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In evolutionary biology, a spandrel is a phenotypic characteristic that is a byproduct of the evolution of some other characteristic, rather than a direct product of adaptive selection—–Wikipedia, March 15, 2020
Commenter Mug of Pee writes:
arctic peoples have large brains for a very NOT just so story reason; the exact same adaptation is found in arctic mammals and in ice age humans and it’s very simple, a big round head is more insulating than a small or long head, allen’s rule.
Arthur Jensen agrees writing:
climate also influenced the evolution of brain size apparently indirectly through its direct effect on head size, particularly the shape of the skull. Head size and shape are more related to climate than is the body as a whole. Because the human brain metabolizes 20 percent of the body’s total energy supply, it generates more heat in relation to its size than any other organ. The resting rate of energy output of the average European adult male’s brain is equal to about three-fourths that of a 100-watt light bulb. Because temperature changes in the brain of only four to five degrees Celsius are seriously adverse to the normal functioning of the brain, it must conserve heat (in a cold environment) or dissipate heat (in a hot environment). Simply in terms of solid geometry, a sphere contains a larger volume (or cubic capacity) for its total surface area than does any other shape. Conversely, a given volume can be contained in a sphere that has a smaller surface area than can be contained by a nonspherical shape, and less spherical shapes will lose more heat by radiation. Applying these geometric principles to head size and shape, one would predict that natural selection would favor a small head with a less spherical shape (brachycephalic) shape because of its better heat dissipation in hot climates, and would favor a more spherical (dollichocephalic) shape because of its better heat conservation in cold climates….
From The g Factor page 436
So even if cold climates didn’t require any extra intelligence to survive in, they did require more brain mass just to keep warm, and given the moderate causal correlation between IQ and brain size, they would have selected for intelligence indirectly as a byproduct of thermoregulation.
There is also likely a causal correlation between IQ and brain sphericity (independent of size) because a sphere is the shape that minimizes the distance between neurons and thus presumably maximizes brain efficiency.
So it seems that not only could cold winters have selected for high IQ directly because of the intelligence needed to survive the cold, but they also may have selected indirectly via thermoregulation of brain size and brain shape.
The question for HBDers is how do we test these three potential causes to determine how big a role (if any) each played in population differences in IQ?
The just-so stories continue to get more and more elaborate. Notice now how the theory is protected from falsification. The justifications become more and more elaborate. Just-so storytelling at its finest. Byproduct storytelling still falls prey to the just-so story objection, anyway. You’re describing the free-rider problem (the problem of selection-for), how “selection” can’t decouple correlated traits. I wonder if PP can name a property that an adaptation would have that a byproduct wouldn’t have. There is no independent verification, so again PP is just storytelling. The basis of “HBD.”
“given the moderate causal correlation between IQ and brain size,”
Haha what?
so someone else’s actions may tell one he knows something he doesn’t?…so as to use “one” rather than “you” because lesbians…
and the other person is thinking the same thing…
what happens?
I wonder if PP can name a property that an adaptation would have that a byproduct wouldn’t have.
Well we’d expect an adaption to have survival value in the particular environment it evolved in but the tricky thing here is that both thermoregulation and intelligence have survival value in the cold. We would also expect adaptions to evolve faster than byproducts since the latter is just an imperfectly correlated proxy of the former. So for example if IQ is just a byproduct of brain size selection, we’d expect the regression slope predicting IQ as a function of latitude to be equal to the regression slope predicting brain size as a function of latitude (when both traits are expressed in SD units) multiplied by the correlation between brain size and IQ. Or vice versa if IQ is the adaption.
There is no independent verification, so again PP is just storytelling. The basis of “HBD.”
Comparing regression slopes would be independent verification. Also, we could look at what parts of the brain increased in size. If the entire brain increases uniformly with latitude, that might suggest thermoregulation is the adaption, but if the cognitive parts increased more than the sensory-motor and vegetative parts, then IQ was likely the adaption. We might also find genomic variants that cause brain size without causing IQ and/or genomic variants that cause IQ without causing brain size. Climatic variation in these variants could further help us verify which trait was adaptive and which was the spandrel, though it’s also possible both were both. In a field where there are too many “just-so stories” I agree we need to weed some out.
The thing is that both are linked and when you have one you have the other. Byproducts can have all of those properties. Byproducts can have survival value. Would you say that what you wrote in your first paragraph is an example of a property that an adaptation would have and a byproduct wouldn’t?
You’re just stating “plausible conjectures without a way to adjudicate among them” (quoted in Smith, 2016: 278). What is the predictive content? Why should I believe X was adapted other than the fact that X still exists today? “Regression slopes” isn’t an answe to the question.
The thing is that both are linked and when you have one you have the other. Byproducts can have all of those properties. Byproducts can have survival value. Would you say that what you wrote in your first paragraph is an example of a property that an adaptation would have and a byproduct wouldn’t?
Survival value is something an adaption MUST have and thus is more likely to have than a byproduct.
You’re just stating “plausible conjectures without a way to adjudicate among them” (quoted in Smith, 2016: 278). What is the predictive content? Why should I believe X was adapted other than the fact that X still exists today? “Regression slopes” isn’t an answe to the question.
NBA players are both tall and heavy. Do you think their height is mostly a byproduct of them being selected for height or is their weight mostly a byproduct of them being selected for height? Explain your answer.
That X is currently adaptive does not mean that X was an adaptation. There is no argument for the claim that since X is adaptive today that it was selected for in the past due to its adaptive function. X can be an adaptation without being currently adaptive and X can presently be adaptive without being an adaptation. PP’s assumption is that since X exists that there must be a reason why, thus PP creates a just-so story to explain why it still exists today while also creating another story to protect it from falsification. Adaptive hypotheses don’t raise the probability of any state of affairs, they are underdetermined by all states of affairs, and they only predict what they’re invoked to explain—the existence of the trait which gives us no good reasons to accept the hypothesis.
That X is currently adaptive does not mean that X was an adaptation. There is no argument for the claim that since X is adaptive today that it was selected for in the past due to its adaptive function.
Unless past conditions were similar to current ones.
X can be an adaptation without being currently adaptive and X can presently be adaptive without being an adaptation.
Correct
PP’s assumption is that since X exists that there must be a reason why,
LOL! So you think things exist without there being a reason why? Wow!
Adaptive hypotheses don’t raise the probability of any state of affairs,
gibberish
“Survival value is something an adaption MUST have and thus is more likely to have than a byproduct”
Can byproducts have survival value? Can a trait have survival value today and not in the past? Can a trait not have survival value today and have survival value in the past?
Asking a question about height and weight doesn’t address the objection.
“Unless past conditions were similar to current ones.”
How do you know?
“So you think things exist without there being a reason why?”
Your assumption is that T exists because T was adaptive in the EEA—for which there are many possible stories but no independent evidence—the hallmark of “HBD.” (There are no hallmarks of adaptation, however, as we’ve seen since you cannot bake a property that an adaptation would have that a byproduct wouldn’t.)
“gibberish”
Is there anything you’re having trouble understanding? That something is “gibberish” means it’s unintelligible or nonsense—can you explain what’s nonsense or unintelligible?
PP has no observation that’s expected on his pet hypothesis—that intelligence was selected for—that’s not expected on the assumption that it was a byproduct, fixed by phylogenetic inertia, genetic drift, or because it was phenotypically plastic.
Can byproducts have survival value?
Yes, but an adaption is more likely to have it
Can a trait have survival value today and not in the past? Can a trait not have survival value today and have survival value in the past?
Yes and yes.
Asking a question about height and weight doesn’t address the objection.
How do you know when you can’t even answer it?
“Unless past conditions were similar to current ones.”
How do you know?
How do I know what?
“So you think things exist without there being a reason why?”
Your assumption is that T exists because T was adaptive in the EEA—for which there are many possible stories but no independent evidence—the hallmark of “HBD.”
You mean the hallmark of all evolutionary theory which you clearly reject.
however, as we’ve seen since you cannot bake a property that an adaptation would have that a byproduct wouldn’t
Actually I’ve named four:
1) more likely to have survival value than its byproduct
2) steeper regression slope (i.e. if a trait is an adaption to climate, it should correlate with climate more strongly than its byproduct does)
3) functional morphology (i.e. if intelligence was the adaption, then the parts of the brain related to intelligence should show disproportionate increase)
4) differential genomics (if intelligence was the adaptation, genomic variants that select for IQ independently of brain size should differ between populations more or less exposed to the selection pressure)
PP has no observation that’s expected on his pet hypothesis—that intelligence was selected for—that’s not expected on the assumption that it was a byproduct, fixed by phylogenetic inertia, genetic drift, or because it was phenotypically plastic.
RR lost the “byproduct’s can never be differentiated from adaptions” argument so he’s moving the goal posts by mentioning three other mechanisms. Shameful.
“Yes, but an adaption is more likely to have it”
This doesn’t make sense. Byproducts can be adaptive and have survival value. Your assertion doesn’t undercut the objection.
“How do I know what?”
If “past conditions were similar to current ones”.
“You mean the hallmark of all evolutionary theory which you clearly reject.”
The main tenets of evolutionary theory have been independently verified. See “29 Evidences for Macroevolution: Scientific Evidences for the Theory of Common Descent with Gradual Modification.”
“Actually I’ve named four:”
A byproduct would have all four due to trait linkage. And re (4), population stratification is a thing.
“RR lost the “byproduct’s can never be differentiated from adaptions” argument so he’s moving the goal posts by mentioning three other mechanisms. Shameful.”
No I didn’t because your proposals don’t undercut the objection—the other mechanisms, too, need to be ruled out. It’s almost as if PP isn’t familiar with Gould’s and Lewontin’s argument in their Spandrels paper. None of what you said differentiates byproducts from adaptations—you can’t name a hallmark of adaption because their are none. Byproduct hypotheses are subject to the same exact criticism because there is no support for them either.
The hypothesis that trait T is an adaptation is falsifiable if and only if an observation exists that can verify that T moved to fixation in virtue of its contribution to fitness in the EEA and not in virtue of its being a byproduct. Byproduct hypotheses predict the same facts that adaptive ones do.
The hypothesis that T is an adaptation is verified independently iff the hypothesis generates a prediction that disconfirms the hypothesis that T is a byproduct—so what’s the observation? (1)-(4) don’t cut it as they can be features of byproducts too. You would need to deconfound all traits coextensive with T (of which there are an infinity).
PP has made the “CWT” unfalsifiable. Hilarious.
“Yes, but an adaption is more likely to have it”
This doesn’t make sense. Byproducts can be adaptive and have survival value.
Then they’re not merely byproducts, they’re adaptions too. By definition.
“How do I know what?”
If “past conditions were similar to current ones”.
When did I say they were?
“You mean the hallmark of all evolutionary theory which you clearly reject.”
The main tenets of evolutionary theory have been independently verified. See “29 Evidences for Macroevolution: Scientific Evidences for the Theory of Common Descent with Gradual Modification.”
You don’t believe that, obviously; otherwise you wouldn’t dismiss every evolutionary theory you hear as a just-so story.
“Actually I’ve named four:”
A byproduct would have all four due to trait linkage.
Absurd
And re (4), population stratification is a thing.
You can come up with a million excuses for not believing the predictions made by any hypothesis, but those excuses must be tested in their own right. Population stratification is not a blanket trump card you can just uncritically play to dismiss any genomic data you don’t like.
“RR lost the “byproduct’s can never be differentiated from adaptions” argument so he’s moving the goal posts by mentioning three other mechanisms. Shameful.”
No I didn’t because your proposals don’t undercut the objection—the other mechanisms, too, need to be ruled out.
I don’t have to rule out theories that no one has even made a credible case for.
It’s almost as if PP isn’t familiar with Gould’s and Lewontin’s argument in their Spandrels paper. None of what you said differentiates byproducts from adaptations—you can’t name a hallmark of adaption because their are none. Byproduct hypotheses are subject to the same exact criticism because there is no support for them either.
Then why do some evolutionary theories gain mainstream acceptance while others are rejected. Obviously scientists consider both byproduct and adaption scenarios all the time and decide which is more plausible.
The hypothesis that trait T is an adaptation is falsifiable if and only if an observation exists that can verify that T moved to fixation in virtue of its contribution to fitness in the EEA and not in virtue of its being a byproduct.
If IQ enhancing variants are found to have increased in frequency (independent of their effect on brain size) the IQ was just byproduct of brain size theory is falsified. If brain size enhancing variants are found to have to have increased in frequency (independent of their effect on cognition) the brain size was just a byproduct of IQ theory is falsified.
Byproduct hypotheses predict the same facts that adaptive ones do.
Nonsense
The hypothesis that T is an adaptation is verified independently iff the hypothesis generates a prediction that disconfirms the hypothesis that T is a byproduct—so what’s the observation? (1)-(4) don’t cut it as they can be features of byproducts too. You would need to deconfound all traits coextensive with T (of which there are an infinity).
By that standard no scientific theory would be viable, because there’s always an infinite number of alternative theories. You really need some new talking points.
“Then they’re not merely byproducts, they’re adaptions too. By definition”
Adaptations are what is supposedly selected for while byproducts are merely selected.
“When did I say they were?”
Was it not implied? I said that there is no argument for the claim that since X is adaptive today that it was adaptive—and selected for—in our evolutionary past which you seem to be implying with your recent series of articles.
“You don’t believe that, obviously; otherwise you wouldn’t dismiss every evolutionary theory you hear as a just-so story.”
I do believe that, obviously, as the link falsifies your claim.
“Absurd”
Why?
“I don’t have to rule out theories that no one has even made a credible case for.”
You need to rule out other mechanisms before the probability that X is an adaptation is raised. Otherwise you’re merely telling just-so stories.
“Then why do some evolutionary theories gain mainstream acceptance while others are rejected. Obviously scientists consider both byproduct and adaption scenarios all the time and decide which is more plausible.”
Do you mean “inference to the best explanation” (IBE)?
“If IQ enhancing variants are found to have increased in frequency (independent of their effect on brain size) the IQ was just byproduct of brain size theory is falsified. If brain size enhancing variants are found to have to have increased in frequency (independent of their effect on cognition) the brain size was just a byproduct of IQ theory is falsified.”
If aliens land, then it’s plausible that they guided our evolution from ape to Man. IQ-ists can be caught up in all of their “predictions” until the world ends (i.e., until COVID-19 takes us out). Just poke Murray and all of his many similar “X years away” claims for genomic evidence. Even then, again, Kevin’s paper undercuts such claims (when it comes to race).
“By that standard no scientific theory would be viable, because there’s always an infinite number of alternative theories. You really need some new talking points.”
The logical conclusion is to abandon adaptationism. But the “HBDers” can’t do that as their enterprise hinges on it.
“Then they’re not merely byproducts, they’re adaptions too. By definition”
Adaptations are what is supposedly selected for while byproducts are merely selected.
And if something has survival value, by definition it’s being selected.
“When did I say they were?”
Was it not implied? I said that there is no argument for the claim that since X is adaptive today that it was adaptive—and selected for—in our evolutionary past which you seem to be implying with your recent series of articles.
The article is about what was selected for during the ice age.
“You don’t believe that, obviously; otherwise you wouldn’t dismiss every evolutionary theory you hear as a just-so story.”
I do believe that, obviously, as the link falsifies your claim.
Name some theories you believe for how specific traits evolved.
“Absurd”
Why?
Because it isn’t true
“I don’t have to rule out theories that no one has even made a credible case for.”
You need to rule out other mechanisms before the probability that X is an adaptation is raised. Otherwise you’re merely telling just-so stories.
By that standard you’ve just dismissed all science as “just-so stories” because alternative mechanisms can always be invoked.
“Then why do some evolutionary theories gain mainstream acceptance while others are rejected. Obviously scientists consider both byproduct and adaption scenarios all the time and decide which is more plausible.”
Do you mean “inference to the best explanation” (IBE)?
I mean just what I said.
“If IQ enhancing variants are found to have increased in frequency (independent of their effect on brain size) the IQ was just byproduct of brain size theory is falsified. If brain size enhancing variants are found to have to have increased in frequency (independent of their effect on cognition) the brain size was just a byproduct of IQ theory is falsified.”
If aliens land, then it’s plausible that they guided our evolution from ape to Man. IQ-ists can be caught up in all of their “predictions” until the world ends (i.e., until COVID-19 takes us out).
They have the technology and skills to answer these questions today, it’s just a matter of funding.
Even then, again, Kevin’s paper undercuts such claims (when it comes to race).
How did it do that?
“By that standard no scientific theory would be viable, because there’s always an infinite number of alternative theories. You really need some new talking points.”
The logical conclusion is to abandon adaptationism. But the “HBDers” can’t do that as their enterprise hinges on it.
You claim believe in the theory of evolution yet deny adaptations played a role? Weird.
“And if something has survival value, by definition it’s being selected.”
Byproducts are selected while adaptations are selected for. This is basic evolutionary theory.
“The article is about what was selected for during the ice age.”
Right—the claim that X is adaptive today doesn’t mean it was adaptive in the EEA (the conditions of which are unknown).
“Name some theories you believe for how specific traits evolved.”
The prediction of intermediate morphologies of organisms with specific traits, for example dinosaur to bird transitions, the well-known example of ancestors of whales having legs (which we can still see in their bone structure), reptile to mammal transitions, ape to man transitions, etc. There are dozens and dozens more examples that have been predicted and independently confirmed. “HBD”, on the other hand, just storytells and storytells.
“Because it isn’t true”
Why isn’t it true?
“By that standard you’ve just dismissed all science as “just-so stories” because alternative mechanisms can always be invoked.”
For a self-professed evolution enthusiast, you don’t seem to be aware of the many, many predictions made by evolutionary hypotheses which have been independently verified of the data they purport to explain.
“I mean just what I said.”
So inference to best explanation? Can you give me a few examples with references?
“They have the technology and skills to answer these questions today, it’s just a matter of funding.”
Sure thing.
“How did it do that?”
Showing that “natural selection” doesn’t explain the already-found SNPs “associated” with IQ.
“You claim believe in the theory of evolution yet deny adaptations played a role? Weird”
Yes. You don’t need adaptationism to explain how creatures are fit to their ecologies.
https://notpoliticallycorrect.me/2019/09/13/rampant-adaptationism/
“And if something has survival value, by definition it’s being selected.”
Byproducts are selected while adaptations are selected for. This is basic evolutionary theory.
These word games you play don’t get us anywhere. Adaptation means the trait increased in the population because it increased survival rates. Byproduct means the trait increased in the population merely because it’s correlated with the adaptation.
“The article is about what was selected for during the ice age.”
Right—the claim that X is adaptive today doesn’t mean it was adaptive in the EEA (the conditions of which are unknown).
Actually quite a bit is known about ice age conditions, so let’s not waste time with this argument.
“Name some theories you believe for how specific traits evolved.”
The prediction of intermediate morphologies of organisms with specific traits, for example dinosaur to bird transitions, the well-known example of ancestors of whales having legs (which we can still see in their bone structure), reptile to mammal transitions, ape to man transitions, etc. There are dozens and dozens more examples that have been predicted and independently confirmed. “HBD”, on the other hand, just storytells and storytells.
I said “Name some theories you believe for how specific traits evolved” and you just named examples of things evolving without telling HOW. HOW did whales lose their legs? Was “no legs” an adaption, a byproduct, sexual selection, genetic drift? And what predictions and independent confirmation do you have in support of said process?
“Because it isn’t true”
Why isn’t it true?
Because not all traits are correlated
“I mean just what I said.”
So inference to best explanation? Can you give me a few examples with references?
Without endorsing that term, a few examples are the white appearing fur of polar bears, the white appearing fur of arctic foxes etc. In both cases scientists believe this is an adaptation for camouflage. Now you might dismiss this as a just-so story, but because no one could tell a better story, it’s become scientifically accepted by default.
“How did it do that?”
Showing that “natural selection” doesn’t explain the already-found SNPs “associated” with IQ.
And how did they show that?
“These word games you play don’t get us anywhere.”
The distinction matters—if it didn’t, there wouldn’t be “adaptations” and “byproducts.”
“Adaptation means the trait increased in the population because it increased survival rates.”
“Byproduct means the trait increased in the population merely because it’s correlated with the adaptation.”
I’M playing wordgames?
T is a trait and H is proposed to explain T. H is proposed to explain T. But for an observation to count as evidence for a hypothesis, it needs to be consistent with the hypothesis—it needs to be expected if the hypothesis is true. So claiming that T is an adaptation is consistent with the fact that T exists, but that gives one no (rational) reason to believe the hypothesis (other than motivated reasoning). The fact that a hypothesis coheres with what it purports to explain does not raise the probability that H is true. But novel evidence raises the probability of the hypothesis being true and X is novel evidence if X was not used. X is independent of what it is purported to explain in virtue of its being unobserved before formulating the hypothesis. So X is novel evidence for H if and only if X comes to be known after the formulation of H. There are three kinds of hypotheses—(1) ad hoc hypotheses; (2) hypotheses that generate no predictions and thusly are unconfirmable; or (3) hypotheses that predict novel evidence. The arguments provided in this thread show that adaptationist hypotheses predict what they purport to explain while generating no testable predictions. You can show how adaptations can be identified (where you’ve already failed) or you can name an adaptationist hypothesis, a prediction it has made and how the prediction follows from the hypothesis, or (3) argue that it’s rational to accept just-so stories.
The theory of natural selection posits environmental filtering mechanisms. But the problem is that these filtering mechanisms explain the selection of both the fitness-enhancing trait and its linked free-rider without being able to say anything about what is being selected for.
“Actually quite a bit is known about ice age conditions, so let’s not waste time with this argument.”
Why don’t you want to waste time with it? Because you know you’re wrong? The examples from Lynn, Rushton, and Kanazawa have been refuted to hell and back.
“I said “Name some theories you believe for how specific traits evolved” and you just named examples of things evolving without telling HOW. HOW did whales lose their legs? Was “no legs” an adaption, a byproduct, sexual selection, genetic drift? And what predictions and independent confirmation do you have in support of said process?”
The onus is not on me to do so. The onus is on you, the adaptationist. I’ve provided a few things that evolutionary theory has successfully predicted wth novel evidence. I’m not the one telling stories that “IQ” was “selected for” by “cold winters”. The onus is on the just-so storyteller to attempt to justify their storytelling—but the claim that T achieved fixation in the EEA due to reproductive efficiency is underdetermined by all possible observations.
“Because not all traits are correlated”
All traits are coextensive with an infinitude of traits.
“Without endorsing that term”
Why won’t you endorse the term?
“the white appearing fur of polar bears, the white appearing fur of arctic foxes etc. In both cases scientists believe this is an adaptation for camouflage.”
Were polar bears selected for being white or matching their environment? Will polar bears that are selected for being white win competitions with polar bears that are selected for matching their environments? Also, when you say, “Obviously scientists consider both byproduct and adaption scenarios all the time and decide which is more plausible”, this is because “when evolutionary accounts are coextensive in their application to actual outcomes, one distinguishes between them by reference to their application in counterfactual outcomes” which “is the logic of appeals to the ‘method of differences’ in deciding counterfactual outcomes” (Fodor and Piatteli-Palmarini, 2010: 117, What Darwin Got Wrong).
“And how did they show that?”
Using GWA study results (eg Lee et al 2018), he showed that a pattern not consistent with “natural selection.”
rr’s “just so story” is a just so story.
there is no way to “know” if OJ did it for anyone unless he’s OJ or an eyewitness.
this is the great fault of darwinism as a “scientific” theory.
presumably, the laws of physics don’t change over time…presumably…
so they can be tested at any time…unless…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_drop_experiment
it has been pointed out by lawyers and other laity that darwinism is not a “scientific” theory in the way that philosophasters of science and afro-albanians use the term “scientific”.
for example:

THE POINT YOU FUCKING DENSE GUIDO IS…
OJ DID IT!
AND HIS JURORS HAD LOW IQs.
DO YOU WANNA BE A FUCKING OJ JUROR + HAVE RIDICULOUS HAIR?
We could see how altitude affects skull size. Cooler, higher places should have different skull shapes from those in the lowland, whatever the latitude. best James
From: Pumpkin Person Sent: Monday, March 16, 2020 4:43 AM To: james.thompson@ucl.ac.uk Subject: [New post] If cold winters select for high IQ, do they do so directly or indirectly?
pumpkinpers
We could see how altitude affects skull size. Cooler, higher places should have different skull shapes from those in the lowland, whatever the latitude.
I would expect they would but that should be the case regardless of whether the cold is selecting for thermoregulation or IQ directly.
Beals, Dodd, and Smith (1984) showed that climatic variables were correlated strongly with variation in crania but that race and cranial variation had low correlations—which Rushton never acknowledged even when it was pointed out to him two times.
why would he respond to it?
Check pg 306:
“The implication is that any effort to attribute racial or cognitive significance to brain size is probably meaningless unless the effect of climate is controlled. For exam~le, the endocranial volumes of Europeans and Africans differ iittle from what one would expect given the difference in their respective winters.”
And pg. 312:
“We find little support for the use of brain size in taxonomic assessment (other than with paleontological extremes over time). Racial taxonomies which include cranial capacity, head shape, or any other trait influenced by climate confound ecotypic and phyletic causes. For Pleistocene hominids, we doubt that the volume of the braincase is any more taxonomically “valuable” than any other trait. Ecotypic differentiation (fig. 9) appears sometimes greater than average taxonomic difference. A slight increase in head size combined with a rounder cranium has a disproportionate effect upon volume. Even with absolute capacity difference, a connection to reproductive isolation is quesionable given the lack of such connection among modern peoples.”
Beals, Dodd and Smith show a high correlation between climatic variables and cranial size, not cranial size and race.
Rushton didn’t respond to Lieberman on that point because Rushton is a lying, dishonest hack.
Yet another example of Rushton lying by omission—just like Cernovsky and Littman (2019) showed with Rushton’s INTERPOL crime data.
Pumpkin, if parents are bilingual, but they only speak their second language with their children, would the verbal IQ remain in tact with performance IQ when you go to school, since you have more space to fill up, and you’d naturally do so?
Big *round* head? Inuits are starkly dolichocephalic. The big round heads of the ice age prehistoric era, at least in Europe, were also largely dolichocephalic to low mesocephalic.
That hypothesis sounds fanciful actually.
An interesting question would be, I wonder if it would be possible to analyze, whether Neanderthals and homo erectuses of Europe and other northern altitudes had larger cranial capacities on average than their southern kindred. Now that would really put the north/south iq gradient on firm ground! I recall reading somewhere that the axes or erectus in Europe became very involved and ornate compared with others. Could that be a symptom of relatively high iq?
Fraz do you believe tropical humans today are just as genomically intelligent as Norther Eurasians?
I meant that large brain size evolved to create warmth. That sounds silly to me. I believe the north south gradient as adaptation to difficulty in survival in harsher climates. I’ve considered it true for so long I think I came up with it on my own.
I believe everything Ruston says. I’m well versed in all that.
I believe everything Ruston says. I’m well versed in all that.
You and RR are going to get along great 🙂
What a nonsense question.
Oh, you don’t believe that? I misread your question then. What counter evidence would you offer? What part of rushton do you differ with?
I don’t WANT it to be true, but it appears to be. There’s also much I don’t like about myself 😢
I think rushton’s theories are interesting but more research needed
Faz Urb and PP, which of Rushton’s hypotheses have the best evidence for them—which have been independently confirmed? Can you provide quotes from Rushton and link to independent confirmation?
There’s a north-south gradient in the intelligence of indigenous Americans too, for a very long time actually. North-south gradients in India and Africa as well, when talking about indigenous peoples and not conquerors…
So Pumpkins hypothesis makes sense.
The north-south gradient in India is reversed isn’t it?
IDK about the various native American results though.
That’s true, north-south gradient is reversed in India but that’s because of the indo-european conquerors who probably displaced older, more intelligent civilizations there by interbreeding or genociding the real native populations of the area. I’m sure Harappa and other older civilizations of Pakistan and north India were far more advanced than their southern counterparts.
In the Americas, it’s rather evident that a north-south gradient actually exists just from cranial capacity and modern-day IQ scores. However, civilizational accomplishments in the northern regions of America were limited compared to the Mayans, Aztecs, etc. Even if we look at just the United States region, we see natives in the south had more accomplishments than their northern counterparts as well.
Note that this is just my historical knowledge that dates to today…there may be more discoveries in the future that discredit what I say but haven’t been acknowledged yet.
“However, civilizational accomplishments in the northern regions of America were limited compared to the Mayans, Aztecs, etc*
Hmm maybe this is because the creation of civilization is more complex than what is acknowledged. These civs throw a wrench in the theory but they already have auxiliary hypotheses for the Arctic people and Maya/Middle East/Egypt.
“HBD” is a joke.
@LOADED
>I’m sure Harappa and other older civilizations of Pakistan and north India were far more advanced than their southern counterparts.
There was no comparable southern counterpart to this civilization. Only an eastern one and that too was in the north. Though there is another interesting thing to be noted here: pre-Harappan era south Asians had a higher cranial capacity than Harappan era ones. Probably just the farming effect.
Regarding natives do you have IQ test results for the northern natives vs southern ones? IIRC Patagonid south American natives have fairly large heads, about as big s that of arctic Inuit. The difference is that Patagonids are brachycephalic while Inuits are dolichocephalic and somewhat higher vaulted.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Marta_Mirazon_Lahr/publication/238270521/figure/fig3/AS:734813917044739@1552204698831/Comparison-of-Fueguian-left-and-Eskimo-right-skulls-in-frontal-a-and-occipital-b.ppm
Fuegan on the left, Eskimo on the right
@Flaminhotcheetos
The Patagonids might be further evidence that cold winter theory is real.
This is the only thing I could find on indigenous IQs: https://www.human-intelligence.org/native-americans/
Kind of contradicts what I was saying since Latin American indigenes prove to have comparable iqs to each other according to the link I laid down.
Yeah, there isn’t that big of a difference because cold adaptation isn’t the only way to select for intelligence. Civilized centers with lots of people can provide for more mutations and if controlled properly will allow for selection for the positive mutations and selection against negative mutations with respect for intelligence. But that won’t be an endlessly progressive thing because there would be some kind of a sweet spot for the average intelligence of a civilization. The elites would probably not be able to effectively rule over a population with the same average IQ as their’s especially if the population has a high number of people.
1. a beard is Cynical and un-Cynical at the same time.
2. the feeling of a creature sucking your face may go away like a train in the night.
3. diogenes/ted k had a beard….but he did NOT use “beard oil”…
4. jesus fucking christ someone needs to give rr a BEER education!
FOR ONE THING YOU FUCKING AFRO-ALBANIAN…
GUINNESS STOUT IS SHIT!
THERE WAS ONE BEER WITHOUT A CORK, RASPUTIN STOUT, BUT…
NORTH COAST HAS RUINED IT.
IF A BEER DOESN;T HAVE A CORK…
IT’S SHIT!
RR IS WHY THE ROMAN EMPIRE FELL.
SAD!


alec guinness reminds me of rr’s favorite proiofessional wrestling beer.
“GUINNESS STOUT IS SHIT!”
Stop outting yourself as a man with no taste.
^^^EXACTLY^^^
I actually love guinness.
Philosopher is a man of taste. I’d drink a Guinness with you. We can talk conspiracies.
Does anyone think that the coronavirus fiasco is in part the government trying to see what they can have us do if they push the right buttons?
you both have absolutely no taste.
guinness is to beer as sutter home is to wine.
sad.
do y’all even have access to high end beer?
i mean beer that comes in 25 mL bottles and has a cork and costs $10+ a bottle?
the cheapest of these is made in quebec by unibroue.
the cork is actually necessary. not for show.
unibroue is canada’s imitation, here’s america’s imitation of belgium’s abbey beers, the cheapest of which is chimay:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewery_Ommegang
The more I read puppy the more I realise puppy just doesnt get it. Puppy is basically a person with the mind of a 14 year old being exposed to various theories and at no time can puppy actually come up with a coherent narrative for why things are. Puppy just picks and chooses whatever research comes into his inbox for arbitrary reasons e.g. east asians look like fictional aliens.
If puppy was stone cold correct about cold climates selecting high IQs then why aren’t the Inuit and eskimo people that smart?
Why aren’t people from siberia that much more smarter than their western russian co-ethnics?
Why are artic mammals not known for being especially intelligent like bottlenose dolphins or chimps?
If puppy was stone cold correct about cold climates selecting high IQs then why aren’t the Inuit and eskimo people that smart?
Compared to other hunter-gatherers, they’re the MOST smart. Once you control for whether a geographic race made the leap to civilization or not, there’s virtually a perfect correlation between IQ and climate.
Well then why are the eygptians and middle east the ‘cradle of civilisation’.
Because it’s in the goldilocks zone. Warm enough to support civilization, but cold enough to have the IQ to create it. All six independent civilizations were created by peoples who had ice age exposure yet found a relatively warm refuge. If you don’t understand this, you don’t understand human history.
right!
even if making one’s living in siberia as a hunter-gatherer is more challenging than making one’s living as a hunter-gatherer in tropical africa…
1. “more challenging” may not mean more “cognitively challenging”, AND…
2. with civilization the most fortunate have it better, and the least fortunate have it worse than they would have had as HGs.
3. making one’s living within civilization can be much more cognitively demanding. hunting mammoths on the ice age steppe is way easier than farming or running a business, etc..
in fact one explanation for pygmies’ short stature is the paucity of calories in african rainforests…
so hard to make a living you have to economize on the size of your body.
…
but then in Keep the River on Your Right, the priest claims the peruvian rain foret indigenes are lazy because it’s so easy to make a living, all they have to do is stick yucca in the ground and they’re set…farming fails more often than it succeeds, but not for them.
prof shoe claimed he met a namibian in china and asked him about negroes. the namibian said negroes are just as smart as us but it’s so easy to make a living in africa they’re not as motivated, industrious as us.
“All six independent civilizations”
What’s the sixth? I’m aware of the Sumerians, Egyptians, Harrapan, Maya, and Chinese (created writing independently, a hallmark of civilization) so what’s the sixth that had writing independently? (Four of those are warm-weather civs; your explanation is, of course, ridiculous).
Puppy you just contradicted yourself. You said cold climates produce highest IQs and now youre changing your story to goldilocks zones promoting it. How come you have no consistency? RR is right. Most of these panhandle civilisations like Maya and Eygptians have nothing to do with cold weather. Puppy just doesn’t get it RR.
No you don’t understand:
cold climates select for the human capital to build civilization
warm climates have the geographic capital
Only in the rare cases where humans exposed to the cold ended up in relatively warm climates did civilization emerge.
It is the rare marriage of human capital and geographic capital that spawned the modern word.
That’s why civilization appeared so late in human history. It wasn’t until the last ice age that we evolved the human capital and even then, it was mostly found far from the geographic capital.
Since when were the Maya and Eygptians living in cold climates? Stop making up stuff.
The problem, it was thought, is that mummy DNA couldn’t be sequenced. But a group of international researchers, using unique methods, have overcome the barriers to do just that. They found that the ancient Egyptians were most closely related to the peoples of the Near East, particularly from the Levant. This is the Eastern Mediterranean which today includes the countries of Turkey, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon
So the Egyptians were exposed to just enough cold during the ice age to be smart enough to create towns & written languages & they had more than enough warmth to make the Neolithic transition. The Goldilocks zone.
The Maya were exposed to extreme cold when their ancestors crossed over from Siberia to Alaska before heading south to South America
“The Maya were exposed to extreme cold when their ancestors crossed over from Siberia to Alaska before heading south to South America”
This part is completely made up.
Also you could say the entire planet was exposed to cold weather during the Ice Age and therefore etc etc.
Also you could say the entire planet was exposed to cold weather during the Ice Age and therefore etc etc.
Don’t be stupid, the tropics were not exposed to extreme cold weather during the ice age & that’s where virtually all our species lived until 70 kya
“Only in the rare cases where humans exposed to the cold ended up in relatively warm climates did civilization emerge.”
Just-so stories.
So PP how long does a cold weather group need to be in warm weather for them to not create civilization independently? What’s the” IQ cut off” for the ability to create civilization and what’s the test?
All Native Americans were exposed to Siberia. What happened to the ones who couldn’t develop a society?
Many of them stayed north where the conditions were too harsh to create civilization.
So the native americans that had high IQs in the north never made civilisation but those that lived near the equator did even though whites and east asians that lived in similar temperate zones made civilisation. Great. THATTTH MATTH SENTTHH!!!
but whites didn’t create a civilization independently & civilization emerged in the warmer part of china
I think rivers are also an important part in making a society. The Southerns had access to rivers while most of the Northerners did not.
“Many of them stayed north where the conditions were too harsh to create civilization.”
So if they went south they’d be able to create one? How long does a group need to stay in a certain ecology to “evolve the IQ for that ecology”?
“The Maya were exposed to extreme cold when their ancestors crossed over from Siberia to Alaska before heading south to South America”
Are you reducing the achievements of these civilizations where their ancestors evolved? Maybe think about the types of resources, population size, etc etc before reducing civilizational achievements to idiotic and long-refuted theories.
“So the Egyptians were exposed to just enough cold during the ice age to be smart enough to create towns & written languages & they had more than enough warmth to make the Neolithic transition. The Goldilocks zone.”
How long is “just enough” to be “exposed to” the “cold” to “evolve higher IQ” and therefore be able to “create civilization”?
The only civilization that counts for wihat PP is claiming is the Chinese—all other four independently created civilizations are warm-weather—his attempt to save his pontificating is, if course unevidenced. What is the time period to evolve lower IQ PP? Under what time from does a cold weather to warm weather group not have the ability anymore to create civilization?
Your silence on the issue is very telling.
How would I know what the time period is? All I know is that all independent civilized cultures are descended from non-tropical people. That needs an explanation.
Then those people BECAME “tropical people.” I asked you how long a cold climate group would have to live in a warm climate to NOT be able to create civilization. Unless PP is making the unfalsifiable claim that only groups that have been exposed to cold weather can create civilization.
Ad hoc after ad hoc. PP just won’t let the CWT die, no matter how many people poke huge holes in it PP is there to attempt to cover the holes, but the covers burst and PP is unaware.
I’m reading Angela Saini’s “Superior” and on page 8 she writes:
“Sloane could have known little of the more recent Aztec and Inca empires in South America, which upon their discovery by Europeans destabilized the very meaning of civilization by proving that highly sophisticated societies emerged independently elsewhere. They came as such a shock that some to this day still believe their cities were the work of aliens.”
But to PP its not aliens, it’s “cold winters” which somehow “select for” cognitive abilities which have certain groups able to “achieve civilization”.
HBD and Ancient Aliens are nothing but just-so stories.
(Also note the racist subtext of the Ancient Aliens theory.)
peepee is WRONG.
the first civilization in chiner was in southern coastal warm chiner by swarthy midgets who looked like the melo personality.
civilization developed by necessity in egypt and iraq and the indus valley because climate change made agriculture using irrigation the only way to survive. thence to crete and anatolia.
[redacted by pp, March 19, 2020]
Those swarthy midgets still had non-tropical ancestry
Your theory is ad hoc (a term RR uses incorrectly) because it fails to explain the other places civilization independently emerged
RR does not use ad hoc correctly.
However, you don’t know the meaning either and have been making ad hoc explanations this entire time.
Provide an example of an ad hoc statement I made. It’s fine if you think my views are wrong, but statements can be wrong without being ad hoc.
An ad hoc assertion is essentially a hypothesis that has not been independently verified and is invoked to save a theory from falsification.
You’ve been doing that since I first started commenting here. To the point that the theory itself is just losing any real explanatory power it had. An example would be the statement that cold temperatures select for IQ but if the environment is too inhospitable, civilization will likely not emerge. Sometimes you also use population size in this way.
It’s ad hoc simply because you haven’t provided any real evidence for the claims. Even if they seem intuitively true. The reasoning is always half assed as. All of your ad hoc attempts are suspect which means you’ll have to keep pulling shit from your ass.
I’m taller than Mugabe.
“Then those people BECAME “tropical people.””
I would say the opposite. The tropical people fucked cold people.
East Asians As a Example
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11253652
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30369466
More studies found here: https://disenchantedscholar.wordpress.com/2019/08/02/east-asian-are-african-mongrels/
“Your theory is ad hoc (a term RR uses incorrectly) because it fails to explain the other places civilization independently emerged”
Nope. A just so story is an ad hoc hypothesis. A hypothesis is ad hoc if it can’t be independently verified of the data it purports to explain. And I’ve given you three other indicators. ALL of HBD is ad hoc. The hereditarian hypothesis is ad hoc.
Let’s play a game and call it “fill in the blank.”
The hereditarian hypothesis is not ad hoc because______?
“Your theory is ad hoc (a term RR uses incorrectly) because it fails to explain the other places civilization independently emerged”
And your “theory” explains it? What risky predictions that could possibly falsify the theory does it make? Unless…. It doesn’t make any predictions of possibly novel facts which means it’s a just-so story since it explains what it purports to while generating no new predictions.
Pumpkin cannon,
They are Siberians who crossed the Bering land bridge some 23 to 18 kya. There were also back migrations from the Americas to Siberia. If I recall correctly there were three waves. They moved from cold to warm, and in the case of the Maya did their accomplishments thousands of years after being in “the cold”.
“At this point, it seems appropriate to address explicitly one debate in the philosophy of science—that is, whether science can, or should try to, do more than predict consequences. One view that held considerable influence during the first half of the twentieth venture is called the predictivist thesis: that the purpose of science is to enable accurate predictions and that, in fact, science cannot actually achieve more than that. The test of an explanatory theory, therefore, is its success at prediction, at forecasting. This view need not be limited to actual predictions of future, yet to happen events; it can accommodate theories that are able to generate results that have already been observed or, if not observed, have already occurred. Of course, in such cases, care must be taken that the theory has not simply been retrofitted to the observations that have already been made—it must have some reach beyond the data used to construct the theory.” (John Beerbower 2007,” Limits of Science? Important things we do not know about nearly everything”)
https://notpoliticallycorrect.me/2019/07/14/prediction-accommodation-and-explanation-in-science/
T is some trait, T’ is a linked trait. Place any traits you want there. So:
“(1) Selection-for is a causal process.
(2) Actual causal relations aren’t sensitive to counterfactual states of affairs: if it wasn’t the case that A, then the fact that it’s being A would have caused its being B doesn’t explain its being the case that B.
(3) But the distinction between traits that are selected-for and their free-riders turns on the truth (or falsity) of relevant counterfactuals.
(4) So if T and T’ are coextensive, selection cannot distinguish the case in which T free-rides on T’ from the case that T’ free-rides on T.
(5) So the claim that selection is the mechanism of evolution cannot be true.” (Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini, 2010, What Darwin Got Wrong)
Positing adaptive hypotheses without a way to identify between adaptations and free-riders is just storytelling.
Thanks for the information RR.
“RR does not use ad hoc correctly”
https://pumpkinperson.com/2020/03/16/if-cold-winters-select-for-high-iq-do-they-do-so-directly-or-indirectly/#comment-153585
If just-so stories are ad hoc hypotheses and just-so stories offer “little in the way of independent evidence to suggest that it is actually true” (Law, 2016) then ad hoc hypotheses also offer” little in the way of independent evidence to suggest that it is actually true”. And, of course, it’s in reference to independent evidence.
How come my last response is moderated? Is that the way you debate?
it wasn’t worth my time to redact the ad hominem which is how you debate
samuel johnson said:
A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority.
that may’ve been true in his time.
i haven’t been. my brother has. he told me italians are gross and dirty. he told me naples was especially disgusting. old men would eat pizza, put the pizza grease in their hair, and cat call young women. and there was garbage all over the place because mafia controls garbage collection.
sad.
I have heard about some arguments regarding disease load for the people living in Siberia and the Arctic though I am not sure about how legitimate the argument is.
@Pumpkinperson
Comparing them to Papuans would be one way to judge it, however AFAIK Papuans and Australasians like them such as Australian aboriginals in general have undergone drastic reduction in cranial capacity in the last ~12,000 years or so. IDK how the larger brained yet still tropic inhabiting pre-Holocene Australasians would compare to people living in the Arctic.
@Flaminhotcheetos
I’ve always speculated that in terms of genes, Papuans and aboriginals always had the lowest mutation accumulation. They also have the greatest diversity of culture, language, and possibly genetics, at least in the case of Papuans.
These may not be very intelligent peoples but their creativity, mental energy, and ingenuity in terms of staving off extinction is abundant!
And yet the small-headed Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews btfo the big-headed, sex-abstaining, k-selected, effeminate, graceful, high-cultured Great Northern Eurasian Race which when we talk about Europeans and East Asians collectively we really only mean to praise East Asians.
trump says,
IT’S NOT RACIST AT ALL…I CALL IT CHINESE BECAUSE…
IT’S FROM…
‘DZHINA…
trump knows chinese men actually DO have small penises and that they KNOW it.
and they know he knows that they know that he knows that they know that he knows…
HE KNOW! HE KNOW DEE MOON AND DEE STAR. HE KNOW.
genetic superiors are running circles around trump. even though they started virus, whole world thanking them for sending everyone test kits and masks and europe is calling it the trump virus.
https://pumpkinperson.com/2020/03/09/top-horror-themed-games-you-can-enjoy-on-your-mobile-phone/#comment-153296
You mean European SJWs are calling it the Trump virus.
Trump didn’t delay quarantine out of stupidity.
Reasons:
Kill old people off so they don’t get social security and food
Reset the economy
Fuck up the Internet with the gay Earn It Act
Pass other shitty psychopathic laws
Test quarantine on people as a experiment
Control the food supply by getting small farmers out of business so the elites can get all the food during inevitable food storages. The soil won’t last forever.
Luckily this virus has bought down the illusion of East Asian superiority. People will remember this forever. At least the black who bought Ebola said sorry.
I love Jews so much and I’m not Jewish
Idiot
LOADED what test reported your 2% Ashkenazi result? Do you think it comes from Sephardi Jews?
I took an Ancestry DNA test, came back as ~2% under trace results in the initial analysis. Since then, they’ve modified it and it comes back as 100% subcontinental. Also, ~2% under my MyHeritage and Family Tree DNA as well.
I am paternal haplogroup G which is associated with Caucus peoples and Jews as a bonus. To expand on this, I have significant Pashtun admixture as well, who are thought to be long-lost Jews themselves.
I have a very Jewish nose (Robust and long) and some other Jewish facial characteristics. my dad was mistaken for being Jewish often by other Jews since he has significantly lighter skin than me. Also, in high school and my only year at UC Santa Cruz earlier last decade, I had many Jewish friends.
I’ve always had an affinity for Jews myself. They’re very interesting and have a lot of unique and powerful personality traits. You can’t really mention the Jews without mentioning power. Their influence is so great, it will remain unmatched in the future of human history.
Good. I am happy to hear that your father has lighter skin than your mother. I hope the Jews are doing well in California with the recent invasion of other nepotistic, upwardly mobile groups. I will always be rooting for a successful racially Caucasian group, and especially a white one at that, which the Jews are. LOADED every racial Caucasian group differs gradually I think from its neighboring racial Caucasian groups so people in neighboring Caucasian groups, not only the Jews, can claim to be part of each others’ groups and not their own and get away with it. Many times more people than the number of actual Ashkenazi Jews can claim to be Jewish, and likewise many people who have no Tunisian ancestors can claim they are Tunisian. I’m glad we both share a love for Jews. Well you know LOADED you talk about power but strictly Ashkenazi Jews were not heard much of for most of their time in Europe except for their historic rise and downfall from the mid-1800s to WWII. Also in another comment you claimed something involving blacks being larger than whites. This is not true at all. I am 100% Caucasoid, Eastern European and 6’2″. For a group whose average height is not much different from that of whites, they could use it to their advantage especially where they comprise a majority of the general populace, but they don’t. I think blacks are really well-behaving in multiethnic environments despite all the psychological pressures and the pressure cooker interface we all have to experience in our minds. I love the blacks and the more prototypical blacks are like my brothers but I have to draw the line with the ones who are more uppity and white-acting. It is really a shame, but I’ve always been afraid of white cliques and friend groups in school. I don’t know why I’ve never been accepted by whites even though I am white but have been by blacks. In fact I oppose anyone who isn’t non-Hispanic, non-Jewish white to act like them on the inside and it pains me to see American Jews who can barely recount the countries their ancestors lived before the US and who intermarry. They need to be protected
i want the pill personality’s take peepee.
some stocks are selling like bankruptcy is expected.
stocks like Boeing and even mortgage REITs which hold loans and not MBSs.
why?
my guess is because BA is a highly levered company and there’s fear that even mREITs without mark-to-market exposure won’t be able to roll over their short term debt…no deposits.
BUT BANKRUPTCY IS A SOCIAL PEHNOMENON, NOT A NATURAL ONE.
LEHMANN WAS ALLOWED TO FAIL BECAUSE THE POWERS THAT BE JUDGED…
ITS BANKRUPTCY IS DESERVED.
there’s also the possibility that i grok something other investors don’t…
namely, that bankruptcy is a social judgement…
and therefore the fed and the feds will do WHATEVER IT TAKES to provide “liquidity” when scared little girls refuse to.
i meanbankruptcy is an ENORMOUS headache for lenders TOO!
and BA is NOT lehmann…
BA is UNIQUE.
BA got hit with a one-two.
maybe the one will justify the fed and feds ALLOWING it to go bankrupt…
but i yuuuugely doubt it.
BA is a way better investment than the GBP.
buy Boeing and get rich?
will BA be known as “bureaucratic aircraft”?
like GM…”government motors”?
there’s yet another possibility…
1. some companies are denied funding ON PURPOSE…
SO THAT…
2. there perfectly GOOD assests may be taken over by people like paul singer.
a financial conspiracy is more lucrative than any other type of conspiracy.
interesting in this regard is that the biggest mREIT announced on friday that it would make an announcement on monday…
what was that announcement?
that NLY’s had replaced its CEO with a new CEO named David Finkelstein.
https://www.annaly.com/
their perfectly…
i am an intentionally boring person.
NLY is shit btw. i never bought it.
but this makes the point…
if a world-class and indispinsable company like Boeing can be tombstoned…
then capitalism is hanged….
there’s YUUUGE propaganda that government is bad and busiiness is good…
those who hold/promote this POV will not allow it to be contradicted…
and they control the commanfing heights…
so i’m thinking most of the redonkulously cheap stocks ARE redonkulously cheap…
trump, obama, bush…it doesn’t matter.
they’ve GOT YOUR BACK!
I don’t do financial analysis of particular stocks but Boeing has had a lot of negative sentiment around it after their problems with their new aircraft model. Sometimes negative sentiment is enough to ‘price’ something below book value.
Youre probably right that the government would not allow Boeing to fail though.
thanks peepee.
thanks for telling me what already knew.
th pill personality has become shit.
the guy is an empty suit. glad you are finally realizing.
derrida was an algerian jew, but he didn’t write humbug…his humbug was “studied”.
But I think a market like this is ideal for stock picking not that I will do it. Im waiting for more panic to set in, especially in the states then I will buy ETFs.
the problem with waiting is…
you can never “know” the bottom…
you can never catch a falling knife…
but you can know that catching as soon as release is karate, empty hands.
what i’ve done is take some of the profits from my hedges and buy things i think are already unbelievably cheap…
but only SOME…
the 2000 and 2008 bottoms were 50% and 57% off their highs…
this means the s&p should fall to at most 1900.
THE POINT IS IF YOU HAVE A LITTLE MONEY AND A VERY HIGH IQ…
THESE ARE THE TIMES THAT WILL MAKE YOU RICH!
so i’ve already lost about 30% from my attempts to catch the knife…
because…
the knife may hit the ground!
but lots of amo left.
Fed doing QE again to help the rich people in this trying time. They are very compassionate.
there’s no “trying time” fucktard.
trump said something like “the airlines are gonna be ok.”
dumbasses think this is meaningless because orange man bad and because bankruptcy is NATURAL PHENOMENON…
and not a SOCIAL PHENOMENON…
mugabe can’t risk it…
but there’re lots of ways to get rich NOW…
if you have any money…
the short sellers are either…
1. fighting the last war…
OR
2. STEALING…
like paul singer
An insolvent business is an insolvent business. Bankruptcy is a social phenomenon up to a point.
no. that’s WRONG.
if a business with perfect assets can’t rollover its short term liabilities because irrational lenders it is NOT insolvent.
it is MADE “insolvent”.
same is true of boeing. it needs a bailout because lenders are being fucktards, not because it’s a shitty business and more funding would just be good money after bad.
once again mugabe is surprised by how much more he, a non-specialist, knows about finance than supposed specialists…
sad.
the fed needs to open its discount window to NON-banks as it can;t count on banks to be not retarded.
Greetings. I was pondering the question of whether you could prorate my IQ scores to get an estimate of my cognitive regression, so I decided to leave a comment. I was assessed on the WISC at 14, and obtained a full-scale IQ of 98, but I was assessed on the KBIT-2 not long before I turned 6, and obtained a verbal of 99, and a nonverbal of 79.
Can you help me with this?
Which peoples have been most extensive in compiling information, I think that is what it comes down to as to who is most intelligent. Your memory will never be as clear as directly looking at something on paper
That’s a good way to address the intelligence question but in ancient times, you see Egyptians and Mesopotamians documenting things at a far higher rate than the Greeks. You see our society, where literally everything is documented, still being less intelligent in novel innovations compared to the Victorians. I suppose inventiveness and word of mouth still count as a form of documentation but not in its outset form like you describe things being.
I guess the meaning behind this is that whites have never really documented their successes as much as other races. In modern times, it is black culture that predominates and is going to leave a mark on human history far more than white accomplishments of today.
So basing it off your premise, we see that the compiled information will never reflect the truth and thus is not a good measure of pure, raw intelligence.
However, I do agree that documented information will always outlast undocumented information. This enough is obvious and will allow those who can document their information to prevail in implementing their value systems onto others and makes yh their collective intelligence higher!
“You see our society, where literally everything is documented, still being less intelligent in novel innovations compared to the Victorians.”
The reason why this is the case is because genius (of every race) is being suppressed.
http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.com/2014/12/why-are-modern-conditions-so-hostile-to.html
http://polymatharchives.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-inappropriately-excluded.html
“In modern times, it is black culture that predominates and is going to leave a mark on human history far more than white accomplishments of today.”
Aren’t you concerned about the degeneration of rappers and music stars in general? Most rappers today don’t compare to yesterday’s rappers and that’s because of drugs which make you think like shit. The best music is found underground.
I know genius is being suppressed. I would consider myself a mild genius with a 120 IQ but always contended that with a 20 IQ increase, I’d be an eminent genius and a 40 point increase would put in the realm of the great polymaths of old.
Also, there is a misconception that black rappers today are dumber. I’ve contended that blacks are going through a Flynn effect. Here’s some evidence you theoretical empiricists desperately need: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/20060619_IQ.pdf
Black rappers are so much more talented and intelligent than anytime in the last 20 years. You don’t even listen to rap that’s not on the radio, how could you judge?
You can explain the IQ gains with abortion and immigration.
I do have skepticism though because I doubt they got anyone from the inaccessible ghettos.
I should had clarified that I was talking about mainstream rappers only not all the rappers. In all music mediums the best music will never be popular.
Black ghettoes have always been inaccessible so previous scores from previous studies already merit the fact that they probably never included these ghettoes in the first place.
And you have to realize that mainstream musicians are extremely talented, they’ve just sold their soul to becoming famous and rich. Their non-mainstream creations are the best music anyone can produce, honestly. This is a bit of a secret from those brainwashed enough to believe that mainstream media never selects for talent. It does; it’s just that everyone in the entertainment is a power-hungry psychopath willing to sacrifice their craft for power!
“You can explain the IQ gains with abortion and immigration.”
One of Helms’ (1992) hypotheses in “Why is there no study of cultural equivalence in cognitive abilities testing” was that “Acculturation and assimilation to White Euro-American culture should enhance [black] performance on … existing cognitive ability tests.” This was confirmed by Fagan and Holland (2002, “Equal opportunity and racial differences in IQ”; 2007, “Racial equality in intelligence: predictions from a theory of intelligence as processing”), and the decrease in the black-white gap (Smith, 2018; “Has the black-white IQ gap in the United States Narrowed? A literature review”).
“It does; it’s just that everyone in the entertainment is a power-hungry psychopath willing to sacrifice their craft for power!”
By saying that they sacrifice their craft, your saying that they got dumbed down. They gave up the thing that makes them intelligent. If their non stream creations are the best music then why should they cripple themselves by going mainstream and losing their creative freedom?
Not everyone in Hollywood is a psychopath. You think I generalize but at least I can say that not all popular artists are dumb. You handwaved everyone as psychopaths. That’s inaccurate.
It was an exaggeration to call everyone psychopaths but most people would be able to abstract the idea that the entertainment industry is selling their artists short of what they could produce. That was thr main takeaway, tbh.
Look at the language PP uses:
“If cold winters select for…”
“Did cold winters select for higher IQ?”
“Selection for” fitness is supposed to explain the proliferation of certain traits over evolutionary time. “Selection for” problems need a way to distinguish between counterfactuals—but there is no agent of selection (a mind doing the selecting) nor any laws of selection that hold across all ecologies. The theory of natural selection purports to explain the distribution of phenotypic traits in biological populations. This explanation depends on the relationship between phenotypic traits and fitness of the organisms. But when these traits are coextensive, selection cannot distinguish between the got trait and it’s free-rider (byproduct). So natural selection can’t be the mechanism which connects phenotypic trait variation with fitness. Therefore natural selection is not an explanatory mechanism. So we should abandon adaptationism.
What is your replacement to adaptationism?
I don’t need to posit an alternative.
yeah, you kind of do
Just to be clear here, are you saying I can’t forward Fodor’s critique of natural selection if I don’t have an alternative to adaptationism (storytelling)?
peepee is extremely ashamed of being a black woman.
this is hilarious.
taleb’s yuge deal is “model risk” and how model risk can’t itself be modelled very well. this comes from his experience as an options trader.
another version of this is what’s happened to me over these last two weeks…
i think, “these prices for such and such are absurd, BUT…i know there may be things i don’t understand and that explaining the behaviors of others as due to stupidity is unwise, especially in the financial markets, where the players are often extremely smart and sophisticated….or not.”…
in other words, “model risk” includes always having the thought however certain one is…”maybe i’m an idiot.”
so then with entrepreneurship the great entrepreneurs are one of at least two types…
1. the irrationally self-confident.
2. people so smart they really DO know that everyone else is an idiot.
3….
and 2 requires great social intelligence.
I’m 2% Papuan, equal amounts to the percentage of Ashkenazi Jewishness I have.
I may be the most genetically diverse person to ever live, despite me not having any African ancestry whatsoever.
thinking about why women seem to like idris elba…even though he looks pretty ordinary to me…
and why black women are angry…
maybe in europe there was selection for female beauty…
and so you get pretty boys…
whereas in africa there was selection for male beauty…
but the unfortunate consequence was…
young marlon brando is the sexiest man of all time whereas…
black women are ugly.
because a pretty boy can still be sexy…
but an ugly woman is just ugly. (unless mulatto.)
sad!
black men and women are equally attractive
All but the last look like shit. Celebrities are plain at best.
Your face has to fit the Marquardt Mask at least somewhat.
https://www.beautyanalysis.com/research/perfect-face/facial-masks/
Idris’ jaw is too narrow. He would had died in ancient times. No wonder why he got sick.
I kind of look like an Indian Idris Elba.: same nose, same facial dimensions, etc. Too bad I was never voted sexiest man in the world hahaha.
John Legend got the award last year. Doesnt make any sense.
That’s rather funny. I find his wife to be the most overrated celebrity in terms of looks. She’s known as a sex icon but has sagging breasts and masculine cheekbones.
I feel like discussions like these have an extravert bias. You can only judge what you can see and talk to. You also have to account for makeup (esp. contours) and plastic surgery,
My hypothesis is introverts are better looking because:
They stay indoors
They have better friends
More time to take care of their bodies
They get lonely less often
Less likely to contract diseases
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/our-performance-ray-dalio/?trackingId=W9s7RC%2FWlnUVdxOibl7TJw%3D%3D
Dalio’s ‘all weather’ portfolio is down 12%. I’m not sure what index you would use to measure his performance against seeing as he holds a mixture of asset types. But if hes down that means a lot of hedge funds will hit the wall before the virus is over.
Neanderthals apparently needed a larger visual cortex than a more spherical brain. Not to say that Temperature isn’t a causal force on skeletal morphology it’s just strange how it affected Neanderthals bodies but not as much their heads, while this pattern is reversed in Homo sapiens. So at that point you’d have to make the jUsT sO StORy that Neanderthals made hats before Homo sapiens or somethin equally retarded.
More than likely the cranial shape of Homo sapiens is probably due to some combination of developmental changes (heterochronies), sexual selection, or some other factors. African Homo spaiens had much more “modern looking” skulls than the Neanderthals despite living in a much warmer climate. In fact I can guarantee that you can’t give any reasonable explanation as to how a tropical Human was as intelligent if not more intelligent than it’s arctic cousin and spread far enough to conquer the world. I mean CWT hinges on that. I mean either the tropics are just as difficult if not more so to survive in than the colder environments or encephalization is driven by a more complex interaction of mechanisms including resource allocation.
Click to access gravlee03a.pdf
I’m tired of refuting CWT at this point, so i’ll just let you simmer in your echo chamber. However, I may reply here and there about how a comment you’ve made in reference to it is stupid
I will say this though, I think most of your assertions require a great bit of evidence to confirm and so far you’ve shown nothing more than intuitive hints and ad hoc posturing. So while some of your statements may seem logical on the surface level they simply remain at that level and don’t hold up to further scrutiny.
a commenter on seeking alpha made a point similar to mine about paul singer.
as stiglitz has said banks are basically mortgage REITs but with different taxes and funding and regulation and they’re more than 10x less efficient…
so if mREITs depend on banks for funding, banks may collude to deny them funding to get rid of/ruin the competition.
that is banks are more than 10x less efficient than mREITs at doing the same thing.
my theory is the category 2 entrepreneur is extremely rare. bill gates is a 2.
the first category is more common.
and a third category, “the accidental, fell into it, entrepreneur”, is more common than both put togather.
So Bill Gates has great social intelligence? Before you said he was autistic.
The richer one is, the more likely they are to be 2 because luck only takes you so far.
you’re lying again. i’m not pill. AND…
i have also said that people can have superlunary social inteliigence and be “autistic” at the same time…
in fact this is the way it always is…
Gregory House, MD.
exempli gratii.
hahaha now she’s using “autistic” in quotes so when her contradictions are exposed, she has plausible deniability. What a snake.
hahaha “she” has used “autistic” in quotes without exception.
[redacted by pp, march 19, 2020]
you used it in an informal sense to mean socially stupid (even if they don’t meet the clinical criteria) but now you’ve expanded it to people like house who seem socially dumb despite being socially brilliant
DOES MORE THAN ONE PERSON RUN THIS BLOG???
GO BACK AND READ WHAT I SAID ABOUT HOUSE FUCKTARD!
just to show how UN-fickle mugabe is…
when i “lifted” some of my hedges i just bought what i’d owned before.
more DNB, for example.
i saw a headline of kudlow suggesting equity replacement.
this is the LAST WAR.
ALL that’s NEEDED is the govt become the insurer of what was un-insurable and provide “liquidity” DIRECTLY rather than through “depository instituions”.
and peepee still thinks “smart people get to the smart naturally.”
the truth being, “some smart people get to the high middle naturally. the rest is 100% gay sex.”
the problem with 1 is it more often than not leads one to be buttfucked by life.
there’s also politics.
as russel brand said, “every crisis is an opportunity to change the system.”
but this crisis won’t wreck capital in the short term as it can’t be blamed on capital and tulsi is a whore.
so capital still has an “indian summer” left before it develops fullblown AIDS.
but this may only last a year now that central banks have nothing left short of obvious “intervention”.
You define every business like it can never be insolvent. If you get the government to fund businesses directly I see a lot of potential for corruption. Its not very different from communism at that point where fundamentally insolvent business aren’t allowed hit the wall and soak up working capital from newer ventures that are better.
^^^IDIOT^^^
Bill Gates is a number 1. Gates talks like a 15 year old girl. Only an idiot like Mugabe who never had the money in the first place would say that Gates philanthropy shows social intelligence.
Gates made his fortune copying and pasting code from xerox labs. At a certain point he was forced to hire other employees, and eventually gates realised he wasn’t very good with interacting with humans so he hired steve ballmer while he focused on his autism.
^^^MORE LIES AND RETARDATION FROM PILL-PEEPEE^^^
Hahaha I’ve never watched house but I imagine the character is being portrayed like Sherlock Holmes character in the recent movies. Some sort of social savant. Gates is NOT this type of person and I’m not even sure this type of person exists beyond Hollywood.
Gates best friend is Warren Buffet who is a fully blown autist.
I have always said Gates is NOT autistic. Just very nerdy. He isn’t like say, Mark Zuckerberg who is indeed an aspy.
they’re BOTH full blown autists fucktarded liar.
but it requires social intelligence to know for sure that other people are morons.
The US government should guarantee loans from banks and let the banks decide who is insolvent or solvent. I’m not even a neoliberal but bankers should know what a viable enterprise is in terms of repayment of credit rather than some apparatchik appointed by Trump handing over equity.
If the government bails out the airlines, there must be a significant social cost to airlines going bust. It can;t just be because Robert Mugabe from his basement said airlines are great businesses.
^^^IDIOT^^^
there’s no way to insure against a pandemic and govt commanded shut down and mass hysteria…
it’s NOT just airlines.
There must be thousands of people like Bill Gates out there that launched businesses in the 90s and saw them hit the wall in the dot com bust. Most successful entrepreneurs are survivor effects. Right place. Right time.
I bet there are people even smarter and better at coding than bill gates that we will never here of.
During the Dotcom bubble, I invested heavily is Beanie Babies and rare pokemon cards.
why would you “bet” that rather than just ASSERT it?
because GAY?
Puppy is a speciescist.
and you’re specious
The debate about insolvency is rather a bit like that debate about foreclosures actually. Some households really are insolvent and rely on government policies and cash to keep going. I don’t have a problem with that as there is a clear human and social cost to letting people hit the wall en masse. But for businesses which are just legal trading entities, some of these do deserve to hit the wall during a pandemic, natural disaster or whatever. If they didn’t buy insurance fuck em. If they didn’t have a continuity plan fuck em.
There are charities that deserve government cash right now more than many businesses.
there was no insurance fucktard. and there’s no insurance for anything for very big companies, companies much bigger than any insurance company.
…deserve…
sounds like you might be gabish-ing, capiche-ing.
bankruptcy is supposed to:
1. not happen to half of all businesses at the same time.
2. be a social judgement. namely, the judgement: “your business is shit and needs to be flushed.”
i’m thinking pill/peepee is full blown autistic at this point.
that is, pandemics are natural BUT…
they are NOT natural in the sense that businesses should be punished for not preparing for them.
they shouldn’t.
so i predict boeing is a BUY at this point.
VERY VERY VERY different from lehmann.
Why are people banned from having exotic animals like tigers or elephants as pets? If you can prove you will and can take care of it why not?
is this a test of autism?
because:
1. your animals may be a danger to other people. wouldn’t you call the police if your next door neighbor had a tiger? i would!
2. because some of these are endagered and the categories “endangered” and “exotic” overlap may be confused by lawmakers. there’s no “market solution” to the cheetah or siberian tiger endanger-ed-ness.
3…
is this a test of autism?
It’s actually very similar to the type of question you’d find on WAIS comprehension. You answered it well. You & pill need to take the WAIS stat. I can arrange for you two to take it for free online to avoid the virus.
…may be a danger to OTHER people…
and elephants and tigers are super expensive pets.
90+% of americans couldn’t afford one.
that’s what the thai girl told me. “ypu have to be rich to have an elephant, and i’m not rich.”