200 Blog Posts – Everything You Need to Know (To Start)

Post updated, 7/23/15. See below!

At long last, I reach my 200th blog post. It’s been a quite a ride! Blogging on human biodiversity – or simply humanity – has taught me a great deal. Since the start, I hoped that I could offer some meager contribution to mankind with this blog. I will continue to try to do that.

Recent events have brought to light quite a bit of rubbish, from all sides. made it plain to me that this blog does have something to offer, and this very post should give a really good example of that. There has been rubbish coming from all sides here, and this blog – and this post – serves to try to clear this up.

In this post, I intend to reach out to newcomers, so I ask veteran readers to excuse the following lengthy review of certain basic topics. I hope to make human biodiversity (HBD) accessible to a wider audience, and maybe my long-time readers will find this post useful to share with those they’d like to educate on the topic. However, for the veterans, I also offer some new commentary.

In many ways, this post follows the tradition of my previous milestone post, 100 Blog Posts – A Reflection on HBD Blogging And What Lies Ahead, in that it reviews much I have discussed over the previous 100 posts and talks about some things in store for the future.

Table of contents

1. Introduction

2. Essential human categories: race and sex (and the Bruce Jenner/Rachel Dolezal controversies).

3. Guns, violence, and the Dylann Roof rampage

4. The American Nations

5. Heredity and behavioral genetics

6. Intraracial group variation and HBD Chick’s theory

7. The Deep South and the Confederate legacy

8. The Taboo Future



Introduction

Over the past three weeks, three individuals have made headlines, each making a bigger media impact than the one before. All three have started discussions that are smack dab in purview of human biodiversity. And with all three, the discussion that has ensued in mainstream sources has been inane and rather bereft of facts. Many of the usual arguments ignoring (and in fact denying) the biological basis to human behavior have reigned, in addition to some bizarre new arguments. Many of these arguments continue to circulate in mainstream discourse despite the efforts that I and so many others have made (others include Greg Cochran & Henry Harpending, HBD Chick, Razib Khan, Peter Frost, “Misdreavus”, the Audacious Epigone, Steve Sailer, Emil Kirkegaard, and many, many others). This rubbish would be quickly dispelled if people took the time to cruise through the evidence marshaled on my blog or on many of the blogs linked above.

And now I have had enough.





2. Essential human categories: race and sex (and the Bruce Jenner/Rachel Dolezal controversies)

First and foremost, we should be aware of something that should go without saying at this point: biological sex is a real phenomenon. The differences between human male and human female (a fundamental division that is found across much of the animal kingdom) do not end only at plumbing; they extend all the way to visible differences in the brain, as can be seen in this graphic from Ingalhalikar et al (2013). This paper and many other pieces of evidence on the matter can be seen on my HBD Fundamentals page, section On biological sex differences.

These mean that it is impossible (with any technology we currently possess or likely to posses in the foreseeable future, anyway) for one to change one’s biological sex. The concept of “gender” is superfluous. “Psychological sex” (“gender”) stems from biological sex. Not only do the sexes differ in fundamental features of their brains, they differ in every cell in their bodies: different chromosomes, XX vs XY. A man who gets a “sex change” may have his external anatomy rearranged to appear as something resembling a woman, and may inject himself with female hormones, but the aforementioned fundamental differences remain unaltered and unalterable. The feeling that one’s sex is other than that one was born is a mental illness. Unfortunately, “transgender” individuals are merely deluding themselves into believing they have become the opposite sex, and modern society indulges them in this delusion.

These facts were discussed by Greg Cochran (Transsexuals | West Hunter and Elves, Orcs, and all that | West Hunter), Peter Frost (Gender Reassignment of Children), and Paul McHugh. Bruce (“Caitlyn”) Jenner is no more now a woman than he ever was, but many who point out that fact have been chastised – often being called “transphobic” (a point to which I’ll return).

Just as biological sex is real, so is race.

Race among humans is as real as ancestry, which ultimately is what race is. Different ancestral human groups have, through time and evolution, accumulated differences in their respective biologies. The oft-repeated claim that “race is a social construct” – which is technically true – is meaningless.

This is true of many other things, like the periodic table of chemical elements, astronomic classification, and Linnaean taxonomy itself. Clearly the intended meaning of the claim, that race is only a social construct, is as false for race as it is for those other things.

Race is often easily discernible by sight alone. It is clearly discernible on a genetic level, and companies like 23andMe and Ancestry.com make a business out of detecting genetic ancestry – hence race – in their customers.

(Above from Racial Reality: Global Admixture Analysis at K=6)

One aspect of race that gives people trouble is that race is an inherently fuzzy concept. There are no defined boundaries from one race to the next, and they often smoothly transition from one to the other. This means there’s a great degree of overlap, especially at the edges, as the above charts should make clear.

Certain individuals – such as my son and I (who both have sub-Saharan African, European, East Asian, and South Asian ancestries) – make attempts to fit everyone into clear and crisply delineated racial boxes difficult to impossible. But I think it’s quite clear that the existence of people like us do not invalidate the broad categories. If they did, companies like 23andMe and Ancestry.com would be defrauding their customers.

Race is as real as (and very much akin to) dog breeds.

And, contrary to what you’re often told, the differences between human races are not just skin deep. These differences but extend down through blood (see sickle-cell anemia), bone…

…viscera (as can be seen from the global distribution of lactose tolerance)…

…and of course, brain, most obviously in (but by no means limited to) global variation in average brain size (derived from Beals, Smith, and Dodd 1984, image source here):

This a map of the average brain size of indigenous (pre-European diaspora) peoples across the globe.

EDIT, 7/23/15: [Indeed, a new paper, Fan et al 2015, that the details of cortical surface structure of the brain is highly predictive of genetic ancestry. Indeed, as Fan et al put it:



Here, we demonstrate that the three-dimensional geometry of cortical surface is highly predictive of individuals’ genetic ancestry in West Africa, Europe, East Asia, and America, even though their genetic background has been shaped by multiple waves of migratory and admixture events. The geometry of the cortical surface contains richer information about ancestry than the areal variability of the cortical surface, independent of total brain volumes. Besides explaining more ancestry variance than other brain imaging measurements, the 3D geometry of the cortical surface further characterizes distinct regional patterns in the folding and gyrification.

Indeed, an earlier paper from this team (Bakken, Dale, and Schork, 2011) found that this works within racial groups as well, as the case with Europeans (see also the section Intraracial Group Variation below):

In our group’s previous study, we found that area measures of cortical surface and total brain volumes of individuals of European descent in the United States correlate significantly with their ancestral geographic locations in Europe

Average brain size correlates with latitude, and also correlates (partially) with average IQ (derived primarily from Lynn & Vanhanen, 2012) :

This was all covered in my “F.A.Q.” (JayMan’s Race, Inheritance, and IQ F.A.Q. (F.R.B.)) as well as my HBD Fundamentals page, section On the reality of race.

The biological reality of race means that it is impossible for one to change to a race different from the one he or she was born, and no amount of surgery, hair treatments, or skin whiteners (or darkeners) can do the trick. After all, one cannot change one’s ancestry. Rachel Dolezal has been derided on this point (correctly so), but the very same people have defended the possibility of changing one’s sex, as in the case of Bruce/”Caitlyn” Jenner (see here and here). In so doing, despite the obvious logical inconsistency this presents…

…a number of the usual falsehoods have been repeated, particularly the “social construct” nonsense that I can only hope I’ve clearly trounced here. The bottom line on this one is as I said:

If you accept that "transgender" people can exist, you *must* also accept that transracial people can too. Can't have one without the other. — JayMan (@JayMan471) June 15, 2015

I admit, I was actually surprised by the blatant hypocrisy on this matter. I didn’t expect so many people to attempt to make a principled argument on how one of these is possible but not the other. Indeed, since race is fuzzy, one would imagine the idea of changing one’s race to be more “possible” than changing one’s sex (sex being a far more discrete category than race – though not completely so). (After all, was Michael Jackson not White, at least in part?) Yet mainstream sources clamored to claim the very opposite. Both of course are impossible, but this demonstrates how far mainstream discourse has diverged from reality.



3. Guns, violence, and the Dylann Roof rampage

However, quickly overshadowing both Bruce Jenner and Rachel Dolezal was the heinous shooting by Dylann Roof. Now make no mistake, Roof is an evil creature who I think deserves to fry for what he did. He’s symptomatic of a strain of thought that is disturbingly all too common in the people who follow this very topic (at least the ones that make themselves known via comments to various human biodiversity and related blogs and other publications). These people do indeed have to face some important qualities about themselves – a point to which I’ll return shortly.

The murders committed by Roof have shocked the nation and have revived many tired old arguments. One of the most egregious in this case is the matter of “gun control” and gun violence; arguments which rear their head after every highly publicized rampage shooting. Symptomatic of this interminable discussion is this deceptively dishonest datum:

I used this slide in my debates on gun control. More guns=more crime not less (assuming killing someone by gun=crime) pic.twitter.com/VGJgNLpbpZ — Michael Shermer (@michaelshermer) June 22, 2015

People with more guns tend to kill more people. With guns. http://t.co/M3PPwZensG pic.twitter.com/WbYv4X7YC6 — Max Roser (@MaxCRoser) June 21, 2015

Of course, the “gun deaths” here are mostly suicides (with a fair amount of police shootings as well), which presumably isn’t what people are thinking about when see this graphic. The relationship between gun ownership rates and gun homicides is quite different.

The key here is that certain individuals are trying to create the illusion that the presence of guns causes violence. These people like to attribute variations in human behavior to “environmental” factors, so naturally, they expect that gun violence must be caused by the presence of guns (ignoring the fact that prevalence of gun ownership is itself a behavioral variation that would also be in need of explanation). After a previous bout of mass shootings, I wrote Guns & Violence, Again…, in which I thoroughly debunked the “guns cause violence” argument with a few simple pieces of data. For one, the relationship between the prevalence of gun ownership and homicide is negative in North America:

Here’s a scatterplot for the U.S.:

@DrRobertKing @hbdchick @JayMan471 That's DC in the top left corner. I'm not arguing that the causal effect is neg.. pic.twitter.com/c8AvM55lq8 — Random C. Analysis (@RCAFDM) June 23, 2015

Indeed, the correlation is weak to negative globally:

Now, you would think that if one were going to make a case for “guns cause violence,” one would at least have to have a correlation. But no, these posers don’t even have that. Rather pathetic.

So what is the cause of this violence then, including the rampage shootings for which the U.S. is known? As I said before:

It is not the guns; it is who has them. #DNA #humanbiodiversity — JayMan (@JayMan471) June 9, 2014

4. The American Nations

The ultimate source of violence and regional variation in such was fleshed out in my post Guns & Violence, Again…, where I noted the American Nations model:

The United States (and for that matter, Canada) is not one monolithic culture but consists of a hodgepodge of regional cultures that cluster approximately as shown above. Many of my previous 100 posts focused on this matter, heavily based on the book American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Colin Woodard (itself partly based on Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America by David Hackett Fischer). For an overview, see my page:

American Nations Series

In short, local sociocultural and economic differences across both countries are driven by local demographic differences across each. On the broadest scale, (continental) race is a major factor:

Areas with higher Black proportions have higher rates of violence (the same is true to a lesser extent for Hispanics and Native Americans):

@JayMan471 Other plots you won't see from them any time soon…. pic.twitter.com/9FrTGRGlU4 — Random C. Analysis (@RCAFDM) June 23, 2015

EDIT: [See also these scatterplots of homicide rates by U.S. county race of victim against fraction of specified race of total population. The fraction of the county which is Black has a strong positive relationship, while the fraction which is White has a weak negative relationship. From: County level homicide rates by race/ethnicity of victim | Random Critical Analysis

***End Edit***]

Gun crime in NYC first 8 months of 2013. http://t.co/QnAIkJZz9W—

Amazing Maps (@amazinmaps) May 04, 2015

These broad racial differences are key factors driving variation in violence across the country. But beyond continental race, differences within the White population are also responsible for many social/cultural/economic differences across the country.

The American Nations model is based on the settling of the Americas by Europeans. The U.S. and Canada received settlers from different parts of the British Isles – each settling in a different part of the continent. This was in addition to other Europeans, notably Germans, French, and Dutch (and of course, Spaniards in the Spanish colonies).

The settlers to nations of the American South were the English Cavaliers (to the Tidewater and the Deep South) and the Borderlander Scots (to Greater Appalachia). Both groups possessed a more aggressive, martial culture than those that came to the nations of the North. This culture lives on in their descendants that populate the South today, and can be seen in the gun-centric, capital punishment embracing nature of their societies. Additionally, the Far West received a share of Appalachians and other groups that were selected for life in a harsh, isolated, frontier environment, and hence are individualistic and also quite attached to guns.

The Nations of the South have not received much by way of immigrants since their founding. Later waves of immigrants – mostly more Germans, Catholic Irish, Scandinavians, Southern Italians, and Eastern Europeans flooded to the northern nations Yankeedom and the Midlands, further widening the split between these nations and those of the South.

Ultimately, this is the source of the interminable conflict between different regions of America, represented now in the debate over the Confederate flag:

This conflict is friction between distinct ethnocultural areas of the country, each with its own regional identity (some stronger than others, perhaps being strongest in the more ethnically homogenous nations of Greater Appalachia and the Deep South). This is why theses tensions keep popping up. (Although as of late, it is probably more the Deep South vs. everyone else than a replay of the battle between the Deep South/Tidewater and Yankeedom that was the Civil War, as the present residents of the latter nation have less biological continuity with their region’s combatants during the war.)



5. Heredity and behavioral genetics

So far I have talked a lot about “biology” and “heredity” being behind all these patterns we see. But how do I know, you may ask? Well, the single biggest most important clue to this is the fact that all human behavioral traits are heritable. This includes intelligence, personality, political views, religiosity, even how much you enjoy watching television or surfing the internet.

We know this from twin, adoption, and half-sibling studies (as well as modern genomic studies). These special family combinations allow us to pick apart the effect of genetic inheritance from any effects of the “environment.” Decades of studies have shown that genes account for at least half of the variation in all human traits (and usually much greater, especially when measurement error is taken into account). The tables below provide summaries of these findings:

Equally important, the effect of the shared environment appears to be zero for these traits. Children growing up in the same home (and sharing all the environmental influences such children encounter) do not resemble one another in any discernible way (especially when measured as adults, and when the effect of assortative mating in addressed). Adopted children aren’t any more similar to their adoptive families than random strangers. Rather, they resemble their biological families. Twins reared apart are highly similar to each other in virtually every way, but they are no more similar to each other than twins raised together.

This means that the effect of growing up with one set of parents is no different from any other set of parents. Nothing in the environment children share seems to have any impact on how they turn out. This has huge implications for putative “environmental” forces, which the prevailing model in Western society holds to be of paramount importance. As Greg Cochran put it:



The early intervention studies with the most striking results all involve quite small samples. Why would that be so? All such studies need to carefully disentangle genetic effects. These studies have done such a good job that you can hardly even find the word ‘genetic’ in their text: twice in the first review, zero in the last two. Since twin studies clearly show that genetic influences on behavior are strong (except for homosexuality, of course) while non-genetic influences are something other than the ones that most professionals in the field JUST KNOW have to matter (zero influence from shared family environment strongly implies that face time with liberal arts majors also has zero influence), studies that ignore genetics are wrong. Studies that looked for effects from factors that would show up as shared family environment – like which school you go to, let alone whether you attend pre-K, are surely wrong.



In addition to the above linked posts, see my posts:

Environmental Hereditarianism

The Son Becomes The Father

More Behavioral Genetic Facts

Health and body weight follow similar patterns (high heritability, zero shared environment). See my page Obesity Facts for more, or my post IQ and Death.

Indeed, these very studies show that gun ownership is considerably heritable (Barnes, Boutwell, and Beaver, 2014). This patterns shows no shared environment component, despite being studied in a nationally representative sample. This indicates that regional variation can’t be reduces to local “culture”. Genetic differences drive cultural differences, and not the other way around.



6. Intraracial group variation and HBD Chick’s theory

Why do differences between different White groups matter so much? Why does precise ethnic origin matter? Differences between human groups are fined-grained because evolution acts locally. One of the key differences among different European groups is a factor HBD Chick calls clannishness. See this map of perceived corruption around the world (from Transparency International):



There are considerable differences across the European continent:

Northwestern Europeans and their descendants stand out in particular – in many ways, distinct from all other peoples across the world…

…being lower on corruption, being more individualistic (as opposed to communal), having weaker family ties vis-a-vis the rest of the world…

Percentage of young adults living with parents in Europe http://t.co/tAWbwbPJox pic.twitter.com/XsZu1oOIDi — Beautiful Maps (@BeautifulMaps) June 24, 2015

…having stronger civic institutions, having a greater attachment to/belief in democracy, and so much more.

HBD Chick thinks that these unique traits arose in good part because NW Europeans have a long history of avoiding cousin marriage, unlike virtually all other peoples around the world. This led to lower average relatedness within families, thereby weakening the strength of selection for kin altruism relative to selection for reciprocal altruism. See these posts/pages from HBD Chick:

start here | hbd chick

clannishness defined | hbd chick

big summary post on the hajnal line | hbd chick

medieval manorialism’s selection pressures | hbd chick

time enough | hbd chick

As well as my own post:

Predictions on the Worldwide Distribution of Personality

This led Northwestern Europe to diverge from the rest of the world early on (see my earlier post “Racial Reality” Provides My 150th Post)

These data show the importance of biological differences within a race, indeed, differences that can exist even within the same island, as is the case with Great Britain and the distinct American Nations it spawned.



Taken all together, the above sections show that global disparities in wealth, human development, freedom, and social welfare stem largely from the innate traits of the people who inhabit each country. These include IQ, future time orientation, and the aforementioned clannishness (or more precisely, the lack there of):

To understand human biodiversity is to understand the world, and why it is the way it is.

HBD also explains why people like Dylann Roof exist. As aforementioned, the traits of people who have made up the old Confederacy and others who harbor hatred of other groups are inherited traits, quite likely the result of evolved adaptations. The existence of the American Nations and the distinct political and social views each holds are because of each’s genetic inheritance. This explains why we constantly hear that “the South will rise again” and why they hold on to the Confederate flag. It is am emblem of the values that appeals to their temperament – what comes naturally to them. This also speaks to why attempting to ban the flag – symbol of racism and oppression it is – may not be as successful as some hope it will be. You cannot change who they are. It is likely these issues will not go away. But, tension between the various American Nations goes back a long way.

Collected on this blog is a repository of research and information that supports this. In addition to the aforementioned pages (JayMan’s Race, Inheritance, and IQ F.A.Q. (F.R.B.) and HBD Fundamentals) my About Me page contains a list of key blog posts and topics that are helpful as an introduction to the matter.



7. The Deep South and the Confederate legacy

Returning to the U.S., in particular the American South, Dylann Roof is perhaps the worst expression of a nasty element that exists in our society and frequently voices itself on these blogs. One of the key points spurred by the Roof shooting is about the Confederate flag, which is perhaps the quintessential symbol of the Deep South and what it stands for and has stood for. In my earlier post The Cavaliers, I talked a good bit about what this was. This was exploitation and oppression, not just most infamously of Black slaves (and later freed Blacks forced to live under Jim Crow), but of their own people. The Deep South (and to a lesser extent the Tidewater, as well as parts of Greater Appalachia) was built as a quasi-feudal plantation society where wealthy plantation lords ruled over all: Black, White, and all in between. The system of top-down exploitation persisted well after the Civil War and into modern times. As “Misdreavus” put it (collected on my page Misdreavus Stream):

Which just makes the neo-Confederate faction of Nrx that much more perplexing. That's the civilization you admire? — misdreavus (@SuperMisdreavus) March 3, 2015

The vast majority of whites living a wretched, hand-to-mouth existence, living in fear of the "black terror" rising up to swallow them — misdreavus (@SuperMisdreavus) March 3, 2015

The list goes on and on. The fact that a large segment of #Nrx idolizes this civilization speaks volumes about their sanity — misdreavus (@SuperMisdreavus) March 14, 2015

Rich Southern planters cared about their profits first and foremost — the rest of the white race could starve to death, for all they cared. — misdreavus (@SuperMisdreavus) March 14, 2015

It's a pattern that repeats itself throughout American history. Mass immigration from S. and E. Europe, amnesty for illegals, H1B visas, etc — misdreavus (@SuperMisdreavus) March 14, 2015

Just don't forget the other side that has an immense financial interest in promoting "diversity". They do not give a damn about you. — misdreavus (@SuperMisdreavus) March 14, 2015

Stop whining, all of you. And yes, the Confederate flag has everything to do with slavery. Why must this be repeated so often? — misdreavus (@SuperMisdreavus) June 19, 2015

Dylann Roof’s manifesto demonstrated that he had knowledge of inherited biological group differences (though superficial and pretty inaccurate knowledge). What I read in Roof’s manifesto is not too much unlike some things I’ve seen in comments to various HBD and related blogs, and it sickens me. Here’s a key fact about knowledge of HBD: merely having an understanding of biological inherited group differences doesn’t automatically translate into hate for other groups or feeling some need for racial solidarity. A is a very different item from B. I don’t particularly harbor any animosity towards any group.

However, common among people who have a superficial and/or selective understanding of heritable group differences is belief in conveniently inaccurate claims. One of these erroneous ideas that White nationalists in particular have latched on to is the belief in “ethnic genetic interests” – that is, that kin selection has led individuals to favor people of their own race/ethnic group over others. This of course is bunk. Natural selection doesn’t work that way, since individuals within an ethnic group aren’t closely related enough for this to work. This has been explained repeatedly, lately by Misdreavus:

It is impossible for such a thing as a “race altruist gene” to evolve, because sacrificing yourself on behalf of strangers does nothing to increase the frequency of the gene under any set of circumstances. It doesn’t matter if the frequency of a such a gene “magically” originated with a frequency of 4 in 10 Chinese people. The Chinese who don’t have the gene, on average, would have a higher fitness, resulting in the frequency decreasing monotonically over time.

He continues to argue there, which is worth a read for anyone seriously interested in the matter.

Although it’s important to note that the “other side” harbors a good bit of blame here. This tweet encapsulates the problem:

I shouldn't even have to say this: you can contradict the falsities peddled by certain groups and not harbor any ill-will for these groups. — JayMan (@JayMan471) June 17, 2015

Unfortunately, many people don’t feel that way. They interpret contradiction of cherished (and false) dogma commonly held by/about certain groups to be an attack on that group. This is how someone like me can be accused of being “transphobic” for merely pointing out that Bruce Jenner is not a woman. This is how merely addressing apparently unflattering qualities of a group – or espousing that these differences have inherited roots – can be considered tantamount to hating said group. It’s hateful to believe in things which are true (or, in worst case, have a reasonable possibility of being true). That sort of accusative attitude can only breed animosity in return.

Of course, these people are not wrong in the assumption that some people who espouse belief in biological roots to behavior do indeed harbor hateful feelings towards other groups, as we see with Roof and his ilk.

HBD Chick tackled this in her post you and me and hbd

See also my post The Problem with HBD, the Dark Enlightenment, Neoreaction, Alt-Rightism, and All That Jazz



8. The Taboo Future

Alas, it is not enough to point out any of the above for many, because making the claims I have made here – as true as they are – and despite the abundant evidence for them – is taken as evidence of hatefulness, as per the above.

If heredity is so important to social outcomes, and most “environmental” influences appear not to be, then you may be wondering why do so few people know this in Western society? Well, unfortunately, there is an active effort by some to discount or suppress this knowledge. See:

The End of Science | West Hunter

It Must Be Said | West Hunter

Unknown Phenotypes | West Hunter

“Environmental” explanations reign in modern research and mainstream discourse, leaving a handful of thoughtful researchers to investigate this matter properly. In the height of irony, this is explained by human biodiversity itself. Certain populations (e.g., Ashkenazi Jews, and to a lesser extent various Northwestern Europeans) are more averse to genetic explanations for human behavior and outcomes and are more receptive of environmental ones than other groups, on average. Because of this fact, getting across the facts on the matter faces incredible resistance, both within the academic world and without. HBD explains the resistance to HBD.

This resistance leads to a suppression of the science. Far too many researchers proceed under the “standard social science model”:

.@AmirSariaslan "the standard social science method (SSSM) assumes genetic influences do not confound the association between X and Y" — JayMan (@JayMan471) October 6, 2014

This leads to all sorts of bad research in the human sciences, from behavioral science to economics to medical science. Despite all that is discussed on the internet and in certain scientific journals, there’s quite a lot we don’t know.

One of the biggest unexplored avenues to understanding health and behavior is the role of pathogens. The most startling example is collected in my post:

Greg Cochran’s “Gay Germ” Hypothesis – An Exercise in the Power of Germs

Homosexuality – a behavioral trait that, quite unlike most others, has low heritability – likely has a pathogenic source. Pathogens may be behind all manner of behavioral traits and health conditions and may be a major contributor to the mysterious so-called “nonshared environment” (the difference between identical twins) – especially since it has been discovered that identical twins have very different pathogenic histories, as gauged by their immunological profiles (Brodin et al, 2015). These microorganisms – likely most of which are unknown (75% – 99% being unknown in stool samples) – may exert huge impact on human behavior. Indeed, we are learning that gut flora may play a considerable role in health, obesity, and behavior.



However, this area of research remains underdeveloped, because while there are some people looking, microorganisms aren’t not recognized for the potentially fruitful avenue of research that it is.

We also don’t really know – at least, not concretely – why variation within groups exists in the first place. Natural selection tends to minimize variation, with adaptive alleles thriving and maladaptive alleles fading to extinction over time. This should serve to homogenize populations, but, as we know, human groups exhibit a great wide range of individual variation. Some people are tall, others short. Some people are outgoing, others reserved. Some people are beautiful, others homely. Why? There are a few ideas on this, some discussed in detail by Penke, Denissen, and Miller (2007).

One suspected driver of individual variation is genetic load, that is, the burden of deleterious mutations we all carry. Mutations constantly appear and are more likely to be harmful than beneficial. Mildly deleterious mutations are only slowly purged by selection – often after many generations –and hence build up in the gene pool. Some individuals possess a greater burden of these mutations than others, and suffer poorer quality traits because of it, including lower IQ and poorer health (which themselves are linked, see my post IQ and Death). However, finding conclusive evidence of the role of genetic load in normal range variation has been difficult. Compounding this difficulty – and adding to the mystery – is that IQ and physical attractiveness turn out to be uncorrelated (see Mitchem et al, 2015). Each of these are driven primarily by additive heritability – which suggests genetic load is involved in each, but there is no overlap with the other. For this to be case, these traits must share no genetic factors, which is quite possible. Further research is needed.

As well, we have a poor understanding of the correlation between various phenotypes in general. Some evidence suggests that physical appearance and behavioral traits are correlated, but we have precious few large, well-measured, genetically informative (i.e., using twins or other relatives) samples to examine these. These correlations, especially when established on a genetic level, might shed light into how these may have evolved.

We also don’t know what the origin of female homo-/bisexuality is. Some speculation was seen in my previous post (Female Same-Sex Attraction Revisited).

And, most ironically, the true nature of “environmental” influences, particularly those that cause cohort effects (such as the rise in average height, obesity, IQ scores, and irreligiosity over the past century) remains poorly understood. This is primarily because these are difficult to study well; better research designs are needed to disentangle the various confounding factors.

We could also stand to investigate HBD Chick’s theory, that is, that differing rates of cousin marriage affected the evolution of behavioral traits. Sequencing DNA from Medieval skeletons might serve to shed some light here. But it doesn’t seem like many are interested in this research.

And of course, we have a great deal to learn about how the genetic code itself works, though we are making some progress there (Information Processing: More GWAS hits on cognitive ability: ESHG 2015).

These and other avenues remain blocked or poorly explored. Part of this results from a deliberate effort to suppress investigation into biological causes of behavior and human outcomes. However, is this fear justified?

I have previously argued that widespread knowledge of HBD might come with serious consequences (see hbd fallout | hbd chick):

“Back when groups differences weren’t so taboo in Western society, and one could talk about them openly [see Those Who Can See: Being a Progressive, Yesterday: Race], society was *also* more racist (this was pre-Civil Rights here in America). It is possible that in order for society to be aware of the reality of HBD, it must be actually be *racist*. “Think of all the simmering resentment in Whites that are the victims of these crimes (as a Black man, I wouldn’t talk to this soldier’s family about now). And on top of that, imagine all the Whites that are not necessarily so politically correct about race. How would they react? … Sane, moderate thinkers seem to avoid this stuff like the plague. (Of course, this could just be the disaffected voices speaking loudest, but that is the appearance anyway.)

The hope is that Dylann Roof is not at all representative of the type of reactions people will have should these facts become more commonly known.

Certain individuals in places to affect popular discourse (in the media and in academia) make a conscious effort to suppress this knowledge. Indeed, see Cofnas (2015):

Some prominent scientists and philosophers have stated openly that moral and political considerations should influence whether we accept or promulgate scientific theories. This widespread view has significantly influenced the development, and public perception, of intelligence research. Theories related to group differences in intelligence are often rejected a priori on explicitly moral grounds. … Daniel Dennett—also a philosopher, but one who has made substantive contributions to cognitive/evolutionary science—says that the standard of evidence required to accept “dangerous”

scientific hypotheses should not be raised. Rather, we should never accept them regardless of the evidence (Dennett 2003, 2006b). He is fairly open about his principled opposition to “dangerous” theories, and this leads him to apply jarring double standards to scientific hypotheses with different alleged social consequences. In Freedom Evolves, Dennett (2003) says regarding critics of hereditarianism: I don’t challenge the critics’ motives or even their tactics; if I encountered people conveying a message I thought was so dangerous that I could not risk giving it a fair hearing, I would be at least strongly tempted to misrepresent it, to caricature it for the public good. I’d want to make up some good epithets, such as genetic determinist or reductionist or Darwinian Fundamentalist, and then flail those straw men as hard as I could. As the saying goes, it’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it.4 (pp. 19–20) So what are we to make of his statement on page 160 of the same book, where he calls the theory that intelligence differences between races are hereditary an “awful racist hypothesis”? This can mean one of two things: he considers hereditarianism about race differences in intelligence to be either scientifically wrong or socially “dangerous.”

Is this (in part) because they fear how people would react were facts about heritable human differences to become commonly known? I think so.

(Although it does seem people are quite a bit more aware of heritable group differences than many mainstream voices realize:

Who else is enjoying post-racial America? pic.twitter.com/AUPWHVSYbJ — Sean McElwee (@SeanMcElwee) June 23, 2015

Nonetheless, as noted above, reaction to this knowledge depends on inherited individual and group differences. While the overwhelming bulk of people may have this knowledge and behave just fine, there are likely many more Dylann Roofs among them. Have the people who seek to suppress this knowledge correctly calculated that it’s better to do so to keep the peace?

Well, there is a problem with that strategy: even if the view behind it is correct, what’s true remains true. People will continue to discover and rediscover these truths despite every attempt to bury them, simply because they are so. Sooner or later, a critical mass will become aware, and we will have to face it one way or another.

Make no mistake, widespread acceptance of the reality of heritable individual and group differences will likely have significant consequences for our society. Our institutions are presently set up with the assumption that the SSSM is true (see currently accepted social doctrine in America), even if common people often believe differently. Much will change if society were to accept these facts officially.

But, this all comes back to the fact that they are still true. Debates about the merits of allowing it to be commonly known are ultimately about timing – debating the when, not if. Being that this is the case, I think that what we need are more competent, responsible, and thoughtful individuals in positions of power to better manage the issues we are bound to face no matter what we do. (I will say that nobody in the present crop of presidential hopefuls fits the bill.)

In the mean time, I will continue to discuss HBD here, both for the purpose of my own curiosity and with the hope that maybe some good is to be done. Let’s see what happens by post #300!

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Here is the theme for this post, which I think is highly fitting on many levels: