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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   4190 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 20, 2022

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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I haven't read his most recent thread - but his output before that was uniformly just nonsense, and there wasn't any truth or value in it whatsoever, not even in an 'adjacent to truth' sense.

On that basis are you saying this? His inferences are straining credulity, but he cites genuine data.

I wrote something here but I lost it to browser issue, so shorter:

tl;dr my issue isn't with non-expert science, my issue is specifically with this guy's results and conclusions. It's really easy to 'cite data', there are piles of bad studies everywhere, and you can draw ridiculous conclusions from reasonable studies easily. Tweet threads or better blogposts with strong conclusions are fine, but the results need to be correct, and this guy (and a lot of other vaguely right-wing posters) are not putting out correct stuff.

this is what I was thinking of when I wrote OP. Lots of data is cited, but it's not useful data. Japan high EPA+DHA (sure), "There’s a national correlation -0.63 (strong) between seafood consumption and homicide rate." is uncited (nation-level correlations like thisare totally useless, horrifically confounded), cited "The effect of omega-3s on aggression is powerful enough that it has also been noticed in dogs" n=36, in dogs is not evidence for anything in humans. He quotes "The mood profile was improved after Omega-3 with increased vigour and reduced anger, anxiety and depression states. This was associated with an effect on reactivity with a reduction of reaction time in the Go/ No-Go and Sustained Attention tests" without citing it, which is from this - a n=33 psych study that finds a large number of effects of omega-3! It improves scores on the sustained attention (p<.01, p<.0003 for physical reaction time and EMG latency) and go/no-go (p<.0005, p<.0001) tests, improves vigour (p<.0001), reduces anger (p<.001), anxiety (p<.01), depression (p<.01), fatigue (p<.04), confusion (p<.04). Ofc, the systematic review i could find on one of those topics (depression), found no significant result despite a pooled N of 3000. So I just don't believe that paper, tbh.

This is what I mean - yeah, he cites data, but not in a 'literature review to find out what's accurate post replication crisis' sense, but a 'here's a paper that agrees with me!' sense. It's really easy to get papers that agree with you! There are some 'meta-analysis of 4000 RCTs of traditional chinese medicine finds that it works' papers, but that doesn't mean that TCM works!

His most recent tweet thread (which I still haven't read, just saw when i clicked his profile and it was relevant) ends with

The important question: do omega-3 fatty acids, protective against inflammation, depression, and schizophrenia, also protect against TB? At bare minimum they do boost serum Vitamin D, which is closely linked to disease risk.

With a link to the paper ... is this supposed to be evidence that omega-3 helps with inflammation? "Omega 3 helps with vitamin d/inflammation/depression/schizophrenia -> it helps with TB" is not a conclusion you can make if you've even had a HS biology course. Benadryl+SSRIs+antipsychotics+IV vitamin D won't treat TB.

Even his non-sourced assertions are just weird

For much of my life I've thought it obvious that the mental differences between generations are so large that they have a biological origin. As far as I can gather though, I am the only person in the known universe to think this.

huh?

Well Galton got further than 90% of modern social scientists (whose received wisdom still looks like this) with just that plus a bit of math. Directionally the same, it seems, happened for the whole Hajnal line discourse, Indian Aryan issue and other topics. We've been hearing a lot of cackling from the wannabe sophisticateds about stupid racist nazi chuds obsessed with foreheads and brow heights or using CaLiPeRS to reach conclusions about intelligence; but time and time again it seems like calipers work to an extent. So I think there are grounds for cautious optimism about this approach.

Pre-20th century, or perhaps more to the point, pre-Civil Rights guys were less technically informed but also less mindkilled and could reason freely on the basis of what is now unattainable purity of real experience; explicitly rechecking and refining their intuitions with modern tools could be a legitimate way to revitalize anthropology in the broadest sense.

That said, wilder schizoposter accs are merely riffing off the aesthetic of gentlemen scientists, if not scholars of the occult.

See edits.

Anyway, what I'm asserting is that the presence of bluster of this kind is not enough to disqualify the proposition as «uniformly just nonsense». Something like 25% of Uriah's conjectures may well prove correct. If I were to bet on it, I'd say that brachycephalization-domestication thesis, episodic memory vs. «stamp collecting» adaptations and the bit about Oceanian quivering smell less like bullshit than Japanese Omega-3 one, but all of it is within the realm of sane academic hypotheses, if not Overton-compliant ones.

Milk Lobe is... controversial in my mind.

brachycephalization-domestication thesis

Wouldn't domestication proceed by subtle neurological changes, rather than bulk physical ones? Genetic variation in temperament exists, and wouldn't selection on that make much more sense than head-shape?

episodic memory vs stamp collecting

I guess that's from this? The thread also includes brachycephaly claims as part of a claims that 'northern europeans are smarter than all the other ones'. And that claim isn't true afaict? Spain and italy don't have significantly lower national IQs than norway/UK/germany/france (according to lynn 2010, 98/97 vs 99/100, which is just not enough for any claimed large difference, and plausibly explained by migration). The lactose tolerance thing also doesn't seem plausible. But directly about episodic memory vs stamp collecting: I can't find any 'data' on this, but I personally know several europeans and several jews with extremely good 'episodic memory', and several europeans and several jews with very poor 'episodic memory' - and generally intelligence isn't just made up of 'memory', but much more complicated, i think, so looking at large differences in intelligence in terms of 'being caused by memory types' is just confused, imo.

I couldn't figure out what 'oceanic quivering' is by searching 'from:crimkadid' on twitter so idk.

You mention galton:

Galton produced over 340 papers and books. He also created the statistical concept of correlation and widely promoted regression toward the mean. He was the first to apply statistical methods to the study of human differences and inheritance of intelligence, and introduced the use of questionnaires and surveys for collecting data on human communities, which he needed for genealogical and biographical works and for his anthropometric studies. He was a pioneer of eugenics, coining the term itself in 1883, and also coined the phrase "nature versus nurture".[2] His book Hereditary Genius (1869) was the first social scientific attempt to study genius and greatness.[3]

crimkadid isn't doing anything like that. He should, and I'd be interested if he was, but he won't.

Wouldn't domestication proceed by subtle neurological changes, rather than bulk physical ones? Genetic variation in temperament exists, and wouldn't selection on that make much more sense than head-shape?

False dichotomy bordering on the absurdity heuristic; subtle changes in cell behavior may be evolutionarily easy to reach (particularly on timescales he discusses, i.e. dozens of generations) though selection on pathways that affect embryonic cell migration and, say, characteristic relative white matter tract lengths and thus gross anatomy, and not strictly on microscopic scale; and indeed, if head shape as such is not being strongly selected upon, it can be thrown around by apparently unrelated pressures. Specifically, domestication syndrome in animals corresponds to allometric cranial changes; there is a (fairly contested) model attributing it to neural crest alterations.

For all I know, within-population temperamental variation is still linked to head shape in the way he describes. I admit I haven't checked.

Spain and italy don't have significantly lower national IQs than norway/UK/germany/france (according to lynn 2010, 98/97 vs 99/100

According to Lynn, speaking of Italy as a coherent population with some average IQ is very misguided, Sicilians don't even crack 90 while Northerners get to 103. I am not sure about Spain but it does seem to me that, indeed, an average native German is more than 1 point above a Spaniard, and Scandis are obviously not «99/100». In at least one large sample of elderly Western Europeans, there is a gamut of over 1 SD in «categorical fluency» and «episodic memory» task performances. (Admittedly, contra Uriah, they are correlated).

4 points aren't nothing on the population level.

Why you say this is explained by migration is beyond me; migration can explain many distributions, but that's a minor elaboration on selection.

generally intelligence isn't just made up of 'memory', but much more complicated

Sure, but come on now, he doesn't assert that it is.

I couldn't figure out what 'oceanic quivering' is by searching 'from:crimkadid' on twitter so idk.

https://twitter.com/crimkadid/status/1264785819870601216

First paragraph - true, it's a bad objection to something with good evidence, but I think it's a stronger point against brachycephalization theory than the evidence I've seen for it. And when I tried to read more about it, I got more confused - see this thread where - germans are domesticated/brachycephalic, swedes aren't - he claims this impacts "national character", but I can't think of any strong psychological differences between swedes and germans, let alone those large enough to support that theory.

Scandis are obviously not «99/100

I was citing this lynn paper, which has norway as 100, sweden as 99, and denmark as 98!

Probably a fair point about italy, but I'm not sure if the genetics of north italians match the hypothesis.

Sure, but come on now, he doesn't assert that it is.

Well, what I mean is that "episodic vs stamp collecting" will not explain a significant fraction of variation in either 'total amount of' or type of intelligence, because both the 'hard part' of intelligence is orthogonal to that, and the hard part is deeply intertwined with memory. This kind of thing is a constant, historically - people are willing to believe many varieties of strange about 'intelligence', what contributes to intelligence, types of intelligence, etc. And claims like "This difference in memory accounts for the difference in interests: Jews like politics, finance, the law, the real, present world. Northwest Europeans prefer history, fantasy, nerdy stamp collecting and the pursuit of meaningless knowledge for its own sake." are total nonsense then. (Jews are also incredibly interested in meaningless knowledge, fantasy, history, nerdy stuff - also math science arts etc)

see this thread where - germans are domesticated/brachycephalic, swedes aren't - he claims this impacts "national character", but I can't think of any strong psychological differences between swedes and germans, let alone those large enough to support that theory.

Well to begin with, Swedes have like zero hardcore authoritarian tradition, and are markedly less anal/conscientious/workaholic, about equal in psychological intenseness (mild) but less conformist, and have better taste and manners but worse engineering? That's just my gut feeling.

Let me check: according to Hofstede, they actually differ. Near-equal Individualsm, somewhat greater (but still on the lower side) Power Distance in Germans, everything else is totally dissimilar. Germans score 66 on Masculinity and Swedes 5 (that's the lowest score among all surveyed countries! By the way: Norway 8, Netherlands 14, Denmark 16, France 43, UK 66). 65 vs 29 on Uncertainty Avoidance, Germans score 30 points more on Long-Term Orientation, and ~40 points less on indulgence. Not sure how this translates to individual distributions, and Hofstede is probably obsolete, you could try to find better comparisons, I believe the pattern will remain directionally correct because it jives with what I know of Sweden and Germany, and Germans and Swedes.

They are of course very close genetically. And it may be that race science bros are hallucinating distinctions. But given that this almost Hakan-tier nuanced speculation was popular with people who also noticed currently verified continental-level trends, and that people most obsessed with dunking on them also deny continental-level trends... I'd urge to consider that perhaps some of us are just better at noticing fine shades of national characters, be they genetically or just culturally mediated.

How much life they have underneath this apathy, how much cheerfulness, playfulness! Heaps of ability, of talent - all this can be seen in little things, in idle conversation, but it can also be seen that there is only no content, that all of their life's own forces have boiled over, burned out, and require new, refreshing beginnings. The Japanese are very lively and natural; they have few absurdities of the Chinese sort; for example, that heavy, pedantic, obsolete and unnecessary scholarship which only makes people stupid. On the contrary, they inquire into everything, ask about everything, and write it all down. Almost all of the Dutch travelers who have been to Edo say that the Japanese have purposely sent to them their scientists, to borrow something new and useful. Meanwhile, the Chinese scholar does not even dare to express his thought in a lively, common language: it is forbidden; he must express himself as is shown in books. If the Japanese stick to the old, it is only out of fear of the new, even though they are convinced that the new is better. They themselves feel bored and yawn, whereas the Chinese, according to stories, have none of this. Decidedly the Japanese are the French, the Chinese are the Germans of this realm.

Goncharov, 1855. I remember this giving me pause.

claims like "This difference in memory accounts for the difference in interests: Jews like politics, finance, the law, the real, present world. Northwest Europeans prefer history, fantasy, nerdy stamp collecting and the pursuit of meaningless knowledge for its own sake." are total nonsense then. (Jews are also incredibly interested in meaningless knowledge, fantasy, history, nerdy stuff - also math science arts etc)

People with high IQ produce prominent individuals in all fields. Not in visual arts though: I believe there does not exist a single genius-level Ashkenazi painter (I love Levitan), especially if we remove critic-driven gallery art. Like, what, Chagall? No, some of his stuff is good, he's not Joan Miró, but... So there is a big difference in major subfactors of intelligence, at least. And I think SBF and MacAskill are a fine pair to illustrate how this «fantasy vs finance» isn't nonsense.

But that'd be more anecdata.

What about distributions and ratios? It's a serious question. What is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence, of course. But nuh-uh-ing a schizoposter is boring.

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