The Rawness

The spartans had to keep down the Helots. The tiny group of spartiates had to maintain their strength and cohesion in order to keep the large population of Helots from rising up and tearing the spartiates to shreds. From the period of Sparta’s existence before they conquered Messinia, there is a decent amount of artistic pottery in the archaeological evidence. After they conquered Messinia, and became a caste of professional warriors in a standing army, it all stopped.

Thucydides: “most Spartan institutions have always been designed with a view to security against the Helots”.

In contrast, the Athenians did not have such a large group of people to keep in thrall, until their empire. (They did have slaves.) The Romans were able to integrate conquered peoples into the hierarchy of the republic. Closer, populations, conquered earlier got the best treatment. With progressively more distant populations getting worse treatment. It was at least theoretically possible for almost all of them to move “up the ladder.” Look up the “Latin Right”.

Alex J, good stuff. I debated whether or not to mention the Helots since the post was already getting too long (making more of an effort to keep my posts shorter). Glad you did it instead, since you actually explained it better than I would have anyhow.

Prediction for argument 3: black Americans have lower average IQs because intelligence was a disfavored trait bred out of the slave population to maintain pliant minds while strength and endurance were favored and bred in. Corrective solution: kill affirmative action to let competition do what it does.

Great series, man, as always. Looking forward to a book someday.

I believe it’s important to have a discussion of blacks and IQ because without recognizing that there is a problem, there will be no will to change the trajectory of that racial/social group’s path.

It’s clear that (1) blacks on average have lower IQs according to common measurements; (2) the present IQ is not reflective of future IQ, and (3) that IQ is mutable across generations and even within generations if addressed early enough.

But before you address the why and how, you have to recognize the what.

T,
Excellent post, as always. I’ve responded to some of your key ideas as laid in Part One of this series, would love to gt a bit of feedback from you and the rest of the forum members on that.

Also, I think what Mike says above, which could form the basis of your Part Three, seems plausible. Trying to make a bunch of smart folks slaves is I would think, kinda rough.

At some point I would think that at least a mild form of eugenics would have to come into play in order to raise the average IQ of African Americans. This is an interesing point I would like to explore further.

Comments?

Also, thanks for the mention and kudos of my blogsite.

Salaam
Mu

Mu’Mins last blog post..The Rise & Fall Of WaMu

T,
Just read the article you mentioned in Part One. It’ll never work, one, because the program is voluntary and no one will voluntarily give up their powers of procreation, and two, because its not voluntary you can’t really have any impact. In order for such a program to work it has to be compulsory, which brings up all kinds of problems for a politician, like LaBruzzo.

Salaam
Mu

Mu’Mins last blog post..The Rise & Fall Of WaMu

Jared Diamond’s book is garbage. The very first thing he writes is that the book will not reach any “racist” conclusions. A bit later on he says that there are no differences in intelligence between different peoples, and one or two pages later he casually mentions that the people of Papua New Guinea are genetically more intelligent than Europeans. I think he also spouts some Noble Savage bullshit about them having superior values or something.

The entire book is based on leftist-liberal ideology, not science or reason. The fact that Diamond couldn’t even understand the contradiction of first saying everyone is equally intelligent and then saying some people are more intelligent than others is further proof of the worthlessness of his book.

Mike – there’ll be a little more than that, but you got the overall gist of what the next part will be about.

Asian Man – I disagree that a discussion of blacks and IQ is necessary, just because phrasing it that way creates too much unnecessary controversy for too little benefit. The whole conversation then goes into tangents about whether IQ is a worthwhile, valid metric to even judge human worth by, about racism, about whether black intelligence genetics are fundamentally flawed, whether studies on genetics are flawed, dna debates, whether blacks are being accused of being inherently inferior…I’m all for a bunch of science wonks discussing this among themselves to their hearts’ content, but to start public policy discussions from this point usually ends up being a nonstarter. People who don’t understand genetics can’t get it and misinterpret it as justifying racism, people who do really get genetics end up getting stuck in the morass of debating the science of it all, which tunes the layman out…Totally not worth it in my opinion when you can get the exact same results by just pointing out that affirmative action doesn’t work and has a negative effect and advocating equal race-neutral standards of achievements for everybody.

Mu’Min – I agree that eugenics won’t work, and I don’t recommend them voluntary or otherwise. I pointed out that article about LaBruzzo for the commenters who thought that eugenics is an outdated concept that would never be seriously put on the table in this modern, enlightened day and age. There are still people out there in power who occasionally suggest it.

random passerby – i do recall diamond’s book trying very hard to be politically correct. however i think you may be throwing out the baby with the bathwater here, as many of his theories do seem not only perfectly plausible but also quite likely. Even if you dislike Diamond’s work for being to PC, there are others who have come up with similar conclusions whose scholarship you may prefer like cultural evolutionists Leslie White, Julian Steward, and Ester Boserup, who analyzed the relationship between agriculture and economic and political growth, and historians William McNeill and Alfred Crosby, who analyzed the relationship between agriculture, European expansion, and disease.

But the problem is that his book is tainted by a strong ideological bias, so I can’t trust anything he says. People with his ideological disposition are not known for their intelligence, either.

People with his ideological disposition are not known for their intelligence, either.

That’s a good point actually.

Tell you what, if you want to try the same line of reasoning minus the blatant ideological bias you may want to try some of the other names I mentioned.

I agree that eugenics won?t work, and I don?t recommend them voluntary or otherwise.

T, serious question, how would you physically prevent a powerful country, like china for example, from engaging in voluntary (or even involuntary) eugenics if they chose to?

i would posit that all the world needs is one powerful country promote eugenics. once more competitive humans are created, every other country will be forced to follow suit- or be left behind the evolutionary chain. inddeed, most of the people in the anglosphere who are opposed to voluntary eugenics seem to implicitly assume that the anglosphere will always enjoy the economic and intellectual hegemony needed to preclude such policies in the future. if you aren’t making this assumption, then i would propose that there is no way to stop an autocratic country like china from doing what they want when they inexorably garner the economic and intellectual abilities to entertain such options.

I’m not convinced by the argument that it is “easier to survive” in equatorial climes. Watching Man vs. Wild, in spite of its obvious flaws, convinced me that deserts, jungles and savannahs are every bit as difficult to survive in as ice covered mountains or tundra. Groups like the French Foreign Legions conduct “jungle training” near the equator, and from what I’ve seen, conditions are far more miserable than Europe. One has to deal with dehydration, heat stroke, fire ants, mosquitos, frequent rain and flooding, and hundreds of poisonous organisms that can kill you (from bacteria to snakes). YOU try surviving down there, and THEN get back to us regarding whether or not you still believe the “arctic theory” of intelligence.

“In the other continent, the given area is filled with numerous city-states formed by the separations caused by natural boundaries like mountain ranges, and the competition and warfare among all these groups forced Europeans to encourage innovation. More conditions to weed the less innovative out of the gene pool.”

Papua New Guinea is an example counter to this. There are 850 indigenous languages, and people used to (and still do to some extent) fight with each other all the time. The obvious difference here of course is the fact that it’s an island, and outside influence was limited, especially considering how xenophobic the natives were. Plus, as subsistence farmers, they didn’t have time to sit around and invent gunpowder like european citystates did. Jared Diamond has a lot about PP New Guinea cuz he originally did fieldwork there as an ornithologist. That said, Jared Diamond is the shit and his books are easily the most accessible and readable “lehman’s” anthro books out there. guns, germs, and steel is a must read.

Anyway, Europe as a hub of the civilized world enjoyed the best influence from everywhere; it’s no wonder it was able to advance like it did. It also had the natural resources to back it up. The biggest thing holding Europe back all those years is arguably religion, which periodically set Europe’s enlightenment back several centuries by razing libraries and punishing intellectuals. It was give and take, and responsible for some amazing engineering works, but I think the cons outweighed the pros.

I’m not sure I agree with what you said about harsh climates breeding particularly intelligent people though. There have been advanced societies in every climate where people had their shit together, but the resources available to them could not sustain them. I’d argue that population pressure is more of an impetus for societal survival of the fittest than climate.

also, if i may respond to random passerby:

being an anthro guy myself, i can understand why jared diamond would say on one page that he isnt being racist, then say that PPNGans are genetially more intelligent than europeans. to him it’s not a racist comment because he’s not looking at humans in terms of “race” but in terms of regional groups. if i said that people living in and around a top university were genetically smarter than people living in a coal mining town in west virginia, i would be referring to a regional characteristic, not a racial one. T is also making the same conclusion on his post. Is he a racist? that said, a dumb PPNGian was a dead one. the island was full of linguistically distinct groups who were constantly engaging in blood vengeance and at war with one another. their battles resembled dodgeball games with spears and arrows, pretty interesting. looks like they’re still at it:

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=hPM-gJA62Rs

T — I understand your first point that a discussion about blacks and IQ is likely a non-starter.

But with regard to your second point, the only way you can point out that affirmative action doesn’t work is to point out that blacks are underachieving relatively speaking despite affirmative action [like what Richard Sander and others have tried to do vis-a-vis black law students in California].

paully, according to leftist-liberal dogma it is racist to say that one race or people is more intelligent than another. Presumably when Diamond proclaimed that no racist conclusions will be drawn, he was referring to something like “white people are smarter than black people.” Saying that Papua New Guineans are genetically smarter than Europeans is no less racist.

chris:

I?m not convinced by the argument that it is ?easier to survive? in equatorial climes. Watching Man vs. Wild, in spite of its obvious flaws, convinced me that deserts, jungles and savannahs are every bit as difficult to survive in as ice covered mountains or tundra. Groups like the French Foreign Legions conduct ?jungle training? near the equator, and from what I?ve seen, conditions are far more miserable than Europe.

A few things Chris – you are going by Europe’s climate conditions now. During and immediately after the Ice Ages, climates in Europe were much harsher than what we know now. The final Ice Ages ended about 10,000 years ago, by which time much of this selection for intelligence was already done. At least that’s the theory put forth by the book excerpt at this link. This link also describes how even harsher climates in Asia may have had an even greater affect on Mongoloid populations’ IQ.

The logic is that with this level of harsh cold, physical adaptations have their limit, you need to be able to come up with ways to stay warm: ways to build fire better, a lot of pressure to come up with ways to create all types of clothing and shelter to protect yourself. Innovative forms of clothing and shelter are not as necessary in a hot climate. Also, long periods of winter reduce available growing periods, putting pressure on those societies to come up with innovative ways to store food for prolonged period, like drying meat. These societies also have to know not just how to store food, but be smart enough to ration responsibly through the lean, winter months in a way that will ensure the food will last. To avoid making this comment too long, I suggest looking at this link and checking the work of some of the experts cited.

One has to deal with dehydration, heat stroke, fire ants, mosquitos, frequent rain and flooding, and hundreds of poisonous organisms that can kill you (from bacteria to snakes). YOU try surviving down there, and THEN get back to us regarding whether or not you still believe the ?arctic theory? of intelligence.

You seem to think that because I’m saying arctic climates are harder to survive in, I’m somehow saying that equatorial climates are simple. I’m not claiming that such climates are a cakewalk, just that they are easier than climates during and immediately after the Ice Ages. I have seen many a show similar to Man and Wild over my lifetime, but I’ve yet to see Man and Ice where people are willing to challenge arctic climates on a regular basis. There’s got to be a reason for that. I think history even shows that arctic expeditions tend to be much more disastrous than equatorial expeditions.

As far as your French foreign legion examples and things like training for heat stroke and mosquitos, keep in mind that Europeans find these things more challenging that black people do. Of course they need much more training to deal with it. Black people have a genetic advantage when it comes to resisting Malaria and thanks to melanin and other genetic advantages they have a genetic advantage with sun and the heat. You can’t use the difficulty a European person has with equatorial climates to judge the difficulty native Africans would have dealing with those same climates. Of course a white person would need more training and skills to survive in such areas.

Your other points, like avoiding snakes and bacteria…avoiding snakes is not a huge selection pressure for intelligence I would say. At least not as big an intelligence selection pressure as, say, trying to build a suitable shelter, wardrobe and food storage system to help you withstand a harsh winter in an ice-covered terrain. And as for bacteria, that’s not a selection pressure for intelligence either: either you physically build immunities as a society or you don’t. Like melanin and malaria resistance, the adaptations required to build immunity to bacteria are not intelligence-based. Also, Europe’s history in relation to being exposed to a greater range of domesticated animals actually meant that the germs and bacteria of Europeans were more harmful to Africans and Native Americans in equatorial climates than vice versa (which is why large parts of indigenous populations would get wiped out by disease when encountering early explorers from the New World). You can read more about that here:

http://fubini.swarthmore.edu/~.....essay3.htm

So bacteria and germs were traditionally a bigger problem in Eurasia than in Equatorial climates.

paully

I?d argue that population pressure is more of an impetus for societal survival of the fittest than climate.

This may be true, I’m not trying to claim that climate is the absolute biggest determinant or that climate alone is responsible. I don’t know enough to claim that. Other factors like population pressure, presence of constant warfare, etc. also play a role, for sure. That being said, I believe climate pressure is definitely relevant as a factor in evolution of intelligence.

Asian Man

But with regard to your second point, the only way you can point out that affirmative action doesn?t work is to point out that blacks are underachieving relatively speaking despite affirmative action [like what Richard Sander and others have tried to do vis-a-vis black law students in California].

I agree with you here, but you can totally point out that blacks are underachieving with studies like Sander’s without ever touching the political third rail of blacks and IQ by race. You can phrase the debate in much more politically palatable ways like phrasing it as proof that the lowered expectations caused by affirmative action lead to inferior results, thereby necessitating a color-blind system of equal standards for everyone, regardless of race. Or like sander’s work points out, you can show that lowered standards of admissions leads to academically inferior students getting degrees and careers they aren’t qualified for and suffering in the marketplace as a result. You can approach the affirmative action debate by showing the disparate outcomes among blacks and whites in an affirmative action system and never bring up race and IQ even once. Thomas Sowell, Ward Connelly, John McWhorter, Larry Elder and others make many devastating arguments against affirmative action without resorting to the race and IQ angle. The problem with attacking it from the race and iq angle is that people often get defensive immediately and intellectually shut down and refuse to hear anything else you have to say after that, no matter how persuasive it is. They feel after hearing your views on race and IQ that if they now accept ANY part of your arguments, they are also implicitly endorsing the notion that they and their family are mentally defective. Therefore they’ll feel their only choice to preserve their self-image is to reject ALL of your argument.

Like I said, for science wonks and geeks like us that like intellectual debate, the race and IQ debate is great, but as a basis to launch a movement for social policy change in this politically correct society, it causes more problems than it solves.

Those are some good points, I suppose. So what is the explanation for why Inuits have a lower average IQ than the Han Chinese, who are much further south? I guess that’s where you can invoke the population pressure hypothesis. (I’m not sure I’d really call it a theory, as it is simply an educated guess and not actually testable.)

my parents? attic in Long Island

I’m tempted to ask, where on the Island? Somehow, I presumed you grew up in the City…

In a civilization that is developing in a continent like Africa where its warm and sunny, it?s easier for people who are not too bright to survive since it doesn?t take much innovation and resourcefulness to figure out a way to survive in an environment like that.

Essentially, you’ve come to the same conclusions that my dad and I have in regards to this subject. Not so much that black people are magically stupid, but that the environment of Africa was simply more hospitable for the growth of the low IQ population.

If you subjected blacks to environment and cultural conditions that rewarded high intellect, competition and technical innovation first and foremost and made it hard to survive and thrive without these traits, you?d see a positive change in average IQ

Some have theorized that this portion of your theory is why Ashkenazim Jewry were able to develop high IQ despite being discriminated against in Europe which again does seem plausible.

I concur with many of the other posters as you have written an excellent and sensible post to deal with the issue of IQ. I await the third segment of this series.

David Alexanders last blog post..The Words Finally Have Meaning

T –

There are a couple of flaws here. Outside the Greeks and Romans, who did NOT consider themselves Europeans, no one would have been impressed with Europeans before the Roman Empire or after it, until around AD 900 or so. It was characterized by tribes in rags and fur, who survived by raiding and scratch farming. A backwater nothing, where nobody did anything interesting. Ever.

Meanwhile, as Victor Davis Hanson points out in Culture and Carnage, Cortez’s men found all the resources they need in Mexico to make more gunpowder. The argument Diamond makes about Eurasia’s superiority ignores the many domesticated animals that others had, in Africa and the New World, and diseases that Colonizers suffered from terribly — malaria and Yellow Fever and syphilis.

Europe was nothing, before the Romans, and nothing after them … until monogamy, and small-holding created a “deep” pool of human resources that allowed them to fight back both the Vikings and the local pagans like the Saxons, and the Muslims from the South.

People don’t like to focus on how … BACKWARD Europe was during the Dark Ages, when Christians were few, and somehow beat out both rivals. Christians won because Jesus did not, unlike Odin and Thor, demand your little sister as a blood sacrifice. She could instead be married off quite handsomely to a chieftan across the river. Meanwhile, Muslim polygamy was horrific to Christian monogamous men who could figure the result — most of them without women.

whiskeys last blog post..Dating Capital

I want to throw some new stuff into the mix here – analogies, sort of. Populations tend to lose the ability to do things which are expensive and don’t add fitness. Our ancestors used to be able to make Vitamin C – most of the genes are still there. And we lost it, because the synthesis is work, and our diets generally provide it, so it wasn’t worth maintaining the ability. Those of us who have blue eyes have most of the genetic equipment to make brown eyes, but didn’t need them (less bright light? who knows?), so that capability was lost. Intestinal parasites often descend from far more capable worms, which could move around and seek food. Didn’t need it, it was expensive to maintain, out it went. This goes to your point about Africa being a swell place for folks who weren’t all that bright, because resources were plentiful. Brains are expensive, we spend about 20% of our daily calorie intake maintaining them. For a cost like that, brains must be doing something for us! And we’re not going to buy any more than we need.

You can make up various just-so stories about why Europeans, or Ashkenazi, or Chinese – would need brains. 2000 years of exams on Confucian theory being how you got food, a nice job, and three cute concubines might do it. So might Torah knowledge and skill at theological dispute being how you got the community to support you. Nasty winter certainly makes for a need to be forward-thinking and squirreling food away for winter, and maybe planning for it.

Whatever, the parts of modern life we approve of tend to reward brains, and they seem to have been selected for in premodern life more in some groups than others. Doesn’t mean individual Chinese are smart, or blacks dull. Likely it means you can get fifteen engineers out of a group of a hundred Chinese kids, two out of a group of a hundred blacks.

Is there something to do about this? Is it a problem? Well, do we have enough engineers? Is it a good thing if folks think themselves primarily ‘black’ ‘white’ ‘east Asian’ rather than ‘Mormon’ ‘Baptist’ ‘Parsee’?

The argument Diamond makes about Eurasia?s superiority ignores the many domesticated animals that others had, in Africa and the New World, and diseases that Colonizers suffered from terribly ? malaria and Yellow Fever and syphilis.

the fact that the colonizers had to deal with such new world maladies is discussed in guns, germs and steel, btw. however, do you know how many domesticated animals were in the new world and africa prior to the arrival en masse of europeans? this is also discussed in the book. if you have additional information, we’d all like to hear it. i thought the case laid out in guns, germs and steel was quite cogent on these matters.

Europe was nothing, before the Romans, and nothing after them ? until monogamy, and small-holding created a ?deep? pool of human resources that allowed them to fight back both the Vikings and the local pagans like the Saxons, and the Muslims from the South.

well, i respect your historical momnogamy angle. i think this is an issue that should be looked into in more detail by people interested in this cross- cultural analysis. i don’t really know much about the statistics for polygamy from a historical islamic perspective, and you have never provided any data on that topic either. however, there is some evidence that widespread polygamy in islam may be a myth:
http://www.islamherald.com/asp.....rities.asp

A slightly earlier but relevant statistics of polygamy (1961 census report) totally smashes the myth of Muslim polygamy, unless the social trends have worsened drastically, which obviously have not. As per this, the incidence of polygamy is highest among the Adivasis (15.25) followed by Buddhists (7.9), Jains (6.72), Hindus (5.80) and behold, followed by Muslims (5.70). Research carried out by Mallika B Mistry of Gokhle institute of Pune, concludes that “there is no evidence that the percentage of polygamous marriages (among Muslims) is larger than the Hindus”. A comparison of nuptiality patterns for Hindus and Muslims shows great similarity, the incidence of polygamy has been declining among both Hindus and Muslims.

granted this only looked at india in (i think) 1961. i remember a gnxp post that also stated how the vast bulk of the marriages in the muslim world were monogamous. however, i’ve had trouble finding that article. i may be wrong, but again, i’d really like to see if you have any stats to buttress your side.

this isn’t meant as a diss; i like your blog and comments on other blogs a lot.

While you’re probably right, your point is not relevant for most policy considerations (for example: disproportional hiring by a company is not de facto evidence of racism.) The timescale for these IQ shifts is at best over several centuries – much too long to have any policy implications.

T,
The topic of racial differences in IQ must be discussed, because it has real consequences. For instance, the differences account for some portion of the disparity in black-white academic performance. If you refuse to discuss race differences, you will have to look elsewhere to explain the gap, and overextend other possible causes to explain the entire gap.

And this has happened – people who refuse to acknowledge IQ and such are prone to blaming the difference on widespread if concealed racism. Or on poor upbringing. And then they try to eliminate the racism, or improve child-rearing, and their success, if any is nothing like they had imagined.

In short, silence causes misplaced blame and inflated expectations.

I just read your first post though, and I share your sentiments to a degree. Charles Murray, when asked “say what you write is all true, what do you propose to do?” He always responded that he would treat people like individuals, eg, assess their IQ and track them accordingly.

I’m sure you could work it to avoid torpedoing kids prospects’ before they start. Eg, say with a kid’s given IQ, there’s a 30% chance that he’ll complete a calculus class, or graduate from college, or what have you. There’s an arbitrary balance to be struck, as to how ‘generous’ or ‘optimistic’ you want to be, a balance that would be decided democratically. What with the frequent demands that every kid go to college, we’re on the generous side of the spectrum.

[Not that the difference accounts for all of the gap]

[...] Blacks and IQ, Part 2 [...]

[...] Blacks and IQ, Part 2 [...]

Yeah, I know, old thread to reply to, I know, but a point needs to be made.

Random passerby basically trashed a book as garbage for the simple reason that the author is ideologically biased. Out of hand trashing Diamond’s book is common in HBD circles, along with criticisms of it’s non-scientific nature and so on.

The irony is that many who typically trash the book also have strong ideological biases. Very little is out there – ignoring disingenuous pretenses to the contrary – on this topic that is not colored by emotional reaction on the basis of ideological bias from the left or right. Diamond’s work can be critiqued, it suffers from weak points, but he also makes strong arguments here and there that should be engaged. Frequently are not rather they are simply dismissed with much rhetorical flourish, but little substance. I would respect the critics more if they actually engaged these arguments

Both sides of the debate concerning biological vs. socially, or environmentally, conditioned behavioral and cognitive differences, between populations and races, suffer from a tendency to passionately personalize the debate, rhetorically dismiss opposing opinion out of hand without rigorously engaging them, a tendency on both sides to play fast and loose with ambiguous data and numbers while systematically ignoring alternate conclusions apart from their pet ones, and the tendency to engage in triumphalistic chest beating and shaming language in making their points.

Progressive authors indulge in public shaming of writers whose viewpoints differ from the current liberal zeitgeist, frequently on public stage, and they generally dismiss out of hand theories and conclusions differing from their majority Western Liberal worldview.

But only the willfully disingenuous, or utterly unconscious, could deny that right wing authors do so as well. Both sides appear constantly stuck in some sort of dialectic in which the one takes positions opposite form the other simply because the other holds a particular opinion. The pendulum swings back and forth from decade to decade.

Few conservatives or liberals alike have any rigor or discernment in the positions they pick, in general people fit into neat ideological boxes and their opinions can be veritibly predicted simply by knowing how they self identify.

There are notable exceptions, most of whom are not active in the blogosphere. Both sides fume and few authors on either side of the debate evenly weigh out evidence and make arguments that comprehensively deal with all matters at hand. Some do, but many do not.

Never underestimate the impact of emotive and ideological bias. And never underestimate how bloody obvious such bias is to others, and how difficult to uproot, and pernicious in its influence, and all but invisible the effects on such bias on our thought and words can be.

The mere act of dismissing an entire book as garbage, out of hand, when even some critics have at least found some matters interesting in the book, suggests ideological bias. We all have our biases.

Intellectual honesty requires that we examine them and keep them in mind as we draw our conclusions.
Kamal S.´s last blog ..“..in searching for a common enemy to unite us…”

Kamal, I’m actually glad you brought this topic back up. At the time I actually wrote this article, I knew the general gist of Diamond’s theory and skimmed key sections but didn’t read the whole thing from beginning to end straight through. I also wasn’t yet familiar with how unreliable HBD followers are when it comes to evaluating counterarguments. I’ve since discovered that HBD people ultimately look for arguments and facts that support their self-esteem. If an counterargument is valid and logical but doesn’t help their self esteem and make them feel special, they mischaracterize it and/or dismissively sidestep it. But at the time I wrote this article I didn’t know they had this tendency. So for all these reasons I took random passerby at face value when he described Diamond as some uber-lefty radical. My thought was that he had some good theories that were good in isolation, which I used, but that there were other problematic parts of the book I hadn’t read yet that were poisoned and unreliable due to ideology.

Now that I’ve read the whole book cover to cover plus debated a bunch and seen how unreliable they can be when describing counterarguments, I regret even humoring that idea. That idea was totally untrue. All the theories in Diamond’s book were indeed plausible, logical and supported by good thinking and evidence. I didn’t see a leftist bias poisoning the assessments at all, at least not as bad as the ideological bias I see in HBD arguments. I’d actually argue he was less clouded by ideology and personal sentiment in drawing his conclusions than the typical HBD person.

Live and learn.