I was listening to Ideas on CBC radio the other night and there was a good discussion with Christopher Hedges that I think a lot of my readers might like (Stephen Pinker is briefly discussed). Here’s a summary from their web site:
Christopher Hedges believes that the American empire is ending. Cities are dying, their infrastructure crumbling, the middle and working classes gutted, and income disparity more extreme than ever. The problem, he argues, is systemic: “Capitalist oligarchs, meanwhile, hoard huge sums of wealth — $7.6 trillion stashed in overseas tax havens — exacted as tribute from those they dominate, indebt, and impoverish.”
Although he disavows Marxism, Hedges believes the diagnosis Marx offered in the mid-nineteenth century is correct. “Marx warned that capitalism had built within it the seeds of its own destruction”, he asserts. While Marx did not know when that day would come, he did foresee how it would unfold over time: “Capitalism would in the end, Marx said, turn on the so-called free market, along with the values and traditions it claimed to defend.” One of those values and traditions was that free markets would mean more individual freedoms and increased social harmony. Yet we are witnessing the rise of authoritarianism in the U.S. and around the world. For Hedges, this trend is not simply alarming; it was predictable.
You can listen to the full episode here.
Pumpkin Person 
I agree with it but Hedges wont mention [redacted by pp, nov 22, 2018]
It explains alot more the cruelty given to the working class Joe than Marxs explanation alone does. It has more in common with colonial relationships than default Master Serveant ones.
Basically there seems to be 3 ways elites organise the means of production
1. Extraction e.g. Europeans in colonial africa
2. Farming e.g. countries like America/East Asia and Japan
3. ‘Democratic Socialism’ cant think of a better term – elites actually let the workers chose some things like whether they go to war or how much welfare an unemployed person gets. e.g. Europe/Canada/Australia
Redistribution is literally like spreading fertiliser on the plants to help them grow. At the end of the day, the elite is still going to harvest the plant once it grows. But the plant does grow quicker and stronger and is able to reproduce other plants more.
I don’t think the analogy holds over to putting in too much fertiliser where the land becomes slurry or the environment becomes ruined. Some autist person would correct me on that no doubt.
I wrote that exact same thing on roberts lindsays blog!
“I don’t think the analogy holds over to putting in too much fertiliser where the land becomes slurry or the environment becomes ruined. Some autist person would correct me on that no doubt.”
No it still holds, becuase overfertilising is ignoring realpolitik. Meaning that distributing too much is giving leeway for high iq psychopath genetic clusters to reap the rewards of false conciousness. That is, if you accept historical materialism in which the mode of production catalizes the best alternative of relationships between the proles and bourgeois.
Also colonialism in africa was primarily western missionaries giving aid and prostelytizing. The congo free state, the union of South africa and etheopia are the exceptions. This is becuase of the mode of production and harsh climates made most areas of africa useless. But thats changing.
By best i meant most sustainable.
The countries that didn’t join America to invade Iraq in the West have democratic socialism. The ones that did e.g. UK, Poland, Italy are closer to the Farming type.
better called “social democracy”. there are lots of super rich people in scandi. more on a per capita basis than the US.
It reminds me of the Spanish elites treatment of indigenous natives and serfs emigrating to Latin America actually. I think Sailer thinks this as well as he keeps talking about Latin America in the same way he talks about the US economic system.
Puppy. If Bill Gates has a 170IQ, why does he talk like a 16 year old girl when explaining his work in Africa. Could it be that he actually thinks like a 16 year old girl on some topics?
Even people with 170 IQs can be stupid in some areas, but you can’t assume his philanthropy is stupid just because you disagree with it politically. You have to look at it from the perspective of his goals.
And of course Gates is IQ 170 on the SAT. Bruno argues his true IQ is much lower.
I think that has more to do with the PC language that has been instantiated in the current political climate. In other words he is dramatically limited in the ways in which he can address this issue while he has to speak in a way that would be intelligible to the average person. Most philanthropists/activists address these issues in much the same way. It would be political suicide if they veered off script as that would increase the chance there would be a misunderstanding in what he was saying or he touches a controversial topic.
As for his IQ I think he is a solid 160+. My sense is however that most people that are that high in intelligence tend to sacrifice a little in social intelligence. Not to say that he is a social dummy nor that he has asperger(that is a myth btw) but he might not be a social genius like some top tier movie stars are(talking about one to one social intelligence not a 30 thousand foot assessment of humanity’s interaction evolution and direction). I think that social intelligence and logic based cognition(verbal/math/visual) are not compatible. Not to say that social intelligence is entirely random or irrational but when you throw emotion in the mix things do tend to become a little hard to understand if you are a highly rational thinker. Social interaction is still mostly emotion based, thankfully! I think the higher up you go in intelligence it gets harder to reconcile the two aspects of cognition. Those that do well tend to be able to transition easily from one to the other or even juggle both at the same time despite the stark differences.
Well puppy person (aka philosopher) is arguing that Gates’ philanthropy is itself evidence of autism/low social IQ. He thinks that if Gates was socially intelligent, he would give his money to his own race instead of Africans & sees Gates as a useful idiot for the interests of others, brainwashed by political correctness. I prefer to think the opposite: Gates is so intelligent, he’s not motivated by goals as concrete as tribalism and is thinking on a higher level, and is also savvy enough to know that helping Africa is good for his image.
Oh I think I would definitely side with your assessment. Outside of the actual philanthropy in terms of the most bang for buck Gates has made an incredibly savvy move by giving money to Africans. Keep in mind that his business ventures stretch well outside of the US. His revenues from the US are probably much less than half of those from the rest of the world. Being seen as helping the world’s MOST impoverished is the safe bet and something everyone(including most US whites) but the most heartless would see in a positive light. Not saying puppy person is heartless because he too has a point. However I don’t know that Gates doesn’t help in the US at all. Surely he gives a good amount to solve domestic problems, right? As for focusing on his own race, well Whites are ahead of Africans by such a huge margin that even if we dump 10 trillion dollars tomorrow into Africa it would still not move the needle by much. But I do agree that there are poor, sick, disadvantaged white people that could definitely use the help. Like I said I would be surprised if he didn’t help his own though.
It’s funny you mentioned this, it is something that has troubled me for some time now. First of all I don’t buy the idea that if white people focus entirely on themselves this would lead to the fourth reich. Not in a morally advanced civilization(assuming there is no shortage of resources in the foreseeable future). So taking extremist white nationalism out of the equation, why would it be a bad thing that white people focused entirely on the improvement of their own? I don’t think it would. It may in the extreme long run lead to such disparity that for all intents and purposes they would have diverged into a new species. Would that mean that they would treat everyone else differently or enslave them? No, why should that be the case, not with automation around the corner. I think that one way or the other species divergence is inevitable as we start to venture outward into the solar system and beyond.
On the other end of the ideological spectrum it seems to me that people on the left are advocating that we move at the pace of our slowest “runners”. Some even think that the only viable future for humanity is complete racial mixing. I think that is a terrible idea and it goes against one of our most fundamental principles, that of freedom of association. Not against mixed race people at all though and if people want to do it more power to them but I am seriously opposed to people advocating for it let alone enforcing it somehow.
Having said this I think a more immediate problem is going to be trying to regulate designer babies within the next 50 years. Which is why I think the best thing we can do is ingrain a very strong non aggression principle in people so that no matter what happens things won’t turn violent. If we can avoid violence then everything else is manageable. We might branch off in all sorts of directions but as long as we don’t see each other as a threat and provide reasonable help to one another then we should be fine.
“Gates has made an incredibly savvy move by giving money to Africans. ”
Once i read this part of the comment I realised I didn’t need to read the rest.
Puppy Person
I meant in terms of image building and general world wide consensus of who needs the money the most. His choice keeps the rest of the world happy(almost 60% of microsoft revenues) and all but very few Americans happy(40% of microsoft revenues). It’s a win win. If he focused only on the US people in other countries might not like it and microsoft sales might decrease.
It was the best decision for his bank account and a safe bet in the eyes of the world. Was it ideal in the eyes of poor whites, of course not but the government takes care of them so it’s not the end of the world.
Basically do you accept the idea that a high IQ doesn’t mean aptitude in all cognitive domains? [redacted by pp, nov 22, 2018]
All cognitive abilities are positively correlated via the g factor, so on average, people who are good at math are good at social cognition on average. But the positive correlations are not strong (i.e. math and social cognition) so you get a lot of people who are above average at one but below average at another. But when you control for g (i.e. compare only people with the same overall IQ), there might be a negative correlation between social and mathematical IQ.
“But when you control for g (i.e. compare only people with the same overall IQ), there might be a negative correlation between social and mathematical IQ.”
If you control for IQ, the correlation would be negative between math and all other aspects of intelligence. Just think about it, you’ve fixed the average, so if you dial up one component of overall intelligence another component has to come down in order to maintain the same average. It gets a little more tricky for social intelligence because it is not included in IQ testing but there is no reason to believe it functions any differently. After all there HAS to be a positive correlation between math and social along virtually the entire IQ distribution(ie non fixed IQ, while savants wouldn’t change the correlation much).
Just think about it, you’ve fixed the average, so if you dial up one component of overall intelligence another component has to come down in order to maintain the same average.
That’s true, if the number of components is small enough that each one can affect the overall score. Thus it’s more meaningful to control for general intelligence, rather than intelligence in general. The former being the common factor to all cognitive abilities; the latter being the totality of all cognitive abilities. I was using both concepts interchangeably but in this context, it’s important to distinguish them.
But I agree with everything else you have written. The consensus seems to show that the higher the IQ the greater the disparity between relative IQ sub tests. In other words the average difference in verbal and math sub IQ scores would be greater at overall IQs of 150 lets say, than it would be for those that are at 100.
G factor correlates at basical levels not at highest.
“Thus it’s more meaningful to control for general intelligence, rather than intelligence in general.”
I don’t know that this would change much. We would still see the same phenomenon. IQ has a 0.95 correlation with g meaning that even if we controlled for g instead of IQ we would still see Verbal for example go down as Math was increased. The correlation would still be negative between all sub-tests or more broadly between all aspects of cognition if we sampled from people with the same g.
Even on an individual basis this would be observed. Imagine a person that could tweak their various cognitive abilities. Assume this person’s g(or cognitive capacity) however stayed the same. Well if they managed to increase their math ability they would have to sacrifice from their other abilities to balance it out and thus keeping g at the same level. This tends to be somewhat intuitive to me in the real world even with something as seemingly innate as IQ. Imagine a child from a young age being exposed to 2 parts math for every one part verbal well into adulthood. I would say with the exception of some strong innate predisposition they had for verbal their math IQ would invariable be superior to their verbal IQ. The opposite would happen if the parts were switched.
pumpkinhead, your idea of g seems to be somewhat analogous to money. If you spend all your money on your house, then there’s less left over to spend on your car, so among people with equivalent wealth, there’s a negative correlation between house value and car value (even though there’s a positive correlation in the general population). This is a plausible theory, but it’s not the only interpretation.
Instead of thinking of g as a zero sum competition, it could be more like a constant value that gets added on to everything. Imagine for example that a big part of g is just neurological speed. More speed enhances performance in everything from interpersonal relations to mathematical reasoning causing all cognitive abilities to intercorrelate, but that would not necessarily cause abilities to negatively correlate among those with the same speed. It could just mean no correlation.
Is pumpkinhead actually just puppy using another account to back up his arguments?
No, pumpkinhead & I have disagreed about many topics. He just happens to agree with me about Gates. Your view of Gates is a minority opinion, not just on this blog, but in the world.
But its the correct one. I don’t care if its a minority one. Believing in social justice is a majority opinion. Being religious etc.
It’s an interesting hypothesis, but highly speculative.
Puppy Person
There is nothing wrong with social justice, it’s the people that try to implement it that are often 50 therapy sessions short of sanity. SJWs aside there are real problems in the world and one of them is poverty and disease in Africa. Gates did a highly commendable thing despite it just so happening to be the best thing for his image and bank account(in the long run). Consensus isn’t always wrong, just that when it is, it does tend to be quite infuriating, I will grant you that.
hedges is an idiot, but he is part of the list of those who get that identity politics is a stool pigeon of the ruling class.
hedges sounds like a preacher most of the time. it’s all about the intonation and not the substance. for hedges there’s usually no substance he’s dumb. but his father was a minister and he graduated from harvard divinity school. he grew up in about the same place First Reformed took place.
you’ll notice pill talks up steve sailer…the ultimate controlled opposition.
this proves pill is jewish.
Steve Sailer is not controlled opposition lol.
The idea of sailer being controlled opposition is absurd.
no it isn’t. he is under the thumb of a jew master. but may be that steve doesn’t know he’s controlled.
His “master” gives him free speech & he uses it, so what’s your point? How is he controlled?
he’s playing the game master wants him to play. he’s just a comedian like flush limbaugh who makes fun of the dupes.
i’ve read him enough to know.
he has never once shown any sign of getting what’s really going on, that the woke and SJWs are mere dupes of the ruling elite which uses identity politics to control the 99%. that reagan, thathcer, clinton, and blair are all the same person.
divide and conquer, distract the 99% from economic issues and the failure of the post 70s elite, control them by threatening to call them “racist” or “homophobe”, make them focus on russia and the alt-right rather than the satan worshipping goons who really run the country, etc.
thiel, weinstein, hedges, carlson, chomsky, etc all get it. sailer has shown zero sign of getting it.
Steve would probably agree with you that cultural liberalism advances the interests of the ruling elite. He just focuses on how it advances their ethnic interests, while you focus on how it advances their economic interests. The latter is the politically correct interpretation, and thus is endorsed by Hedges, Carlson, & Chomsky. It’s Sailer who is advancing the taboo version, so it’s ironic you’re calling him “controlled”.
a few days ago i recall: i was driving to the store and i heard (on the radio) that native americans are 4x more likely to be homeless than whites (in my area).
i thought: no one needs to be homeless in the US. why is this invidious distinction being reported?
answer: because even my local public radio station is captured…by the capitalists.
and by the [redacted by pp, nov 22, 2018].
“One of those values and traditions was that free markets would mean more individual freedoms and increased social harmony. Yet we are witnessing the rise of authoritarianism in the U.S. and around the world. For Hedges, this trend is not simply alarming; it was predictable.”
I like Chris Hedges, I think he is generally a very thoughtful and intelligent person but I disagree with him here. He is right about authoritarianism but my question is who does he think are the authoritarians? If it’s the authoritarian PC activist left and the tech industry and MSM propaganda, censoring, and bully tactics, then he is right. Paradoxically the elites that Hedges correctly identified as responsible for the current predicament(but only partially) have found a strange bedfellow in the regressive open borders, multi culti, pro illegal immigration left(along with the remaining factions which for now seem to be aligned with one another). Without a shadow of a doubt the authoritarians are predominantly on the left, they just have better bed side manners thus making their policies and ways seem more agreeable while the perception that they are the perpetual underdogs tends to garner them more sympathy than they deserve. I think modern society suffers from underdog syndrome – an incessant support for the underdog or perceived victim – hence why a lot of people today have figured out how to game the system and monetize “victimhood”.
Not that the right doesn’t have it’s problems while crony corrupt capitalism has and still is a huge problem(though this is now a problem of both sides of the isle). Is there a risk from the populist right and people like Trump? Maybe, but that is far beyond the visible horizon, we need to right the ship first, get the leftists under control before we start worrying that we might make yet another over-correction, this time towards the right.
Today’s push for globalism and a multi culti diverse world tends to be pursued at the expense of some of our more fundamental axiomatic principles.
– Free speech
– Freedom of association
– Meritocracy
– Sovereignty(of the individual and the state)
– Nation’s right to self determination
This is the smoking gun that reveals that the globalist elites in their pursuit of cheap labor and greater multi-national expansion and market capitalization are up to no good for propping up the leftists that advocate for these policies. This is not globalism done right, this is hasted globalism in the pursuit of greater profits. They(elites, the 1%) are trying to build a world that is suited for them. They benefit from the positive aspects of a diverse intellectual/economic elite and they pay no attention to the detrimental effects the negative aspects of the rest of diversity will have on the general population. They would be safe behind their gated communities, rich neighborhoods and secure multiple homes around the world. All the while the middle to lower classes would have to contend with migrants competing for their jobs thus lowering the minimum wage and further fractionating the national identity into countless competing subcultures. Don’t get me wrong I am not an ethno nationalist nor a purist(in fact I’m left of center ideologically) but for gods sake lets not go the other way completely and lose the plot entirely.
As for Marx predicting any of this, I highly doubt it, the tendency to monopolize once a person or entity reaches the top is as old as time. However the institutions that allow for capitalism to function properly still exist while all this stashed cash would lose value precipitously if authoritarianism creates social and likely economic instability.
Personally I think that the problems that ail the world are mostly to do with the human condition and some of the more negative elements of our DNA(greed, corruption, stupidity, envy, thoughtless and unjust aggression etc). Note that these are problems that plague rich and poor alike, the left and the right(not equally though and not in the same way)! Marxism uses a poor man’s optics to solve a problem(incredibly one sided entirely unsophisticated and terrible in it’s consequences) while capitalism albeit a fundamental economic principle, offers no solution for the plight of the poor man. This does not mean however that it is inherently flawed. The system works and is exceedingly fair, it is human beings that are flawed and apply it poorly. Socialism is inherently a regressive ideology but a necessary one in order to deal with the lower end of the distribution. However if applied to it’s fullest extent it will lead to stagnation and regression, eventually markets will collapse. Now can we figure out how to keep the economy powering forward while taking care of those that are disadvantaged? Sure, we can, but the question is how much is too much to take from the rich? It is a very serious problem because there are insidious elements in the left as well that tend to game the system. As for the rich stashing money in tax havens, well that problem is readily solvable, we just need to sort out crony capitalism first and try to get money out of politics, then go after the tax evaders.
Pumpkin in regards to my humans aren’t entirely sheep post you said “I suspect it started long before agriculture. Even in hunter-gatherer societies, humans can’t survive without the group, so those who didn’t mindlessly follow the group would have been kicked out and their genes would have perished, leaving sheep as the survivors.
There’s a theory that humans domesticated ourselves. Even the way our bodies and faces changed over the last 200,000 years fits the domestication syndrome. Some say modern humans are to domesticated dogs as prehistoric humans are to wild wolves.”
I actually agree I have an original theory that I made entirely by myself that adds to yours.
My theory is based on a few principle truths.
That evolution is not only progressive going forward but also lateral going sideways (branching off).
That an organism in X amount of time will be perfectly, PERFECTLY adapted to its environment, and even the slightest change will cause a new combination of genes to be optimal.
That mutations are not how we perceive them to be in popular culture (like X men)
That mutations are simply very rare yet still possible gene combinations. so for example no human can be born with gills or wings because our earliest ancestors had no gene combinations capable of creating those traits. That’s why we can have 4 legs and 3 toes and everything because the combination is already there and possible. Things like that just happen to not be adaptive.
Now the theory goes if our EARLIEST most ancient ancestors lived in 1 unchanging stable consistent environment they would evolve into the perfect fit for their location in x amount of time . Now whether they became their final product is irrelevant. What matters is the environment changed for some ancestors and they branched off from us and became gorillas chimps etc. So whatever change happened in the environment that steered us toward walking upright and using our thumbs, creating tools and changing the environment to fit our needs has steered us to wear we are now. Now the very first moment our ancestors discovered how to independently change their own environment is when we started domesticating ourselves. So before hunter gatherers, probably the very moment we walked upright or used our thumbs. That set the course, that specific combination of genes allowed for this novel behavior to surpass environmental limitations. So now we are on a singular evolutionary path, with the final destination being mathematical perfection over the physical world.
Now that sounds mystical but its based on scientific fact. The reason why we have been and are becoming more overall intelligent, specifically more creativity and higher IQ is because we are on a path towards the perfect combination of the human genome for control over the physical universe.
more evidence is the fact that we are mathematically becoming better looking. The most beautiful men and women on the planet have face and body ratios that much up with the golden ratio.
Our inevitable final destination is a single gene combination that allows the human brain to be as hi IQ as possible while simultaneously having the body be in perfect symmetry with perfect ratios.
In laymen terms the jock and nerd will become one
About domestication: The leaders are ruled by the group in that they only can controll the group in ways that work and are evolved to like controling groups in only certain ways, based on the need to controll the group in an way that works. Thats like saying that any organ controls an organism. any sort of reduction in morphology could or could not change reproductive fitnes.
You forget scarcity and extermination. Any species can be argued to expand indefinately but it can really only be proven when it has happened.
Ill brain fart now: its the diversity of material and external forces on the planet being stable that in time cuases competition to make organisms find new sources of food, especially eathing eachoder. From this complexity grows, defined as more materia being able to be stored within AN living being. I define an living being as materia that can move all of its components, follows the criteria of an organism and that doesnt destroy all the capability for all of its components to reproduce. Thus any group of within species or interspecies counts as an “living being”, your smartphone also counts as its materia that can be moved. Some living organisms can merge, like tribes or humans.
This leaves room for what i call “environmental evolution”, which means that spandrels are used for reproductive fittnes in new environments, which is why humans advanced in my opinion. Spandrels can also reach an critical mass to where they change the morphology of an organism in the same environment.
So the question is, does the correct spandrels and environment exist for becoming the largest living being in the whole universe? im not sure…
hunter gather humans are actually massive in my opinion. An hunter gatherer living being is of lets assume 60 people, so an true human is aroung 60 times heavier than an individual. Obviously this decreases the correlation between strengh and wieght during some circumstances, but maybe also increases it in others. Environmental evolution has made us millions times larger than what we used to be.
“Now the very first moment our ancestors discovered how to independently change their own environment is when we started domesticating ourselves.”
What do you mean by “independently”? The environment obviously helped people realise how to change the environment, ever wondered why the Netherlands was more advanced than moldova or lithuania?
“that specific combination of genes allowed for this novel behavior to surpass environmental limitations”
My comments about domestication and the paragrah above argues differently.
“more evidence is the fact that we are mathematically becoming better looking.”
Evidence? your talking about this; https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3689902/Amber-Heard-Kim-Kardashian-Kate-Moss-beautiful-face-world-according-science.html ? its a correlation. Thats decent but it would be interresting to know the causial mechanisms instead, but the brain is to complex. Does that correlation hold in all cultures? im not sure…
Also, they dont talk about profile view or any angle, nor if theres any face body interaction (some faces fitting certain bodies).
But wheres the evidence for us getting more attractive? are you talking about kanazawa and the fertility of attractive females?
Anyways african features and obesity are possitively correlated with fertility, which is not congruent with your assertion that people are starting to look more like caucasoid models.
I dont see how this is evidence “more evidence”.
“Our inevitable final destination is a single gene combination that allows the human brain to be as hi IQ as possible while simultaneously having the body be in perfect symmetry with perfect ratios.”
We could have an environment that osiclates unevenly in selective pressure for facial traits, making the long term selection none even though there is an selection pressure.
Has components that follow the criteria of an organism. Theres a lot of wrongly written stuff but i guess you guys are high iq enough to understand. Bassically i say that groups of individuals and the environment they create are al one thing that is being selected for thanks to some components being organisms.
Thinking mouse re write it over correctly written, we should not have to analyse your paragraph. Just type in a coherent manner.
a lot was an overstatement, which is why thought you guys would understand. Is there anything you didnt get specifically? i can clarify.
Mikey Blayze
That’s a very interesting theory, It’s the first time I’ve heard someone talk about human beings within the context of domestication. However, if you don’t mind me playing devil’s advocate for a while, I think that is an approach to the issue that is limited in scope while you seem to be contradicting yourself a little.
First of all contrary to what some people believe disagreeableness correlates positively with intelligence while agreeableness correlates negatively. One can simply intuit this from the fact that dogs(a domesticated wolf) has a brain that is 30% smaller in size than that of a wolf. So how can we be marching on towards the ideal genetically superior human being if we are slowly being domesticated like cattle?
This is a quote from scientific american:
“8 dimensions of personality outside the openness to experience domain were positively related to IQ, including organization, toughness, provocativeness, leadership, self-disclosure, emotional stability, moderation, and happiness– although the correlations were much smaller than with intellectual engagement and mental quickness. IQ was negatively related to orderliness, morality, nurturance, tenderness, and sociability, but again, the negative correlations were much smaller than the relationships among IQ, intellectual engagement, and mental quickness.”
What I find particularly striking is that morality, nurturance, tenderness and sociability were negatively correlated to IQ. Come to think of it growing up I felt that the above qualities made me feel stupid, I had a natural aversion to them if I found myself immersed in them for too long. Not to say that I was a rebel or an anarchist, quite the contrary, I thought deeply about morality and was often the peacekeeper with a highly adventurous bent. But I thought about morality from first principles, I hated other people telling me what to do because it was the “moral” thing to do, I wanted to know WHY it was the moral thing to do at a very deep level. I guess what the above results show is that “domesticating” or pacifying people makes them stupid. Intelligence is innately inquisitive adventurous, chancy, it likes to get into the thick of it and this tends to put the powers that be on edge which is why they quickly try to stifle that spirit and create obedient subjects.
So here’s my hypothesis…first of all i think you are right about one thing, our evolutionary trajectory is to create the ideal perfect human being, that is if we don’t annihilate each other first. Whether we do that with the slow cumbersome process of evolution or we take matters into our own hands and start tinkering with our DNA isn’t perfectly evident at this point. My guess is that we will go the genetic engineering route along with AI enhancements. Eventually we might go all “natural”(sans AI) or some carbon based AI fusion once the technology allows for it.
In any case back to my hypothesis, I think that it isn’t domestication per se that has been our trajectory up until this point(despite some people’s great efforts). If it was domestication we would end up becoming dumber and dumber until we go extinct out of our own stupidity. So it may be a struggle between the two forces, the need for domestication(community, unity, agreeableness, sociability, tenderness) and the stark reality that intelligence correlates very strongly with survival. Hence why the most disagreeable people tend to gain power, tend to rise to the top, tend to rule over others. They are the smartest not simply because of some innate quality they have but also because their disagreeableness has allowed them to think outside the box and escape the shackles of conformity convention and the establishment. Once they gain power however they seek to pacify those under them in order to make their rule easier.
Of course one cannot simply go around sticking their finger at the authorities or society at large, it requires finesse and intelligence would dictate that you need to internalize that disagreeableness and harness it in the right way all while using all social tools at your disposal to achieve your goals. Those that don’t turn into tyrants and become worthy and admirable leaders tend to have a healthy dose of empathy in them thus orienting them towards taking care of the people. However too much empathy can be a bad thing as that probably correlates negatively with IQ. All this of course is incredibly hard to come by in a person which is why most of today’s leaders are very very weak indeed choosing instead to take the easy route by capitalizing on the current trend of hyper empathizing in order to gain favorability. It may just be one of the negative aspects of Democracy since once you are ruled by the will of the people you become a slave to their every whim.
Higher degree of individuality [don’t confuse with individualism] higher the self-awareness, correlated with ”iq”.
Mikey
I think this is also why there is a strong contingent of people that are highly disagreeable and tend to react at any attempt to create conformity in the populace whether that is via censoring, propaganda, austerity, authoritarianism, dictatorship(note that all remaining dictatorships are with a low IQ population) etc There is a significant number of these people and their voices tend to be the loudest so I think that society is trying to balance out the domestication or “sheep mentality” in order to ensure we don’t lose our wits in the process. In fact, I think it’s less of a domestication but rather a sophisticated collaboration with a keen eye towards improving the human condition through collective effort. We may just be past that threshold that would leave us powerless to inevitable domestication, our intelligence in essence is preventing us from falling for the trappings of collective conformity and becoming passive and stupid.
To further reiterate my point regarding the elites pushing for a multi culti diverse world, essentially what I am getting at is that the social dynamics at the top are different to the dynamics at the bottom of the economic spectrum. What happens at the top is that the elites are bonded together by multiple factors the biggest one being their wealth. What this means is that people of different ethnicities can work together since the things that would naturally lead to disintegration are countered by the benefits of diverse cultures and viewpoints and a greater number of ideas and ways in which they can pool their resources(wealth) together to greater heights.
Down at the bottom, people of different ethnicities also have something major in common, namely poverty. However poverty is not a marketable quality. So what if someone of a different culture/ethnicity has poverty in common with you, can he share his poverty to improve your life, of course not. Then what is left, maybe solidarity but generally speaking people don’t go shopping for solidarity from people they don’t know or have little in common with, they mostly get that from their family and friends to which they will most likely be ethnically related to. I mean this world wide push for “solidarity” is a nice sentiment but is mostly for show, there is very little of substance there outside of monetary aid and a few protests here and there.
A simplified example to get my point across; It’s kind of like gathering together a bunch of people with hammers to build a building. Whether they are culturally or ethnically different does not matter the job is to build that building and possessing those hammers helps. On the other hand you don’t gather together people with sand in their pockets to build a building let alone ones that can’t even effectively communicate with one another. So in my view what is passed down from the upper echelons of the economic and intellectual elites to the lower classes is two fold. For one it is this naive sentiment of “well we seem to be able to get along why can’t you? In fact if you don’t get along and integrate we are all doomed.” Secondly and particularly with regard to the economic elites it is mostly a matter of access to cheap labor and world wide resources either through open borders and free trade or easy movement around the world by undermining nationalist sentiments and weakening protectionist national policies.
Thinking mouse November 23, 2018 at 5:03 pm
About domestication: The leaders are ruled by the group in that they only can controll the group in ways that work and are evolved to like controling groups in only certain ways, based on the need to controll the group in an way that works
this statement is completely false. Leaders by the very definition of the word leaders control the group. Look at communism, slavery, any monarchy, the group is always at the mercy of its leaders. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and say you did not mean to type like that. Also control is spelled with 1 l not 2.
“The leaders are ruled by the group in that they only can controll the group in ways that WORK”
Its always negociation since a person can 100% controll someone. And the controled has an possibility to act own accord in most circumstances, if not all, atleast to an small degree.
“Look at slavery, any monarchy, the group is always at the mercy of its leaders”
Look at haiti (and other slave revolts) and the magna carta, especially the magna carta. Once the elite step out of line, other elites take them over or the proles just kill them, most often the first one eventually. The line is drawn by the material conditions, which involves the proles. No one controls another person by your definition of “at the mercy of its leaders”, since they in reality are negociating.
“Look at communism”
I did, look at what i found: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_materialism
An philosohy talking about “controling people” having their agency based on what they are owning.
” Leaders by the very definition of the word leaders control the group.”
And i think that that definition is untenable. But i still think the phenomena of leadership is real, just adequately described in an different manner. In humans, i define an leader as an person who makes other people comply, with means other than pertaining to him/her physically. The distinction is that the person has to comply. The reason i define it that way is becuase its congruent with most usages of the word and doesnt contradict my arguments against the word.
An leader is just an organic component of an living being, but there are many other components that are nescessary for its components survival.
Its very semantical. If you define controll as the type of negociations that are done today withing the living being(s?) of human(s?), then youd be right. But it seems like you are ignoring the fact that people dont really have agency as individuals, nor the role of capital in catalyzing the agency of the elite, which i think is untenable as well.
” I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and say you did not mean to type like that. ”
Nice.
Ill elaborate on: “and are evolved to like controling groups in only certain ways, based on the need to controll the group in an way that works”
So this breifly means that peer pressure and social desires determine how the leadership is done as the elite works to get results in methods that are evolved when the opinion of the tribe mattered more. Environmental evolution (along with an natural selection for mutations) might change this very much though, as the desires and methods to get results are ever more changed/sepereated, leading to the selection of master-slave relationships, and noam chomsky would argue large scale war. So its not an argument against your definition of leadership but an comment on human leadership.
cant 100%
Thinking Mouse ok now your argument is making alot of sense. Maybe English is not your 1st language?
Anyway how do you explain Mk ultra techniques for complete brainwashing? Surely a leader has complete control if he mind wipes his victim, err i mean “group member”. And im not talking about Jim Jones mind control I’m talking mind wipe. I saw a MK ultra documentary ( cant remember the name) where the doctor put his female patient into a coma used electro shock therapy and played recordings (cant remeber what they were) to her for a very long time (maybe about a month). when she awoke she could not remember anything, who she was how to talk, etc mind completely wiped. Took her years to remember everything and she relearned extremely quick.
You cant possibly tell me that with that kind of power you cant create the perfect slave err group member.
and ok suppose you want an example where no physical touching is involved. Then the best way to control someone verbally is to overload their mind with choice until they relent and offer control yo you. This process creates the illusion of choice
lets say me and you are friends, i want to go to the mall and I want to take you with me. I dont know where you want to go and I dont care. However because i am also a leader and want to control you, I say hey Mouse we should go somewhere do you want to go to the mall or the movies? you of course think about your choice but before you can answer i say or we can go to the park. We can go to the corner store. We can go to Mary’s house. We can go to Wallmart. we can go etc. eventually you will say ENOUGH! ok i dont care where we go you decide.
And thats where i got you see i offered you the illusion of choice as a form of control. What is your response? How can you say a leader using these strategies is not in control of the group?
Miley blayze
The controler person is ruled by that he is forced to only do certain tricks to sustain His Lifestyle. That why i said that even inatemate objects like capital matter to. Each type of leadership (by my definition) has different properties in how they catalyze the Lifestyle of an leader. So it Kinda follow that most change in the world is done unconciously, though theres some room of concious choice, to what we call politics.
Pumpkin head i just saw your response today and to your point about smaller brain size. Cell phones are more advanced now despite being much smaller than the 1st computers. Its possible brain size could be the same way.