domain:astralcodexten.substack.com
hydroacetylene
10m ago
You make a compelling case for using a third party matchmaking service.
hydroacetylene
11m ago
Just go start political conversations in diners with old men. Once you can get over the 'golly willikers she's a girl and she's pretty' the skills are surprisingly transferable.
non_radical_centrist
13m ago
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.
doglatine
47m ago
Would Plato’s account of the trial and death of Socrates be better if there were a possibility of Socrates simply... not dying?
Funnily enough, Athenian tragedy had a very messy relationship with canonicity. Did Iphigenia really die at Aulis, sacrificed by her father's hand, or was she replaced with a deer on the altar by Artemis at the last minute? Depends on which playwright and even which play we're talking about. That woman Helen, who started the whole Trojan War? Never even went to Troy according to one famous play.. A huge amount of Greek storytelling, especially tragedy, seems to be basically fan fiction to Homer and the wider oral epic tradition, playing with "what ifs" and turning preferred heroes from myth (especially Athenian ones) into massive Mary Sues.
I think you're actually wrong there- whites are on average more physically imposing and have more facial hair, musculature, etc. I think you're also grossly oversimplifying the domestication process; the gene most associated with domestication is a thing that occasionally occurs in humans and causes williams syndrome, a rare developmental disorder. Insofar as animal intelligence can be measured, dogs are dumber than wolves, cattle and sheep are dumber than aurochs and mouflon, etc, etc- the opposite of whites and asians vs blacks.
Whites and Asians having more domesticated traits also needs a causative mechanism which doesn't run into obvious flaws- eg complex civilization as a domesticating force doesn't account for the middle east today.
Selection pressures on humans within historic times are interesting to talk about. But, I think domestication is definitely the wrong approach.
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