The Stanovich: Rationality and the Reflective Mind.

On of the notions in my grand theory of everything is that the Liberal advance in Western Society has come about because errors weak-points in Western culture. The Left has been able to exploit these weaknesses to its advantages whilst the Right, bound by a veneration of Western tradition has been unable to adapt. One of the those weak points concerns the subject of human rationality, especially our conception of it.

I've just finished reading Keith Stanovich's Rationality and the Reflective Mind and in my considered opinion it deserves to be one of the foundational texts of the intellectual Right. Stanovich's book, which is really a synthesis of the latest research into the psychology of rationality and the empirical findings should serve as fuel for future Right wing thinkers in their evaluation of the human capacity for dispassionate reason (with all the social, political and propagada implications).  It needs to be understood that this is not a "Right Wing" book. Stanovich does not present that data with a political agenda. It is quite simply a summary of the state of the art of Rationality research. The power of this book lays in its evidence which undermines our concepts of rationality, assumptions which have been disastrous to the Right and have provided fuel for the Left's advance.

The right may have some skepticism with regard to the intelligence of the average man but ultimately believes he is rational. Our notions of human rationality underpin many of the social structures and conventions that have evolved over time. Our jury system is premised on the notion that the jurors can rationally weight evidence. Our democratic system is premised on the notion that our voters can rationally evaluate opposing political views and come to the right choice. Contract law presupposes rational participants and consumer warnings presuppose a rational ability to evaluate the data. The justification for radical equality is many ways premised on the notion that all men are rational beings, able to find happiness in their own way through sober reflection and deep thought. Even the idea of public debate presupposes the notion of rational debaters who are able to be swayed by compelling evidence and logic. And yet, the data would suggest that this is not the case. Stanovich lays it out;

Humans are cognitive misers because their basic tendency is to default to Type 1 processing mechanisms of low computational expense. Using less computational capacity for one task means there is more left over for another task if they both must be completed simultaneously. This would seem to be adaptive. Nevertheless, this strong bias to default to the simplest cognitive mechanism—to be a cognitive miser—means that humans are often less than rational. Increasingly in the modern world, we are presented with decisions and problems that require more accurate responses than those generated by heuristic processing. Type I processes often provide a quick solution that is a first approximation to an optimal response. But modern life often requires more precise thought than this. Modern technological societies are in fact hostile environments for people reliant on only the most easily computed automatic response. Think of the multimillion-dollar advertising industry that has been designed to exploit just this tendency. Modern society keeps proliferating such situations where shallow processing is not sufficient for maximizing personal happiness—precisely because many structures of market-based societies have been designed explicitly to exploit such tendencies.

Stanovich begins his book with a discussion on the subject or rationality, separating the weak notions of it which begin with Aristotle--(and have thus been hugely influential in the formation of Western Culture)--and modern, more rigorous definitions.  The weak notion of rationality equates rationality with the capacity to think.  Harder notions of rationality imply the notion that thinking is not enough; getting the correct answer is important.*  This blog subscribes to this latter view.

Stanovich approaches the subject of human rationality from his background in heuristic and biases research which demonstrates that for majority of humans, thinking is a "least effort" exercise, resulting in predictable errors and faulty logic.  Stanovich places himself in the Meliorist camp, in that he believes by understanding the errors of human reasoning people can be taught to think better and avoid the mistakes. I'm more pessimistic than Stanovich is in this regard and I feel that humans have always had a compelling interest in getting things right and the fact that they don't learn means that group stupidity is part and parcel of the human condition. I suppose I'm a pessimistic Meliorist.
The opportunities for human improvement are minimal.

Opposing the Meliorist camp are the Panglossians. This latter group tends to come from the Evo-psyche crowd who argue that there is no correct answer, rather the most common answer is the evolutionary right one.

The difference between the Panglossian and the Meliorist was captured colloquially in an article in The Economist magazine where a subheading asked, “Economists Make Sense of the World by Assuming that People Know What they Want. Advertisers Assume that They Do Not. Who Is Right?” The Meliorist thinks that the advertisers are right—people often do not know what they want and can be influenced so as to maximize the advertiser’s profits rather than their own personal utility. A Panglossian view of perfect rationality in the market place would need to defend the view that people take only from advertising what optimizes their consumption utility. In contrast, the Meliorist does not assume that consumers will process the advertiser’s information in a way that optimizes things for the consumer (as opposed to the advertiser). Thus, Meliorists are much more sympathetic to government attempts to regulate advertising because, in the Meliorist view, such regulation can act to increase the utility of the total population. This is just one example of how the Great Rationality Debate has profound political implications.

and;

The contrasting positions of the Panglossians and Meliorists define the differing poles in what has been termed the Great Rationality Debate in cognitive science—the debate about how much irrationality to attribute to human cognition. Tetlock and Mellers  have noted that “the debate over human rationality is a high-stakes controversy that mixes primordial political and psychological prejudices in combustible combinations.” The great debate about human rationality is a “high-stakes controversy” because it involves nothing less than the models of human nature that underlie economics, moral philosophy, and the personal theories (folk theories) we use to understand the  behavior of other humans. For example, a very influential part of the Panglossian camp is represented by the mainstream of the discipline of economics that is notable for using strong rationality assumptions as fundamental tools.

Panglossians tend to "explain away" defects in reasoning, attributing fault to the experimenter or the experiment construction. Stanovich explains at length how this view is wrong.

Stanovich's book, exhaustively referenced, lists multiple type of cognitive errors  such as problems in probability estimates, bias toward emotionally favoured responses, poor logic, "framing effects", etc but what comes across quite forcefully in this book is...

...just how little correlation IQ has with rationality.

One of the most baleful influences that HBD crowd has bought to the modern "Dark Enlightenment" is the notion that IQ is be all explanation for individual and cultural success.

Firstly Stanovich subscribes to the notion of Spearman's g and the Cattell-Horn extrapolation of it. He is not an IQ denialist and anyone expecting a defence of "creative" and "emotional" intelligence best look elsewhere. He fully recognises the importance of IQ in the ability to abstractly think and makes oblique references to the genetic component of it, it's just that high IQ people can make surprisingly dumb mistakes especially when they're not aware that they are making them. Stanovich recognises that the concept of IQ is incomplete when it comes to the concept of rationality. Furthermore, Stanovich fully understands the sociological implications of the misplaced veneration of IQ.

The ability or inability to think rationally profoundly affects people’s lives. Yet we fail to teach the tools of rational thinking in schools and refuse to focus our attention on them as a society. Instead, we keep using intelligence proxies as selection devices in a range of educational institutions from exclusive preschools to graduate schools. Corporations and the military are likewise excessively focused on IQ measures. Consider the example of lvy League universities in the United States.These institutions are selecting society's future elite. What societal goals are served by the selection mechanisms (e.g., SAT tests) that they use? Social critics have argued that the tests serve only to maintain an  economic elite. But the social critics seem to have missed a golden opportunity to critique current selection mechanisms by failing to ask the question “Why select for intelligence only and ignore rationality completely?”

In short, we have been valuing only the algorithmic mind and not the reflective mind. This is in part the result of historical accident. We had measures of algorithmic-level processing efllciency long before we had measures of rational thought and the operation of the reflective mind. The dominance and ubiquitousness of early IQ tests served to divert attention firom any aspect of cognition except algorithmic-level efliciency. And then, because of this historical accident, we have been trying to back out of this mistake (overvaluing the algorithmic part of the mind) ever since.

The lavish attention devoted to intelligence (raising it, praising it, worrying when it is low, etc. seems wastefiil in light of the fact that we choose to virtually ignore another set of mental skills with just as much social consequence—rational thinking mindware and procedures. Popular books tell parents how to raise more intelligent children, educational psychology textbooks discuss the raising of students’ intelligence, and we feel reassured when hearing that a particular disability does not impair intelligence. There is no corresponding concem on the part of parents that their children grow into rational beings, no corresponding concern on the part of schools that their students reason judiciously, and no corresponding recognition that intelligence is useless to a child unable to adapt to the world.

l simply do not think that society has weighed the consequences of its failure to focus on irrationality as a real social problem. Because of inadequately developed rational thinking abilities—because of the processing biases and mindware problems discussed in this book—physicians choose less effective medical treatments; people fail to accurately assess risks in their environment; information is misused in legal proceedings; millions of dollars are spent on unneeded projects by government and private industry; parents fail to vaccinate their children; unnecessary surgery is performed; animals are hunted to extinction;billions of dollars are wasted on fraudulent medical remedies; and costly financial misjudgments are made. Distorted processes of belief formation are also
implicated in various forms of ethnocentric, racist, sexist, and homophobic hatred.

and;

The poor performance of the college students in the experiments in the literature on reasoning and decision making is not in the least paradoxical.The college students who fail laboratory tests of decision making and probabilistic reasoning are indeed the future jurists who, despite decent cognitive capacities, will reason badly. These students have never been specifically screened for rationality before entering the laboratory. And they will not be so assessed at any other time. If they are at elite state universities or elite private schools, they will continue up the academic, corporate, political, and economic ladders by passing SATs, GREs, placement tests, and performance simulations that primarily assess the algorithmic mind. Rationality assessment will never take place.
But What if it did? It is an interestingly open question, for example, whether race and social class differences on measures of rationality would be found to be as large as those displayed on intelligence tests. Suggestively, Sternberg (2004) finds that race and class differences on measures of practical intelligence (the aspect of his broad view of intelligence that is closest to rationality) are less than they are on IQ tests. The framework that I have outlined in this volume would at least predict that rankings of individuals on assessments of rational thinking would be different from rankings on intelligence. The reason is that rationality involves thinking dispositions of the reflective mind not assessed on intelligence tests.

Interestingly, Stanovich recognises that certain forms of cognitive error require a certain degree of intelligence to seriously entertain them.

Regarding the sixth category in Figure 8-1—contaminated mind ware-—we would of course expect more intelligent individuals to acquire more mindware of all types based on their superior learning abilities. This would result in them acquiring more mindware that fosters rational thought. However, this superior learning ability would not preclude more intelligent individuals from acquiring contaminated mindware—that is, mindware that literally causes irrationality. Many parasitic belief systems are conceptually  somewhat complex. Examples of complex parasitic mindware would be Holocaust denial (Lipstadt, 1994; Shermer, 1997) and many financial get-rich-quick schemes as well as bogus tax evasion schemes. Such complex mindware might even require a certain level of intelligence to be enticing to the host. George Orwell conjectured in this vein when discussing political attitudes in the World War II era: “There is no limit to the follies that can be swallowed if one is under the influence of feelings of this kind. . .. One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool” (1968, p. 379).

This conjecture is supported by the results of a study commissioned by the National Association of Securities Dealers (Consumer Fraud Research Group, 20o6).The study found that the investment fraud victims had significantly more education than a comparison group—68.6% of the investment fraud victims group had at least a BA degree compared to just 37.2% in the control group. Finally, surveys show that pseudoscientific beliefs have a quite high prevalence among those of high intelligence (Chatillon, 1989). Also suggestive is a study reported by Zagorsky (2007) in which a regression analysis showed a positive beta weight for intelligence as a predictor of income but a negative beta weight for intelligence as a predictor of wealth and financial distress (debt problems, bankruptcy, etc.). Income is more dependent on IQ-type selection devices used by selective schools, corporations, and the military (SAT, GRE, LSAT, GM.AT,ASVAB, etc.). In contrast, Wealth management and personal financial decision making involve much more the rational thinking skills that go largely unassessed by conventional IQ tests and intelligence test proxies such as the SAT.[ED]

High IQ is no protection against stupid if your conception of how the world works is wrong, of if you have faulty understandings of cause and effect and are romantic impulsive. Furthermore, the failure to error check and test your theories seems to make one prone to irrationality. Indeed, one of the big factors with seems to be strongly correlated with rationality is thinking styles or personality.  People who are conscientious, deliberative and committed to the truth seem better at thinking rationally than those who are not.  What's interesting to speculate upon here is the relationship between values culture and intelligence.  High IQ is of little protection when you ditch a commitment to the Truth or embrace ideologies (Marxism) which negatively affect rational thought.The cultural revolution in the 60's may have had repercussions which extended beyond the sexual revolution and may have interfered with the rational capacity of Western populations. Stanovich proposes the following taxonomy with regard to some rational errors and their solution.

If I had to fault this book it is in the fact that Stanovich does not go into the subject of thinking styles enough.  The whole point of a book on irrationality by implication is how to avoid it, and if thinking style are causatively linked to rationality some further exposition on the subject was warranted.  However, given the quality of the rest of the book this is a small nitpicking.

Stanovich may have set out to write a book on rationality but I feel he has unintentionally given us a foundational text for the intelligent Right.  It's a must have.

*This philosophically assumes that there is a truth. Red Pill.

The Human Operating System: The Rise of the Machines.

 ..in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them,

Romans 2:15

One of the most amazing things I have ever seen is a watching a young child, blind from birth, get up and walk. If you think about it from an engineering perspective, walking is an incredibly complex activity, requiring significantly rapid computational power to ensure both balance and locomotion, yet nearly all little children are able to do so without any real difficulty. The amazing thing in this blind child's instance is that she did it without any form of spatial orientation or visual example or how to do. The functional capacity was innate. She was not born a blank slate.

I can also remember the first time I saw an erotic image, and remember the blood surging to my groin unexpectedly. I remember being shocked by the response, yet what had happened was, that without any prior learning, my eyes had transferred the information to some portion of my brain which was was able to computationally extract the erotic information from the image and then initiated the then "inappropriate"  physiological response. All this happened without my conscious awareness.

People tend to look at human behaiviour without reference to the computational mechanics involved. Take, for example, disgust, as mentioned in the previous post. For the brain to elicit a disgust response visual, nasal and tactile information must be computationally analysed and an appropriate response be elicited. The disgust response predicates circuitry or software which is capable of eliciting it.  Furthermore, the sensation of disgust is not some lower order reflex like a knee jerk, but rather one that can be elicited across a wide variety of real and imaginative human situations.

Furthermore, some things are intuitively disgusting, which implies that not only is there pre-existing circuitry which enables the response but that certain conditions are capable of eliciting it to the exclusion of other situations. In other words, values are front loaded and the system can discriminate.  Why are slimy things thought of intuitively disgusting or bad smells. Likewise, deformity but why not beauty?  Clearly the disgust mechanism is biased toward one type of outcome.

Likewise with hypergamy. Why are not all men equally capable of eliciting arousal in women? Why is arousal conditioned on several predicate factors. In other words, why does it discriminate against one type of man against the other? I suppose some people will say evolution but the important point to noted is that the hypergamic response is biased toward a certain type of male. The values are front loaded.

Human beings are not born blank slates, rather,  we have predictable patterns of behaviour  which we bundle under the name of human nature. We feel affection for our kin, we associate with like, we chafe at injustice (think about it, why do we have any response at all when we see injustice), predictable things elicit disgust. We have an inbuilt operating system.

Much like a microprocessor, on its own, is incapable of doing anything meaningful without an appropriate program likewise neurons have to be "wired up" and signal transmission needs to be modulated across them in order for any meaningful behaviour to be elicited. The human mind has an architecture which predetermines human nature. We tend to think of instinct in terms of animalistic tendencies but I think we fail to appreciate that instinct operates at much higher levels with several higher order cognitive functions being instinctive as well. Human beings are born with an operating system.

But much like there is a difference between Windows and iOS it appears that not all humans are born with the same operating system. Rather their seems to be a variance amongst people. As mentioned in the previous post. Disgust sensitivity seems to vary amongst individuals, so while all humans may have a disgust response, saying that disgust is part of human nature can easily obscure the fact that there is a wide range of sensitivity with regard to it.

So what?

Experiments in cognitive science show that morality is frequently a rationalised intuition and it's fascinating to think that basics of human morality may be encoded into our genome throught the genetic biases that are encoded into our higher order response. How we "feel" about a certain thing seems to be influential in our moral understanding of it. The feeling we get to a situation, on the other hand, seems to have a strong genetic component.

Which brings me to cognitive science. I'm a big believer in the Dual Process theory of the mind (with updates later) and what I think we're seeing in the distinction between System 1 and System 2 process of the mind is the strong genetic basis to System 1 i.e. biocognition and System 2 processes being more abstract. Hypergamy, Disgust, Homophily are all System 1/genetic responses. System 1 is our inbuilt operating system, it's what gives us our human nature.

Disgust and Biocognition

Following up on the last post on disgust, I thought I would follow up on it with some comments on the link between disgust and political orientation.

The a growing body of scientific evidence demonstrating a difference in disgust sensitivity between liberal and conservatives. Evidence suggests that Conservatives have a increased sense of disgust and the following are a few studies that I've pulled from Google Scholar that demonstrate the point.

Study 1.
Study 2.
Study 3.

Indeed, the link appears so strong that fMRI responses to disgust can quite accurately predict political orientation. From the the same paper;

Accumulating evidence suggests that cognition and emotion are deeply intertwined  and a view of segregating cognition and emotion is becoming obsolete. People tend to think that their political views are purely cognitive (i.e., rational). However, our results further support the notion that emotional processes are tightly coupled to complex and high-dimensional human belief systems, and such emotional processes might play a much larger role than we currently believe, possibly outside our awareness of its influence. Despite growing evidence from various fields, including genetics, cognitive neuroscience, and psychology, many political scientists remain skeptical of research connecting biological factors with political ideology, arguing variously that biology is irrelevant to central political questions, that the theoretical basis for expecting biology to be relevant is weak and murky that acknowledging a role for biology is reductionist, and that recognizing the relevance of biology to human beliefs and behaviors is potentially dangerous. We hope some of this skepticism can be alleviated from our demonstration that fMRI data, even from a single stimulus, can serve as a strong predictor of political ideology.

Smarter neuroscientists are beginning to see that a lot of the political divide is due to a phenomenon known as motivated cognition, in other words the rationalisation hamster justifying emotional response.  And a lot of the Left/Right divide may have nothing to do with principled opposition to certain positions rather they are a rationalised gut response to them. Liberals intuitively respond differently to conservatives on many issues. It is not thought per se which is driving the political debate rather it is biocognition.

Furthermore, repeated scientific studies which that conservative and liberals tend to differ on a host of personality factors. Broadly speaking, conservatives prefer order, authority and homogeneity and regularity whilst liberals are more messy and independent. The bottom line is that temperamentally the two groups are different. But it needs to be remembered that this difference needs to be seen as differing along a spectrum rather than being strictly polar.

The philosphical treatment of Rationality tended to view it as a sort of single entity of varying potentcy. i.e. Man was rational, but some men were better rationalists that others. What's becoming apparent in in psychocognitive reasearch is that there are different "modes" of intelligent action and there appear to be different types of intelligence.

Now, here I'm not talking about social or emotional intelligence, rather, there appears to be modes of thinking within the class of activity that we call rational which are different in their natures. The Dual Process theory of the mind postulates that there is a difference with System 1 and System 2. With System 1 being the "intuitive" mode of thought, and the modality of "thought" employed by the average cognitive miser.

The concept I want to explore is the idea of an emotional response being a type 1 type of process, as is the cognition generated by it. So for example, disgust is a type 1 response, as is hypergamy, threat perception, order and novelty preference and so on. Indeed, what makes the difference between liberal and conservative is the type of type 1 response generated by a specific stimulus. One could almost say that conservatives and liberals have different "operating systems" or different "natures" as the old philosophers used to say.

Take for example hypergamy. One of the startling things about the features of the female response to Alpha males is just how consistent it is across cultures. Women prefer the stronger, taller and socially adept male in all cultures and the question is why? The response, much like the response to disgusting stimuli, is not consciously thought out (System 2), rather is intuitively felt. The point being that hypergamy, much like disgust, homophily, preference for fairness and colours are hard wired into our brains. Hypergamy and disgust are a form of "machine cognition" where our biology does our thinking for us with our sensation of it being an emotional (hedonic) response. One way of thinking about it is that the "software" that ensures hypergamic response is front loaded onto the female genome as is part of the female operating system. System 1, to a large degree is what gives us our "natures."

So why is System 1 so important? Because human beings are, by their natures, cognitive misers, and the nature of System 1 "thinking" is to a large extent going to determine the responses humans give to a given question.  More on this in later posts.

But it also appears that this type of thinking seems malleable to some degree, particularly through the process of conditioning and can be influenced by externalities to a degree.

Study 4.
Study 5.
Study 6.

I think when all of this stuff is finally nutted out we will see different levels of System 1 malleability. With primal needs which are vital for replication being strongly resistant to change while less "replication contingent" elements of our natures will probably have a significant degree of malleability. 

Disgust

Given events in the U.S. in the last few days, I felt it would be pertinent to revisit the subject of disgust.

Disgust was a long overlooked emotion but recent psychological research into the subject has shown that it plays an important role in many facets of the human person.

Firstly, with regard to the subject of female sexuality, there is a growing body of research which suggests that it has an important role in the regulation of female sexuality.  From this paper,

In addition, the stimuli involved in sexual encounters are in general (at least out of context) strongly perceived to hold high disgust qualities, with saliva, sweat, semen and body odours qualifying among the strongest disgust elicitors . Clearly then, disgust may be an important interfering factor in sexual activity which may help to explain the mechanisms involved in sexual dysfunction  The finding that many of the strongest disgust eliciting stimuli are also involved in sex (e.g., saliva, and sweat) may not only help explain how disgust may be involved in sexual dysfunction, but it also raises the critical question of how people succeed in having pleasurable sex at all

The growing research evidence suggests that arousal is the key disgust suppression mechanism which facilitates sexual activity. In other words, women are quite literally disgusted by the idea of sex unless sufficiently aroused. This is an important finding, especially with regard to its theological implications. Traditionally, the marital debt was supposed to be rendered by each spouse on demand--within reason--yet the arousal dimension, a dimension which appears to be necessary in order for the normal functioning of the act has not been an object of consideration. There appears to be a need for a theology of desire (Eros: Ed).

The implications of a lack of arousal are clear. (from the same paper) 

From a clinical standpoint these findings can indicate that lack of sexual arousal (perhaps due to inappropriate stimulation) may interfere with functional sex, as it may prevent the reduction of disgust and disgust related avoidance tendencies. Consequently, if sexual arousal is low (for a variety of possible reasons), the disgusting properties of specific stimuli, which are relevant for the engagement in pleasurable sex, as well as the hesitation to approach these stimuli are not attenuated. As a result, this could lead to problems with sexual engagement, and lack of vaginal lubrication, which in turn could increase friction and cause problems such as pain with intercourse. It is thus possible that in extreme cases the woman might acquire negative associations with sex and might start to avoid sexual intercourse altogether. Relevant to this, our previous studies with women suffering from vaginismus (Genito-pelvic pain disorder/penetration disorder) have shown that they experience disgust responses towards erotic stimulation at the subjective as well as at a more automatic level. Moreover, the fact that sex related stimuli appeared to elicit disgust rather than arousal in women suffering from vaginismus might further worsen the problem. This is relevant here, since a typical response to disgust is avoidance behaviour in order to create distance from the disgusting stimuli. Thus, it is highly possible that these sexual problems can be directly or indirectly related to low sexual arousal, which as a consequence gives more room for the elicitation of disgust, resulting in a downward spiral and continued maintenance of their difficulties and sexual dysfunction.

As I've mentioned before, "Biblical Christians", whom insist that a wife must submit to his wife without any reference to the qualities of desire are cultivating conjugal trouble.

Recent research into the subject of Vaginismus and Dyspareunia have shown that women who suffer from these conditions have a higher disgust response to sexual stimuli than other women. Furthermore, normal morally conservative women have a higher disgust response than liberal women. (There appears truth to the notion that liberal women are easy and more tolerant of dirt.)

Now treatment for this condition varies in effectiveness with most approaches being based on a systematic desensitisation approach with quite variable success rates. Interestingly, this small and highly ethically dubious study, used "surrogate partners" with 100% success. After reading the about this latter study, I wanted to know a bit more about the characteristics of the surrogates, no details were forthcoming, but this dissertation, which reviewed the literature with regard to male response to vaginismus, is, as they say, very...very interesting.

The male partners of women with vaginismus are typically described as gentle, timid, inexperienced, overly considerate, and passive-dependent men who are unassertive with lower than average sexual desire (Fertel, 1977 cited in Leiblum et al., 1980). The female partner is seen as the more dominant personality in the majority of the cases (O’Sullivan, 1979). A psychometric study of both partner’s personality by Kennedy et al. (1995) found the male partners “to be reserved rather than outgoing, sober rather than happy-go- lucky, shy rather than  venturesome, trusting rather than suspicious, tense rather than relaxed” (p. 16).

A high proportion of the male partners are described as gentlemen, who are kind and polite, display a good deal of tenderness and concern towards their partner, and show much consideration and understanding for her condition (Puxon & Dawkins, 1963;Stanley, 1981). These qualities of support and empathy may help with the continuation of the relationship, but some partners experienced supportiveness without an appropriate level of assertiveness, as an exacerbation of the difficulties caused by vaginismus in a study by Canin (2006). 

Roissy's shadow is ever present in the dissertation.
Several manosphere commentators have noted the link between disgust and non-alphaness and it would appear that there is a sound scientific basis for it.  Arguing against the notion that there is something wrong with women for wanting an alpha male is not just anti-woman but it is anti-nature as well.

NOTE TO THE RETARDED.

I'm not saying that both these conditions are caused solely by a lack of alphaness in the male, rather it would appear that recent research suggests that the that failure of desire arousal (for whatever mechanism) may be responsible. Epsecially, in cases of dyspareunia, organic factors may be at play and need to be excluded before "desire failure" should be considered as a cause.
Seek proper medical advice.

Lucky Guy

Unlike a lot of this segment of the blogosphere, I'm pretty ambivalent on the subject of a hereditary aristocracy or Royalty. It's a sort of backhanded tribute to Marx when one accepts the notion that those born into a life of privilege are actually morally better than those less fortunate.

I must admit that I have strong sympathies for this view of Jefferson in his letter to John Adams,

For I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents. Formerly bodily powers gave place among the aristoi. But since the invention of gunpowder has armed the weak as well as the strong with missile death, bodily strength, like beauty, good humor, politeness and other accomplishments, has become but an auxiliary ground of distinction. There is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents; for with these it would belong to the first class. The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society. And indeed it would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed man for the social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of the society. May we not even say that that form of government is the best which provides the most effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government? The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent it’s ascendancy.

A cursory read of European history will show that princes have been corrupt, kings bad, dukes dissolute, Earls treacherous and Queens promiscuous. In England, we have the virtue of Elizabeth matched by the prolishness of his Son Andrew and former daughter-in-law Sarah. There have been exceptions of course, but hereditary aristocracy is no guarantee of virtue. I'd be far more accepting of it, if we could rid ourselves of the worst offenders without slipping into war.

Which brings me to Sweden. Nothing really surprises me about Sweden and those superior Aryans Nords anymore. It appears that they have had a Royal Wedding and whilst marrying commoners is not the breech of precedent it was before, I must admit, I'm a bit surprised with Sweden's newest princess, Sofia Kristina Hellqvist.  Her credentials are impressive (NSFW). Topless model, Reality TV show contestant,  admirer of  Jenna Jameson.  The picture in the Wiki link shows her just about to hit the wall.

Clearly, some commoners are more common than others. That prince, he sure is a lucky guy.

Welcome to our new overclass.

Carnal Lite II: The Virtues of Eros.

One of the most important concepts in biology is the concept of conditioning. First described by Pavlov, conditioning is the learned association between between an innate response and some other stimulus. It is a powerful mechanism of learning in aversion therapy, i.e. when you want to teach a patient to avoid a certain behaviour. It is worth keeping in mind in my comments to follow.

Now, the reason I bring this up is because of a recent post by Dalrock, Don't blame Heartiste for the equation of Alpha with virtue, which I believe raises an important question with regard to the relationship between the two. Now, in order to help those who suffer from concept conflation,  I want to distinguish between alpha male traits--traits which women find sexually attractive--and the the PUA lifestyle, which involves the bedding of multiple women.  The two concepts are separate and when I speak of Alpha male behaviour, I'm speaking of the specifically of the traits, not the lifestyle.

Now the reason I raise this point is to pose the question: Is it possible to be properly masculine without reference of alpha traits? Or is alphaness something that forms a component of masculinity?

If you look at it more closely, many of the alpha traits which women find attractive aren't explicitly sexual traits but are rather personality factors, which demonstrate a strong internal locus of control combined with a strong sense of social awareness. Can a man be manly without these factors? Personally, I don't think so and am more of the opinion that a man needs to posses some alpha factors in his personality to be properly masculine.

In other words, Alpha behaviour is a component of masculinity and sexual attractiveness is a sort of virtue. A better way of thinking of it is as an Arete, an excellence of masculinity.

As I've argued previously, Christianity has downplayed this excellence and has sometimes been out-rightly hostile to it, and has in may ways laid the foundation for the current sexual dystopia, by blurring the sexual dimensions of the person, seeing moral goodness as sexually androgynous. When we tend to think of a good man for instance, we don't tend to think of him as a attractive muscular personage, rather we tend to dismiss this aspect and evaluate him solely on his character traits. Likewise for women. Christian goodness or badness seems to seems to evaluate the "vessel" in which the moral actor subsists as morally irrelevant. It's hard to develop a theology of sexual polarity when the underlying religious assumptions regard physical sexual identity as if it didn't matter.

The problem with taking this approach is that it become very difficult to then to analyse deficiencies or excellences of sexual polarity within any type of moral framework. Even Christian conceptions of Eros, tend to "decarnalise it" seeing it as an appetitve element, a thing of desire, rather than as a thing of desire for the opposite sex. If anyone doubts this, have a read of Benedict's speculations in his Encyclical Deus Caritas Est, and Benedict is not stupid. This Christian approach to Eros deforms it into a meeting of souls instead of a hedonic delight in the carnal nature of each other. Eros is primarily concerned with the flesh.

Eros is a type of love that brings the opposites together and therefore it's virtues are those which facilitate union. Masculinity under such a framework  must posses qualities which are attractive to the opposite sex, likewise femininity is composed of the qualities which attract the male. The Erotic virtues are those which conform to this ideal and a good man under this analysis is not only a man who is pleasing to God but is also attractive to women. Furthermore, masculinity in this construct becomes a matter of empirical observation instead of some philosophical construct. A component of masculinity must include what women like.

This "carnal lite" view of the sexes leads to other more profound problems. It tends to analyse intersexual relationships without reference to actual human biology, tending to evaluate male female relationships on a "platonic" dimension instead of an "erotic" one. Marital dysfunction is seen more as a "friendship" failure rather than a failure of Eros.  Now by erotic failure, I don't just mean an explicitly sexual failure--i.e a failure in the bedroom--but rather a more inclusive failure of either masculinity or femininity. Wives come home to men who can't make a decision and men come home to whiny bossy wives.  Marriages fail not just because men and women don't posses the character traits to be friends, rather marriages fail because the partners fail to maintain their sexual polarity.
Christianity just doesn't operate on this level of analysis.

Now the reason why I think this is important is because many Christian types feel that the institution of marriage would be all right and dandy if wives would just simply" submit to their husband" as per Paul's command. Paul says much more than this on the subject of marriage and is, in fact, quite explicit that both partners should try to please each other. But what's important here, amongst those who love to emphasise this passage of scripture, is the usual accompanying disregard for the erotic component of male-female relationship, and given the anti-carnal tendencies of Christianity, "pleasing" is quite readily assumed as not including the broader sexual dimension. Therefore Christian marital advice focuses on "understanding" and "patience" instead of losing weight and property maintenance without nagging. Furthermore, Christianity does not seem to grasp that their may be a class of "erotic sins" which wound a marriage.

Now telling women to "submit" without reference to their carnal nature leads to some very interesting and poisonous after effects, especially in light of recent psychological research on the subject of disgust. Accumulating evidence suggests that the emotion of disgust is the sexual gatekeeper in women and it's inhibition through the mechanism of arousal is what permits sexual activity to occur.

Which brings us back to the subject of conditioning. If a women is compelled to have sex without arousal, her innate response will be to associate the act with disgust, The thing that needs to be remembered is that this is a "hard wired" biological response not some choice. Over a while,  a conditioned response will occur and avoidance behaviour will set in, resulting in the marital aridity of folklore. Now the good woman may choose, out of her love of God, to grit her teeth and perform for the husband but she will be acting against her nature and gradually, as the cycle is repeated,  the conjugal aspect of the marriage will become dysfunctional. No matter how you cut it, arousal and disgust matter. Eros is more than just desire, it's about the qualities of the other.

A Jezebel President.

George Bush may have been an idiot but he never left his country impotent, like Jimmy Carter did. How does the most powerful nation in the world get bought to its knees without a shot being fired? Perhaps it's when they elect, through their deliberative and shrewd judgement, an idiot man of God.

Anyone trying to understand the malaise at that time would do well to reflect on this latest piece by Jimmy Carter as an insight into the "mind" of the man. One doesn't expect high intellectual standards from the Left but Jimmy is proof that age does not necessarily give wisdom, nor "faith" intelligence.


Guess the men who fought and bled on Guadalcanal and Tarawa died so such a man could rule.

Give me Tricky Dicky any day.

Pope Francis Appeals to Roissy. (Sort of)

 

In further proof that the Traditionalists are the intellectual equivalent of Liberals, only at the opposite temperamental pole, Pope Francis, who is "persona non grata" amongst them, has once again confounded expectations by laying the boot into Feminism and Gender Theory. Quelle Surprise!

In his THIRD condemnation of Gender studies during his Papacy, Francis makes a shout out to the Manosphere!

The marital and family bond is something serious; it is for everyone, not just for believers. I would like to urge intellectuals not to abandon this topic, as though it had become secondary to commitment in favor of a freer and more just society.

To be quite honest though, Francis once again goes into traditional Platonic Love mode.

"To resolve their relationship problems, man and woman need instead to talk more to one another, listen more to one another, know one another more, love one another more. They need to treat one another with respect and cooperate in friendship. With these human foundations, sustained by the grace of God, it is possible to plan a marital and family union for the whole of life.

Perhaps a better solution would be for men to act like men and women to act like women and then do the talking. This implies knowing how to act like a man and knowing how to act like a woman something which the Church itself has considerably muddled.

 

As I've argued in previous posts, the Church has in many ways been the midwife of Gender theory by pushing a view of human sexuality that downplayed the carnal component of it. Eros became desexualised. The moderns, simply took the cultural capital they inherited and amped it up, and the way to look at Gender theory is that it is a type of Platonic love only on steroids. Spirit disconnected from body as opposed to Aristotlean hylomorphism where spirit and body are one. You Churchy types reflect on The Word made Flesh for a moment.

Pope Francis seems to be proof that the Traditionalists will do all the possibly can to let the Liberals win. The Liberals are the Catholic Church's Sefton.

Bonus Link.

I don't agree with all the things that Zmirak says because I don't think Francis is an enemy of the Right, he's opposed to Traditionalists.  The way to think about what is going on in the Catholic Church is not a Right/Left dichotomy rather, it is a Tradtionalist/Right/Left trichotomy.  With the Trads and the Left both working to undermine the Right.

Perhaps we have our first Reactionary Pope.

Easter Homily.

Perhaps the best homily heard during this Easter period was not heard from the pulpits but from inside the reactionary sphere.  Now, I don't agree with everything over at Alternative Right but there is a lot to agree about in this piece.

Another Victory for Religious White People.

Quote:

But why are Christian Conservatives so weak, so feeble, so unable to stand up on their two hind legs, except to beg for mercy? Some will say it's because they are too nice, too meek and mild "like Mary's holy child," too in love with love, and too at peace with peace to ever kick up a fuss. But the funny thing is that that is more or less exactly how their Liberal opponents like to see themselves – the good guys, the lovable peaceniks, everybody’s friend, etc. Their humanitarian totalitarianism and Twitter hate lynch mobs draw moral strength from the certainty that they are.

and,

 Cook was blamed for his hypocrisy, but this is a little unfair. Hypocrisy usually means you treat identical cases differently, but there is every difference between Saudi Arabia and Indiana, as there is between Islam and Christianity. In Christianity, Liberals merely see a faith that is weaker then their own; one that can be pushed around by their zealots with little fear of reprisals. With Islam they see a faith that is stronger than theirs and accordingly tread much more carefully and respectfully.

The problem revealed by the RFRA debacle in Indiana is not that Liberals exist and want Liberal things, but instead that Christians are not fully Christian and have no idea how to get Christian things. They are at best lukewarm believers in their supposed faith, incapable of acting to defend their beliefs.....

.....A more likely explanation is that Christianity in the modern West is only capable of inspiring a faith that is feeble, doubt-ridden, passive, and essentially worthless – except as a means of enriching its ministry. Perhaps that is where all its enthusiasm has gone, and why there is none left over to fight back against the rampant rival faith of Liberalism, which in itself is a fine example of just how potent comparatively small numbers of religiously motivated White people can be.

 

Testify Brother, Testify!

 

The astonishing march of the Left Wing through Western Culture has only been possible because of the lack of opposition to it. It was only in the 90's that Gay marriage was regarded as a joke and now we see Christians being persecuted by mobs for their feeble opposition to it.

 

Belloc was right, Europe is the Faith and the Faith is Europe, and if the idea of European Civilisation is dying it's because the faith is dying as well.  Part of the reason I suspect this is the case is because the faith we have had handed down to us has had all the testosterone washed out of it. Christianity still believes in its mission, but it's mission has been redefined as being just another NGO, albeit one that has to comply with Ceasar's bidding.

Another part of the reason is that the Christian teaching on Courage has tended to emphasise it's passive component. Lauding the courage of forbearance and the acceptance of pain whilst downplaying the role of righteous defence and attack.  Doubling down on prayers and fasts may improve ones "spirituality" and ability to bear suffering, but it does nothing to diminish the hurt from the opposition. It's so much easier to withdraw than attack, and justify it as "carrying your cross".

After reading the article, I must admit the first thought came to mind was the Parable of the Talents. Many people have been given the Talent of Christianity only to squirrel it away and do nothing with it. "Accepting Jesus" was quite clear on what was going to happen to them. God expects you to have a pair.

A Sovereign Mind

The true rightist is not a man who wants to go back to this or that institution for the sake of a return; he wants first to find out what is eternally true, eternally valid, and then either to restore or reinstall it, regardless of whether it seems obsolete, whether it is ancient, contemporary, or even without precedent, brand new, ‘ultramodern.’ Old truths can be rediscovered, entirely new ones found. The Man of the Right does not have a time-bound, but a sovereign mind. In case he is a Christian he is, in the words of the Apostle Peter, the steward of a Basileion Hierateuma, a Royal Priesthood.

 Erik Maria Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

Neoreaction appears to be a Conservative phenomenon by virtue of association yet to think of it as Conservative is wrong. Neoreaction is neither Conservative or Liberal. It is neither regressive or progressive. It is not traditionalist nor is it modernist. It is not about being either Left or Right, it is about being right: Truth is its imperative.

And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

Our Sefton

...... Nevertheless, my objection is to your blanket “the Jews” when referring to some segment of Jews who are virulently Marxist and/or Zionist. As you note, Ron Unz and Paul Gottfried are righteous. I could add many other names to the list. And as you also note, Christianity is the real root of our disease. It is the Catholic and Lutheran Churches bringing hundreds of thousands of African “refugees” into America. It is the Catholic Church harboring illegal mestizos. It is the tens of millions of evangelical Christians eager for our next war on Israel’s behalf. It is american christians who are Netanyahu’s biggest cheerleaders while our largest Jewish group, Reform Jews, are opposed to him. On all this it appears that we agree.

So when numerically the Christians actively pursuing our destruction outnumber the Jews pursuing our destruction (and their own subsequently) by a hundredfold, what benefit is obtained with saying, “The Jews .. The Jews”? We all know the Jews are more intelligent (on average) than the Christians and that this advantage is weighted toward verbal IQ so they carry an influence greater than mere numbers suggest. But I still fail to see any reason to blame “the Jews” for what the majority of Christians and indeed 100% of Christian leadership fervently advocates. America’s Christians are listening as much (or more) to their Pastors and Priests than to Moishe Goldfarbsilversteinowitz. And I’m sure you’d agree that a Jew weighing his beliefs will be alienated by any movement where every other advocate is railing endlessly against “the Jews .. The Jews!” Don’t we really want and need more smart white people to awaken to our cause? Based on the numbers of secular Jews and Jewish outmarriage rates, the number of Jews who self-identify as “white” rather than “Jew” is on the rapid rise. But secular or not, they’ve been fed “The Holocaust” with their mother’s milk from birth. My suggestion to you then isn’t that you change your mind, but that you become more specific in your condemnations. Instead of “the Jews .. The Jews” perhaps “the Zionist Jews and their Christian pals”? Or “the Christian and Jewish Zionists”? Or “white genocide favoring Christians and Jews”?

Stan D Mute, The Unz Review.

Before reading on, it might be worthwhile to refamiliarise yourself with System 1 and System 2 thinking.

One of my favorite movies is Stalag 17. It's a story about American airmen in a German POW camp during WW2 who have their plans for escape continually foiled. The pattern of consistent failure leads to a realisation that there is an informant amongst them and suspicion falls on an American named Sefton, who has been  fraternizing and trading with the German guards.

Sefton is the obvious choice for the informant. He is friendly with the Germans, is cynical with regard to the war and doesn't real show significant "patriotism". In addition, He possess several unlikable characteristics and places bets against the prisoners who are trying to escape, which makes him all the more repugnant to his fellow inmates. So convinced of his guilt, are the other prisoners, that they beat him up and want to lynch him, with Sefton being only spared by the intervention of the prisoners leader. The prisoners continue to believe that Sefton is the informant until the the very end, where in a plot twist, it is revealed that the congenial, blond, blue eyed, all-American camp security officer, whom nobody suspected, is the German Spy.  For his performance of Sefton in the movie, William Holden won the Academy award for Best Actor in 1954.

Apart from being a good movie, it is a powerful study into the "cognitive" behavior of mobs and how prejudicial (System 1) thinking can lead to false conclusions. More importantly, as the movie shows, sometimes prejudice acts as a smokescreen by making men focus on a probable evil and through cognitive neglect, letting true evil flourish. For the sake of this article, I'm going to call this the Sefton Effect.

The Sefton Effect requires four components for its operation:

1) An aggrieved party of cognitive misers. i.e most humans in groups.
2) A patsy, who by virtue of some attribute, elicits both a strong negative emotional response and is a plausible prima facie (low cognitive demand) explanation for some evil.
3) A villain, who is highly agreeable and continually deflects blame on the patsy.
4) The failure to dispassionately exercise logic and the rules of evidence.

The roots of prejudice can be found in the System 1 mechanism of the human mind. Prejudice is quite simply the result of the mind's capacity to associate facts, experiences and emotions in a low- cognitive-demand, higher-order-reflex arrangement. It is a biocognitve phenomenon which is a feature of the human mind. The reason why Stereotypical thinking is prevalent in human beings is because it's a type of thinking that works in most circumstances and confers a survival advantage. And stereotypes, like prejudices, no matter how politically incorrect, have some basis in the truth. Black men are statistically more prone to criminal activity than white men. White upper middle class men are low probability violent perpetrators. In situations of informational ambiguity, threat or in environments where low cognitive accuracy is habituated, the mind will come to conclusions based on pure probabilistic and associative assessment. It might be unfair, it might be unjust, but its a biological effect of the human brain. Its only by engaging in System Two thinking and by following the rules of evidence and logic, that System One thinking can by over-ridden and and an accurate logical analysis of facts and events can be made.

Real life has similar examples of this type of thing,  The Sefton Effect can be seen in the phenomenon of the Racial Hoax. White perpetrators, wanting to deflect the blame from themselves of a crime will frequently blame a black man for the crime they have committed and, unfortunately, many times they have been successful. The reason why this sort of thing works is because most people are cognitive misers and  are quite content with the solutions provided by intuitive stereotypical (System 1) thinking.

False rape accusations are in a major way facilitated by the effect. Pretty White Southern Girl, Petty Criminal Black man, Beta male mob. Need I say more? The conclusion is foregone even though no facts have been presented.

Now the reason I bring this up is because in my opinion, the Sefton Effect has seriously hampered the Right's understanding of why it has failed in the 20th C, choosing to blame easy to grasp low hanging fruit instead of tackling underlying fundamental issues which plague Conservatism. And perhaps one of the biggest example of the Sefton Effect in Conservatism is anti-Semitism.

It appears that there is resurgence of Conservative thought in the West and one of things that I would hate to see it do is shoot itself in the head by repeating the same mistakes of the past. One of those mistakes is anti-Semitism.

The Jews, many ways, are tailor made to be the Right's bogey man. After all, there is the longstanding cultural embrace of the Left by Judaism, the disproportionate representation of ethnic Jews in the Communist tragedy of Eastern Europe, with its virulent anti-Christian nature. Their self-proclaimed chosen status, the differential treatment handed to Goy and non-Goy, (paging Salomen Morel) whilst lecturing all on the evils of discrimination. Their vastly disproportionate representation in the leadership of the Cathedral and in the institutions of Banking and Finance. The Tribes fierce assault on one noticing (Mearsheimer and Walt) and cynical weaponisation of the Holocaust. Their exclusive claim to Auschwitz (Never mind the Christian Poles killed there) The silencing of any criticism by framing it as a wannabe Nazi restoration. The condemnation of the Nazi's whilst pursuing a policy of Lebensraum settlement in Palestine, the promotion of multi-Culturalism in the West whilst simultaneously promoting mono-culturalism in Israel, the war on Christmas under the banner of discrimination and so on. For the Goy, there's a lot not to like.

Many Goy, seeing this, justly or unjustly, don't like the Jews and will through a mechanism of cognitive biases selectively "interpret" the evidence to prove that they are enemies of the Right.

The Jews fill a vital role for the cogntive-lite-Right, being the low hanging fruit by which they can easily explain the Western cultural decline. Much like Black demagogues seeing an explanation of all evil in the White Man, the lite-Right tend to blame all of Western Society's ailments on the Jews. They are the Lite-Right's Sefton.

However, many of these same Goy fail to notice that many Jews just want to fit in to society. In the U.S., many are secularising and Israel is a secondary priority. Many Jews, as professionals have positively contributed to the sciences, arts and to all other forms of community service and even amongst the Jews themselves, the Rabid Zionists and Leftists are on the nose. It's high time that the Right recognises the Righteous amongst the Jews. I nominate John Monash and Issac Issacs.

It is so easy (cognitively) to stitch them up for the failure of Conservatism in the 20th Century but it is also wrong. Instead of arguing why were there so many Jews in the Communist Revolution, the question should really be, why was Western society so weak that Communist revolution became possible. What changed? Instead of asking why is the media controlled by the Jews? We should be asking why should anyone group be able to control the media and why has society permitted this. Instead we focus on the symptoms instead of the disease. It's the aching sore toe that pre-occupies us, not the cancer in the belly.

Now, the reason I bring this up is because there has been a "tradition" in Right Wing circles of anti-Semitism which has seriously crippled the Right's ability to think about the problems of the 20th Century critically, tending to blame the failure on obvious patsy's like the Jews instead of focusing on the problems that are "in house". They have been the Right's Sefton. Much like our characters in Stalag 17, the Right has concentrated on obvious explanation instead of difficult to comprehend and subtle internalities which rot at conservatism unremittingly from the inside, untreated. Secondly, anti-Semitism is a slow poison which fundamentally weakens the Right, especially Neoreaction by making it susceptible to entryism by Nazi and crypto-Nazi elements. It needs to be remembered that National Socialism is the "right wing" flavor of socialism and any influx of Nazi's, apart from being personally repellant, is also likely to destroy Neoreaction from the inside both intellectually and ideologically, pushing it to the Left. The way that Neo-reaction should deal with the issues of Semitism is to ignore it.  Semitism is irrelevant to Neo-Reaction or Conservatism and is a ultimately distraction from real issues.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whom no one can accuse of being a philo-Semite came to the same conclusion. After years of looking into the matter he was of the opinion that the Jews were not responsible for the Russian revolution, he saw that the rot lay deeper:

Since then I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our Revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened. 

What is more, the events of the Russian Revolution can only be understood now, at the end of the century, against the background of what has since occurred in the rest of the world. What emerges here is a process of universal significance. And if I were called upon to identify briefly the principal trait of the entire twentieth century, here too, I would be unable to find anything more precise and pithy than to repeat once again: Men have forgotten God.

In this secular age, it may not be socially polite nor cognitively pleasing to admit that what ails Western Civilization is a collapse of the faith. It's easier to pin the blame on the bogeyman we don't like rather than see that the rot lies within ourselves.

A Troublesome Intelligence:2

Due to personal commitments, I never got around to putting up a follow up post to this one.  Wade's, A Troublesome Inheritance book seems to have fallen off the radar but I've never been one to not to put a boot into an idiotic theory even if it isn't topical.

One of the problems with Wade's contention, that economic success is a result of genetic selection, is that in many instances he does not control for multiple variables which my also influence his observed results. Wade, for instance, does not control for religion, or political regime which, in my opinion are important confounding variables. Ideally the best way to test for the genetic component of wealth creation is to control for as many confounding variables you can  whilst allowing the genetic component to fully express itself.

Ideally, what you would want to do would be to put as many different genetic groups into the same political, religious and economic climate. Preferably, then, you would like to "acclimatise" them for a few generations to avoid legacy effects and then observe them for a few years and then stratify them upon their per capita wealth.

Fortunately, this data is quite readily available on Wiki, and a short scrutiny of the data pretty much demolishes Wade's claims. I know that the data is not perfect, and that there are other confounding variables, such as religion which aren't dealt with but Wiki has data which is much better than anything Wade presents.

Per Capita Income in the United States by Ancestry (i.e. genetic heritage)  makes for interesting reading. Clearly, if Wade's theory was correct you'd expect the genetic advantage bred into the Northern Europeans would be transferable to the the U.S. with their immigration to it, and that in the equal economic environment of the U.S. they would be able to out-compete with the untermensch from the other parts of the world. And yet the data illustrates that this is not the case. My own ancestors, Croatians, listed 58 on the IMF GDP per capita rankings are ranked 17th in the U.S., on per capita income, just under the English, but well above the Swedes, Scots-Irish, Germans, Danish, Finns and Dutch. Yet, Croatia was a backward frontier outpost of the Austro-Hungarian and Venetian empires with a very limited economy. Clearly, if Wade's was correct, then Nordic economic superiority should have evident, at least in the instance of the Croatians, the opposite effect is observed.

Yet, when you look at Per Capita Income by Country of Birth you see that the Croatians are ranked 48, much closer to the IMF world rankings. How is it then, that after spending only a few generations in the U.S., not enough time for natural selection to occur, that a Croatian's economic potential is so markedly improved?

It's the software stupid. It's culture.

Another  very powerful demonstration of the power of culture is shown by way of the example of Germany. Communism had its hold on Eastern Germany from 1945 to 1989, roughly about two generations worth of time, not enough for selection pressures to be significant. Additionally, most of East Germany was Protestant which had traditionally superior economic performance per captia when compared to Germany's Catholic areas. Yet, despite 2 trillion Euros worth of investment, subsidies by the government  and a new found economic freedom, the Eastern part of Germany is still lagging financially. What gives?  Why should 50 years of communism leave a lasting economic legacy 25 years after unification?

Culture and Culture.

The map on the Left is GDP per capita and the map on the right is worker productivity per capita.

In this fascinating paper on the change in IQ of German military recruits by region of origin Roivanen makes the following point.

These results show a strong correlation between IQ, GDP, and education, confirming the observations made by Lynn and Vanhanen (2012). However, it is difficult to explain these correlations using biological or genetic factors because of the rapid changes occurring within a short time span. It is not reasonable to assume significant genetic or biological differences between East and West Germans in 1992 but not in 1998. [Ed] Instead, social and political factors offer a simpler explanation. Great  differences existed between East and West German societies before the unification in 1990 in terms of education, economics, politics, and religion. Due to political factors, such as lack of democracy and economic freedom, the East German economy did not perform as well as the West German one and offered fewer resources for education, which is known to have a strong effect on IQ. When the two societies started to merge in the 1990s, eastern Germany gained in GDP and the educational expenditure rose. The educational level of East German conscripts was significantly higher in 1998 than in 1992 resulting in robust IQ gains.

Buried in that paper is another gem:

Children from immigrant families had much lower mean scores in PISA 2006 than children with German parents (Prenzel et al., 2008). Ebenrett and Puzicha (1999) do not report the share of conscripts from immigrant families, but census data indicates that it was probably higher in 1998 than in 1992 and this may have affected the stagnant IQ scores in West German cities. On the other hand, 1.3 million Germans moved from East to West Germany from 1989 to 2006, half of them younger than 25 years of age (Lehmann, 2008). The education level of these migrants was higher than that of the general population, with roughly one third of the early 1990s migrants having at least a high school diploma. The east–west brain drain has been an important political issue in unified Germany (Ebenrett,Hansen, & Puzicha, 2003). Arguably, IQ gains in eastern states would have been larger without the migration.

Despite the brain drain from East Germany, German IQ continued to rise! In other words there was a positive effect on IQ despite negative genetic drift!

Now I'm not arguing that genetics don't matter; you can't put in what God's left out, but it's clear that cultural software is very important with regard to IQ and economic performance and reductionist explanations that are biased towards one or the other are false. Wade's theory is rubbish.

For those who are interested, here is an interesting paper discussing the cultural wedge that has been formed by the fifty years of Communist rule between East and West Germany, and why there will be differences between East/West performance for a long time to come.