Scientists commonly assert that evolution is not progressive and that organisms occupying lower branches on the evolutionary tree are not anymore primitive or ancestral than organism’s occupying higher branches, because all extant life are, as journalist Peter Knudtson stated, “equivalent cases of time-tested evolutionary success”.

For example, Harvard biologist Stephen Jay Gould wrote “evolution forms a conspicuously branching bush, not a unilinear progressive sequence…earth worms and crabs are not our ancestors; they are not even ‘lower’ or less complicated than humans in any meaningful sense.”

This web page even displays a helpful diagram of an evolutionary tree to debunk the idea of evolutionary progress:

It’s technically true that no extant species is precisely ancestral to humans.  It’s also true that smart, complex and impressive life forms could theoretically have split off at any point on the evolutionary tree, and that “progress” is a somewhat subjective term.  But if all extant life forms were truly equally evolved, and if lower branching life forms were in no sense ancestral to higher branching life forms,  there should be zero correlation between position on the tree, and “progressive” traits like brain size and encephalization quotient (ratio of brain size to expected brain size for body size).

In order to test this hypothesis, I decided to compare degree of branching on the evolutionary tree (which I defined as number of splits on the tree before a given taxa splits off) and brain size/enchephalization, in 1) three major kingdoms of life, 2) four major animal groups, 3) five major higher primate groups, 4) four species of the genus homo, and 5) nine populations of modern humans.

For each of these samples, the Pearson correlation coefficient (r) was computed.  Such correlations can range from -1.0 (an increase in X perfectly predicts a decrease in Y, and vice versa) to +1.0 (an increase in X perfectly predicts an increase in Y, and vice versa).  If evolution is progressive, we’d expect most of the correlations to fall between 0 and +1.0.  If evolution is regressive, we’d expect most of the correlations to fall between 0 and -1.0.  If evolution were neither progressive nor regressive, we’d expect a mix of positive and negative correlations, averaging out to roughly zero.

What I actually found was that all the correlations were positive, ranging from +0.5 to about +1.0.

Correlation between number of splits and encephalization among kingdoms: +0.5

The following tree shows that plants, animals and fungi are all descended from a common ancestor.  That lineage split into plants (on the left) and non-plants (on the right) and then the non-plant branch splits again into animals and fungi. So plants are descended from one split, but animals and fungi are descended from two.

Notice how animals, which are descended from two splits have a brain (averaging an encephalization quotient of about 0.5), but plants which are descended from only one split, do not.  This implies a positive correlation between number of splits and intelligence, but since brainless fungi are also descended from two splits, the correlation is only moderate: +0.5.

Correlation between number of splits and encephalization among four major animal groups: +0.9

Now among animals, in the below tree, worms are descended from one split, fish are descended from two, and birds and mammals are descended from three.

Because mammals have an average encephalization quotient (EQ)  of 1.0,  birds average EQs of 0.75, fish have EQs of 0.05, and worms have unknown EQs, but probably about 0.01, the correlation between EQ and number of splits among major animal groups in the above tree is an astonishing +0.9!

 

Correlation between brain size and number of splits among five major higher primates

Just from looking at the below two images, it should be obvious that there’s a positive correlation between primate brain size and number of splits on the hominoidea evolutionary tree.

As shown below, the correlation between a primate group’s brain size and its branching on the evolutionary tree is +0.67.

 

Correlation between brain size and number of splits among four species in the genus homo

Wikipedia states that Homo habilis (descended from one split in the below tree) had a brain size of 610 cm³ , Homo erectus (descended from two splits) had a brain size of 1093 cm³ and that modern humans and Neanderthals (both descended from three splits) have brain sizes of 1497 cm³ and 1427 cm³ respectively.

This results in an astonishing +0.995 correlation between brain size and number of splits:

Correlation between brain size and number of splits among nine modern human populations: +0.71

Lastly, I decided to explore the correlation between brain size and number of splits among nine modern human populations using brain size data from Richard Lynn, which he adapted from Smith and Beals (1990).

 

Plotting the average brain size of each “race” as a function of number of splits before it branched off of Cavalli-Sforza’s tree gives a potent +0.71 correlation, suggesting that ancient splitting-off dates explain 50% of the variation in racial brain size.

Interpreting the results

The above correlation between brain size/encephalization and number of splits on the evolutionary tree, are all positive, and in some cases, extremely strong, suggesting 1) evolution is progressive, 2) some extant organisms are more evolved than others, 3) organisms that branch off the evolutionary tree prematurely, and don’t do anymore branching, tend to resemble the common ancestor of said tree.

Although the preliminary evidence I document here is strong, more research is needed because the choice of trees I decided to analyze was not random and one can imagine how a different set of trees might not produce such high correlations.  While I tried to find trees that compared taxa of relatively equal rank (i.e. comparing species with species within the same genus, or comparing race with race within the same species) many of the groupings are arbitrary, and the decision to lump or split various groups can result in fewer or more splits in the evolutionary trees and thus it’s crucial that these decisions are made based on objective criteria.

Nonetheless the fact that trees made by other people, who made them without considering the brains of the taxa, still correlated so consistently with brain size/encephalization, is compelling.

Explaining the trend

But if evolution is progressive, the question is why?  Stephen Jay Gould claimed that any trend towards complexity is merely an artifact of the fact that life started extremely simple, and had nowhere to go but up, so random variation in all directions will be progressive merely because there’s a floor on how simple life can get.  And yet there’s no floor on how small a brain can get, but I have yet to find a single phylogenetic tree where encephalization is negatively correlated with number of splits, and while such trees undoubtedly exist, they are conspicuously rare.  Thus an additional explanation for evolutionary progress is that because intelligence allows organisms to adapt behaviorally instead of genetically, it’s more efficient than evolving new traits every time the environment changes, and thus it tends to be highly favoured by natural selection.

An ancient tradition

Although the notion of evolutionary progress is today often dismissed as pseudoscience, it has a rich intellectual history that predates even the theory of evolution itself by over two millennia.

As J.P. Rushton noted, Aristotle suggested a scala naturae in which animals > plants > inanimate objects.   One of the most important ideas in Western thought,  Aristotle viewed higher ranked organisms as more perfect, God-like and rational.  The great Greek philosopher stated:

Now some simply like plants accomplish their reproduction according to the seasons; others take trouble as well to complete the nourishing of their young, but once accomplished they separate from them and have no further association;  but those that have the understanding and possess some memory continue the association, and have a more social relationship with their offspring.

Over 2000 years later this would be roughly known as the r/K scale where K selected organisms have lower reproduction rates, but higher survival rates, investing in more parenting than reproducing, while r selected organisms do the opposite.

Although r/K theory (and its applications to humans) has been severely criticised, it remains undeniable that regardless of its selective agents, there is an evolutionary trade-off between high quantity and high quality offspring and different organisms fall at different points on this continuum.

Modern theories of evolutionary progress

E.O. Wilson, the co-father of the r/K scale believed evolution was progressive dividing life’s history into four major stages:

(1) the emergence of life itself in the form of primitive prokaryotes with no nucleus

(2) the emergence of eukaryotes with nucleus and mitochondria

(3) the evolution of large multicellular organisms that have complex organs like eyes and brains

(4) the emergence of the human mind

Princeton biology professor John Bonner noted that there’s been an evolution from primitive bacteria billions of years ago to complex life forms today, and the newer animals have bigger brains than older animals and that it’s perfectly natural to say that older life forms are lower than newer life forms, because their fossils are literally found in lower strata. Even plants can be ranked he argued; angiosperm > slime molds.

Paleontologist Dale Russel noted that the mean encephalization of mammals had tripled in the last 65 million years and that the mean encephalization of dinosaurs steadily increased for over 140 million years.  Extrapolating from the latter trend, Russel argued that had dinosaurs not gone extinct 65 million years ago, they would have eventually evolved into big-brained bipeds.

While the specific humanoid form Russell imagined was highly speculative, the increase in encephalization seems quite plausible.

Inspired by such thinkers, in 1989 J.P. Rushton argued that archaic forms of the three main races (Negroids, Caucasoids, and Mongoloids) differed in antiquity, with newer races being more K selected than older races, though Rushton’s model has excited enormous criticism.

[Note from PP, June 24, 2017: the following is a guest post and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pumpkin Person.  Out of respect for the authors, please try to keep all comments on topic.  I understand conversations naturally evolve, but at least try to start all discussions with on topic comments]

Introduction

Jean Phillipe Rushton (1943-2012) was a British-born Canadian psychologist known for his theories on genetically determined racial differences in cognition and behavior between Africans, Europeans, and East Asians. While marginal among experts, Rushton’s theories are still widely accepted amongst the proponents of eugenics and racialism. This article will focus on Rushton’s Differential K-theory which tries to apply the r/K selection model to racial differences in behavioral traits. To be fair, Rushton wasn’t the only one to use r/K selection as an explanation for psychological differences within humanity. For instance, some have associated the continuum with left-wing vs. right-wing ideologies. And although ecologists (the specialists of ecosystems) find applying r/K selection to humans inappropriate, the behavioral sciences have identified life-history patterns that roughly correspond to the colloquial fast vs. slow life differences in life history. For that reason, Rushton may have accidentally discussed variables and trends that are largely acknowledged by experts but his theory lies on a misunderstanding of core principles of the r/K model as well as using flawed (or non-existent) data.

Agents of selection

To begin, confusion about the modes of selection in an ecological context needs to be cleared up. There are classes of natural selection in ecological theory to be discussed: r-selection where the agent of selection acts in a density-independent way; K-selection where the agent of selection acts in a density-dependent way; and alpha selection which is selection for competitive ability (territoriality, aggression). Typical agents of K-selection include food shortage, endemic and infectious disease, and predation. Typical agents of r-selection temperature extremes, droughts, and natural disasters. Typical agents of alpha-selection are limited resources that can be collected or guarded, examples being shelter and food, showing that alpha-selection is closer to K than r (Anderson, 1991).

As you can see, the third mode of selection in ecological theory is alpha-selection—which Rushton failed to bring up as a mode of selection to explain racial differences in behavior. He didn’t explain his reasoning as to why he did not include it—especially since alpha-selection is selection for competitive ability. One may wonder why Rushton never integrated alpha-selection into his theory—either he was ignorant to the reality of alpha-selection or it could occur in numerous ecosystems—whether temperate/cold or tropical. The non-application of alpha-selection throws his theory into disarray and should have one questioning Rushton’s use of ecological theory in application to human races.

The Misuse of r/K Theory

Ecoregions

Rushton’s model starts with the erroneous assumption that the populations he describes as humanities three main races qualify as ecological populations. When studying the adaptive strategies of organisms, ecologists only consider species within their evolutionary niche—that is, the location that the adaptation was hypothesized to have occurred. When it comes to humans, this can only be done by studying populations in their ancestral environments. For this reason, Africans, Europeans, Amerindians—any population that is not currently in their ancestral environments—are not suitable populations to study in an evolutionary ecological context. The three populations no longer inhabit the environment that the selection was hypothesized to have occurred, so any conclusions based on observing modern-day populations must be viewed with extreme caution (Anderson, 1991). Even in the Old World, constant gene flow between ecoregions, as well as alterations of the environment due to agriculture and then industrialization, make such a study virtually impossible as it would require ecologists to study only hunter-gatherers that have received no admixture from other areas.

Rushton’s next misuse of the theory is not discussing density-dependence and density-independence and how they relate to agents of selection and the r/K model. K-selection works in a density-dependent way while r-selection works in a density-independent way. Thusly, K-selection is expected to favor genotypes that persist at high densities (increasing K) whereas r-selection favors genotypes that increase more quickly at low densities (increasing r) (Anderson, 1991). Rushton also failed to speak about alpha-selection. Alpha-selection selection for competitive abilities and, like with K-selection, occurs at high population densities, but could also occur with low population densities. Alpha-selection, instead of favoring genotypes that increase at high densities “it favours genotypes that, owing to their negative effects on others, often reduce the growth rate and the maximum population size” (Anderson, 1991: 52).

The r/K continuum

The r/K continuum—proposed by Pianka (1970)—has been misused over the decades (Boyce, 1984) and that is where Rushton got the continuum and applied it to human racial differences. Different agents of r-selection produce different selection pressures, as does K-selection. However, where Rushton—and most who cite him—go wrong is completely disregarding the agents of selection, along with perhaps the most critical part, reversing r and K in application to human races (if it were applicable to human races, that is), which will be covered below.

Dobzhansky (1950: 221) notes that “Tropical environments provide more evolutionary challenges than do the environments of temperate and cold lands.” It is erroneously assumed that living in colder temperatures is somehow ‘harder’ than it is in Africa. People believe that since food is ‘readily available’, that it must be ‘harder’ to find food in the temperate/Arctic environments so, therefore, selection for high intelligence occurred in Eurasians while Africans have lower intelligence since it’s so ‘easy’ to live in Africa, as well as other tropical environments.

Africans, furthermore, have been in roughly the same environment since the OoA migration occurred (the Ice Age ‘ended’ about 11,700 ya, although we are still in an Ice Age since the planets caps still have ice), and so any assumptions about it being ‘harder’ for the ancestors of Eurasians to survive and pass on their genes is a baseless assumption. Tropical environments that provide more evolutionary challenges than temperate and cold lands whereas the migration that occurred Out of Africa introduced humans to novel environments. As described above, endemic disease is an agent of K-selection whereas migration to novel environments are agents of r-selection. Thus, cold temperatures would be an agent of r-selection, not K-selection as is commonly believed, whereas endemic disease would be an agent of K-selection.

Even though intelligence nor rule-following were not included on the list of variables that Pianka (1970) noted on his r/K continuum, Rushton chose to include the variables anyway, even though selection for intelligence and rule-following can occur due to agents of r- or K-selection (Anderson, 1991: 55; Graves, 2002: 134-144). Pianka (1970) never gave experimental rationalization as to why he placed the traits he did on his continuum (Graves, 2002: 135). This is one critical point that makes his theory unacceptable in application to racial differences in behavior. By Rushton’s own interpretation of the r/K model, Africans would be selected for intelligence while Eurasians would be selected to breed more since novel environments (i.e., colder temperatures) are agents of r-selection, not K. Using the terms r- and K-selection to describe the traits of an organism is inappropriate; Rushton’s application of r/K theory to the traits of the three races, while ignoring that r/K describes a mode of natural selection “indicates circular reasoning rather than support for Rushton’s hypothesis” (Anderson, 1991: 59).

Reznick et al, (2002: 1518) write: “The distinguishing feature of the r- and K-selection paradigm was the focus on density-dependent selection as the important agent of selection on organisms’ life histories. This paradigm was challenged as it became clear that other factors, such as age-specific mortality, could provide a more mechanistic causative link between an environment and an optimal life history (Wilbur et al. 1974, Stearns 1976, 1977). The r- and K-selection paradigm was replaced by new paradigm that focused on age-specific mortality (Stearns 1976, Charlesworth 1980).” r/K selection theory was dropped for the much stronger life-history approach (Graves, 2002)—which uses some elements of r and K, but otherwise those terms are no longer used since other factors are more important as agents of selection, rather than density dependence and independence as was commonly thought.

Simple models?

One of the main reasons that Rushton’s r/K continuum gets pushed is because it’s a ‘simple model’ that so ‘parsimoniously’ explains racial differences. (e.g., cold winters supposedly take more intelligence to survive in and supposedly are an agent of K-selection.) But ecological systems are never simple; there are numerous interactions between the physical environment and the biological system which interact in complex ways.

Rushton’s use of this ‘simple model’—the r/K continuum—and its application to human races are wrong because 1) the three races described are not local populations; 2) the r/K continuum as described by Pianka (1970) is a poor representation of multidimensional ecological processes; and 3) cold weather is normally an agent of r-selection while endemic disease in Africa—as described by Rushton—is an agent of K-selection. Simple models are not always best—especially for organisms as complex as humans—so attempting to reduce complex biological and environmental interactions into a linear continuum is mistaken (Boyce, 1984). The simpler the ecological model, the more complex ecological sophistication is needed to understand and apply said model. So, although Rushton prefers simple models, in this context it is not apt, as complex biological systems interacting with their environments should not be reduced to a ‘simple model’.

Applying r/K to human races

If the r/K model were applicable to humans, then Caucasoids and Mongoloids would be r-selected while Negroids would be K-selected. Endemic and infectious disease—stated by Rushton to be an r-selected pressure—is actually a K-selected pressure. So Negroids would have been subjected to K-selected pressures (disease) and r-selected pressures (drought). Conversely, for Mongoloids, they migrated into colder temperatures which act in a density-independent way—hence, cold winters (temperature extremes) are an agent of r-selection.

Pianka’s (1970) r/K continuum “confuses the underlying pattern of life history variation with density-dependence, a process potentially involved to explain the pattern” (Gaillard et al, 2016). Furthermore, one cannot make assumptions about an organism’s traits and the selection pressures that caused them without studying said organism in their natural habitat. This seems to be impossible since one would need to study non-admixed hunter-gatherer populations that have received no outside contact.

Gonadotropin levels, testosterone, prostate cancer and r/K theory

Numerous attempts have been made to validate Rushton’s r/K theory. One notable paper by Lynn (1990) attempts to integrate gonadotropin levels and testosterone into Rushton’s r/K continuum. Lynn cites studies showing that blacks have higher testosterone than whites who have higher testosterone than Asians. He then implicates higher levels of both testosterone and gonadotropin levels as the cause for the higher incidence of prostate cancer (PCa) in black Americans.

Lynn (1990) asserts that by having fewer children and showing more care, this is shifting to a K strategy. So, according to Lynn, the best way to achieve this would be a reduction in testosterone. However, there is a fault in his argument.

The study he uses for his assertion is Ross et al (1986). He states that the two groups were both “matched for possible environmental factors which might affect testosterone levels” (Lynn, 1990: 1204). However, this is an erroneous assumption. Ross et al (1986) did control for relevant variables, but made two huge errors. They did not control for waist circumference (WC), and, perhaps most importantly, did not assay the subjects in the morning as close to 8 am as possible.

Testosterone levels are highest at 8 am and lowest at 8 pm. When doing a study like this—especially one to identify a cause of a disease with a high mortality rate—all possible confounds must be identified then controlled for—especially confounds that fluctuate with age. The cohort was assayed between the hours of 10 am and 3 pm. Since testosterone assay time was all over the place for both groups, you cannot draw evolutionary hypotheses from the results. Further, the cohort was a sample of 50 black and white college students—a small sample and a non-representative population. So it’s safe to disregard this hypothesis, on the knowledge that blacks don’t have significantly higher testosterone levels than whites.

Another correlate that is used to show that blacks have higher levels of testosterone is the higher rate of crime they commit. However, physical aggression has a low correlation with testosterone (Archer, 1991; Book et al, 2001) and thusly cannot be the cause of crime. Furthermore, the .14 correlation that Book et al, 2001 found was found to be high. Archer, Graham-Kevan, and Lowe (2005) show that even the .14 correlation between testosterone and aggression is high in a reanalysis of Book et al (2001) since they included 15 studies that should have been omitted. The correlation was then reduced by almost half to .08.

Other theories have been developed to attempt to explain the racial crime gap which centers around testosterone (Ellis, 2017), however, the theory has large flaws which the author rightly notes. Exposure to high levels of testosterone in vitro supposedly causes a low 2d/4d ratio and blacks apparently have the lowest (Manning, 2008). Though, larger analyses show that Asians—mainly the Chinese—have a lower digit ratio compared to other ethnicities (Lippa, 2003; Manning et al, 2007).

Testosterone also does not cause PCa (Stattin et al, 2003; Michaud, Billups, and Partin, 2015). The more likely culprit is diet. Less exposure to sunlight along with low vitamin D intake (Harris, 2006; Rostand, 2010) is a large cause for the prostate cancer discrepancy between the races since low vitamin D is linked to aggressive prostate cancer.

Even then, if there were, say, a 19 percent difference in testosterone between white and black Americans as asserted by Rushton and Lynn, it wouldn’t account for the higher rates of crime, nor higher acquisition and mortality from PCa. If their three claims are false (higher levels testosterone in African-Americans, larger penis size, and high levels of testosterone causing PCa), and they are, then this obliterates Rushton’s and Lynn’s theory.

Differential K Theory has, as noted above, has also been associated with a larger penis for black males in comparison to white males who have larger penises than black males (Lynn, 2012), which is not true, there is no reliable data and the data that does exist points to no evidence for the assertion. Lynn, (2012) also used data from a website with unverified and nonexistent sources. In a 2015 presentation, Edward Dutton cites studies showing that, again, Negroids have higher levels of testosterone than Caucasoids who have higher levels of testosterone than Mongoloids. Nevertheless, the claims by Dutton have been rebutted by Scott McGreal who showed that population differences in androgen levels don’t mean anything and that they fail to validate the claims of Lynn and Rushton on racial differences in penis size.

r/K selection theory as an attempt at reviving the scala naturae

Finally, to get to the heart of the matter, Rushton’s erroneous attempt to apply r/K selection theory to the human races is an attempt at reviving the scala naturae concept proposed by Aristotle (Hodos, 2009). The scala naturae organizes living and non-living organisms on a scale from ‘highest’ to ‘lowest’. However, these assumptions are erroneous and have no place in evolutionary biology (Gould, 1996). Rushton (1997: 293) attempted to apply r/K selection theory to human populations to try to revive the concept of the scala naturae, as can be clear by reading the very end of Race, Evolution, and Behavior.

This, of course, goes back to Rushton’s erroneous application of r/K selection theory to human races. He (and others) wrongly assert that Mongoloids are more K-selected than Africans who are more r-selected while Caucasians are in the middle—it also being asserted that K organisms, supposedly Mongoloids, “are the most K evolved” (Lynn, 2012). However, if r/K selection theory were applicable to humans, Mongoloids would be r and Africans would be K. Rushton further attempts to provide evidence for this ‘evolutionary progress’ by citing Dale Russel (1983; 1989) and his thought experiment troodon that he imagines would have eventually have gained human-like bipedalism and a large brain. Nevertheless, Rushton himself doesn’t say that it was only one dinosaur that would have supposedly had human-like intelligence and mobility, Reptile brains, however, lie outside of mammalian design (Hopson, 1977: 443; Gould, 1989: 318), and so, Russel’s theory is falsified.

This use of r/K selection theory as an attempt at bringing back the scala naturae may seem like an intuitive concept; some races/animals may seem more ‘advanced’ or ‘complex’ than others. However, since Rushton’s application of r/K selection theory is not correctly applied (nor does it apply to humans) and any of the claims that Rushton—or anyone else—makes while invoking the theory can be disregarded since he misused r and K selection.

In an attempt to “[restore] the concept of “progress” to its proper place in evolutionary biology,” Rushton (2004) proposed that g—the general factor of intelligence—sits atop a matrix of correlated traits that he proposes to show why evolution is synonymous with ‘progress’, including how and why K evolved organisms are so-called ‘more highly K evolved’—which is a sly attempt to revive the concept of scala naturae. Rushton’s (2004) paper is largely copy and pasted from his 1997 afterword in Race, Evolution, and Behavior—especially the part about ‘progress in evolution’ (which has been addressed in depth).

As can be seen, Ruston attempted to revive the scala naturae by giving it a new name, along with the misuse of ecological theory to make it seem like evolution is synonymous with progress and that K organisms are ‘more evolved’, makes no sense in the context of how ecological theory is (or was) applied to organisms. Rushton’s theory is correct, if and only if he applied r and K correctly to human races. Rushton did not apply r/K selection theory correctly to human races, so Rushton’s claims and any that follow from them are, on their face, immediately wrong. The claims by Rushton et al showing evolution to be ‘progressive’ have been shown to be demonstrably false since evolution is local change, not ‘progress’ (Gould, 1989; 1996).

 Conclusion

Rushton’s r/K selection theory has enamored many since he proposed it in 1985. He was relentlessly attacked in the media for his proposals about black penis size, testosterone, brain size, sexual frequency, etc. However, the explanation for said racial differences in behavior—his r/K selection theory—has been rebutted summarily rebutted for misapplying ecological theory and not understanding evolution (Anderson, 1991; Graves, 2002). Even ignoring his racial comparisons, his application of the theory would still be unacceptable as he didn’t recognize agents of selection nor alpha selection.

Rushton is wrong because

(i) he misapplied r/K selection in application to human races (Africans would be K, Mongoloids would be r; rule-following and intelligence can be selected for in either environment/with any of the agents of r- or K-selection),

(ii) he arbitrarily designated Africans as r and Mongoloids as K due to current demographic trends (the true application of r and K is described above, which Rushton showed no understanding of),

(iii) the races do not differ in levels of testosterone nor penis size,

(iv) testosterone does not cause prostate cancer nor does it cause crime, so even if there was a large difference between blacks and whites, it would not explain higher rates of PCa in blacks, nor would it explain higher rates of crime,

(v) the scala naturae is a long-dead concept no longer in use by evolutionary biologists, along with its cousin ‘evolutionary progress’, while r/K selection is the attempt at reviving both,

(vi) human races are not local populations; since human races are not local populations then his application of r/K selection to humans is erroneous.

Rushton was informed numerous times he wrongly applied ecological theory to human populations. Yes, E.O. Wilson did say that if Rushton had noticed variation in any other animal that ‘no one would have batted an eye’, however, that does not say a word about Rushton’s incorrect application of r/K selection to human races. No race of humans is more ‘highly evolved’ than another.

Anyone who uses Rushton’s theory as an explanation for observed data is using incorrect/misapplied theory meaning that, therefore, by proxy, their theory is wrong. Rushton’s r/K theory is wrong, and people need to stop invoking it as an explanation for racial differences in behavior, politics, religion, and any other variable they can think of. If Rushton’s application of the theory is wrong, then it logically follows that anything based off of his theory is wrong as well.

When animals are directly selected for reduced reactive aggression (domestication), either naturally or artificially, they are indirectly selected for other traits too, like depigmentation, floppy ears, shorter muzzles, smaller teeth, docility, smaller brains, more frequent estrous cycles, juvenile behavior and curly tails.

Some scientists believe that the decrease in human brain size that occurred over the last 10,000 years may have been an indirect effect of domestication, but there are two problems with this theory:

1. Head size has rapidly rebounded over the 20th century (as has height), suggesting the brain size reduction during the Holocene was perhaps not an evolutionary change, but merely suboptimum nutrition caused by disruption of healthy hunter-gatherer life style in aspiring agriculturalists and the peoples they colonized.
2. If humans did self-domesticate ourselves, the evidence suggests it began hundreds of   thousands of years ago, not merely in the Holocene, and yet brain size reduction only occurred in the latter.

How might domestication have occurred?  One theory is that capital punishment, in which about 15% of the population (usually hyper-aggressive males who were bullying the rest of the tribe) were killed off in a “Revenge of the Nerds” scenario.

The fact that alpha males were such evolutionary losers is very humiliating and painful to commenters like “philosopher” who probably come from a long line of big husky rednecks, so they must convince themselves that nerds were selected for by masters looking for slaves, when in reality, nerds were the authors of their own evolutionary success, and simply murdered the bullies.

Because these alpha-male bullies tend to be very manly men, when their genes are removed, the tribe starts looking less like men and more like little boys.

This may help explain why early humans looked more like manly chimps while later humans look more like baby chimps.  It may also explain why a lot of nerds act more like little boys than grown men, preferring to play video games or play chess, and watch Star Wars or Star Trek instead of pursuing money and sex.

But in the rare cases where nerds do pursue money (i.e. Bill Gates) they often slaughter the alpha male competition in record time because they are so much smarter, particularly if they’re self-aware enough to start their own business instead of trying to climb the corporate ladder which they often lack the charisma to do.

But this leads to a paradox.  If domestication reduces brain size and makes people more nerdy, why are nerds smart, and why is there no evidence of brain size reduction until the Holocene (and even that may simply be malnutrition) when other signs of domestication (facial size reduction) occurred hundreds of thousands of years earlier?

One possibility is that modern humans in general and nerds in particular, were shaped by two evolutionary forces:  One selecting for less reactive aggression (domestication) and the other selecting for intelligence, and the latter prevented brain size from shrinking.

For more information about this topic, please see the following video:

Our species is believed to be between 200,000 and 300,000 years old and yet there’s no evidence of symbolic behavior until about 88,000 years (engraved ocher from Blombos cave, South Africa) and there’s no evidence of true art until about 40,000 years ago in Europe.

What took so long?

Was this just a slow accumulation of cultural knowledge, or as Stanford professor Richard Klein has argued, was the human brain not genetically capable of higher level creativity until around the time we left Africa?

One incredibly evil way scientists could answer the question would be to raise a bunch of modern humans from birth with no language, art, technology, clothing or modern advances of any kind.  If these humans start talking and creating symbols within a few generations, we’d know Klein was right and that there was a genetic mutation that suddenly allowed our species to acquire behavioral modernity quite rapidly.  On the other hand, if these humans take over 100,000 years to create language and art, then it will prove we’re no genetically smarter than the earliest members of our species, we’ve just had more time to create culture.

But if we are genetically smarter, how did we become that way?

Increasing brain size can’t fully explain it.  While it’s true brains grew as people entered freezing Europe and created the first art, those who stayed in the tropics would also display impressive cave art, independent of European influence.

So perhaps the explanation lies not in brain size, but in neurotransmitters.  In a recent issue of Scientific American, scholar Liane Gabora argues that humans lacked the neurotransmitters to fully exploit our huge brains until around 100,000 years ago at which time we evolved an ability to switch easily from analytical to associative forms of thinking

 

One of my beliefs is that Africans have genetically preserved an extremely ancient phenotype , or at least preserved more of that phenotype than non-Africans.  While I may never be able to prove this in full, and educated commenters like Phil78 provide counterevidence, Wikipedia provides a tiny bit of support for my assertion:

With the evolution of hairless skin, abundant sweat glands, and skin rich in melanin, early humans could walk, run, and forage for food for long periods of time under the hot sun without brain damage due to overheating, giving them an evolutionary advantage over other species.^[7] By 1.2 million years ago, around the time of Homo ergaster, archaic humans (including the ancestors of Homo sapiens) had exactly the same receptor protein as modern sub-Saharan Africans.^[16]

In honor of Father’s Day I wanted to talk about one of my favorite horror film’s, Creepshow (1982), made by two horror legends: Stephen King and George Romero.  The film is about a little boy who gets in big trouble with his father when Dad discovers he has a horror comic book.  This reminds me so much of myself as a kid as I too was always getting in trouble for consuming horror.

In the film the stereotypical 1950s father throws the comic in the garbage and the little boy is devastated until the giggling rotting corpse, who narrates the comic, shows up at his bedroom window and the little boy (played by Stephen King’s son) is starstruck.

At the end of the film the little boy takes revenge on his father by killing him with a voodoo doll.

The bulk of the film consists of the actual stories inside the comic book, the first one being Father’s Day about an extremely wealthy and extremely old man whose descendants can’t wait for him to die so they can inherit all his money.

Suffering from dementia, his only pleasure is to enjoy his father’s day cake, but no matter how hard she tries, his Italian American daughter can’t seem to make it fast enough to please him, partly because she’s being driven hysterical by him constantly screaming: “I WANT MY CAKE YOU DIRTY BITCH!”, as he bangs his cane on the table.

Finally she can’t take it anymore and she bashes him to death with an ashtray:

But on Father’s Day seven years later, he comes back:

As a little kid I was OBSESSED with this movie and even had the comic book, and would bike around the block screaming “I WANT MY CAKE” until some teenaged boy who lived across the street advised me to stop.

It takes a village to raise a child.

Black national merit finalist GondwanaMan suggested I blog about Alex Jones’s IQ.

I don’t know enough about him to give a truly educated guess, but he strikes me as a huge bullshiter.

Nonetheless I don’t think he’s lying about having a 140 IQ.

 

Hosting a talk show looks easy but it’s actually one of the most cognitively demanding jobs out there, given its competitive, verbal and improvisational nature.

The self-proclaimed SAT scores (a proxy for IQ) of several talk show hosts have been reported:

Howard Stern stated on his show that he scored less than a 1000 in the early 70s, equating to an IQ of 117 (116 white norms).  Based on the fact that height, income, and Jewish ancestry are all positively correlated with IQ, I suspect the SAT underestimated his ability.

Meredith Vieira claims she scored in the 1300s in the early 70s, equating to an IQ of about 144 (143 white norms)

Megyn Kelly told Stern she scored in the 85th percentile.  This would normally equate to an IQ of 115, but since only an elite third of teens took the SAT, it’s more like 125 (123 white norms)

So on a scale where all white Americans have a mean IQ of 100 with a standard deviation (SD) of 15, people who reach the most elite levels of broadcast media average IQ 127 and an SD of 14: An IQ distribution even more impressive than the Ivy League’s!

This may sound like a contradiction since Ivy League students average much higher SAT scores than talk shows hosts, but because the former are selected by SATs, they regress precipitously to the mean when given a random cognitive test.

Roughly one in six successful talk show hosts should have IQs of 140+ so Jones’s claim is not outlandish.  Given that he attended a community college, I doubt his SAT scores equated to an IQ of 140 but it’s plausible he scored that high on an official IQ test, given that the typical high school when Jones was growing up had at least one student with scores that high in their file.  Scores much above 140 almost never appear in school files because they’re rare and because many tests don’t measure much beyond the top 0.5%.

Corroborating Jones’s 140 IQ claim is his apparently impressive and rapid recall, as displayed on the Joe Rogan show:

Also note how much tighter the headphones fit on Jones’s cranium compared to Rogan and his sidekick, suggesting a large cranial capacity.

In addition Jones claims he can speed read and disbelieved in Santa at only age 2.5, and while this is hard to believe, he can at least bullshit his way through a math discussion.

Of course many people think Jones is a wacko, especially after he suggested that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was hoax, causing the grieving parents of the dead kids to demand his recent interview with Megyn Kelly never air, but Jones may have outsmarted the IQ 123 Kelly by anticipating a hit piece and secretly taping it to prevent selective editing.

Many people don’t understand how an IQ 140 could possibly believe some of the incredible conspiracy theories Jones pushes (i.e. the government raising human-pig hybrids), but talk show hosts often feign beliefs that broaden their audience.

Intelligence is just the mind’s problem solving computer and is only as good as the problems it’s used to solve.  Jones may use his IQ to validate what he already believes instead of seeking the truth.

Jones may also have borderline schizophrenia.  I have long argued that since schizophrenia is arguably in many ways the opposite of autism (social blindness), those with mild schizo traits are especially good at attracting a cult following, which explains the psychotic beliefs of the World’s great religions.

I’m not a member of the far-left or the alt-right but I’ve noticed both groups sometimes are guilty of the same kind of racism, namely, the tendency to assume almost all successful blacks are just being used by the elite, and not just like any other smart person who exploited opportunities to get ahead.  That’s not to naively deny that elites select people who are willing to carry their water, but why do black elites so disproportionately get accused of “selling out” or being puppets, when they’re no different from any other successful person?

So the far left will accuse Obama of just being the black public face of power to disguise the fact that the real agenda is to keep blacks disenfranchised.

On the other hand the alt-right will say Jews deliberately empower blacks like Obama as a way of disenfranchising the white power structure which has historically challenged their power.

So the far left sees Obama as a tool to keep blacks down while the alt-right see him as a tool to keep whites down, but both just see him as a tool for the elites.

Ironically, the only political extremists who give Obama any credit or agency are the far-right which saw him as a Manchurian President brilliantly advancing a secret pro-Muslim agenda.

Alt-right commenter “Philosopher” claims he used to be a liberal and I believe him.  Strong feelings are easily flipped and you can see the parallels between the far left and the alt-right; indeed the alt-right could be renamed the alt-left.  I think some of the biggest racists are actually white liberals, but they feel guilty about it and overcompensate by adopting a far left ideology.

But it’s easy to love poor black people.  They’re not a threat to your power or economic status and they allow you to feel superior.  The real proof that you’re not a racist is “can you love and respect empowered blacks?”

J.P. Rushton argued East Asians have the least testosterone, Blacks have the most and Caucasoids are in between.  However this claim has been challenged in recent years by East Asians who didn’t want to have less T than whites and whites who didn’t want less T than blacks.  Even though Rushton saw high T and sexual potency as primitive traits, millions of young men equate sex with self-worth and so their fragile egos can’t handle a low T racial stigma.

People really need to get a life.

I don’t have time to review all the research folks have done so I just did a quick search and found this graph:

It seems that among single graduate students, Rushton’s hierarchy is confirmed, with Blacks enjoying more T than whites who have more T than East Asians.

However among grad students in relationships,  East Asians tower in T.  Perhaps that’s just an artifact of the small sample size of those in relationships, or perhaps because of anti-Asian discrimination by women, only the most hyper-masculine Asians are able to date (on average).  The theory implied by the study authors is that being in a relationship increases T for East Asians, but lowers it for non-Asian men.

But if testosterone levels can fluctuate that much just from being in a relationship, it sounds like too unstable a variable to be of much relevance to racial differences.

Perhaps a more interesting trait is 2D:4D ratio– Length of your second digit compared to your fourth digit.  The higher the ratio, the higher your femininity (on average) because you were prenatally bathed in more estrogen than testosterone.  In contrast, low 2D:4D ratio suggests more prenatal T exposure relative to estrogen, and thus more masculinity.

According to this blog post,  low 2D:4D ratios predict aggression, fatherhood, early marriage, promiscuity, athleticism, risk taking, alcoholism, autism, spatial ability, ADHD, facial masculinity, penis length and prostate cancer.

It may also predict muscle mass.

High 2D:4D ratios predict smoking, obesity and verbal fluency.

Some of these correlations support theories I have proposed or endorsed.  Others may challenge those theories.

How does this fit with Rushton’s theory?  The Inductivist Blog claims:

It turns out that there are large ethnic differences in the 2D:4D ratio…According to the results of one study, “The Oriental Han had the highest mean 2D:4D, followed by the Caucasian Berbers and Uygurs, with the lowest mean ratios found in the Afro-Caribbean Jamaicans.” In plainer language, Hans were the most feminized and Jamaicans the most masculine.

I don’t have time to vet all these claims.  Some of the research might be old and may be overturned by newer larger studies, and even the true correlations might be small or non-causal.