Transhumanism, at its most basic level, is about extending human capabilities through technology.
In a sense, it has always been with us since at least the invention of fire. As David Landes notes, the invention of eyepieces in Renaissance Italy de facto doubled the productive life expectancy of artisans that relied upon fine motor skills for their labors. It probably wasn’t particularly critical so far as European ascendancy went – my best guess is that particular honor belongs to mass literacy, another technology that massively extended human capabilities, effectively augmenting the information storage capacity at our fingertips by orders of magnitude – but it certainly didn’t hinder the process.
This illustrates another fundamental aspect about transhumanism. While it is generally good for the individual – you want fire to cook your food, your want vaccines not to croak soon after childbirth, you want eyeglasses (or even better, contact lenses) to see better – it is primarily at the social and national level that it can be said to truly multiply capabilities. While Marxists believe that it was modes of production that constituted the the “base” of human development, in reality it has always been technology. When the stirrups were invented, you wouldn’t have had any particular luck as a peasant arguing its fine philosophical merits or demerits against the mounted nomads that rampaged down from the Eurasian steppes to engage in an orgy of slaughter, rapine, and brigandry. When industrial development went hyperbolic in Great Britain around the turn of the 19th century, it marked what was to become a century of exceptional genetic adaptiveness for the Anglo-Saxon race, which overspread most of the “Stone Age” world. Societies built on lagging technological paradigms, no matter how numerous the levies that manned them (though conscription potential, too, is a factor of development), were hapless in the face of it.
In the 21st century, one possibility is that dysgenics will destroy innovation-producing smart fractions sooner than they can launch a singularity of some sort. I call this scenario the Age of Malthusian Industrialism.
Another possibility is that some entity (an individual, a team, a corporation or political/military organization, a country, the “noosphere” as a whole) will launch a recursively improving AGI (artificial general intelligence). We can only speculate what the goals of this AI will be; there are disparate attempts to solve this so-called “alignment problem”, but my cursory impression of the space is that its prospects aren’t good. Nonetheless, while the question of who precisely invents and “launches” this AI is speculative, and might not necessarily end up benefiting its creators, another possibility is that it will help them achieve some kind of world domination (a “singleton” as it’s called in the literature), the side that possesses such an AI being in a position far superior even to America’s world nuclear monopoly in the late 1940s. Consequently, this is an area of research whose world-historical important is not done justice even by the current elevated hype around “machine intelligence” and the like.
The third possibility is what I call a “biosingularity.” The machine AGI problem is either judged to be too hard, or the hopes of solving the alignment problem too meager, to make it worth pursuing (also assumes that coordination problems constraining such research are also solved). Biosingularity at a basic level suggests massively augmenting base level biological intelligence, e.g. identifying the alleles corresponding to intelligence and figuring out reliable ways of mass editing them. The first country that starts to do this even a few years ahead of the rest of the pack – in my assessment, the most likely candidates are either some post-religious, non-SJW trading entrepots like Singapore, or more exotically, India – will rapidly gain an insurmountable lead relative to the rest of the world analogous to in world history to the Agricultural and the Industrial Revolution. Even today, countries with a notable smart fraction that is ~1 S.D. above the population average (Ashkenazi Jews in Israel; Brahmins in India; Jews and “Puritan descendants” in the US) strongly outperform their national IQs in the global GDP per capita league tables. Now imagine if this smart fraction was to have an S.D. advantage not of 1, but of 5 or more. Probably the resulting conquest will not be military in nature, but the cultural and economic domination will be total.
Now certainly tradcons can play a useful role in society, helping leverage national competitiveness. “Breeder” groups, most famously the Haredim in Israel, but also including more exotic examples such as the Laestadians in Finland, can elevate fertility rates above the “default” level and make sure that their country continues to be replenished with new bodies and human capital until they can be upgraded. They are also a pillar of patriotism and nationalism that insulates against state dissolution.
However, any country that allows the retrogressive and obscurantist worldviews that predominate amongst such insular traditional communities to unduly influence state policy is simply going to be left behind and will fade out of the pages of history. They are free to mutter about how transhumanism is transgenderism and how QR codes represent the number of the Beast to their heart’s content, but this should likewise disqualify them from any input on state technological or scientific policy. Their ideas are a recipe for long-term national helotization and precisely no nationalist would presumably want that that for his or her country. I would even say that nationalism is implicitly transhumanist.
There are nationalists who don’t care for transhumanism. That is fine. But then there are nationalists who strongly signal against transhumanism. These “nationalists” simply prioritize the welfare of their particular ideology (tradconism) over that of their nation, much like “liberal nationalism” usually de facto implies superior loyalty to the Democratic Internationale, “Communist” nationalism usually implies the prioritization of the global proletariat over national interests, and Neo-Nazism implies loyalty to global White Supremacy (or narrow German nationalism, if you’re talking of old-school NSDAPists). While alliances of convenience can in principle be built with these factions, one should always approach “nationalists” who privilege any particular ideological memeplex over the interests of their own people (whether it be Liberalism, Marxism, or nebulous Conservatism) with care.
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Try saying this to Vox Day and his crew.
I wouldn’t call exactly Israeli Hardi jews a pillar of patriotism and nationalism. Although now that we probably get an Israeli governemt without the Haredi parties, maybe they will forced to get jobs and serve the army
I don’t think it is so simple.
Tradconism is positively related to nationalism and this has been found in numerous polls and studies.
That is, trad cons are more likely to be nationalist and vice versa.
These things are not equivalent. Liberalism is negatively related to nationalism, again as per numerous polls and studies. That is, liberals are less likely to be nationalist and vice versa.
Pragmatism über alles!
An obscurantist like Dugin ironically has a much clearer view of what transhumanism is compared to you. No, transhumanism is not technology. It’s turning humans into something else, “overcoming” humanity. It’s like transgenderism, which stems from the same philosophical root.
It’s a goal of satanists and gnostics.
A nationalist is implicitly and explicitly anti-transhumanist, because state power is only useful so far as it protects and advances the interests of the nation – if said nation (of actual people) ceases to exist, that is the ultimate defeat.
Imagine Russia taking over the world by turning every single Russian into a mutant with superpowers – is that a triumph of Russian nationalism when the original Russian people are gone? At least that scenario sounds cool and mutants being organic maybe can carry the legacy of the original people, depending on the severity of the mutations. But what if the minds of all Russians are uploaded into cybernetic bodies, killing the meatbags in the process and making the new “Russians” much more efficient, and again they take over the world, the galaxy even – how would this be a triumph and not a complete and utter defeat for a Russian nationalist?
“For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? ” is an underrated saying in my opinion.
The problem is that transhumanism would destroy much of the content of the nation that the nationalist claims to treasure, while barely preserving its form. Consider the old hbd European paradox. Universalist and modernizing, therefore succesful, but also given to disparaging tradition, and innovating away old bonds, creeds, and eventually even nations. That’s what is ‘Faustian’ about us. We are very good at attaining power through technology, but in doing so trade away our sould. Someone I know once said if was fine if my country turns to Hong Kong near the Rhine, because ‘we have to be hospitable’. Typical European. A complete lack of attachment to anything beyond abstract ideals and ‘progress’.
What I’m saying is, transhumanism continues the uprooting process inherent in modernity- a process that has already subverted European nations more or less completely through deterritoralization. There’s no reason to expect that even more modernity will save nations, instead of hollowing them out even further.
‘Neo-Nazism implies loyal to global White Supremacy (or narrow German nationalism, if you’re talking of old-school NSDAPists’
I’m more or less a liberal and not a nazi at all, but any European that puts his nation before European civilization as a whole is a moron; like those that gave us the current crop of swine ‘populist’ parties only focused on narrow nationalisms instead of the civilizational project.
The problem with transhumanism is that, as the name implies, what you end up with isn’t human; it’s “beyond” human, standing in no definite relation to what goes by that name now, but probably in what will be an adversarial one. What use would such a successor species have for current humans? None whatsoever. Most likely, it would simply exterminate any remaining humans. In the alternative, it might keep them as pets, much like humans keep monkeys. Is that our glorious future? No thanks.
Yet the author is right to see this as the next step in technological progress, assuming the system continues and doesn’t collapse. It’s the direction things are headed, and it’s precisely this anti-human, genocidal characteristic of “Progress” that is shaping our modern world. As a support for nationalism, transhumanism fails, since nationalism in any meaningful sense must be about the survival of a discrete type of people and their way of life, not changing that people into something else entirely. For transhumanists, nations are an outmoded concept, something to be discarded in their headlong rush toward … what, exactly? A global society? Becoming a cyborg? Walking among the stars? Uploading their consciousness into a supercomputer? Nobody, really, has the faintest idea of how it will play out; only pipe dreams.
Medical advances do probably have dysgenic effects by letting the less intelligent who would not have previously survived do so and at some point those dysgenic effects may negate the positive effects of the medical advances. You also have the situation that has occurred all through history where a country becomes wealthy, the wealth leads to decadence, and then the decadence leads to decline as the country increasingly engages in nonproductive foreign military adventures and develops a large underclass living off welfare. You can see that happening here in the U.S. in recent years.
There’s another possible negative effect of technological advances. Researchers into extending lifespan have found in recent years that there is some truth in the saying that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. A number of supplements like resveratrol increase lifespan by putting mild stress on the body. Strenuous exercise and fasting also increase lifespan by putting mild stress on the body. Even subjecting yourself to temperature extremes can be good for you. People who take regular sauna baths live longer. By making life easier, technology can be bad for us. Food is always readily available, we can drive around everywhere, and we can stay in heated and air conditioned buildings that always keep temperatures within a narrow range. We need to learn better how to adopt the good aspects of technology while avoiding the bad aspects of it.
The best thing about the Age of Malthusian Industrialism is that it basically implies that nature itself is transhumanist.
Maybe the good thing is that we have no say in the matter.
Here’s Orwell somewhat related remarks.
Forget about increasing IQ or lifespan! The ultimate question for transhuman-nationalists is: how to solve the soy problem? Firstly, what is the correct approach? What artificial gland do we aim for?
One that would quickly metabolize the harmful estrogen found in microplastics? Or one that would increase circulating levels of testosterone? How much time do we realistically have? Is a dual approach necessary?
And is international cooperation also needed? Or would such knowledge, freely shared, just be used by the Empire to create an army of neobull-dykes with double the grip strength of normal men?
This is a difficult problem. The word “nation-state” is an oxymoron. The nation is past-oriented and the state is future-oriented. Fascism was an attempt to reconcile those concepts. It didn’t succeed.
I don’t see a contradiction. Who is to say Vox’s take on these technologies not more trans humanist? You have to be careful when you end up in the same camp as the midwits.
A big threat to noosphere is the degeneracy that is growing like cancer and Anatoly acknowledges that. He wants to escape the consequences by inventing a tech that will help him achieve that. Sometimes there is no shortcut and you have to go through the process that Vox Day represents. Which is tradition and culture.
The more I read history the less I see these tech jumps to be so one sided. Your competition reverse engineers tech pretty fast. Anglo dominance did not last as long as Roman or Chinese.
Edit:I see some posters have a problem with the word trans humanism and relate it to ending of humanity. That is not how I view it. I see it more as uplifting, you don’t seize to be human.
Both Transhumanism and Nationalism are human concepts that need defining before their supposed relationship is discussed. If the meaning of concepts is not agreed upon, then anything goes and nothing useful will come out of it. Of course we can pontificate that the Bandersnatch is implicitly Jaberwocky, but people would be entitled to agree or disagree with us on whimsical grounds.
So what is this Nationalism that is supposedly implicitly Transhumanist?
And how can this be, when Nationalism has appeared as a nineteen century concept, while Transhumanism in its present format only appeared in the early 1980ies ?
Russian Supermutants conquering the galaxy is the whole point of the entire existence. 🙂
Well, if Russian Supermutants installed neuralink chips to control Yasen nuclear submarines with their minds would it make them any less Russian? Would it make submarines any less Russian? I don’t think so.
Why would they kill the meatbags? I mean, its a possibility, they would have the power to do so, but where would the desire to do it come from? In history, it happens of course sometimes and powerful people do wipe out the weak ones occasionally, but usually its by unhappy accident. Outright killing off your own people entirely is rare.
The alternative is of course inevitably somebody else will become a Supermutant and then its much more likely Russians will get wiped out. The weak foreigners getting exterminated is a much more common occurrence.
As someone who works with his hands crafting timber framed homes I am aware of a major difference between tools and technology.
A tool is something which amplifies my natural abilities, therefore giving me freer ability to create. This may be a chisel, circular saw, or so on. They are extensions of myself, but I am the motive force. As I like to tell new hires in training, human beings are the original and best CNC machine.
Some companies cut all their timber joinery with CNC machines, which are impressive machines, but have definite constraints in what they can cut. Therefore the joinery choices are dictated not by strength or suitability but by the constraints inherent in the technology.
One is also highly constrained in timber stock choices as a CNC machine cannot process if the material is not perfectly square and accurately dimensioned. I on the other hand, can produce perfect joinery in timbers that are highly irregular, naturally curved, twisted, etc.
The former (chisel, saw, etc.) are examples of true tools which free me to create to the utmost of MY abilities. The CNC machine cut frames just force one into a technologically constrained box, albeit with faster production times (which you have to achieve to pay the big loan).
I’m making a similar point to yourself, but in a different context. It comes back to the question of what is the point, or goal, of why we are here. I’m not sure that trans-humanists think in those terms though. What is the point in fundamentally transcending humanity when every one of us is too lazy to barely scratch the surface of the abilities we are born with. Trans-humanism seems in many ways a lazy use of technology to avoid the work of actually becoming human.
What say you, Anatoly? I’d be curious to hear your thoughts.
The other way to look at it is that “transhumanism” is a $64 word that describes routine 22nd century medicine. At least that’s how I see it.
This is basically the plot of Halo 4. Composing biological entities into digital constructs didn’t work.
Spoken like a true liberal.
Social conservatives should be the only ones allowed to set these policies, not utopians seeking their “gains-of-function”.
The distinction you draw is really between automation and direct human labor. That’s valid, but characterizing it as a distinction between “tools” and “technology” is fallacious. Tools are inherently a part of technology.
As for transhumanism, as AK has outlined it here, he seems to view it as no more than a high-powered technological upgrade. Human goals have changed throughout history in response to new technologies, but without a firmer idea of what transhumanist technological advances would really consist of, it’s hard to predict how humankind’s goals might change in response.
Your point is valid on my sloppy use of terms in my previous post. Thank you for pointing that out. Sometimes it’s easy for the ideas to get ahead of the words!
Your statement about the nebulous nature of what transhumanism actually means are also pertinent.
However, my imperfect impression is that a great many of the “enhancements” which are on the wish-lists of avowed transhumanists do fundamentally change what it means to be human in a way that the majority of previous tech does not. Most transhumanism (correct me if I’m wrong) really isn’t about fixing broken equipment, it instead considers any human limitation to be an evil to be overcome.
I think that my main point still stands as to the absurdity of hankering over technological enhancement when we use the original equipment to such poor advantage.
As a parallel point, I find radical life extension to be an entirely absurd proposition, since most folks seem to squander their 80 or so years away without doing anything of merit. I would much rather try to live fully in my allotted time and then let my kids have their own crack at living. Anything else would be static and dead.
It depends on the nature of the “upgrades.” Improving physical characteristics by eliminating illnesses, increasing longevity and youth by a couple of decades, and boosting intelligence to high levels within normal limits (say, by having half the population have IQs of 130 and increasing the number of Newtons or Kants to several every generation) would not eliminate humanity because those phenomena exit in humans.* Creating “people” with IQs of 300 who live for 500 years, accumulating wisdom over centuries – I’m not sure of such creatures would really be recognizably human anymore. Although such monsters would be preferable to AI or cyborgs with electronic brains that would clearly not be human at all.
In its extremes “transhumanism” becomes anti-human.
Transhumanism may or may not be patriotic, but we can certainly say that fascination with transhumanism is correlated with being a tranny and/or being fascinated by representing oneself as a woman (See Ray Kurzweil for a public example).
I wonder why this is, but more importantly, wonder how strong the correlation is. Can we think of examples of super smart guys into transhumanism who have never publicly flirted with trannyhood?
I would rather cast my lot with islands of genuine humanism and tradition than the post-human world, and fade away from the world with them – after all everyone is destine to pass off from this world.
(Or maybe if Martin Armstrong’s predictions are right, the main transhumanist drive will fail, bringing all of the 3 political theories down with it, and open a new century where China (and maybe tradcons) will inherit the Earth.)
Dugin is right – the moment the West went astray was the 13th century when Scholastics go the individual road. The rot has always been there – that is why nationalism, totally, is part and parcel of the West’s decadence.
We do have a say, at least for ourselves and our conscience – go off and live among the Savages.
The true problem facing humanity isn’t that it needs enhancements to ascend to a new level – it is overdevelopment.
I think rate of change and aesthetic will play a greater role in how things will be accepted and defined if human or not compared to the nature of the upgrades.
I’m not a philosopher but somebody (maybe even on this forum) told me of Greek fable regarding this. Basically Greeks launched a ship on a long journey and it got damaged a lot on the way and they had to replace a lot of parts. So the question was if it was the same ship or if not, at which point did it become a different ship.
I think if change is slow enough and look and feel are close enough people will accept it as normal. Like if you stuck a nuclear reactor and a pump jet propulsion on sail boat people would freak out but if you added a steam engine and a propeller but kept the sails people would see it as normal.
Similar with people. We probably shouldn’t breed humans with a tail or something, that would be weird. But people’s acceptance of body modifications increases significantly for breast implants for example, because unlike tails, they usually look as what we expect. Those implants can be used as computer housing or something else useful, and after initial shock, that modification will probably be accepted as human.
Similar, we should not install IQ 5,000 brain chips without downregulator of some sort to make sure that the host doesn’t scare normal people. They would not be fun at parties.
In a more extreme case, creating a literal batman would end badly, nobody likes neighbors flapping their wings and flying over their house at night. But what if you just genetically engineered a lighter bone structure and maybe reinforced it with titanium inserts, and provided mechanical ports by the shoulder blades, tastefully hidden of course. What if this combination of light weight and mechanical attachments integrated with skeletal frame would allow for liftoff with a paraglide sized wing (sold separately)? Would this person stop being human just because he is skinny and lightweight, and has a few prosthetics?
Just like that Greek ship, at what point does the batman stop being a man and becomes a bat? Technically, i can see it being pushed pretty far. Philosophically, i don’t know, not really my department.
Definitely not Ukrainian nationalism with its cult of vyshivanka and hostility to industry. I guess it’s going to fade out.
Before trying to become more than human, maybe we should try to understand what it means to be truly human in the first place. Same thing with Nationalism, first we need to know what a nation truly is. Perhaps both human nature and nations will prove as something too complicated to fathom, something we cannot really understand completely. A lot of things that seem obvious suddenly prove quite complex after a detailed analysis. If both human nature and the nature of nations proves complicated, then it might be wise to not try better the latter by transcending the former.
Inshallah.
When Russia renounces democracy and formally ascends to a nationalist monarchy it will lead the way in human genetic engineering. With selective breeding, they shall create a 125 IQ, 6’2”, silver hair, purple eyed race of ubermensch whose beauty and intellect shall leave the rest of mankind in the dust.
Perum wills it!
This sounds better than what I said earlier based on a regressively libertarian worldview born out of a Manichean struggle between the state and the individual, one that I’m only slowly moving away.
That said and speaking less assertively, I do believe that transhumanism is far from the only path we can follow for the future – there will be islands of Savages who cling to either tradcon or libertarian ideology and make do with a lower tech level or economic complexity. And those whose mindset align with those ideologies well will find these places more hospitable than the techno-feudalist/transhumanist hegemony we are likely to head into.
There are still lots of unknown possibilities facing us, and new options emerging.
(I’m not taking back the point about how Dugin diagnoses the start of modern decay. In fact one of his positions on economic arrangement is the restoration of agrarianism as a comprehensive and traditional way of life and system of institutions – something I find good after having a stint at the Burning Platform)
IANAM ( I Am Not A Marxist) but if memory serves, w/ Marx the Mode of Production includes Relations of Production and Forces of Production, and the Forces of Production include besides Land (natural materials) and Labor also the Produced Factors/Forces of Production, that is, the Technology, tools, infrastructure, the Real Capital …
and the story goes than when the tech advances it might make the existing relations and mode of production obsolete, causing social changes …
also I had a vague memory that Marx mentioned the effect of the invention of stirrups somewhere but I might be wrong … when I put ‘Marx stirrup’ in to the search engine the first result was Wikipedia’s article on technological determinism and that article states:
so while Karl might have been wrong in various ways, he was still more Karlinist than Antoly seems to think.
I too am a master craftsman and I get your point. I too have mastered hand tools (as well as power) and use them to create, in my case, boats, the curves of which can only be sweet if fashioned by a knowing mind directing obedient hands. (Don’t call me a braggart. Judge me by my works, not my words.) Also, I paint (reasonably good, (well, actually, pretty darn good)) portraits, which calls for the utmost co-ordination between a perceiving mind, judgement, executive function and then hand execution. I picked just about the most difficult tasks a human can do, deliberately. I wanted to challenge myself in life, not merely make a living or exist.
People who talk of transhumanism won’t get your meaning because they haven’t explored all that it means to be human*. Why go beyond when you haven’t even taken the time and trouble to exhaust the possibilities which lay before you, literally, right to hand? We humans can’t develop our minds without using our hands and vice versa. The first prototype is hand made and crude. Later we develop machines to perform the now standardized functions that turn an experiment into a commercial product.
Maybe I’m wrong. We shall have to wait and see whether machines–and no matter what label you put on it, a computer is a machine–can invent machines, usable or useful ones anyway.
*It’s like the difference between free diving and going down with scuba equipment. Sure, scuba opens up a new world for the mass of people but we humans had literally never grasped the limits of our abilities underwater until people began to take up free diving. Free diving merges into Yoga and deep mind control and meditation, the inner dimensions, and does so through thoroughly physical means. So, the point is, is that at some point, at peak experiences, differences dissolve. Transhumanism is transcended.
Base and superstructure – production and social reproduction (and so the institutions) maintains and reinforces each other. It makes good sense even for non-Marxists, but the point of contention is whether the base or the superstructure will be dominant and in what ways (Fascist economic model serves political model and liberal political model serves economic model; the 2 pairs are reinforced the other way around).
But remember while individual technologies are value-free, how they are employed isn’t and the ways one technology is favored at the expense of another also aren’t.
Well, most of the cells in our body are recycled, we have new skin every couple of weeks and new red blood cells every few months. But the cortical neurons (what most makes us human) don’t get replaced. I think physical changes that don’t dramatically change ones functioning would not affect one’s status as a human. A person who happens to fly would still be a human. A dolphin-like creature with a human’s brain would not be. Although such a creature should be granted “human” rights.
I think that any electronic gadget would at most be a perfect simulation of humans but would not be human at all.
It gets trickier with organic changes. A 300 or 500 IQ person would not be a human like us, but something different. A gradual shift towards such a state over generations would not be different from the emergence of Homo Sapiens from Homo Erectus. It would human, but a new species of human. This would be a far less tragic future than replacement by unfeeling unthinking empty reasoning AI. Will Homo Sapiens be the first species to voluntarily replace itself? Will there be a race among nations to see which one will be the ancestors of the next dominant species? In that case, would nationalism even matter? The new species might care about nationalism and nations about as much as Homo Sapiens care about Homo Erectus family units or mating habits. As passing academic interest by some.
I did free diving when young. Not at a competition level, but I get your point. I have also done some long distance hiking, marathon running and I do Zazen, perhaps that is why I get your point. People often do not know what their own mind is and what are its abilities. Sometimes, they don’t even seem to know what it means being human. Before we transcend humanity, we first need to embrace our human nature and understand it in all its aspects. Perhaps once we understand what being human is all about, then we will no longer need transcending it.
There’s really no need to wait for the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, to enjoy the aesthetics of grey hair. Liberal democracy made this possible decades ago:
https://youtu.be/KQ7cu9yByv0
Besides, Fearless Leader Karlin recently came clean and admitted that the likelihood of a Tranhumanist future coming to fruition is less than .05%. In the meantime I plan to exercise, eat a healthy balanced diet and take supplements as needed. I’m still getting my subscription to “Life Extension” that includes a lot of useful information.
Sounds like another retort to Bashibuzuk.
Skims the open thread
Aaaand indeed it is.
I think the previous one about ports was much better. This one, attempting to incorporate “transhumanism”, which might be better called posthumanism (cognate with posthumous), into nationalism is is quite odd. Or was it supposed to be funny? Is this “rightoid entertainment” too? ;‑)
Or maybe evolve into spiritual perfection – that worths more than any transhuman enhancements you can ever take.
Transhumanism is about enhancing our material existence thru modifying or substituting part or whole of or bodily functions – it does little to spiritual development if you don’t ramp up your intelligence.
A good summation of what I believe in as well, with the additional caveat that it is actually quite immaterial to adhere to the maladaptive philosophies, since it will lead to destruction from better adapted philosophies anyway.
Of course, terminal values apply and it isn’t usually as clear and simple as the above, but this is an excellent mainstay way to consider the world.
I wonder how this actually works.
Is it an absolute number of high-IQ smarties? If so, how many do we need to get the same effect?
Is it a larger relative fraction of high-IQ smarties? How large, in that case, must it be? Larger than the natural 1/6th of a standard first world country, one assumes.
Note: it’s also useful to have a high median IQ so that even the less intellectually demanding jobs are filled with useful and productive workers.
(Perhaps most likely.) Is it due to a society oriented to promoting the activities of these high-IQ smarties? Well, how to operate it in that case? Presumably while avoiding pogroms due to shenanigans.
Preach. Still have to notice that happy savages tended to get genocided and enslaved by not so happy, innovating Euros tho. The technological leviathan devours those that do not embrace it. If you don’t get smart, you accept being helpless.
nationalism is only inherently tech-based transhumanism for some of the ice people. for the Germanics it is explicitly – they talk about it all the time, and it’s how i see human existence as well, as a completely Germanic man. it must be in our genes. Soviet era Rus completely adopted this view. Japan and China have clearly adopted this perspective as well.
other ice people reject it openly and are trads like you said. tech improvement will still come from them but that’s not their focus. surviving and prospering are. are the French in the first category or second? they invent stuff but they don’t live to work. they work to live. what about the Mormons? the Amish? Philo Farnsworth invented the cathode ray tube, but the temple was probably more important to him.
for third worlders it has nothing at all to do with any of that. they can’t even understand what that would mean let alone actively work on something like that. nationalism is the default psychology and government for 100% of them. it means ‘everything for us, nothing for you’. it has zero to do with technology. tech doesn’t change in their world – they aren’t smart enough to do tech – so to their mind the planet is an unchanging static land field to conquer or lose, with zero sum resource battles. and always will be. i live 40 years, i ride horses, i kill, i screw women, i have kids, i gain land and food, i die. having a car instead of a horse and a rifle instead of a sword doesn’t change that mindset from the last 20,000 years.
It was you that started praising the 65 IQ Khoisan lifestyle, man, so you laid the link to cognition yourself. I agreed with your sentiment, just pointed out that such a lifestyle implies helplessness. I’m not sure why you replied with such anger.
By the way, if you look up to the early comments, comment 7 or 8 was mine (which I think you agreed with) where I say Europeans happily sell their soul for technological power. I’m obviously not happy about it, but neither am I blind to the reality that those who do not accept modernity are destroyed. It’s not only a European phenomenon, just look at Korea and Japan in the 20th century. Maybe Koreans were real wise and all, but how much good did it do them?
BlackFlag: “Maybe the good thing is that we have no say in the matter. ”
Certainly we have a say in the matter. The technological system can end in only three ways.
Natural catastrophe such as an asteroid strike, gamma ray burst, supervolcano, etc. that is devastating enough to cause a permanent collapse.
As an accident of technological development, perhaps by causing an ecological catastrophe and consequent extinction or a near extinction of mankind. Global thermonuclear war might be one possibility. The “gray goo” scenario discussed by Bill Joy in his essay “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us” might be another.
As a result of a deliberate attack. In this connection we might think of a renegade genius like Ted Kaczynski, only one with better weapons than gunpowder bombs. What if the next Kaczynski is a virologist, for example? What if he figures out how to make a corona virus 100 times more lethal than covid-19? For a suitably talented lone wolf, or a small cell of dedicated revolutionaries, the system has thousands of vulnerabilities.
I think that the Fermi Paradox is easily explained by most intelligent alien civilizations not making it out of the technological existential risk zone that we have entered with in the 1940ies. We are even deeper into this zone today and we might well end up too being a confirmation of the Fermi Paradox.
Yeah, the ‘preach’ wasn’t sarcastic, I was agreeing with you. I’m just more pessimistic than you are. I tend to agree with ‘ole Ted that technology grows to dominate us instead of the other way around. I have grave doubts as to whether moderation and technology can ever mix.
The problem is that technology, satanic as it is, has also aided my people (Europeans) immensely. Without us kicking the whole thing off, maybe we would have been colonized instead. If it were up to me, all the peoples on the earth would just get along in peace, but will that ever happen? I remember some black guy on the street telling me to just ‘wait and see’ what would happen when we (whites) are no longer in charge in my country; same with some moroccans. Your comment, whether you meant it or not, reflects the hate felt by many of resentful people around the world.
Whether it is justified or not is irrelevant. Sometimes, it seems to me that if we ‘got wise’ and just let our guard down, we would simply end up like the incas, koreans and those peoples the Bantus trampled. To renounce the monster we created would put us at the mercy of a world that clearly resents, sometimes even hates us. I have no desire to dominate anyone, but you see the dilemma.
I agree, see my comment about the Fermi Paradox above.
Yes I understand it perfectly well. A defensive war is a just war. A defensive and proportional violence is justified. You have to be both strong and wise to stop the fools from harming other people. Someone who is not a fool will not cause unnecessary harm to anyone. But this World is full of foolish people and we have to be careful.
This is wrong. Without the means of production (in that I include the process of production and scaling it to a mass level), technology is worthless. It’s like Russia producing new Pak-Fa fighters. Sure, they are superior to the US equivalent, but when Russia can only produce 3 of them and the US can produce 300 inferior fighters, the advantage is on the side of the US.
Those societies that lack the means of production will be technologically inferior. This is why when Britain industrialized, what it really did was make production process more efficient and scaling them into mass production that overtook anything any other competitor can offer.
This is why I said earlier that technology is nothing more than a tool, and that humans drive technology and why centralized control of the means of production is actually a more efficient system (which is why you do not see ‘democratic’ corporate structures – only top-down, authoritarian, planned ones exist).
The problem with breeder groups is they will eventually die off to be replaced with whatever the dominant paradigm is.
The solution to population dysgenics and demographic collapse is ‘pro-natal’ propaganda to young women by leveraging existing social media technology (like facebook, instagram, tiktok or whatever new technology emerges). No other method will work. This method works because women are inherently herd creatures that will try to leverage existing social trends for social status (more-so than men). When women see their favorite artists, movie stars, glamorous girls, etc talking about how great it is to have a large family and stay home to raise kids – expect women to follow suit. This will reverse low TFRs worldwide.
You don’t understand communism very well if you think that. Communism is nationalistic in its essence (hence giving more control to its own working class).
If anything capitalism implies the prioritization of global capital over national interests. This is what we see where Russian capitalists (for example) hold all their assets in foreign banks/have children study overseas/buy foreign mansions or how in the US, capitalists will sell out their manufacturing sector to potentially hostile countries if it guarantees greater profits. This is why unbridled capitalism is the enemy of the nation and the people and should be controlled by the government – which is why I advocate a separation of ‘private capital and State’ (similar to how the US/USSR wanted to separate the Church and State).
Communism is only forced into a type of nationalism when global revolution fails, for pragmatic reasons. It is otherwise a globalist movement aimed at unifying humanity. Marxian communism assumes that dialectical technological progress erases more and more boundaries and makes nationality, in the long term, irrelevant.
Fragmented centralized control of corporations in a market economy is also not the same as a centrally planned economy. Corporations still face cutthoat competition, leading to the innovation (creative destruction) that capitalism is known for.
I agree that capitalism de facto is more globalist than communism, but that has more to do with reality on the ground than ideology.
This is true. However, this is no different from the formation of Empire (aka Marxism ironically advocates for the formation of a Communist Empire) and even Marx recognizes that internationalism is an ideal but pragmatically speaking it must be limited to a small number of states that develop sufficiently to be able to export world revolution. (ironically what kind of what the US is doing with its exportation of capitalism and democracy)
Marx and Engels evaluated nationalism as a beneficial step in the eventual creation of ‘internationalism’.
It’s a matter of scale. There are some corporations with more resources than entire countries and with a wide number of enterprises (eg Samsung – produces everything from washing machines, to phones, to tanks and ships to medical equipment and hospitals, etc) that are centrally planned.
It is quite possible to create an element of competition in centrally planned economies. For example, in large, multinational companies you have competition within departments to produce products. If this is scaled onto a country, you can have competition within State Owned Enterprises (which are ultimately ‘departments’ of a much larger ‘company’ (aka the State)).
In fact, most innovation and research (especially in complex technologies) is done by large, centrally planned multinational organizations or governments.
This is a meme that is not necessairly true.
‘Marx and Engels evaluated nationalism as a beneficial step in the eventual creation of ‘internationalism’.’
Very true. Marxists were almost nihilistically pragmatic. But it also means that Marxian nationalism was always superficial, insincere, and ready to be discarded when ‘new conditions’ for global revolution presented themselves. In the USSR it was always some tactic. We no longer like Israel? Time for dog-whistles about jews, never mind they made up most of the cadres. Germans are upon us? Forget about ‘great-Russian chauvinism’ and dust off some slogans. It’s all tactics.
‘Large corpos are centrally planned.’
Yes but in general, in the 70s, most vertically integrated corpos shedded a lot of their production line as it held them back having to do everything by themselves. Most corpos prefer specializing in one or a few things they can have good oversight of.
‘It is quite possible to create an element of competition in centrally planned economies.’
The incentive for the top dogs to cartelize and lessen the competition would always be there. Central planners can be corrupted. Not sure it wouldn’t all just stagnate like the USSR. That being said, I’m open to the idea of state capitalism. It seems to work for China. Japan also has a tight grip on the economy, I think.
‘This is a meme that is not necessarily true.’
I am lightyears beyond you, and my galaxy-brain has already perceived the Truth that ‘the state not corpos innovates’ is the true meme, pushed by libtards who claim a few famous examples constitute a trend.
Speaking more seriously, as far as I’m concerned, the fact that we had mass innovation under capitalism but not communism or feudalism proves my point. We always had governments. They evidently didn’t do as much as the libtards seem to think. Innovation is about 1:1 correlated with private enterprise, so I’m thinking there’s causation too. Unless you’d like to say that the 1:1 correlation of the presence of Western Euros to innovation points at the true cause…
Isn’t it likely that covid-19 was made in a lab too? Why so weak then? As a test? Maybe who made covid-19 will make a more powerful one now. Maybe he is already dead. Maybe he never existed.
What is the point in living without technology anyway? Didn’t humans live like this once? And were rendered obsolete by those who used better tools? Live in 40 men tribes again? Why as a white racist should one want to lose the power that could help one genocide all non-whites and achieve mastery over the planet? Do you think that technology will always end up devouring Man? Then Man deserves to perish, for he proved to be not intelligent enough to be not beaten by mere tools. Let the white race die.
How exactly is that different from other countries? A capitalist would sell his country in a heartbeat if the opportunity for profit arose. In fact, that’s what we currently see with SJWism run rampant, where certain moneyed interests see a profit in it and thus promote it.
Which is why large corporations are diversifying more than ever now? I provided the example of samsung that makes almost everything (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung) and has no problems with quality control.
Many other companies are beginning to again follow this (apple expanding into car manufactering, google expanding into automaking, drones, biomedical sciences; huawei diversifying into software, pig farming, automaking, etc).
No. With proper legislative environments this is unlikely. Furthermore, if the SOEs (state owned enterprises) are always competing (as multiple departments even within multinationals do) they won’t cartelize (again through a good legislative environment and correct organization).
And yet this is not the case in the central planners in large corporations. And we do not currently see that even in the Central Planning apparatus of China.
The “stagnation” of the USSR was not an inevitability, and neither was its collapse. Even during its ‘stagnation’ it still had a GDP growth/year of 2.36% (ahead of most western countries) from the period of 1960-1989
The USSR needed a simple reorganization of its economy and the adoption of new management principles – which alone would have increased its economic growth significantly.
Communism existed for a short period of time and had an amazing amount of innovation/invention for its short time of existence.
Even under feudalism, most forms of research and development occurred with someone with money (aristocracy, mostly kings) funding new developments (which is how the printing press was invented, or even the greatest musical compositions of mozart where written) as a form of ‘Patronage’. Even in Classical times – most of the famous poems/works of history/sculptures you see today were all funded as part of the ‘patronage’ by Roman Emperors.
Silicon Valley was built on the money of the US Government (namely DARPA). Many tech companies (even now) depend on government money to run their research departments. For example, spacex got most of its funding from NASA and US Dept of Defense. This is the case for just about any technology of significance. All private companies did was scale the products for consumer use. Lets take the computer – it was an invention by the government for military purposes, internet – government invention for military purposes, radio technology (used in calling/wifi) – government invention for military purposes, medical technologies – government invention either for military purposes or to get rid of diseases ravaging the population. Point is this – most significant research is done by governments.
Western Europe isn’t special. Why do you think that European Industrialization started in the 1780’s/90’s and not before? It coincided with European colonialism and stealing the knowledge and money of more advanced cultures (Indochina), and using the manpower of slaves from Africa. It has nothing to do with “European exceptionalism”.
The potato – it took a while for it to make inroads. Might have happened earlier, if rice grew well in Europe.
Nah. Potato wasnt a significant factor – potatoes are about as nutritious as rice and just as easy to grow and as ubiquitous. So why did Asia not become Europe and industrialize? Because it did not plunder the wealth and manpower of other peoples.
In fact the potatoe came from the New World and was a product of colonialism itself (just like everything else Europe got). So that inadvertently supports my point – that Europe would have been a poor backwater without colonialism.
“Transhumanism” as merely the tag, applied to the coming links, of a long chain of human technological progress, stretching back thousands of years, is a useful conceptualisation. It makes things clearer. Thank you AK.
It renders nationalists, who oppose it, like the Japanese of the Sakoku period. They would fix their nations in time, thereby rendering them vulnerable to obsolescence in the future.
This is interesting, because most philosophical nationalists seem to consider their nation like a person, or an organic entity; which makes their dislike, of a nation’s self-directed growth, equivalent to a fat diabetic who refuses to lose weight, as it would be change, and “change is a self-betrayal.”
Nationalists can choose this path, but, like the diabetic, their nations will suffer the consequences.
I can see how inventing all of the amazing technology that Europeans invented, would help to plunder the wealth of peoples. I cannot see how it would work the other way around though.
Can you explain how you see a pile of silver turning into the agricultural revolution for me, as an example?
This is important because it was obviously technology that drove European industrialisation, not something like slavery. As we can see from low labour cost nations, slavery is a strong disincentive for industrialisation; while technology is the requisite.
Isn’t that kinda circular? The ‘technological system’ is getting so powerful that it may destroy “us” (not sure whether it’s whites or humans generally you’re referring to), so to prevent that, we need to destroy the technological system, which we apparently can only do by destroying ourselves.
I recall a poster at The Occidental Observer who used to argue this way. “Weisse Engel” or something like that. Is that you?
Europeans did not invent most of the technology though. At best they innovated it.
For example, gun powder (and guns) were invented by the Chinese and came to Europenas part of the silk road. The compass was also invented by the Chinese and were introduced to Europe through Arab merchants via the silk road. The printing press existed in China almost 1000 years before it arrived in Europe. Etc.
Point is – Asia was far ahead of Europe in technology. Even in sailing technology was China ahead until the 18th century (from which Europeans began to steal ideas). Hoever, Chinese emperors ended up closing off from the rest of the world and did not become explorers like the European. The discovery of the New World (that Europe reached in leaky buckets – wherein Asia was fielding fleets of ships with crews of hundreds of peoples) led to the discovery of massive amounts of uncultivated fertile land and large amounts of silver that the Europeans could sell abroad (namely to Asia). Using slave labor to cultivate agriculture and selling silver in asia and selling slaves gave huge rates of returns and caused the development of proto-capitalism – freeing up labor for industrialization (with ideas stolen from the East that the Europeans acquired with their silver amongst other things). This excess silver was part of the factors that led to the collapse of the Chinese economy (and the Qing Dynasty), and opium wars that essentially propelled Europe to be number 1.
You make a distinction between “innovation ” and “invention” that is without a difference.
You also seem to have a limited understanding of the technological progress involved in industrialisation. The avalanche of European invention was exceptional.
You later offer a narrative whereby silver and cheap, or free, labour leads to automation, because “it freed up labour”, but that makes no sense.
Slavery clearly disincentivises automation and the inventors who drove automation, during industrialisation, were not peasants liberated from the plough.
In fact, the entrepreneurial spirit, that was engaged in exploring the world for silver and negotiating deals with African Chiefs for their captured enemies, before they were ritually executed, is exactly that which would have sped up industrialisation were it not, instead, diverted to the short-term gains of imperialism.
Necessity is the mother of all invention and free labour and mountains of silver greatly reduced the necessity for technological progress, even as technological progress made it greatly easier to acquire free labour and mountains of silver.
It seems to me that you have started with your ideology and tried to make your observations on reality fit it. Perhaps try to look at reality first and then pick your ideology. It will work better.
Or perhaps you need to believe what you believe to gain some sense of pride by proxy? In which case, I would advise you address that need by means more satisfying and personal than creating fantasy narratives of history where those you identify with are oppressed geniuses and everyone else only did anything because they were bad people.
It wasn’t only physical technology either, but also social innovation that drove industrialisation and allowed colonisation. The roots of this all go back a long way, as shown in the following two paragraphs:
As early as the 12th century, some fields in England tilled under the open field system were enclosed into individually owned fields. The Black Death from 1348 onward accelerated the break-up of the feudal system in England. Many farms were bought by yeomen who enclosed their property and improved their use of the land. More secure control of the land allowed the owners to make innovations that improved their yields. Other husbandmen rented property they “share cropped” with the land owners. Many of these enclosures were accomplished by acts of Parliament in the 16th and 17th centuries.
The process of enclosing property accelerated in the 15th and 16th centuries. The more productive enclosed farms meant that fewer farmers were needed to work the same land, leaving many villagers without land and grazing rights. Many of them moved to the cities in search of work in the emerging factories of the Industrial Revolution. Others settled in the English Colonies.
Huh? Population of the UK was 3.9 million in 1500 and 21.2 million in 1820. You don’t think quintupling population is significant? New world crops actually had a similar effect on Asia. Highest estimate for South Asia circa 1500 is 110 million – and it is likely too high.
It almost did industrialize during the Tang. Why didn’t it go all the way? Who knows? One could posit many reasons. Did Asians financialize on the same timeframe? I don’t think they did.
Compared to where? From the 13th century until 1894, the world’s tallest building was always a church or cathedral. You have adopted the language of Baizuos and Africans. Does it not suffice to say that Europe was once ahead of Asia, but no longer?
There have been lots of critique of the idea of “progress”, and with it, the “necessity” or “inevitability” of technological development (they don’t). Don’t expect transhumanism to shoot up, or our host’s vision of Malthusian Industrialism will be really achieved.
The burst of technological and economic development in the World-System might be exceptional, and that means a possible or even likely correction towards the historical norm of lower, but more humanly conceivable and tangible, level of technological use. Reversion to the mean.
There is a huge difference between ‘invention’ and ‘innovation’. Invention is the creation of something new, where nothing existed before. Innovation is improving on an existing technology.
European invention occurred late and had been invented elsewhere before, but was stolen or re-invented in Europe later.
How does it make no sense? Silver that they sold to Asia, allowed the Europeans to sustain their exploration/colonies, which also allowed them to invest in new cost saving ideas so that they could gain even more profits. Cheaper labor and excess land (in the New World) allowed for extensive agricultural cultivation (more than they would be able to at home), which meant that the land that they would use at home would be used for cash crops (like cotton) for example.
By that logic, the European colonial states would have never industrialized once the slave trade started. But we saw the opposite – it only accelerated industrialization. It was a source of cheap labor for industrialists that would allow them to further save costs. This is what we see in Chinese industrialization currently – cheap labor allows for more manufactering as early industrialists are able to save costs and accumulate capital.
Except for the part where the Chinese had already established extensive trade networks as far as Europe and covered most of Africa with Somalia becoming a powerful trade hub thanks to Chinese shipping. Under the Ming dynasty, Chinese merchants had landed as far as Madagascar establishing extensive trade networks as they went.
There was also extensive inter-African trade both across the Sahara and some African empires even had extensive trade fleets (such as Axum) establishing trade with India and even the Byzantine Empire. Next, Swahili polities were trading with India and the Middle East.
Point is this – there was no ‘European entreprenurial spirit’, everyone else had one too if not more so than the Europeans.
I think you are talking about yourself. You have some incorrect view of European exceptionalism that you greatly wish to be true to give yourself a sense of exceptionalism. But this only serves to illustrate your poor knowledge of history.
But China was also ahead in these metrics as well:
“the Chinese economy was not stagnant, and in many areas, especially agriculture, was ahead of Western Europe.[101] Chinese cities were also ahead in public health.”
According to Paul Bairoch, in the mid-18th century, “the average standard of living in Europe was a little bit lower than that of the rest of the world.”
During the Song Dynasty (960–1279), the country experienced a revolution in agriculture, water transport, finance, urbanization, science and technology, which made the Chinese economy the most advanced in the world from about 1100. Mastery of wet-field rice cultivation opened up the hitherto underdeveloped south of the country
No. I don’t think the potato was significant in causing industrialization. By the time the potato was introduced to the UK in particular and before it began to have an effect on populations, colonialism was well underway. If anything I’d argue it was the excess uncultivated fertile land and cheap slave labor in the New World that allowed for 1) more food to be produced and 2) the focus of Europe on growing cash crops (which it then sold and used those profits to improve its living conditions).
During the Song Dynasty (960–1279), the country experienced a revolution in agriculture, water transport, finance, urbanization, science and technology, which made the Chinese economy the most advanced in the world from about 1100.
So yes, Asia did financialize in the same timeframe.
Compared to the Middle East/Asia.
Ok. So? That has no relevance to Europe being a backwater compared to the rest of the world until it began systemically plundering colonies and thus had access to more resources than the rest of the world which allowed for eventual industrialization.
I’m talking about stock markets and large banks.
Very strange assertion.
The Pantheon was completed in 125 AD. Can you point to a superior building elsewhere in the world completed before that, or up to 1500 AD in China?
Luddites, by the very nature of their being and thinking, are vastly outgunned in “intellectual capital” by the quantity of individuals who benefit from technology and therefore have reason to support it. They also lack the network effects that permit development and advancement of such weapons, or indeed, the basics of almost all economics on Earth.
Easy.
Gate/Hall of Supreme Harmony
Forbidden City
Hall of Moni
Great Wall of China
The Forbidden City (as the most magnificient palace in the world)
The three Pagodas of Dali (built in 840 BC, were the tallest buildings in the world)
By what measure is The Parthenon (I assume you speak of that?), the most superior building?
These are just in China itself. I can name many from the middle east that would rival if not surpass the Parthenon in sheer opulence.
Also forgot to mention, china had banks before Europe did – as early as the Song Dynasty.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_banking_in_China
The Great Wall was substantially completed by 206 BC, but of course, the early Pyramids were completed even earlier and used substantially complex engineering methodology.
At any rate, while I don’t agree with the rest of Xi’s assertion, Europe was certainly did become a kind of backwater after the fall of the Roman empire, as currency ceased to be used(coinage ceased to be minted: Charlemagne’s system of currency was almost entirely imaginary) and steel production became almost nil with the breakdown of trade which basically eliminated the ability to get consistently high quality iron ore, and the bloomeries reduced to tiny structures.
I think our kind host also ran the numbers and found basically the same thing: China surged ahead of Europe in metrics after the collapse of Rome, until recovery later.
I think an interesting aside from this is that the breakdown of early globalism did seem to lead directly to a loss of technology. Insofar as applied technology requires specific materials to maintain and talent to work said material, with the collapse in trade, a lot of technology is basically dismissed with and replaced with simpler analogues – not to mention a lot of labor returning to agriculture.
How was Europe able to take over more advanced countries and steal their knowledge and money? If those countries were more advanced why didn’t they use their greater knowledge and wealth to keep from being taken over?
This will only promote the success of whatever organization and group that does fully embrace and continue to be adaptive with technology.
Nationalism may be Transhumanist.
But…
Trashionalism is Transgenderist.
This is because a lot of White Trashionalists around these parts have said that they don’t mind a transgender sex partner since the race of the person has never changed.
This is related to the fact that these White Trashionalists have openly said that they would rather have sex with a white man than a black woman, since racial loyalty trumps sexual orientation for them.
But hey, don’t take my word for it. Commenter Truth has observed all this unfold first hand.
Because these advanced countries (like China) had mostly unified and did not suffer constant warfare (for the most part) that required them to devote significant resources to fighting. Also, Islamic cultures regularly defeated European armies (Ottoman Empire was a powerhouse from the 13th Cebtury) and developed amazing siege technology (again Ottoman Empire was known for its artillery) well into the 16th Century when they began to rest on their laurels seeing no need to further develop military technology.
Plus in regards to China, something can be said about it being more peaceful in terms of culture – preferring trade over war.
I mean the “Pantheon” in Rome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon%2C_Rome
I wouldn’t say it is the best building ever built, but it is extraordinarily impressive for something completed in 125 AD. Largest dome (diameter of 43.30 m) in existence for over 1300 years. Not easy to engineer something like that. It was also superseded by another European dome, that of Florence Cathedral in 1436. In fact, as near as can be determined, Europeans seem to have always held the record for largest domes, going back to Mycenae 1250 BC. That is, discounting more recent sports stadiums.
Luddites don’t mean to compete with those of superior technology – they just want to be left alone to pursue their rather primitive visions. When materially superior people come to their door, they will prefer picking up the fight as best as they can before being annihilated.
Surely regressive, but they are more genuine in their thought.
It is starting to happen again under the guise of “supply-chain failures”, when the current era of globalization is being superseded.
Any Luddite that hopes to aspire to the following is definitely in the position of a competitor – as were the original Luddites who destroyed waterwheels(and were thereafter annihilated).
So you are saying they were more intelligent and advanced than Europe but at the same time they were so unintelligent they were unable to adapt and meet the threat of a European takeover. I would say being intelligent includes an ability to adapt and successfully react to novel situations and these Asian and Arab civilizations were sorely lacking in this area.
It was the ideas of the Enlightenment that caused Europe and countries populated by Europeans like the United States to leap in front of the rest of the world. The Enlightenment took place in the 18th century so that is when that prosperity started. Slavery and colonialism existed all through history but the great increases in wealth and life expectancy didn’t start until then. Other parts of the world have become prosperous to the extent they adopted these ideas.
Anti-Enlightenment ideas have persisted, even in Europe. Rousseau thought the civilized Europeans of his era had it worse off than primitive savages. Rousseau was a pernicious influence on French thought and was a major influence on why the French Revolution turned out worse than the American one. When Pol Pot was studying in Paris he recognized Rousseau as a kindred spirit. Here in the U.S. these ideas spread with the sixties counterculture. Norman Mailer in his essay “The White Negro” proclaimed the life of ghetto blacks to be superior and said whites should emulate them. The spread of these ideas helped lead to our decline here in the U.S.
By that measure i’d say the Roman Pantheon is surpassed in terms of engineering conplexity by the Pyrmaids of Giza, the Three Pagodas of Dali or even the construction of the Great Wall (which was completed in a similar time).
In my opinion, not only are the three Pagodas of Dali beautiful, they were also some of the tallest buildings for almost half a century standing at 69 meters. This is an impressive feat for the 2nd Century BC
.
This argument is reddit-tier. I expected higher level discourse from you. I will answer this once.
I am saying that Europe had spent more time innovating and developing its weapons systems at the expense of basically everything else which means that even though China/Asia was ahead of Europe in almost every other measure, they lost key battles because it is difficult to rapidly adapt military technology (or any kind of technology) while under attack from an enemy. This should be obvious. Lets see you “adapt” when im punching you in the face constantly, unless you have prepared for it beforehand.
Enlightenment ideas are irrelevant in prosperity. This is typical anglo drivel. China is bound to surpass the US this decade economically, and it has adopted nothing but its own Confucian ideas. Perhaps the secret to rapid prosperity lies in Confucianism?
Prosperity in Europe in the 19th Century had its foundations in plundering the wealth either of undeveloped tribes in south america (that also happened to be rich in Gold/silver) that was then sold to asia for massive profits, the slave trade that gave cheap and almost unlimited labor for agriculture in the New World that freed Old World Labor to work elsewhere (mainly industry or as artisans). Enlightenment ideas had nothing to do with it.
Words to live and die for, ha ha!
I’m not sure entirely what I think on the matter, but technology the helps people grow and prosper and spread is good. Technology and culture that encourage and support high quality of life and in turn the quality of life that produces better technology and better culture is good. Anything that takes us into the stars is good.
Whether one culture, or many.
Nothing can continue indefinitely to grow exponentially, so energy use and economic expansion must, sooner or later, level out or perhaps even collapse. This is a physical and certain constraint, independent of the curious preferences of Luddites and techno-cultists.
The question is the time and manner of the collapse, and how the proponents of each ideology react.
Luddites see the collapse as imminent or want to initiate it – and prepare accordingly.
Techno-cultists see the collapse far away with lots of room filled up with transhuman or post-human tech, and project the prosperity brought by these technologies into their visions of the future.
Nuclear energy is practically infinite for our purposes, and there’s significant reason to believe that future technological emulations will cost less energy than flesh-and-blood analogues of intelligence.
“Nuclear energy is practically infinite for our purposes“
At the current rate of energy use (under 20 TW), using standard fission reactors, proven uranium reserves suffice to power human civilisation for only a few years. For these kinds of calculations, which are rather elementary, I recommend the book Energy and Human Ambitions:
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9js5291m
Breeder reactors would suffice for maybe a 1000 years, if energy use levelled out (which it won’t any time soon). Unfortunately, breeder reactors still haven’t become common, despite being in development for decades. I hope this is because we just aren’t trying hard enough yet.
Fusion would outlast the sun, but we don’t know if it’s possible. Again, maybe we aren’t trying hard enough yet.
The bigger issue is that even if we could control fusion reactions, but continued to increase energy use at our current rate, the oceans would boil off in a few hundred years: Stefan-Boltzmann.
So either energy use has to level off, or we upload ourselves into the fully automated gay commiecloud.
However, while we know that fusion energy actually exists (the Sun), we are still waiting to get a working emulation of C. Elegans:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenWorm
Is that really true? Spain became wealthy in the 16th century? Did the Spanish really become decadent?
The Dutch became extremely wealthy. Did they become decadent?
Switzerland is very wealthy. Would you describe Switzerland as decadent?
Wealth leading inevitably to decadence seems very very dubious to me.
Maybe you could make a better case that becoming powerful leads to decadence. But Spain was powerful in the 16th to early 17th century and doesn’t seem to have become decadent. Sweden was powerful in the 17th century but doesn’t seem to have become decadent.
Britain today might well qualify as decadent, but Britain has grown more decadent as it has grown less powerful.
Excellent comment.
Thanks for adding evidence to my observations. I agree that China was more advanced agriculturally than Europe in 1100. Europe then rose and rose with phenomena like the Rennaisance.
I’m very sympathetic to your views, but I think you’re making the mistake of seeing yourself in “opposition” to the technology promoters, and as competing for “one” culture suitable for everyone.
People like Anatoly Karlin and Daniel Chieh, and other “futurists”, are deeply, deeply, unhappy people, who have not learned how to enjoy themselves, and suffer from a massive sense of “inadequacy”. Consequently, they are under an extreme compulsion to try and become “more”, and focus on some distant future, where they will finally, at long last, be “sufficient”.
This is a perennial human type. It is based on not seeing through the illusion of time and self.
But it would be extremely cruel to deny them their attempt to become “enough”, even as they labor under an illusion, and are indeed already “enough”. But they cannot see this, and must search for what they have always had.
Instead of competing with them over “one” culture, each of us must pursue our own karma. If you can see through their futile pursuits, consider yourself fortunate. But there is, in the end, no competition, and each of us must pursue our own ends.
Hmm…given that we have found no evidence of the alien civilizations in other solar systems, plus likelihood of eventual transformation or very high level advancement of humans (or post-humans), might it not be at least as likely the UFO phenomena are tourists from the future as that they are visitors from other planets?
Yes or other dimensions somewhat connected to our own tiny planet in this time and space. Parallel universes…
They were badly damaged by Mongol invasion and Turk / Mamluk elites. Arabs ended up second tier citizens in most of the lands their ancestors conquered. A little bit like Russians today.
This is your understanding of Chinese intellectual development in the 20th and 21st Century?
You think Marxism, nationalism and economic liberalism have played little part?
Your namesake disagrees with you completely.
The Renaissance was more of a byproduct of its rise as Europe got exposed to the arabs who reintroduced it to Greek/Roman works. If the Renaissance was what rose Europe – why then did the Arabs (who had superior science under various caliphates and pax mongolica) not rise – given they had not lost the knowledge of the Greeks and were actively studying it, even while it was lost in Europe? Even the Chinese had a rich history of political theory by the time that Europe was reintroduced to the Greeks.
The point is – your observations are incorrect and the Renaissance played no role in Europes rise.
Arabs actually did very well under Pax Mongolica and had ubfettered access to trade in the East. Arab scholars also flocked to Mongol occupied lands, due to their tolerance towards science and religion. Plus many Mongol lands ended up adopting Islam.
Egypt was on tbe brink of industrializing almost a century earlier than Britain, as it had rich agriculture, cotton growing and weaving industries. In 1800, Egypt had higher per capita incomes than most of Europe and Japan – that was equivalent to leading European Powers like France.
The Ottoman Empire fell behind for one main reason – free trade. It had opened up its markets to free trade too early (whereas in the same time period Britain and America were staunchly protectionistic), and this caused a flood of cheap products and disincentivized local producers. By the time they tried to reverse this it was too late.
Enghlitentment ideas are indeed irrelevant to prosperity.
Marx came after Hegel, and I’d make an argument that Marx was a “counter-enlightenment” thinker.
Also, keep in mind Xi knows Marx very well but is promoting Confucian thought in China, which is leading to rapid economic gains. So my statement is correct – perhaps it is not enlightenment thought leads to prosperity but Confucian thought?
In fact ever since Mao died, Confucianism saw a re-emergence, which also corresponded with Chinese economic gains.
It’s mostly my old libertarian habits, or picturing an Ancap Leninism where everyone has to throw off the statist yoke simultaneously – Reading Martin Armstrong, who’s married to his own models predicting the doom of the current model and the Davos “future”, surely gave me a determinist Manichean struggle between Davos and the individualists. I have a long way for my learning and maturity…
I’m sorry, Egypt industrialising before Britain? An Albanian Pasha named Mehmet Ali would like to have a few words with you… (According to Maddison Project, Egypt’s GDP per capita was 1/2 of France’s and a bit less than 40% of Italy’s)
The best the Ottomans could manage is a Japan – not falling behind but not climbing up either, before late 19th/early 20th century.
Intelligence is dysgenic today.
OT – I see Iran’s biggest warship has suffered an unfortunate fire/sinking.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/02/iran-warship-has-caught-fire-and-sunk-in-gulf-of-oman-say-local-agencies
Live in the pod.
Eat the bugs.
Drink the soy.
Wear the second hand clothes.
https://twitter.com/jpwiseuk/status/1400025254425239552
I think we need to account for what is the reason for the increased wealth.If it us due to hard work and industrious intelligent behavior at a societal level as was the case of the Dutch and Victorian England in the past and is by and large the case for Switzerland today then the increase in wealth doesn’t result in decadence and societal decay quite the converse.
If however the reason for the sudden rise in prosperity of the average citizen is due to hasty implementation of an over generous welfare state or similar policies as in post WW2 West or the GCC countries today then the rapid rise in wealth usually leads to societal decay and decadence.
Well, I think we all start of as Manichean, and that’s an important phase to go through. You start realizing just how awful the world and people are, and you just want to condemn it all, or “save” it
But eventually you evolve past the Manichean phase, and you reach a state where you realize the world simply isn’t important – in Buddhism, this is “emptiness”. This is true detachment.
Condemning the world, you are still attached to it. True detachment is to see the world as empty.
To modern materialists, this sounds depressing – but it is actually a state of great freedom and joy, and paradoxically, life-affirming.
One of the most joyous and life-affirming moments in my life was the realization that the world has no future. We are doomed. Nothing will “save” us. And that this does not matter.
With this comes great release. All that energy wasted on anxiety and the desire to save the world, can now be poured into living.
The depression of modern civilization is it’s belief in a future.
Eventually, it all passes away, and eventually, it all gets recreated in its original purity, because existence and non-existence are two sides of the same coin.
I find the Hindu myth of Brahma creating the world and destroying it, in an infinite cycle, to be very powerful.
But everyone has their own level of understanding, and consequently, their own needs. To someone who does not see very deeply, detachment is not possible, and thus the great release into joy is not possible. Such a person thinks he can die, and fears for his life – he clings to it. Such a person must give birth to heavens and projects like transhumanism, and the great quest to control the earth – technology.
And we who see more clearly should not take this from them. That would be to torture them. Let them work out their own karma in their own way, according to their needs.
Need to correct myself, I was referring to Japan before WWI.
More snippets on their modern economies for thought: Japan’s GDP capita was between Greece & Anatolia until 1913, when staying out of WWI enabled Japan to achieve parity with Greece in the interwar period. Japan only definitely surpassed Greece after 1950 and only at that point did models of economic growth matter – both Greece and Turkey were on the import-substitution model, and Greece was overinvesting on shipping and tourism.
Can the pyramids or pagodas fit thousands of people inside, so that most of them can see each other? Two of those pagodas are solid (just piles of brick and mud), and they would fit under the dome of the Hagia Sophia, which was built hundreds of years before.
Similarly for Ottoman Egypt, its per-capita income in 1800 was comparable to that of leading Western European countries such as France, and higher than the overall average income of Europe and Japan.[59]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Divergence#Wages_and_living_standards
The butthurt Euros are out in full force today.
The Hagia sophia is 56 meters tall vs the 67 meters of the three pagodas. Nice try. Plus the pagadoas are more than mud – they withstood many earthquakes and have stood for almost 1100 years being one of the most resilient ancient structures.
The Great wall extended hundreds of Kilometers and could fit thousands of people
The forbidden city was the worlds largest palace consisting of 9999 rooms, and was 961 m long and 756 m wide. The hagia sophia is childs play in comparison.
The pyramids were 146 m tall and were the tallest buildings in the world for 4000 years. And was built almost 1000 years earlier than the “domes” you obsess over. Shall we talk abt the Hanging Gardens of Babylon next?
It’s great that China is reviving Confucianism.
But a merely Confucian China – a China of mere law and order – is a dull and uncreative place, as we see today. Hardly competitive with the great ages of the West.
Confucianism always went along with Taoism, as it’s natural complement, and as providing freedom from the stuffiness of Confucian order and convention.
It’s good that China is recovering it’s sense of order, decorum, convention, and tradition – but hopefully China will not settle down in such mediocrity, as we see in it today.
I look forward to the revival of Taoism in China, which is the true genius of China. Such a spirit of freedom, fused with Western science, may give an exhausted world something truly new.
I’d lean towards time tourists or historians/ scientists from the future. This would explain why they don’t interfere in any substantial way, only providing us with occasional inconsequential glimpses – they would not want to mess up the timeline in a way that would prevent their future existence and achievements. And they have succeeded in doing so, as demonstrated by their presence.
Of course, most likely there is a more boring explanation for UFO phenomena. But if UFOs are visitors, they probably aren’t aliens.
Society says youth people like me need to strive for our own lives in very rigid paths. A lot in my generation would rather stay low, or seek opportunities where the older generations couldn’t.
Too much detachment will distract me from the need to live and make a living (and this is a form of attachment too) – might be better to gain wisdom from living in this world.
Only one of the three pagodas is 67 meters tall (69, per wiki), the other two are 42 meters tall.
Of course a mere tower is not as complex or advanced as a dome. And plenty of 12th to 14th century European church towers surpassed those pagodas in height:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_church_buildings
Actually, I agree with this 🙂 Too much detachment, becomes just another form of attachment, “desiring to not desire”, “trying to not try”, etc.
That’s why Buddhism, It’s core idea being detachment, eventually saw this, and evolved into a Taoist-like spontaneity – effortless living, since all intense effort is a form of attachment. (well, only some sects, like Dzogchen, Mahamudra, and Chan)
Live life, without clinging to it obsessively, and without “desiring not to desire”. It’s a normal life, just light-hearted.
Well, that’s just my view. Feel free to disagree.
Agree with this too. Increasingly, people are not interested in the “Faustian bargain”, and just want simple, relaxed lives, or work unrelated to “conquering the earth”.
This is playing out in America in a big way, with a growing movement to go camping, live in vans and RVs full time, “dropping out” to a certain degree, and in the explosion of the “arts of life”, gourmet food available everywhere, good bread, good beer – 20 years ago, America was a spartan, puritan place, devoted not to pleasure, but to technology and progress.
This is the great development of our times, and it is to be welcomed, in my view. Of course, the “Faustian people” still exist, but as I said, I think they should be accommodated and tolerated. Let them be happy as best they can.
What a load of bollocks. AK proves again that he’s either a disinformation agent or just an idiot. Either way, I have no idea why he considers himself some kind of “dissident voice”, as he just repeats what the system says. A legend in his own mind, as Clint would say.
I’m waiting for hm to announce that he has become a transgender (notHing more natural for a transhumanist, after all).
Yes. Good point regarding the heights. However keep in mind those pagodas were built in the 9th century. Doesnt change the fact that one of the pagodas will not fit in the dome of the hagia. Also, it is quite difficult to build an earthquake proof building, especially okes that are that old. Ancient engineers had big problems with earthquake stability. Which is why (if i recall correctly) both the Statue of Rhodes and the Lighthouse of Alexandria were lost to Earthquakes.
Regarding complexity – theres a reason why i mentioned the Forbidden City – in terms of complexity it was greater than the Hagia Sophia. The Chinese were excellent architects and engineers that could have also constructed domes, had they wished but that was not their style.
In his book American Theocracy Kevin Phillips says this about 17th century Spain:
“Spanish morale was dulled by desengano, a national disillusionment, vast bureaucracy, upper-class luxury, immorality, and political corruption. These were targeted- without any noticeable success- by sumptuary decrees restricting attire, by curbs on prostitution, and by abolition of unnecessary government positions and receiverships.”
About 18th century Holland he says the following:
“Dutch reformed pastors called for national renewal and incessantly attacked laziness, prostitution, French fashions, immigrants and homosexuals.”
I personally don’t think I would blame French fashion designers for Dutch decline as a world power. Phillips also discusses how an increase in irrationality spreads during these periods. For example, an interest in Occultism spread in late 19th and early 20th century Britain culminating with figures like Aleister Crowley. Even the creator of the supremely rational Sherlock Holmes ended up going to seances and searching for fairies out in the garden. In recent years here in the U.S. you have the rise of various New Age beliefs and more primitive forms of Christianity. Even radical environmentalism and worship of St. George Floyd can be seen as new forms of irrational religious beliefs.
I disagree – I believe that energy has quite a bit to extend, as per Roko.
Is the Earth running out of resources?
The article also addresses heat considerations:
This is not to consider resource extraction from the solar system, which while not infinite, can vastly expand the scope of growth.
Can’t wait for you to see through the illusion of existence and provide all of your material goods to Karlin.
Once again, more hypocrisy from you.
If there was a native philosophy driving China now, its Legalism, not Confucianism. China also an interesting historical basis for socialism, though it never incarnated in a philosophy as such, but it did often materialize as a form of thinking and governance.
Confucianism is innately “understanding of” corruption, which is arguably a significant destroyer of economic progress. But of course, modern day China is a synthesis both of her old ideas and new ideas, including those from overseas; syncretism is pretty common. The only thing specifically inherited from Confucianism off the top of my head would be the general reverence for education(interestingly, actually originally from Mohism) and an inclination toward group rather than individual perspective. Its there, but its pretty subtle ultimately.
As the saying goes, no man steps in the same lake twice.
silviosilver: “Isn’t that kinda circular? The ‘technological system’ is getting so powerful that it may destroy “us” (not sure whether it’s whites or humans generally you’re referring to), so to prevent that, we need to destroy the technological system, which we apparently can only do by destroying ourselves.”
The technological system is destroying the natural world as it expands. Human races are part of the natural world, and are being destroyed through race mixing brought about by “Progress”. There’s nothing circular or hard to understand about that.
Of course, most who claim to desire to save the white race are hypocrites like you, or they’d acknowledge this, and acknowledge that the only way to prevent it is to prevent the system from expanding. Whether causing a permanent system collapse would kill everyone or not is an open question. I tend to think it wouldn’t, but it would avert the threat to the white race. It seems very clear to me that under a “Mad Max” scenario of total anarchy the races would separate.
On the other hand, Mr. Silverman, like others here, you are probably not too concerned about that, so to you a collapse doubtless seems a poor alternative.
Can’t help thinking Glubb Pasha was onto something, although not everything – Rome lasted longer than his 275 years, China is still one political entity, most (not all) of the Biblical peoples are gone with one notable exception.
http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf
Yarvin has a recent post on his substack refuting AI fears with arguments that I always found appealing.
commandor: “Isn’t it likely that covid-19 was made in a lab too? Why so weak then? As a test?”
If manufactured, its release could have just been a accident, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn that it was a kind of test, designed to put into place a method of handling what the system perceives to be an imminent threat to its existence.
commandor: “Do you think that technology will always end up devouring Man? Then Man deserves to perish, for he proved to be not intelligent enough to be not beaten by mere tools.”
That’s what’s at issue, isn’t it? Will he allow it to happen or won’t he? Man is the only animal stupid enough to engineer his own extinction and consider it “Progress”.
Gnostics don’t care for the material world, literally their core tenet is that the material world is illusory, fake, and mostly or entirely evil.
You’d have struggled to pick a worse example.
To briefly take your caricature at face value –
In this scenario, the only actual alternative will be “Americans” or “Chinese” or “Neuralink Early Investors” adopting that mantle.
The likelier scenario, based on history, is just economic backwardness – but probably made far more intractable than was ever the case historically (you can cease being backwards relative to the leading countries if you have a comparable national IQ with the right policies, it is impossible if they have a huge superintelligent smart fraction and you don’t).
Only because neither the Soviets nor NATO fought to win at all costs. (Ethical constraints).
If either had operated with a quarter of the brutality that the Wehrmacht visited upon Belarus during WW2, for instance, the Pashtuns would long be quiescent and happy secular socialists/gay pride paraders, respectively.
Daniel Chieh: “Luddites, by the very nature of their being and thinking, are vastly outgunned in “intellectual capital” by the quantity of individuals who benefit from technology and therefore have reason to support it. They also lack the network effects that permit development and advancement of such weapons, or indeed, the basics of almost all economics on Earth.”
That’s the thing. The system itself provides the tools for its own destruction. The internet is one such tool, and as the system grows, it will doubtless provide even better ones. To survive, the system must squelch all opposition. It must be successful in this every time for an infinite length of time, whereas an attacker using a weapon capable of destroying it only has to succeed once.
I live a very simple life. I am something of a minimalist. I go on long camping trips where I live just about as basically as one can – and I would live this way full time but I must work. My dream is to buy land and live in a simple cabin. In the city I live in a simple apartment. I eat simply. And I am not wealthy.
You know nothing about my life, yet you call me a hypocrite. Why?
Are you really shocked that not everyone is part of the consumerist lifestyle to so high a degree? It is telling that people have a hard time believing anyone can not need a high level of comfort and luxury.
To be fair, many if my friends think I’m crazy and try and convert me back to luxury and comfort. It disturbs them that I don’t need these things all that much, as it does you.
Soft sci-fi is fun, but there are two issues here, neither of which you are seriously addressing:
1) The unsustainability of the rate of growth of energy use.
There’s no way getting around this, and not even hyper-optimistic bloggers like Roko are claiming that we can. Rather, Roko is simply claiming that people will just have to use less energy than we do.
:yes
Whether we can continue to have a similar standard of living while using less energy is an open question. Already, we are fast approaching maximal theoretical efficiency of lighting.
2) Having sufficient resources to run human civilization for another 10^N years.
Breeder reactors, which presumably are behind schedule mostly because of atomphobia, give N=3 under the assumption that we learn to live with what we have now. This is really not long on the scale of human history.
Fusion reactors would give N>>3, but are perhaps impossible to make work. Turbulence is an extremely difficult problem.
Solar gives around N=9, but requires solving the storage problem, about which I am less optimistic than fusion.
See
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421512001449
And no, Musk hasn’t solved this problem:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/07/27/141282/the-25-trillion-reason-we-cant-rely-on-batteries-to-clean-up-the-grid/
Event 201, and the global coordination on lockdowns.
Sad thing, but it’s the unforeseen tendency of such a path of development (“Karma”). But there have always been lots of branching ways out of the path, any time in history.
I remember listening to an episode of Geopolitics and Empire podcast where the guest argues for the breakdown of extraction and generation systems, leading “Peak Oil” or “Peak Energy” coming hard not because of exhaustion of sources, but of systemic unravelling.
He’s a doomer who is trying to quit the system he was badmouthing, but his merit is differentiating exploitable vs potential energy reserves.
I think Ian Morris has the best quantification of the West vs. East relative gap over large timescales:
https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-596e0552734f199b30e8e7b97f4c70a2
I actually think this might be somewhat over-generous to the East (China). From various estimates of historical literacy rates I have gathered, it seems that literacy in Europe overtook China as early as the Renaissance. (Literacy is just one subcomponent of the Social Development Index, and I think he consistently overestimates China in that department; but another thing to bear in mind is that literacy is often a leading indicator, since higher literacy helps drive more innovation which translates into wealth, “social development”, etc.).
That’s a tad optimistic. Demographic decline started a long time ago. It wasn’t caused by propaganda and I doubt that it will be reversed by propaganda.
The obvious conclusion is that it was not made in a lab.
But why did Europeans develop that technology? Why didn’t the Chinese, given that they’re every bit as smart as Europeans? What was different about Europe? Was it the Reformation? Did that lead to the scientific revolution which led to the technological revolution?
Was it some significant difference in the European economic system? Proto-capitalism? Was it the political system?
The earlier replies are a bit much to respond to. They generally strike me as fair, although I still think you use precisely the few striking examples of technology liberals use to claim that MOST innovation is state-led. However, your point on patronage is a good one. I will instead only linger on this part:
Third-worldist drivel. Slavery was a drag on the economy although it made a minority rich. American South was much weaker than the North and Latin-American countries were held back by being based around agricultural plantations. Many of the richest European countries (Scandinavia) never had colonies, while some of the largest powers (Spain and Portugal) stagnated despite plundering the world the earliest. The most threatening industrial behemoth, Germany, never had a meaningful colonial empire to speak of. You do remember that Stalin could industrialize a backwater in 20 years, without any colonies to speak of? Of course he used forced labor for the extremely short timespan, but Europe had the main necessities (wood, iron, coal) to do a similar thing in 100 years.
Do you have any proof that we ‘stole knowledge’ that doesn’t come from total cranks? I study History myself, yet even my Woke history department (which would love such an idea) never started about THAT. Probably because there is no evidence at all of such an assertion. Did we steal the technology for electricity, telegraphs, steam engines, cotton mills, and later on the internet and the atomic bomb? I suspect this is more of a point of pride for you, that you are Chinese and quite nationalist, and will never concede anything here, so there’s probably no point in discussing it.
And of course the Enlightenment was important, although it was probably a symptom of a biological type (but of course that is speculation) that obsessed over progress, innovation, invention etc. In the 19th century, many Europeans were actively hostile to tradition and worshipped science (like now, I suppose). That is the product of Enlightenment thinking, like it or not. The actual scientific revolution, mind you, started at the end of the Rennaissance already and arguably culminated in the Enlightenment.
The under-estimation of the Chinese and especially the Japanese has bit Europeans in the ass a couple of times. Good to see that the favor is returned nowadays.
Also, I suppose that all of the lads mentioned here simply stole these inventions from Asians?: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Revolution#New_mechanical_devices
One thousand years from now, we are going to figure out the whole dark matter/dark energy thing which will vastly expand the scope of energy and materials available for expansion.
The world of 3,000 AD will be as incomprehensible to us as a modern airport would be to a 1,000 AD peasant from rural England. He would think modern society was powered by demons. We would think the same of the remote future.
Human expansion is based on logistics formula anyway, just like everybody else, so I’m not worried about running up to the limits to growth. For all practical purposes, energy and materials are infinite in availability. The only thing that universe is short is labor. And that’s where robots/Supermutants will come in.
War. Modern European history started with 100 years war, continued with 80 years war, and brought about modern world with 30 years war. And there were war running on top wars on top of other wars.
And of course other cultures had wars too but none in such scale and complexity. It was cold in winter, so just to time the fighting in between the harvests required intelligence and organization.
Unironically HBD.
I agree completely.
Possibly. What I think it comes down to is that wealth does not lead to decadence. Wealthy countries can become decadent but there are other factors that must be present. Wealth is not the cause of decadence.
I think it might even be possible to achieve decadence without first achieving wealth. So there may be no link at all between the two.
Peak uranium is a nothingburger.
https://twitter.com/akarlin88/status/1122295215132377089
It was happening in France as well. But I don’t think it had anything to do with wealth. I certainly don’t think there was any direct causal link. There was huge social and cultural ferment in the 19th century. It was an Age of Cultural Revolution. Mass education. The beginnings of mass media. Urbanisation.
Christianity was gradually declining throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. It was declining among the upper classes in the 18th century and among the lower classes as well in the 19th century. People were looking for substitute religions.
And I don’t see a minority interest in the occult among the artistic/literary elites as evidence of general societal decadence.
You are a hypocrite by the very logic of the principles that you supposedly advice. I call you one because it is who you are, and I remind you every time of your essential worthlessness(while economizing my time not to waste it upon you).
Is solving the storage problem that impossible?
https://www.azom.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=19811
But there’s also the consideration that the sun is always shining on Earth at some point, so in practice, if there is a common transmission protocol, constant generation itself is sufficient to provide energy needs.
This was put on hold, but the idea itself isn’t lacking:
https://www.drishtiias.com/daily-updates/daily-news-editorials/one-sun-one-world-one-grid-1
China has an idea as well, which as far as I’m aware, hasn’t been suspended.
https://www.powermag.com/china-rolls-out-proposal-for-worldwide-grid/
I don’t think that was decadence as much as the natural order reasserting itself. We started the 19th century a little wealthier than the UK per capita, and remained quite wealthy. The 19th century and indeed the 20th century were more a time of ‘pleasant’ stagnation in a relative sense, and steady progress in an absolute sense. However, we had been punching above our weight for some time- there’s just not that many Dutch people around. ‘Fortress Albion’ could of course also focus entirely on its fleet, while we had the misfortune of existing on the mainland and had to spread our forces around more. We were only a world power because we first to the capitalist party.
No? The knowledge of Greek fire is lost to us, but not the knowledge of fire-making chemicals. Technology is more an edifice, each part which builds on each other, and which can be set back, but ultimately ideas endure so as long as there’s even something as basic as writing – good example of this would be the existence of currency even after currency ceased to be used in Europe. While no coins were being minted, goods were still valued in Roman denarii even if they were actually bartered: once the idea of quantifying value in numbers came to be, even systemic collapse didn’t stop the concept from existing.
Some sort of widespread cybervirus could probably could a lot of damage, but humanity would just route around the damage. Even changing the laws of physics, say, by removing the existence of combustion engines would probably only just be another piece of damage for technological society to route around.
Ok, so you’re extremely threatened by my philosophy and are lashing out. I get that. Your sole hope in life is that one you’ll feel happy if we develop technology enough, and I’m not on board with your program.
For my part, I think everyone should pursue what makes them happy, so have no problem with you pursuing technology and transhumanism.
I wish you the best of luck.
It’s hard to make anything out of the tweet without reading the book, but it’s almost certainly irrelevant to the obvious and mundane point I’m making: exponential increase in energy use can’t continue for very long. Forget uranium availability on Earth. At the current rate of increase, we’d eat the Sun in 1500 years, the Milky Way in 2500, and the entire visible universe in 5000. Since we can’t traverse the Milky Way in that time, energy use has to begin flattening out in well under 2500 years.
Not to mention we’ll boil ourselves long before that.
You can do the calculation yourself, the idea of which I learned from Murphy’s book Energy and Human ambitions: say the world uses about 20 TW of power (actually, maybe marginally less, but doesn’t matter for the argument), and the growth rate is 2.3% per year (an underestimate, but chosen so to get a tenfold increase each century). Then use E=mc^2 and the estimated mass of the Sun, the Milky Way, and the Universe. Depending on the estimates, you might get somewhat different numbers, but it’s going to be at the right order of magnitude.
You can try to imagine your way out by positing various soft sci-fi scenarios, but every kind of energy consuming device has efficiency limits, and many common devices such as engines and light bulbs are fast approaching maximal theoretical efficiency. So there is some minimal amount of energy that will have to be spent just to maintain fully automated commiespace populated by emulations of economists and other primitive worms.
There is no end of speculative solutions, and the burden of proof lies on those proposing them.
The problem with battery solutions, however fancy or efficient, is that the amount of material needed to build enough capacity is prohibitively expensive, typically multiples of entire national economies. That was the point of the first article to which I linked:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421512001449
As for a global grid, the resultant coordination problems make turbulence in fusion reactors look easy by comparison.
But ultimately, even if we figure out how to make solar or fusion work at scale, exponential increase in energy use will quickly outstrip anything we can produce, anything that the Earth can radiate back into space, and in fact will relatively quickly eat the whole visible Universe. In reality, this just means energy use must flatten out, and pretty soon, and we really have no idea know what the resulting steady-state will look like.
I thought the surviving parts of the Great Wall were mostly from the Ming – and rebuilt for tourists, after going to ruin. Long walls were pretty common in the ancient world. Many of them were built from perishable materials. I’m not sure the Great Wall is really that impressive in a technical sense apart from its length and the man-hours that went into building it. It shows high state complexity, and the ability to marshal manpower, but not technical genius, IMO, as something like the Roman aqueducts or the Coliseum arguably show. Ancient China seems to suffer from a lack of large public buildings.
I don’t disagree with this idea, but “backwater” strikes me as inherently a deconstructive and political phrase. (would not surprise me if it were invented by Jews) Never would have been uttered, IMO, except for the fact the West is currently being invaded and parasitized. Xi’s narrative is basically boiler-plate CRT: your wealth is due to BNs. It is sad to see a Chinese (as I assume) take it up.
Even considering the “Dark Ages”, not really that long between Hagia Sophia and Aachen Cathedral, and the latter was frankly better than what most of the world was offering at that time. Europe had a special spark since Ancient Greece. Allowing for economic and population cycles, I think it was either first-rate or at least peer competitor since then. Perhaps, not on every single metric, but certainly in art and architecture. At any rate, NOT a “backwater.” Not some place saved by Arabs and blacks, as the multicult narrative goes, but a place that had its own impulse and momentum.
To clarify:
They are two different issues under discussion.
1) How long can we power human civilization at its current level of energy use, using fission reactors, whether standard or breeder? The estimates I’ve seen are on the order of a 1000 years, which is rather short on a civilizational scale, but if solar and fusion at scale are in principle solvable, then this buys precious time. This is presumably what is being addressed in the book about which AK tweeted.
2) The rate of energy use can’t continue to increase exponentially, and anyone who ignores this point is a retard.
That assertion is a third-worldist idea, that often says more about a psychological need to denigrate the Europeans that conquered the world, and initiated the scientific and industrial revolutions, than offering real empirical analysis. It is no surprise that such ideas are often propagated by ethnic minority activists, like Muslims, in academia who have a clear interest in subverting ‘Eurocentrism’. If Europeans are nothing special, who needs them?
There is no other set on people on this earth so obsessed with getting to the root of reality. Both analytical and continental philosophy are vast tracts of thought aimed at getting at that goal, and have their roots in scholasticism. It reflects on a people that was intent on decoding the entire world- a suitable mindset for scientific revolutionaries. We didn’t have to be smarter than the Chinese, just more curious.
Yes Stalin can do it, but Einstein and von Neumann wouldn’t want to work for him, would they?
You make a complete separation of the two things, but in reality the smart fraction always has their ideas beyond being just a tool for you or anyone (or even their alter ego).
Technology carries its own baggages. People often assume that Technology is value neutral, but it is not exactly true. It is confusing and frequently super messy, but, I mean, did the Soviet scientists not make examples?
Legalism by definition does not drive anything because it is a mean to govern instead of being an inspiration to whatever.
Another point that is missing from the article is that the AGI or another super intelligence might not necessarily take the implicitly assumed individualistic image but being more like a hive, a society, made of discernable semi independent parts.
In other words, it may be like the old game, the same old. I believe Marx or Mao of the AGI bend would take a similar view. Struggle (among semi equal entities) is forever.
The Great Wall was not made from perishable material – it was not exactly sexy, but it was made from rammed earth(and parts with stone), and quite adequately served its purpose. Being made of rammed earth meant that it would remain viable as an obstacle with very little maintenance, which unfortunately it would often suffer as China often ceased to be unified and they were completely abandoned. It is a testament to their construction that subsequent dynasties were able to expand on them with significant less effort than the Qin put in. From a functional standpoint, it more than served its purpose, because while it wasn’t invincible, it served to constrain raiders, reduce their speed and shift some of the initiative to the defenders.
The same goes for the Grand Canal, which is used to this day, and arguably for other things such as the terraced farms over the mountains. A lot of Chinese construction wasn’t particularly elegant or beautiful, but it was all quite functional and often continued to be beneficial for hundreds, even thousands of years.
As a general rule, though, China didn’t really build with stone so it didn’t leave a lot of legacies of buildings. I’m not entirely certain for the reasoning, though I suspect it had something to do with cost and constant budgeting concerns.
I think that’s more of how you personally feel.
Nations and people move in and out of importance over time: the Germanic areas were definitely a backwater during the Roman era, and Scotland was so worthless that Rome didn’t even campaign for it. Greece, once a center of the civilized world, does not produce very much culture or advancement these days; the Middle East was definitively once the center of civilization, with the greatness of Babylon and a probable origin of writing with Sumer(including thishighly entertaining complaint letter), but of course it no longer holds that same degree of importance. China, too, moves in and out of prominence(and for that matter, territorial integrity).
Daniel Chieh: “The knowledge of Greek fire is lost to us, but not the knowledge of fire-making chemicals. Technology is more an edifice, each part which builds on each other, and which can be set back, but ultimately ideas endure … ”
That’s certainly true. The technological system is cumulative, and its primitive basis is probably impossible to destroy completely. The existence of techniques such as clubs and spears wouldn’t be affected by a collapse, only higher technology, which requires an already functioning industrial base to produce. In ISAIF, Kaczynski gives the example of refrigeration technology. He writes:
A collapse of the technological system would have to happen on a worldwide basis in order for it to be permanent. That much is also clear. If not, it would simply, as you say, route around the damage, and recover. Nevertheless, billions of lives would be lost in any such collapse, since humans are now dependent upon the system for basic necessities such as food. The reduction of the world’s population to a few hundredths of a percent of its current level would probably cause a new Dark Age in which even literacy and knowledge of the past might be lost.
https://i.4pcdn.org/pol/1494755696390.png
It may be a means to govern, but it actually does result in significant differences in what is produced since by concentrating power in the central government, it means that “large efforts” are much more possible. E.g. a more Confucian-inclined government would be uninterested in exploring other continents due to obligation to care for the poor, while a Legalist government would place that on a much lower importance versus surviving as an organized entity.
Qin’s development as a military power utilizing mass production wasn’t accidental: it basically required breaking the entrenched interests of local families, nobility, guild-equivalents, etc all to streamline into a notion maximizing state power. Notably, Qin was nationalist in terms of maximizing the power of their nation(which ultimately prevailed over China) but certainly not ethnically nationalist, as they encouraged immigration to dilute the power of the local nobility and to weaken rival states.
Legalism is a system for control freaks. No creative science has ever come from such a system. Nor can it.
Creative science requires a certain tolerance for anarchy.
But to let go of control, you have to have courage. And Legalism is a system designed by fearful men.
I don’t buy it.
An adequate explanation has to explain not just where things the explosion in technological innovation and the Industrial Revolution happened but also why it happened at a particular time. Why not 300 years earlier? Why not 600 years earlier?
And if it’s HBD you have to explain why it didn’t happen in China. Or Japan.
But birth rates are plummeting globally, which means we’re looking at the likelihood of sustained and fairly dramatic population decline. That could surely buy us a lot of time.
It is not my imagination that historical narratives are being promulgated in the West, based on the ideology of open borders (Just look at period films being produced today), and that it is harmful when those narratives are successfully propagated.
I seriously doubt that there is anything close to similar in the Far East. From what I hear, Koreans are not taught about the benefits of Japanese colonialism. Chinese and Japanese are not taught to feel shame for dispossessing aboriginals.
Would any of those places use a word with as negative connotation as “backwater” to describe themselves in their contemporary stage when Europeans arrived in ships? Would they ever settle for third place? Make their children bow to the Arabs or India? Seems rather hard to believe.
Arguably, anyplace paying for imported Somalis is decadent.
Well, China did have ships at the time and didn’t think of themselves as weak; the Ming defeated the Dutch after all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Dutch_conflicts
But actually, by the mid 1900s, China was pretty much a byword for poverty. The Chinese do call themselves words like “degraded, weak” and especially “落后” which basically means “country that lagged behind.” During that time, there was general belief that the Chinese were in fact inferior in some fundamental way to Europeans, until they’ve proven themselves not to be – you can see that in the writing of Lee Kuan Yew.
To some extent, that attitude remains, and is part of the narrative of the Rise from Humiliation.
At any rate, I was using it in the sense of a very simple and realistic notion, I think: places rise and fall in importance over time.
I disagree about the impossibility of that coordination problem: I think that if push came to shove, the coordination problem can be solved as it is ultimately an issue of communication and control, rather than requiring new discoveries in science.
I don’t have any good answer to this beyond that consideration that anything that extends into the thousand year will probably have such significant and different dynamics that it will be difficult to predict anything, especially since we will have almost certainly triggered one of the singularities by then.
We are only left with wild speculations, because I don’t think if we’re going to be any better at plotting 1000 years in the future than the people in the year 1000 could understand our existence.
Bacterial persisters are a stochastically formed subpopulation of low-energy cells
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3001194
They hope for a Deus ex machina (not the game, but the antique Latin) type of intervention. Technology is supposed to work miracle, just like the Godmen of old were supposed to do. Well, they say that faith moves mountains, let’s hope faith can tap the quantum field for energy too…
HBD doesn’t have to limit itself to just IQ. Its entirely possible that there’s a set of genetic traits with Europeans that make them uniquely more capable of developing and spearheading the technological revolution and I think differentials can be seen even within Europe now.
It could just be a difference in openness and cooperativeness, which is surprisingly contributory to advancement – you see it still, with Nordics being one of the most common contributors to open source platforms. In my experience with Japanese and Korean communities, while some degree of fan contribution existed, a strong notion of cliquishness was present such that people refused to share “their work” with others and thus much effort is constantly wasted reinventing algorithmic wheels. The cliquishness and refusal to cooperate with foreigners(or others groups) is all very cool and all, but economy of scale from more cooperative, less cliquish setups will crush you.
Imagine if science operated like that, with each discovery hoarded as a mystery rather than shared freely, and you could see that quite a bit less would be achieved.
Have you gotten the note to memory-hole your viewpoint? I actually like how the mainstream media and even Facebook flip-flips on how COVID-19 came to be, finding the right time to focus all the accumulated anger onto China.
Basically most talk on the way to go for systematic tech and social development is based on the positivist, progressive belief that progress is linear or exponential.
Late Bronze Age Collapse, European Dark Ages, Mongol invasions (on the Middle East and more weakly China).
That is really not the devastating criticism you appear to think it is. Whether we arrive at that point sooner or we arrive later, there isn’t any real choice except to move progressively closer to it. I’d prefer sooner, not that it will make any difference to my life whatsoever, short of radical life extension becoming a thing in the next few decades.
Even if that thesis is not considered proven, given the weight of evidence in its favor, it would be wise to proceed cautiously, rather than cavalierly pronounce Europeans superfluous.
First man to incarnate the Breker golem earns an immortal place in the Volkshalle.
But is openness and cooperativeness cultural or genetic? To support the HBD theory of European achievement you’d first have to prove that openness and cooperativeness are not just cultural artifacts.
Japan and Korea had very different histories compared to the Nordics, plus totally different religions. Different social, economic, political and cultural histories and systems. So a entirely cultural explanation for openness and cooperativeness would surely be quite plausible.
DanielChieh said more or less what I’d say anyways, so I’ll continue from here.
Not sure if you meant it this way, but there is a ‘culturalist’ sleight-of-hand where it is posited that, since the possibility of a cultural explanation exists, it is preferable. But there is no reason to assume ‘culture’, that is to say, behavioralism severed from genes (a bizarre idea) is a good standard hypothesis. First off, I don’t believe culture can be severed from biology. That idea was first popularized by Boasian anthropology; I’d read the Culture of Critique for an argument why that makes it suspect.
Biology influences our behavior, and our collective behavior is our culture. Since we know of the importance of genes: 60-80% adult heritability estimates for IQ and about 40% (on average) for personality in twin studies: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7012279/. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23919982/
I’m not saying environment doesn’t matter, I’m saying we’ll probably never disentangle it from biology.
Going from that point, it all depends how persuasive you find genetic explanations for group behavior. A large shift in my expectations was how persuasive I found the arguments offered in Culture of Critique, but especially Separation and its Discontents (which has a simpler thesis) about the group behavior of Jews (Andrew Joyce here on UNZ also documents his ideas reasonably well). I was quite left-wing while I was younger, and it struck me that Jews were so overrepresented in the youth wing of my socialist party- this as the Germans killed most of them in my country. I barely met any Jews before going into Marxist politics.
They also tended to display the personality traits presented in SaD- being extremely passionate, dogmatic, pushy, and being socialists, they were of course hostile to the fundamental basis of gentile society. These are all just averages, of course, but it’s still striking. The massive overrepresentation and even take-over of left-wing politics by Jews, throughout history, is well-documented. While I still liked them personally, it still struck me that the only reason Jews hadn’t taken over power in my party was because they almost don’t exist anymore in my country. The Jews I knew were some of the most dedicated and smart activists there.
Why I find HBD persuasive for Europeans too comes down to point offered up above:
AFAIK, Chinese philosophy, and by extension the Chinese people just don’t have that same obsessive drive. The most famous Chinese philosophers I know essentially created legal theories (AFAIK). Meanwhile, the whole slew of most famous European philosophers I can think of: Hegel, Nietzsche, Kant, Heidegger, Descartes, Duns Scotus, Thomas Aquino, Hume, etc, is almost without exception a list of people famous for claiming to understand the ‘essence of reality’ in some manner, so to speak- or criticizing such a pretension.
The European philosophical conception is extremely individualistic, it’s always one guy pretending to be able to decode the world all by himself (perhaps we are therefore, in a way, given to a type of narcissism? Idk.) IMHO that fits an extremely outbred population group where ‘the subject’ faces the world mostly by himself, assuming a social world of legality and fair play. It’s a personality compatible with aggressive universalism, intolerance of imperfections, and anti-traditionalism. To the best of my knowledge, that makes us different (though I wouldn’t say better) than the Chinese.
It’s also not necessarily to posit one necessary time for revolutionary change. The change in Europe accumulated with exponential speed from the Rennaissance outwards- precisely when the Catholic Church had assured an extremely outbred population.
This is the relevant chapter on Boasian anthropology: http://www.kevinmacdonald.net/chap2.pdf
https://asiatimes.com/2021/06/mach-30-wind-tunnel-will-put-china-decades-ahead/
Kind of contradictory, especially the story of the father of the Chinese rocket program who was expelled from the US during the Red Scare witch hunt only to be greeted as a hero in China and installed at the head of Chinese space and ballistic missile program.
It appears China is more open to learning from others and more meritocratic.
I think that partly we are talking past each other, with my focus on intractable problems and your focus on speculative solutions to problems that, I agree, are not a priori intractable.
While there are some problems that will perhaps— just maybe, if we are lucky— get solved (such as solar power, fusion reactors, global grids), there are other problems that are imposed by the nature of exponential growth and the laws of thermodynamics, and any solutions that you can imagine to these latter kind of problems go beyond soft sci-fi into the realm of fantasy.
As for people in the year 1000, it’s interesting to note that the intractable problems could have been explained to the sharper ones, who did understand problems of scaling and exponential growth (Dido outlining the territory of Carthage with a cowhide, a king foolishly agreeing to place 2^N grains of wheat on the Nth chess square), as well as the most relevant piece of thermodynamics (the volume of water that you can boil with a pile of wood is proportional to the volume of that pile).
In fact, one can well imagine Archimedes the Sand Reckoner estimating the time it would take to boil oceans under the assumption that people double the amount of fuel that they burn every 2^7=128 years (a binary century, so to speak). Hmm, Daniel, that gives me an idea for our next cafe meeting…
Finally, note that, properly speaking, “singularities” come from super-exponential growth, going off to infinity in finite time. While some data suggest that population and economic growth have been on a super-exponential trend, that must eventually (and relatively rapidly) come to an end, since to continue they’d require super-exponential growth in energy use, so that would also have to go off to infinity in finite time.
Note that the hypothetical bio-singularity is a misnomer, since even the soft-sci scenarios of uploading to fully automated gay commiespace still presume the use of a finite non-zero amount of energy. The hypothetical bio-singularity will still not allow super-exponential growth of anything. In short, the imagined solution is not even soft sci-fi.
For a physicist giving a popular discussion of “The Singularity”, I recommend Geoffrey West’s book Scale.
Arrive at which point? Flattening of energy use?
I think my criticism is mundane, simple, and obvious, not devastating: even the most abundant and efficient source of energy still won’t last long on a civilizational scale given the observed exponential, let alone super-exponential, growth in energy use. So something has to give.
BTW, isn’t the absurdity of even relatively short term exponential growth precisely the premise of your “Katechon hypothesis”?
Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy Simulator
There will not be an exponential energy demand growth for 1,000 years. We will become Japan long before that.
https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/Japan
That is one anecdote. I don’t feel I can infer much out of that. I agree that, in general, China seems to have been a relatively open society in the past (but take what I say about the Chinese with a grain of salt, it’s a lot of cobbled-together stuff from a few books, interactions with the Chinese, stories, and general inferences). I also tend to associate the Chinese with a pragmatic instead of obsessive way of going about things. I wouldn’t say Euros are ‘open’ to outsiders, necessarily (my bad for mentioning universalism): when we turn closed, we get Apartheid and the Nazis. It’s more that (Northern) European societies tend to obsessively value abstractions over concrete stuff like kin/clan.
However, I personally believe that:
The Chinese have a naturally less inquisitive temperament;
But that the Chinese are smarter than Euros;
That they have learned conservatism is weakness;
And will outperform us and grow to dominate the world based not on natural temperament but leasons learned in the past.
I’m a little sceptical of tall tales from Chinese scientists, however, given the general Chinese reputation for wondrous stories that in the end amount to very little- I am especially thinking of the way they are reputed to do business.
I think a better thing to notice (instead of anecdotes) are these statistics from ‘coffee salon demographics’. https://www.unz.com/akarlin/salon-demographics/ It shows a lack of interest from Asians in rationalist pursuits, even as they are smart enough to be involved. Jews, of course, are themselves a group famous for having a culture praising knowledge and smarts.
Yes, exactly. Also note that their economy appears to be approaching a steady-state. Here’s the log scale:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gross-domestic-product?tab=chart&yScale=log&country=~JPN
They could understand the basic principles when it was accurate, but there was a vast portion of potential that they wouldn’t be able to speak of: many Roman efforts at innovation, for example, involved mechanizing animal labor but were defeated by pollution caused by animal waste. Without knowing anything about fossil fuels or energy storage, likely even the best thinkers then would assume much lower capabilities and ceilings for humanity. Sometimes they also had incorrect basic assumptions of the world which would impede their understanding of reality, e.g. the idea that air did not exert pressure itself and did not have weight.
https://technicshistory.com/2021/03/11/the-weight-of-the-air/
As someone much better written than I did wrote, the ancients would likely only comprehend our work as occult magic through which disaster had to elapse from: living off the hardened black necromantic energies of ancient titans to power captured lightning and controlled air explosions in our metal wagons.
Its likely that while such basic constraints will exist, there’s also much that we will discover del novo in the next thousand years. For my considerations, a singularity only needs to further expand human potential in a way that the industrial revolution has been for humanity, essentially introducing a new form of energy to us as a society and harnessing it in novel ways such that it will be hard to imagine life without it. I highly suspect the ever increasing cyborgification of society(even something, for example, as having smartphones allowing us to record everything and thus significantly change our comprehension of memory) will be once such evolution.
It doesn’t matter, to some extent.
Whether its cultural or genetic(and it is likely both), neither are likely to change dramatically and they reinforce each other. This is quite sufficient to draw sociological predictions from.
Perhaps that it is due to the fact that any person smart enough to understand the limitations of human reason would choose other avenues for personal development?
I mean, once you get that you basically cannot fully experience, let alone understand Reality by using the rationalist approach and the scientific method, better mind your beans instead.
Jews are more of a status seeking ethnic group, they do Hi Tech because in today’s society it brings them status, influence and wealth.
Once again, we are talking past each other. I agree that the solutions we already have to tractable problems would seem magical to our ancestors, just as the solutions that our descendants will find to tractable problems would seem magical to us. The fact remains, though, that there are some intractable problems, some limits imposed by physics. These limits would make perfect sense to Archimedes, as they do to us. “New forms of energy” are irrelevant to this point. The only way around them is to violate the laws of thermodynamics, which is why I say entertaining such ideas is not even sci-fi. Cyborgs still consume a non-zero amount of energy at less than perfect efficiency, so they better control their expansion or else the Simulator is going to pull the plug.
I wouldn’t say smart, but common-sensical, which is often but not always the same thing. 100 vs. 105 IQ isn’t world-shaking and Jews are smarter than us both. This is about personality, not smarts. I guess (Nordic) Europeans are just kind-of bonkers, in a way that seems to verge on narcissism sometimes. I’d say the idea that one guy can understand the essence of reality just by thinking a long time is kind of narcissistic.
Also, this mentality isn’t rationalism per se- the Germanic continental tradition specifically has various strands of irrationalism and disparagement of rationalism. But guys like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche remove ‘Reason’ and just add ‘Will’ as an effigy instead. The same obsession with fundamental understanding of reality is still there. There’s a reason the big 3 aggressive ideologies that claim total understanding of society (fascism, communism, universalizing democracy) are European inventions.
Did you ever read up on the despair many Europeans experienced when they felt the rationalist schemes were breaking down Post-WW1? We are aware of the problem. Post-Modernism is one reaction to that sensation, but imho true pomo is just not very European. It’s quite typical that intellectuals like Ernst Jünger, who flirted around with proto po-mo irrationalism in Sturm, would later disavow that novel and turn to fascistic irrationalism instead. Heh, is po-mo even meaningful to Asians, that never really lived through the rationalistic obsession in the first place?
The Chinese are open to learning from others and have a history of meritocracy, but no vast background of “selfless giving” which I think is surprisingly useful for spontaneous coordination. You have that concept – 兼愛 – but it is in Mohism, which did not survive as a philosophy and was obscure even at its height.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohism#Caring_and_impartiality
While it seems reasonable, one result of this Confucian anti-universality is the belief that it is a moral obligation to convey one’s efforts to the benefit of one’s family. This increasingly can get into angles hostile to mass cooperation, starting from Confucius’ own stated beliefs that one should balance one’s obligations to his family against one’s obligations to the king(against the apparatus of the state) and in modern considerations has come around to the idea that it is morally right to guard one’s work or invention so that you could charge for it and help your family(a little before Xi went on his “angel and saints” crusade against corruption, it was easily an excuse for corruption). The innovation of guanxi removes the exactitude of “family” and allows a person’s “family” to consist of any non-blood relations he chooses, but this universality is limited into a form of cliquishness. And so we finally arrive at basically at the heart of a lot of creation limited in East Asia: cliques, for example doujin circles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doujin
This can be really high quality, reflecting dedication and focus(much fan work exceeds anything seen in the West – there’s no Western equivalent of creating an entire animated series for free like Touhou), but notably its not cooperative and is highly competitive. So a lot of energy instead of spend fighting each other.
From what I’ve seen, there’s a major difference between this and places like the Nordics where there’s much more of the concept of the Law of Jante, and cooperation is just assumed. European science, imo, has often assumed that form of selfless willingness to share and innovate, often at personal cost: Thomas Newcomen basically invented the form of the steam engine we use today, but basically got a pittance compared to Savery who owned the patent, our basic programming language was developed by Dennis Ritchie who no one knows, etc. Such things are countless: it isn’t that Asians don’t have that impulse, but it is definitely not as encouraged to spend one’s time on things that won’t benefit yourself or your family for the notion of “truth.”
By the way, I often wonder if non-Euros experience interacting with Euros in the way I’m describing. I’d say that might be the best proof of the concept. Would you say Euros are often seen as excessively ideological, obsessed with abstractions, somewhat narcissistic, in the wider world?
I see what you mean, but I think that I ultimately disagree on what can be seen as an “intractable problem.” The ancients would have seen many problems as intractable that we now understand to be tractable: human powered flight, blood transfusions, organ transplants, etc. Archimedes might assume many other limits, limits that we have since broken with concepts or existences that he was not aware of.
But I do concede that its likely that exponential energy usage will have to ramp down, but I generally feel there’s a lot further to go before that becomes a major obstacle.
It really only matters to people who have a political axe to grind. Unfortunately these days just about everyone who considers such matters does have a political axe to grind. So you get Blank Slatists who dismiss genetic factors because such factors are politically unacceptable to them, and you get HBDers who dismiss cultural factors because such factors are politically unacceptable to them. Everything today is political so as soon as a topic like this comes up both sides choose their positions purely on political grounds.
And you end up with a political debate instead of a debate about science or history or whatever. And if it’s Unz Review someone will then advance the argument that it’s all the fault of the Jews.
In the case of the sudden dramatic rise of European civilisation to global dominance it’s the short time scale on which it happened that makes me suspect that it was mostly cultural. It seems more plausible to me. Especially given that there were huge and obvious cultural differences between Europe and other civilisations. It seems highly likely that being a Christian society or an Islamic one or a Confucionist society or a Legalist society or a Buddhist society is going to have a spectacular effect on the way people behave and think. It’s not exactly a smoking gun but it is a very plausible murder weapon that just happens to be found at the scene of the crime.
I’d argue that culture can change fairly quickly. The triumph of secularism over Christianity in the West was accomplished in an astonishingly short time frame. Cultural changes are the ones you have to watch out for because they can sneak up on you real fast. And the triumph of secularism over Christianity represented an incredibly dramatic change.
I guess HBDers could, in desperation, try arguing that secularism had a genetic cause but that would be a case of clutching at straws.
I’d say that Chinese Legalism was a proto-version of fascism which does indeed claim total understanding of the universe, wedding itself at one point to a form of Taoism, so it claimed transcendent qualities.
In theory, it indicates a system by which even the monarch becomes an apparatus of a state. In practice, it seems to have quite underestimated the ambition of its major bureaucrats and I’ve often believed that likely the same kind of dissolution would have happened even if the Third Reich was successful in war.
Legalism Qin was quite successful in war, but at some point, major political figures clearly began to divorce themselves from any philosophical underpinnings of it into “winning makes right.” This ultimately destabilized it enough for rebellion to collapse the state, although amusingly, most Legalist reforms remained because they worked. The Confucians just took the effort to slander the Legalists because it sounded much nicer.
I’m waiting to see if you’re going to reply to me too before I put in the work for a large reply, but I’d like to mention you’re assuming a somewhat exaggerated position of your opponent here. How many people really believe genetics simply explains 100% of behavior? I’ll leave it at that for now.
Yes, its a logistics equation type plot, all life follows it. In any environment population explodes as if exponentially and then levels out. The general goal of humanity is to seed colonies in new environments where they will follow their own logistics plots, but it is unlikely they will be able to sustain exponential growth there either.
We probably want to do this sooner rather than later because old people make poor colonists and in steady state younger people will be at a premium as old people will want to capture the young and make them serve their needs rather than explore new worlds.
Whenever they’re challenged HBDers always trot out the line, “Hey, nobody is claiming that genetics explains 100% of behaviour.” But I suspect their good faith. They tend to behave and argue in a manner that suggests that they do believe that genetics explains 100% of behaviour.
I’m referring here to people for whom HBD is a religious faith, and an essential cope that they can’t live without. I suspect that that’s the case for most white alt-righters/white nationalists for whom HBD is the equivalent of the Nicene Creed. I don’t think it’s so much case for Russians or Asians who believe in HBD because they don’t have the same need for coping mechanisms.
Well, I replied this way because I gave an explanation of how I think on culture/genes in my reply to you. Since I suppose I’m the ‘HBD-er’ in question here, it seemed a little unfair to trot out that point.
Well, I’m somewhat on-board with HBD and a northern Euro myself, but I wouldn’t say it’s all positive. Like mentioned in other posts here, I tend to view Euros as a bit nutty and verging on the narcissistic. HBD also implies that northern Euros are more or less given to self-abolishment, which I suppose hardcore racialists love to forget. It also undermines the notion of a unitary White Race.
dfordoom: “The triumph of secularism over Christianity in the West was accomplished in an astonishingly short time frame … the triumph of secularism over Christianity represented an incredibly dramatic change.”
You’re as bad as that Johnson guy. You try to cast some changes in details of Christianity as other “religions”, and neglect to consider that secularism represents no triumph over Christianity if that same secularism retains most of the ethical structure of Christianity. Christianity isn’t dead. It’s just going under various aliases. In fact, transhumanism itself is just a reworking of the Christian idea of dying and going to heaven. Its exponents are people who should know better, but insist that evolution is directional, that transhumanism represents an evolution “upwards”. They’re a modern version of the primitive Christian who wants to go into the clouds, to meet God (as they fantasize). They simply don’t care that the cost is their own death as a species. You have to die to get to heaven, right? All good Christians take this for granted. After the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West, Europe spent almost a thousand years waiting for the return of the crucified rabbi, who was supposed to bring heaven to earth. When that didn’t happen (shocking!), it had no choice but to invent science so that it could instead bring heaven to earth in another way. They’re trying to build it themselves! The Christian death cult rolls on.
This arguably predates Christianity.
The evocation of greater truths from the world of ideals is a Neoplatonic concept, and is a fundamental belief in the idea of greater understanding of the universe that will lead to the attainment of power in this material world due to a more thorough understanding of the universe, including the spiritual and the subtle. As the adept gains in wisdom from beyond, so can he also convey his wisdom into the dross that is Malkuth. It is, in a way, an evocation of what was witnessed from perfection of the aether so that it may be clad into the clay that is daily life.
As above, so below.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeticism
I am Russian, my wife is a Western European (French and Irish ancestors, therefore mainly Celtic). I live in a Western country and usually get along just fine with my neighbors and colleagues regardless of their ethnicity or religious affiliation.
Russians have possibly this advantage of being actually kind of Euro/Asian, not Eurasian but really being half way between Oriental, Middle Eastern and Western European mentalities. In my experiences most Russians I personally know get along just fine with nearly any other ethnic group.
About Westerners, I would draw a distinction between the Mediterranean people (Spanish, Italian, Greek) and the North-Western Germanic / Scandinavian type. My impression is also that Celtic ancestry folks are perhaps a bit different from other North Western Europeans.
So to answer your question: I don’t know whether Russians truly qualify as “typical Europeans” and also I think that Europeans are a diverse group. Those who come closer to the description that you provide are probably the North-Western European subtype and some French, who are really a mix of Celts/Latins + Nordic + Mediterranean types.
Yes. Say, set our sights on reaching a Kardashev type II civ, and then worry about what to do later. Or hell, even just maxing out a type I.
Between today and then, there is a lot of living to be done. Why not just cross the intractability bridge when we get to it, rather than waste time worrying about it now?
Bro, the way you talk sometimes, I had you pegged for a Muslim. Not an insult, some of the most chill people online I talked to were Muslims. Congrats on being Russian, at least you guys aren’t going as crazy as we are. I’m a liberal, but sometimes it seems as if the PUTLER REGIME is the one thing keeping things normal. Then again, you live in a western country, so that must have been more attractive.
Yeah, as I said, the praise for ‘Europeans’ in HBD is really about North-Western Euros. I agree Europeans are very diverse. Generally the Germanic/Romance/Slav distinction works perfectly.
That’s a bit like saying that if you shoot your dog and then have him stuffed and mounted he’s still the same dog. But in fact while poor old Fido might still look the same he ain’t the same dog any more.
It is true that modern secularism retains some of the ethical structure of Christianity. But there have been some pretty major ethical changes. Things like the ethical approach to abortion, euthanasia, divorce and homosexuality have changed radically. Sexual ethics in general have changed dramatically. Our entire attitude towards marriage has changed.
Going from a belief in Heaven to a belief that you can build Heaven right here on Earth is actually a radical, revolutionary change.
And once you remove God from Christianity then you have Man taking the place of God, which is a radical, revolutionary change.
The idea that secularism is just Christianity rebranded just doesn’t stand up. There are some similarities and some continuities but the dissimilarities and the discontinuities are pretty spectacular.
I think we are certainly on the same wavelength. I’ve never tried boat building (yet!) but have seen it done and it is a very impressive craft.
Perhaps the tragic thing is that very few in our modern age understand that deep visceral thrill that occurs when surety of hand and eye and speed and economy of movement are transmitted through a simple tool to the work. Competence in body and mind sure feels powerful. Knowing that feeling, I really can’t imagine wanting that mediated through increasing levels of technology.
I think personally the reality is that technology has passed the point where it makes human life more enjoyable or meaningful. Certainly, we have innovations and more and more shiny things, but they don’t seem to make people very happy. More comfortable perhaps, but I wouldn’t confuse comfort with happiness.
I’ve heard it put as: the meaning of life is the joy of creation.
One can always quibble with statements like this, but I think it’s pretty good, and you can certainly do a lot worse.
I would wholeheartedly support that sentiment. It’s well put and pithy, and quite well describes how I’ve attempted to align my own life.
This is why I see global consumer capitalism as a fundamentally dehumanizing force. What worse insult could there be than to be labeled a “consumer”? The creative force is what separates us from the animals. If one wants to put it into theological terms, when Genesis says man is made in the “image and likeness of God” that is what is being referred to. We have the ability to conceive an idea and also execute it. Not quite “ex nihilo”, but close!
By discouraging true creativity and mastery in modern society I feel that we have descended into a fundamental form of savagery. A very pretty and refined form, but savagery none the less.
Pauline Christianity itself is the marriage of Hellenism with Judeo-Aramaic tradition – how Paul and subsequent theologians educated in the Greco-Roman tradition reinterpret Jesus’s gospel for the Palestinian commoner.
I had a comment in one of the threads a few weeks ago about going back from “abstract” capital to “concrete” capital. It is basically this, going from intangible developments to tangible welfare where our hands perform their natural role of manipulating our own world, technological level included, but for economic ideology.
Authenticity begets creativity.
dfordoom: “It is true that modern secularism retains some of the ethical structure of Christianity. ”
You seem to be one of those people under the mistaken impression that there is one and only one Christianity, namely, the one of which you approve. Like Johnson, you think that that is “real” Christianity, and everything other system, no matter how strong the family resemblance, is a different thing entirely. Both you and Johnson exaggerate any differences even to the point that you call them other “religions”. Often this then gets carried into surreal absurdity when it even gets claimed that all the mainstream churches have been “infiltrated”, so that the vast majority of self-described Christians aren’t really Christians at all because they aren’t practicing “real” Christianity as you define it. But in the history of Christianity there have been many schools of thought that espoused beliefs directly contrary to current “mainstream” ones. Notably, among early Christians, Cainites and Carpocratians held that it was necessary to violate all ten commandments in order to be “saved”. Some sects believed Jesus was God, others did not, seeing him as no more than a wise man. Still others thought he was never an actual person at all. By comparison, a secularism or liberalism that espouses a frankly anti-Darwinist point of view with regard to humans, that dogmatically asserts that miraculously, all the races of man have turned out on average to have exactly the same capabilities, and that all men are essentially of one blood, and are brothers who should love one another rather than competitors in the struggle for survival, bears such a striking resemblance to mainstream Christian claims that any difference is barely worth mentioning.
dfordoom: “But there have been some pretty major ethical changes. Things like the ethical approach to abortion, euthanasia, divorce and homosexuality have changed radically. Sexual ethics in general have changed dramatically. Our entire attitude towards marriage has changed.”
As I have repeatedly pointed out, technological “progress” in the area of scientific birth control has forced adjustments. Christians, both self-identified and crypto like you and Johnson, have mostly had no problem with it. Where they do sense a conflict, they handle it adroitly with their customary hypocrisy. In fact, I think they actually like it, because it gives them the opportunity to call for a return to a “real” Christianity they imagine exists. The development of scientific birth control was nothing short of a revolution in the relationship between the sexes, one which had held since man descended from the trees. Once sex became divorced from reproduction, and women could have sex with same abandon as men, such things as you mention became a lifestyle choice. I don’t see this as a break with the basic Christian moral framework, which always has been nothing if not adaptable. Christian platitudes such as “judge not lest ye be judged”, the emphasis on unconditional love, and their irrational belief in the fundamental equality of individuals goes a long way towards explaining how such seemingly radical course reversals can be rationalized away.
dfordoom: “Going from a belief in Heaven to a belief that you can build Heaven right here on Earth is actually a radical, revolutionary change.”
On the contrary, the Bible says that Jesus is scheduled to return to Earth and reign with perfect justice for a thousand years, establishing a paradise on Earth. Christian chiliastic belief eagerly anticipates this, and in its secular form of transhumanism just substitutes a hypothesized technological singularity for Jesus’ return. Historically, this crazy Christian idea has taken other forms too, notably the Worker’s Paradise of Marxism and Hitler’s Thousand Year Reich. The great historian Oswald Spengler called Christianity “the grandmother of Bolshevism”, and observed that Communism was derived from Christian theology.
dfordoom: “And once you remove God from Christianity then you have Man taking the place of God, which is a radical, revolutionary change.”
So long as there is belief in any kind of God, there’s actually been very little change. In the West, a belief in technology and/or the State as God is just another transfiguration of Christianity. A man from the Christian culture of the West who imagines himself to be God, or who believes that Man can become God through technology, is just having a Christian hallucination. It’s a big mistake to underestimate the influence Christian religious fantasy has had on the West. Most of it is profoundly negative, particularly from a white racist point of view.
The only war anyone should ever fight is a Total War (Totaler Krieg really does win the coolness-factor on this one). I mean, if every conflict is a no-holds barred deathmatch of the worst aspects of humanity, technological progress, and horror, people should get tired of it pretty quickly. That, or at least no one gets to be smug about winning or can ignore 20 years of conflict.
Afghanistan being “the graveyard of empires” always seemed overrated to me. The Mongols took it. All they had to do was commit genocide, which seems like a universally solid and successful option of last resort (assuming the power balance is in ones favor. It wasn’t in Belarus, so genocide was a bad option for the Nazis I think.)
For moral and pragmatic reasons though, I don’t think the US, Russia or China (Iran might) really benefit from skull pyramids outside Kabul.
I think the above comment you were responding to also forgets that Asia was plundering its own wealth, in that sense. I mean, China was never at a loss for cheap labor or riches, really. It was, however, at a loss for steam engines and rifles.
India too, now that I think about. India was probably better placed than most for pulling off an Industrial revolution eventually (if I had to put it on any non-Europeans.) Japan would be a close second (after meeting Indian steamships.)
It’s almost as if the true answer lies somewhere between “Guns, Germs and Steel”, that one Libertarian competitor of it, and HBD. Ha ha ha.
I was very curious about the author’s idea of Brahmin IQ… So, I tried to verify some of this, and found:
“When statistical adjustments are used to convert the backward digit span results to full-scale IQ scores, Indian Americans place at about 112 on a bell-shaped IQ distribution, with white Americans at 100. 112 is the 79th percentile of the white distribution. For more context, consider that Ashkenazi Jews are a famously intelligent ethnic group, and their mean IQ is somewhere around 110.” [1]
Now, are the Indain Americans disproportionately Brahmin?
Interestingly, Brahmins are only about 25% of Americans (and theoretically do contribute to this large IQ), but what might be more relevant is that “virtually no Indian-Americans are Dalits” [2].
Thus, perhaps it is too narrow to suggest that Brahmins specifically have an IQ that is 110+ on average, and we could simply say that upper caste persons tend to have higher IQs.
Sadly, I was unable to find anything that specifically tests IQ by caste in India. And this would also potentially be irrelevant due to the Flynn effect — presumably, Brahmins/Kshatriyas and wealthy enough Vaishyas will have had more access to education and thus the effects of education on IQ will have completely played out among them, and we are seeing them towards the top of their natural biological IQs.
As it stands, Dalits and ‘backwards castes’ really do make up, in many cases, tribal peoples that have been excluded from society not just in the premodern times, but also in the midst of modernity.
Another caution on this is that Indian immigrants also do go through a selection process — so it may very well be the case that the upper caste Indians in America also do represent some of the best of the upper castes in India, as they had to acquire the means and qualifications to enter the US. What might take the edge off of this, though, is that a significant amount may arrive via H1Bs, and obtaining the qualifications for this could be a lot easier than one thinks, as they are filling in low-pay tech jobs that many others want. While, sure, this could still be competitive, it’s a bit different than us only measuring Indians coming over as professors or top notch industry experts & wealthy entrepreneurs.
The author also talked about how Puritan descent Americans have higher IQs, and th is would be based in the work done by Steve Sailer concerning ‘Episcopalians v. Jews’ on IQ, where he cites the General Social Survey saying that Episcopalians have an IQ of 109. versus Jews of 109. Lutherans came in at 107.4… Further information shows Quakers, Unitarians, Anglican SAT scores being hgih, with the Math + Verbal SATs of Unitarians & Quakers beating Jews (by a lot in the case of Unitarians), and the Anglicans keeping generally up with Jews. [3]
What was also interesting about this, though, is that one could argue there is some amount of selection bias here, too.
English immigrants are perhaps more likely to stay Anglican/Episcopalian (though countless Puritans became Baptists and Congregationalists and never saw the Anglican church as purifying), but it is also the case that certain demographics would also shift into Baptism along with some of the Puritans who literally did sign on with the 1689 Baptist confession of faith (many of whom moved to Rhode Island). But it is the case that, probably, many people remained Anglican even in spite of some degree of poverty… So, the Episcopalian demographci could potentially be a stand in for the old English American demographic, and thus an IQ of 110+ could be there.
It was really interesting to see that this stuff seems to check out pretty well.
I enjoyed the other parts of the article, too, but this was the part that really caught my interest.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/2009/02/24/bobby-jindal-indian-americans-opinions-contributors_immigrants_minority.html?sh=66ac5b74583b
[2] https://unherd.com/2020/09/how-brahmins-lead-the-fight-against-white-privilege/
[3] https://vdare.com/posts/episcopalians-v-jews-on-iq
I agree with most of what you said. I will also say that rapid change in ideas does not invalidate HBD. The idea that reactions to new situations do not exist, or that indoctrination does not exist, is absurd. The HBD idea is more that if say, secularism is imposed on Japanese and Europeans, both will change, but in different ways. Like how black christianity is very different from white christianity.
Also, it is more or less impossible to have a clean ideological break, unless you import an ideology wholesale. Otherwise you reject some current ethical norms out of preference for other ethical norms. By definition, therefore, it is almost impossible for secularism to be ‘un-Christian’ as it grew from that framework. Indeed, the very first steps towards romantic love and atomistic society were set by… the church.
So why are Indian elites less competent at governing their country than East Asian elites, despite higher IQ?
Why compare it with the Thousand Year Reich? Nietzsche wrote better about the Hitlerian project.
The Gay Science, 356
“A new flora and fauna of men thereupon springs up, which cannot grow in more stable, more restricted eras—or is left “at the bottom,” under the ban and suspicion of infamy; thereupon the most interesting and insane periods of history always make their appearance, in which “stage-players,” all kinds of stage-players, are the real masters. Precisely thereby another species of man is always more and more injured, and in the end made impossible: above all the great “architects”; the building power is now being paralysed; the courage that makes plans for the distant future is disheartened; there begins to be a lack of organising geniuses. Who is there who would now venture to undertake works for the completion of which millenniums would have to be reckoned upon? The fundamental belief is dying out, on the basis of which one could calculate, promise and anticipate the future in one’s plan, and offer it as a sacrifice thereto, that in fact man has only value and significance in so far as he is a stone in a great building; for which purpose he has first of all to be solid, he has to be a “stone.”… Above all, not a—stage-player! In short—alas! this fact will be hushed up for some considerable time to come!—that which from henceforth will no longer be built, and can no longer be built, is—a society in the old sense of the term; to build that structure everything is lacking, above all, the material. None of us are any longer material for a society: that is a truth which is seasonable at present! It seems to me a matter of indifference that meanwhile the most short-sighted, perhaps the most honest, and at any rate the noisiest species of men of the present day, our friends the Socialists, believe, hope, dream, and above all scream and scribble almost the opposite; in fact one already reads their watchword of the future-: “free society,” on all tables and walls. Free society? Indeed! Indeed! But you know, gentlemen, sure enough whereof one builds it? Out of wooden iron! Out of the famous wooden iron! And not even out of wooden….”
The Führer spoke about this.
Hitler’s Table Talk, 1941-1944, Night of 11th-12th July 1941
“At the end of the last century the progress of science and technique led liberalism astray into proclaiming man’s mastery of nature, and announcing that he would soon have dominion over space. But a simple storm is enough—and everything collapses like a pack of cards!”
Do you oppose biological evolution? What is your position? Your racism is “The Aryan race must remain unchanged”. But it’s not a natural position. I support the basis of racism – “The Aryan race must remain pure”. The rest is negotiable.
Obviously, I agree that creating a competitor in the face of China or robots is suicidal. And that being supplanted by the said competitor is pure idealism, suicide and Christianity. But evolution is a continuous death by definition. The old must and does die.
The Jew rose from the dead! Who would have thought? Still, you have to admit that neo-Christianity has taken some liberties with the source material – neo-Christianity has preserved the spirit of the Bible while discarding the impurities. This is why marriage is cast away, patriarchy, church itself. Because Christianity is an idealist creed that hates life, existence, the Universe. But it was balanced by centuries of pragmatism. Jesus died – Christians forbade suicide and homosexualism. Lifting the bans makes the system disintegrate.
A traditionalist Christian fails to see that he’s a hypocrite, and the lipsticked transvestite is the true conclusion of Judaism. The church structure is un-Christian.
I’m not sure your point on Total War bears out. WW1 was an unprecedented technological death match and it dragged on and on. One would have hoped that soldiers would have thrown down their arms en masse in disgust, but it never happened, and the leadership was firmly intractable.
Your point about genocide being the only real winning strategy in Afghanistan is right on though.
India wouldn’t since they were also too labor-rich, like China, to incentivize capital accumulation. A slightly better shot than China without the perfidious Albion dismantling their handcrafts, but well behind Japan, which had serious protoindustrialization under the Tokugawas; the labor pool was too small to swamp out capital or land into a Malthusian trap, but large enough for the economy of scale to jump-start large-scale production.
(same thing in Mount Lebanon too, also in Silk, but free trade broke it up. It was the 3rd most prosperous region the Ottoman Empire ever owned, after Greece & Hungary, and in front of Egypt)
Following in Mazdayasna footsteps, the Abrahamic Creeds have dismantled human cyclical time-frame and replaced it with an arrow of time pointing towards some future transcendence of universal suffering.
They have also reversed the perception of the human spiritual evolution in that the ancient pagans viewed the past as a better Golden Age and the future as the end of the cycle filled with corruption and decay. The Abrahamic Creeds described the past as time of ignorance, corruption and violence, while the present was a reformation of man on a better standard under the guidance of the Abrahamic Creed clergy leading to the final cathartic conflagration and the triumph of Truth.
This is indeed the pattern which both Communism and Nazism were built upon. A pattern that contradicts nature itself and human psyche. The primitive (in the right sense of the term) mind of the archaic (in the positive sense of the word) pagan would have contemplated this way of thinking with much bemusement…
“About the Swastika – I’m not sure the meaning of the symbol fits the movement for an Aryan revival. The Hakenkreuz underlines the cyclical part of the nature of the Universe. But all we have here is all or nothing. We are the pinnacle of evolution – but we may fall, and perish forever. This is linear evolution. There will be no other chance for intelligent life on the planet.
What’s the deal with the Swastika anyway? It symbolizes the cyclical part of the nature of the Universe. But is that enough?
Biology trumps chemistry. Man trumps biology. The dinosaurs died off, and the mammals got a chance to evolve. Man has killed off the lesser races, and will go to the stars – or perish at the hands of modern Neanderthals.
There is no new dawn if Aryans are defeated this time. It will be a death for all eternity, a failure of intelligent life on the planet. No new blond barbarians from the North.
I prefer the linear timeline. We come from the monkeys. Even Aryan women were far uglier in the past, before our ancestors bred them to look cuter.”
These discussions about why the West was the first to industrialize always proceed in the exact same way; the baseline assumption is, all cultures had/have an equal desire to “progress”, therefore the only possible difference can be one of ability.
This assumption is never questioned. It is simply assumed as a given that all cultures have an equal desire to gain power and to “progress”.
A Japanese statesman in the 19th century made a comment that sheds light on the issue. Observing the frantic, driven quality of the Europeans of his time, he remarked – ” we Japanese are too happy to ever become as rich or as powerful as the West”.
This simple comment sheds more revealing light on the issue than the reams of futile writings on the issue from the Western perspective.
Of course, the Japanese statesman was only half right. To this day, life in Japan has a quality of relaxed, non-serious, happiness that is at stark contrast with the gloomy, serious West, but Japan did become much less happy, and consequently, rich, powerful, and industrialized.
But the new “satori generation” may signal a revolt against “progress”.
Is the “low expectation society” (as a boomer HR put it) the result of economic stagnation, or the other way round?
Chicken or Egg? One thing for certain, humans are malleable, that explains every trend in history. What was a delicate culture has become one of overworking 150 years later; what has been frugal, decadent. (tho for sure the artisanship spirit was long in making). This is the basic reason against linear progress – everything has to be set in the same trend while the real world has complex changes which obviates consistent trends.
China certainly was at a loss for riches: if you look at the Ming, etc, there are increasing difficulties in funding for governance. The best European equivalent off the top of my head was the same difficulties that the Royalists had with the English Civil War, when they attempted to raise funds and arms against the Parliamentarians but found that medieval tax laws were entirely not up to the task. Ming suffered likewise, fighting essentially an eternal war to the north(and later, in the oceans) while suffering from corruption, evasion and generally inefficient tax revenue. Its actually a remarkable surprise that the Ming was able to be as successful as they were given the challenges they were facing.
A strong argument against Chinese industrialization was that the government, after early histories of dissolution and civil war, had become increasingly wary of local magnates, merchants, etc. making major investments, because this has often led to rebellion and split loyalties to the local official. And this isn’t theoretical, there’s no lack of examples in Chinese history of the government becoming hostile to any major investment by local businessmen(or heck, modern CCP attitudes toward their tech billionaires).
In practice, however, this basically discouraged capital investment as a whole which meant that productivity was overall depressed, with all the negative downstream effects on economic growth, technological advancement, and tax revenue.
There’s probably an HBD component to this, but there is also a geographical component to it. One reason why Japan developed quite differently was as China was relatively flat, it was feasible for a single centralized government to exist(though, with increasingly difficulties to scale); Japan, with its hilly terrain was far more amenable to feudalism as until the modern era, it was difficult for a central government to exert its will over fiefdoms, and thus necessarily granted them more independence. While this didn’t solve the basic lack of resources that Japan had, it meant a lot more freedom locally and quite a few impressive things: e.g. shortly after Japan acquired even a few examples of European firearms, Japan produced guns in massive quantities(iirc, I’ve heard that they were matching the entire European continent in quantity for a few years), enough to arm the entire Korean invasion force. China, which had firearms for much longer and many more examples of foreign firearms, never fully was able to complete that transition until the modern era.
I think disillusion is the natural culmination of prosperity. Modern society tells you fulfillment is achieved through wealth and success. So people achieve that, often after great sacrifice and struggle.
And then the truth emerges that all that is empty. It is a case of getting what you wished for. In reality, all hopes fulfilled lead to disillusion 🙂
Which is why Taoism and Zen say – have no preferences, only don’t distinguish between good and bad, right and wrong 🙂
A great path to enlightenment is to have all your wishes, desires, and hopes fulfilled – only then do you see past hopes, wishes, and desires.
Yes, history plainly argues against any “essentialist” view. Which is why HBD, despite having valuable, if ambiguous, information about groups in our time, becomes silly when taken to an “essentialist” extreme, which sadly, it almost always is.
The linear view of history is plainly false. A cyclical, “up and down” character to events seems built into the very structure of reality. Computer science is based on ones and zeros. The world seems to be a “system” of pluses and minuses. You literally can only understand a concept by contrasting it with it’s opposite.
The “linear” view of history, despite being unintelligent, is an extremely powerful myth, that has it’s origins in Judaism, and later carried over to Christianity, and the secular West, which is based on Christian myths.
But it is precisely it’s mythical, non-rational character that gives it so much more power than a merely intelligent reading of history would.
The linear view is essentially “salvific” – it cannot exist outside of a sacred reading of history. It’s purpose is to provide a scheme of salvation in time, whether it’s Christian, secular, or transhumanist.
So anyone who believes in linear history, believes in sacred history, salfivic time. That is why it has such an imaginative grip on some people.
I disagree with that.
1) Even if we disappear, there might well be another intelligent life on this planet.
2) Blond Barbarians from the North were not those who jump-started human civilization. Their input has only become important in the last 500 years or so. Human civilization is at least 10 000 years old, human species (Cro-Magnon) is probably 250 000 years old. 500 years is not that impressive.
3) Indo-European women have probably been quite pretty in the ancient times as well. They were stronger and wiser back then too.
I understand the thrust of the argument by the author of this short text, it is respectable, but it is nothing I would personally feel excited about.
This is such a good comment, because it captures so perfectly two possible approaches to existence.
For a Taoist, the best thing you can call him is “worthless” or “useless” – Taoist writing is full of talk about the value of “uselessness”. And to be found “useless” by mainstream society is a central aspiration.
For the ordinary, mainstream person, his life is a constant anxious quest to acquire “worth” – and to judged worthy by mainstream society.
Thank you for confirming that you are a worthless hypocrite.
Solid enough, and Japan’s Feudalism mirrors the European advantage in that aspect, as well. The island parallels to England are also pretty strong. They just needed more coal.
Oh, it sure did, but no one (except America) was happy after the fact. Vietnam only chilled America a little, because it wasn’t painful enough for actual Americans, but most European and large Asian nations are cooled on the idea of brutal mega-war (to their great benefit, I think.)
If every war left every side (including America) as devastated and unhappy as the Great Wars (or the 30 years war) then people would really have to consider things. Alas, most countries these days can get away with most things because most people don’t want to actually fight powerful countries in a brutal death match, again.
That may change, of course.
Now, now Daniel don’t be so rude, he is just sick in the head, and one should not insult mentally challenged people.
Aaron I am trying not to waste my time on you and your narcissistic delusions, but if you are truly interested to learn here’s a link to a discussion about Taoist influence on Buddhism.
https://www.dharmawheel.net/viewtopic.php?f=69&t=8355&sid=f10719cb144ffe9ceae13a82a0c2fe66
Dharmawheel is the biggest English language forum of Mahayana Buddhism, some of their commenters are extremely learned Buddhist practitioners, and some are… well just basic liberals…
Yes, China and Korea.
https://chechar.wordpress.com/2017/10/27/what-race-were-the-greeks/
The English anti-natalist Simon Elliot says beautiful women didn’t exist in artistic representations until the 20th century. He was writing a book about the subject. You can contact him at this email: simonelliot777 [at] yahoo.co.uk
Thanks, it’s an interesting discussion.
I personally don’t think Chan is just Taoism, because the exact same message of effortless spontaneity emerged in India in Tantric schools like the Mahamudra, and in Tibet as Dzogchen.
It also appears in the West in writers like Montaigne.
It is evidently a human perennial. Just as the striving Faustian type is a perennial human type, so too is the naturalist school of effortless spontaneity.
I personally don’t have a problem with the striving Faustian type, either in religion or in the secular world. I understand this attitude rests on particular intuitions and deeply embedded assumptions that amounts to a “style” of thinking that cannot be disembedded from the man himself. People have to work out their own karma.
I just think the modern world is so overwhelmingly striving and Faustian, and has become so inhospitable to genuine non-materialism, so hostile to any genuine attempt to give up the world and surrender concern with ego (even modern religion in all it’s forms has become materialistic and self obsessed), that we are in powerful need of a correction.
It is significant that to reliably elicit rage, online or in the real world, all I have to do is express disinterest in ambition, material development, and self-improvement, to adopt an attitude of non-serious frivolity – the only genuinely spiritual attitude. This would seem to be an utterly un-threatening attitude – yet in modern life, it elicits rage. As we see on this blog.
So – my sole purpose is to rehabilitate frivolity as a legitimate attitude towards life. Genuine detachment as a legitimate attitude towards life and self. In some small way, and not to revolt against mainstream seriousness – appropriate to the masses.
Humans seem uniquely capable of manipulation, etc for technology but I wouldn’t rule out another species as being capable. While quite slow to develop, ants have demonstrated quite a few methods associated with humans – herding, farming, etc, for example.
At any rate, the cessation of humanity and replacement by say, intelligent robots would still allow intelligence and civilization to continue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphrodite_of_Knidos
..among countless other examples. He’s clearly just wrong.
Last time I checked neither ants nor bees built any rocket.
“Finally, you worship this supposed Aryan race, an idea spawned from 19th century mysticism and historical misunderstandings, and yet it has apparently escaped your notice that authentic feminine beauty was virtually non-existent for all of human history, until finally making an appearance in the second quarter of the 20th century, thanks to the research of Konrad Lorenz. Greco-Roman depictions of the female form throughout classical antiquity have the same unpleasant features; a large nose, large chin, and a tiny mouth. These features do not correlate to femininity, either rationally or endocrinologically. On the contrary, they are masculine and aged. The artists of the Third Reich were also very poor at depicting femininity, with many propaganda posters depicting women with prominent noses, jaws and chins. In other words, their “Aryan” ideal was masculinized and quite horrendous, and a far cry from the paedomorphic beauties we adore today. The ugliness of the Greco-Roman face is as obvious as water being wet, and yet you have been taken in by all this Hellenic, Nordic, Germanic, Teutonic, Hyperborean lunacy. Bisexuality was common in Ancient Greece and Rome, so perhaps that explains why they idealised a mixed-gender aesthetic. Hardly the crown of evolution, is it?”
https://chechar.wordpress.com/2020/12/28/ask-me-anything/#comment-83966
I have emailed him, I will post a link to his book when/if he answers.
He’s just an internet autist. Insofar as feminine beauty was portrayed, his standards are just his own. Depictions of feminine beauty have been with us for as long as time, even if they aren’t the same as what we would perceive as such. One of the oldest pieces of art is the Venus of Willendorf , and it is a goddess statue.
Beyond that, the depictions of beauty in women as hourglass figures favoring thin waists, larger breasts and hips is pretty consistent, and as consistent secondary sexual characteristics, would be arguably very feminine indeed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoan_snake_goddess_figurines
Minoan, 1600 BC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_Romana_del_Casale
Roman, 300 AD or so, the so-called “Bikini girls”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gu_Kaizhi#Nymph_of_the_Luo_River_(%E6%B4%9B%E7%A5%9E%E8%B3%A6)
China, 340 AD
Good Luck!
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/Mosa%C3%AFque_des_bikinis%2C_Piazza_Armerina.jpg
I’m sorry, but this picture makes me understand why they were pederasts. Maybe César Tort is right.
“The only type of homosexuality tolerated in a Fourth Reich should be that of two adolescents beautiful enough not to cause revulsion in a heterosexual who sees them together.”
https://chechar.wordpress.com/2020/07/14/hubbards-book/
What would be interesting would be to find representations of women that closely resemble those portrayed by the vulgar David Dubnitskiy.
Mostly I insult him because its funny, and to an extent, I believe that the Gordian knot of nonsense is often cut through best with directness.
But its also amusing to see someone who claims to understand so much, but essentially utterly lack even the basic theory of mind of others, and to continue to prod it rather amuses me. It is also interesting insofar as an exploration of egoism by someone claiming the lack of it.
But yes, one should be understanding of the mental illness of others; they know only what they can know, much as the qualia of color for the blind is ultimately an alien concept.
Adûnâi: “I support the basis of racism – “The Aryan race must remain pure”. The rest is negotiable.”
The technological mindset regards man and race only as an instrumentality, not as valuable in himself or itself. As merely what he is or it is, neither man nor race is considered worth preserving. “Progress” always forces more change, and there’s no logical stopping point. Modifications continue until nothing of the original remains. That’s what puts the “trans” into transhumanism, and makes it incompatible with preserving racial purity.
I fear that you may have confused the essential important aspect of femininity to bear children, with a necessity to resemble children.
The thing about a boat is, you screw it up, you die. Your life depends upon your good craftsmanship and this means being “mindful” every moment and with every detail of the building process.
And not just you, but your passengers as well.
So, when you actually undertake to build a boat, you become a serious person. There are no excuses, there is no blaming one’s failure on race or one’s past or one’s parent’s or grandparent’s lives or any of that crap. You can’t smoke a lot of dope or work drunk. You’ve got to pay attention and get it right. When you’re miles from shore and something goes wrong, none of those seemingly seductive excuses will be there to help you. They are fair weather friends. Your only friend is the conscientiousness you put into every effort you undertook.
Building a boat makes one a “conservative”. Conservatives hold people responsible for what they do. Liberals congenially laugh off personal failure and pass it off as the fault of “the environment”. A builder of his own craft becomes well acquainted with “the environment”. It’s the wind, the tides, the currents, the profile and composition of the bottom, the fauna and flora of the sea in which they cruise. Nothing is “caused” by “the environment”. It is what it is. Your job is to build a craft that is rugged enough to handle it.
A boat, a successful boat, combines seaworthiness, a comfortable motion, creature comfort with beauty of line. In a boat, the Good, the True and the Beautiful are truly wed. To be one is to be the other. I have read that if you immerse a block of ice in a flowing stream it will be eroded and melted by the action of the water to the shape of a perfect teardrop airfoil.
The moral to be drawn is that anything clunky on a boat will obstruct and impede your progress and be broken off. So don’t build it clunky to begin with. Learn to build a teardrop foil.
Bashibuzuk: “Following in Mazdayasna footsteps, the Abrahamic Creeds have dismantled human cyclical time-frame and replaced it with an arrow of time pointing towards some future transcendence of universal suffering.”
Excellent observation. This sort of worldview, which devalues the past and present in favor of an illusory future, provides an indispensable support for “Progress”, and is well-suited to technological civilization; so much so that I suspect that such a civilization would not have been possible without it.
Well maybe these Buddhist beauties will change your mind?
https://thealtstandard.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/hindu-statues-aesthetic-celestial-dancer-devata-from-hindu-statues-aesthetic.jpg
https://live.staticflickr.com/1383/773704804_b89b79d979_b.jpg
What about this Apsara(nymphs of Dharmic legends) from 12th century?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/56/Siyama_Tara.jpg
Or Tara(Female Buddha) from 17th century?
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/59/c6/fa/59c6fa4609ac9e47a340ab8a25c1d1e5.jpg
https://www.artranked.com/images/2a/2afbd7f87cedad367c4232a30357aa43.jpeg
Or these Buddhist ladies from 5th century Sri Lanka?
There are thousands of other examples in Buddhist art.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Qing_Dynasty_Immortal_Magu.jpg
As a bonus a painting of Chinese Taoist immortal from 18th century Qing dynasty.
Interestingly enough, more than half the people depicted in all of the other mosaics in your second link, that of the Roman villa, had blond hair.
Maybe there’s a bit of a nut in all of us.
Why’s that? I’m simply a principled supported of democracy, although I don’t feel the need to universalize it. That’s why I’ll never be a fan, myself.
You have quite a ceremonious, formal way of talking and thinking that I associate with the Muslims I met online. I also might have confused you with another poster here on Unz, who, I think, really is a Muslim. AP, maybe? Can’t really remember.
Yeah, I tend to agree. While I understand the impulse behind salafism, which, on its face, seems to be a wish to follow divine commandments as literally as possible (makes sense for something that’s, well, divine), it seems inevitably to lead to strong intolerance. While the Kuran can be very harsh, the aggression prescribed by Wahabism seems to go beyond what is prescribed in the Kuran (although my reading might have been naive).
I won’t pretend to understand Islam or note a ‘best’ position though. I could only notice some Muslims online seemed like very friendly, pious people.
Genes are an essence, that’s the entire point. I will repeat that you are echoing Boasian anthropology. I will leave it at that, since you will probably never answer my original reply to you. Still a bit frustrating to see you repeat claims that I had an answer to in the first place.
No, no, no Daniel, how can you still misunderstand me after all this time?
I do not claim to understand anything. As a Taoist, I do not value knowledge. You know this about me. That is why you started hating me.
Knowledge and understanding interfere with natural simplicity. As Old Tzu says, the normal person learns something every day while the sage forgets something every day. Sage being used here entirely ironically. There are no sages in Taoism and the term is used entirely ironically.
And I certainly don’t claim claim to lack ego. I only claim not to add to my preexisting ego by trying to eliminate it 🙂 But my preexisting ego is quite an incorrigible old fellow.
You keep on converting my words into terms you can grasp – you keep on thinking I’m striving for some kind of “superiority”, and that I’m “competing” with you, because that’s what you can understand.
Unfortunate.
I apologize, I did not see any other reply of yours aside from this?
I’d be happy to respond to you. I am not consciously echoing Boasian anthropology, but clearly it captured some part of the truth.
National character changes far too frequently and in far too short a period of time for nations to have a permanent “essence”.
That being said, people clearly have inherited predispositions.
The only logical way to think about national and personal character is to recognize both the principle of stability and the principle of change, and to think in shorter time spans.
In my opinion.
All non-whites have ugly faces. Eastern Asians look like bugs. Indians look like trampled upon. Maybe those pictures look like the women of today, I can’t say. I certainly don’t see any beauty in those faces.
I respectfully disagree. A lot of Oriental women are beautiful and elegant.
Keep working on your theory of mind.
I prefer knowledge and understanding over ‘natural simplicity,’ but it’s certainly a good idea to guard against believing too strongly that you truly ‘know’ something.
These lines from Emerson’s “Man Thinking” help to remind of this.
(You need to read that a bit sarcastically to understand what he’s getting at in the rest of the essay.)
Get used to it. It’s hard to pin him down to anything. With Aaron, you can think you’re playing poker, and then he’ll make a move that suggests he thought you were playing canasta.
Have to agree with the sentiment here. AK is of course describing nationalism as he wants it to be, not as it is. The amount of people who get that this is a winning strategy is miniscule – totally irrelevant to the reality of nationalism as a a real world political phenomenon.
Transhumanism in the way AK presents it is simply advantageous on its own merits – no matter what political ideology it is cloaked in. Of course nationalists will do better in the long run if they accept transhumanism – which I think is what AK is trying to say here. But so will every political group if they make improving human capacity of the in-group one of their core objectives. A better title for this article would be ‘Transhumanism is adaptive. Act accordingly”
The better question is if there is a relevant political ideology that is genuinely transhumanist in the way AK is describing? I don’t think I’ve heard of one – the ones that are kind of do it by accident or out of fealty to natural law (some forms of libertarianism).
I have no idea how you got the idea that I’m a Christian or a Christian fellow traveller. I think it’s a good thing that secularism triumphed over Christianity. I’m very much on the secularist side. I merely used the triumph of secularism over Christianity as an example of rapid cultural change.
You’ve misunderstood my position in a truly spectacular fashion if you think I have even the smallest amount of sympathy for the idea of a return to a “real” Christianity.
So you’re saying that being an atheist secularist (like myself) and being a Christian are basically the same thing?
But rapid change in ideas does suggest that HBD on its own is an inadequate explanation. It severely weakens the extreme HBD position.
That doesn’t provide any actual support for the HBD argument, since Japanese and Europeans already had very different cultures.
Again, that provides no support for the HBD argument, since blacks and whites already had very different cultures.
I’m not arguing that HBD is wrong. I just think it’s an unproven theory that is mostly held for ideological reasons. For most HBD True Believers HBD is a quasi-religious ideological belief. It requires faith rather than reason. I don’t care if HBD is correct or incorrect. I don’t have an ideological dog in this fight. I don’t have a need to believe or disbelieve in HBD. I’m a sceptic, not a denier.
I agree with that. And, amusingly, now you’re making a culturalist argument. Once a culture is established it will evolve. All ideologies are to some extent based on previous ideologies. Ideologies do not suddenly appear out of thin air. They grow from the existing cultural soil.
Well to you Greek and Roman art works of female beauty are too masculine and a reason to understand pederasty, therefore you are just a f****t, aren’t you? Young boys are clearly more to your tastes than fertile Hellenic or Oriental ladies of past!
https://cdn1.ozone.ru/s3/multimedia-l/6000798789.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-2000-0110-500%2C_BDM%2C_Gymnastikvorf%C3%BChrung.jpg
“The artists of the Third Reich were also very poor at depicting femininity, with many propaganda posters depicting women with prominent noses, jaws and chins. In other words, their “Aryan” ideal was masculinized and quite horrendous”
I think you missed comment 185, which is my actual argument for the plausibility of HBD.
Like I said in 185, heritability probably explains something like 40/50% of behavior, and I don’t think genes and culture can be disentangled. It follows that people are still malleable. HBD also doesn’t explain that much, afaik. The most you can do with it is notice that Europeans are extremely outbred and go from there. For example, nuclear families were around in England since Medieval Times, which AFAIK is incredibly early. https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/all_theses/1840/ Most of HBDchicks posts are about ‘who is inbred, who is outbred’, although there’s also genetic correlation studies around noticing that genes associated with collectivism vs individualism are around more in Asians than Europeans. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2842692/
A fair point. Though I must note, if cultures and genes are entangled, and culture is subject to change, then ‘isolating’ one cause is always a highly artificial pursuit. The most you can very plausibly claim with HBD is that, one way or another, difference will always exist until we prove particular genes matter. Like I said in 185, it just doesn’t make sense to me that, when heritability matters for individuals, it suddenly is no longer important for entire cultures.
Yes, but do note I spoke about the Catholic Church. If you’ve read up on HBD, you know we believe the Church pressing nuclear families was the most important thing in outbreeding Europeans. I think this yt vid by Sean Last gives the best succinct argument for the genetic importance of the catholic church: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kWyRrg0ZCA. You can see that there are incredibly massive correlations of the church (and its outbreeding) and all types of individualism. Like I said in 185, You should also read Separation and its Discontents and essays by Andrew Joyce if you want to see the huge documentation on the rather unchanged behavior of Jews throughout the ages. An eye-opener for me, where genes seem much more important than social learning, is that Jews did the same thing whether they were ‘assimilated’ or not. Consider the case of the ‘New Christians’ and the Jesuits: https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2017/12/26/review-the-jesuit-order-as-a-synagogue-of-jews-part-one/
Apologies man, I should’ve been heckling dfordoom. If you’re interested, comment 185 was my 2 cents on the matter.
Loyal to the UNZ meme, I do sort of accept the idea that Jews have an unchanging essence. I also accept the HBD idea that, whatever Europeans think at one given time, their ‘essence’ is always that of being a highly outbred population and will shift accordingly.
I’m learning French now, friend. Currently trying to read ‘le Bleu du Ciel’ by Bataille. Ever heard of the man?
I know George Bataille in name only and of Acephale fame. If you read Bataille, then you already must have a good grasp of French language. It is not an easy prose, his topics and style are complex, as was his personality (although he was in a sense a typical French thinker).
Faggots are those who find attractive women of races other than their own.
Something like 90% of Northern Western European adults are also not interested in free-thinking intellectual topics or science, or high culture.
Intellectualism and free-thinking is always related to a minority personality type, among adults, and one which is usually suppressed (or suppressing this inclination within themselves) in their society. In every nationality, there can remain as adults a variety of personality types, including “nerdy people” who like technical topics. But there are cultural differences in how the society treats and prioritizes its nerdy or thoughtful personalities, which vary wildly across historical epochs.
Renaissance and secular Enlightenment world, comes to Europe as a result of complicated historical process, but the result is half because of the irony of fate – institutions originally established by the Christian church, that allowed the nerdy people to have an independent funding, international common language, and a cloistered environment, safe from persecution and a need to do subsistence labour.
In this sense, Christianity was turned against itself in the Early Modern epoch, as institutions it had originated as independent sources or power, were hi-jacked to cloister the emerging scientific community.
In most of history, and most societies, nerdy personality has been persecuted, or that aspect of their personality suppressed as adults – as most people in history have been required for physical labour jobs, war, slavery, etc, and not sitting in the courtyard in Oxford or Harvard.
In Christian (Northern) Europe from the 18th century, there was an emerging secular world, in which scholars are developing scientific findings, on multinational level, and with minimal religious interferences, while being free from subsitence labour.
At the same time, in the Ashkenazi Jewish world, there is still (from secular viewpoint) a dark ages, surrounded by primitive religion, and based in small villages. However, this environment has selected for a subsection of large families that have nerdy personalities, as the village rabbis who had to study for long hours, would have large families.
Scientific contribution of people with Ashkenazi Jewish nationality, emerges in the 19th century, when an oversupply of people from these large nerdy families that existed in such villages of rabbis, lost belief in their ancestral religion, secularized and entered a post-Enlightenment society of Europe.
However, from the late 19th century, there is even far more overrepresentation of Ashkenazi among classical music performers, than among scientists or mathematicians. The overrepresentation of Ashkenazi Jews in professions that require long mental concentration, is unlikely to be a question of the mythical “IQ test” (that measure cultural conformity) – but more likely a result that large families of people, that had high number of people with a personality type that would study for long hours (which is required to learn to play e.g. a piano sonata, as much as for religious study).
What do you mean by “the Chinese”? It’s 1,5 billion people – world’s largest nationality.
Only a small minority of any nationality are as adults still “inquisitive” (in nerdy sense of the term), and even less are as adults “naturally inquisitive”. Although most children are naturally inquisitive.
The question (of development of enlightenment, high culture, science and philosophy) is how the majority relate to such majorities – this is mainly a question of political organization of the country.
Chinese will only have a small minority of “inquisitive” people, as any nationality. But the relevant question for your claims, is whether their society will give conditions for these people to contribute to high culture, science and philosophy. This is a question of politics and culture.
In Ancient Athens, free-thinking was within a slave economy, that allowed aristocratic youth a luxury of freedom of thought, within limits (that Socrates has over stepped).
Most of us had philosophical questions, when we were a small child, with no exposure to these questions from society. So inquisitive personality is a natural one for humans, but for the vast majority of people in any nationality – adult discussion has lost connection to this instinct, and adapts to the question survival within a society (which in most of history has been politically full of danger, especially for people asking too open questions).
The first three paragraphs you wrote in this comment is very true. (But not much the last three paragraphs, where you relate this lesson to the labels of partisan US politics).
This is true not just for boats, but with any serious work that interacts with an objective reality.
It’s also true for example – to learn to play a piece of music to a high level is a moral task, although it doesn’t have the aspect of responsibility that is included in tasks like building bridges and boats. This is why study of classical music, is very good moral preparation for children’s personality, in my opinion, even if they will never become professional musicians.
–
This is also true not just with building, but with any arts, whether farming, gardening, poetry, drawing, and things like flower arranging.
To build or do anything well, is making you a “serious person”, at least in a moment that you are focusing on this task, and fully concentrating.
But the point is that there are objective constraints, that you have to conform to.
For example, poetry has a formal/mathematical element, as there is an objective discipline on the set of words you can use.
On other hand, writing comments on a forum like this one, has no objective constraint to it, and doesn’t have any disciplining aspect, unless the other readers would impose objective standards (which they do not).
Boat builders, are interacting with an objective reality, and requires a serious focus and discipline. Gardeners are interacting with nature, and will be objectively punished and rewarded by nature, for their skill or lack of it.
With classical music, the discipline of the performer, will depend on the standards of the listeners and fellow performers, that still exists in an institutional way (although recently it could be breaking down – for example, with some YouTube performers).
With sports there is objectivity imposed on the participant by the competing team or athlete, within set rules, as well as physical constraints of the world.
Very good comment again, Dmitry. I would add that perhaps in the Ashkenazim shtetl, the learned Rabbi had a very high status, almost like prominent Hindu Brahmin had a higher status. Also European Jewry was confined into some trades, mainly linked to commerce and finance that might have also selected for cognizant abilities linked to mathematics. Finally, the pressure from the hostile Gentile environment might have also selected for some psychological patterns. That would actually explain a lot in the Ashkenazi IQ and the proverbial Jewish question in general.
I agree.
Knowingness is the bane of learning. I think the current scientific stagnation is caused by knowing too much. Or thinking we do.
The modern revolution in science began when medieval scholasticism with it’s logical coherence and edifice of knowledge was replaced by an attitude of receptivity and suspension of judgement.
Keats called this ability negative capability. We have lost it in modern times. Everyone wants to claim they know these days. That’s how you impress people, like in the Middle Ages.
Also, being comfortable remaining in not knowing instead of impatiently imposing some scheme on reality and making sense of it requires a great deal of nerve and a sense of adventure. That’s gone these days too. Things like bureaucracy and peer review make clear we prefer security to adventure.
It’s not widely known, but mysticism with it’s negative theology encouraged the growth in Europe of this negative capability of not imposing a scheme on reality and instead striking into the unknown with a sense of adventure, ready for whatever may come, however paradoxical or incoherent, whatever strange beasts one might meet, however little sense they make, half-monsters like the Hypogriff or the Chimera.
As for not being able to pin me down, that’s because my non-dualism makes not take any permanent and definitive sides. As Hegel said, it’s easy to see what’s wrong in a position but you’ve truly matured as a thinker when you can see what’s right in every position.
dfordoom: “I have no idea how you got the idea that I’m a Christian or a Christian fellow traveller.”
People who talk about Christianity having been defeated usually are.
dfordoom: “So you’re saying that being an atheist secularist (like myself) and being a Christian are basically the same thing? ”
I’m saying that if you can claim to be an atheist and a secularist and still see the world in what is essentially a Christian way, yes. You don’t have to believe that Jesus was actually God to be a Christian. You can believe that homosexuality is okay and still be a Christian. You can use any form of birth control, including abortion, and still be a Christian. Conversely, you can be an atheist and also accept all the basic principles of Christian morality.
Because of this, I’m saying that every example you gave of “the triumph of secularism over Christianity” was not really valid. You’re setting up a false opposition between two things that aren’t necessarily opposed.
We live in the most Christian times in the history of intelligent life on planet Earth (unless you consider intelligent life was vanquished in 1945 CE).
This guy is just insane with his muh “secularism triumphed over the christcucks”. What even is this secularism to begin with? From what you can find on wikipedia it smells like Christinsanity through and through. Just say you are an exerminationist racist, everything else is Christcuckery anyway.
Yes, I think that Peter Frost wrote that colorful eyes and hair are apparently sex-linked and clearly desirable, which makes sense why they would be depicted and featured prominently.
https://www.scirp.org/html/4-1590226_46104.htm
What’s interesting is if Uriah’s very powerful tweets are true, this bias is valuable enough to even make up for a disadvantage in physical abilities that it can introduce.
https://mobile.twitter.com/crimkadid/status/1395948783486242818
commandor: “We live in the most Christian times in the history of intelligent life on planet Earth …”
In the Bible, Satan offers the whole world to Christ, who rejects it. Later, Jesus says that his kingdom is “not of this world”. It is indeed remarkable that Christianity, which makes such a point of rejecting the world, has gone on to conquer it! This victory stands in mute testimony both to the incredible magnitude of human hypocrisy and the effectiveness of Christianity as a technique of constructing and maintaining an empire.
Sort of. But my original point was that when things change rapidly, when dramatic social changes happen in the course of a couple of generations, then genetic explanations seem very implausible. The shorter the time frame of change the less plausible genetic explanations become. The history of European civilisation since the Reformation has been one of a series of dramatic changes happening very quickly.
Things like the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution effected dramatic change within the lifespan of a single individual. A genetic explanation seems implausible.
OK, HBDers could argue that things like the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution happened because Europeans already had a genetic predisposition to individualism and intellectual openness but I think that would be a very unconvincing argument. Is there any evidence that medieval Europeans had such a predisposition?
Obviously over longer time spans the contribution of genes could be significant, and over longer time spans culture and genes are likely to become hopelessly entangled.
It’s the time frame thing. Particular genes can give an individual a huge advantage in the here and now. Changes in the genetic makeup of a whole society will take a long time to have any effect.
It’s possible but it’s pretty speculative.
Like I said earlier, I don’t have an emotional investment in the argument. What worries me about HBD is that many of its proponents do have such an emotional investment. They need to believe in HBD as a justification for their ideological beliefs, and in many cases as a justification for their hatred of non-whites. HBD has also become a tribal political marker for the far right.
That doesn’t mean HBD is necessarily wrong, but it’s always dangerous to believe something for ideological or emotional reasons. And I’m not claiming that all HBDers fall into this category, but it’s obvious that a significant number do. HBD is one of the many subjects that is now so hopelessly politicised that it’s impossible to know where the truth lies. It always amuses me that so many people on the Right can see that the beliefs of the Left are ideologically and emotionally driven but they’re unable to see that their own beliefs are just as ideologically and emotionally driven.
Eh, I’ve already had my great HBD debates a few years ago, but thanks anyways. In my view, not much more to be said about it. HBD has a certain limited validity and is often very ambiguous, but cannot be the “great answer” to how the world works it’s proponents thought it might be at first. The world, it turns out, is much more interesting, and complex, and changeable. HBD is at best, one more piece of the puzzle.
Jews an unchanging essence? I suppose that does position you as the typical Unzer lol.
I can only wonder how you can look at Ashkenazi Jews in Israel, and think they possess the same sort of character as Jews in Europe a hundred years ago. I would have thought, Israel was a dramatic example of the limitations of HBD and the notion of essences.
Interestingly, Hilaire Beloc, an HBDist of his time, thought the Jews in Palestine would never be able to defend themselves, based on the character of Jews in Europe during his time. He thought he saw an unchanging essence – but he was only looking at temporary conditions. That is why HBD is very ambiguous. It has a certain validity that is very local in time and space, but it’s very hard to say more.
But I suppose the concept of essences has a perennial appeal to the human mind, and many people find it imposes order and structure on a quicksand world that is too shifting and complex to make long term predictions. Platonic Forms, as we know, are one of the great mythic mind-structures the human mind has conjured up as a way to impose order on chaos. So this way of structuring the world has indeed a perennial appeal.
Sure, the reputation of a group now will say something valid about what you can expect from them now – but much more than that, I am not sure.
Anyways, if you do like thinking in terms of essences then I see no reason why you shouldn’t.
It’s not that simple. Intelligence isn’t a literal quantity, so that what you are actually doing is making a qualitative modification to an organism that (assuming its healthy) throws it out of equilibrium. This means that any (necessarily) qualitative modification will entail both essential detrimental consequences (highly intelligent people can’t or won’t do or won’t do well certain tasks because of high intelligence per se) and accidental detrimental consequences (highly intelligent people can’t or won’t do or won’t do well certain tasks not because of high intelligence per se, but because of some other variable positively correlated with high intelligence).
I would not try to “enhance” human capacities by directly intervening into the human biology, since you can’t anticipate all the consequences of doing so (many, if not most, of which are likely to be negative outcomes from the point of view of society and the individual).
That seems to me to be a very good point indeed.
Another excellent point.
I think it is a combination of the Indain problems being harder to solve or, potentially, we are dealing with triple digit Upper Caste average IQs, and 80-90 lower caste IQs.
Following an HBD model, we would expect that a society of avg. 90 IQs ruled by a minority with avg. 110 IQs to probably do better than one where the elites were reflective of the low national average, but they would also lag behind the society where the average national IQ is 100.
I’ll type up a bigger response if I have more time, but I will re-iterate that separating ‘genetic’ from ‘cultural’ explanations is pointless. What you mean when you talk about culture is basically social learning in a Boasian sense. Both the ideas that genes do not influence behavior, or that social learning does not exist, seem to be untenable. It follows that both have a dialectical relationship: while rapid change can be imposed on people with a certain ‘nature’, it will react to it differently than another people would. Since social learning and genetical behavior cannot be easily distuingished, the dialectic is extremely hard to trace. While the genetics of Europeans (I believe) set in motion the whole train of ‘progress’, that does not invalidate the observation that this progress worked back on Euros.
To outbred living patterns, yes, that’s why HBD harps on about clannishness. Medieval countries like England already had a nuclear-family structure where you could no longer rely on a clan-collective and had to make due with impersonal structures. If you compare Andalusia to the Christian Iberian kingdoms, you see that the first functioned as a collections of clans, and the second did not (and non coincidentally had a lot of institutional resilience). Dedicated traditions of reasoning were also around with scholasticism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholasticism
Individualism is about more than simple conformity/non-conformity. It’s about having to rely on contracts, impersonal law, and fair play, because you cannot nepotistically fall back upon family members. Obviously a society where you have to fend for yourself will have more developed ideas of personhood and ‘free-thinking’ than societies where all that is subsumed in patriarchal authority.
From an HBD perspective, Europe became more and more outbred under the church, which eroded the pull of conformism that’s around when you have to subsume your own interest into that of some clan. It was then only a matter of time until the dam broke. From the early signs of ‘progress’ during the Rennaissance, to modern society, there’s a pretty straight line. It’s just hard to see scientific revolutions (or any sort of high-level societal functioning) happen in clannish countries. https://europeansaurus.wordpress.com/2014/02/21/the-balance-between-inbreeding-and-outbreeding/ This map doesn’t explain everything, but classic centres of wealth and innovation are also extremely outbred.
I agree, but I also think HBD doesn’t work for ‘European racism’ pure and simple. ‘Rightists’ like Steve Sailer, who really understand its implications, tend to give up on racism as a policy choice. Jayman is a black liberal (mixed, I believe) who sees HBD as the reason live is easier on minorities in the West, than in other parts of the world.
Soyjack centrist European scientist: nooooo you must have a weak attachment to your ideas, what about the community of inquiry and critical thinkerino?!?!?!
Gigachad Boasian anthropologist: what do you mean I can’t replace racism by staffing anthropology departments with Jews and relentlessly pushing my ideas, soyjack? I just did
It can be measured(working memory, IQ), and thus it can be improved. Equilibrium arguments are specious. It throws society out of equilibrium to invent fire, but it is strictly beneficial in the long run.
Same goes for inventing fire. If a society always needed to avoid any negative consequences, it will be overrun by more adaptive societies that have less of that need.
You can’t call yourself a russian patriot unless your wife is from a country that is friends with Russia. You have literally fraternized with the enemy – as Western Europe is Russia’s enemy.
Slavery was what allowed the Northern industrialists to build a large part of their economic capabilities as inter-American trade developed. The South fell behind as their economy did not evolve and remained an economy of ‘raw resources’ (ie cotton and human flesh).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavian_colonialism
Scandinavian countries had extensive colonies, they were unlucky or incompetent or both and unable to hold onto them.
I never said that colonialism did not lead to eventual stagnation or collapse. I said that colonialism gave the impetus for Europe to become dominant.
Spain and Portugal were ahead of all of Europe until the other European countries obtained their own colonial ventures. The Spanish and Portugese were unable to translate their extensive colonies into industrial might due to the (ironic) misfortune of plundering territories rich in Gold and cotton. This made them rich (kind of like oil rich countries of current times). However, the portugese were able to maintain some colonies for a very long time due partly to the less brutal form of colonial rule they employed.
Here is a list of German colonies – Germany had extensive colonies in Africa and some in China too:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_former_German_colonies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_colonial_empire
Stalin had Russia/the USSR which is also a colony. The difference with other European powers was that Russia had landlocked colonies connected to its mainland. Rapid industrialization would not have been possible without the dearth of resources Russia had available to it (due to its colonial ventures in Siberia and the Far East).
All of this technology is based on the technology stolen from other peoples during European period of colonialism. Which accounts for why Europe was a backwater suffering from widespread religious persecution until the 16th/17th century.
Or maybe Bashi has taken enemy’s female, then it must mean that he is a real warrior in our struggle? It’s hard for his children to be hostile against Holy Russia when their father is Russian. There’s btw old Chinese tactic to marry Han women to the enemy or barbarians.
Btw your resolve is commendable!
My boys often sing the Russian anthem when they play their video games in which they massacre hundreds of thousands of virtual enemies.
(I’m not kidding here)
But most importantly, I have done my best to intriduce to them Buddhadharma as the most adequate spiritual tradition. Perhaps when they grow up, if their Karma allows for it, they will travel that path.
A little story along these lines: when my younger daughter was born I often played to her a YouTube video the Imee Ooi rendition of the Heart Sutra:
https://youtu.be/P2D8epuXla8
Once I was hiking a trail in the mountains carrying my 3 years daughter in a kid-carrier backpack. When we arrived to the top of the mountain the wind blew terribly strong and she got cold and frightened and started crying. Then I started chanting the Hart Sutra to her and she immediately calmed down and fell asleep. I continued walking for a few hours with her being well and calm on my back.
This is one of my best memories ever.
I’m tardy replying to this, but I’d be remiss not to.
I’m in full agreement in terms of both the substance and style of your points. Furthermore, you have made your point elegantly. I read the entire comment thread aloud to my wife (because that is what normal families read aloud next to the blazing hearth…UR comment threads!) and she was also very complimentary to this post.
I wish you the very best with your boat building and life in general.