Esperanza
10mo ago
you can't conclude much about unwillingness to do other things based on unwillingness to sleep her way into the job.
Much of the difficult things that actresses are asked to do involve simulating sex. Hence Ms. Depp in the above post. Game of Thrones pushes the line a little beyond simulating at times. If actors were made fight other people with swords, joust (incidentally, the only jousting school is in LA. Can you guess why?), jump out of planes (with and without parachutes), and scale high buildings, cliffs, etc. then this might be analogous. Some actors actually do these things, and allegedly their movies are the better for it. You test actresses with sex as that is the thing they are most likely to balk at on the actual job.
For example, just today Joanna Lumley complained about nudity in movies.
Esperanza
10mo ago
it is not necessarily in the interests of the producers of the film.
This is why producers are the ones who run the casting couch, presumably. It is their money on the line, so they make the decision.
As Wikipedia says:
Predominantly male casting directors and film producers use the casting couch to extract sex from aspiring actors in Hollywood, Bollywood,[3][4] Broadway, and other segments of the industry.
Neither [3] nor [4] give any evidence for the claim "Predominantly". If there is a female producer or casting director using the couch, she is flying under the radar.
Esperanza
10mo ago
This makes the assumption that normal humans treat sex like ordinary financial transactions. This assumption is false.
I don't think Hollywood actors are normal people. Asking the actress for money would not be the same kind of test at all. You need a test that will show that the actress is willing to do whatever it takes. Acting is weird, and people do things in movies that are very out of character, as people like watching strange things. Furthermore, directors think that they know best and want people who will do what they say.
Consider Ms Depp's recent show, The Idol, (which to be honest, I have not watched). My faith in humanity suggests that less than 1% of women would consider acting in that role. Much of modern film is probably indistinguishable from pornography on set at times.
I think that the casting couch is deeply immoral, but I understand why it reliably selects actresses who are desperate and willing to do anything to get and keep a role. There is a difference between understanding how something functions and approving of it.
Esperanza
10mo ago
they had rich rulers
There is no question, that Mansa Musa, King of Mali, was immensely rich.
impressive art
This is more questionable. Here are some highlights from Met. Which do you consider impressive?
What many African countries have now--a strong man extracting wealth from an oppressed populace
The model African model of a strong man extracting wealth is only possible because of Western (or recently Chinese) trade. The ruler can now exchange what he takes from his people for useful things. Prior to being able to trade with the developed world, there was little reason to oppress the populace as they had nothing (save some daughters) that was particularly worth much to the ruler. It takes a lot of organization and manpower to extract rents from the poor.
Esperanza
11mo ago
Charles C. Tansill
is a revisionist historian, for what it is worth.
In the 1930s, Tansill was a staunch isolationist, arguing that the United States should not participate in World War II.[1] At the same time, he was an advisor to the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.[2] In 1952, Tansill published Back Door to War, a book about the war.[1][6] According to A. S. Winston, Tansill, "blamed Franklin Roosevelt for forcing a peace-minded Hitler into war and used the standard Rudolph Hess line that Hitler wanted only a free hand to deal with Bolshevism in the East."[1] Tansill went on to argue that it was Roosevelt who persuaded Neville Chamberlain to assure Poland that it would be defended by Britain if it was attacked by Germany, which happened in 1939 during the German invasion of Poland.[2] Winston goes on to suggest, "The book became a foundation for revisionist history of World War II."[1]
Barnes is similar, if a little kookier.
In his 1947 pamphlet, "The Struggle Against The Historical Blackout", Barnes claimed that "court historians" suppressed that Hitler was the most "reasonable" leader in the world in 1939, and that France's Premier Édouard Daladier wanted to commit aggression against Germany, aided and abetted by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and the U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Edward Raczyński
was later President of Poland in exile and is a reputable figure. "he provided the Allies with one of the earliest and most accurate accounts of the ongoing Holocaust". A statement by him should be believed in this matter.
Łukasiewicz
was a marginal figure who committed suicide in 1951. I find him credible, but much less so than Raczyński. However, Wacław Jędrzejewicz is a completely solid figure, awarded many honors and was a professor at Wellesley.
Tyler Kent, a fascist (in the sense he was a member of a fascist organization, the Right Club), was convicted of spying as he leaked documents to the Germans.
At his trial, Kent also admitted he had taken documents from the US Embassy in Moscow, with the vague notion of someday showing them to US senators who shared his isolationist, antisemitic views.
Wikipedia says:
Isolationist groups in the United States claimed he had been framed and that the trial was an attempted cover-up of an attempt to get the US to join the war. The documents, finally released in 1972, did not support this claim. The papers that Kent had purloined indicated British-American naval co-operation, but they also showed that Roosevelt was not prepared to go further without support from the US Congress or the public.
but this ends with "citation needed" so it is unsourced.
Overall, if the source that says Raczyński vouched for them is accurate, then I believe the documents are accurate. I find the claims of Kent, Tansill, and Barnes unconvincing, as I would expect them to make those claims. I would also place significant weight on Jędrzejewicz, but he was reporting on someone else's beliefs as I read it.
I hate when people mix reliable figures with others that are completely partisan.
Esperanza
9mo ago
You mention speed reaction can't be trained for, but I'm assuming elite black athletes have superior scores on these,
Why do you assume this? I will look up the results. Lynn claims that black children have slower choice time but faster movement times. IQ is related to choice time (I am told, but I have not seen anyone doubt this.).
Lynn concludes:
The result suggests that around one-third of the white advantage on intelligence tests may lie in faster information processing capacity.
Populations at the level of black v white v mixed are mixed of genetic lineages. This means tail genetics doesn't have to relate to median genetics.
I don't understand what you mean. Sorry.
Your genetic pot analogy seems a bit naive scientifically.
The idea that there would be a linear relationship comes from the assumption (or observation?) that intelligence is influenced by many genes. This is fairly well accepted in other areas. I don't know any arguments why it would not apply to intelligence, but that might be my failure.
the complexity is not engaged with
If you were around a few years ago, there was a lot of complexity, but I did not pay that much attention, and the major proponents don't post anymore.
For an example of engaging with the question, have a look at this paper. I have not checked the data, the analysis, or even if the study they are using ever happened, but it shows the kind of reasoning that HBDers do. They take seriously the kind of questions you ask.
Esperanza
9mo ago
I would add the Welsh and Scots to your list as obvious nations without states. Would you consider the Gullah people in Carolinas to be close to a nation, if a little too small at 200k?
Esperanza
10mo ago
If you meet these kids, it is immediately obvious, in the first minute or so, whether the child has it or not. The difference between the top kids (say, the top 20% of the class at a top university) and the rest is palpable. The top 5% are different yet again, and the smartest ten kids in the grade are obvious to all the faculty who mee them, as well as all their peers.
The SAT does not work, especially know that all the heavily g loaded parts have been removed.
Esperanza
10mo ago
Do you know many Italian Americans? The ones I know are very aware that their name ends in a vowel and that they are distinct from regular Americans. I would have expected them to be more integrated, but Italian Americans are still quite distinct. German Americans barely know that they were originally German, in contrast. I think Poles fall into the same bucket as Italians, where they feel quite separate from mainstream America.
Esperanza
10mo ago
I'm sure next time you're looking for a job and your interviewer plays games with you "to test for proper attitude, flexibility etc." you won't buy that kind of shit.
I was in a restaurant, where at the next table a group of lawyers were having lunch with a prospective candidate. All was going well until the senior lawyer said to the hire, "Everything looks good, but we like to be on a first-name basis in our firm, and we already have a Lisa. Would you consider changing your name?" The guy was playing games and as I am not a lawyer, I do not know what the right answer was. Interviewers play games. That is the entire point of interviews, as far as I can see. They exist to test the candidate.
Actors are regularly tested on their ability to plausibly act in sports movies. Sir John Gielgud could act, but all his thespian skills could not avail him when a tight spiral was required.
Esperanza
10mo ago
I always think of that series when I see people refer to non-men.
John Hopkins University was slammed by critics including “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling for switching up its definition of “lesbian” to instead refer to the group as “non-man attracted to non-men” in order to include non-binary people.
Esperanza
9mo ago
The Cloaca Maxima looks fine to me and far superior to most sewers that I have had to work in. I will grant you the other two. I should have known that someone from New Jersey could find ugliness easily.
Esperanza
9mo ago
If there was any infrastructure then I am sure a dump would count. I do not know of any old dump with appreciable infrastructure. Even a rail line, a station, etc. would be enough.
Esperanza
9mo ago
And aboriginals clearly have had time to become somewhat different. But is this a shorter term phenomenon akin to adaptation rather than a longer evolutionary time.
Aboriginals have been isolated for 50k years. That is a few thousand generations which is long enough for fairly drastic changes. Whether or not there was enough difference in selective pressure is unclear to me.
I'm suspicious that any group over long enough time wouldn't select for intelligence in some form. When is G not useful in an environment.
The homo floresiensis had tiny brains and it is possible that they traded size for more calorie efficiency. I see claims that they used stone tools, but my sense is that people think they were much dumber than regular humans. A very calorie-restricted location, like an island, can lead to miniaturization of a species, and this can make them trade off seemingly useful talents, like intelligence, for reasons of efficiency.
how long do homogeneous populations exist
I think that there will always be clines, and this is visible in England for example, where the East Coast is noticeably blonder than the West. On the other hand, the longer the separation the bigger the differences will be. Some chance is involved, as the difference between Celts and Scandanvians shows. Both are obviously selected for very pale skin over the last 5 to 10 thousand years, but one group became uniformly blonde while the other got quite a bit of red hair. Selecting for less pigment, presumably to absorb enough vitamin D not to have horrible rickets, can be done by many mutations. Some claim that blonde hair spread by sexual selection as well, which is obviously culturally bound.
Can we really assume that much about our current race categorisation around genetic similarity, or are we arguing that early divergence was the key differentiator.
The major categorization, sub Saharan, New World, Aboriginal, Asian, EMEA is based on large geographical features that blocked population flow. It looks from DNA results that people in the past were more similar than they are now. For example, early Celts were brown-skinned. Once we collect more DNA, this will be obvious, I suppose. As far as I know, there are good reasons to believe that much of the differences in genetics between Asia and Europe are due to selection after leaving Africa. I think that groups in Africa have more diversity and some of this is due to Africa bing inhabited longer. The San and the Pygmies separated very 110kya ago, before humans left Africa. The other splits are earlier.
The San and Niger-Congo, Afroasiatic, and Nilo-Saharan lineages were substantially diverged by 160 kya (thousand years ago).
Humans left Africa 60 to 90k years ago, so these split predate that quite a bit.
There are arguments that claim to distinguish when divergence occurred and to be able to tell whether it was due to the founding population or not. I skipped that part.
Esperanza
9mo ago
The US has many different ethnic groups in it, not many different nations.
I think that quite a few (572 federally recognized ones) Native American tribes consider themselves nations.
I like Bloom's definition of a nation - the same people living in the same place. The Native American tribes on reservations definitely have this character.
I do not know if any other groups in the US are sufficiently segregated to count as a nation. I think in Canada, the Quebecois would have obviously been a nation had they split in 1995, so presumably, they were close to being one at the time.
Esperanza
9mo ago
The US definition of navigable may not be that relevant as this is a treaty, not a US law. I don't know anything about how terms in treaties are interpreted, but I imagine that the treatment must be symmetric, so if US law matters, then so must Mexican law.
I also don't know enough to tell if the Rio Grande is navigable. Allegedly it is "too thick to drink and too thin to plow."
Esperanza
9mo ago
I agree that their purpose is to block people. It does seem strange that there is a treaty that says you can't try to impede people crossing the border. I wonder if navigable normally refers to crossing a river rather than traveling down it lengthways.
Esperanza
10mo ago
There had never been nationalist uprisings against foreign rule before the 19th century?
Ireland fought for freedom for 800 years, but according to this claim, only the last 150 were for nationalist reasons. I don't understand that claim at all. The big nations, like Italy and Germany were only created in the 19th century, but prior to that there were smaller nations, like Ulster or Saxony. Ancient Greece saw itself as a nation in comparison to the barbarians and came together to fight the Persians. Presumably there is a reason that people want to claim nationalism is a new idea, but it does seem to go back as far as 1066 and all that, if not further.
Esperanza
10mo ago
I have been to farmer's markets in the US and in Europe, and at precisely none have I seen live or dead wild animals for sale. No one breeds bats (I think, maybe in China) so the market was selling wild animals - dead I presume, which is pretty weird.
The eating of weird wild animals is as traditional as Chinese medicine. During the Great Leap Forward, Mao invented both:
it is said that the Chinese started ‘eating anything that moves’ after the great famine of 1958. The Chinese government allowed people to even poach wild animals and eat them.
China banned bushmeat in 2020, so obviously, they agree with me, and you are the only one left defending the indefensible. Don't buy roadkill from a roadside stall.
In early 2020, soon after the breakout of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, the Chinese government swiftly outlawed the consumption and trade of bushmeat on 24th February. The decision was hailed as "the symbol of an era without bushmeat" by the Chinese media.
Esperanza
10mo ago
a mouth is just a mouth,
Oral sex used to be rarer and more special than vaginal sex, but along came AIDS, and people's attitudes changed. From 1997
"It is incredible how casual oral sex has become for some adolescents," said Dr. Carol Perry, who was a psychologist for 15 years at Riverdale Country School and Trinity School, two private schools in New York City, and who is now in private practice. "With older people, it was something that usually came further along in a relationship, when two people had been comfortable with each other and intimate for a while. But many of the adolescents see it as safer than intercourse, and not as intimate."
Many of those interviewed -- teen-agers and sex educators alike -- say that the casual acceptance of oral sex comes in good part from the media, especially movies like "Pretty Woman," in which Julia Roberts portrayed a prostitute who would perform oral sex with clients, but would not kiss them, because kissing was too intimate.
For girls, 'Do you spit or do you swallow?' is a typical seventh-grade question.
I think this is a good example of how cultural norms about sex can change. In the early 70s, oral sex was very taboo and rarely mentioned outside an example of cruelty justifying divorce. Twenty years later, it was normalized for middle schoolers (in New York, according to the New York Times, YMMV).
Even the Kama Sutra disapproved of it: "this Auparishtaka is the work of a dog and not of a man, because it is a low practice"
Perhaps gay sex will follow the same path.
Esperanza
10mo ago
There are other relevant factors in life success, of course.
What would you say are the genetic factors that are relevant? I can think of a bunch of social factors, like being wise enough to choose parents who are rich and live in a free society. The ones that come to my mind are being good-looking, being musical, and being tall. For women, being blonde is a huge win, as are the other obvious things, so long as you don't approximate the Willendorf Venus (and even then?).
There have been great efforts to find other factors that are independent of g, but it seems quite hard to isolate any. Even being good-looking is correlated with having less genetic mutations, and this also weakly correlates with g. In the US:
It shows that physical attractiveness is significantly correlated with general intelligence (r = .126),
Musicality correlates as well.
A remarkable direct correlation between IQ and musical scores in both the control (r≥0.38) and experimental (r≥0.37) groups was observed.
Alas, among non-Hispanic whites, even being blonde correlates with IQ. Brown haired men (104.4) and blonde women (103.2) are on the top of the heap, though blonde women have the smallest standard deviation (12.2) and black haired men (mean IQ 100.1) the largest (15.2).
The conclusions come from a survey of 10,878 white Americans asked about their natural hair colour (Hispanics and African Americans were excluded to eliminate bias). The results showed the average IQ of blonde-haired women was 103.2, 102.7 for brown hair, 101.2 for red hair and 100.5 for black hair.
Esperanza
11mo ago
The entire premise of the book is an attempt to explain why people in Papua New Guinea have so little while white people have so much. Do you recall him addressing the argument that you would get if you posed that question here?
Jared Diamond’s journey of discovery began on the island of Papua New Guinea. There, in 1974, a local named Yali asked Diamond a deceptively simple question:
“Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo, but we black people had little cargo of our own?”
Diamond realized that Yali’s question penetrated the heart of a great mystery of human history -- the roots of global inequality.
Diamond knew that the answer had little to do with ingenuity or individual skill. From his own experience in the jungles of New Guinea, he had observed that native hunter-gatherers were just as intelligent as people of European descent -- and far more resourceful.
Diamond just knew that it had nothing to do with "ingenuity or individual skill." He did not have to prove that; he just knew it.
His answer is fabulous, as it presumes that animals and plants can be radically different depending on the continent they are in (hence zebras and horses) but denies that any such difference could exist between people from different continents. A zebra is from Africa, and we can presume that it cannot be domesticated because of its genetics, but genetics only work for plants and animals. We could never countenance such a claim about an African person.
He completely fails to engage with the other side and refuses to even consider the possibility that some countries did well because of individual decisions. It has to be geography that matters, not decisions made by people. Even on this point which he believes because of Marxism, he can not be consistent, as he blames China not dominating the seas on the decision of a single emperor. Basically, he is a hack that refuses to argue.
Esperanza
9mo ago
Adopt a sibling's child?
This used to be common when people had large families (10+ kids) and when there were extra children lying around. The usual pattern was the youngest child, with perhaps a three or four-year age gap to the older ones. This child was often "gossiped" or given to another relative (often childless). It does not happen anymore. My parents considered this with my youngest sister.
Esperanza
9mo ago
Is what you are looking for, an analysis of a large number of genes that shows that certain genes are associated with high IQs and these genes are more common in certain populations? There are studies. I can't speak to their reliability. Alternately, are you looking for twin studies that show that identical twins are more common than non-identical twins in IQ?
The achievement gap/IQ gap between white and black people in the US is accepted by all sides. The argument is whether or not IQ is genetic, whether it is a meaningful measure, and whether the tests are fair. The arguments for each of these are many.
HBDers, whether they are right or wrong, have put in quite a lot of work.
what the evidence base is for isolated genetic pools over long history.
The evidence that some populations were isolated (genetically and otherwise) is pretty strong. We can trace DNA and know that Australia and the New World were cut off for quite a while. Similarly, we can tell that Europe and North Africa were cut off from Sub-Saharan Africa almost entirely. There is almost no Neanderthal genes in Sub-Saharan Africa, etc.
Did the campaign for no-fault divorce argue that it would lead to oral sex being commonplace? If so, it was prescient.
More options
Context Copy link