coffee_enjoyer
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User ID: 541
coffee_enjoyer
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2d ago
All of those questions are absolutely and infinitely beyond human comprehension. A human can no more understand the nature of the universe or consciousness than a genetically engineered worm can understand the human mind. This “answers” the difficult question. It’s like if someone with down syndrome asked you about the nature of financial markets — the correct answer is the most beneficial answer. What answer promotes the holistic good in his life? Whatever answer gives him comfort and motivation, and which turns him away from investing time or money into something beyond his understanding. Even if high-powered AI provided we mortals with a definitive answer, some long equation stretching five miles wide when written, this wouldn’t do anything to satisfy our need for an answer, because the answers we are looking for are human-digestible answers just like we look for human-digestible food. The way science is going, material developments on the universe are going to require so much training and intelligence that no one will understand it holistically; it will be specialists working alongside some holistic AI.
Now, once we confess “I am not high-minded”, and declare to ourselves, “I do not exercise myself in great matters which are too high for me”, we can begin our real song of ascent, and “quiet and calm our soul, as a child is weaned from his mother”. You are a designed organism, whether you are a creationist or an evolutionist. This is why you have a need for purpose and clarity. But your need for purpose and clarity is not for things beyond your understanding, because that is not its design. Its design is to obtain the Good, which is evident by results, consequences. This Good can only be obtained in your sphere of concern. Our instinct for broad purpose is to align ourselves with a collective, and our instinct for clarity is to ensure that the path ahead of us will provide a good life.
Surely this is the real answer you are looking for, because imagine if God gave you, and only you, the definitive answer to the universe and consciousness. After a few days that will cease to be interesting, and your instincts will rear their restless head and you will once again be left with an interest for more purpose and more meaning and more clarity. “Okay, I’m happy I have understood the whole purpose in life and science, but now I really have to understand why my boss is mad at me and why my stomach is acting up and why my character’s build isn’t working as I thought…” The answer will not be satisfying. What you want isn’t an answer to this particular question, but to enjoy some designed pattern of life which routinely provides satisfaction and interest, more than other possible life patterns.
Putting it one more way, imagine you sacrifice everything in your life to understand the universe. You understand it, then die. You arrive in some heavenly place but the gate doesn’t open for a few hours, so you sit alongside some Hadzabe hunter from undeveloped Tasmania. You tell about all your suffering and toil and then the answer you found, and he is momentarily interested in the answer (he figured it had to do with the sun god). But then he tells you about his life: the wild hunts of animals, how he met his wife, the feuding tribes and the taste of raw honey, the ways in which he pleased the sun God. Who is really more satisfied? Where did your answers get you? Was it not vanity of vanities?
So IMHO the answer people should be looking for is, “what belief and answer winds up optimizing my life for value”, and this value is in an evolutionary sense, the joys which all of us are evolved to favor: safety, interest, paternal love, friends, helping others, healing the world, and fulfilling our biological role. The optimization of our evolution is something religion-like, because it allows us to perceive the vastness of the cosmos as the expression and handiwork of your loving Father’s glory, and not a dark cold alienating backdrop to a confusing life upon a floating rock. We want an Edenic walled garden. Let the scientists continue working and in 4,000 years perhaps they will find some interesting material answers which can take us to a new earth. But even the scientists when they are off the job should have their walled edenic worldview, as (if what they value most is maximizing scientific knowledge) the stress-reduction and purpose-maxxing and honesty-enhancing benefits of belief will enhance the quality of their output.
As a last note, really, look at how our atheistic age spends their time without religion, and you see that it’s just as fantastical and delusional if not more — playing fantastical video games where they are the hero who must heal a fallen world, reading fantastical mangas and erotica, listening to rappers extol a life of abject hedonism, over-concerning themselves with political drama — but it lacks all of the invisible benefits of religion. This tells us something about what we crave as humans. There’s no use in being “scientifically accurate” if we wind up wasting even more time on stranger fantasies without reaping any benefits. I lied, I have one last note: do you really want a world where every human has long periods of existential dread and confusion? How inefficient, yet this is any world without irrational dogma. Irrational dogma is good! Which dogma most efficiently promotes scientifically-evident good behaviors and feelings?
coffee_enjoyer
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3d ago
I thought it was lower but just checked you’re right
coffee_enjoyer
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3d ago
They might notice if those who did that more had more brain damaged children
Humans are terrible at noticing longterm things, eg that tobacco and alcohol are bad for infant health or that the families which cooked in lead wound up with dumber children; but I wonder I’ll look to see if any scientists have studied this.
balance
I think it is inexpensively trainable by requiring girls to wear front packs before an obstacle course as some school activity, and then advising the practice of this again before pregnancy. Genuinely would be better than half of what is taught in gym classes. I mean, 25% experiencing a fall and “20% sought medical care” are insane stats. Early life training + practice before pregnancy could probably bring that number considerably; I genuinely don’t remember the last time I fell while walking and I’m usually oblivious to my path.
coffee_enjoyer
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3d ago
I can imagine a womb accommodating walking but I’m not sure about even running, let alone braking. I wonder if pregnant primates are known to run or if they tend to “take things easy”.
coffee_enjoyer
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3d ago
With this evidence, we could also say that Russia’s relatively lower IQ and relatively higher behavioral problem scores are related to how often the women are beaten… though I would guess that most wife-beaters target the face and not the womb, but I don’t know.
coffee_enjoyer
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3d ago
Someone on Twitter, jokingly creating fake discourse, writes
Mothers who drive cars subject their babies to accelerations of greater intensity, duration, and frequency than any they'd survive in the premodern world. Every time you hit the breaks it's a mild case of shaking baby syndrome and the effects are cumulative
This was made up in jest, but now it has me genuinely wondering. Wouldn’t quick breaking in a car cause a whiplash-like effect similar to shaking a baby? Is it possible that breaking and certain kinds of exercise are invisibly harming the health of babies while in the womb? I can’t see how there would be a difference between the infant whiplashed outside of womb and in womb except maybe a small reduction in force. I glanced at some studies and falls during pregnancy are associated with fetal complications (also, “falls during pregnancy occur in 25–27% of women and can cause serious harm to both the mother and the fetus” is insane and makes me think every girl ought to take part in a balance-based activity).
coffee_enjoyer
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4d ago
Yeah, if Black Americans were caught up in self-criticism and failed to promote their in-group then it would reduce their political power. What am I missing?
There is no reason to criticize West Virginia if you want white people to advocate for their group interest. Jared was rebuffed for doing so by people who understand how group dynamics work. Strategic “divide and conquer” is a well-known tactic used to prevent group cohesion; anything which draws a wedge between white people or highlights differences will ultimately reduce the strength and chance of group advocacy. If the primary problem at hand is an absence of group advocacy, then there are about 10,000 items on the checklist before we reach “discuss West Virginia’s IQ”. Progressives know this all too well, which is why they refuse to highlight that black people disproportionately target Asians in violence. This is why Jared corrected himself in a later tweet —
As @GraduateBen notes, they are warm-hearted people who look after not just neighbors but strangers. Working-class whites will be the backbone of any true national populism. We are all brothers and sisters.
Consider that the IQ difference between West Virginia and Massachusetts (the highest IQ state) is only 7.1, which is less than the IQ difference between Akita and Okinawa in Japan, at 11 points. If Japan were in conflict with another group, and their primary aim was victory, what do you think their leaders would discuss in the newspapers? “We are all Japanese, we are one nation, one group” etc. This is how things work, because most people are not giga-online debaters with dozens of cognitive nooks and crannies to compartmentalize different concerns. Most people can only hand a few simple takeaways from an entire category of information. You can call this pathetic, but what’s pathetic is failing to understand how things are actually effected in the real world, and then being destroyed because of hubris and ignorance. Do you want to be right on the internet or do you want to change the world? People have made their decision.
Anyway, I don’t find the criticism of Jared’s belief compelling, because you’re looking at states and not neighborhoods. That’s a category error. When white liberals move to a state with more Mexicans, their neighborhoods are likely to have a similar racial makeup as before, and same when they move to suburbs. So I bet they still prefer to live among other white people, per Jared’s claim. And their friend groups are often homogenous. But at the same time, I think Jared’s point is kind of immaterial: the question is what white people would prefer without the vast amount of propaganda about in-group / our-group preferences that they receive through education and media.
[edit] One more point. According to Cremieux,
the average IQ of Ashkenazi Jews is between 109 and 115 depending on the type of cognitive battery they’re tested with. Lynn also provides some data on the IQs of Mizrahim, Sephardim, and Ethiopian Jews. The IQs of the Mizrahi are indistinguishable from Arabs, centering around 87 when sampled together, Sephardim have IQs of around 100
So the difference between the Ashk IQ and the Sephardi is a whopping 12 points. Ashk and Mizrahi is 25(!). This is significantly greater than the difference between WV whites (~98 when you take black out of WV total) and the average white American IQ (100-103). How often do you hear advocates of the Jewish people talk about this? Almost never, and especially not since the war started — instead only songs about One People. This is very advantageous for a group, obviously.
coffee_enjoyer
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6d ago
the perspective of a person who is willing to wait an hour in traffic, but is not willing to wait 15 minutes plus pay $9. In a world of rational actors, this person should not exist
Most people can’t arbitrarily decide to work more billed hours, though. 45min saved from no traffic isn’t 45min of extra work the next day. There’s nowhere you can immediately sign up for 45min of labor providing minimum wage or more. Then you have to consider whether the person is doing something in traffic which they would otherwise do for 45min in the absence of traffic. A lot of people enjoy time zoning out, listening to music or a podcast, talking to someone on the phone or even being alone for a moment. So some portion of the time in traffic isn’t completely written off, but is actually an activity they would otherwise enjoy on the couch at home.
coffee_enjoyer
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6d ago
I disagree with this in the strongest possible terms. The flagellate was more than a spectacle of suffering. The flagellate truly confessed and remembered his sin before his self-punishment. There’s psychological research to support both this practice and the medieval “mechanical” treatment of repentance generally. When a memory is reactivated (retrieved) it becomes labile (malleable) immediately and for up to six hours, in which period the valence and instinctual response regarding the memory can be modified. Provided that the flagellate has reactivated the memory of his commission of sin before his punishment, this would act as powerful counterconditioning which will (unconsciously) make him averse to the sin in the future (this may take a month to fully occur neurologically). This has been studied for instance in respect to alcoholism: “Disruption of relapse to alcohol seeking by aversive counterconditioning following memory retrieval”, “Long-term behavioural rewriting of maladaptive drinking memories via reconsolidation-update mechanisms”, etc. (The opposite can occur as well, which supports the mechanical way that gratitude was “practiced” (reactivating prosocial cues before the enjoyment of, say, a succulent Chinese meal)). If there were flagellates in California, perhaps things would be different.
Let us consider the California Question with special attention to what our Psalmists have to say —
Fret for your figure and fret for your latte and
Fret for your lawsuit and fret for your hairpiece and
Fret for your Prozac and fret for your pilot and
Fret for your contract and fret for your car
It's a bullshit three ring circus sideshow
The archetypical LA mindset is characterized by distraction and consumerism. It is not characterized by the recognition or repentance of sins (errors); it’s questionable whether the local leaders even believe in those. The fire is the Divine Mandate, contrary to the OP, at least symbolically speaking. The fire is “improbable but longterm-certain threat that has gone unrecognized”, and “failure to plan longterm”, and “failure to elect strong-minded leaders who care”, and then “failure to prioritize changing politicians”, which involves “failure to prioritize changing culture”, and descending to the relevant individuals with wealth and time there is “failure to sacrifice status in order to grow the right culture”, reaching to those who fretted figure and latte and contract and sideshow more than than what is actually Good. A ton of innocent people are going to suffer from this, too, which makes their sins so much worse.
Destruction leads to a very rough road but it also breeds creation
And tidal waves couldn't save the world from Californication
coffee_enjoyer
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7d ago
A primary motivation of January 6th protesters was the belief that the election was stolen by the other party, which is a decidedly anti-fascist motivation. Many of them were interested in more safeguards for the democratic process, like voter ID and a ban on election machines. This is in stark contrast to BLM, where the whole idea of American democracy and rule of law was thrown out in favor of an emotional narrative centered on an oppressed people — a textbook example of how fascists get into power. You may argue that Trump was being fascistic when he accused his opponents of election manipulation, but then the very fact he had to cloak his intention in the language of democracy is a testament to the absence of a fascistic undercurrent in the American Right. Which, in my opinion, is unfortunate, because there are a lot of good arguments for the introduction of fascistic aesthetics, prosocial values, and meritocracy to America. Isn’t China being fascist when they make the State beautiful and promote Han civic values and ban immoral entertainment and curtail the power of billionaires? How about El Salvador? Okay, it’s not exactly going poorly for them.
coffee_enjoyer
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8d ago
I like this guy Bright Sun Travels who reviews cruises and resorts. I have no idea why, but it’s very relaxing to listen to someone with plausible-autism explain amenities calmly for 40 minutes. It’s truly brain-off because it has no impact on anything I will ever do.
coffee_enjoyer
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10d ago
Anything interesting in there?
coffee_enjoyer
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10d ago
Lol
coffee_enjoyer
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11d ago
You don’t appear to understand that the gene is already associated with aspects of prosociality in a number of studies which compare Europeans to Europeans and Europeans to Asians and Asians to Asians. You should think about it as one important variable in a long equation. It’s not the variable that controls for violent behavior per se, or impulsivity, or default IQ. It seems to control for whether you are sensitive to the feelings of other people, how sensitive, etc. Those are different variables. The reason Pakistan probably has high AA prevalence is because they are a collectivist Asian nation that historically practiced female infanticide and favored males, with each one of these attributes being correlated to AA frequency. In any case I just found a study which looked at a random sample of Pakistani women, and in the random control condition there was a 96% rate of AA.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053811915000592
It has been shown that carriers of the G relative to A allele of rs53576 show enhanced empathic parenting (Bakermans-Kranenburg and van IJzendoorn, 2008) and higher empathic accuracy (Rodrigues et al., 2009). Moreover, individuals homozygous for the G allele show higher trust, empathic concern, and prosocial behavior than A allele carriers (Tost et al., 2010, Kogan et al., 2011, Krueger et al., 2012, Smith et al., 2014
It has been shown that G compared to A allele carriers of OXTR rs53576 exhibit higher dispositional empathy and social-emotional sensitivity (Rodrigues et al., 2009; Lucht et al., 2009; Tost et al., 2010; Smith et al., 2014) and that OXTR knockout mice display a variety of aberrant social and emotional behaviors (Takayanagi et al., 2005).
We also showed evidence for distinct associations between OXTR rs53576 and differential NAcc activity in response to racial outgroup and ingroup individuals' pain. A/A but not G/G individuals showed increased NAcc activity to racial outgroup versus ingroup individual's pain. Thus the two antagonistic motivational systems related to ingroup favoritism (i.e., the ACC and Nacc) show opposite patterns of associations with OXTR rs53576. The NAcc reward-related activity is observed both when viewing images of loved ones (Aron et al., 2005) and when witnessing disliked ones receiving painful stimulation (Singer et al) reflecting modulations of human reward activity by emotional processes. Although current societies do not tolerate explicit negative emotions toward racial outgroup individuals, social distinctions based on race develop during economic or status competition between two or more social groups (Spickard, 1992) and result in racial ingroup favoritism in many societies and situations (Devine et al., 2002;Johnson et al., 2002; Greenwald et al., 2009; Drwecki et al., 2011). Ingroup favoritism may enhance collective group processes that have fostered our survival during evolution by enhancing our individual ability to adapt to group living (Caporael, 1997). The genetic effects reported here may be a part of the evolutionary heritage of neural correlates involved in multiple cognitive/affective capacities that support the development and maintenance of group membership (Brewer and Caporael, 1990).
(C-F) The NAcc activity to racial out-group individuals' pain predicted altruistic motivation as measured by the assigned intensity of electric shocks to racial out-group members in AA but not GG individuals.
Our findings further indicate that whether 588 observing others' suffering induces increased activity in the reward system is not only affected by the intergroup relationships between an observer and a target but also modulated by one's genetic makeup (e.g., OXTR rs53576). However, it should be noted that, even though our participants intended to give stronger electric shocks to racial outgroup compared to ingroup individuals, our work lacked a direct measure of pleasure associated with electric shocks assigned to racial outgroup individuals. Thus whether the NAcc activity observed in our work reflected a pleasure of observing racial outgroup individuals' pain is still an open issue.
This is enough to explain the behavior of Pakistanis in the UK. AA gene appear to take pleasure in causing other groups pain, and they feel less guilt and feel less empathy. This is never going to be a problem among, say, Chinese Americans selected for intelligence who also have dispositionally low impulsivity, and have been molded by Chinese collectivist values to be nice to everyone. (Although, maybe it is in other ways: spying, hiring decisions….). But it’s going to be a problem with Pakistanis due to a variety of religious and cultural factors: the insane in-group interest that makes them marry cousins, the group dynamics of Islam, and then whatever genetic traits make Pakistanis corrupt in Pakistan
coffee_enjoyer
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11d ago
Do you know how the 1000 genomes project recruited their volunteers? I’ve looked everywhere and I can’t find their sampling method. If they permitted volunteers to approach them or recruited from students within a science institute, etc, then they would be over-sampling for less GG because it is associated with less autism. (higher proportion of STEM students have autism). If that’s the case then their sample isn’t representative of the population-level allele frequency. Their sample has .4, .4, .19 for GG, GA, AA. Another study shows .55, .37, and .07 but that’s for UK total. I could have sworn I saw something the other day showing Britain having highest GG among European countries, but now I can’t find it.
Africans etc
The gene is one gene among many governing behavior — we may also look at genes associated with intelligence, impulsivity, aggression, and sociopathy. But what’s of most interest in this gene is that it appears to govern social sensitivity, in-group preference, whether you take pleasure in harming the out-group, familial affection, etc. I can imagine, just for the sake of hypothetical, that you can have a population of people who are very socially sensitive and guilt-prone and yet also aggressive and impulsive
Finns
Well, you do have the famous Finnish bus stop
coffee_enjoyer
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12d ago
If I wanted to combine a mind map and a mood board, which could be expanded outward almost endlessly, what program should I use? The more multimedia capability the better
coffee_enjoyer
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12d ago
It’s complicated. There is a native GA and AA presence in Europe, just in a far lesser amount, and historically our culture revolved around notions of guilt/warmth which are of particularly benefit to GGs (religion-priming helps GGs exercise self-control more than others, for instance… my God there are so many studies I’m finding). So the existence of A and AG is clearly of some evolutionary benefit when in a lower amount, similar to left-handed people. It’s improbable that Elon Musk and Steve Jobs were GG, from what we know about Elon he has no empathy, so he has a utility to society provided that he is ultimately subservient to moral authority (not deciding wages, or work conditions, or immigration policy). With the Pakistani community, though I haven’t looked at anything specific to them, I would wager they are supermajority AA (as a community) and have other genes related to in-group preference and impulsivity (OXTR is one of many different genes governing morality). I also know they have the highest rate of cousin marriages and are historically clannish. British Pakistanis iirc have a higher cousin marriage rate than even those back home.
Consider that those with AA are more likely to feel pleasure when administering pain to the “out-group”: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25637390/ . This perfectly explains why the most in-group-favoring people you can think of — cousin-marrying clannish insular foreigners in the middle of Northern England — would take pleasure in causing pain to the native British inhabitants. In Pakistan, girls never walk outside, lest they be raped by a foreign clan. You can also notice the weird cultural habit of south Asian Muslims waking in front of their wife — they are likely to lack the empathy that GGs typically possess for marital affection ( https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30818381/ )
I mean, at a minimum, the genetics of guilt-proneness and empathy clearly throws a wrench in the old progressive worldview, if by wrench we mean a small nuclear warhead. Genetics may tell us that this particular Pakistani community in Britain are complicit in the rapes to the same extent that a family of pitbulls is complicit in a dog attack; that is to say, we understand that their behavior is informed by their genetic destiny and the solution to the problem is to consider the breed in total and not the individual dog.
coffee_enjoyer
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13d ago
The Truth, and the actual reason it is true, could not be conveyed, in RATIONALIST spaces that claim to only value the truth... Because we don't value reason or the truth... We value politeness and discussion, and the truth has been allowed to go to hell because of it
It is important to understand the rational basis of phenomena and intuitions. This is why I like themotte’s style. It forces me to do this and this has led me to research interesting things. What might rationality to do with Rotherham? This is a topic I’m currently interested in, and here is my current hypothesis: (1) Northern Europeans have a high prevalence of the OXTR rs53576 GG allele, which governs empathic behavior and guilt-proneness; (2) this “empathy allele” makes us feel guilty about harming anyone, including strangers, and especially the most vulnerable, and it is also associated with all sorts of prosocial behavior, like low corruption and post-guilt reparative behavior, even within collectivist countries like China; (3) other areas of the world, like Pakistan, have the A or AA allele, which is related to less empathy and guilt, and instead associated with the cultural trait called “collectivism”; (4) the empathy allele people can be easily taken advantage of, because they are genetically disposed to feel pain at the prospect of harming people (“anticipatory guilt-proneness” in the literature), and what causes harm is socialized and can be pretended; (5a) the British were subjects to a propaganda campaign which artificially enhanced the image of immigrants as most deserving of empathy: they were painted as innocent, more moral, and as the most vulnerable and pained member of the community, which induces feelings of guilt and consequent reparative conduct; (5b) in actual fact, they are the least deserving of empathy, and not because of their criminality or anything, but because they are the least likely to feel empathy and guilt themselves, making them morally deficient in relation to the British; (6) as a consequence of the former points, anyone who is dispositionally guilt-prone and a carrier of the GG allele ought to understand that they have a serious disease, a disease which is deadly when you unknowingly exist around those who lack it, yet is of civilizational importance when you are around others who also have the disease; (7) we can, I think, develop tests and cultures which normalize, enforce, and reward guilt-proneness.
coffee_enjoyer
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13d ago
imo: “active Facebook” is a retirement community, so the numbers aren’t as significant. Sure, they have voting power, but they aren’t changing culture. Among the age group of people capable of changing culture, you have X and Reddit, with Reddit having an organic negative reputation. Tik Tok is an weighty challenger against Twitter, but it’s not used the same way.
coffee_enjoyer
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14d ago
But consider —
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200114-why-japan-is-so-successful-at-returning-lost-property
In a study comparing dropped phones and wallets in New York and Tokyo, 88% of phones “lost” by the researchers were handed into the police by Tokyo residents, compared to 6% of the ones “lost” in New York. Likewise, 80% of Tokyo wallets were handed in compared to 10% in New York
The study occurred in 2002, so before the surveillance state. The actions could not be purely motivated from the threat of social judgment. This seems to indicate that the Japanese internalize their shame/honor to such a high degree that it’s intrinsically motivated. But if shame can be so intrinsically motivated, then there are limited practical consequences to a guilt/shame distinction.
coffee_enjoyer
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14d ago
a system, organization, or society in which people are chosen and moved into positions of success, power, and influence on the basis of their demonstrated abilities and merit
Merit:
a praiseworthy quality
character or conduct deserving reward, honor, or esteem
I would also argue that a demonstrably non-corrupt disposition would fall under ability’s “competence in doing something”.
coffee_enjoyer
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14d ago
But (returning to the object-level) a genius verbal IQ is only meritorious if the person who has it also has prosocial genes and cultural values. As a thought experiment, we can imagine that a sociopath with a high verbal IQ can do a lot of damage to a country, and on the other end a person with a lot of empathy and a high verbal IQ can do a lot of good. The latter person is probably doing groundbreaking journalism, or explaining science to the masses, or taking corporations to court pro-bono, or is an incredible psychiatrist or Scott Alexander type. The former people are doing, I don’t know, political propaganda and “thank you for smoking” stuff and purposely not helping his psychoanalytic clients.
In between the extremes of “sociopath” and “the aunt you have who cried when looking at photos of refugees” (to pick a personal example) there’s probably an amount of prosociality which is greater than some quantity of IQ. I have no idea what the breakdown is, but thinking about it a little bit more, the emotional dimension to prosociality probably necessitates guilt. A person who is apt to feel guilt at their actions is more apt to behave prosocially, because guilt comes in regardless of external surveillance, and shame only comes in when there’s a risk of being caught. Although this wouldn’t explain Japan, which is presumably a shame culture, so maybe back to the drawing board…
coffee_enjoyer
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14d ago
Are you familiar with the studies on why East Asians are less likely to be CEOs, and that the prevailing theories involve personality? Who is your favorite Asian comedian? Asians should be overrepresented among comedians because of their high IQ, unless, of course, there are personality differences and comedy revolves around challenging social convention in novel ways. If I were to say that certain African ancestry populations commit more crimes because they have a MAOA gene linked to aggression which then influences their temperament, would you consider me “woke left” because it doesn’t show up on an SAT?
If you believe in human biodiversity then it is reasonable to assume that different populations have different temperaments, because temperaments are simply general behavioral tendencies informed by genes x culture. East Asian conformist-collectivist culture, for instance, developed alongside rice cultivation and collective waterway management which induced different genes and cultural values than wheat cultures:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-44770-w
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0014292121001318
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8371358/
This is a generally unexplored area. India is corrupt as hell, and it’s not unreasonable to assume that it is corrupt because the people there are corrupt. If the people are corrupt then this indicates temperamental or cultural value differences. Just from the Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_India
A study conducted by Transparency International in 2005 recorded that more than 62% of Indians had at some point or another paid a bribe to a public official to get a job done.[2][3] In 2008, another report showed that about 50% of Indians had first hand experience of paying bribes or using contacts to get services performed by public offices
In the absence of any good studies on this topic (or that I simply don’t know about them), for now I’ll trust my instincts for determining people that I think are trustworthy and virtuous. Someone like Tristan Harris has facial expressions, gestures, and intonation which immediately convey trust to me. I can feel that he genuinely feels for others, and it’s no surprise to me that he was our best whistleblower for social media algorithms despite most employees at FAANG being Asian. Patrick Bet David, Ramaswamy, and Siriam Krishnam… not so much.
One factor going unnoticed: the 4chan generation of conservatives entering adult fruition. This involves 100k+ (1 million even?) American teens who went from liberal-libertarians to hardcore infographic-clad conservatives somewhere between ‘12 and ‘15. This generation is now 25-31 and influencing things. Their influence extended to the Red Scare Podcast subculture which extends even to some celebrities (Timothy Chalamet and Aubrey Plaza having familiarity). This cohort was kept in an online meritocratic containment zone where persuasion (memes) were of exclusive clout, and then they were released into the wild with their memetic infections and immunities.
So there’s Musk, but then there’s also an element of progressive memes losing persuasion due to a longterm culture cohort shift. Then it’s also news media losing influence.
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