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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   29233 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 19, 2024

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It seems like the rapid economic advancement of East Asia is an argument against hard racial hereditarianism. Because the HBD arguments goes that Sub-Saharan Africa is poor, underdeveloped, and wartorn because black Africans are just have bad genes. But if we grant the HBD premise that EAsians are, for genetic reasons, more intelligent than whites, blacks, American Indians, Arabs, etc. then it becomes clear that a people with high "genetic potential" can spend centuries mired in poverty, before some environmental stimulus induces rapid development. Because prior to the mid-point of the century, many EAsian countries were as poor or poorer than many SSA and Latin American countries. Someone in the 19th or early 20th century who claimed EAsian poverty was for genetic reasons would have been on as solid footing a someone who claimed the same of SSA poverty today, but he would have been wrong.

Someone in the 19th or early 20th century who claimed EAsian poverty was for genetic reasons would

You know what? Once Portuguese visited Japan in 16th century, they got some Japanese slaves. Slavemasters owning both African and Japanese slaves noticed stunning difference between two. Pretty soon, enslaving East Asians was outlawed.

Where can I read about this?

I don't remember where I read about this, wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Japan has some links

Except Japan existed and was developed and rich despite having no natural resources. They almost immediately matched the European nations once they started trying. China also matched and exceeded Europe prior to the 19th century. I'm sure some racists thought they were inferior, but no one who actually looked at the history of Africa and Asia would find them comparable.

You’re switching from outcomes of various groups within America to globally at a country level, which makes it more complex.

North Koreans are shorter than South Koreans. We know pretty strongly that’s environment and not genes causing that difference. But when we can control for environment sufficiently and remove it as a barrier, as in the case of malnutrition, it’s probably going to be genes setting the upper limit on height.

Also we can now compare performance on international tests and observe outcomes for various immigrant groups around the world over time as well as at the country level. If there weren’t consistent trends then that would be strong counterevidence. But there are quite consistent trends.

I misread the comment and assumed we were talking about the races on a global scale.

Why do you think east Asia was significantly poorer and more underdeveloped than Europe for so long if east Asians really have more "raw" intelligence (g or whatever) than Europeans? What do you think the barrier was in that case; why did they need to adop European tech and institutions rather than developing their own equivalent (or superior) ones?

Re: “European” tech and institutions:

https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/07/25/how-the-west-was-won/

Markets work if they aren’t strangled and the Industrial Revolution didn’t arrive everywhere the same way.

Japan was closed off, then it rapidly industrialized, then after WWII it rebuilt and became a juggernaut until an aging population slowed things down.

China and Korea had a real bloody time of it. Then South Korea was able to rapidly grow with US protection and eventuality China loosened up on the central planning and also made significant gains. North Korea remains a basket case.

Now we see if they can possibly do anything to avoid population collapse…

Well you're saying that East Asians abandoned inefficient economic policies and adopted the efficient ones of Europeans, but that's besides the point. If you accept the premises that inborn genetic ability (however it is measured) is the primary determinant of national prosperity, and that Asians are equal to or higher than Europeans in measured ability, then it becomes strange that East Asians had to play "catch-up" at all. Why was it the Europeans who in the first place developed the technology and industry necessary to generate unprecedented wealth?

Luck matters.

History is full of strange contingencies and many books have been written trying to explain why the scientific and industrial revolutions took place in Western Europe and not somewhere else. Britain having easily accessible coal was pretty important, for example. Lots of people believe Christianity had important cultural effects that led to intellectual and economic freedom and the resulting innovation.

The correlation in modern times between national IQ and wealth is a modern correlation. Inborn ability can be constrained from reaching its potential by the environment. China is still hobbled by bad policy and underperforms its potential, as is North Korea.

Luck matters.

Right.

The correlation in modern times between national IQ and wealth is a modern correlation.

IQ tests didn't exist prior to the 20th century so it's hard to say whether the correlation is a recent development or not.

The measured correlation is obviously a modern development because before then we didn’t measure it.

But also having knowledge economies is a modern thing. A genius farmer in the days of yore couldn’t leverage his intellect like a genius investor or programmer or general white-collar professional can. The gains from intelligence are much higher now than in the past, as is the gap in wealth between countries.

And the rapid increase in height in Japan is an argument against hard physical hereditarianism.

There are certainly things that can hold down development besides heritable low intelligence. The most obvious is Communism (thanks to the Kims for demonstrating the quite clearly). But this doesn't mean heritable intelligence doesn't exist, and we have other information demonstrating that.

I don't think heritable intelligence doesn't exist.

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