I know I promised to post about Angela Merkel (and will) but I wanted to do a quick post about the psychology of HBDism.

How high IQ causes HBDism

High IQ people are more likely to be Darwinists than creationists, and HBD is just extreme Darwinism.  As Stephen Jay Gould noted, the problem with believing that humans evolved from apes, is that it causes folks to wonder if some humans preserve some of that ape-like heritage.  So just as Darwinists are more intelligent than creationists,  we’d expect HBDers to be smarter than regular Darwinists (on average).  Further, Darwinism is all about survival of the fittest, so extreme Darwinism leads to the HBD belief that the rich are, in some sense, biologically better than the poor.

How low IQ causes HBDism

Low IQ causes conservatism, and I define conservatism as preferring the strong over the weak.  The reason low IQ causes conservatism is it’s a simple world view that requires less ability to see things from the perspective of the less fortunate, and may also be a sign of sociopathy (which is probably caused by brain damage and primitive genes).

So if you’re really conservative, you’re going to love rich and powerful groups (i.e Ashkenazi Jews) and have contempt for the poor and powerless groups (i.e. blacks).  Thus, you are going to be inclined to embrace the race-class IQ hierarchy, which puts the wealthy and Jewish at the top and the poor and black at the bottom

HBDers are rare

Because HBDers tend to have two traits that are, ironically, NEGATIVELY correlated with each other (Darwinism and conservatism), HBDers are rare and hated by both sides of the political spectrum.

Austism vs Schizophrenia

IQ is not the only trait that influences our views.  I also believe all humans fall along a neurological bell curve with autistic neurology at one extreme and schizophrenic neurology at the other extreme.  Having an autistic or schizophrenic neurology doesn’t mean you have autism or schizophrenia (you also need a neurological disability) but it does put you at risk.

Now if you have an autistic neurology, you’ll tend to be extremely pro-science and this could cause you to become aggressively pro-HBD, pro-vaccine, pro-atheism and pro-Western medicine.  By contrast if you have a schizophrenic neurology, you’ll tend to be aggressively anti-HBD, anti-vaccine, anti-Western medicine, anti-atheism etc.

This is because autistic neurology causes you to be very rational when it comes to facts and very trusting when it comes to people (including scientists).  By contrast, schizophrenic neurology causes you to become very irrational when it comes to facts and very cynical and paranoid when it comes to people (including scientists).  So an autistic type might never believe that scientists could have a racist or greedy motive and thus would always trust the research or Rushton, Jensen, and the pharmaceutical companies, while a schizophrenic type might always suspect a bad motive and be deeply suspicious of scientists.

But because schizophrenic neurology is (in some ways) the opposite of autistic neurology, and autistics tend to be socially impaired, those with schizophrenic neurology tend to be brilliantly charismatic, to the point of inspiring cult-like worship (i.e. Charles Manson).  As a result they can be very dangerous because many people will listen to their anti-science views.