24
Sep
Following a typical HBD Bibliography twitter intervention (paraphrased: “educate yourself”), a professor of Global Liberal Studies turned up to engage in activity that can be technically described as “hooting”. The pattern of symbolic behavior that then manifested cannot, of course, be reduced to the expectations of primatology. If it seems like an entirely predictable assertion of dominance, as found among all the great apes, something is surely being missed. That at least is the claim now being made (decorated by a little immediate status signaling):
The error of mistaking this expert hooting for the first step in an argument was too tempting to resist. After all, if a professor of Global Liberal Studies deigns to teach you about the limits of possible biological understanding, it is only polite to listen attentively. Unfortunately, certain monkey juices were triggered by the chest-thumping of GLS-prof., and I descended quickly into obstreperousness:
Continue Reading
16
Sep
A familiar point, stated exceptionally well:
… while the evolution of northwest Europeans to extreme altruism worked great for the last 500 years or so (it allowed for the type of cooperation that more or less created a far better world), it left us very vulnerable to exploitation. We simply have no genetic defense against being called bad names.
06
Sep
Extracted from a flawless slab of hard Jim:
Yair Lapid self pityingly whines “why do they hate us?”, “us” being in this case the Jews, though it could equally well be any group that is economically successful and reluctant to murder innocents. […] … Kikuyu … Tutsis … Kulaks .. So cut the damned whining. You sound just like the people who are trying to murder you. … when they hear whining, they hear weakness, and so they attack.
Stop whining. Kill someone.
19
Aug
Ripped straight from Gregory Cochran:
Reality is Unacceptable
19
Aug
Ideological categorization is the astrology of politics, in the sense that it panders to insatiable identity hunger. This post still holds the daily traffic record here, which is probably not entirely due to people looking for their political star signs, but neither is it mostly for other reasons. New approaches to the Left-Right spectrum — the Prime Political Dimension — promise master-keys to the secrets of identity-core opinion.
Given the quite absurdly competitive nature of the terrain, there is something truly remarkable about the simplicity and persuasiveness of this PPD-model, based upon the biological distinction between r/K selection strategies. The application of this distinction to humans is — I confidently assume — radioactively controversial. Its usage as a conceptual tool to collapse ideology into an axis of Human Biological Diversity is therefore undoubtedly disreputable. (This trigger-warning isn’t likely to act as much of a deterrent here.)
The ‘Anonymous Conservative’ theory does the most important things expected of a PPD-model. In particular, it provides an explanation for the polarized clusters of ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ traits, which have often proved highly resistant to reflective integration. Why should anti-capitalism, pacifism, and sexual laxity belong together? When grouped together as expressions of an r-type strategy, this bundle of seemingly unconnected ideological predispositions tightens into an intuitively coherent whole.
Worth special mention is the mapping of ideological difference onto environmental conditions. The (‘liberal’) r-type strategy is a response top conditions of resource abundance, versus (‘conservative’) K-type adaptation to scarcity. When augmented by some modest assumptions about the effects of r-type prevalence upon the persistence of Civilization, the r/K PPD-model automatically generates a cyclical history of social ascent and decline (through a biorealist abundance-decadence mechanism). The hope-crushing tragic structure is sure to appeal to reactionary sensibilities.
The Outside in prediction: This is a theory (and book) that will go far. You can read the first chapter here.
16
Aug
Steve Sailer doesn’t ask whether there are any two human races further apart than wolves and coyotes, because he’s a nice guy.
27
Jul
(Weekly open thread.)
Alexander Dugin has an unmatched ability to throw me into a thede-spasm. When he talks about the Atlantean enemies of his people, it’s absolutely impossible for me not to recognize them as my folks. He’s like the Hyperborean double of Walter Russell Mead in that way.
In that vein, I was musing about a death-bed thede-moment competition. Which three books do you have at your bedside to provide ideal thede-coloration to your final moments? (In the old English radio program Desert Island Discs, The Bible and Complete Shakespeare were thrown in for free. Make that the KJV bible, and it seems to me an obvious part of the Anglo-thede core — so the Outside in show will provide them too.) My selection: Paradise Lost; The Wealth of Nations; and An Essay on the Principle of Population. Those are the works to take a nuke from Dugin for.
More enemies.
Continue Reading
14
Jul
An utterly compelling tangle of arguments at The Center for Evolutionary Psychology, where the intersection of science and society is ripped open by controversy over Kevin MacDonald and his relation to Darwinian biorealism. Evo Psych star John Tooby makes some important points about the politics of denunciation, bringing the distinct spectra of political allegiance and sociological genetics into complex collision. Where do the implications of Hamiltonian inclusive fitness lead? (HBD doesn’t quite come into focus, but it haunts the discussion from the edges.)
For a sense of how murky this gets:
Continue Reading
10
Jun
[*sigh*]
(I think I saw a tweet by Jayman that also came out swinging, but I’ve failed to hunt it down.)
ADDED: The Jayman commentary (excavated by Mr. Archenemy).
ADDED: Some relevant comments in this thread.
07
May
(Special dam-breaker issue.)
Recent. Copious. Regional.
Some background reading here and here.