social mobility is WAY higher than Clark’s estimate. It’s common for high ability men to marry attractive but less intelligent women, resulting in a sharp socioeconomic and IQ decline in the next generation, especially if they’re boys, since boys tend to be closer to their mother in IQ than their father. Women will try to marry into more intelligent families, raising the IQ of their offspring above their own level, whereas men marry into less intelligent families lowing the IQ of their offspring. The idea that assortative mating is greater today is preposterous, during most of history people practiced arranged marriage, to keep intelligence and wealth from diluting back to average. India’s caste system was specifically designed to ensure intelligence and wealth maintained itself over the generations. People today marry people they “love” it doesn’t matter if her father was a truck driver or elite, people marry by education level, which is’t a great proxy for IQ unless it’s STEM.

Regression to the mean would indicate high downward and upward mobility, if class structure was this rigid regression to the mean is clearly overstated. According to Stephen Hsu IQ can go from genius level (140) all the way back down to 110 in 3-4 generations. It’s not uncommon at all for upper middle class people to produce offspring who would be better suited to blue collar work. Regression to the mean is a powerful phenomenon and it indicates that one cannot maintain high intelligence over many generations. Stephen Hsu said that it’s common for super high IQ physicists to produce kids who can “only” become doctors, and doctors could also produce kids who could only become electricians.

You use dictatorship to mendaciously refer to a single party state ruled by a single strong man. Non disingenuous twats who bother to read Marx’s words and take him at his word (instead of interpreting their way around it by referring to every philosophy they fear as “pseudo” this or that) will have inevitably arrived at the heart of the matter he actually described in plain language. The dictatorship of the proletariat is a single party state ruled by the proletariat which would comprise all of society at the end of the revolution.

But by all means just home in on the word dictatorship because it sounds scary (see: bad faith reasoning)

Florence isn’t closed and if you actually read that article you wouldn’t be making demented pleas to genetics to account for this effect. It shows flat out that savings explains the largest explainable part of the effect.

The US is a terrible place to become rich if you’re poor. It falls consistently in social mobility every few years. I suppose you could handwave this away by saying its genetic drift but it isnt. From this we can infer the obvious; that it isn’t what you know, or how much you’re able to know, but who you know. Intelligent people often become rich because of the confidence it affords them, not the ability. One of my former employers was in most respects a fucking moron but he was ruthless and single minded as most HBDers/phrenologists are.

If you think single mothers are the victims of their single mother genes, there’s just no way to put this politely. You’re a fucking idiot. My IQ surpasses my mother’s and fathers by a long shot. Maybe I have a rare mutation? Maybe, just maybe the IQ test is worthless and contaminated beyond hope and you rely on it because it offers simple, convenient explanations for a confusing and frightening world that you pretend you can grasp on equal terms but can’t. Genes don’t code for behaviors, but proteins that form tissues which work in a complex, dynamic system which creates an emergent property known as consciousness. Try tying the preference of apple to pecan pie to genes. Try tying a fear of getting water stuck in your ears to genes. You can’t and you’ll always be putting the cart before the horse in any attempt to do that.

All you do is cherry pick studies that seem to be saying what you think they are, deliberately misinterpret them to fit the a priori position that’s comforting to STEM seeking social retards and deriving a harebrained philosophy from that a priori position (everything everyone does is down to genes.)

We know shit all about genes but we know that they turn on and off all the time. We know that identical twins have contrasting personalities which shouldn’t be possible at all if we were clockwork men. We know now that there isn’t a single type of intelligence but there are many types of intelligence, and that a system that measures it by using a single numerical rating value is inherently ridiculous and should be laughed at. Your ego (and subconscious black shame) governs everything you believe, and it does so in concert with genes, not solely and unequivocally derived from the proteins they encode. You should be embarrassed and ashamed, but not because you have black genes, but because you don’t have the will to override them.

Single parenthood is merely the result of bad genetics, hahhaha. Morality police (or lab rats) ahoy

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/01/single_moms_are_better_kids_raised_by_single_mothers_are_sturdier.html

Jayman, Don’t know if you will see this here, or another source.

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2016/05/19/the-wealthy-in-florence-today-are-the-same-families-as-600-years-ago/

Basically, if you live in Florence, and your ancestor was wealthy in 1400′s, odds are that you are also. It seems to fit your ‘son becomes the father’ It is worth noting that income mobility is higher in other areas, but this also could be explained by genetics. In the US, where a poor man can become rich and a rich poor more easily than about anywhere else, that dynamic is desired, so those who seek their fortunes migrate to the US and away from areas where they can’t.

Should be “recent” not “resist.”

trying to decompose this function with a best linear approximation is just mathematical jive

This is the thesis of a resist critique of heritability as applied to criminology. Has an hbder responded here?

[…] http://www.unz.com/jman/the-son-becomes-the-father/ […]

[…] and see my posts All Human Behavioral Traits are Heritable, Environmental Hereditarianism, and The Son Becomes The Father; recapped in my 200th post, section Heredity and behavioral genetics]. As such, the question then […]

[…] Environmental Hereditarianism The Son Becomes The Father More Behavioral Genetic Facts […]

[…] Hereditarianism The Son Becomes The Father More Behavioral Genetic […]

Has karl marx advocated totalitarian form of government in his books about communism?

He has advocated dictatorship of proletariat, so yes, he did advocate dictatorship – for those of us not having romanticist blinkers, can we doubt that putting a lipstick of democracy and sappy worker-oriented pseudo-intellectual propaganda lipstick on…

I don’t see job/career titles of “Community Activist” or “Elected (career) Politician” or “Appointed Bureaucrat”; the people occupying these positions need to be accounted for in these charts and graphs.

[…] effect on educational attainment wouldn’t be too meaningful, because, as described in my post The Son Becomes The Father, there is a shared environment on education, but one that doesn’t translate to later […]

Concerning your update “Edit, 6/5/14″ it is interesting to see that self-report measures have higher shared-environmental effect compared to criminal report. I’m not surprised by this result. These measures surely reflect some shared familial experience. If you want studies on the heritability of income, see here. Try to do an CTRL+F and enter “Hyytinen”. One other thing I have noticed is that EEA may be violated for income. Try to enter “EEA appears to be violated”.

I think this essay has shed some light onto my situation and I feel like sharing it with strangers who probably don’t care.
My dad and mom are both socially adept people, but my dad has some sort of personality disorder that I can’t really identify. He’s paranoid (which manifests itself both in personal relationships and politically) and at least in his youth he was quick to aggression.
I must have inherited something from him, perhaps a distaste of authority and a general paranoia – but it manifests itself differently. He’s messed up in a lot of ways, but at least he’s functioning in society. When he was growing up in a poor neighborhood he could and would use violence to solve his problems. (Nowadays he’s a funny guy and uses that to his advantage, although he still doesn’t trust people and he’s not exactly financially successful. I’ve no idea how he’ll survive as an old man with no savings.) I have temper problems but have always chosen not to get violent in public. He chose fight, but I choose flight. Instead of resorting to violence to resolve conflicts, I’ve opted to entirely avoid conflicts because I cannot stand them. I dropped out of highschool because I couldn’t stand having strangers stare at me anymore. I’ve retreated to my room for 4 years, leaving only to take out the trash or do other menial tasks demanded by my parents. Psychologically it’s a hellish existence and I’ve been contemplating suicide because of it. But why did I have to be this way? What traits did I inherit from my parents that have crippled me like this?

According to a Raven’s Advanced Progressive matrices test from iqtest.dk, my IQ is roughly 119. On one hand this makes a bit of sense to me because I can remember attempting to think deeply about things ever since I was a little kid, and I think I’m more thoughtful than the average person (albeit I pale in comparison to the HBD, neo-reactionary, and new right communities, where I’d guess the average IQ of active contributors to be 130 or higher). On the other hand it feels artificial, as if I’ve substituted a slow process speed with….just more time spent thinking. To be fair to myself, exactly how one gets to have a particular IQ might not be too important. If it’s a personality quirk that results in my having prolonged thoughts, that doesn’t really make the IQ “artificial” compared to someone who can analyze and solve problems quickly – though I must admit that I’m extremely jealous of people who are the latter type.

It’s hard for me to gauge my parents’ intelligence. My mom isn’t exactly stupid but she’s not very smart either. I’d guess her IQ to be 110. I’d say my dad’s IQ is lower than that. But of course, IQ isn’t always going to match the parents’ because of natural variation and all that. Anyway, I found this essay extremely compelling and I’m mostly glad I found it. On the other hand I realize the only person I should have kids with is a beautiful, nice, and smart conservative women, of which there seem to be very few these days, and in my current situation would have no chance with anyway.

Reblogged this on Philosophies of a Disenchanted Scholar and commented:
reference

[…] More Behavioral Genetic Facts – The sequel to the previous post, I continue to tie up additional dangling points and affirm the high heritability and lack of “shared environment” impact on traits such as IQ, criminality, emotional/mental problems. I talk about the extended twin design and how it can clear up some dangling questions, like who do we choose our mates? Do spouses influence each other? I mention the key findings of behavioral genetics, namely: […]

[…] The Son Becomes The Father – Here I discuss the recent findings of Gregory Clark (as told in his book The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility), finding a high heritability of social status across time and across space. I square this with what is known from behavioral genetics from the 20th century, noting that evidence for a high genetic effect on all behaviors and all major life outcomes, like the aforementioned life satisfaction, income, criminality, marital stability, etc. I also note that the transmission must be genetic, as evidence shows no parental effect on any of these things. […]

Hm… concerning Molenaar (2013) you should take my earlier comment with pinch of salt. They said that GxE interaction could have diminished GWAS heritability. I thought I could believe them, but after reading the references they cite, it says the opposite. It’s curious they mis-understood it, or maybe their sentence was poorly phrased. After all, GWAS heritability is supposed to get only the additive portion, and GxE can’t be additive, by definition.

Honestly, GWAs seem more important than what the skeptics tend to believe. Since GCTA/GWAS sample only the nonrelated individuals, thus no genetic similarity (unlike twins) the necessary consequence is to remove (almost) entirely GE correlations of all types. This argument does not work anymore. It’s finished. And who is attempting to use that argument again is either a complete ignorant of GWAS or he is still locked up in his ideology.

[…] have recently updated two key posts, my post More Behavioral Genetic Facts and More Maps of the American […]

[…] the dad despite the clear folly of this as per my earlier posts The Son Becomes The Father and More Behavioral Genetic Facts), who has his own 8-factor causal proclamation. It doesn’t occur to many of these people that […]

[…] (who couldn’t resist blaming the dad despite the clear folly of this as per my earlier posts The Son Becomes The Father and More Behavioral Genetic Facts), who has his own 8-factor causal proclamation. It doesn’t […]

[…] states. Indeed, economic historian Gregory Clark in his surname analysis (see my earlier post The Son Becomes The Father) found that the French Canadians in the United States exhibited unusually low upward mobility and […]

When you say rGE is often negative, it depends on which one you are thinking. Passive ? Reactive ? Active ? For the last one, it’s impossible, because it means that people tend to seek environments contra their own genetic propensities. It’s extremely difficult to conceive that. But I can easily conceive that parents and teachers prefer to invest more on low IQ children, thus, in that case you have your passive/reactive negative rGE. Such outcome seems very likely in most of the modern (western) societies where the dominant political orientation is the supra-egalitarianism (just look at how the new book of the french economist Thomas Piketty encounters its success). Now that is said, I want to precise that it seems unlikely that behavioral researchers think about passive/reactive rGE when they use that argument for the explanation of the increase in h2 with age. No, they think about active rGE. It’s obvious when you think that shared environment (c2) don’t have much impact in adulthood, and that rGE shifts from passive to active from childhood to adolescence/adulthood. Nonetheless, you can have a rather strong critic of active rGE from Brant (2013) “The Nature and Nurture of High IQ: An Extended Sensitive Period for Intellectual Development”.

The most prominent theory of developmental increases in the heritability of IQ posits that across development, individuals gain more scope to shape their own environments on the basis of their genetic propensities (active gene-environment correlation), which causes an increase in genetic influence over time (Haworth et al., 2010; Plomin, DeFries, & Loehlin, 1977). Our results challenge this explanation, as they show a later increase in heritability for individuals of higher IQ. To explain our results in the context of active gene-environment correlations, one would need to posit, counterintuitively, that higher-IQ individuals seek out environments concordant with their genetic propensities later in development than do lower-IQ individuals.

The reason for developmental increases in the heritability of IQ thus remains unclear. Other possibilities include amplification of existing genetic influence by increasing population variance in cognitive ability and the simultaneous limiting of environmental influences and introduction of new genetic influences as a result of synaptic pruning processes and myelination at the end of the sensitive period (Plomin, 1986; Plomin et al., 1977; Tau & Peterson, 2010).

Like I used to say, it’s interesting that they dismiss rGE when at the same time they have opened another possibility. The genetic amplification. To be sure, it’s John Fuerst who suggested me this idea, first. Look here.

http://occidentalascent.wordpress.com/2011/01/30/genetic-amplification/

Now, just some ideas, when I was reading your article :

Lot of people expect heritability (h2) to be upwardly biased. In the case of twins, it’s always MZ correlation that is suspected to be biased upwardly. One reason is rGE effects. Suppose that’s true. In that case, I expect rMZ to be much higher than the double of full sibling correlation, because the double is just what an additive model surely expects to find. Because rMZ seems to be just the double of full sibling correlation, that makes me believe there is a high genetic additive component in the IQ. But another, better way to disentangle that difficult question is to look at the h2 of the trait in question in different countries, preferably in very different social environments. For example, you can expect h2 in poor countries such as Africa and India for IQ to be lower. A failure to find difference in h2 would surely dismiss any rGE hypotheses. That’s the best test of the “locality” of h2.

I mention IQ but evidently it goes the same for all behavior traits. It’s just that I did not find the data for them. But if h2 is similar for, say, happiness, trust, agression, openness, and some other things like those, among different countries, with different political regimes, cultures, and different regions, e.g., rural versus urban, then if the h2 are quite comparable under diverse condition, it would seem that neither rGE or GE interaction is likely to produce most of the h2. When researchers attempt to use model-fitting for choosing which hypothesis needs to be retained, it’s no sufficient enough. They must always be accompanied with experiments. Even if your data tells you that you model looks very likely, has the “best fit to the data” that’s meaningless if experiments lead you to reject your model anyway. It’s the same kind of guys who believed they can model financial behaviors, coming to the conclusion that the crisis won’t happen. Well, we see it’s not true. The subprimes reveal quite a lot of bad investments.

Concerning h2 interaction with SES, I don’t think we should be surprised by a possible lower h2 at lower SES. h2 may be expected to move closer to 100% when environments become stable and/or better because in this particular case you don’t have much environmental variation, but on the other hand, the high-risk environments will just add more environmental variation and thus will act to reduce h2. That seems to be common sense. For instance :

One comprehensive review of class and health surveyed mortality rates in Britain from 1921 to 1971 (Black, 1980; Townsend & Davidson, 1982). Everyone was living longer, but the professional classes gained more years than semiskilled and unskilled workers. In 1930, people in the lowest social class had a 23% higher chance of dying at every age than people in the highest social class. By 1970, this excess risk had grown to 61%. A decade later, it had jumped to 150%. In Britain, a National Health Service has long existed to minimize inequalities in access to medical care. The increasing correlation of health and social class makes sense when one realizes that removing environmental impediments makes individual-difference variables more dependent on innate characteristics. (Placing intelligence into an evolutionary framework or how g fits into the r–K matrix of life-history traits including longevity, Rushton 2004)

This aside, the topic is highly controversial, and the topic is fulled of dishonest claims. Researchers always cite Turkheimer, but rarely the studies contra such conclusions. That said, I just wanted to point out this document.

Genotype by Environment Interactions in Cognitive Ability: A Survey of 14 Studies from Four Countries Covering Four Age Groups (Molenaar 2013)

It’s a very important article. They say explicitly that lack of representativeness can distort the direction and magnitude of the GxE interaction. At some extremes, maybe the interaction disappears, or magnifies. IQ measurement is also a possible cause of the inconsistency. Sometimes, it’s verbal IQ that is measured, sometimes, full IQ, sometimes nonverbal IQ. Another problem, less known, is the error measurement in the IQ. In ACE model-fitting, the E component also includes measurement error, and the portion of E that is tied to error variance can give rise to spurious GxE effects. Thus you must use multiple IQ measurements (see how many subtests in your battery, how many items per subtests, etc.) and try to reduce error variance as much as possible. But, interestingly, age can make a difference. Indeed, Molenaar and his team found that in childhood, there is negative GxE, which means lower E at higher level of G. In adolescents, no effect at all. And in adulthood, E was stronger (not smaller) for higher level of G. That runs contra Turkheimer/Rowe/Sluis/Tucker-Drob. Unfortunately, the final result is not easily interpretable because you have lot of differences between the studies and the countries (look their figure 2). In other words, it’s not sure that aggregation makes sense at all. The Molenaar paper is infinitely more important than the Hanscombe. I don’t understand why no one else cited it. Because it’s by far the best one available on that topic. And everyone should read it.

There is also another feature worth noting in Molenaar paper. The authors explicitly stated that the unmodeled GxE interaction might be one reason for the “missing” heritability in GWAS estimates. Another factor of under-estimated GWAS h2 may be population stratification, as mentioned by :

A genome-wide association study for reading and language abilities in two population cohorts (Luciano 2013)

Among the last paragraphs they wrote that when they exclude non-white people in the analysis, the correlation was significant whereas it didn’t when non-whites were included. Stats stuff is really, really, highly complex.

There are dramatic difference in average outcomes between *groups* proportional to how sealed off those *groups* are from the dominant culture in the post-60s West and how much those *groups* promote different behaviors (Mormons, Muslims, Amish etc).

One explanation is boiling off over generations.

Another possibility is that as humans are a social animal then as well as hereditability of individual behaviors there may also be heritability of group conforming behaviors. This might not alter the frequency of inherited individual behaviors but it would alter the level of display of those behaviors.

The change in the dominant culture since the 60s and the change in average behavior among groups not sealed off from the dominant culture – mostly media driven – has been so sudden and dramatic that boiling off is not an option imo so we have a very clear experiment showing that the average difference in behavior between *groups* in the same dominant culture is proportional to how much their group rejected the post 60s culture *and* critically how much their group was also able to seal themselves off from the dominant culture into a sub-cultural bubble.

The post 60s cultural experiment shows that both are required: rejection of the dominant culture and relative isolation from it.

So individual hereditability of behaviors yes, individual parental powerlessness against the dominant culture yes but also the hereditability of group conformity behavior means *groups* who isolate themselves into a sub-cultural bubble can resist the dominant culture.

Great post,

I should say that Harris’ theory talks of peer pressure to differentiate rather than to conform so it’s hard to see how this could turn up as shared environment. While the company is shared the treatment will be differential and it’s the treatment that is the social environment. I suppose the evidence would be found in correlations between peers as adults, if they stabilize as more (inversely) correlated than control groups. That said, these increasing heritability estimates are making the mystery of unique environment a shrinking one.

[…] culture isn’t something they have within themselves? Something that affects behavior while being highly heritable and stable over the lifespan? And why are there so many Asian Americans holding on to face culture […]

As you mentioned before labelling the “25% or something” of human traits as unique enverionment is misleading, since this might not be environmental at all. Possibilities include among others:

- alterations in somatic genome (Mosaicism, Chimerism, X-inactivation for women etc.)
- “noise” from small auto-immune reactions based at random (receptor rearrangement) events during T and B cell maturation
- microbiome (pathogenes alter somatic genome as well)

What do you think are the most likely sources of this 25% non-inherited variability? What percentages would you assign to each possible source?

–

With the advent of surrogacy the effect of uterine environment could actually be deduced. It is tricky, because they cannot be seperated from effects directly caused by the artificial surrogacy (implementation, in vitro fertilisation). Do you know any studies looking at uterine environmental effects?

“There are two aspects where spouses are highly correlated – the things you don’t talk about in a bar: politics and religion”

But what is your theory to explain the high correlation on religiosity and political trends between spouses? it seems you are suggesting a homotypic preference.

First we should bear in mind that within-pair matching for a feature may arise even if people pay no attention to this feature in prospective partners. So marry each other depends partly on the structure of the marriage market and social stratification, the effect propinquity / nearness has on our pool of potential mates, and also involves cultural norms of endogamy, or the choice to marry within a group.

Owing to physical proximity and ease to contact, people in a romantic pair tend to come from the same rather than different social groups. This is why partners are usually similar in characteristics associated with a social group, such as age (due to attending to schools), education and social status, etc.

On the other hand, I doubt that there is a mate preference for these kind of personality traits (i.e. religiosity, politics) determined by a genetic locus.

Furthermore, from an overall genetic framework, we should not forget such mechanisms as inbreeding depression and heterozygous advantage, so I’d assume that same-type matings are less fertile than different-type mating. If all individuals have a disassortative mating preference a viability-reducing trait may be maintained even without the fertility cost of same-type matings; a disassortative mating preference can be established even if it is initially rare, when there is a fertility cost of same-type matings.

Moreover, an assortative mating preference is less likely to evolve than a disassortative mating preference. This may be applicable to the evolution of MHC-disassortative mating preferences documented in animals and humans.

As you know, although Handscombe’s study failed to find an SES-heritability interaction there are a number of papers other than Turkheimer’s 2003 paper that have found this effect. Given that at least some of these studies have reasonable sample sizes and utilize the normal MZA-DZA model. Why do you think some studies find an interaction affect and others don’t ?

I feel that everything has a genetic component, and part of that is the susceptibility to a triggering event or the possibility that a therapeutic intervention can make a difference or not. Personally, I’d rather see the strong evidence for heritability and work around that for exceptions and modifications than deal with the “Environmental Causation” folks who don’t narrow down the factors they’re looking at because they are so insightful that they “look at the big picture.”

Even in the strongest arguments for the genetic heritability of behaviors and disorders, I don’t see such a degree of absolute determinism that modification to environment or behavior is completely dismissed out of hand.

>One key question: how do they assess “trust”? Just how good was their measurement? Measurements in social science need to meet three basic criteria: they need to be reliable (that is multiple testing instances of the same individual should give roughly the same results), they need to be “valid” (that is, be predictive of some real-world outcome), and they should be heritable.

Doesn’t the third criterion make the “all behavioral traits are heritable” a tautology?

You have gradually and quite completely won me over to your “extreme” position on the issues you discuss. Still, it seems to me their is room for misunderstanding (or maybe I am misunderstanding?) in terms of the take-away that a lot of people will have to your position. For instance, a generation or two back African Americans were famous for their good manners, no doubt because of the way they were taught be their parents in combination with the fact that white society would not tolerate the kind of bad manners (ghetto manners) which are so common today. Maybe you cover this when you emphasize that your position does not hold when different generations are being discussed?

Or take the issue of child sexual abuse: obviously different children are affected in different ways by such abuse (I know a woman for whom it seems to have triggered a borderline personality disorder) and let us stipulate for the purposes of argument that you are absolutely correct (and I believe you are) when you say these different reactions are mediated by genetic differences. Still, it would be a shame if people came away with the idea that child sexual abuse didn’t matter. Somehow you need to emphasize this side of your argument more effectively if you want it to be more widely accepted. I think.

[…] my earlier post on Gregory Clark’s work, The Son Becomes The Father, I laid bare the case for the known high heritability of human behavioral traits (including values […]

College education is now used as a marker for other characteristics. That is the primary reason college educated people earn more, not what they learned in school. People who attend college and drop out just earn 10% more than high school grads, while college grads earn 83% more on average. Today Lincoln couldn’t become a lawyer without 19 years of formal education, wouldn’t be possible.

Formal education is not the only kind. One can be self taught, read a lot, and get exposed to others who know a lot and learn stuff from them.

Re: the importance of education: it’s good to remember that two of America’s most accomplished people, Benjamin Franklyn and Abraham Lincoln, had between them a total of three years of formal education.

Another thing, this time a question, somewhat off topic: surveys of happiness show that countries in South America are happier on average than in North America. Yet South Americans also score significantly lower on IQ. So my question is, to take it to extremes: can you have a stupid, dysfunctional societies full of happy people (a la Idiocracy)? I would be interested in the historical dynamics of such societies: how long do they last, what do they give way to? H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine has an interesting take on this.

Re: the importance of education: it’s good to remember that two of America’s most accomplished people, Benjamin Franklyn and Abraham Lincoln, had between them a total of three years of formal education.

“@ Mark: Please explain how being raised by a single, high-class professional (my mother) was worse for me than being raised in a household where my father regularly beat my mother.”

It was not worse for you in terms of significant adult outcomes. I’m sure it distressed you as a kid, and you obviously have bad memories of it. But it didn’t ruin your adult life, no.

Well I do live in the North East which as Staffan has pointed out is a higher Neuroticism area of the country so it may just be that everyone is neurotic around here, not just the smart. Part of the problem though is that I score absurdly low on Neuroticism, essentially zero (I am similar to The Dude Lebowski in many many ways, except perhaps a tad higher on the cognitive scale), making even what others would consider normal levels of anxiousness, worry, and concern, feel annoying to me. It’s no big deal though, It’s not like I worry about it.

@Jayman,

“According to this review neuroticism appears negatively correlated with IQ (r = -0.15). Not very strong, but there we are. Maybe you’re getting the neurotic smart people? Maybe Staffan will want to chip in?”

Only to say that -0.15 is very little and that there is research suggesting that this is mediated by test anxiety. Woody Allen and others portray it as an intellectual trait but this may relate more to guilt culture, common among some Jews as well as Northwest Europeans, than to neuroticism in general.

@ Mark: Please explain how being raised by a single, high-class professional (my mother) was worse for me than being raised in a household where my father regularly beat my mother.

Chick could publish her research and it would be her publication same as for anyone else who publishes.

So much has been written now about tribalism, individualism, universalism etc., that at the very least, Chick could publish -from the wealth of cross-cultural and historical case-study material that she has painstakingly read and reviewed and appraised- in support of existing hypotheses.

But is it not so that Chick’s unique hypothesis is that, if all the various other hypotheses – pertaining to fitness, altruism, family & marriage, manorialism, christianity – are brought together, a theory emerges; sexual selection as a key driver in civic (and other) social structures.

But….I’m struggling with the coincidence that just up the road from the outbreeding project (and many years before) lactase neoteny took place, cattle breeding started, and megalith structures were built through collective action for communal purpose with people aggregating from hundreds of miles away. How do we explain this? Is there magic in the Gulf Stream?

Om Yogi Om ”
In my circles there’s a lot of intellectually smart but technically stupid people. They can analyse philosophy, art and culture all day long, and that’s about it. I think a liberal arts degree does that to people.”

Om Yogi Om,
majority of teachers for example, to be intellectually stupid. Huuuuum, my impression show us that humanities to be the central nervous system of liberalism. Beyond the bio-behavioral nature of creative people, the selection of people with strong liberal views as well contribute to these situation in humanities, but many of the most smart and compromissed divergent thinkers are derived by this cognitive verbal universe.
Creative people are very variable in their ideological views (less the most famous, grace by the liberal mèrdia) (and many of creatives in fact, are not higher creatives). Many deep thinkers, group derived by creatives, to be the very higher intelectual capacity, the real philosophers, ideoilogically free minds. Like us…
Complexity of humanity today achieve such a high level that only very smart people is able to understand.

”But why are they “conservative” if family, environment, culture, behavior and choices ultimately don’t matter? If none of that matters and one can do exceedingly well “letting it all hang out” and raising one’s kids amongst the dregs of society (where often times more fun is had) then why be conservative?

Why work so hard for oneself and ones family if it doesn’t matter?

Hello?!?!?!”

Om Yogi Om,
you to be accusing me about it?? I’m not understand. I’m not against conservatism, i’m against the past of REAL oppression of conservatism, as today happens with liberalism against divergent thoughts and people. To me, sincerely, can the two ideological groups killed themselves, both are not as angels in the Earth, never was.
The problem about the world is, liberals are right about many’things, conservatives also are right about many other things. They are complements. Satan love these divisions.
If, liberals live in their world and conservative in their world, we do not would this problems.
When a neonazis with suastika tatoos, a jews and a black panthera can coexist, respect their spaces and use the dialogue and not the animalesque aggression, the world will a better place, without any doubt about it. But for it, will necessary extinct the own human nature.

“Hbd is a sophisticated ‘conservative oriented’ answer to liberalism today,”

But why are they “conservative” if family, environment, culture, behavior and choices ultimately don’t matter? If none of that matters and one can do exceedingly well “letting it all hang out” and raising one’s kids amongst the dregs of society (where often times more fun is had) then why be conservative?

Why work so hard for oneself and ones family if it doesn’t matter?

Hello?!?!?!

Gottlieb,

“The technically smart and intelectually stupid is the most powerfull enemies against the true of facts.”

In my circles there’s a lot of intellectually smart but technically stupid people. They can analyse philosophy, art and culture all day long, and that’s about it. I think a liberal arts degree does that to people.

“And even if parents did have some kind of effect in India, the evidence is abundantly clear they have no effect here in the West”

That’s why I said “culture people, CULTURE”.

No chill pills or me, thanks. I’m an herbalist.

”The radical homosexual HAD ALREADY INFORMED “us” that mothers and fathers are meaningless in rearing a child. “They” made this pronouncement over a decade ago. They claimed that ALL that was needed was a “loving environment.”

Good question. Jayman and the other few so called “HBD” bloggers I’ve skimmed seem to be all up in this concept of “family values” and against government having input into families and how kids are raised.

If it doesn’t matter, then WHY?

Thordaddy,
i see some problems about interpretation of data here, SPECIALLY when the subject is about ”meritocracy”. I believe in the possibility in meritocracy, but today, this not there or if there is very slight…
Born in a right place in a right time is very important. What’s the chances to a smart person born in a favela in Nigeria compared than smart american born in New York??? I’m not try to say or suggest that there a enormous quantity of talents undiscovered in Nigeria, only for comparison, but indeed there smart people who live in a poorer conditions grace to stupid people around.
What was the chance of a white smart guy born in a proletarian street of Notthingham in XIX??
I’m not a classicist, but i believe in a natural aristocracy and these is not based in blood but in character, specially when we observe who ”dark” and ”fair” personality traits varies within the families.
Poor environment created by lack of ”smart genes” of the populations around is a important factor that underdeveloped the entire smart fraction of a one nation (not only, measure and identified by iq).
Like i said in Hbd Chick post and to take similar quote to Bruce Charlton, today modern educational system selected against the really smart guys and girls and priorize the low intense personality and technical intelligence. These people today fight against all danger of the system that make them riches, socially prominent or economically safe. Education specialist fight against darwinian or non-soo lamarckian perspectives. Diversity campus rectors fight against counter arguments to racial cognitively unfair quotas. The technically smart and intelectually stupid is the most powerfull enemies against the true of facts.
When HBD find excuses to explain why many higher iq people believe strongly in lamarckian assumptions is a way to justify the deterministic and simplistic hbd perspective about iq and intelligence correlation.
The problem about meritocracy today and in the past is about collective transcendence. Nations selected some phenotypes to determined goal, des-selected in counterpart this groups that don’t serve this objectives.

I’m try ressurect the lamarckian theory, was he wrong in all its assumptions???
Darwin explain how mechanisms work to adaptative, micro or contextual evolution. ”I think” in ”repetitive movements” can cause mutations, not in a one human generation scale as monsieur Lammarck was suggest but in a specie evolution scale (as for comparison, geologic time). During their lifes individuals suffer by random and non-random mutations (if not, there would be no cancer), of course, if you have intense personality combined by great intelect so your brain will suffer mutations cause these personal interaction with the environment and its demands. I see human beings and beings as Planets, with all of components that characterized the Planets and with a geological ”stratum”. Indeed, your kid is your continuation and of its family.

oh – i should also add that another big inspiration came from the economist avner greif who connected the church’s cousin marriage bans and “corporatism” in european societies. again, though, he missed out on the biology of it (the inclusive fitness connection and selection for traits, etc., etc.). still, he was very much on the right track.

yup. standing on a lot of shoulders am i! (^_^)

well, i actually think i kinda-sorta did, although the idea was obviously HIGHLY inspired by steve and kurtz. steve sailer never discussed outbreeding afaik — only inbreeding and inclusive fitness when discussing iraq/afghanistan and democracy (his Cousin Marriage Conundrum article). (stanley kurtz didn’t discuss inclusive fitness or biology at all.) i remember inverting it in my head and wondering: well, if inbreeding hinders the development of democracy, did some sort of outbreeding promote it in europe?

in any case, william hamilton got there before all of us — in the 1960s/70s. (^_^)

There are many distractions in modern societies, and even though a child is intelligent they might not be as motivated as they need to be.

One can view the behavior of some Chinese parents as being selected to ensure that more of their offspring get to the pinnacle of their society and pass on their genes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZt-pOc3moc

”Gottlieb…

You are missing my point…

My point was that before the “jaymans” and HBD crowd “enlightened” us on the negligible effect of “parenting” there was another radical collective making assertions MUCH MORE SPECIFIC without a scintilla of “data” to back the assertion.

In this order of “cause and effect,” HBD seems to be a lagging indicator of an imprecisely defined phenomena.

The radical homosexual HAD ALREADY INFORMED “us” that mothers and fathers are meaningless in rearing a child. “They” made this pronouncement over a decade ago. They claimed that ALL that was needed was a “loving environment.”

Where is the HBD answer on this much more specific question?

So now we have a more complete picture. The “science” looks suspiciously like ideological confirmation with room for plausible deniability (um… we weren’t really looking for the effect of specific mothers and fathers on child rearing just “parenting” in general). And when you add to this milieu “scientist” doing this “science” unwillingly (without free will) then things look doubly suspicious.

BUT THEN…

There is a third angle…

The “nerd” perspective and his obliviousness to the bigger picture… As in, “science” used to spread ideological driven fallacies.

But “nerd” DOES NOT get “dumb blond” benefit ESPECIALLY when he’s a “black” male. Lol.”

Thordaddy,

soo sorry again but i don’t find what do you to want to say. I go try to replicate your observations (off topic) but i’m not understanding your points.
Half of your comment i understand that the supposed non-existence of free will (people really believe strongly in abstract concepts, unbelievable) will can used to prove that ”parenting effect” is also inexistent. I’m right?
I believe not exactly in ”parenting effect” like as trivial nurturist perspective but in differences in personality phenotypes and its possibly non-directly-genetic influences and degrees.
Most important to analyse ”behavioral traits” is analyse ”personality phenotypes”, a combination of this traits, ’cause people are not a single behavior traits obviously. I read somewhere that the sociopathy is more influenced by environment than psychopathy. I strongly believe that some people to be more influenced by ‘environmental factors” (genetic anthropomorfized constructions, concrete or abstract). Important now is prove it, catalog,classify, identify and test.

”Loving environment” can work for some people but not for other, in fact there many complex things who ”us” should analyse that today i have the impression that genetic factors are more important than environmental factors because this first are assuredly obvious, without genes us do not there, simply. Even if was proved that we are as blank paper, our genes would as our pencil or pen, deny this is like a mental disorder to understand the basic.
If there some personality types like some sociopathic personality that is more influenced by ”gene-construction of social landscape”, aka, environmental factors, so why not others types also could to be more influenced?

Hbd is a sophisticated ‘conservative oriented’ answer to liberalism today, nothing wrong about that, only liberals can do it? Is necessary today, strongly necessary to be people who have feets in the groud.
But the problem about extreme perspective is that it tend to deny all or majority of these assumptions raised by your opponent, this a problem. Liberals are not wrong about all of their assumptions but today, they are intoxicated by your ego, like as conservatives were one century before.

The last part of your comment i see who you don’t hear my request to stop to used ad hominean ”arguments”, i see who you is a smart guy, stop to use their neurons to do personal attacks, is a waste. Interesting that Jayman, even beeing a ”black” (in true, he is mixed race, stupid ”hypodescendence” of one drope rule) ”accept” (he do not accept, he know and do not need to accept) many facts that work ”against” him. But it is not true because i think that he want improve the quality of life in your homeland and make REALLY the world a better place.
I’m strongly against these possible public actions about homossexuality found by Jayman and Cochran, because like i always said, is much early to do any action to supposed ”pathogen”. I got proppose to Jayman to analyse the role of pathogens not only about non-reproductive sexual behaviors but also to more profound questions like, the concrete (and not verbally scientifically build concept) nature of human genes, what in fact are the mutations, etc.

Gottlieb…

You are missing my point…

My point was that before the “jaymans” and HBD crowd “enlightened” us on the negligible effect of “parenting” there was another radical collective making assertions MUCH MORE SPECIFIC without a scintilla of “data” to back the assertion.

In this order of “cause and effect,” HBD seems to be a lagging indicator of an imprecisely defined phenomena.

The radical homosexual HAD ALREADY INFORMED “us” that mothers and fathers are meaningless in rearing a child. “They” made this pronouncement over a decade ago. They claimed that ALL that was needed was a “loving environment.”

Where is the HBD answer on this much more specific question?

So now we have a more complete picture. The “science” looks suspiciously like ideological confirmation with room for plausible deniability (um… we weren’t really looking for the effect of specific mothers and fathers on child rearing just “parenting” in general). And when you add to this milieu “scientist” doing this “science” unwillingly (without free will) then things look doubly suspicious.

BUT THEN…

There is a third angle…

The “nerd” perspective and his obliviousness to the bigger picture… As in, “science” used to spread ideological driven fallacies.

But “nerd” DOES NOT get “dumb blond” benefit ESPECIALLY when he’s a “black” male. Lol.

Gottlieb…

The are three positions on “free will” in my estimation.

1. No “free will” (jayman’s position)
2. Some “free will” in a limited, materialist paradigm.
3. Free will as an experience… Extant, temporal, unmeasurable.

So what do we “observe?”

IN REALITY, #3 can accommodate both #1 and #2.

#2 can compromise with #1 but must reject #3 AND BECOME practically equal to #1.

THE REALITY OF #1 cannot CONTAIN #2 or #3, but DOES SO, apparently unwillingly.

So #1 is observably an extreme position. To push it publicly MEANS SOMETHING, does it not?

What does it mean?

I’m not talking about mental illness. More the big five’s neuroticism trait. Think Woody Allen and the characters he’s written for himself (and for many other characters in his movies) over and over. It’s not crazy exactly, but damn it’s exhausting to be around.

@Mark There are likely reasons your father chose her and it might well be the same reasons you worship her as well. People don’t have to be brilliant to be wonderful. There’s a great deal to be said for friendliness, warmth, and charm. I’d rather hang out with fun amicable people of average intelligence than brilliant but pretentious self satisfied snobs (and I often do). I don’t know why intelligence so often comes with a bucket brimming with numerous neurosis, but I am often saddened by it.

~S

An important aspect of the phenomenon is that the prosperous for much of pre-industrial history had about twice as many surviving offspring as the poor. This means that the right half of the bell curve was growing and the left half was shrinking. I expect that Norman surnames are more common today than they “should” be all up and down the SES axis.

Great post,

I looked up the 100 richest Swedes and there were 37 times as many names from the nobility as you’d expect from their share of the population. It’s basically setting up your own ethnic group by mild inbreeding (or in some cases severe). As for the dark traits, I don’t think psychopathy will contribute much to success given that it entails poor impulse control. Pure lack of empathy could work better. Anecdotally, it’s my distinct impression that the nobility here are narcissistic whereas the equally rich Jews are more machiavellian. Not sure why but I imagine that the nobility, traditionally landowners, woud rely on social status, having people think they are better, as a protection against angry peasants. (Why machiavellian traits are common in Jews is probably due to them traditionally being into business.)

I was surprised to see the Minnesota study for MZAs (who volunteered, oops) found a rho of only .69 for the WAIS fullscale and .64 for bp.

bp varies quite a bit. it’s even less reliable than IQ. so if it were corrected for reliability…

But anyone save those with kidney problems or an adrenal tumor can reduce his bp to 100/60! It’s been done.

It can be soberly and solemnly concluded that IQ is not heritable in any significant sense!

And I’m in the bgi study. Too bad. I just got lucky!

Well, there is another thing about “no parental effect”. This is all about so called “normal” families, e.g. short of abuse etc. E.g. in MAOA studies, children with 3-allele version have higher probability of problematic behaviour when raised in “abusive” families, but were, IIRC, not visibly different from other children when raised in “normal” families (regardless of parenting style).

Seems parents may disturb normal development of children, but not so much aid it.

Few years ago I read the data about effect of divorce and single parenthood. I remember at that time I was amazed that one type of “single parents” homes were mostly devoid of negative effects: homes in which one of parents have died. While divorce always caused immediate problems and sometimes long-term negative effects as well (more problematic for boys than for daughters), death of mother or father seem to have only short-term effects but not long-term impact (in statistical sense). i was puzzled at that time. I guess I shouldn’t.

But remember we are talking about “long-term” effects. There may be short term effects, which will however have diminishing influence on children outcomes in adult life. That is, I _believe_ based on what I read, that divorce impact (bare genetic predisposition for certain character trait which caused the divorce in the first place) may have effect when you are 16, less visible when you 20, and non-existant by 40 (numbers taken from thin air).

I can see why both conservatives and liberals don’t like you. However, facts have no ideology. I was just musing that my late mother was a lovely woman, and she sort of blamed herself that none of her 3 sons (including me) has been a great success in life. None of us have ever had very good jobs and income or successful personal relationships, and we gave her no grandchildren. I did struggle through college and finish, which I must have managed due to genes inherited from my high I.Q. dad. I wish I could have told her that her behavior had nothing to do with how we turned out. Interestingly, I recently discovered that all of us boys, independent of each other and without talking about it between ourselves, have constructed little “shrines” to mom in our apartments with pictures of her and memorabilia. We all must have gotten the gene which caused that!

“There’s an ancient Sanskrit saying from one of the Vedas that the “son becomes the father”.”

And we have a ritual for it too. Again, CULTURE.

“The failure of parents to appreciably affect the outcomes of their children….”

Failure of parents to affect the outcomes of their children only happens in cultures (such as Western) where individuality is emphasized, even at the cost of the family.

In South Asia there is no such failure of parents to appreciably affect the outcomes of the children. The majority of marriages are still arranged and most kids grow up to go into the professions that their parents tell them to.

Culture, people. Culture.

Thordaddy,
”szopeno…

There is another fanatical collective that absolutely rejects the influence of “parenting” except that this collective is much more particular in its claim as compared to the HBD expression. They don’t merely deny the influence of “parenting,” they reject the effect of a mother and father, completely. As in, they claim that ALL a child needs is a “loving environment.” In reality, this IS WHAT HBD is actually saying with its slightly different “interpretation” of the “data.” And in ironic “opposition” is a “deeper truth” that has absolutely no supporting data. It’s pure claim with HBD running a support role. There is ideological collusion behind the scenes. Homosexuals and HBDers are like hand and glove in this affair.”

Thordaddy,
i have two brothers with similar ages and can to say with certaintie to you, this ”parent effects” for me was ZERO. The only non-very well analysed component could to be ”genetic similarity among son and fathers”. My mother love so much my older brother, is a observable fact. Interesting that, fathers love their problematic kids and despise their non-problematic kids, why????
My mother have similar personality and obviously similar interest. My older brother also is ”facially” similar as my mother face.
Environment is, particular desires derived of the personalities. Is not, ”people are environmentally affected by actions of others” but ”RESPOND individual and personalized-genetically to events”.
Your environmental thinking to me also to be a way of deny free will or desire.
Internal conflict (like creative broken personality) growing self awareness and free will, genius derived by this. Even if free will ”don’t there” (and you are chronologically programmed to act as animals or greater majority and in a degrees of non-human species) the internal conflict make you open your eyes.

There’s an ancient Sanskrit saying from one of the Vedas that the “son becomes the father”.

Thordaddy,
i want who you stop to make ad hominean comments and centralize your attention in a discussion here and not try search problems, many them personally idealized, into a person that write the text, this inscounterproductive and sorry, but also is stupid.
First, we have to understand the concept of ”free will”. The adjective ”free” initially to be wrong. If we to be really free, indeed, we could fly immediately when you want, but not. We are not total free but the birds are not ”free’ because they can fly. The limite define ”liberty” in your pure concept, make what do you want. To all things, abstract and concretes, there degrees among the extremes or opposite poles (aka spectra). We understand who ”total liberty is also like a slavery” then.
Animals or non-human species, in my opinion, to be very focused in your ”way of survive”, they to seems exactly like robots of movie fictions. (my impression,only) Humans, like i always said, are very deviant than nature and our way to evolution is change us more and more in a ”anti-nature” species because we since the early period of our historical obscure existence are envolved in a disadvantageous behavior when compares or into a perspective to non-human strategies. We are not ”body-mind system” but, my opinion again (always, i’m not a ocean of certainties), we are as two simbiotic system, mind AND body”. For it, we are what we are.
Deny the (Limited but existent) human free will is like deny yourself, deny the ”I’m”, deny our capacity to imagine the future, deny our capacity to choice, deny our desire. Animals can’t control ”it’selves, they born, quickly sexually mature, reproduce and die. SOME humans can control if want or not have children. Pathogens?? I don’t know but if to be, well, this ”pathogens” define our identity as singular species. Every human and specially, the most cognitive evolved type are like as individual species, majority of animals or non-human species are like as twins or very-near biological relative. The phenotypical diversity contained in a whole non-human species can be founded in only one human family (but no genetics).
I agree with you about the (some times) pedantic trends of science to try explain all things and ”supposed obvious things, like racial differences in intelect but you can’t deny the role of the genes.
Jayman believe that if the genes have the predominant role to architect our behavior, so we not have ”free will” (was that i understand Jayman) because this. I disagree, if us are our genes, don’t there ”genes govern us”, because you ”can’t to be controled by other-yourself, you is you, you to be the genes, you is every cell, every part of you, no chance. Like i said, action is derived by desire, desire is the first component, action is a result or not of a desire. When i talk about genes, i want to talk about you. If free will don’t there, then desire don’t there. The problem about dicotomy ”genes and environment” is basically these dualistic perspective.

Gottlieb says,

Genes OR ”environment”, is a central problem about the initial thinking of Jayman…

More particularly, jayman’s “central problem” is MERELY genes and environment without man’s free will EVEN a “free will” conceptually collapsed INSIDE the gene/environment paradigm. Meaning, in a less limited reality there are genes, environment AND man’s free will existing outside the LIMITED material paradigm BUT still operating within it. Jayman’s first delusion is that of a knowledge of a larger reality. He actually “endeavors” to LIMIT the scope of reality FOR ALL OF US. There are only two things we really know about the modern evolutionist; he denies man’s free will and no two will give you the same mechanism for the “evolution” of life. But the delusion goes even deeper when you dig towards the fundamental assertion of a “jayman” which is, “I “observe” no free will in the data.” A self-evident impossibility. For us provincial folks, free will is readily observed in the traditional manner. As in, we see free will all around with our apparently lying eyes. Now, here comes a “jayman” to tell us what we see with our own eyes in not actually the manner in which to truly observe free will. No, we have to go to the data and “observe” what it tells us and it tells “us” that we have no free will. Of course, this means that the “jaymans” of the world, so adamant in convincing the masses that they have no free will, are unwillingly “doing” what they are doing. Meaning, the “jaymans” are BEING FORCED to convince the masses that they posses no free will. It’s like self-fulfilling “science,” but WHO is forcing the “jaymans” to do this and WHY?

If free will seriously exists, why don’t you convert to homosexuality and suck my ****? There.

The only right way to respond to an incorrigible troll such as this is rudeness.

[JayMan: Easy, my man, easy. Yup, his comments are nonsensical, and yup, I'm getting my fill, but gotta respect the commenters nonetheless.].

”Gottlieb,

If the crude equation is human action/illusion of free will/input + environment/fixed process/program = output/free will/illusion of free will then how can we infer that the human action/illusion of free will/input is necessarily limited by an environment/fixed process/program?”

Thordaddy,
i’m not understand clearly what you want to say above but i fish the last part (i think). The immediate actions would be as strong genetic (or organic) factors. Reflexion or thinking would be as ” my genes make me do it” ”and now, what i can do??”. Two forces, your thinking, a result, a reaction of action AND the action, non-free will here. Free will would be when you have the capacity to reflect your action or thinking. Free will is a combination of empathy and self awareness. If you can choices (but this not mean that you will make the better choices) you have a ”free” or alternative will??
The problem of Jayman thought that is he believe in a dualist thinking ”to be or not”. Genes OR ”environment”, is a central problem about the initial thinking of Jayman in my non-soo humble opinion, all of rest is derived of this beliefs, sorry Jay man.

Family = Clan = Ethnicity = Race. They are essentially interchangeable, the only thing distinguishing the succeeding term from the one preceding it being size, and saying that the transition points between these terms are hazy and indistinct is a major understatement. A big, related family or group of related families is a clan; a big, related clan or group of related clans is an ethnicity; a big, related ethnicity or group of related ethnicities is a race.

Steve Sailer pithily summed this up nearly two decades ago, describing a race as an extended family with some level of in-breeding present.

From this, we discern things like what La Griffe du Lion calls the fundamental constant of sociology, the implications being, among other things, that if both a white couple with IQs of 115 and a black couple with IQs of 115 each have a child, chances are the child from the white union is going to have a higher IQ than child from the black union. It’s far from certain that as much would be the case when only a single white and single black couple are being considered, but take 100 white and 100 black couples as described above, and it’s virtually guaranteed that, on average, the collective white litter will have a higher average IQ.

Intelligence is just one aspect of countless other characteristics–seemingly all traits are heritable to some degree–but just this one is often too much for most polite people to handle. The truth is no less evitable in spite of them, of course.

Working from the ground up, so-to-speak, is probably the most socially and politically effective way to spread the HBD word.

So, single moms (and their sperm donors) just have worse genes? Encouraging marriage would make no difference, but encouraging people to make better choices regarding who they mate with would? Am I understanding you correctly?