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Monthly Archives: December 2017

Race and Strength on the Big Four Lifts by Race Realist

24 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ 378 Comments

[Note from Pumpkin Person, Christmas Eve, 2017: The following is a guest article and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pumpkin Person.  Out of respect for the author, try to keep the comments on topic.  I understand conversations naturally evolve, but at least start on topic]

Different races have different morphology/somatype. Therefore, we can reason that different races would fare better or worse at a certain lift depending on their limb length, such as leg length, arm length, torso length and so on. How do somatypic differences lead to differences in strength between the races on the Big Four lifts? The four lifts I will cover are bench press, deadlift, squat and overhead press.

Squat

East Asians

East Asians have higher levels of body fat (for instance the Chinese, Wang et al, 2011) and have lower BMIs, yet higher levels of body fat (Wang et al, 1994). This, along with their somatype are part of the reason why they excel in some strength sports. Since East Asians have a smaller stature, averaging about 5 feet 8 inches, with shorter arms and legs. Thinking about how the ancestors of the East Asians evolved, this makes sense: they would have needed to be shorter and have shorter limbs as it is easier to warm a body with a smaller surface area. Therefore, while squatting they have a shorter path to travel with the bar on their back. East Asians would strongly excel at the squat, and if you watch these types of competitions, you’d see them strongly overrepresented—especially the Chinese.

African-Americans

African-Americans are descended from West African slaves, and so they have longer, thinner limbs with lower amounts of body fat on average (especially if they have more African ancestry), which is a classic sign of a mesomorphic phenotype. They do also skew ecto, which is useful in the running competitions they dominate (in the case of West Africans and descendants and certain tribes of Kenyans and Ethiopians). Either way, due to their long limbs and a short torso, they have to travel further with the weight therefore here they suffer and wouldn’t be as strong as people who have a long torso with shorter limbs.

European Americans

Like East Asians, Europeans have similar morphology—skewing ectomorphic, the somatype that dominates strength competitions. Having a long torso with shorter limbs and more type I than type II fibers, they would then be able to lift more, especially since these competitors keep a high body fat percentage. Again, like with East Asians, there is a biomechanical advantage here and due to their higher levels of body fat and endomorphic somatype along with shorter limbs, they would be able to move more weight on the squat, especially more than African-Americans. Biomechanics is key when it comes to evaluating different groups’ morphology when attempting to see who would be stronger on average.

Deadlift

East Asians

The deadlift is pretty straightforward: bending down and deadlifting the weight off of the ground. Key anatomic differences between the races dictate who would be better here. East Asians, with shorter limbs and a longer torso the bar has to travel a further path, compared to someone with longer limbs and shorter torso. Though, someone with short limbs and a short torso would also have a biomechanical advantage in pulling, it is nothing like if one has long arms and a short torso.

African-Americans

Here is where they would shine. Their anatomy is perfect for this lift. Since they have longer limbs and a shorter torso, the bar has a shorter path to travel to reach the endpoint of the lift. At the set-up of the lift, they already have a biomechanical advantage and they can generate more power in the lift due to their leverage advantage. The deadlift favors people with a long torso, short femurs, and long arms, and so it would favor African-Americans. (Their long arms off-sets their short torsos, though the bar would still have to travel further, they still would have the ability to move more weight.)

European Americans

European Americans would have the same biomechanical problems as East Asians, but not as much since they have a taller stature. It is well-known in the world of weightlifting that having shorter, ‘T-rex arms’ impedes strength on the lift, since speaking from an anatomic viewpoint, they are just not built for it. No style of deadlift (the sumo or conventional) suits people with short arms, and so they are already at a biomechanical disadvantage. Relative to African-Americans, European Americans have ‘T-rex arms’ and therefore they would suffer at pulling exercises—deadlift included.

Overhead press

East Asians

The overhead press is where people with shorter arms would excel. Thus, East Asians would be extremely strong pushers. Say the bar starts at the top of their chest, the path of the bar to the lockout would be shorter than if someone had longer arms. The size of the trapezius muscles also comes into play here, and people with larger trapezius muscles have a stronger press. The East Asians short stature and therefore shorter limbs is perfect for this lift and why they would excel.

African-Americans

African-Americans would suffer at the overhead press for one reason: their long limbs, mainly their arms. The bar has a further path to travel and thus strength would be impeded. Indeed, people not built for pressing have long arms, long torsos, and long legs. Performing the full range of motion, African-Americans would have less strength than East Asians and European Americans.

European Americans

Again, due to similar morphology as East Asians, they, too, would excel at this lift. Since the lift is completed when the arms lock out, those with shorter arms would be able to move more weight and so what hurts them on the deadlift helps on pressing movements like the overhead press.

Bench press

East Asians

Lastly, the bench press. East Asians would excel here as well since they have shorter arms and the bar would have a shorter path to travel. Notice anything with bar movement? That’s a key to see which group would be stronger on average: looking at the average morphology of the races and then thinking about how the lift is performed, you can estimate who would be good at which lift and why. The bench press would favor someone with a shorter stature and arms, and they’d be able to lift more weight. (I personally have long arms compared to my body and my bench press suffers compared to my deadlift.) However, Caruso et al (2012) found that body mass is a more important predictor of who would excel at the bench press. East Asians have a higher body fat percentage, and therefore would be stronger on average in the lift.

African Americans

Here, too, African-Americans will suffer. Like with the overhead press, the bar has a further path to travel. They also have less body fat on average and that would also have the bar travel more, having the individual put more exertion into the lift compared to someone who had shorter arms. The longer your arms are in a pushing exercise, the further the bar has to travel until lockout. Thus you can see that people with longer arms would suffer in the strength department compared to people with shorter arms, but this is reversed for pulling exercises like the deadlift described above. (There is also a specific longitudinal study on black-white differences in bench press which I will cover in the ‘Objections‘ section.)

European Americans

Again, like with East Asians due to similar somatype, European Americans, too, would excel at this lift. They are able to generate more pound-for-pound power in the lift. The bar also has a shorter path to travel and since the people who compete in these competitions also have higher levels of body fat, then the bar has less of a distance to travel, thus increasing the amount of force the muscle can generate. Limb size/body mass/somatype predict how races/individuals would do on specific lifts.

Objections

One of the main objections that some may have is that one longitudinal study on black and white police officers found that blacks were stronger than whites at the end of the study (Boyce et al, 2014). However, I heavily criticized this paper at the beginning of the year and for good reason: heights of the officers weren’t reported (which is not the fault of the researchers but of an ongoing lawsuit at that department since people complained that they were discriminating against people based on height). The paper is highly flawed, but looking at it on face value someone who does not have the requisite knowledge they would accept the paper’s conclusions at face value. One of the main reasons for my criticism of the paper is that the bench press was tested on a Smith machine, not a barbell bench press. Bench pressing on the Smith machine decreases stability in the biceps brachii (Saterbakken et al, 2011) but there is similar muscle recovery between different bench presses in trained men (Smith, barbell, and dumbbell) (Ferreira et al, 2016). This does not affect my overall critique of Boyce et al (2014) however, since you can move more weight than you would normally be able to, along with the machine being on one plane of motion so everyone has to attempt to get into the same position to do the lift and we know how that is ridiculous due to individual differences in morphology.

Some may point to hand-grip tests, which I have written about in the past, and state that ‘blacks are stronger’ based on hand-grip tests. Just by looking at the raw numbers you’d say that blacks had a stronger grip. However, to get an idea of the strength differences pound-for-pound there is a simple formula: weight lifted/bodyweight=how strong one is pound-for-pound on a certain exercise. So using the values from Araujo et al (2010), for blacks we have a grip strength of 89.826 with an average weight of 193 pounds. Therefore pound-for-pound strength comes out to .456. On the other hand, for Europeans, they had an average grip strength of 88.528 pounds with an average weight of 196 pounds, so their pound-for-pound grip strength is about .452, which, just like African-Americans is almost half of their body weight. One must also keep in mind that these hand-grip studies are done on older populations. I have yet to come across any studies on younger populations that use the big four lifts described in this article and seeing who is stronger, so inferences are all that we have.

Further, Thorpe et al (2016) also show how there is an association between household income and grip-strength—people who live in homes with higher incomes have a stronger grip, with blacks having a stronger grip than whites. Thorpe et al (2016) showed that black women had a stronger grip strength than white women, whereas for black men they only had a stronger grip than white men at the highest SES percentile. This could imply nutrient deficiencies driving down their ability for increases grip strength, which is a viable hypothesis. Although Thorpe et al (2016) showed that black men had a stronger grip strength, these results conflict with Haas, Krueger, and Rohlfson (2012) though the disparities can be explained by the age of both cohorts.

Nevertheless, grip strength—as well as overall strength—is related to a higher life expectancy (Ruiz et al, 2008; Volkalis, Haille, and Meisinger, 2015). If blacks were stronger—and this is being debated with studies like hand-grip—then we should expect to see black men living longer than white men, however, we see the opposite. Black men die earlier than white men, and it just so happens that the diseases that are correlated with strength and mortality are diseases that blacks are more likely to get over whites. One should think about this if they’re entertaining the idea that blacks have an inherent strength advantage over whites.

Others may argue that since chimpanzees have a higher proportion of type II fibers and that’s one reason why they are stronger than us by 1.35 times (O’Neill et al, 2017) and have the ability to rip our faces off. Of course, other factors are at play here other than the chimps’ fast twitch fiber content. Of course, one must also think of the chimpanzee’s way smaller stature when discussing their overall strength. It’s not just their type II fibers, but how much smaller they are which gives them the ability to generate more force pound-for-pound in comparison to humans. So this is a bad example to attempt to show that blacks are stronger than whites based solely on the composition of the muscle fibers.

Finally, back in July, I argued that Neanderthals would be stronger than Homo sapiens due to their morphology and a wide waist. This, of course, has implications for strength differences between the races. People with a wider waist would have the ability to generate more power. Blacks have a higher center of gravity due to longer limbs whereas whites and Asians have lower centers of gravity due to a longer torso. Along with climatic conditions, the Neanderthal diet also contributed to their wide waist and thorax, which would then help with strength. Therefore, this has implications for racial differences in strength. We can replace Europeans with Neanderthals and Homo sapiens with Africans and the relationship would still hold. This is yet more proof that blacks are not stronger than whites. This article also contributes to the argument I laid out in my article on how racial differences in muscle fiber typing predict differences in elite sporting competition. Morphology/somatype is the final piece of the puzzle; without the correct morphology, it’d be really hard for someone to become an elite athlete in a certain field if they do not have the correct morphology.

Conclusion

Looking at the big four lifts, the advantage goes to European Americans and East Asians. This is due to their average somatype and morphology. The only lift that Africans would excel at is the deadlift and this is due to their morphology—mainly their long arms. People with longer arms excel at pulling exercises whereas people with shorter arms excel at pushing exercises. Hand-grip strength studies show blacks having a higher grip strength than whites, however in one study if you see who is stronger pound-for-pound, the differences are insignificant. The longitudinal bench press study is highly flawed due to numerous confounds and is therefore unacceptable to assess strength and race. The fact that chimpanzees have a higher proportion of type II fibers compared to humans is also irrelevant. Chimpanzees have a smaller stature and they can, therefore, generate way more power pound-for-pound. Attempting to replace Africans with chimpanzees in this scenario doesn’t make sense because Africans have longer limbs than Europeans and would, therefore, generate less force pound-for-pound. Overall strength is related to mortality; stronger people live longer and have fewer maladies than weaker people. This too lends credence to my argument that whites are stronger

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Donald Trump drops 92 spots on the Forbes 400

18 Monday Dec 2017

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ 97 Comments

donaldforbes.PNG

Back in October the media was gloating that Donald Trump dropped an incredible 92 spots on the Forbes annual ranking of the 400 richest Americans.  In 2016 he was the 156th richest American with a net worth of $3.7 billion, but in 2017 he was the 248th richest American with  $3.1 billion.   New York’s sinking real estate market combined with the fact that his polarizing politics has tarnished his brand with the very elites his buildings and golf courses target, may help explain this setback.

Of course we shouldn’t feel too sorry for the Donald.  After all, he’s still the only person in history to get to be both a billionaire and the President.

You now need an astonishing $2 billion just make last place on the Forbes 400.  A billion dollars is no longer enough to be super rich in America.  When the list was started back in 1982, only $100 million was enough to qualify.

Despite the fact that Jews are only 2% of America, they’re an astonishing 50% of the ten richest Americans in 2017:

forbes400

I estimate that self-made members of the top 10 average incredibly high IQs (150), while self-made members near the bottom of the list are probably in the low 130s, while those who merely inherited their way on to the list probably average around 115.  It’s ironic that old money looks down at new money, when new money is so much smarter.

Despite the fact that blacks are 13% of America, they are only 0.5% of the Forbes 400 (Oprah and private equity mogul Robert Smith, each worth over $3 billion).   I don’t think there’s ever been more than two blacks on the Forbes 400 at any given time.    Way back in 1986 there was also only two blacks on the list (John Harold Johnson, the Chicago publisher of Ebony magazine worth $185 million, and Motown Records’ Berry Gordy, worth $180 million).  Yet another example of how little progress blacks have made in the last several decades, and while some might argue that ethnic wealth gaps can be explained by ethnic IQ gaps, the genetic component of race IQ gaps are too small to fully explain such huge disparities.

Blacks were forced to work without pay in America for hundreds of years and even after slavery ended, they endured another 90 years of Jim Crowe, and in the 1990s their communities were further devastated by mass incarceration, and then were devastated again by mass illegal immigration.  And while affirmative action opened up a few doors for blacks, it was nowhere near enough to compensate for centuries of structural inequality, causing many blacks to now call for reparations.

If reparations are given, DNA tests should determine how much black slave blood each American has.  Even though Oprah’s a multibillionaire, she should be given more reparations than the average black American, because the average black American is only 75% black slave, while Oprah’s DNA is 89% black slave.

A reader sends me his WAIS-III scores

17 Sunday Dec 2017

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≈ 26 Comments

 

A reader I will call “Passa” wrote the following:

My Autism-spectrum Quotient (AQ) is 33, and in a couple of weeks I’ll know for sure if I have Asperger’s syndrome (many childhood oddities, which to a degree still survive in me today, clearly imply I am somewhere on the spectrum). I suspect comorbidity with ADD (which is strongly supported by my WAIS results, in addition to my own self-awareness), and also mild OCD.
My major was in Computer Science, but I dropped out after one year and now I’m about to begin my Mathematics degree. Initially I suspected I wasn’t smart enough to obtain a degree in the latter, but later I realized I would be capable of obtaining it, granted I would undergo pharmacological or whatever therapy to decrease the effect of ADD on my cognition. I am really good at understanding complex concepts, somewhat less at doing long and complicated calculations (one more reason for dropping out of highly-computational Computer Science). My current goal is: doing research in the fields of Category Theory and Mathematical Logic.

The reader also stated:

I was tested in Italian, but scores were based on US norms, due to the fact that Italian norms don’t exist for the WAIS-III. My ancestry is:

– 75% South Italian (specifically from Campania)
– 25% North Italian (specifically from Lombardy)

RR is that you? 🙂  Just kidding.

Not a month goes by where someone doesn’t send me an email asking me, begging me, to take a look at their Wechsler scores or the Wechsler scores of their loved ones.  I don’t really like doing this, because one’s Wechsler scores are between them and their psychologist, and I, a mere blogger, am not qualified to diagnose anyone or give psychological advice,  so this blog post is for entertainment and educational purposes only.

“Passa” recently took the WAIS-III age 20.  What follows are his scores expressed in IQ equivalents (U.S. norms) with values corrected for the Flynn effect (since the WAIS-III is now outdated, the IQs in parentheses are how I estimate he would have scored had he been given the more recently normed WAIS-IV instead, based on page 240 of James Flynn’s book Are We Getting Smarter?  There’s no data on the Flynn effect for Letter-Number Sequencing but working memory subtests historically show the least Flynn effects).  Note that subtest scores are reported on a scale where the U.S. mean is set at 10 with a standard deviation of 3, and IQs use a scale where the U.S. mean and standard deviation are set at 100 and 15 respectively.  To convert scaled scores to IQ equivalents, merely multiply by 5 and then add 50.

I have divided the scores not into the traditional Verbal vs Performance IQ of the original Wechsler scales, but a more complex taxonomy the latest Wechsler scales are moving towards:

– Vocabulary: 17 (16)
– Similarities: 17 (16.3)
– Information: 18 (17.5)
– Comprehension: 16 (15.6)

Verbal Comprehension IQ 145 (140)

– Arithmetic: 15 (15)
– Digit Span: 13 (12.7)
– Letter-Number Sequencing: 13

Working Memory IQ 121 (121)

– Picture Completion: 13 (12.1)
– Block Design: 15 (14.7)

Spatial IQ 125 (121)

– Matrix Reasoning: 16 (15.4)

Abstract logic IQ 130 (127)

– Digit Symbol-Coding: 6  (5.8)
– Symbol Search: 9 (9)

Processing speed IQ 86 (86)

Passa is clearly very bright, and when it comes to verbal comprehension, brilliant, but he’s dragged down by very low processing speed.  Low scores in this domain are associated with autism, so it’s not surprising that Passa’s pursuing an Asperger’s diagnosis. I have no idea whether Passa is autistic or not, but autistics may struggle with processing speed subtests either because they lack the executive function to efficiently shift focus, or the high anxiety and perfectionism of autistics slows them down on speed tasks.

On the other hand, the low processing speed score may not be a sign of autism, but be caused by attention problems associated with Passa’s suspected ADD, but given the relatively high Working Memory IQ, attention problems seem less likely.  Either way, Passa may wish to ask his psychologist if he should avoid fields that call for rapid multitasking until these issues are resolved.

I have no idea whether Passa has autism and it’s not my place to opine, but his Wechsler profile (very low processing speed, Vocab, Info, Similarities > Comprehension, Block Design > Picture Completion) is consistent with autism, but his psychologist will need to know a lot more about him than just that to draw a reliable conclusion.

But autism is not necessarily a bad thing.  A little autism might be good if you want to go into highly scientific or systematic fields, and while his score on the socially loaded Comprehension subtest is the lowest of his verbal comprehension scores, it’s still extremely high, suggesting he’s not clueless socially, at least not on an abstract verbal level.

Passa writes “I am really good at understanding complex concepts, somewhat less at doing long and complicated calculations”.  The understanding of complex concepts is consistent with a verbal comprehension IQ of 140, but the less spectacular, though still very high, Working Memory IQ of 121 may drag down his ability to do long complex calculations.

Passa writes ” My current goal is: doing research in the fields of Category Theory and Mathematical Logic.”  My advise is don’t do anything until you know what you’re really passionate about.  Is this truly what you want to do with the rest of your life?  Is this what captures your imagination and gets you up in the morning?  Is this the topic you’re most obsessed with? If so, I’d say “go for it”, but talk it over with your psychologist first.  Your combination of extremely highly verbal abstract ability (Similarities) plus very high Arithmetic and Matrix reasoning scores, suggests you’d be quite competitive in abstract math.

U.S. black-white IQ gap, no more than 50% genetic?

15 Friday Dec 2017

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≈ 55 Comments

Perhaps the single best piece of evidence in support of racially genetic differences in IQ is the Minnesota Transracial Adoption study which was interpreted by Richard Lynn (in his 2006 book Race Differences in Intelligence: An Evolutionary Analysis) as showing that the U.S. black-white 15 point IQ gap is 100% genetic, because in this study, even when whites and blacks are both adopted into white upper class homes, more than the full IQ gap remained.

However as commenter Race Realist reminds me, recently the study has been undermined by British physicist Drew Thomas who argued that one reason adopted whites scored so much higher than adopted blacks is that the white sample suffered from attrition.  Thomas writes:

 A total of 25 White adoptees were in the study when it began, nine of whom were lost at follow-up. The lost adoptees had relatively low IQs, so the remaining White adoptees were unrepresentatively high in IQ, as Mackintosh observed [25]. One can prove this by comparing the original IQs of the full sample and the subgroup who were measured at both ages 7 and 17; the latter subgroup had an initial mean IQ of 117.6 (with a minimum IQ of 92) but the full sample had an initial mean of 111.5 (minimum 62). Because initial and final IQs had a correlation of 0.63 among the White group, the elite subgroup would likely have had their final mean IQ inflated by about 0.63 × (117.6 − 111.5) = 3.8 points. Meanwhile, the BW and Black–Black adoptees lost to follow-up hardly differed in IQ from the remaining adoptees, so attrition inflated those groups’ mean IQs by about only 0.2 and −0.7 points respectively.  Adjusting the final mean IQs accordingly (Table 2) implies smaller racial differences of 3.5 points (White vs. BW adoptees) and 11.7 points (White vs. Black–Black adoptees) in the study’s final wave.

The figure that most interests me in this study is not the black-white IQ gap, but the IQ gap between whites and half-blacks.  The reason is the black kids, despite being adopted into an upper middle class white home, still had a black prenatal environment, and were adopted at older ages on average, but the half-black kids not only were raised in a white upper middle class white home, but had white prenatal environments (white biological mothers), so I interpret the estimated 3.5 IQ gap between them and adopted whites (also raised in upper middle class white homes) to be 100% genetic.
Since African Americans average about 74% black ancestry, African Americans with white biological mothers might average about 37% black ancestry.  So if 37% black ancestry causes them to score 3.5 points lower than whites when both prenatal and home environment are fairly controlled.  it suggests that 74% black ancestry (a typical African American) would cause them to score 7 points lower.
Thus contrary to proving the U.S. black-white 15 point IQ gap is 100% genetic as some thought,  I now think the Minnesota study shows it’s only around 50% genetic, and that if the average  African American had the exact same prenatal and home environment as the average white, their IQs would rise from 85 (white norms) to 93, compared to the white American mean set at 100.
As I reported back in May 2016, a 7 point IQ gap is about what you’d expect from the racial differences in brain size observed in the United States.
If races as genetically distant as blacks and whites differ so little in genetic IQ, it suggests that all racial IQ gaps are a lot less genetic than most HBDers think.

The HBD-o-sphere reacts to Trump’s Jerusalem move

10 Sunday Dec 2017

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≈ 123 Comments

It seems Donald Trump’s base is largely composed of two largely  opposing groups: the pro-Israel far-right and the anti-Semitic alt-right, with each side hoping Trump was playing the other and secretly being on their side. Below is a video of Trump responding to an anti-Israel question:

But with Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, we’ve seen the clearest test yet of where Trump actually stands.  A friend was in America’s most pro-Israel city, New York, when Trump made his announcement and was worried about all the traffic jams from people going out to bars to celebrate.  He felt he needed to get back to his hotel room immediately because the city was about to go into a state of euphoria.

Donald Trump–keeper of promises gushed the normally anti-trump CNN.

Hard-core New Yorker Lion of the Blogosphere was deliriously happy, gushing:

This is the most pro-Israel thing that any U.S. President has ever done. Only Trump could have done this. Any other president would be too afraid of the State Department establishment, too afraid of the changing the status quo to do what’s right.

What have the Palestinians ever done to merit NOT moving the embassy to Jerusalem? Absolutely nothing.

Does Lion honestly believe America’s  elite (including the state department) is not pro-Israel?  In the comment section he writes:

Prole white gentiles love Israel a lot more than self-hating Jewish liberal elites.

Lion is claiming  America’s foreign policy is pro-Israel in spite of its Jewish elite, not because of it.  I don’t know if Lion actually believes this, but elite media always claims the U.S. is pro-Israel because of Christian evangelicals, and not because of Jewish influence.  I doubt America’s liberal Jewish elite is anywhere near as self-hating as Lion claims, though that doesn’t necessarily mean they all support Israel, or think Trump’s move is good for Israel if they do.

But I do agree with Lion that a lot of gentile proles love Israel, and I think this is part of the negative correlation between IQ and conservatism (which I define as supporting the power structure).

Within each race, lower IQ people tend to oppose the underdogs (blacks, gays, Hispanics, women, Palestinians, the poor, wild life) while high IQ people  tend to oppose the powerful (men, Jews, Israel, the U.S. military, the U.S. president, bankers, billionaires, oil companies), which is ironic given that high IQ people are far more likely to be powerful themselves, but since Jews tend to have high IQs despite being pro-Israel on average, those Jews who are critical of Israel will tend to have freakishly high IQs (Chomsky) because the combination of belonging to two high IQ groups (Jewish and anti-Israel) with so little overlap is so rare.

By contrast Arabs tend to score low on IQ tests despite being anti-Israel, so a fanatically pro-Israel Palestinian would probably score freakishly low on a culture reduced IQ test because the odds of belonging to two almost mutually exclusive low IQ groups is so rare. We see a similar phenomenon with black conservatives in the U.S.

Meanwhile over at Steve Sailer’s blog, opinions on Trump’s Jerusalem move were mixed, but generally more cynical than at Lion’s blog.

Commenter Thomas wrote:

I can’t help but think this maneuver is driven at least in part by the special counsel probe. Trump had this in the desk drawer since the campaign, and with Flynn’s recent legal trouble arising from a back-channel diplomatic effort to help Israel out at the UN (while Obama threw them under the bus), Trump probably wants to fly the “Friend of Israel” flag high and proud right now.

Commenter syonredux wrote sarcastically:

…Frankly, people don’t understand just how much Trump hates the Jews…..I mean, would Hitler have forced his (hypothetical) daughter to convert to Judaism and marry a Jew? No, Hitler would never have gone that far in order to gull the Jews….but Trump did…Talk about a will of iron….

Commenter lavoisier said:

…This just shows the world that Donald Trump is Israel’s bitch. This is fine if the label only applied to him, but unfortunately it now applies to all Americans, even those like myself who are disgusted by this decision and do not support our unholy alliance with Israel.

 

Commenter International Jew said:

Trump recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital reminds me of the outrage he caused on (I think) his first day in office, when he took a phone call from the president of Taiwan. Which he wasn’t supposed to do, because the red Chinese don’t want us to.

In both cases, Trump’s gesture amounted to a FU directed “to whom it may concern”. Which, within reason, is a good policy inasmuch as it sends two signals: (1) that he lives in the world of the real, not the make-believe, and (2) that he’s nobody’s bitch. (Letting others dictate who you talk to, and what words you may use, qualifies you as their bitch, par excellence.)…

The most terrifying comment of all came from Brabantian who wrote:

Unz’s own Israel Shamir, hints at an opposite ‘anti-Semitic’ interpretation of this Trump move … as a very clever anti-Israeli & anti-Jewish-lobby wrecking ball, using Israel’s own over-reaching desires to ruin it, as a couple of commenters above also suggest.

On this view, Trump’s gambit with Israel is to pretend to give them what they want, Jerusalem as the capital, annexing more of the West Bank etc … Jewish over-reach will provoke such a huuge reaction, that the world community will more quickly move to declare racial-law Israel an apartheid state, and isolate it as a pariah, so that even in the USA Jewish influence will implode, to Trump’s secret pleasure.

This argument is that Trump, precisely because he has always had to adapt to a Jewish mentality, having spent his entire career amidst it, from his earliest days with Meyer Lansky’s friend Roy Cohn, is quite weary of Jewish power and wishes to bring Jewish influence to heel.

A related idea is that Trump is shaking the table in order to let the mid-east dominoes fall into conflict, Israel with its neighbours & the various Muslim factions & communities against each other, ultimately buttressing his anti-immigration, ring-fence-the-Anglo-culture positioning, as the world watches mid-East nations fire up deadly major conflict out of what increasingly seems to be their inner nature.

The theory is that Trump is lighting up the mid-East on purpose, as the best tool he has to demolish both Jewish influence, and the Islamist-fellow-traveller fake progressives in the West.

Sexual Selection and Intelligence by meLo

05 Tuesday Dec 2017

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≈ 516 Comments

[Note from Pumpkin Person, Dec 4, 2017: The following is a guest article and does NOT necessarily reflect the views of Pumpkin Person.  Out of respect for the author, please try to keep all comments on-topic.  I realize conversations naturally evolve, but at least start on-topic]

Introduction

Usually within the HBD community, discussions regarding the main mechanism(s) that drove the expressions of particular phenotypes is centered around natural selection or ecological(in the strictest, most traditional sense) factors. Sexual selection is unfairly sidelined, even though sex is the base of all multicellular evolution. The point of this article is to provide a logical argument for Sexual selections tremendous involvement, and to provide examples of how these pressures have shaped neolithic and modern Homo sapiens. I excluded Australoids but for good reason. Even though the population does have sexual selected traits, like blonde and curly hair, they are an incredibly diverse group and with the amount of pocket isolation I don’t think it’s fair without breaking this group into more categories. I kept this paper short, because it’s my first one and I wanted to use this as a “prototype” for future posts. Again all criticism is more than welcome because I myself am still learning about this topic.

First, it is important to note that traits which evolved from sexual selection are not the same thing as traits that serve reproductive purposes. Reproductive organs are usually the product of sexual selection, but sexual selection does not always act upon genitalia. Sexual selection favors any trait that allows an organism to attract the opposite mate more effectively, competitively or not.

The general trend
   

 Before I explain the respective pressures and phenotypes between subpopulations of the neolithic, it is essential to begin with a summary of the temporal trend that persisted before the aforementioned groups. This begins with a breakdown of definitions and the repair of misconceptions. Human development is extremely complicated, so this explanation will have oversimplifications for the sake of efficiency. Any questions or discussions on the matter are more than welcome. If you don’t know anything about heterochronies I suggest you read this

 Paedomorphosis=/= Neoteny. Neoteny is a heterochronic process, paedomorphism is a type of heterochrony. One of the largest or most noticeable differences between Homo sapiens and Chimpanzees is the increase in paedomorphic and peramorphic traits of the former. All heterochronic mechanisms affect the developmental outcome of homo sapiens this is mostly to do with developmental trade offs and creates a mosaic pattern of our evolution. Humans have accelerated brain growth which reaches full size before most of the other limbs and organs are finished, even though this is achieved through peramorphic heterochronies it coincides with the deceleration of the body which actually produces a more paedomorphic appearance in the population. This acceleration ends(progenesis) and is subsequently followed by a strong deceleration(neoteny) of the skulls growth (Penin, 2002). Neoteny and acceleration define growth rate, but the actual duration of the growth period is hypermorphic, meaning the duration of Human growth is delayed  or extended so that our legs and brains can continue to grow. Even though the brain is not paedomorphic it still enlarged to retain its childlike plasticity.These processes underlie the “direction” of our evolution, and while a lot of important traits are a result of peramorphic processes, it would be foolish to disregard the obviously paedomorphic traits we exhibit. It doesn’t take long to see how sexual selection can favor peramorphic or paedomorphic traits. Peramorphosis tends to create exaggerated features(think Irish Elk, Peacocks or the human brain) while paedomorphosis tends to appeal to sexual selection by producing “fragile” traits associated with infants of the species, in theory members of the opposite sex should associate these traits with “cuteness” and possibly even better parental skills.

Macro races

    Most don’t realize, but all races have undergone sexual selection. Each race has its own unique combination of peramorphic and paedomorphic traits as well as superficial ones that don’t relate to heterochrony. I will briefly go over each race and describe the varying degrees of pressures and the resulting phenotypes.

Caucasoids

  Caucasoids have the largest concentration of hypermorphic traits. They are the tallest race, and have the most color variation, this heavily implies sexual selection is involved. While height only has a small correlation with IQ, taller specimens will generally have larger brains, because they also have larger bodies. It also been documented that taller individuals tend to be seen as more attractive. Blue eyes are disproportionately present in the scientific community and they are a recessive trait, it’s speculative but very possible that blue eyes coincides with increased intelligence. Peter frost already did most of the work for me, you can read his piece on European sexual selection here. Mate competition becomes the obvious reason for these phenotypic expressions.

Negroids

Unfortunately there isn’t much data on penis size, as a result this description will be lackluster. Which is usually the go to trait that HBDers look for when defining the sexuality of Africans. Things like Breast and buttocks size are ill defined, and studies on them are rifled with misconceptions. What we do know though, is that blacks are around the same height as Europeans but the majority of groups tend to have smaller brain sizes. It is interesting to point out that Africans display more paedomorphic facial features(except for prognathism). This makes a lot of sense, Africans are more r selected than Caucasoids, so it is expected that they display more paedomorphic traits. Because of a lack of data, I can’t make a reasonable assessment on the pressures that could of caused these expressions, however I do not think it would be far fetched to assume that is also mate competiton

Capoids/Pygmies

Pygmies, are a result of what Shea 1984 calls “rate hypomorphosis” Essentially it is a truncation of allometric scaling. Pygmies should therefore be one of the least intelligent and most r selected races. Their body and brain size decreased from the ancestral one, and they are almost entirely paedomorphic. More than likely their body size has to do with their adaptation to fewer resources. Capoids can confuse a lot of people. At first I thought they must be intelligent because of their paedomorphosis, but their brains are only a measly 1270cc and according to the Shea and Penin studies(cited earlier) a lot of traits considered to be paedomorphic(flat nose, reduced prognathism) are actually just the result of functional innovations and are independent of developmental growth. Specimen like Homo sapien Idaltu then begin to make more sense. The pressure involved here is more than likely an increased need of childcare(or at least a decrease in aggression) but not necessarily and increased need of Intellectual faculties.

Mongoloids

   Along with pygmies they are the most Paedomorphic race, and one of the most r selected. East asians have proportionally short limbs, very baby like faces, and the largest brains of any race. More than likely this is due to shape retardation following neoteny(deceleration of growth). It is necessary to define why Capoids and Mongoloids share similar facial traits yet do not share the same body proportions or absolute brain size. In this situation it is reasonable to assume that both populations had similar pressures for childcare and decreased aggression the main difference is hypothesized to lie in the varying survival pressures each group faced, I believe the ecological factors in East asia were more cognitively demanding than in Southern Africa, not in the sense that Africa is an easier place to survive but that Eurasia had a higher demand for Neuroplasticity. This is for two main reasons 1) in a novel environment there is more that you are required to learn and 2) The founder effect makes recessive genes easier to be expressed.

In Summary

  Intelligence can arise from a multitude of factors and no factor is completely necessary. Caucasoids seem to have developed their intellect from mate competition and K selection. Negroids are similar but to a lesser degree. Mongoloids seem to have evolved their cranial capacity for primarily for docility and cooperation. All are forms of sexual selection, just for different preferences in attraction. Europeans and Africans tend to gravitate to more masculine features while capoids, and Mongoloids are more for feminine ones.