Gil?!?!?

Urban dicdtionary

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Catcher

Pitcher/Catcher

That's actually a good summary.

Japan is the place among all others where standing out from the crowd is an admirable virtue?

Hofstede would say, I think, that this seeming contradiction is a consequence of low individualism.

Which I understand, but then the lack of orthogonality among components makes this challenging. When is being the Man in the Grey Flannel Suit a quality of "femininity" and when is it a quality of "collectivism"? When is caring for others linked to "collectivism" and when is it linked to "femininity"? When is having a focus on quality of life rather than discipline and success linked to "masculinity" and when to "indulgence/restraint"?

The sum of Hostede's factors represent personality fairly descriptively, yet each factor does not seem to be informative individually.

The Japanese perhaps do prioritize discipline and success over happiness, and I'm sure the masculinity factor denotes something, but whether it is anything particularly male….

In individual personality research, it is typical to represent masculinity and femininity as two separate personality traits – usually men score high in masc and women in fem, but there are exceptions and variance. That might've been a better approach.

Right. I had misgivings about the results when I compared Korea and Finland. Korea was considered to be a feminine society despite having arguably the most grueling and competitive work/study cultures. Didn't make much sense to me.

http://viakorea.wordpress.com/2013/02/05/is-korea-really-a-feminine-society/

Something about it just feels right to me.

Japan does give off something of a manly vibe.

On the surface Russia may seem manly, but they have to deal with endemic corruption, poor infrastructure, lack of societal values, etc. that all speak to a lack of ordnung.

A more masculine society wouldn't have to deal with stupid problems like unpaved streets and tuberculosis because it would have a certain level of masculine "orderliness" so those things would be taken care of–see: Japan.

Russia resembles the clothes-strewn floor of a teenage girl's bedroom.

Great Britain used to be the manliest country in the world, and it's empire was the demonstration of that.

I'm of Slovenian heritage, with grandparents that emigrated from Yugoslavia. Wife beating is definitely not acceptable in my family, nor in my extended family.

I'm of Slovenian heritage, with grandparents that emigrated from Yugoslavia. I can't speak for an entire country, but wife beating is definitely not acceptable in my family, nor in my extended family.

…completely overrun with Muslims that form the bulk of their rape statistics.

We are not overrun by Muslims, though there are many here. We are overrun but Swedes and other white people though.

As for being raped by Muslims, it is the same in all the West, but so far only Norway have published the statistics.

South Korea now has the highest suicide rate in the world, and inside the country it' the elderly who have the highest rate.

South Korea’s Struggle With Suicide

These questions mean different things to the different nations.

To a German (and to a lesser extent a Briton or one of the imperial West Europeans), asking if he'd fight for his country means asking if he'd sign up for a dose of the good old imperial conquest.

To a Norwegian or a Finn, it really does mean fighting to defend his soil.

To Russians, something in between, but then they don't really see the good old Russian imperial conquest in that much of a negative light anyway.

In an unambiguous situation (i.e. not a pseudo-imperialist and misguided "Irak Attack"), I suspect the West Europeans would have as much fight in them as the Scandiwegians.

I'm not so sure that the growth of chains like CVS and Walgreen's is primarily a result of the aging population. They've slotted themselves very nicely into a market niche between convenience stores and larger stores such as Wal-Mart, Target, and supermarkets. Health-related items only account for a fairly small percentage of the floor space in a typical CVS or Walgreen's.

Peter

I'd still rather have an older population than a young one. I get the impression that advancements in medicine and technology are pushing our healthy lifespan longer. So I'm not convinced that aging is problem. Among the upper middle class, I more often see healthy, youthful looking middle age folks today than 20 years ago.

I'm not buying any chance of euthanasia ever gaining acceptance in the West other than as an unserious fringe movement. Old people have way too much power, wealth, and time on their hands (and a lack of diversity that enhances their cohesiveness) so they will push around the young and continue to extract resources from them for the foreseeable future.

Exhibit A – The special section in the Wall Street Journal today is on how old people have it so bad because they aren't receiving grandkids quickly enough. Talk about first world problems (in more ways than one).

#2: Norway, at 87.6% "would fight for country."

…completely overrun with Muslims that form the bulk of their rape statistics.

"Would fight," my fat Irish ass!

Re Russian Jews and Euro Russians, a while ago I recoded the variable Jew as rJew, where 0 is subject self classifies as not any sort of Jew, to try and sift out Jewish respondents on the Russians. That reduces the Russian sample size from 93 to 47.4. Another variable I recoded as rJewish (can't quite remember which) reduces the sample size to the same size, for what it's worth.

Anyway, in this selection filter (should you chose to accept it) the Russian membership in categories 1 and 2 is (3.2+7.5), so 10.7%, lower than the Russians here, but still higher than most White ethnics.

When I broaden the year range to 1980-2010 to get a bigger sample and look at wordsum means, the above "Russian, non-Jewish" by the above variables hits around the average White Wordsum for the sample, while the "Russian, Jewish" hits around the Jewish mean for the whole sample, if that helps confirm or deny.

My guess is that surnames are a major determinant of European ethnic identity. For instance, if you're a typical white American, a mixture of many different European ancestries with no cultural ties to any of them, and your father's father's father's father was a German immigrant named Schmidt, your surname would be Schmidt and you'd probably identity as "German" entirely on that basis.

Peter

(paradigmo is Staffan.)

Seven Northwesterners in the top. But less evident in the ancestral stats. This is probably partly due to the fact that many people left Europe for religious reasons.

Russia seems like an anomaly. They are not very intelligent, and not outbred and modern like NWs. And yet not very religious either.

There is a reaction though. There has been a considerable rise in nationalist parties in Europe, even in a place like Holland where Gert Wilders PVV became the third largest party in 2012. And there are pretty smart countries in Eastern Europe that have rejected multiculturalism, like Finland, Estonia and Poland.

"The paradox presented here for many like myself is that the places inspiring the warmest feelings and that I would like most to live in are the places that tend to put the least effort into maintaining what they have. It's tragic."

It's a good quote – and it is tragic.

Where's Japan in those surveys?

spagetiMeatball: There may be nutritional or other environmental issues which are holding down Azerbaijan's mean IQ. Many countries in West Africa have mean IQs in the low 70s, while their descendants in the U.S. are about 85. The European admixture in the U.S. black population is not enough to account for that difference. The lack of famine in the U.S., along with various policies to ensure that certain micronutrients (particularly iodine) are available to everyone, has a lot to do with that gap.

Severe malnutrition as a child, even if only for a few months, can stunt the child's intellectual development. Iodine deficiency (and some others) will also do that. So eliminating those factors will raise the national IQ rapidly – the existing adults are pretty much stuck where they are, but the next generation can be much smarter than the current one with the right policies.

So: for Azerbaijan: Make sure that iodine is available to everyone – possibly by requiring that all salt in the country is iodized (or just subsidizing iodizing salt and other foods). Make sure that kids don't go hungry – in the U.S., we make sure that all kids get lunch at school. If the parents aren't poor, the kid has to pay; if the parents are poor, the kid gets lunch free. That may not be ideal in Azerbaijan, but something to make sure that even when harvests are poor, kids get fed nutritious food is *important*.

Excellent post. I tried to use the data you extracted to draw some conclusions about Chinese attitudes towards citizenship:
http://lawandborder.com/?p=2691.

Am I off base, or are there other conclusions I should be drawing?

@spagetimeatball

(Assuming you're not trolling.)

Ignore all the nonsense about foreign geniuses. The most critical thing in any nation is relatedness. You want your people to be related to each other.

The best way to improve average IQ in a nation is not to breed from the geniuses but just increase the proportion around the 100-115 mark.

The best way to do that in any country imo is to breed from their own special forces as they will all be above average IQ for their country as well as supremely healthy and fit.

So, step one, make all IVF treatments use sperm from your own country's special forces.

Step two, dna screening, couples fertilize a dozen eggs and they are screened and the best one chosen to be implanted in the womb.

Make it a free service won with a lottery to start and then expand it.

As a state investment it will bring huge returns in GDP per capita so it's worth it.

Hmmm…good point Dan.

If the goal is to get where you want to be without external input, that could take a very long time, because genius alleles that do not exist would need to randomly appear perfectly formed.

Getting a few genius alleles into the population does not have to mean replacing the population.

Consider the ability to digest lactose. Suppose these alleles to digest lactose originated in one guy. After many generations, this allele may spread through the population ***but that doesn't mean that everyone looks like that guy***. It just means that the particular good alleles for lactose got into the population and then those alleles multiplied, within that host population.

For example, they say some very key Neanderthal genes got into all Europeans even though Neanderthals are genetically only 2% of European ancestry or something.

Yes. I am sorry to have bothered your post with only tangentially relevant comments, Epigone.

I've been wanting to improve my country for a long time, but reading blogs such as yours has made me realize how entrenched differences in human capital are, and how difficult it would be to upgrade oneself. But everyone has to start from somewhere, no? No matter how lowly or miserable.

The sperm bank idea could work. How much would it cost to build and operate one for say, 30 years? Or is it cheaper to hire the closest foreign one?

The thing about using european geniuses is…well then it wouldn't be us. It would just be YOU through US.

Bringing some foreign high IQ blood can really be a positive thing for a nation. The Parsees have been of huge benefit to India over the centuries, filling the ranks of intellectuals even though their numbers are small. They are Zoroastrians originally from elsewhere and the Indians are generally quite glad to have them. Salting a middling place with geniuses can help a great deal if it is civilization you are after. New York's Jewish population has helped it to maintain world leadership and great wealth amid demographic diversity even as cities like Atlanta and Detroit and Los Angeles have declined.

I read somewhere that one of the benefits available to someone like Marco Polo was that hosts along the journeys would make their daughters available to bring some good DNA into clan. They didn't know exactly what DNA was, but they were practical people.

This has the benefit of bringing outside genius alleles. There are doubtless certain genius alleles that are not present at all in the local population which would help a lot.

@spagetiMeatball —

If you are not trolling and being sincere, it is possible for the Azerbaijani government to 'seed' a bunch of Azerbaijani women with the donor material of Nobel prize winners or other very smart men and give them a bunch of money for their trouble. This is humane, and the benefits are:
(1) The women are happy to have smart kids, who will be their own kids
(2) The women are happy to get a bunch of money, and
(3) It scales up, because you can basically open this thing to the masses of women. The kids of a genius father and a median Azerbaijani mother would still be above the Western average.

Now that would truly be a brave new world!

Is it my fault my ancestors didn't move to the arctic like the ancestors of europeans and chinese? I want to belong to an intelligent nation with a high civilization. What way is there to accomplish this?

There is a de facto ruling family. The parliament is basically rubber stamp. Well all that has been tried in places like singapore and failed. I think only a forceful way remains. The thing is we are desperate to increase our human capital. And certainly depressed by what we have.

You are ancestors were brutally culled in the arctic millenia ago. The only reason you have the intellectual ability to be able to do what you do. An accident of nature.

Is it not possible for us to do something for ourselves? What logistical difficulties are there in collecting a national data bank of scores (IQ tests, or something similar)? How expensive would it be?

I am very close to the ruling family and I can make them aware of this.

My main issue was whether such a policy will work? Will it increase economic productivity? Will it increase Average IQ?

I was not trolling.

Please answer me. My comment is reasonable and I don't want it to be ignored.

I correct myself – if the standard deviation is 15 NOT 115.

Mr. Epigone. I am an Azerbaijani student in American, in California. When I go back to Azerbaijan I want to make it a more desirable place to live for myself and my family. Will eugenics work? I have read many things on Greg Cochrane's blog that show me how easy it is.

For which IQ range will I have to select? Right now Azerbaijan has a population of about 9 million people. Assuming an average IQ of 88 (from PISA scores), if I wanted to select people with IQs >= 115, that would be about 3.59% of the population of azerbaijan, from the z-score (this is true if the standard deviation for IQ is 115, which everyone says it is).

Please reply to me. What political course of action should I take? I really want to improve my country and make it more like the western world; should I sterilize the remaining 96.41%? Which program would be best for this? A stealth sterilization program that presents itself as a UN sponsored antivirus vaccine push but is actually depo provera? Once people find out they can't have children, I as a dictator can deal with them using tear gas and bullets (real ones if they refuse to back down)

And how will I recover the population numbers? 3.59% of ~9 mil people is 332,100 people. If I push for high birth rates (up to 10 per family) the population will increase to 1,660,500 within a generation. And better yet, they will all have IQs >= 115!! And with the extra resources left by the removal of imbeciles will have a much higher standard of living.

I think you in advance for your most gracious reply, sir.

Our elites love capital, but excess/investable capital is only a function of developed countries because in third world countries the poor consume all excess capital.

Our elites surely will get it eventually. So far most numbers such as life expectancy and GDP per capita have moved forward, but these numbers must invariably move backward toward the average of countries sending their people.

Surely the statistical end of the seemingly inevitable march of progress will cause progressives to take notice? Their secular religion is built on the notion of things getting better into the future after all.

It's sad. Swedish schoolchildren are now outperformed by those of Poland and Estonia – much poorer but Muslim-free countries. People here in Sweden are very intelligent, but they don't have any grip on reality; they live in their heads seemingly immune to empirical data.

My cousin just attained citizenship in Australia (he gets to keep U.S. citizenship too). He fits their culture perfectly – a total free spirit.

In 2002, bombings on the (predominantly Hindu) island of Bali killed over 200 people. In 2005, bombings killed around 20. All of these attacks were carried out by Islamic terrorists. Why didn't our Dear Leader cite these instances as examples of Indonesia'a "tolerance?" Guess he forgot.

Mexico 1.02: Good thing that place isn't exporting bigots to another nation known for more religious tolerance, eh?

Germany 1.3 (below Indonesia): Still a bunch of Nazis, I see.

France 1.99: Did Le Pen voters and suburban Muslims boycott the poll?

Netherlands 1.38: You go, Geert!

Burkina Faso 1.55: Steve Sailer noted that this place was also high in tolerance for immigrants. Does the cause of gay rights poll well there? Have we found a unicorn: an impoverished black Muslim African nation with a SWPL outlook?

What's made Peru so cranky?

I notice that America's Most Important Ally was not polled on this question. Afraid of the likely results?

Gotacha'. Thanks, AE.

Wait a minute, I don't understand the table. The sucker index is (% who think 0.1% GDP is too high to donate) – (% who think 0.1% GDP is too low to donate), right? And if someone thinks it's too much to donate, they're basically more selfish, right? So if 80% of people think it's too much, and 20% thing it's too little, the index is 80% – 20% = 60%. It seems to me that a higher score indicates greater selfishness. What am I misunderstanding here?

AE,

Thanks for the table. Some context:

Afghanistan's aid is recent and, presumably, temporary. Iraq also got large amounts during our occupation, and now that has dwindled since we drew down and then left.

Israel's cumulative direct aid over the last ~35 years has been something like $150 billion(unadjusted). Israel also gets huge indirect benefits: loan guarantees, including for illegal settlements in the West Bank; partial exemptions from US military aid rules requiring that foreign militaries must use American funds to purchase weapons from American producers; a 1985 free trade agreement which has led to a cumulative trade deficit, for us, of ~100 billion dollars (unadjusted) — quite a sum for such a tiny place; and so on.

"Switzerland…get called Nazis because"

Because they are racially-European by ancestry. It's really that simple.

Germany's nicer than we are and they still get called Nazis by Greeks with their hands out

Switzerland is even nicer than Germany, and they get called Nazis because they stayed out of the insanity of World War II, allegedly stole Jews' gold (or whatever; never mind all the Jewish and gentile refugees from Nazism who fled to Switzerland), banned new minarets, and let citizens vote on giving citizenship to immigrants.

The "generosity" of bankrupt Spain is amusing. They also stayed out of WW2, Franco liked Hitler, and there was the Inquisition.

So many generous Nazis. A real head-scratcher.

Sucker index.

Beautiful.

100% of foreign aid should be in the form of birth control.

If they can't provide for their people, then they have too many people. They need to have fewer as quickly and humanely as possible.

Americans say that they do not like foreign aid: it is the only item of the federal budget for which opinion polls show consistently majorities in favor of reduction.

But which nation is the largest recipient of American aid? That's right, You Know Who. Polls show that pluralities or majorities of Americans (the numbers fluctuate based on events in the Near East) are favorably disposed toward this lucky ducky beneficiary. AFAICT, the segment of our population least favorably disposed to foreign aid in general — "Jacksonian" megachurch-goin' FOX/Limbaugh Bible Belters — is among the most stridently in favor of foreign aid for You Know Who in particular (aside from, of course, You Know Who's ethnic diaspora).

I would like to see a poll giving respondents accurate figures of the level of American largesse for this other country, including indirect as well as direct benefits, in addition to figures on this other country's wealth, and then see if Americans are still in favor of aid for You Know Who. I do not think that most people understand how extravagant our aid to this beneficiary is relative to its small size and considerable wealth.

And, needless to say, most Americans do not understand how paltry foreign aid is as a fraction of our budget compared with the things that are the real fiscal problems.

You are an idiot and you must die you neanderthal yankee yahoo burger chomper, I hope your death is agonizing and long and possibily involves some fully justified attack on the US mainland, 9/11 didn't teach you anything so you must learn!

Absent any change in the genetics (eg, but eliminating genes with a propensity for violence from the gene pool as whites have done) then we can predict the future from the past.

That is, blacks will continue to be a violent and murderous as they always have been.

This is an elementary misinterpretation of statistical induction. Do I need to educate you on the fundamentals or do I need to educate you on the specific application? This is not a false dichotomy, nor is it merely rhetorical.

This ^ is not a good question. The strengths of the causal factors are still unknown. If they were known, you would need to choose a number to represent "a major effect". And after all of that, extrapolation would be very unreliable. You can't predict the future according to what happened in the past, you can only make educated guesses. (All of this ought to be covered in a textbook on basic statistics.)

Absent any change in the genetics (eg, but eliminating genes with a propensity for violence from the gene pool as whites have done) then we can predict the future from the past.

That is, blacks will continue to be a violent and murderous as they always have been.

Some closing comments:

-Thank you for providing the source.

-I'm not going to check your math for the second set of numbers. The two schools of interpretation are no different than before.

-It is almost impossible to discuss causality in a constructive way without controlled experiments.

"My second question is: what percentage of negroes do you need before you start seeing a major effect on the overall crime rate?"

-This ^ is not a good question. The strengths of the causal factors are still unknown. If they were known, you would need to choose a number to represent "a major effect". And after all of that, extrapolation would be very unreliable. You can't predict the future according to what happened in the past, you can only make educated guesses. (All of this ought to be covered in a textbook on basic statistics.)

-Sharing knowledge is a beautiful and wonderful thing. When you cross-post, it shows a lack of respect for the time of the experts who are answering you. If more than one answers you, then you are wasting their time.

Fortunately, I enjoy lecturing, so you get off with a warning this time 🙂

Don't do it again!

If you have a deadline, then this must be for school. If it's for school, then I'm guessing you'll want to explain the homicide rate in a way that will win you the best grade from your teacher.

First, I'll explain the orthodox interpretation, according to most academics in America:

"Crime is mostly caused by socioeconomic inequality, and blacks in America are disproportionately poor (as a group; some are middle-class and a few are wealthy). Therefore, it is not surprising that blacks turn to crime to satisfy their needs."

But you're in the wrong part of the internet for orthodoxy. The collection of websites you've been cross-posting across is called the "alternative right wing", because it is a small offshoot from the old right wing politics (variously branded as paleoconservatism, paleolibertarianism, classical liberalism, and so on).

Now I'll try to generalize what the alternative right thinks are the causes for disproportionate black crime:

"Crime is mostly caused by a mixture of genetics and culture. Genetically, blacks tend to have lower IQs and several other unfortunate traits (such as a higher rate of psychopathy) that make them susceptible to the temptation to commit crimes. Culturally, black celebrities (rappers) glorify the system of crime, crass hedonism, and 'gangster' tribalism that resulted from the drug conflicts of the 1980s. Also, the federal government has made the problem worse by giving money to blacks who live bad lifestyles, which allows them to continue living in bad conditions and have lots of children, who go on to be 'gangsters'."

Most agree that the low socioeconomic status of most blacks is a contributing factor, but the alternative right believes it is a small factor compared to genetics and culture. Instead, genetics and culture cause both crime and poverty more than poverty causes crime.

Oh you're right. I'm not an American, so forgive me.

Anyway, I know I shouldn't be cross-posting, it's just that I'm writing something and I'm in a hurry because the deadline is today. Here's my source:

http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf

go to page 3, Table 1

It won't happen again, it's just that I'm in such a big rush.

I suspect your first language is not American English. Do you have any familiarity with American culture?

Anonymous,

I answered your initial question at Vox Popoli. As for "why", we can only speculate, absent controlled experiments.

Please note that cross-posting is generally frowned upon on the internet. I can explain the reason for that, but I shouldn't need to.

The population of whites is 82.9%, of blacks it is 12.6%, and other is 4.5%. The homicide rates for each group are: 4.5 for whites, 34.4 for blacks, and 4.1 for other (1980-2008 DOJ stats). Now, (.829 * 4.5) + (.126 * 34.4) + (.044 * 4.1) = 3.7305 + 4.3344 + 0.1804 = 8.2453

4.3344 of 8.2453 = 52.5%

Blacks are responsible for 52.5% of an average US homicide rate of 8.2453 per 100,000.

Is this correct?

Here, I use other expanded population data:

US population breakdown: 16.3% Hispanic, 63.7% white, 12.2% black, AI/AN 0.7%, A/PI 4.9%. Homicide rate from CDC 2007 stats.

(.163 * 7.6) + (.637 * 2.7) + (.122 * 23.1) + (.007 * 7.8) + (.049 * 2.4) = 1.2388 + 1.7199 + 2.8182 + 0.0546 + 0.1176 = 5.9491 per 100,000

2.8182 of 5.9491 = 47.3%

47.3% of the US homicide rate of 5.9491 per 100,000 is because of blacks. Is this correct and why?

The population of whites is 82.9%, of blacks it is 12.6%, and other is 4.5%. The homicide rates for each group are: 4.5 for whites, 34.4 for blacks, and 4.1 for other (1980-2008 DOJ stats). Now, (.829 * 4.5) + (.126 * 34.4) + (.044 * 4.1) = 3.7305 + 4.3344 + 0.1804 = 8.2453

4.3344 of 8.2453 = 52.5%

Blacks are responsible for 52.5% of an average US homicide rate of 8.2453.

Is this correct?

I have two questions. Can anybody answer it? Ok, the US homicide rate is 4.2 per 100,000. What percentage of that homicide rate is the result of the black homicide rate? Is it half? How would I calculate a racial breakdown of the US homicide rate? My second question is: what percentage of negroes do you need before you start seeing a major effect on the overall crime rate?

Thanx

The US is the richest country in the world; if you are in, say, the top four-fifths of US income distribution, then you are "rich" to most of the rest of humanity (especially outside of western Europe and Japan, and even within those countries to some degree). "Rich" to many third-worlders means things that Americans (and advanced world residents), even most of our poor, take for granted.

Why isn't everyone rich? Probably because you need to be in something like the 90th percentile of brains. That obviously immediately disqualifies 90% of all people. Then you have to consider energy, health and drive. So as long as talents are distributed unequally there will always – by definition – be a favored 1%.

There is also the issue of motivation. In other words the answer to the question "If you're so smart why ain't you rich?" is "I don't choose to be rich".

There was a moment about twenty years ago when I chose not to be rich. I was working at that time as a web programmer. I was a pretty good coder but everyone who hired me soon made me a manager or executive. That happened to me several times. The field was desperate for someone to supervise their programmers who actually knew and liked programming.

I also happened to have just the right set of skills. I did C# not Java and SQL Server not Oracle. I taught those other technologies but I didn't use them. I was Microsoft oriented.

Much to my amazement I discovered that the porn business ran exclusively on Microsoft. Who knew?

A recruiter sent me to porn central in San Jose. At that time and that place I was in demand. But they asked me if I wanted to work on the porn or the non-porn side. Foolishly I said non-porn. They showed me the door.

If I had said the porn side I would have been hired that day. I would be the supervisor in a month and the manager in six. After that I would possibly been offered an officer class position with equity. That happened to me elsewhere in subsequent years. But the big bucks were then in porn. I couldn't have been a billionaire but being a millionaire was almost certain.

But that was not to be. I didn't want to be involved in porn. I didn't want to have to try to explain it to my wife.

This one single office suite in a nondescript standard office building had no signs of their line of business showing anywhere. Everyone dressed very conservatively (no gold chains).

Yet this one office accounted for ten percent of all web traffic on a typical day. They had a bigger web footprint than Standard Oil or General Motors.

I knew that if I worked for them I had a good chance at becoming rich but I wasn't willing to make the sacrifice – and it wasn't really much of a sacrifice. I suspect that there are thousands of stories like this. I could have been rich but it was just too much trouble.

Albertosaurus

In all these countries, it really depends on who you ask, and how you ask them. WVS runs pretty small samples, which can badly skew results in heterogeneous countries like Turkey.

I assume you standardized each of your dimensions before inverting and combining (which is the right thing to do), but it's likely that you use equal weights for each of the dimensions (almost everyone does). The results would probably be different if you used a flexible weights approach. Want to send me your data? I'll send the results back…

Could you please remove the 'poor, corrupted Slovenia'? in the post you are linking to, commentators who are actually familiar with Slovenia said that there must be a mistake. And as a woman from Slovenia i can give you a guarantee that there was something seriously wrong with that number.

Where does Ireland fall on this scale?

I don't quite get the idea that a place like Rwanda is what we really mean by conservative or patriarchal. Conservative, patriarchal Renaissance Europe is freaking nothing like Rwanda or Afghanistan in anything from the status of women to the value of life or the individual or free thought, etc. So while Renaissance Europe wouldn't openly or officially celebrate homosexuality, they sure as hell wouldn't be hanging gays either.

Seeing Andorra at the top to the list reminds me of a song. The Song of Roland. Or…

this one

On the day when it appears that Egypt has gone over to the Muslims, it's well to remember that we have been in this struggle for a millenium.

Albertosaurus

AE,

Have you done a post on this study?

http://news.investors.com/article/604124/201203130802/pew-center-study-of-american-online-habits.htm

I think Albertosaurus is exactly right. Rightist ideas about playing by the rules, forthrightness, respect culture and civic life as distinct from science, government, and everything else, don't apply to Muslims. Even more so, rightists have warm feelings toward individual accomplishment even though they are somewhat ambivalent about individualism.

Really, Muslims are from a dramatically different culture that is nothing like our own.

I do think that AE's post is an excellent one, because it shows how hollow "liberal" leftist "anti-conservative" feelings are. Leftists are anti-white, anti-civilization, anti-morality. If they were really anti-conservative, pro-woman, whatever, they would want to shut off immigration by Muslims faster than you can say Susan B. Anthony. I hear leftists kvetching about scary "fundamentalist" (Protestant) "right-wingers" (social conservatives, who often care nothing about the National Question). Yet none of them ever breathes a word of criticism against gay-stoning, wife-beating, abortion-hating Muslims. It no longer surprises me.

These kind of articles are difficult to react to, because there is no real agreement on the property space topology.

The simplest and most universally accepted property space topology is the left-right political stance that we have inherited from the seating arrangement of the Estates-General. We call conservatives rightists and liberals leftists. This is a one dimensional model.

In personality theory Eysenck had a two dimensional property space. Intelligence was one dimension and introversion-extroversion was orthogonal to it. Every person could then be mapped onto the plane with Cartesian coordinates.

Another two dimensional map of people might be intelligence crossed with political stance. This would yield smart conservatives, dumb liberals, smart liberals and dumb conservatives. People seem to think this way and argue that certain quarters are filled or empty. I think the evidence is that the scatter-gram is symmetrical.

But even with the simplest mapping of one dimension there is controversy. Witness the empty debate raised by Santorum over Romney's conservatism. Romney we kept hearing wasn't a real conservative.

The GOP website lists six issues that distinguish a Republican from a liberal. I added another half dozen like gun control, or welfare reform. Santorum, Romney and Gingrich end up with nearly identical scores. Obama maps very far from them, but on the basis of the issues, they all cluster very closely together.

There used to be a website that allowed you to rank yourself based on a quiz of real legislative proposals. You had to read the proposed law and then "vote". I came out more conservative than Gingrich but less conservative than Ashcroft. That seemed about right to me.

If people confined their judgements about left-right to questions like national defense or monetary policy there wouldn't be much controversy.

But alas people seem to confound rationality with religious dogma. When Santorum questioned Romney's conservatism he seemed to only mean that Romney was a Mormon. You can't just make fun of someones religion. Or rather a serious national candidate can't, I'll be happy to ridicule the Mormons for you or the Baptists or the Catholics. But Santorum, constrained from attacking LDS directly, seemed to adopt the term "real" conservative as a code word for non-Mormon.

Similarly Islam not in the same property space as what we normally think of as left-right.

Albertosaurus

Yes but conservative Protestants don't believe that there is a night during which God can't see them so they can go out and partake in Man Love Thursdays.

Also conservative Protestants don't usually have sex with animals.

This is where I have a problem with surveys, people lie, answering the in manner they wish to be perceived or in the manner in which they perceive themselves.

In response to Dan H, Islam is is more than just a religion, it is basically considered a religion of the state, so when one leaves the state religion, maybe they are seen as being a traitor to the state/society. There is more to this than a Protestant becoming a Catholic.

These are softball questions for the Muslim societies. The real questions that show how illiberal many Muslims really are, are not even asked in the World Values Survey.

Questions such as: should someone face death for leaving the faith (Islam or Christianity, respectively)?

Results you get are 76% in Pakistan, 84% in Egypt and 86% in Jordan, three illiberal countries.

http://pewresearch.org/databank/dailynumber/?NumberID=1184

Maybe these results by Pew overstate things a little, but Pew has no history of right-wing bias, and there are presently people on trial for apostasy in more than one Muslim country and facing death.

In America I have lived 33 years and interacted with tens of thousands in my lifetime and never known of anyone who believed in death as punishment for leaving the faith.

By this measure, ~80% of Muslims are less liberal than the most illiberal American. The most illiberal Christian I can think of Terry Jones, the illiberal pastor in Florida, has not gone as far as 80% of Muslims.

And isn’t tolerance of other faiths what liberalism is really about?

Stoning for adultery? Similar result.

"The same pattern characterizes Eastern Europe, though this might be the result of the novelty of being newly Democratic as communism receded having worn off in places like Romania and Bulgaria."

This and more importantly the fact that our countries are run by corrupt politicians and crony capitalists. Why fight to maintain a corrupt regime in power?

At least I believe this how others also think. I am not a typical Romanian young man, since I am quite libertarian-minded and I also read your site and others from the reactosphere.

Italy's difference column looks wrong.