So now that I’m blogging more or less regularly again I’ve been thinking of setting up a bit more of a structured schedule.
Probably it will be minor posts interspersed throughout the week, with a compendium of my best Ask.fm questions and major posts (called Big Posts) every Thursday or Friday which will (generally) run as Features sometime over the weekend.
So without further any ado, here’s my Ask.fm Q&A’s since last time.
Automation and IQ
What model do you foresee replacing the current global neo-liberal economic model? When do you think it will happen?
The game changer will be automation. To be sure, people have been talking of automation for decades, but I suspect when it truly hits it will be very sudden since it will likely involve a series of rapidly occuring threshold events as robots and AI programs quickly replace humans in industry after industry.
I don’t know when it will happen. Sometime between 2020-2050 is really the best I can do.
In the new world that will arise, many – perhaps most – people will be driven out of their jobs. Only the >130 IQ cognitive elites will still have more or less guaranteed employment in the creative industries and in designing and improving the robots (until/unless superintelligence takes care of them too but that’s another story).
Since almost all income will now accrue to the owners of capital, wealth inequality will soar to levels that make today’s reality seem like some kind of hippie commune.
Presumably the oligarchs can be persuaded to institute some kind of basic universal income system if only for their own benefit (no consumers = no economy). But the outcome won’t necessarily be that rosy. My friend Scott Jackisch posits a sort of neo-feudalism where the oligarchs retreat to their gated mansions, get legitimized by their paid up NRx bootlickers, and keep the proles in line through ubiquitious surveillance and drones. And hackers and cyborg “grinders” lead an insurgency against them from the derelict ruins of the old cities. He really should write a sci-fi novel one of these days.
Anyway… back to reality. I do think eventually there will be UBI. That, and the various MyFace/Twatter entertainment systems, are cheaper than murder drones anyway. An interesting question is to what extent, if any, UBI will be linked to “good behavior” (socially, politically). An even more dystopian scenario (to some) would be to have your basic income get determined by your social justice karma. I think we might well be heading there…
If Rindermann’s “smart fractions” are important to national prosperity now, they will become all-important after mass automation. GDP per capita will essentially be linked to the numbers of >130 IQ people you have relative to “dead weight” i.e. everyone below that. Even the most blank slatist economists will realize what idiots they were back when they argued for (~85 IQ) mass Third World immigration.
Since countries like Japan, Korea, and Germany could be expected to become ultra-competitive due to their large “smart fractions,” countries in the <95 IQ zone – i.e., most of the Third World – will have to become protectionist if they want any of their domestic industries to survive. This could lead to a retreat of globalization, and ironically, provide a counter-acting force against rising inequality.
Are you shocked by the amount of low wage labor in large metro areas in America? Most of it came within the last 20 years from immigration. My impression is that Europe (even with its immigration) doesn’t have nearly the amount of stupid unskilled labor that we have.
Yes, I noticed it, though I am not particularly shocked by it. I suspect it’s largely on account of the US having a large class of ~85-90 IQ NAMs (Non Asian Minorities).
In contrast, when I visited France in the early 2000s, even the supermarket in the small town I was staying at already had an automated self-checkout. It was my first encounter with them. (I had lived in Britain beforehand. Incidentally, for whatever reason, productivity in France is substantially higher than in Britain, which you wouldn’t predict on the basis of neoliberal orthodoxy).
Which raises the really big puzzle of just WHY and HOW American GDP per capita is so much higher than that of the EU countries, and France/Germany in particular. (I tried to answer it here, but didn’t really succeed in doing so: http://akarlin.com/national-wealth-and-iq/).
For whatever reason, the middle class and the smart fractions in the US are just a lot more productive than their European counterparts.
What are your thoughts on driverless cars? Will they be a game changer?
Obviously a lot of lorry drivers, chaffeurs, etc. will find themselves out of work. It will take a long time to implement – even if adopted all at once, it will still take about 20 years to change the bulk of the vehicle stock – so I don’t see this as being an absolutely massive game changer. That said, I look forwards to not having to bother with owning my own car, and being able to do something useful during commutes instead of driving.
Given the coming wave of job automation, what would you suggest is a good long-term career path for someone who is in their early to mid 20s, in the 125-135 IQ range but with no technical skills? This is an odd question, I know, but I’d like to what you have to say about it.
Get in an oligarch’s good graces. That’s what half of NRx is doing! 😉
Slightly less flippant answer: Read N.N. Taleb’s writings on the power law, and internalize it. If you have a 125-135 IQ, you should be able to build a successful passive-income business, write a bestselling book, etc. You will most likely need to make a lot of attempts before you hit gold, but with your cognitive profile, you have a good chance of making it there eventually. People who end up succeeding are usually those who also fail the most beforehand.
You’d do well to start at this now before everyone is unemployed, on basic income, and competing with you trying to do the exact same thing.
My Book, Smart Fractions
I always liked your posts on education, PISA performance and related economics/demographics. A few days ago I stumbled on http://www.oeaw.ac.at/vid/dataexplorer/ . In this database you can see fertility rates for all countries of the world by education level. Is that of use to you? It is.
Thanks a bunch for the link! I look forwards to exploring this. Might even be of use to my book.
“It is. Thanks a bunch for the link! I look forwards to exploring this. Might even be of use to my book.” You’re writing a book?
Yes. The preliminary title is Apollo’s Ascent.
Its big idea is that the rate and global distribution of technological progress in history has largely been a function of the literacy rate and the absolute numbers of “smart fraction” people available.
I actually plan to make an announcement about this relatively soon on the blog with a more detailed exposition of the main thesis (hopefully before Garett Jones’ Hive Mind comes out).
wrt the premise of your book, how does Britain fit in? AFAIK we’re the single largest contributor to ‘human accomplishment’ over past thousand years or so but by no means a large populace so the smart fraction couldn’t have been that large in absolute terms.
Here’s the thing: England made a huge leap forwards in terms of literacy early on in the Early Modern Age. By the time of the Civil War, literacy was at around 40%. This was much higher than practically anywhere else. Renaissance Italy peaked at around 20% and then remained stagnant at that level for centuries. France on the eve of the Revolution was only at around 25%.
For a smart fraction to be capable of contributing to scientific/cultural progress, it needs to be literate. According to Ancient Literacy by William V. Harris, Ancient Greece was probably the first society on Earth to go beyond “priestly literacy” (~1-2%) to “craftsman literacy” (~10%). England was probably the first society on Earth to go from “craftsman literacy” to something resembling mass literacy, and that happened in the 17th century.
You will know from Human Accomplishment that the great bulk of British achievements accrued in the post-1600 period, and that this coincided with the genesis of the Scientific Revolution.
Another thing to bear in mind: Since England was also one of the first societies to escape Malthusianism, it would also have been one of the societies longest subject to dysgenic trends. While British national IQ today is unremarkable relative to other West European countries, it might have been somewhat higher 400 years ago. Finally, the English were unusually well fed by continental European standards from the 17th century onwards – they were a few cm’s taller, for instance – so that would have likely given a further boost to their IQs.
I myself played a round a bit with the Education/Fertility database and calculated a “predicted IQ loss” over the next generation. Because of the extreme fertility differences, Latin America will be hit very hard (loss about 4 IQ points). What is your take on the future of Latin America?
“Brazil is the country of the future… and always will be.” – Charles de Gaulle.
CDG was usually right.
Apart from a burst of strong growth in the 50s-70s, Latin America for most of its history seems to have merely been keeping up with the advanced countries if not actively falling behind them (like Argentina).
If as you say dysgenic trends are particularly strong there, then all the more reasons for longterm skepticism. about 7 hours ago
What developed country has the most eugenic fertility? What about the least? My observation is that Britain has the most dysgenic but I haven’t seen the data? Where does America fit in there?
Not a topic I have looked at in any great detail (yet).
From what I have gathered from Lynn/Murray, trends amongst White Americans are moderately dysgenic and strongly dysgenic amongst Black Americans. However, JayMan statistically disputes that: https://jaymans.wordpress.com/2014/07/28/idiocracy-can-wait/
As far as I know, most of the differences in fertility rates between developed countries accrue due to fertiltiy differences amongst the more intellectual sorts. So it may be reasonable to assume that dysgenic trends in low fertility countries (Germany, Italy, Japan) are stronger than in high fertility countries (USA, Australia, France). Which if true would be a double whammy of sorts. But as I said I haven’t looked at this in depth, so don’t quote me on this yet. about 2 hours ago
CRISPR, Eugenics, Futurism
How do you think positive genetic engineering will be deployed? will the .1% be able to use it to ensure the primacy of their offspring or will natural inborn inequality be ‘fixed’ by it or any other scenario? When do you imagine it will be used in a majority of human births?
Using CRISPR to “correct” genetic load and vastly increase IQ is a no-brainer to me. Most East Asians would agree with me, though many Americans laboring under Judeo-Christian morality systems would not. Their loss. Most will probably come round eventually, but might miss out in the meantime.
According to estimates I’ve heard from a well informed person the actual technology should be pretty much worked out in 5 years (this was in 2014).
Then it should be mainly regulatory and ethical issues, but they are a big unknown. However, ambitious (ruthless?) billionaires will be able to start upgrading their offspring around about then.
If left to market forces, due to the Moore’s Law-like progress in biotech costs, I expect the procedure will become affordable to the vast majority of people soon after the technology is worked out. If many or most people start doing it, there will be a huge acceleration in technological progress, possibly but not necessarily in sufficient force to take us to a computer superintelligence sometime this century.
So whether it reinforces or suppresses inequality ultimately depends on the regulatory response. Short of a concerted global ban, high net worth individuals will be able to upgrade their offspring but the option will be foreclosed to the proles. The motivations behind any such ban could be naive concern over “human dignity” or other such nonsense, but I don’t exclude the possibility of a transnational oligarch conspiracy to create “global Brahmins” out of their family lines either.
CRISPR&intelligence: I’m reminded of point 6 of Fred Reed ramblings on evolution (I don’t share his skepticism of evolution) http://www.unz.com/freed/me-derbyshire-and-darwin-612/ Still, remark is interesting. Why are seemingly extremely beneficial traits so rare? Somewhere they must have downsides
Certainly. Bigger brains require more energy. But eventually limits are reached beyond which more intelligence offers diminishing marginal returns and ceases to be strongly selected for.
IMO, Pumpkin Person nails it in his reply to Q3: http://pumpkinperson.com/2015/08/17/some-hbd-questions-from-a-reader/
More on intelligence&downsides. Beyond brain energy consumption, Cochran thinks the downside of Ashkenazi intelligence is a higher prevalence of a host of specific genetic diseases. Beyond, consider the anxiety about GMOs crops. How then can you brush off the precautionary principle for HUMAN GMOs?
(1) We just avoid the specific Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence genes that result in genetic diseases, thus “missing out” on the modest <1 S.D. improvement in IQ that would have otherwise given us. That still leaves huge scope for improvement, at least on the level of 4-5 S.D.’s, which describes the cream of the cognitive crop today.
(2) I don’t think the anxiety over GMO crops is scientifically legitimate.
What developed country are you most optimistic about over the next 50 years? What country most over-performs their potential? Also, what country most underperforms their potential?
(1) The “Anglo offshoots” i.e. Australia, Canada, even the US. Demographically vigorous. High native IQs. Strong universities and hi-tech sectors. Cognitively elitist immigration policies. The US is a partial exception, but since so many talented people around the globe still want to move to the US anyway, this means that in net terms, things will probably cancel out (especially since with the advent of mass automation, the influence of “smart fractions” is likely to increase even further).
Since the Cucks of Europe are insisting on flooding the continent with <90 IQ Third Worlders, and Sub-Saharan Africans will come to comprise something like 40% of the global population by the end of this century (UN projections) resulting in massive immigration pressure, I don’t hold out much hope for any EU countries, including even Poland and Hungary, who will still have to answer for Juncker’s and Merkel’s choices. Japan and South Korea will do okay but ultimately their potential is going to be constrained by their lower q factor (curiosity) since that will likely attain more of a premium in the coming age of automation.
(2) The US itself is the biggest and most prominent example. See http://akarlin.com/national-wealth-and-iq/
(3) Once smart fractions (varying IQ distributions), oil windfalls, and Communist legacies are factored in, there are very few countries that truly overshoot or underperform very much.
But the biggest example here is China. See http://akarlin.com/2012/02/education-elixir-of-growth-3/
Charles Murray and Steven Pinker
Do you know Charles Murry and Steven Pinker? They think mainstream-social science is still lagging behind REAL science by ignoring genetic and racial differences. What’s your idea of this situation and political-correctiness of FAKE knowledge ?
They are of course correct, but their high status stops them from being too forthright in calling a spade a spade. This allows Pinker to retain his status as a high priest of modern liberalism, complete with columns in the Guardian, while Charles Murray, for all my respect for his sociological work, is at heart a cuckservative who gets triggered by Donald Trump of all people. As such, they embody the problem at least as much as they contribute to solving it.
Thank you for answering my questions about C Murry and S Pinker. When will the mainstream media & social science accept and talk about the TRUTH? How hard it will be?
I used to think that the flood of new genetic evidence would sweep away the dogmas that have been accumulating in universities and the media since the days of Boas and Gould.
But I have become much more skeptical of late, because I now realize that regressive trends have if anything accelerated. With SJWs making common cause with the Western deep state (NSA, GCHQ, Google, Facebook, etc.) the foundations are being laid for enshrining blank slate, social justice ideology in perpetuity – or at least until whenever its host organism collapses.
The Ukrainian Question
In http://akarlin.com/prosvirnin-shoahed/ you wrote that Ukrainian nationalists have been preventing Poroshenko from making good on the Minsk agreements. Why them rather than his Western retainers?
It appears that the latter, not the former, are the ones who got him by the balls. I think the Western powers generally do want to see Ukraine fulfill the Minsk Accords (the Europeans do at any rate; I am not 100% sure on the neocons who are overseeing US policy on Ukraine).
The problem is that the Maidan absolutists and nationalists view fulfilling the Minsk conditions as a great zrada (betrayal) and are uncompromising in their opposition to it. The nationalists might not enjoy huge electoral support, but they have a lot of armed, violent men in their ranks, and that is likely what by far the most important consideration in Ukraine nowadays. If they can overthrow one President, then they can overthrow a second one as well, if the circumstances are right.
Moreover, actually fulfilling the Minsk Accords would raise the risk of the far western regions (Galicia, etc.) demanding the same autonomies as the Donbass. These are generally considered to be the main reasons why Poroshenko isn’t rushing to fulfill them. In fact, he has yet to fulfill a single condition in them.
Are Russian and Ukrainian nationalisms necessarily at odds?
I have no issues with Malorossiyans who take pride in their regional culture, traditions, and identity.
As for the “Ukraine” project, it is a fiction jointly created by Poles and Soviet multikultis to divide the Russian nation.
Why do you say Ukraine is a Communist invention? It was created in 1917 by the February Revolution. Its precedent is the Kyivan Rus
No, it’s absolutely not. Ukraine (namely, “borderland,” there being at various times multiple ukrainas to denote territories near the borders of the Russian world) has absolutely nothing to do with Kievan Rus. The term itself was a Tsarist-era literary invention that was hijacked in the 20th century to serve the cause of Ukrainian nationalism. In the days of “Kievan Rus” itself, the term people from Galicia to Vladimir-Suzdal used was just “Rus,” or “the Russian Land” (Russkaya Zemlya).
This is what results in the very peculiar Ukrainian nationalist sort of schizophrenia in which they propose to prosecute and imprison people calling Russia (aka the modern state), “Russia”, or “Rus”: http://lenta.ru/news/2015/07/07/radavsrussia/ In a way, they’re sort of proving the point that Ukraine is an unconvincing fiction. If it wasn’t, they wouldn’t care.
Could the Russian Empire in the early twentieth century have peacefully transformed into something like the British Commonwealth?
Emmanuel Todd’s work suggests that a transition to Communism was not an accident. Virtually all countries/regions with the exogamous communitarian family system (Eurasia, China, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Cuba) took “naturally” to Communism, at least in the beginning.
But if we consider a what-if in which there was no WW1 and the Russian Empire did not become the USSR, it would also have avoided the “multinational” experiments that created Ukraine and Belarus, and both those regions would have become firmly Russian, just like the French provinces only became truly French in the 19th century through the natural process of nation-building. The fact that there were protests in Belarus in the 1920s when Soviet commissars insisted that they study in Belorussian instead of in Russian in the schools shows how much natural, organic momentum this nation-building process had.
The non-Russian regions (Finland, the Caucasian states, Central Asia, etc.) would have fallen away or more likely become federated states. Relations with Eastern European Slavs would be a lot better. With the exception of the Poles, most East European Slavs were highly Russophilic in the 19th century.
Chinese IQ & Cultural Influence
A Chinese official medical magazine shows China’s average IQ of kids was 103.4 in 2005. But there are huge differences among provinces. Someone think it’s caused by Iodine difficiency in some regions.What’s your idea? http://www.city-data.com/forum/world/2348902-china-iq-map-provinces-8-10-a.html
I don’t think differences in iodine deficiency will be playing a major role nowadays. The link between iodine deficiency and IQ depression has been known for a long time now, and Communist countries of all systems are pretty good at solving problems like these!
Most countries have major differences between provinces. Moscow is about 2/3 S.D. higher than the Russian average. Northern Italy is 1/2-2/3 S.D. higher than Southern Italy. Recently, Kenya Kura found a similar north/south gap in Japan, which is rather surprising since Japan has a reputation as a homogenous country! China does not have a reputation as a homogenous country, so the fact that it has major differences in IQ between different provinces is not surprising in the least.
Shanghai and Beijing clearly enjoy a “cognitive clustering” effect. Everybody who’s anybody wants to go there (just like Americans want to go to NY or SF; Britons want to go to London; Russians want to go to Moscow; etc). But only the more intelligent and driven Chinese are capable of doing that, especially since China has barriers to urban migration in the form of the hukou registration system.
The far southern provinces have higher levels of admixture with the (lower IQ) pre-Han indigenous peoples, plus Clarkian/Unzian processes of selection for higher IQ would not have had as long a chance to operate there as in Yangtze/Yellow River “core” China. There might also be a slight environmental factor in the form of greater parasitic disease load in the south, but that is more speculative. Yunnan and Guizhou provinces (lowscoring) are also remote and landlocked and have lagged in the developmental process, so their IQs may also be additionally depressed by sheer poverty and great malnutrition (though malnutrition has long ceased to be a major problem in China overall).
My question about anime, china and japan was about how much china could exercise actual cultural influence in the West, like Japan did in the 90’s and 2000’s and still does to some extent in the form of Anime.
If cultural influence is a function of g, q, and GDP – namely, intelligence, creativity, and economic weight, as seems reasonable – then eventually Chinese cultural influence can be expected to massively outweigh Japanese cultural influence in the West.
What specific form that influence will take is something I have no idea about.
Balkan IQ
According to Lynn, Serbia’s national IQ is 90. Basically, all of the Balkans countries seem to have low, as in 85 to 90ish, IQs. But I’m struck at how low the Serbs apparently are in terms of IQ. Have you any experience with Serbs or Serbia? Are you inclined to accept or to doubt Lynn’s numbers?
I haven’t had many personal interactions with Serbs or South Slavs so I can’t say. Actually, even I I did, it still wouldn’t be of much validity, like all personal anecdotes. I knew one Kyrgyz woman who was very bright but Kyrgyzstan has an average IQ of ~75 (derived from PISA). So personal anecdotes aren’t worth much. I do not see any obvious reasons for why the figures for the South Slavs should be incorrect so I assume they are more or less accurate.
The Balkans in general have been Europe’s least-developed region for centuries. Serbia as late as 1913 had an illiteracy rate of more than 90%. This was far lower than the contemporaneous figures even in Russia or Portugal, the two most extreme non-Balkan laggards in Europe at that time. Since development and literacy are both somewhat associated with national average IQs, that would support the finding of low IQs for the Balkans.
JayMan’s theory on this is that whereas the northern Slavs had selection for higher IQs in the form of cold winters – village communities that were too feckless at longterm planning would simply starve to death and vanish off the map – there were no such rigorous selection mechanisms for higher IQs in the Balkans.
The Serbian IQ is that it isn’t much higher than that of black Americans, just 4 or 5 points higher, and yet they seem so much more civilized. Other Balkans countries, IQs are either a tad higher, the same or even lower (Albania) than blacks, and yet they too are more civilized. How can this be? Which other ethnic group has an IQ that is “4 or 5” points higher than that of American Blacks?
Hispanics.
Hispanics are basically civilized people. Ron Unz had an article a few months ago in which he statistically demonstrated that White and Hispanic crime rates were essentially the same. I currently live in a Hispanic majority area and don’t feel particularly unsafe.
There is more to civilization than just IQ.
I think with respect to American Blacks there are two things we have to keep in mind. First, what really characterizes them is their amazing levels of violence. Nicholas Wade suggests it might be linked to the 2R allele of the MAOA gene. South Slavs and especially Albanians have a reputation for being thuggish relative to other Whites, but they have nothing on Blacks in that department. As you correctly point out, you will be far, far safer anywhere in Belgrade than in Baltimore.
Second, the stereotype of the violent, low IQ Black is drawn primarily from the inner city ghettoes. It is an accurate enough stereotype, but note that those ghettoes consist of those Blacks too poor or feckless to move out of them. There are plenty of Blacks living relatively unnoticed in middle class suburban neighborhoods. If we’re talking of real hardcore 95%+ Black ghettoes with 50/100,000 annual homicide rates, the mean IQ there is probably more like 80 instead of 85.
Russian Economy, Society, Foreign Policy
Are there plans in Russian to seriously start re-building their industrial base (ie non-extractive economy)?
So you have to identify whether you mean “re-building their industrial base” in a statistical sense, or in the rhetorical sense that is often used in political debates in Russia.
In statistical terms, industrial output since 2008 has come close to peak USSR (RSFSR) levels. Let’s take a sectoral look. Light manufacturing (e.g. textiles) is now a small fraction of peak Soviet output, but that doesn’t matter much, since those are shit industries anyway (unskilled, low value added). Machine building, an important industry, is at 50%. Car production is TWICE higher relative to peak Soviet levels. Electronics production is substantially higher. Aerospace and military output has increased greatly in the past few years, but still lags Soviet peak output by a large margin. But the Soviet economy was massively distorted to favor heavy manufacturing, especially manufacturing with military applications. It is unlikely that Russia will be able to return to that kind of structure under a market economy that caters to consumer needs. Or whether it is even good sense to make that effort.
In terms of policy debates, there have been arguments by statist economists like Sergey Glazyev to use Russia’s accumulated oil funds to provide subsidized loans to strategic manufacturing sectors (amongst other suggestions). This is quite a radical suggestion that is unlikely to be adopted anytime soon since the Finance Ministry and the Central Bank appear to be run by monetarist hardliners. Unsurprisingly, the consensus of Western and liberal Russian economics commentators is that Glazyev is a madman. Speaking for myself, I do not feel I have the requisite expertise on the Russian economy or industrial policy to venture any firm opinions on this.
What are some things that the West (and America) do better than Russia? Also vice versa?
Relationships between strangers is a key difference in America’s favor (see http://ask.fm/akarlin88/answer/133014724988).
Britons are civil, but not very friendly. Russians are uncivil, but can become very friendly once you come to know them. Americans are both civil and friendly.
Overall I think Americans are more open to free speech and freedom in general, such as gun rights. This is, overall, a good thing (so long as society can handle it and American society can). Russians (and Britons, and Europeans in general) are very totalitarian in their attitudes towards gun rights and “hate” speech. I mean you can still easily get fired for voicing the wrong things in the US, but at least you won’t be imprisoned for it.
Needless to say, the average American is still far richer than the average Russian (though the gap isn’t as vast as it first appears due to purchasing power differences), and enjoys much better healthcare and higher education services. Moreover, contrary to eurofag propaganda, US healthcare and higher education is better than in almost all other European countries (e.g. just look at cancer survival rates across countries, or the national shares of Nobel Prize/Fields Medal winners). Of course both healthcare and higher education are an order of magnitude more expensive in the US, but the typical American, so long as he isn’t completely feckless, is usually able to afford them quite easily.
I might come off as highly anti-American in my blog postings but in general I really admire quite a lot of things about ‘Murica!
You can read a LOT more about my comparisons of Russia to the US (and Great Britain) here: http://akarlin.com/series/national-comparisons/comparisons-russia-uk-usa/
What is your opinion of the “Euro-Siberian” empire that some people on the alt-right (eg Guillame Faye) like to put forth?
Bismarck said that Europe is nothing but a geographical expression. Eurosiberia isn’t even that.
Broadly speaking, I support a Europe of independent nation-states. I do not see a problem with extending the common economic space across the Eurasian steppes, in a gradual, unforced way, and at a pace with which its constituent peoples are comfortable with. But I see no point in any grander constructs.
How do you see future relations between Russia and China?
No China isn’t going to conquer or otherwise “take over” Siberia. The idea is so absolutely fucking stupid but so many seemingly intelligent people appear to take it for granted.
China and Russia complement it each very well. Russia has the mineral and energy resources, China has massive economic and financial heft. There is a lot of scope for joint work in manufacturing and technology and increasing numbers of agreements are getting signed to that effect. Geopolitical disputes between them are minor and fade into insignificance relative to the problems both have with the US and its aggressively ideological approach to international relations.
Quick Rejoinders
You should do a “game” analysis of the major Russian writers and their works, it would be a great humorous read to supplement your usual serious articles. I can see it already: (Gogol – omega, Turgenev – beta-orbiter, Lermontov – shadow-alpha, Tolstoy/Pushkin – peak Aplha, Nabokov- alpha marriage)
“Return of Kings columnist” isn’t on my current list of career goals.
Have you considered getting a PhD in one of the many subjects that interest you and that you write so engagingly and intelligently about on unz.com?
Why should I pay money to discredit myself?
[the English were unusually well fed by continental European standards from the 17th century onwards – they were a few cm’s taller, for instance]
Actually, the quantity of food bought by a working man’s income in England peaked in 1470-1530, never reached that level again till the mid-19th century, and the 17th century was on average the worst of all the last six. Not were the English quite as tall or long-lived as the inhabitants of Denmark, Norway, Sweden or Schleswig-Holstein.
I really respect you, Anatolij, however I cannot agree that Ukraine was project of Poles and communist. Ukrainian nationalism existed before WWI and usually was directed AT the Poles. “Ukraine for Ukrainians” was slogan created before 1900, while first political Ukrainian party in Russian empire was something like 1900. The name “Ukraine” was used in Polish in XVI century. In 1903 Bruckner was already complaining that “Ukrainian” was incorrect term and Poles should be using “Rusin” or “Małorusin”, meaning the term “Ukrainian” was widely used in his times.
That is correct but the main point of comparison should be with contemporaneous European rivals, especially the highly populated scientific/cultural powerhouses like France, Spain, Prussia, A-H, and the German and Italian states.
I downloaded Joerg Baten’s historical male height data for some major European countries and GB which starts at 1710. Here it is.
https://twitter.com/akarlin88/status/650237805063335937
During the 18th century, GB is generally in the lead, with only Sweden and Netherlands consistently matching it.
The Scandinavians match or exceed GB, sure, but they (1) have low populations and (2) it took longer for them to achieve high literacy levels.
In occupied Balkans (by Turks) people who could THINK got murdered, systematically. Also population was drained by “blood taxes”. Please, get informed
You’re absolutely safe in Belgrade, women roam streets at a.m.night hours freely and safely
It is advisable to know what you’re talking about especially if you’re talking about IQs, don’t you think?
It’s more complex than that. Ukrainian national identity was born in the Russian Empire; it was the project of Cossack officer families and petty gentry. These people were intermarrying with Poles from this region (Gogol, typical example, had a Polish grandparent) and had very friendly relationships with them; both they and the Polish gentry in these areas viewed Russians as the mutual enemy, and because Poland did not claim these lands for itself (unlike as the case in Galicia) the two groups had no issues with each other. Most of the Poles here went local and Ukrainianized. So for example, Hrushevsky’s teacher, Antonovich, was a Ukrainianized Pole:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volodymyr_Antonovych
Some Russians will twist this reality to claim that Ukrainian identity was an evil Polish plot.
Exiled Ukrainian activists from the Russian Empire helped to transform Galicians (who were undergoing an internal struggle, deciding whether they were Rusyns or Ukrainians or Russians) into Ukrainians. When they arrived, they were often shocked by the hostility between Poles and Ukrainians in Galicia.
The IQ in the Balkans will rise as the region modernizes and the people there are forced to think in more modern, abstract terms.
It’s not anymore complicated than that. The only problem is that you need capital and time to modernize, and capital doesn’t like to flow to places with low IQ, for obvious reasons.
GDP figures can sometimes be misleading, since the FIRE sector can have a very distorting impact on them. When analyzing countries like the US and UK, where finance and real-estate constitute such a large percentage of the economy, this should be borne in mind.
“what would you suggest is a good long-term career path for someone who is in their early to mid 20s, in the 125-135 IQ range but with no technical skills? “
That’s not ALL that late for going to med school. One should avoid winner-take-all careers. As a consumer I’m glad there are talented writers, musicians and tech entrepreneurs out there, but from the perspective of a young person trying to choose a career winner-take-all is bad. Almost every smart, hardworking person who starts medical school ends up with a stable high-paying job. The MD career track is the opposite of winner-take-all.
So, Ukraine was a Polish project after all.
“The Serbian IQ is that it isn’t much higher than that of black Americans, just 4 or 5 points higher, and yet they seem so much more civilized. “
As Anatoly said, there’s a lot more to civilization than IQ. There are many double-digit-IQ but hardworking groups – Mexican and Peruvian Indians and Mestizos, low-caste East Indians, SE Asians. The capacity for hard work must be related to impulse control, which is itself related to criminality. It’s my impression that in Mexico people of Spanish descent are both smarter and less hard-working than people of Amerindian descent.
Low IQ + low impulse control a double whammy civilization-wise.
“In terms of policy debates, there have been arguments by statist economists like Sergey Glazyev to use Russia’s accumulated oil funds to provide subsidized loans to strategic manufacturing sectors “
Smart guy. What you said about the lack of popularity of this idea is really sad. Ever since the Industrial Revolution all truly successful, well-run, patriotic regimes were manufacturing regimes. China is the biggest success story of our lifetimes. One has to imitate winners, not losers.
The Donald is 95% clown and 5% US patriot while Jeb and Hillary are 100% establishment lackeys and 0% US patriots. And surprise, surprise, the Donald is the one who’s been making protectionist, re-industrializing noises. It’s automatic – if one wishes one’s country well, one would want it to (re)industrialize more.
To comment on the question “What developed country has the most eugenic fertility? What about the least? My observation is that Britain has the most dysgenic but I haven’t seen the data? Where does America fit in there? ”
As I have played a bit with the Wittgenstein database, I calculated the dysgenic trend for every country by using several assumptions (perfect correlation between IQ and the level of education, standard deviation for the IQ of 15 in all countries, all children will attain the same level of education as their parents). Since the first assumption is especially not really true for developing countries (still a lot of undiscovered talens roam around the woods or work as farmers), the dysgenics especially for the poor countries might be overstated.
Anyway, here’s the map for the projected generational loss in average IQ:
https://farm1.staticflickr.com/746/21683005190_eb722fb3c1_o.png
The strongest dysgenic trend among developed countries is in Israel (probably to high Arab fertility), followed by the US, HK/Macao and the Baltics. Poland isn’t developed yet, but also has a comparably strong dysgenic trend.
The least dysgenic fertility is in Belgium (where it’s actually eugenic from the data), Scandinavia and Canada. Japan and Taiwan also have rather weak dysgenics. Scandinavia and Belgium though have lots of low-IQ immigration.
“Moreover, contrary to eurofag propaganda, US healthcare and higher education is better than in almost all other European countries”
The top 1% of US universities are the best in the world. The other 99% are pretty bad. Because of this the average European and the average Russian know more non-work-related, general-education-type stuff, both in soft and hard subjects, than the average White or Asian American.
In comments to past posts I’ve made a list of industries that make more contributions to the GDP in America than in other rich countries, while failing to generate more customer and citizen satisfaction. Higher ed, healthcare, retirement, transportation, etc. I just remembered another one – the legal profession. America is more litigious than other rich countries. All those legal fees contribute to the GDP.
Well, if hanging out with occasional Poles or being 1/4 Polish or whatever contaminates a project to the extent that it turns it into a “Polish” one, sure. However given the fact that Ukrainians themselves are heavily mixed with Poles, and spent centuries within Poland (Polish linguistic and cultural influence on Ukraine is quite comparable to Norman-French influence on England) it is odd to separate the two. A Russian claiming that Ukrainian is a fake nationality or Polish project and seeking to Russify the population and purge it of Polish influence is about as ridiculous as some sort of pan-German nationalist viewing English as a fake culture and seeking to “re-Germanize” the English people by removing Norman-French influence from their culture, language etc.
I’ve seen different figures – bear in mind that England had less of an approach to conscription than any other of these countries, so data will be lacking in quality. As for literacy, in the late eighteenth century England was behind both north-east France and lowland Scotland.
If you look at PISA scores by race, white American kids outperform almost every European country, US Latinos every Latin American country, and Asians almost every Asian country.
“The name “Ukraine” was used in Polish in XVI century.
What’s now the middle of the European portion of Russia was sometimes called Zalesskaya Ukraina (the borderland beyond the forests) in the Middle Ages. Several other parts of Russia, including some in what’s now the Ukraine were sometimes called ukrainas (borderlands) in pre-modern times. If I had $100,000 for every time I’ve said that I grew up on the outskirts of Moscow (na okraine Moskvy), I’d probably be able to retire early and live off interest.
As the 18th and 19th centuries progressed, the word Ukraina became associated with the (approximately) modern area of the Ukraine more and more, but it’s my impression that this word overtook Malorossiya (Litte Russia) in popularity only after the Communist takeover. And because of it.
Parties with “Ukrainian” in their name easily won elections in Russian-owned Ukraine in 1917, prior to Bolshevik rule. As for usage (published maps, references in books, etc.), since officially this was Little Russia you are probably correct.
In the US you need to satisfy prerequisites (tons of biochemistry, biology, etc. courses). Since OP said he has a non-technical background that will involve doing the equivalent of at least 2 years of undergrad work.
https://career.berkeley.edu/Medical/PrepPrereq
Since he presumably already has a degree, financial aid is probably out of the question unless he is exceptionally brilliant (but ~130 IQ isn’t).
Then we have Med School itself, which is extremely expensive ($200-300K total).
Taking the med route is going to be an exceptionally difficult and costly grind for someone in his circumstances.
Frankly for someone in his position trying to go in Law will be better since at least he is likely to have fulfilled all the Law School prereqs and lawyerly work is more suited for people with a “soft”
academic background. Although problem is that not only is there a surfeit of lawyers in the US but the sector is getting rapidly automated.
I am not advising him to abandon his day job (whatever that is) but to start playing the winner-takes-all career lottery. For someone with an IQ of 130, that is more rational than, say, playing the slot machines.
“Japan and South Korea will do okay but ultimately their potential is going to be constrained by their lower q factor (curiosity)”
Care to elaborate? I have done some searching in the web and actually never saw this statement proven or even somehow researched. From what i know its just a theory by bloggers that explaining how come the west is outperforming the east while having slightly lower IQ . It may be because of several other reasons that are not the q factor. IMO comparing White Americans and East Asians Americans in terms of curiosity(Asians should be adjusted a bit lower because they are selectively migrate to the US unlike the natives East Asians) may put this theory on test.
I do not see any obvious reasons for why the figures for the South Slavs should be incorrect so I assume they are more or less accurate.
How about the fact Lynn changes the numbers from book to book? In the Balkans, he used to have Croatia’s IQ as 90, and then just added 8 points, and now, apparently, Croatia’s IQ is supposed to be 98. No reason to believe he won’t change the figures for Serbia and the other Balkan countries as well. Besides, there’s no way there’s an 8 point difference between Croatia and Serbia, that’s ridiculous.
According to average PISA score in 2009 (converted to IQ):
Croatia = 96
Serbia = 91
Bulgaria = 90
Montenegro = 86
Albania = 83
What is your opinion of the idea that Putin advisor Vladislav Surkov is responsible for the demise of Novorussia? There is certainly evidence to support it:
Surkov convinced Putin that Ukraine would completely disintegrate before the end of 2014 and that it was better to wait for the collapse than to allow the militia to capture Mariupol, opposed helping pro-Russian forces in both Donbass and pre-reunification Crimea, has personal ties to and business interests with Ukrainian oligarchs (including Poroshenko), and has a long history of hostility to and dirty tricks against Russian nationalists (including Dmitry Rogozin). Add to that the fact that Surkov started his career working for then-oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, has Chechen ancestry, and his infamous story advocating (under a pseudonym) for his country to lose to a US-like country so that it would be rebuilt like “Germany and France after . . . the second World War,” and you have someone extremely hostile to both Russia and Russian nationalism.
Re: GMO babies. I think you, like all techno-optimists, greatly underestimate the yuck factor in all this. Now, this could be overcome with decades of targeted propaganda (as the example of gay marriage shows) but there are rational reasons to oppose using CRISPR or some other genetic technique to increase IQ.
First, are we arrogant enough to know that it will work 100% and won’t create unforeseen problems in the future? What if increases IQ for 90% of the children and renders the other 10% idiots? Or what if makes everyone smart but 60% of such kids develop a mental illness at the age of 40? You need a literal lifetime to know if this thing is really safe. Perhaps even two or more lifetimes, to make sure there are no adverse impact on future generations. You want to experiment on your offspring? I don’t.
But suppose genetic manipulation is 100% safe, works every time, and with no side effects down the line. There is another issue to consider here. You are going to get a crop of kids who are far smarter than their parents. Such situations are currently rare, and when it does happen the parents are given partial credit for “good upbringing.” Obviously, this won’t happen with genetically modified kids.
So you got a child who has 30-50 IQ points on his parents. What do you think his childhood will be like? Starting from the teen years he will realize that his parents are unbearably dumb. What will this do to his relationship with them?
Now look at this from the parents’ perspective. Do you have kids of your own? I am guessing not. This will make it a bit harder to explain… Of course, every parent wants their child to succeed in life. But that’s not most important. So what is the most important, the number one thing we expect from our kids? We want, we expect them – to be like us. That’s why we get so excited when baby has daddy’s eyes. That’s why we sing them the same songs we heard as children, read the same books we read ourselves back then. We are transferring our culture to them. No parent wants perfect little aliens for kids. Let them be imperfect but let them be our continuation… Reducing genetic load is one thing, but dramatically increasing IQ is going against human nature. Most people are unlikely to do it voluntarily, and if a mass of them is made to do it against their will (e.g. in China) this would lead to a great social breakdown.
As for the automation, meh. Tolkien said that labor saving machines only create “endless and worse labor.” I don’t know about necessarily worse but the endless part is right on target. I noticed that in learning the history of scientific and industrial progress, and I also observed it first hand in a little way in the course of my career. At first, yes, the new gizmo saves labor and often leads to jobs elimination. Then some propellerhead discovers that you can do things with the new toy that you couldn’t do before. Before you know it, this formerly impossible thing become the absolute minimum requirement.
So what would be those new, yet undreamed of applications for the new automation stuff that is coming down the pike? I have not a foggiest idea. I wish I was able to foresee that – that’s how billions are made. I am not that talented though.
Also, I don’t understand why everyone assumes that you’d have to be super smart to work with those future gadgets. This is not how it happened in the past. Quite the opposite, in fact. As the result of the first Industrial Revolution, highly skills craftsmen who had to train for years were replaced with poor slobs hired off the street and forced to do this all day. If anything, there is a kind of equilibrium: the smarter the machine the dumber the user can be.
Its also the case, too, that Lynn, even when he was still reporting a 90 IQ for Croatia, said that their IQ was higher than that but that he only 2 studies at hand at the time. When more data came in, he revised it in 2012.
Frankly, no one should go to law school in my opinion. But, if the person that asked you that question were a NAM, then he would be well-positioned to get into a top-6 law school — which is to say, in ascending order, NYU, Chicago, Columbia, Stanford, Harvard, and Yale — provided that he get a passable, not even all that great, LSAT score. Which, if he is really at the 125 – 135 IQ level, should be no problem. Even with all of the automation, there are and will probably continue to be plenty of opportunities for people graduating from any of those schools.
Apparently, Rushton put Serbian IQ to as low as 88:
http://philipperushton.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Data-on-the-Ravens-Standard-Progressive-Matrices-from-Four-Serbian-Samples-2009-by-John-Philippe-Rushton-Jelena-%C4%8Cvorovi%C4%87.pdf
“Emmanuel Todd’s work suggests that a transition to Communism was not an accident. Virtually all countries/regions with the exogamous communitarian family system (Eurasia, China, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Cuba) took “naturally” to Communism, at least in the beginning.”
Go figure.
So no bloody revolutions imposed from the outside with foreign money and foreign soldiers, no traitors to their own countries, no domestic terror to establish the one party system and wipe out the opposition, no destruction of religion and of the intellectual elites (which “naturally” lowers the collective IQ of a country)..
It was all natural and benign, eh ?
France’s higher productivity makes perfect sense when you consider the difficulty of firing people in France. If you’re an employer, you had better make damn sure you are hiring productive workers. Corollary: high French unemployment.
By contrast, employers who can fire at will only need to find people who are marginally productive.
But wouldn’t the people notice? There are no “stupid Serb” or “stupid Montenegrin” stereotypes in Croatia. A couple of points I could buy, but 10 points between Croatia and Montenegro I can’t really square with real life experience.
What is UBI?
It isn’t clear that having an IQ of 86-90 makes someone stupid, per se. In any case, a population with that average IQ will be able to produce enough intelligent people (with 120+ IQs), such that no one will say the entire population is made up of idiots. In any case, have a look at Charles Murray’s book Human Accomplishment. If we’re to take him seriously, these populations have contributed as little as any other supposedly backwards population groups outside of Europe. If he’s right, only Northern/Western Europeans and Northeast Asians have contributed anything of value
Unconditional basic income, I’d suppose.
Compare popularity of communist party in France and Poland, by the way (before communism was imposed on Poland by USSR).
Did that imposition endear the communist party to the Polish population?
Thanks.
What you failed to notice amidst your rant is that I made exactly zero moral judgments.
Communist rule in all those countries (plus Hungary which I forgot to mention) arose organically without the need for any foreign intervention except Bulgaria (and even there attitudes towards Communism were always far warmer than in states like Poland or Romania).
The genius of Emmanuel Todd was in recognizing the family structure (strongly exogamous communitarianism) that underlay these otherwise seemingly unconnected countris – Russia, Hungary, China, Cuba.
Better late than never:
Armed violent men would not have overthrown the previous President if the majority if the people of Kiev (and a plurality of the country) did not want the President to be overthrown. Unless this happens with Poroshenko, he will be safe form armed nationalists.
I’m no expert on Belarus, but I suspect Ukraine would not have been so easy to digest you would have hoped. Russians falsely and optimistically assume Ukrainians and Russians are one people and that Polish rule was an aberration. Minimizing the Polish impact on Ukrainian society (Ukrainian nationalists do this too, to a very large extent they whitewash Ukraine’s Polish roots) leads to a false view of Ukrainians and incorrect “what-if” scenarios. Reality is that Polish linguistic and cultural influence on the Ukrainian was no less than French-Norman influence on the Germanic/Celtic people of England whom the Normans conquered. Ukraine spend more time as part of Poland-Lithuania than as part of Russia. Its elite (including Orthodox, including those who fought against the Polish state) spoke Polish for generations, and there was considerable mixing between the two peoples in all strata of society – Polish peasant settlers marrying their neighbors, Polish gentry marrying Rus gentry and Cossack officers. Just as English, a Germanic language, has more words in common with French than with German, so Ukrainian, an East Slavic language has more words in common with Polish than with Russian.
This is reflected in historical events. Somehow Ukrainians were more likely to betray Russia than were other “Russians.” There was no Mazepa in any ethnic Russian region.
Prior to Bolshevism, various Ukrainian parties easily won the Russian Constituent Assembly election in 1917. During the Revolution and Civil War, there was virtually no support for the Whites among ethnic Ukrainians in Ukraine (Whites were the choice for Russian patriots), and very spotty support for the Reds. Ethnic Ukrainians supported a chaotic bunch of nationalists (Petliura) or anarchists (Makhno). Soviet nationality policy in Ukraine was more of an attempt to secure loyalty by appealing to native sentiments and coopting local elites than about the creation of new sentiments.
I couldn’t copy-edit or revise my comment above. I wanted to add that Ukraine is neither “Rus” as Ukrainian nationalists claim (nor is Russia simply Rus), nor Russia as Russian nationalists insist it is. The historical, linguistic, and demographic ingredients are all present, for the existence of a separate ethnos that developed sometime in the 16th century. This explains events in Ukraine more realistically than does the idea of a series of Polish, Austrian, German, and neocon/zionist plots.
Of course a population with an average IQ of 86 will still produce intelligent people. But these are neighboring groups that speak the same language and spent a century as part of the same country, they know each other intimately. They have so many stereotypes of each other, yet none of them are about the other group being dim. I can’t think of another example of populations with such an IQ gap that are so familiar with each other without the higher IQ population regarding the lower IQ population as a bit dim.
Not sure what Murray has to do with this. I’m not comparing Montenegrins to Northern and Western Europeans, I’m comparing them to other South Slavs. All of these groups have produced few internationally notable individuals, Croatia and Slovenia included. And at the local level, Serbia and Montenegro don’t lag behind their supposedly smarter northern neighbors in producing stuff of value. All these groups are equally irrelevant to the wider world, and equally relevant locally. So I remain skeptical about this IQ gap.
Croatia has a much higher per capita GDP than Serbia or Montenegro, without a non-IQ explanation such as having superior natural resources. And this has been historically the case. Croatia’s literacy rate is 99.2%, Serbia’s is 98%. Croatia’s tertiary education rate in 2012 was 62%, Serbia’s 52%:
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.TER.ENRR
There is nothing surprising about Serbs having significantly low mean IQ than Croats.
Being that Croats and serbs fought a genocidal war vs one another, and hate each other till this day, it’s hard to believe that of all the negative stereotypes they must of each other, none have to do with insulting the others intelligence. After all the bad blood, they probably project every negative attribute one each other indiscriminately. The point here is that it doesn’t seem valid to base your rejection of the evidence for low serbia and Montenegrin iq on the basis of what the popular prejudices in that region may or may not be.
And, I only brought up Murray in order to point out that were the serbs and Montenegrin s smarter than the evidence suggests they are, the expectation would be that they would be more intellectually accomplished than they are. After all, it makes sense that not much of value has come out of black africa, considering mean it’s there. And the same is the case with the serbs.
Anyway, there’s been much research on this done by Lynn and Rushton, and many others besides, so I really don’t get your reluctance to accept what the evidence, which is abundant, clearly suggests.
Then how do you explain Slovenia having a much higher per capita GDP than Croatia? There’s no Lynn IQ explanation there. People in the region see all of it as a consequence of which empire which country was part of historically. Slovenia and, to a lesser degree, Croatia had the advantage of being part of Austria-Hungary.
No, they don’t indiscriminately project every negative attribute on each other. The various stereotypes in the region have a long history, they don’t just completely change instantly depending on what the political situation is like at the moment. Rural primitivism is one of them, but stupidity or slowness just isn’t. The big stereotype about Montenegrins is that they’re lazy. If their average IQ was really so low, it seems obvious the others would taunt them over it. The Croats would especially have plenty of motivation to do so, as Montenegrins shelled Croatia’s south in 1991. And yet they don’t.
Sure, popular prejudices don’t prove anything, but they’re enough for me to be skeptical of this. Are there other examples of the higher IQ group having no clue whatsoever that the other group is, on average, significantly dimmer?
Bringing up Murray as proof that these estimates are correct doesn’t make sense when Croats and Slovenes, with their supposedly much higher IQ, are just as irrelevant in Murray’s findings.
I don’t reject the possibility of a difference in average IQ between these countries but, if there is one, I’d expect it to be a couple of points, similar to the one Lynn finds between Austria and the northwestern ex-Yugoslavian countries. My reluctance is surprise and skepticism not over there being an IQ gap, but over the size of this supposed gap, based on years of experience in the region.
Sure. Are people seriously claiming that Serbs genetically have a 6 point or whatever IQ disadvantage vs. Croats? The real and measurable Serb IQ disadvantage is probably mostly environmental and probably due to Serbs having been in the Balkan rather Austro-Hungarian world.
Very well, but without prolonging this further, let me ask you one question. If your problem is with the IQ disparity between Croats and Serbs, how is it that you can take that disparity as an excuse to revise Serb IQ upwards instead of revising Croat IQ downwards?