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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 20, 2023

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HENRICH's MIRRORS, KENYANS and invincible ignorance

Joseph Henrich, the Harvard professor of evolutionary biology who coined the term WIERD to describe Westerners, and wrote the book on the cultural differences between us and them recently went on Hanania's podcast where he insisted that the Kenyan advantage in running records was... purely a matter of cultural psychology. Having introduced the bizzare lengths to which knowledgeable Academics will go to lie about the most obvious things; and knowing that these taboos have been the sacred in the West for so long, I'd like to propose the possibility that even committed HBDers have only scratched the surface of how far biological differences may go.

With that in mind, let's consider the matter of Kenyan children and mirrors. What matter you may ask? Well, one that might prompt the following, again from Heinrich, et al.

"It is possible but unlikely that these children, up to 72 months of age, did not recognize themselves in the mirror. Although the data presented here do not directly address the question of why they did not show signs of self-oriented behavior, we speculate that these are false negative responses..."

You read that right, standard self recognition testing does not detect self recognition in Kenyan children, a whole three years after it does so in European toddlers, and who knows how much longer.

https://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/pdfs/Journal%20of%20Cross-Cultural%20Psychology-2010-Broesch-%20Cultural%20Variations%20in%20Children's%20Mirror%20Self-Recognition.pdf

Now, you'll have noticed that a 5 years of age, even dumb children can be asked questions. Yet for some reason, the study in question shows no sign that these children were ever asked anything about what they saw. In fact the study makers decided to go for another round elsewhere, and leave it at that. Thousands of psychologists are aware of this study, it was even published in Scientific American, and yet no one has publically tried to run it again. If there is even the slightest possibility that this means what It might mean, we are talking about the most important replication attempt in modern history, and it's not even close.

If put on tape, this is the final shot in the HBD wars, and one which even the normiest normie can understand. Any takers? My own prediction is 20% non-recognition, 30% fraud, 20% innate psychological differences in responding to mirrors, and 30% abusive parenting.

This makes me wonder what the state of the art of feminist biology is these days. Once upon a time I got into an argument with a radical feminist who claimed all the observable strength differences between men and women were due to the sexist dietary restrictions women were raised with. That women were starved of the calories and nutrician they'd need to become as naturally strong as they should and could be, which was equally as strong as men.

Even more terrifying was the forum audience that assessed this argument credulously, and thought she was making good points.

Of course, this was a pre-trans explosion argument. I'm not sure what the primacy of trans people in this argument space does. Does it in any way disprove it? Or do you go the ultimate smooth brained route and declare that the existence of trans-women that are just as strong as men proves you are correct?

What was the nature of the forum audience and when was this (If you can be slightly specific without doxxing yourself of course, if not be as vague as you need to be or PM me)?

It was probably 10+ years ago on Penny Arcade.