coffee_enjoyer
☕️
No bio...
User ID: 541
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
6mo 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
☕️
6mo 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
☕️
6mo 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
☕️
6mo 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
☕️
6mo 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
☕️
6mo 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.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
6mo ago
A real meritocracy would have to weigh SAT scores by temperament and cultural values because these two qualities work in tandem with intelligence to produce meritorious results. I doubt Alex Berenson was the smartest person at Yale by testing, but his temperament enabled him to confront the establishment on COVID, making him more valuable than his peers. The reporter who pressed on the Epstein story, Julie Brown, is an old woman and attended Temple University, but for some reason was the only one of her journalistic peers to pursue something which many of them hid. Edward Snowden went to community college. Andrew Norfolk, who uncovered the grooming gang scandal, went to Durham University.
With every job there are moral decisions that require certain values and temperamental qualities. If these are lacking then there are huge civilizational costs. I don’t know if a Vivek Ramaswamy has these optimal qualities. I don’t know if Asian students are temperamentally or culturally disposed to risk their reputation to fight against a corrupt power structure or official. I would argue that their culture is too credential-oriented, results-oriented, and conformist for that. There should be more studies so that we are absolutely sure that “relatively new” immigrant groups have the inner qualities that are required for influential positions in society. Maybe the studies will show that Asian students are actually more likely to have these qualities, I have no idea, but I’m sure the SAT doesn’t measure them.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
6mo ago
You’re right actually, thanks for correction
It’s not 85k, apparently it’s 868k every year, which then must be multiplied (to some mysterious degree) by: up-to 6 year extension; the family members brought in; those who overstay in sanctuary states
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
6mo ago
Is it true that Vivek Ramaswamy’s mom conducted his fda phase 2 trial? Is it atypical for a trial to be conducted by someone socially connected to the company?
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
6mo ago
Does school not regiment them enough? It’s definitely important to learn teamwork and to bond, but you can do when everyone merely plays sports, without making it an obsession that requires 1000 hours of skill training. Have a sports competition every week and control each time for skill, so that each time has a nearly 50% chance of winning. This incentivizes the prosocial qualities, plus exercise, without all of the waste. And having guys organize these themselves is better than having a coach tyrannically dictate everything — I don’t think most training has enough downtime to truly bond, or allow enough argument to truly involve teamwork.
That cricket was an enjoyed pastime and some man developed a reputation for being good is not the same as the sports-celebrity culture today. Boys can name twenty athletes at minimum, they watch most of the games of their favorite team, buy the jerseys and shoes, play FIFA (315 million* copies sold) or Madden (130 million copies sold), invest significant childhood time on competitive sports. I doubt middle class children in England grew up worshipping pugilists or cricket players.
And I mean, maybe pugilism was prosocial when your destiny as an illiterate lower class Englishman was to soldier overseas or die of malaria; it instills courage and desensitivity to pain. But that wasn’t the world of the other classes, and now we are all in these other classes.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
6mo ago
Steelman of two of Vivek’s points:
Americans have been obsessed with productivity for a long time. Search passages by the Founders for “industry” or “industrious” and you will find thousands of hits, often lauding the virtue of productivity. In the early 1900s we had scientific management, described in the 1940s book and movie Cheaper by the Dozen (about the 1920s). The movie is interesting for lauding both productivity and fertility.
Dad always practiced what he preached, and it was just about impossible to tell where his scientific management company ended and his family life began […] Dad took moving pictures of us children washing dishes, so that he could figure out how we could reduce our motions and thus hurry through the task, irregular jobs, such as painting the back porch or removing a stump from the front lawn, were awarded on a low-bid basis. Each child who wanted extra pocket money submitted a sealed bid saying what he would do the job for. The lowest bidder got the contract.
Dad installed process and work charts in the bathrooms. Every child old enough to write — and Dad expected his offspring to start writing at a tender age — was required to initial the charts in the morning after he had brushed his teeth, taken a bath, combed his hair, and made his bed. At night, each child had to weigh himself, plot the figure on a graph, and initial the process charts again after he had done his homework, washed his hands and face, and brushed his teeth
Vivek is also right that we promote the wrong ideal in children. Our sports culture is ridiculous. Children shouldn’t look up to athletes and student athletes shouldn’t practice every day. This has no history in the first century of America, where a sport was enjoyed for its benefits and not as an end in itself. If you were a child in the 1800s you would look up to an historical hero, a national hero, or possibly some business titan. But not a sports player. Consumer sports obsession doesn’t even promote health, it discourages health by demotivating participation in local sports and encouraging sedentary activity.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
6mo ago
There’s also a bad message, though, that as a kid you can do things for yourself and not rely on adults, and that you can have heroic adventures doing things yourself. This is a good lesson for an 18-year-old, but probably not a child.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
6mo ago
I come from the people who more than any other group bred with a different freaking species than my own. If admixture between races offends God than my lineage has already been damned since the last glacial maximum.
Yes, or even the last deluge. We read this in Genesis 6.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
6mo ago
Usha is already here. Usha is also not average H1B. She was a Supreme Court law clerk and her mother was a provost at UCSD. Also, people are likely to pair if they fall in love, and we are deciding a policy about whether or not to even invite Indians to the continent. I’m not trying to dictate whether people in love should marry or not.
admixture is human
Hahahah, tell that to Usha’s ancestors! Who for three millennia as Brahmins conserved as much indo-aryan DNA as they could by instituting a genetic caste system in which they have eternal control over society, which the Hindu religious system revolves around, which they created for that purpose. Are you curious why Brahmin IQ is high? Or why India’s Indo-Aryan DNA is exclusively patrilineal and your Inuit DNA is matrilineal? Men invade and conquer women because that is their genetic divine mandate, because that expands their genes, which at least Hinduism has the honesty to accept. Seriously, violating this is the nearest science has to violating the will of God: this principle is your creator, it is responsible for your very life and cognition, and you can appreciate it because this creator endowed you with thought, so that your reason can understand it if for some reason your instincts fail. Yes, you have the free choice to disobey your creator, in which case your genetic line will eventually lose eternal life.
immigration
We are talking about a very specific type of immigration which takes a somewhat higher income job. Which analysis did you read that focuses on H1B and first subtracts all of these immigrants from the “effect on wages”, eg the effect on non-H1B wages? When Elon hires H1-B for Tesla, do you really think that (checks net worth) he would not be able to spend 20k more on an American? It’s either H1-B or he closes shop? The profits and net worths of the highest H1B recipients prove that it is a way to hoard profit for owners and investors.
immigrants take up too much space is absurd
If humans tend to congregate around urban areas, which they do in both America and horribly dense India, then there is limited space for them, which means… they take up space. “Find a coding job in North Dakota” is not a real criticism here. The Indians can just as well find a job in the Himalayas.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
6mo ago
Even if it is not elastic with density, these people are going to be in your territory forever, whereas the original people still maintain dominion over their territory. So they have thousands of years to change fertility in their country where they often make up 99% inhabitants, but you introduced genes that will stay in your territory forever.
American population cannot growth infinitely and you are filling the land with far away genes. These people disproportionately take high income jobs. It deters the government and industries from problem-solving about our own fertility. Even nepotism aside, which is also an issue, it affects your reproductive success*. And you shouldn’t be sure that your descendants are going to forever mate in a separate sphere. Also, H1B is mostly men. Also, if you would only reproductive if you saw a woman who originates 8000 miles away, you are a genetic anomaly.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
6mo ago
I literally explained this in the parentheses of the first sentence. If you are an American, of literally any ancestry, then your reproductive success is harmed with the introduction of Indian genes. Your biological success is reduced by introducing H1B immigrants, especially as it makes eventual citizenship more likely. Because this is a new introduction at a time when every group is low TF. And so this applies to all non-Indian Americans. Are you American? You have genes and are affected.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
6mo ago
Americans (of any non-indian ethnicity) lose the biological competition regardless of whether intermarriage occurs 100%, 50%, or 0%. Because Indian genes will still make up 99% of India if +200mil were dropped in America. American genes simply reduce their prevalence (if admixed) or ability to proliferate (if no intermarriage occurs). It makes no sense to do this given what we know about our design: with instincts to form groups exclusively for the purposes of gene proliferation. Who would ever form a group that specifically reduces their reproductive success?
Is a person who has mixed-race children less biologically successful than one who has an equal number of children of the same race
If this continues, the genes of that organism will go extinct. Their genes are reduced by half per iteration.
the optimal outcome would be to field an army of clones rather than engaging in sexual reproduction at all
Humans did not evolve to be cloned, they evolved to live in somewhat small bands where 3rd-4th degree cousin marriage was common.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
6mo ago
We are no longer in a 7.0 TFR world, but a sub 2.0 world, meaning that any addition of immigrant either to the top or bottom is actively harmful. When TFR is high and the land is immense and farmable, then immigrants to the bottom may expedite the fertility of higher “classes”. The population of America in 1800 was only 5 million.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
6mo ago
19th century immigration enhanced the fertility of Anglo-Americans because Germans and Irish began their life in the lowest economic position — indentured servants, apprentices, and some creating farming towns out of nothing. This at a time of zero public services, and obviously no DEI. Germany is also the origin of Anglo-Saxons (the angles and the saxons), and the Normans for that matter, and you can read the etymology of men like Washington and Lincoln to see where their forefathers originated. Meanwhile, Irish is so similar to non-Germanic British that DNA sites have difficulty distinguishing between them.
If hybrid vigor is our concern, then consider that India has a high rate of cousin marriage, whereas Europeans had consanguinity laws for much of their history. Look at the rate of genetic problems among Pakistanis in the UK. India has low hybrid vigor, whereas Europeans have a fair amount due to historical laws on >4th generation cousin marriages.
There's a strong scientific reason to be against H1B entirely, even if it increases GDP:
- Humans only developed the ability to form social groups because it benefitted gene proliferation. Community, society, and civilization are intrinsically tied to what benefits human gene proliferation.
- H1B and other forms of immigration actively damage the reproductive success of Americans because (a) our national fertility is low, (b) rival nations have a comparatively enormous population and take in few immigrants, (c) they take the highest wage jobs, (d) they take up physical space in the territory and (e) they accrue political power.
- H1B violates the only reason we are able, as humans, to form countries and organize socially at all, making it a rare case of an objectively bad evolutionary decision.
A funny hypothetical illustrates the point. Let's say that if we import 200 million Indians, our economy would be the best in the world forever. If we do this, do Americans “win”? Well, not biologically. We would have won a socially constructed number-based game that has zero impact on our biological success. We have lost in the deepest sense, because we have betrayed the whole purpose of cognition. Rather than making America competitive, we would have forever lost the evolutionary competition which designed our very minds. Probably because evolution selects for intuitive prosocial genes like empathy (flip-side: out-group prejudice) and not just raw abstract pattern recognition. We would have lost the game of life, and gained a small footnote in the future Hindi history of the world. We would have even reneged on the first words God ever spoke to us — “be fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth”.
Obviously, 200 million is excessive for the point of a thought experiment. But this just means that the damage occurs to a lesser degree. Indian Americans are 1.5% of America, the highest paid group in America, and the fastest-growing demographic. Let’s say that a generous .1% are geniuses who have aided American military might. This reduces American reproductive success by at least 1.4%, arguably more because of the higher socioeconomic position. The greatest risk is that they begin to use their high earnings to lobby for more Indians, which seems to be happening presently.
I find it hard to believe that this arrangement is even in the evolutionary interests of “elite human capital”. If you are Elon Musk, you have more genes in common with the average American than the average Indian. If Elon is crowned Eternal King of India and begins the genetic proliferation that befits a medieval royal — along with a haram of beautiful nubiles — it’s doubtful that he would ever reach the level of similarity that he already has with Americans generally, and Northern European Americans specifically. So what is even the biological point? It makes no sense from a scientific point of view. It is a form of biological self-harm.
It’s weird that no one actually brings up the science in these discussions, only the economic studies. But the economic studies are only valuable when subordinated to and weighed by biology. Okay, economists are saying that if we add the Indians then the CEO gets another ski home… but the biology is quite clear that this is ultimately not in anyone’s interest, even the CEOs, and goes against natural design (both evolution and God). If you guys really want the ski homes then we can invade the Himalayas.
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.
More options
Context Copy link