strong correlation between national wealth and national IQ. Francis notes that national IQ correlates not only with economic prosperity, but every national indicator of success. That means things like crime, social trust, affordable family formation and all of the other things we associated with stable, happy societies.

Of course, there is the smart fraction issue. As civilization becomes more complex, the demand for cognitive ability increases. At the top, where the most complex decisions are made, the demands go up much faster. The more complex a society, the more above average people are required to manage it. A society where everyone is the same IQ of 100, will not perform as well as a society where the average is 100 and intelligence is normally distributed.

The trending down of national IQ means the relative number of people in the smart fraction initially declines, but the overall smart fraction grows. In time, however, this reverses and the smart fraction begins to decline quickly in total and in relation to the size of the population. There are not enough smart people around to keep the system running, so the system must become less complex. Put another way, it must disaggregate, either slowly or all of a sudden.

What this means in terms of public policy is debatable. The most likely answer is that debating it is a waste of time. There is no arresting the demographic changes and there is no changing what that means as far as human capital. Even if there is a way to make it work, there are not enough smart people around willing to do it. At some point North America passes through the marching moron phase into something else. That something else will poor, nasty, brutish, and short lived.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

The Death Of Citizenism

Posted on by

Note On Comments: Many have complained about the number of comments that end up in moderation. There is not much I can do about it, but one way to avoid this trap is to avoid certain language like profanity. The spam filter gets triggered by the colorful use of euphemisms. Links to images and movies is another trigger. They tend to go right to the trash bin without hitting moderation.

For at least two decades there has been a debate on the Right, broadly defined, about how to define America and the citizen. On one side are the intellectual descendants of Harry Jaffa, who argued America is just an idea, so a citizen is someone who agrees with that idea. On the other side are the people who take the view of the Founders who held the traditional view of nationhood. America is the product of a people who secured the blessings of liberty for themselves and their posterity.

A middle ground was staked out twenty years ago by Steve Sailer. He came up with an idea he called “citizenism” which says “Americans should be biased in favor of the welfare of our current fellow citizens over that of the six billion foreigners.” Therefore, “our leaders have a duty to current citizens and their descendants over the interests of prospective citizens and their descendants”. This is a definition that allows for the appreciation of racial differences between the current citizens.

Sailer’s definition is reactive, more than objective. He was trying at the time to put space between himself and other race realists. He wanted to talk honestly and openly about racial differences without being lumped in with people like Jared Taylor, who he considered to be a white nationalist. Sailer and Jared Taylor had an exchange back in 2005 on this topic as well as Taylor’s book The Color of Crime. Here are some bits of this debate here, here and here.

Fifteen years on, we can look at the three sides of this dispute with the benefit of hindsight and see who was closer to the truth. The “nation of ideas” side is looking rather shabby, as the West lurches into despotism in an effort to keep the wildly diverse population from destroying itself. The suspension of civil liberties, constant surveillance and state sanctioned domestic terrorism suggest that the idea at the heart of this new definition of the nation is authoritarianism.

Further, the “nation of ideas” concept was always a Marxist notion. Instead of society being the product of economic relations, the nation of ideas people define society as cultural relations. This is right out of the cultural Marxist handbook. The main difference is the Left thinks that culture is the product of institutions while the Right thinks it is the product of magic. While both sides are wrong about the source of culture, the Left was smart enough to seize the institutions.

The traditionalists who claim a nation is the product of a people, held together by a shared history and kinship have not been proven correct, but their claims against a nation of ideas is supported by present reality. Time will tell if the West devolves into tribal camps that judge their relations with other groups purely through the lens of tribal self-interest, but that is the current direction. At the minimum, the Jared Taylor camp was right about identity politics and what is means for white people.

As far as citizenism, it may be the biggest loser. In his exchange with Jared Taylor, Steve Sailer wrote, “And yet, this manner of thinking, this dismissal of objective reality in favor of assessing whose side the speaker is on, is probably as popular today in America as it was in Berlin and Moscow in Orwell’s day.” Sailer was comparing Orwell’s description of Nazism with Taylor’s brand of white nationalism. In other words, these views contrast with objective reality.

It is turns out that the citizenism can only work if everyone involved steadfastly and fanatically rejects objective reality. For example, they must refuse to consider that what leaders will do is not always in line with what you think they ought to do. Further, the “best interests of the current citizens” is a normative statement, whose definition is based on the perspective of the speaker. The universalist concept of best interest at the heart of citizenism is as real as the unicorn.

To some degree, this form of bourgeoise objectivism has always functioned as a form of escapism where the objectivist gets to be both right and taboo. In this case, he gets to speak candidly about the human condition from the perspective of biology but avoid being sanctioned by the people who must deny this reality. In other words, it assumes there is an exception to morality, where you can avoid official sanction over impure thoughts if you can prove those thoughts to be correct.

This is a world that denies the reality of the prevailing orthodoxy, thus denying objective reality with regards to human relations. Every society has its moral framework that is rooted in its sense of identity. This is largely controlled by the ruling class, which is a feature of every society, regardless of politics. The morality of the people in charge of the West requires us to deny biology and they make no exceptions. That is a reality one must accept before engaging in any analysis of politics.

In the end, Steve Sailer’s approach was rooted in a misunderstanding of what lies behind things like open borders. It was not a desire for mundane things like a desire to save the world or a demand for cheap labor. At the heart of the neoliberal project is the assertion that humans are infinitely adaptable to their culture. This is the unequivocal denial of biological reality. This is why citizenism was doomed from the start. It offered a compromise that could never be tolerated, much less accepted.

In the end, the nation of ideas side was probably more realistic than their critics on the biological reality side. They accepted the premise of cultural Marxism, which is that control of the institutions is what matters in current politics. They simply lacked the intelligence and courage to put their ideas into practice. As a result, the West is headed into the darkness of radicalism. If the West is to survive, Western man must accept biological reality and the reality of those who oppose him.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

Lessons In Identity

Posted on by

One of the reasons conservatives preach against identity politics is they believe it contradicts republican virtue. In a republic, people are supposed to be supremely loyal to the institutions of the republic. The men that hold office are not what matters, but rather, the office itself. You are supposed to respect the office, even if the man in the office is not respectable. This is why preventing low character people from holding office is important, as it diminishes the respect for the office.

Identity politics, in the conservative formulation, is tribalism and that means the tribe comes before everything else. A person who puts his tribe ahead of all else will sacrifice the office he holds or the political system itself, if it is good for his tribe. This is why conservatives moan about identity politics. They think it is un-American. They are not entirely wrong on this point. This is clear with the Jonathan Pollard case. His primary loyalty is to his people, so he spied for Israel.

For obvious reasons, conservatives will never use a case like this when moaning about the dangers of identity politics. Instead, they direct their anger at the white people who have been supporting them for decades but getting ruined as a result. Alternatively, they will gently chastise the Left for firing-up the blacks with fantastical claims about supernatural racism. They are not directing their wrath at the blacks, of course, but at the white people they say are responsible for it.

The Pollard case, however, is an excellent example of identity politics, both the positive and negative manifestations. Pollard claims that “If you’re outside Israel, then you live in a society in which you are basically considered unreliable.” This is a version of, “if they are going to call you a Nazi, you may as well be a Nazi.” In other words, Pollard believes Jews have no choice but to be unreliable and subversive in their hosts countries, because that is the role carved out for them.

This is a great example of negative identity. Pollard thinks all diaspora Jews are defined in their opposition to their host population. This means a big part of who they are is controlled by exogenous forces. If they are in Asia, then their anti-Asian attitudes will come to define them, but if they are in America, it is un-Americanisms. Pollard is defining diaspora Judaism in the same way Woody Allen defined it in the movie Zelig, in which the main character was nothing more than a chameleon.

On the other hand, Pollard points out that to be a Jew is to first and foremost have a loyalty to the tribe and to Israel. In fact, it is this loyalty to Israel that defines the Jew wherever he may find himself. This is a positive identity. Loyalty to Israel and maintaining the cultural habits of the Jewish people, no matter the environment, is what defines the Jewish person. If all the non-Jews died tomorrow and there were only Jews left on the planet, this would still control Jewish identity.

This duality to identity points out something important. If all non-Jews did die off, then that positive Jewish identity would quickly weaken. After all, loyalty to Israel would not mean much when there is no longer a threat to Israel or the Jewish people. Without some comparison and competition, this identity would grow weak. As those familiar with the Hebrew Bible know, the great threat to Israel was always internal. Those secondary identities are what come to dominate in such a condition.

On the other side of the coin, a strong identity turns negative when the group is surrounded by an alien identity. For example, Pollard’s casual assumption that Jews must be seen as unreliable by host populations. Therefore, being a good Jew means working to undermine the host population. What he is suggesting, at least in the case of Jews, is that being a minority population is unhealthy. A minority group with a strong group identity will inevitably become self-destructive.

This duality of group identity is why Europe, despite massive efforts to the contrary, maintains national identity. Net out the tens of millions of alien immigrants and the majority of native people are strong nationalist. The reason for this is Europeans are close enough to one another to notice the differences. There is plenty of competition between European people to maintain the group identity. It is why immigration is important to the European project. It dilutes nationalism.

In North America, identity in the form of nationalism never gained a strong purpose until the 20th century and that was largely artificial. What it means to be American was never a topic of conversation until the 20th century, because it never needed to be. Your local identity was much more important. Even racial identity was never strong, because blacks were small in number and never a real threat. This is why white identity never developed in North America. Non-whites were never competition.

All of this is quickly changing. The invasion from the south will intensify nationalist identity in Europe to the point where whites preaching against it will be laughed off the stage by white Europeans. The weakening of the European consensus is clear when you look at what is happening in ruling class politics. Here and there the view of immigrants and their role in Europe is changing. Denmark and France are two recent examples of where the consensus is starting to shift toward nationalism.

In America, the white population is so beaten down by decades of anti-white agitation that the recovery is much slower. Whites have been conditioned to never take any side, especially their own, but that is changing. The latent sense of identity is flowing into proxy issues like populism and gun ownership. These issues lack an explicit white identity, but they have a strong implicit one. They are white identity with training wheels and in time these will become more explicitly white issues.

The truth is like a body. No matter how well you try to hide it, it eventually turns up, usually at an unexpected time. Ethnic and racial identity are truths of the human condition, so they can never be forgotten, no matter how well buried. That is the truth of the Pollard case now floating to the surface. Identity is about trust. A people can only trust their own people. As racial and ethnic distance grows, the trust declines, which is why peaceful separation is the natural order of mankind.

A new year brings new changes. The same is true for this site as we adjust to the reality of managerial authoritarianism. That means embracing crypto for when the inevitable happens and the traditional outlets are closed. Now more than ever it is important to support the voices that support you. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you prefer other ways of donating, look at the donate page. Thank you.

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

Identity And Eugenics

Posted on by

Last week, famous biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins outraged all of the rage heads on Twitter by tweeting out, “It’s one thing to deplore eugenics on ideological, political, moral grounds. It’s quite another to conclude that it wouldn’t work in practice. Of course it would. It works for cows, horses, pigs, dogs & roses. Why on earth wouldn’t it work for humans? Facts ignore ideology” The rage heads responded with outrage and demands that he be thrown into a well for bad think.

It was one of those events where people revealed things about themselves that they probably wish they had kept private. The “world’s foremost philosopher” managed to step on a series of rakes responding to Paul Ramsey. Not satisfied with his twitter performance, he did a full hour on YouTube, where he must have broken a record for the number of logical fallacies committed in one sitting. Apparently he has yet to reach the chapter on Hume’s law or the masked-man fallacy.

Molyneux’s response was fairly typical, so it is a useful, if unfortunate, example to use when discussing the issue raised by Dawkins. Eugenics, however one defines it, can be both immoral and effective. The morality of it has nothing to do with whether it would work, however one defines that. They are separate issues. Slavery “worked” for a long time, but then we decided it was immoral and it was eliminated. Slavery was not eliminated because it was unworkable or impractical.

His blunders are not surprising, as we live in an age in which morality has been anathematized and made illegitimate. We are no longer allowed to oppose something on moral grounds. Instead we’re required to make economic arguments or make appeals to science. Simply not wanting something, because you don’t like it is no longer a legitimate position. We see this here. Molyneux could not simply say eugenics is immoral, so he claimed it would not work.

The narrow definition of eugenics, according to Webster’s, is “the practice or advocacy of controlled selective breeding of human populations to improve the population’s genetic composition.” Of course, the term is loaded with historical significance and has a strong negative connotation. It brings to mind evil doctors experimenting on children or the state sterilizing people they deem unfit. Of course, you know who looms over any discussion about human fitness these days.

That said, Western societies have been putting a thumb on the scale, as far as the mating habits of the people, for a long time. A great example of this is the laws against consanguineous marriage. In the Middle Ages, the Church and then secular rulers enforced rules against marrying close relatives. This had a huge impact on the human capital of Europe. Cousin marriage leads to lower intelligence and most likely amplifies normal kinship into clannishness.

Henry Harpending and Peter Frost argued that the prolific use of the death penalty in Western Europe, starting in the late Middle Ages, pacified the population. Young men, who committed crimes, were hanged, thus eliminating them from the breeding pool at an early age. Do this long enough and the genes of violent men are slowly reduced. As interpersonal violence declined, men prone to it declined in status, thus reducing their value in the sexual marketplace. That’s eugenics.

That’s also a great example of how the moral arguments about eugenics are mostly based on a cartoon version of the past. Few would deny that the reduction in interpersonal violence was a good thing for the West. Similarly, no one would argue that a society has no right to defend itself against the violent. Like everything else, morality is about trade-offs. Reducing the amount mayhem and violence with the prolific use of the death penalty looks like a pretty good trade-off.

Now, Frost and Harpending could be wrong about the impact of the death penalty, but their theory is not wrong. We can make rules that reduce the reproductive success of those possessing undesirable traits. Those rules, given enough time, will reduce that undesirable trait. If we wanted, we can use force to eliminate those people from the breeding pool. East Asia has been using soft coercion for generations to alter the breeding habits of their people.

Of course, a big part of the hysteria is the implications. If eugenics is a real thing, it means people are not amorphous blobs that can be molded into any shape. To give an inch on the eugenics question is to give up entirely on the blank slate theology. Instead the true believers argue against reality by denying it or avoiding it. You see that in the Dawkins thread, where various people, mostly women, offered ridiculous claims against the reality of animal husbandry and agriculture.

Ultimately, the topic of eugenics brings us back to that point about discussing morality and collective agency in the modern age. A eugenic policy would mean legitimizing the collective will. It would also mean accepting that people collectively have an identity that is rooted in their nature. The war on our collective humanity starts with denying us a right to say who we are and what makes us who we are. It means denying us the legitimacy to want what we want for no other reason than we want it.

For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!

The Gay Debate

Posted on by

For the longest time, it was assumed by science that there was not a single gene that caused homosexuality. The reason is a gay gene would make the person less sexually fit and therefore less likely to reproduce and pass on the gene. It does not take much of a disadvantage for a trait to disappear from the pool over enough time. If such a gene did exist, so it was thought, it would have disappeared from the human gene pool a long time ago and homosexuality with it. Therefore, something else must be at work.

Human societies have, for the most part, assumed homosexuality was to some degree a choice. Like an excessive desire for drink or criminality, that natural inclination could be controlled with enough determination. Like alcoholism or criminality, homosexuality came to be seen as a moral failing. On the other hand, there was always that sense that like alcoholism or criminality, some people are born bad. For whatever reason, they lacked the mechanisms to control their passions or the will to do so.

The source of this divide is the philosophical argument that there are facts that can be tested and values that are purely opinion. A scientific theory is one that can be tested, while an ethical proposition cannot. If something cannot be tested and possibly falsified, it is not science. In the case of something like human traits, it means there is either a biological mechanism to explain it completely or it is purely a social construct with no biological root. Traits fell on either side of the fact-value divide.

As in moral philosophy, the fact-value divide with regards to human traits is starting to come apart, as science gives us a greater understanding of human genetics. For example, complex human traits like intelligence are not the result of a single gene, but the result of many genes. In the case of intelligence, science has identified 55 alleles that influence general intelligence. How these switches are set influences intelligence, but the combinations are also an important factor.

In the case of homosexuality, it is starting to look like it may be the result of both a combination of genetics and environmental factors. A recent study has found two SNPs that influenced both male and female homosexuality. These are not the “gay genes” some thought existed, but two “switches” that have a strong association with homosexuality in men and women. That means homosexuals tend to have these two markers, but it does not mean all people with them are gay.

As with intelligence, something as complex as human sexuality probably has many genes that influence the trait. It could also mean other traits come along with the ride, as they are also associated with the set of genes that cause homosexuality. It’s entirely possible that this set of genes is responsible for a range of behaviors that are often associated with homosexuals. In other words, the attraction to the same sex is just one result of many from a set of genes turned on or off in the person.

A useful way of thinking about this is to imagine genes that cause someone to become an alcoholic. Let’s say ten genes positively or negatively influence a person’s propensity to alcoholism. If all ten switches are on, you will be a serious drunk. If all ten switches are off, you will be a teetotaler. Then there are the combinations in between. Alcoholism is therefore a spectrum. The person’s ability to control their drinking will depend upon where they fall on the spectrum and their access to alcohol.

That last part is where the either/or way of thinking falls apart. Someone with a lot of the drunk switches set to on, but living in a society without alcohol or one with severe repression of it, like Saudi Arabia, is less likely to be a drunk than the same person living in Ireland. In fact, that person with the high genetic propensity to alcoholism may never express those traits, because they are never exposed to alcohol. At the extremes, at least, environment can overcome nature with regards to behavior.

Now, bringing this back to a behavior like homosexuality, it is plausible that it is a spectrum, like the alcoholism example. Anyone who has been out in the world long enough knows that gays come in many varieties. At the one end are the flamboyant Milo Yiannopoulos types, while at the other end of the spectrum are the prudish Lindsey Graham types. In reality, homosexuality probably has more complexity than a linear range. Those switches result in a variety of manifestations.

What it means is that the trait is probably not purely biological. There’s a lot of evidence that homosexual males share more than two SNP’s. They also seem to share grooming stories in their youth. Homosexuals report a significantly higher rate of childhood molestation than do heterosexual men and women. This may simply be a downstream result of genetic factors, but it has been something science has observed for a long time, going back to when homosexuality was treated as a mental disorder.

This is where the fact-value divide closes. If it is a fact that some human traits fall along a range of propensity, based on genetics, then environment plays some role in how those traits are expressed. Put in terms of this topic, if homosexuality is a propensity, then cultural logic that discourages the activity will reduce the amount of homosexual activity in the society. This is the same logic behind banning alcohol. If it is hard to get alcohol, many people prone to alcoholism will never become drunks.

We may be seeing this put to the test with the youngest generation. There have been quite a few surveys indicating young people are the gayest generation. Here’s a story from last year on a survey of young people and sexual identity. Here is a post from the Progressive-adjacent blogger Audacious Epigone using recent survey data. According to that study, nearly 1-in-5 people under the age of thirty identify as something other than heterosexual. It appears that Gen-Z is super gay.

Now, such surveys should be treated with some skepticism. Young people are dumb and most are prone to repeating what they see in the media. Because the usual suspects tell them homosexuality is the best, many will claim to be some exotic sexuality as a moral signifier. The problem with surveys is respondents tend to tell the survey taker what they think is right. What these surveys may be picking up is the public reaction to the new morality being imposed on them by the usual suspects.

Even so, if sexuality, particularly homosexuality, is purely genetic, independent of environmental factors, then we should not see a real shift in homosexual activity when the culture changes. A study of venereal disease rates would probably be a good proxy to measure homosexual activity. If what the survey data suggests is true and we are seeing a real increase in homosexual activity, then it is not unreasonable to conclude that culture plays some role in the frequency of homosexuality.

That means debating these cultural issues is not only valid, but a necessary thing for every society. After all, if sexuality is purely natural, then debating the culture issues surrounding it is a waste of time. On the other hand, if culture matters a lot, then debating the morality surrounding sexuality is a primary concern. Do we want more homosexuals or fewer homosexuals becomes a valid topic of debate. Leaving it up to nature is no longer a justifiable response.

For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!

The Madness Of Anti-Racism

Posted on by

Every liberal society must have a civic religion and it is fair to say that the prevailing religion of current year America is anti-racism. For sure, things like anti-sexism and anti-antisemitism are in the mix. On a regular basis people are condemned for not liking homosexuals or people of mysterious origins. The list of “bads” is very long. All of these other “isms” that make up the set of official “bads” all have the same root as anti-racism. That is, they are twisted around the pole of biological reality.

The place to start is with the dictionary definition of racism. According to Merriam-Webster, the first definition of racism is “a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.” Dictionary.com defines racism as “the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.”

Now, within living memory, racism was an act. A racists was someone who would not hire people of a certain race or would deny people of a certain race access to goods and services. Then the definition shifted to include words. If one said disparaging things about someone of another race, they could be a racist. The assumption being that to think poorly of another race must inevitably lead to acting poorly toward people of another race. Racism was now a state of mind.

Of course, this is now true of all the bads. If one is not sufficiently worshipful of homosexuals, for example, it is assumed you must be homophobic. The days of “hate the sin, but love the sinner” are long gone in our secular theology, assuming such sophistication ever existed or was even possible. With all of the bads, one’s virtue on these matters is an A-B test. You’re either sufficiently worshipful of the protected group or you are an apostate, possibly a heretic, who must be condemned.

The thing is, racism is not empirically verifiable. In fact, it is not something people thought much about until recent. The best one can do, as far as making an empirical claim about racism, is that it is verifiable under a set of logical rules. If someone believes these things, then they are racist. Those rules, however, are cognitively meaningless. That is, they are not true in and of themselves. Those rules exist because the people in charge have wished them into existence.

That’s the truth of all moral codes. They don’t exist naturally. They may arise from observation of nature or as a result of some qualities of man. People do not want to be killed, for example, so human societies have evolved moral codes against killing people inside the society. The moral codes of a society may have evolved in response to universal or particular facts facing the people, but they had to be conjured into existence by the people in charge of society. Therefore, racism is a social construct.

There is a slow shift going on with the definition of racism. The first part of those common definitions now says something like “the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race.” In other words, the moral codes that define racism now include an assertion of fact. That is, race does not exist. After all, to say that people have shared traits that define them as a people is what is considered the primary definition of racism. To be a racist is to acknowledge race.

Racism is well on its way to becoming a form of magic. The racist mind is now one that perceives things that are not real, like sub-Saharan Africans having dark skin. The epicanthic fold not only cannot exist, noticing it suggests the person seeing it is possessed by the demon of racism. There really is no other way to interpret the emerging definition of racism. In order to resolve the conflict between the definition and nature, they must introduce some supernatural element.

The problem, of course, is that there are characteristics and abilities specific to race, ethnicity and sex. People are not amorphous blobs that can be shaped into whatever the ruling class favors at the moment. In fact, it is impossible to maintain a functioning society without accepting biological reality. Otherwise, the differences in outcome, for example blacks in sports or Jews in business, can only be explained by theories of nefarious forces operating in the shadows at the expense of your group.

Now, in fairness, they still tag on the old modifiers about superiority. That’s the thing though, those modifiers are now in the back. Given the behavior of science deniers in the mass media, it is not going to be long before those modifiers about superiority are dropped entirely. One has only to look at the conflation of the terms “white nationalist” and white supremacist.” The ruling cult now uses them interchangeably. To notice that whites are different from other groups is to be evil by definition.

Even if they figure out that those modifiers must be maintained in order for the definition of racism to have coherence, there are those differences between the races. It is an undeniably truth that sub-Saharan Africans perform differently in physical competitions than other races. In fact, they are superior at sprinting and at extreme long distance running events. These differences are rooted in those common traits. For people to be different, it means they must be better or worse at various quantifiable things.

In the fullness of time, anti-racism, and the whole basket of bads that come along with it, will be viewed as a madness that took possession of the ruling classes. The need to see all people as equal, a requirement of democracy, has led the ruling elites of the West down a dark journey into a madness. The denial of physical reality can only be tolerated for so long. Reality is that thing that does not go away when you stop believing in it. Soon, reality shall return and wash the madness away.

For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!

We have A Word For That

Posted on by

One thing you cannot help but notice, if you travel, is that English is just about everyone’s second language. In many parts of the world, their second language is almost as common as their first. In Iceland, for example, you hear as much English in the streets as Icelandic. The locals just seem to assume that people they don’t know are going to prefer English, while people they know will prefer Icelandic. In effect, they have a public language and private language. This is something you see in many places.

It used to be that French was the language of diplomacy. It is where we get the expression lingua franca. Of course, long before that, Latin was the official language of global affairs. In the case of French, it was simply a matter of France being the dominant power on the Continent, so French was the language of diplomacy among Europeans, but not the rest of the world. Latin was the language of the Church, so while the whole of Europe was Catholic, it was a useful common tongue for diplomacy.

The rise of English is a slightly different matter. For sure, the Pax Americana has a lot to do with English becoming the diplomatic language of the West, but it does not explain it becoming the public language. That’s probably due to the rise of global corporations in the last fifty years. Many European countries started teaching English in schools, because it would be useful in the work place. American companies would be more inclined to hire a German who spoke some English than an Italian with no English.

Power and money are always good answers to most questions, because they are easy to understand and confirm things we like to believe about the world. We want to think that there are great benefits to being rich or powerful, like imposing your language and religion on those over whom you rule. There’s certainly some truth to it, but it does not explain everything. For example, the prevalence of English in the Nordic countries is much higher than in France or Italy. The Germans have a lot of English speakers too.

Another possibility for why English has becomes the universal language is the rise of science and technology as cultural forces. English is extremely useful in science, because of its precision and flexibility. English is a not a language with a lot of words that have two very different meanings. For example, study and studio mean entirely different things. In French you would use the same word and the context would make the distinction. Few words in English need context to have a full meaning.

The other thing about English is it adopts new words, either from other languages or out of the blue, with great speed. This post by paleontologist John Hawks is an amusing example of how the flexibility of language works with science and technology. Most languages don’t adopt loan words very well. Instead, they have to take existing words and combine them together to get something like the meaning of the new word. German is hilarious with this. Lots of Zungenbrechers in German with new words.

It is possible that English is a better language for science and technology, where new abstract concepts are common. It is easier to invent a new word or borrow a word, like synergy for example, and imbue it with a definition that captures the new idea, rather than force the new idea into the old grammar. The word synergy was kicking around psychology for a century, before it was picked up by tech companies and turned into a catchy word to describe involuntary cooperation through the use of technology.

Of course, the implication here is that English evolved with people who were better at science and technology. It’s certainly true that the Industrial Revolution started in England and first spread to northern Europe. It’s certainly true that northern Europeans remain the most inventive people on earth. This is probably just a coincidence or perhaps something to do with ecology, as everyone knows there are no differences between people anywhere at any time under any conditions. To suggest otherwise is bad.

Even so, the rapid adoption of English as the official second language in European countries with a common heritage is suggestive. These countries have also always had a high and low version of their languages as well. High German is thought to derive from the Suebi people. Low German, the various German dialects in central Europe, come from the other tribes. Perhaps having a public language and private language, a public custom and private custom, is the real root of this phenomenon, rather than modern technology.

Regardless of the cause, English is becoming the official language of the planet, even as the ratio of Europeans to everyone else rapidly shrinks. Communicating in English is more efficient and more accurate across the wide swath of humanity. There are exceptions at the fringes, but there always are. In the main, English is becoming the public language of the world. That means the elite of the future will be plucked from those with the cognitive skills best suited for mastering the complexity of English thought.

That’s the part you can see in your daily life. There are South Asians, for example, who have a delicate mastery of English. There are others who are comical eruptions of misnomers and butchered grammar. No matter how hard they try, they just can’t think in English or even pretend to think in English. As a result, their mastery of the language is limited to mimicry. Since language is about communicating abstract concepts, these people will never be able to rise to the upper reaches of the cognitive class.

This is usually where the bad people bring up the phrase Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which then results in the usual suspects leaping from the bushes yelling “That had been debunked!” In truth, the strong version has simply been dismissed, because it does not fit in with the blank slate argument. Spend time around people, who speak English as a second language, You will notice that some are thinking in English, while others are just interpreting their native thoughts into English sounds.

It’s pleasant to think that the dominance of English portends good things for native English speakers and their cousins in Europe, but the Suebi may be the better example. They left a lot of their culture, but none of their people. There are claims by some to be the decedents of the Subei, but there is no proof as of yet. Most likely, the Subei were wiped out by strangers who flowed over the borders.

Revolt of the Machines

Posted on by

One of the great unanswered questions in science is how did the first building blocks of life arise from the primordial soup of early earth. It is believed that before even the simplest of life forms existed, earth was something like a thin stew that was getting thicker as more complex chemicals formed. At some point, and no one knows how, the first DNA molecules formed. The prevailing theory is that the first genetic molecule was a primitive form of RNA, which evolved into more complex RNA and then DNA.

No one knows how this could happened only that it did happen. The proof of which is all around us, including in the mirror. Life exists and it is based in DNA. Further, RNA is created from DNA to put that information to work, like controlling the creation of proteins and performing other chemical functions. How DNA became the code of life, while RNA, its predecessor, became its tool, is a great mystery in science. It is the question J.F. Gariepy tackles in his book The Revolutionary Phenotype.

Gariepy or “JF” as he is known by his fans, is an enigmatic YouTube personality, known for his willingness to talk with anyone. He has had everyone from science deniers to holocaust deniers on his show, as well as lots of normal people. His YouTube career is recent, as until 2017 he was a neurobiologist and post-doctoral researcher at Duke University’s Institute for Brain Sciences. In this book, he endeavors to explain the origin of life 4 billion years ago and predict the end of DNA-based life on earth.

One of the challenges facing writers of science books for a general audience is they must first simplify the presentation. It’s not that the audience is dumb, but that they are unfamiliar with the jargon and unfamiliar with the way people in science communicate information through mathematics. A book full of complex proofs and splatter charts is not going to be popular with most readers. Gariepy gets past this first obstacle by sticking with a straight forward narrative format that is easy to follow.

The second challenge for science writers is to follow the old rule about essay writing that kids learn in school. The book should always be like a woman’s swimsuit; big enough to cover the important parts, but small enough to keep it interesting. This is probably a good rule for all writing in this age. Thanks to the internet and cable television, everyone’s attention span has collapsed. Gariepy gets past this hurdle, as the book is just 138 pages and written in a brisk style that makes for easy reading.

The question is, of course, does Gariepy deliver on his promise to explain the origin of life and how it will end. The answer is an unequivocal maybe. On the positive side, he does a very good job of explaining one possible narrative for how primitive RNA evolved into RNA and then DNA. He offers up an interesting theory as to how DNA came to be the master and RNA the slave, which is an important event in the history of life. The presentation here is a nice primer for the general reader on the basics of genetic theory.

What really works here is his use of simple concepts that he stacks together to explain more complex ideas. For example, describing the relationship between your genes and your body as something like the relationship between a machine operator and the machine, is useful in understanding why our bodies will evolve over time. Our body is there to serve our genes, so any innovation that is better for our DNA is adopted, while changes that are not useful are discarded. Our body is a vehicle for DNA.

The negative here is that the language and analogies don’t always work. Using the office printer to explain how gene mutation works is clever, but calling it a trickster printer will give the American reader the wrong impression. The same is true for his use of the phrase “fool replicator.” This is probably a language issue, as Gariepy is French. The word trickster and fool have different connotations to French speakers than they do to English speakers, especially Americans, who think tricksters and fools are immoral.

Another complaint about the book, and one of the trade-offs with brevity, is it assumes the reader has recently read Daniel Dennet and Richard Dawkins. In fact, it is probably a good idea to read The Selfish Gene before reading this book, as Gariepy refers to it extensively in the first third of the book. Again, this is the trade-off that comes from brevity and summarizing the material for a general audience. In this case, it is a minor complaint and it does not ruin the book or invalidate his arguments.

The final complaint about the book is that he spends 80% of the text explaining the transition from simple RNA molecules to the complex DNA-based life. That’s about 100 pages, which is a great short primer on a difficult to understand subject. The rest of the book is a dash to the finish line, explaining how the rise of artificial intelligence spells the end of DNA-based life. There’s a strong impression that this part was rushed in order to get the book done and ready for sale. The book sort of ends with a thud.

Without giving too much away, Gariepy argues that RNA used DNA as sort of a bank vault for its code base. When it needed to copy itself, it did so from that copy stored in the DNA molecule. Eventually, the DNA molecule was able to replicate itself, without help from its RNA master. This set off a battle between RNA and DNA, which DNA won, turning RNA into its servant. This same process is about to happen with artificial intelligence, as AI becomes self-aware and able to self-replicate.

That sounds like the premise of a lot of science fiction stories, but it is both an interesting entry point to understanding artificial intelligence and the dynamic between environment, humans and man’s ability to alter his environment. There’s enough there for another book and maybe that’s the plan, but Gariepy only gives it about twenty pages and it felt very rushed. Given his YouTube audience, most of his readers are more interested in how life ends, rather than how it begins. They will undoubtedly feel a bit cheated.

Overall, the first half of the promise, to tell the story of how life began, works pretty well for the intended audience. It’s not a research paper or a bold new hypothesis to explain the origin of life. It is more of a summary of current thinking in a style that the general reader can follow and understand. The second promise could have worked, but it needed a fuller treatment than what Gariepy delivers. Otherwise, it is a book worth reading, if you have an interest in evolutionary biology or the origins of life on earth.

The Nature of Diversity

Posted on by

Imagine an island that is suddenly populated with one hundred couples, each with a unique last name. No couple has the same last name. Further, they continue the tradition of the females taking the male’s last name upon marriage. As these couples reproduce, their children will marry one another. Couple A1 has a couple of boys who marry the girls from Couple C2. This is not a controlled experiment, so nature can take its course and people are free to marry who they like.

Obviously, some couples will have all girls and some couples will have no children, but infertility  and a lack of interest in children is not that common, so the number of childless couples will be quite small. At the same time, “Fertile Myrtle” is not an unusual phenomenon either and some men have a near uncontrollable sex drive. That means there will be quite a few big families to counter the infertile couples and those couple that choose not to reproduce.

If all couples have one male child and one female child, both of whom make it to sexual maturity and reproduce, then the population remains stable. The number of last names will also remain constant, as each male heir will continue the family name. Given this is a small island, a few extra children, or the “heir and spare” model will make sure that the family names live on, and the population remains steady. In this scenario, we can come back in a dozen generations and things are about the same.

If each generation has 10% of the females unable to bear children, it will take about twenty generations before almost everyone has the same last name. The decline in last names happens fast initially. Something similar happens if 10% of the couples have only female children that make it to adulthood. Throw in the fact that each generation may not have enough females for all the males and the decline of last names will progress toward one single last name.

Obviously, lots of couples will have all boys or all girls. Since this island does not have video games or feminism, getting busy with the opposite sex will be the main form of entertainment. That means some couples will have lots of kids, but others will be more restrained and have one or two kids. The bigger the family, the lower the odds of having all girls or all boys, but it happens. If that is just ten percent of the result, we still end up with one last name in twenty generations.

Why would anyone care about this? Well, it is a good way to understand how a trait can flow through a population, resulting in a unique population. Instead of last names, let us use a pronounced brow ridge, indicating high intelligence. If this is a trait passed through the male line of the A1 family, and that family has plenty of males each generation, then that male trait will become ubiquitous in twenty generations like we saw with the last name idea.

Since a prominent brow line is desirable, men with it will have a greater chance to reproduce, increasing the spread of those genes. On the other hand, let us say the one guy in our one hundred founding couples with the brow ridge drowns while out for a swim, before he had kids. That means this highly desirable trait, both from a biological as well as reproductive reason, is removed from the gene pool forever. Our island will be full of homely dumb people.

This is a simplified and rather crude way of illustrating how a desirable trait can flow through a population. This is how we have so many dog breeds. Humans short-circuited nature, through selective breeding, thus selecting for specific traits. After enough generations, one breeder ended up with Great Danes, while another ended up with Dachshunds, so to speak. A famous example of this is the creation of a domesticated foxes by a Russian geneticist named Dmitry K. Belyaev.

Another way of understanding this is to imagine our island paradise flourishing with a high fertility rate over many generations. Then resource scarcity sets off competition among the islanders, eventually leading to a tyrant. He correctly sees that the issue is the left-handed and has all of them killed. In future generations, anyone found to be left-handed is killed. It will not take long, in fact it could literally happen overnight, for the population to lose the left-handed trait.

This is a good way to understand the natural diversity of people. When modern humans emerged from Africa, the most likely origin, we carried almost all of the traits present in humans today. As people spread out around the globe, nature found some traits much more useful in the new environment, so those traits thrived. Nature also found some traits deleterious and strongly selected against them. Overtime, we got the diversity of man we see today that tracks with geography.

It is why the phrase “scientific racism” indicates stupidity. Just as there is great diversity in the domestic dog, there is diversity in humans. Denying observable reality is a few clicks less reasonable than witchcraft or astrology. It also means multiculturalism is, in effect, a war on nature, as it is an effort to obliterate human diversity. Mixing everyone together into a gray slurry is just a primitive minded war on nature, which we have decided is immoral. it is is also suicidal.