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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   27782 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025

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Harsh winters is the obvious explanation for why light-skinned races (Whites, Jews, Asians) are the smartest while dark-skinned races (Blacks, Indians, Aboriginals) are the dumbest. Obviously, high latitudes select for low melanin that their inhabitants might better absorb precious sunlight and create vitamin D, but whole months without food also select for low time-preference and the ability to plan ahead; you need to work hard most of the year and make sure to save food and wood for winter and avoid eating the seed corn even when you are really hungry. By contrast, tropical jungle environments where there is food year-around which cannot be stored for long before rotting in the heat and humidity inherently select for impulsivity and r-selection. Big brains are calorically expensive; if you don't need them, evolution is not going to make them for you and might even take them away. See Spiegelman's monster and Homo floresiensis.

First of all thanks for sharing the links. Those were interesting.

Harsh winters is the obvious explanation

I wonder. After all, the Inuit aren't particularly bright as far as I know.

And humans originally evolved big brains in Africa. If food was easily available and abundant year around, there would have been no need for big brains in the first place.

So humans evolved big brains, and then underwent additional selection pressure to get to an even higher level of intelligence outside of Africa. I believe that this is likely intra-human selection pressure in a Malthusian environment. Selection came about because of societal pressures. How else can we explain the extreme intelligence of the Ashkenazi?

After all, the Inuit aren't particularly bright as far as I know.

Greenland has an average IQ of 99, slightly higher than Denmark(lol). I suspect the dominant reason for the lack of eskimo rocket scientists is, firstly, lack of eskimos, and secondly, a culture that doesn't value education because they're still partly a traditional culture and the more urbanized ones are, well, impressively culturally dysfunctional. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country

I tried to find a source for the average IQ of Nunavut. Nothing that seemed remotely trustworthy and plausible. Also apparently IQ is an acronym for something different in an eskimo language.

I suspect the dominant reason for the lack of eskimo rocket scientists is, firstly, lack of eskimos, and secondly, a culture that doesn't value education because they're still partly a traditional culture and the more urbanized ones are, well, impressively culturally dysfunctional.

Also the extremely high rate of alcoholism. There are very few rocket scientists who are functional alcoholics.

Yes, I said the urban ones are impressively culturally dysfunctional.

I doubted you so I looked up the data elsewhere and got a similar result. European admixture is only about 25-30% (source: Claude pulled it out of its butt) so that can't fully explain it either. It would appear that Greenlandic people possibly are much smarter than the average Native American.

Maybe there is something to this northern latitude thing, although I still don't really feel it.

I mean, by that literal statistic, eskimos are slightly smarter than Europeans- northern European countries are mostly clustered around 96-98.

I'd still like to find data on average IQ in nunavut. But I remember reading that siberian tribespeople have similar grades to ethnic russians and are estimated as having IQ like mongolians; eskimos are relatively recent migrants from Siberia IIRC, so it's very possible to me that this is the same gene mutations that led to high oriental IQ.

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