In Paul Fussell’s book on class (I think), he says that people are really worried about differentiating themselves from the class immediately below them, but largely ignorant of the customs and sometimes even existence of the classes above them. When I found SSC, and then The Motte, and stuff like TLP, I was astonished to find a tier of the internet I had had no idea even existed. The quality of discourse here is . . . usually . . . of the kind that “high brow” (by internet standards) websites THINK they are having, but when you see the best stuff here you realize that those clowns are just flattering themselves. My question is, who is rightly saying the same thing about us? Of what intellectual internet class am I ignorant now? Or does onlineness impose some kind of ceiling on things, and the real galaxy brains are at the equivalent of Davos somewhere?
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It is somewhat difficult, yes! But humanity has climbed steeper cliffs than that. Dropping down to intuition why are there so many jewish Nobel Prize winners in math, physics? If it was really purely cultural, that means we're leaving hundreds of billions of dollars and staggering human achievement off the table by not spreading said culture. Which we are in plenty of other ways, we can't be perfect. but that seems too obvious and easy. (and there aren't that many jewish convert or adoptee winners). And - consider genetic drift, the founder effect, or the ubiquitous physical differences between population groups (no, they aren't fixed races) - skin color, hair, facial shape, height, eyes are obvious, but little things too - native americans have less facial hair, there's earwax, eyes, disease susceptibility, all sorts of subtle differences in body shape, different baseline blood levels, etc. Why wouldn't the pressures that produced those lead to intelligence differences too? Intelligence is so critical for human survival, it's depended on at all levels of human life, its effects on survival and reproduction are innumerable. What if - because it's selected so heavily, there isn't any room for "noise", and all human populations are so heavily pushed to be intelligent they stay at the same level, even while reproductively isolated? Well, do we see that in any other trait? In separate populations of wild species, one sees divergence and difference, even along axes with selection pressure in the same direction. This is the most stark among separate species, where pressures to be fast, get nutritious, not be eaten pushes them into entirely different niches - that isn't at all true of humans, but the same principle works.
But intelligence causes affluence too, richer people tend to have higher IQs than same-race middle class people, and you need intelligence to be a FAANG coder, and a bit less but still quite a bit to be a top lawyer or even actor. If that sounds too weasely the gap doesn't go away when we compare suburban african-americans or natives and suburban jews.
... and why is that, exactly?
I won't let that goddamn cancer diagnosis stop me from living my life. It's just a piece of paper!!!! You're right that IQ isn't an ultimate measure of intelligence, and it's much less interesting than "how intelligent and competent" someone is. But, as in the nobel example - or every single other area of human accomplishment - the same pattern persists. Why are there so many great jewish çomposers, conductors, musicians? Why are there so many of them in hollywood - even if they were evil subverters, that doesn't magically make them better at marketing or acting? Why are SA and Yud jewish?
Evolution doesn't merely proceed by advantages. It's not advantageous to have sickle-cell anemia, but it is to avoid malaria, so ... And it sure was advantageous to have light skin in europe, but tens of thousands of years passed between humans settling there and its development. And said development is contingent on random mutations, populations moving, and many other things - there's no reason lighter skin would develop at the same time or rate in separate populations. Same for intelligence!
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