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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 13, 2024

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I have a somewhat alternate theory to the standard HBD concept, one that may not be original but I haven't seen before, although I haven't delved the HBD forums much.

The standard HBD argument is that different races have different IQs, and that is the primary factor leads to all sorts of different outcomes. Instead of IQ causing so many differences, which I think might be true but is a lesser factor, I think different races are domesticated to different degrees. I read the book The Goodness Paradox about a year ago, and it was about how while humans kill each other in vastly larger scales than any other animal, we're also much less likely to try to tear each other's faces off in the woods than any other animal. The author first divides violence into two categories: reactive and pre-mediated. Sometimes violence is pre-planned and calculated, like a sniper watching carefully for the moment to take the shot. Other violence is reactive, like someone punches you or even just insults your mother and you hit back before you even think. The author presents a simple answer: That there is a relatively straightforward evolutionary process through which animals are domesticated, and domestication leads to much lower rates of reactive violence. The mechanism is that the animal is essentially forever childlike mentally. But not just mentally, also physically; that's why dogs look like wolf cubs, and domesticated foxes have converged on similar traits like floppy ears.

I think black people are similar, in that they are a more "adult" human. They tend to be physically bigger and stronger. I often see black women called masculine, and that is the explanation for why they're less attractive and do worse on dating apps- but I think it makes more sense to call them more adult(whatever the opposite of neotony is). Black women are well known for large secondary sexual characterics like big ass and breasts, that's hardly masculine. And east Asian women by contrast, a race widely considered more on the high end of genetics by HBDers, tend to be more neotonous, with smaller secondary characteristics and young looking faces. And their men tend to be smaller and less physically strong. So I think it's quite plausible that that domestication mechanism, while probably not the sole factor, is a sizeable one in making black people have such higher rates of crime and east asians such lower rates of crime.

I think there is an element of self-domestication somewhere in European prehistory. It’s noteworthy that blue eyes are unheard of among wild mammals yet are found in domesticated goat, dog, and fox breeds. (See: Morgan Worthy’s obscure 1970s writings). Similarly, blonde hair is uncommon but found in the amicable golden retriever. While Asians have neotenous features they lack other features that go with high-trust animal domestication like wide eyes. There’s even a study showing that when Asians are evaluating faces they don’t normally look at the eyes but the middle of the face, although this may have to do with default mode network differences

Sometimes violence is pre-planned and calculated, like a sniper watching carefully for the moment to take the shot

Re: Morgan Worthy mentioned above, in his “eye color: a key determinant in behavior” he talks about how light eyed hunters across species more often “lie in wait” before engaging in a ”self-starting” hunting action. Dark eyed animals are more likely to hunt by chasing and reacting. Worthy then looked at sports and found that blue eyed athletes performed better at non-reactive, self-regulated actions like free throws and golf (Tiger Woods an exception that did not exist yet).

I think the self domestication is clear in history. In Europe, interactions were tightly controlled, free speech and action were often curtailed by elites and power structures that could kill those who went to far out of line. The Church killed heretics and the state killed the non compliant for centuries leaving behind a population that had survived both. And thus knew how to behave. Asia has a similar history of social control via Confucian culture— your actions were tightly controlled and outliers didn’t make it very far.