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Post a Comment On: Steve Sailer: iSteve

"Africa and the Malthusian Wringer"

22 Comments -

1 – 22 of 22
OpenID foseti said...

"No history from before 1619 is imaginable."

If only that were the case! 1968 is more like it.

Progressive history consists of nothingness until slavery happened and then nothingness until 1968.

If they went back to the 17th Century, they'd be able to compare slavery in the US to slavery elsewhere (the former was much preferable, per Eugene Genovese's great work). They'd also be forced to explain Black's decline in certain important areas during the latter half of the 20th Century.

We seem to be witnessing this weird phenomenon that as we learn more and more about genetics and evolution, progressive racial doctrine gets fiercer and fiercer. It's as if there was a cult that insisted that the moon was made out of cheese and they were growing in numbers and influence (and inability to tolerate dissent) just as the Apollo missions were launched. I don't think this can end well.

5/22/14, 5:30 PM

Blogger james said...

I can't recall the name of the book that claimed that the real first industrial revolution in Europe began with widespread use of windmills and similar machines back in the 12'th century. Which is when behaviors seem to start to change.

5/22/14, 5:49 PM

Blogger Karen said...

1. People with good genes have more children than those with bad genes.

2. Some of those children with the good genes drop in social class, diffusing the good genes downward.

So, why are there any poor people left in England?

5/22/14, 6:05 PM

Anonymous Anononymous said...

We think elephants are cute, but they're huge and thus quite capable of eating a farmer's crop.

Do wooly mammoths count as elephants? They were furry, so they'd have been even cuter.

Neanderthal home made of mammoth bones discovered in Ukraine

5/22/14, 6:05 PM

Anonymous elmer said...

Off-topic but will we get a million Nigerian refugees out of our initial investment of 80 troops to find the girls?

5/22/14, 6:07 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Rushton really laid it all out. He didn't get nearly enough attention.

5/22/14, 6:08 PM

Anonymous JayMan said...

It's important to keep in mind that attitudes towards sex and sex drive itself are both just as heritable as other behavioral traits. If Northwest (non-Celtic) Europeans have lower average sex drives (which it would seem to be case at first glace), it is because they were selected to for this.

It would seem Clarkian selection may be involved, in some manner. That, and perhaps social norms that may have ostracized overly sexual individuals, lowering their fitness.

5/22/14, 6:15 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Reader offers a long list of discouraging factors, such as disease burden, poor soil, and wild beasts, especially elephants. "

There are drawings of mammoths and lions on the walls French stone age caves. Europeans and NE Asians ate all of the European and NE Asian elephants (mammoths) because they could. Why didn't Africans do the same? Backstrapolating from the present one is tempted to blame low mean IQ and low ability to cooperate with one another.

5/22/14, 6:51 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Caucasoids and Mongoloids lived through the last Ice Age. Negroids and Australoids didn't. There was no ice in the tropics during the last glacial maximum.

As soon as the ice retreated, agriculture developed pretty much simultaneously in two widely-separated places - the Middle East and northern China. As soon as Ice Age survivors got a little warmth, they were off to the races of civilization. Negroids and Australoids had that warmth all along, yet they didn't use it. This makes me think that the mental prerequisites to civilization could have developed during the last Ice Age.

Why were Malthusian pressures low in the tropics? Dangerous animals? Non-starter. There were lots of them in the north before local humans ate them all. More diseases? Good candidate. Poor soil? Non-starter. If that was the main problem, Africans would have at least used all the acreage they had. They did not do that. Greater propensity for violence? Good candidate. The more people are killed in warfare, the lower the Malthusian pressure is going to be. This fits well with the East Asian experience - very low propensity for violence, very high Malthusian pressure.

5/22/14, 7:16 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Densely populated Rwanda's been the site of intensive farming for a while now. And under Paul Kagame, it seems to be a real success story economically. The Tutsis are tough, disciplined people.

5/22/14, 7:36 PM

Blogger sbarrkum said...

http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/3823
Cruel windfall: How wars, plagues, and urban disease propelled Europe’s rise to riches

In modern economic thinking, peace and prosperity go hand in hand. However, there are good reasons why in pre-modern societies, the opposite relationship held true – war, disease, and urban death spelled high incomes. This column explains why Europe’s rise to riches in the early modern period owed much to exceptionally bellicose international politics, urban overcrowding, and frequent epidemics.

5/22/14, 11:20 PM

Anonymous dearieme said...

"compare slavery in the US to slavery elsewhere (the former was much preferable…": elsewhere is a large place.

5/23/14, 1:32 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Densely populated Rwanda's been the site of intensive farming for a while now. And under Paul Kagame, it seems to be a real success story economically. The Tutsis are tough, disciplined people"

I'd wager they also have a higher IQ than their Hutu compatriots. It would be interesting to compare the average IQ of the Nilotic branch of Sub-Saharan Africa with that of the Bantu branch. On the other hand, the Nilotic people of Southern Sudan don't seem to have much going for them.

5/23/14, 4:34 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wild idea: Could the subtle propagation of homosexuality by the British public (i.e. private) schools (and comparable institutions elsewhere in Europe) have something to do with the delayed reproduction. All those homoerotic Greek stories... Apparently, adolescent homosexuality was problematic only when it threatened social order (e.g. lord Curzon and his teacher Oscar Browning at Eton)or looked like it might become a "life choice". Probably, pederastic pursuits were considered to be - in all secrecy, of course - much better than danger of impregnating some maid.

5/23/14, 6:05 AM

Anonymous Daniel said...

"1. People with good genes have more children than those with bad genes.
2. Some of those children with the good genes drop in social class, diffusing the good genes downward.
So, why are there any poor people left in England?"

Because "poor" is a relative condition.

5/23/14, 6:41 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Malthusian trap doesn't seem that complex. What really puzzles me is meme evolution. Are memes material? Are they born of the human instinct to imitate? Is reason just a meme? I imagine Jayman, probably your most materialist commenter/blogger could help clarify this. To me evolution is algebra, but memes are second year algebra and I'm hitting a wall. Memes seem to explain all human behavior and that makes me skeptical. Perhaps Africans made elephants sacred, the way Westerners have now.

5/23/14, 7:53 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"arm work as long as they had women hoeing weeds for them. "

Well, at least they didn't slaughter their girl babies & women en masse, like in China.

I wonder what the effect on the Chinese genome killing so many girls has had.

5/23/14, 8:21 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Lower sexuality/birth rates does not mean Europe was not in a Malthusian trap before the Industrial Revolution (Clark's point was that Europe was, as was every other society). Just means that the particular causes of the Malthusian trap in Africa were different, i.e., caused higher death rates -- perhaps disease, predators, inter-tribal warfare etc. -- so the birth rates were higher to compensate. Interesting point that different Malthusian trap features will lead to different genetic adaptation.

5/23/14, 8:34 AM

Blogger Pat Boyle said...

I've mentioned this before but it bears repeating. The guy who established slavery here in 1619 was Abraham Piersay - my direct ancestor. So if anyone is responsible for reparations it would be me and only me.

That's my mother's side. My father's side only came over from Ireland about a hundred years ago. So I would be liable for only half.

And since St. Patrick - who had been a slave - is the patron saint of slaves, I claim the 'Patrick Exemption' - i.e. anyone named Pat is exempt from slavery reparations.

So the darkies are SOL. They'll have to devise another dodge.

Pat Boyle

5/23/14, 2:17 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Blacks suffered the Lions and hyenas trap. Slow ones got eaten, which is why Negroes be so fast and strong.

5/23/14, 6:29 PM

Anonymous Chief Seattle said...

war, disease, and urban death spelled high incomes.

One of the strangest things about the millennium-long French vs English warfare is how the elites on both sides saw themselves as basically the same people. Sure they fought on the battlefield, but when captured, the officers were very rarely killed or tortured, but were instead ransomed back to their side. When they won they got the ransom and when they lost they paid it. But if the peasants revolted, all nobility was on the same side. War became an economic enterprise for striving young men. Which became a useful model once technology made it possible to colonize around the world.

5/23/14, 8:21 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"...book that claimed that the real first industrial revolution in Europe began with widespread use of windmills and similar machines back in the 12'th century.

It was probably water wheels. Britain had a large number and was particularly suited to water power (lots of rain and creeks). Water wheels are more constant and (in those days) more powerful than wind power.

5/23/14, 10:07 PM

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