Re: Review of the Italian problem

On 28 helmi, 15:26, "Frank de Groot" <f...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
<henricbergsa...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote

That's probably partly true, but I don't think lack of intelligence
can explain everything. Italians are not less intelligent than anyone
else, still this story appears to be very Italian. There must be some
social/cultural factors as well that have to be taken into account.
Please consider also the evolution of social behaviour in general over
a few millennia, I don't think there is any reason to believe that
intelligence has improved much on that timescale, or am I wrong?

The easier it is for humans to live somewhere, the less requirements to IQ.
Therefore, evolution did not need to prioritize IQ in warm countries.
So Italians, on average, are stupider than say Germans.

Tatu Vanhanen and Richard Lynn compiled data on national IQ and GDP
for their book _IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations. According to their data,
the Italian national average IQ is 102, not lower than that of
Germany.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations#National_IQ_estimates

I know this is not PC and controversial, but it's a fact.

Not even Lynn and Vanhanen claim that it works the way you claim on a
scale smaller than continental.

I wouldn't expect much difference in the genetic basis of intelligence
between European countries because of relatively recent large scale
population movements. Particularly the Po river valley has received
many settlers from Northern Europe. Lombardy is actually named after a
Germanic tribe that settled the are in historical times.

It would be racism if I said that Italians are closer to monkeys because
they're brown,

Most Italians I have met I would classify as dark haired white people.

what I'm doing is giving scientifically sound arguments for
my assertion that Italians are dumber than people from colder climes.

Well, Italians are not demonstrably less cognitively able than
Europeans in general.

So - if anyone has scientifically sound evidence to the contrary, feel free
to flame me.

Flaming is not conducive to good scientific debate.

I am a racist - I believe different races have different intellectual and
mental properties.
I also discriminate - "discrimination" in this case means "acknowledging the
existence of statistically significant social/cultural/behavioral and/or
genetical differences in groups".
Being a discriminating rasist (some would simply call it "realist") however
does not mean that one should generalize or treat people unfairly.

This is semantic, but I think the word racism originally meant racial
discrimination in the sense that one treats people unfairly or
discriminates against individuals based on their race (instead of
their individual characteristics). Nowadays anyone who acknowledges
racial differences on a population level, is often called a racist (in
the above sense), which I find silly.

But I truly believe that the warmer the country, the bigger dipshits live
there.
If you don't believe me, try living a decade or so in half a dozen random
warm countries.

Intelligence is but one trait existing on a K-r continuum of emphasis
on reproductive strategy. Although, all human populations are VERY K
compared to the animal kingdom as a whole, they indeed differ somewhat
along that continuum depending on where they spent the bulk of their
evolutionary past. In tropical environments where the climate was
consistently warm and humid with eternal growing season, where there
were no predictable long-term changes in environmental conditions over
the course of a year, and which were full of unpredictable dangers
such as nasty tropical diseases, natural selection favored a more r-
type of reproductory strategy than in temperate climates: shorter
gestation time, higher twinning rate, higher sex hormone levels and
higher sensitivity to sex hormones, faster maturation, higher
extroversion, lower impulse control, low neuroticism etc.

While I don't think intelligence is less useful in the tropics than
elsewhere, I do think, in light of the fact that higher intelligence
seems to require slower maturation, that intelligence was not quite as
strongly selected for in the tropics than elsewhere.

In contrast, North East Asians whose distant ancestors migrated from
West Eurasia taking a route north of the Himalayas, faced extremely
harsh but predictable winters for tens of thousands of years. Hence
natural selection favored an extremely K reproduction strategy with
longer gestation time (variation between human populations is in the
order of a few days), lower twinning rate, lower sex hormone levels
and lower sensitivity fo sex hormones, slower maturation, high
introversion, high neutoricism (see Eysenck's personality theory).
Europeans are placed between Sub-Sahran Africans and Northeast Asians
on that continuum, but closer to the Asians. Evidently, temperate
climates with distinct seasons, have selected for higher future
orientation (for a good reason: the winters used to kill off those
living too much "in the moment" and who did not store enough food
etc.).

Interestingly, Northeast Asians (and their English-speaking
descendants in North America), have a slightly higher average spatial-
IQ than Europeans, while having a bit lower verbal-IQ with a total-IQ
a few points higher.

It's truly funny how people on the one hand think themselves elucidated in
the ways of science, understanding Darwinism etc, but on the other hand deny
all consequences of said laws of nature as soon as it turns out
uncomfortable for them.

The exteme nurturism in anthropology was a reaction to the horrors
Nazism and crude early eugenics, so it was an understandable thing.

By the way I find it very dangerous to base an ethical judgement on
the truth value of factual judgements such as whether or not there are
racial differences. What if science one day demolishes the nurturist
position? Are the ideologues who insist on there being no racial
differences - who sometimes have no compunction using highly unethical
means to persecute those holding opposite views - then forced to
conclude that the "racists" where right and that all "inferior" races
are to be gassed? I accuse the fiercest nurturists holding implicit
opinion that human value depends on intelligence.

- mj

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