**update below**
curt asked me what i thought about this, which was a comment on this written by charles murray. i had a quick look at kling’s post and murray’s article last week … and then promptly forgot about them. (sorry, curt!) i suddenly remembered about them as i was trying to get to sleep last night, so here i am…
murray’s writing about a topic he obviously knows a lot about and which i know very little — the expanding divide between the upper and lower classes in america, specifically white americans — so take my comments with a grain or two of salt. maybe murray’s already thought about my objections and deals with them in his book “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010″. i dunno — i haven’t read it.
murray says that the white american upper and lower classes used to be more alike in values — that all white americans really sorta viewed themselves as a kinda big middle class — and that most of the members of both classes shared the same, four core “founding virtues” of all white americans: industriousness, honesty, marriage and religion.
he makes the argument that these four virtues were present at the founding of america and made america what it was — great. he also makes the argument (and he’s got the data to back it up) that these four virtues were shared by most white americans, of both upper and lower classes, as recently as 1960, but that the two classes of whites have been diverging ever since — upper class whites still very much stick to these virtues while lower class whites don’t anymore. he also says that, at least partly because of this new divide in values and behavior, the upper class is out of touch with the lower class and doesn’t care about the members of the lower class as much anymore.
arnold kling suggests that the upper vs. lower class divide is an iq thing due to assortative mating. that doesn’t sound controversial at all to me, and steve sailer points out that this was herrnstein’s idea back in 1971.
what’s bugging me is murray’s data. for instance, he compares the white working class residents of “fishtown” in 1960 and in 2010. well, i gotta ask — were the same sort of whites living in fishtown in 2010 as there were in 1960? in my experience — and i grew up in a large mid-western city with a lot of ethnic neighborhoods — the ethnic make-ups of big-city neighborhoods in america have pretty much NOT stayed the same from 1960 to 2010. and i don’t just mean racially. former italian-american neighborhoods became polish-american became armenian-american, and so on.
murray says he’s not looking at changes due to “ethnic inequalities,” but what he really means by that statement is “racial inequalities.” he knows that whites and blacks and hispanics and asians all have different success rates in modern america, probably due to innate differences between the groups, but he seems to assume that all “whites” are the same.
what i want to know is: which whites were living in fishtown in 1960 and which whites are living there now? are they the same ethnic group? in other words, are the data directly comparable? or were they wasps in the 1960s and russians today? or germans in the 1960s and armenians today? or italians in the 1960s and turks today? not all whites are the same. or today is there a mix of different whites? we know from putnam that any sort of mix of ethnic groups screws things up.
and re. upper-class white america? murray talks about “the neighborhoods where the elites live—places like Northwest Washington, the Upper East Side of New York, the North Shore of Chicago, the western suburbs of Boston, and Beverly Hills.” well, three out of five of those i KNOW are not characterized as wasp neighborhoods (upper east side, north shore and beverly hills).
murray also refers back to the founding population of the u.s. — to the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. well, most of those people were wasps — and they had a very special evolutionary history (also clark). you really almost can’t compare anything that happened with those first settlers to anything that happened post-late-1800s immigration to this country — unless you just compare those early settlers to new englanders today.
not all europeans are the same in capabilities or temperaments or things like industriousness or honesty (for some good reasons for the differences, see the Inbreeding in Europe Series in the left-hand column below).
there’s white … and white.
update 01/14: see also the audacious epigone who finds that most americans still think of themselves as working or middle class, whatever the realtiy on the ground might be.
(note: comments do not require an email. real white.)
All true, but for all their possible faults, I don’t think recent immigrants from Armenia are the ones having all these children out of wedlock.
His main point is probably still correct even if his examples are iffy.
“that these four virtues were shared by most white americans, of both upper and lower classes, as recently as 1960, but that the two classes of whites have been diverging ever since — upper class whites still very much stick to these virtues while lower class whites don’t anymore.”
the culture was deliberately poisoned, first taking effect around 1960. IQ provides partial immunity to the poison.
take two castes average IQ 100 and average IQ 120. there’s a direct IQ gap in terms of ability and an indirect IQ gap related to the lower IQ group making proportionally more self-harming life decisions. a healthy culture is basically one where the IQ 120 caste sets adaptive rules for everyone. this has the effect of reducing the indirect IQ gap because it stops the lower IQ people running with scissors.
if you have a hostile elite it is in their interest to do the opposite. they create a culture that promotes self-harming behavior. this effects lower IQ people more than higher IQ ones and increases the indirect IQ gap.
increasing the indirect IQ gap damages the children who will one day be competing with the high IQ group’s children.
(the cultural poison destroyed the black family first and almost straight away because of the lower IQ – family being the single most important factor – with lower IQ whites starting to come unstuck a decade or two later around the mid 80s or so.)
.
“he also says that, at least partly because of this new divide in values and behavior, the upper class is out of touch with the lower class and doesn’t care about the members of the lower class as much anymore.”
If the true cause is the deliberate poisoning of the culture then the people who did it started out not caring about the lower class.
However leaving aside the cultural marxists who deliberately set out to destroy social cohesion in this way it is likely that other members of the elite would begin to care less as the two castes diverged more. If you create a culture that encourages people to act like subhumans and the lower class are disproportionately effected by it then others will start to see them that way too.
.
“arnold kling suggests that the upper vs. lower class divide is an iq thing due to assortative mating.”
The English middle class assortatively mated but they weren’t a hostile elite – not in England anyway, although they might have been elsewhere sometimes – so they acted to drag the lower orders up to their level rather than constantly thinking of new ways to push them down lower.
I’m with mr Wanderer, with nuances. I blogged about it here https://bloodyshovel.wordpress.com/2011/12/29/left-and-right-continued/
An authoritarian culture can make average IQ people behave, but if you put freedom and self-expression as the highest goods and dismantle all obedience structures; well stupid people will use their freedom to do stupid things. Which is what happened.
About any ethnic divide due to assortative mating; well I guess there is, but does it matter? It’s not like stupid WASPs are immune to the decadence.
@ihtg – “All true, but for all their possible faults, I don’t think recent immigrants from Armenia are the ones having all these children out of wedlock. His main point is probably still correct even if his examples are iffy.”
maybe. but it’s hard to know ’cause i don’t know if he’s comparing apples with apples (wasps with wasps) or apples with oranges (wasps with italian-americans). that’s my objection. (but, like i said, maybe he dealt with that in the book. i dunno.)
there are different shades of white folks, and they behave differently. all you have to do is look at europe to see that.
@g.w. – “the culture was deliberately poisoned, first taking effect around 1960.”
yeah, i won’t argue with that. and our hostile elite — made up of a coalition of people drawn from different ethnic groups — has gotten progressively more hostile as globalism has increased. they don’t have to give a f*ck about the people in their own country ’cause they’re off in dubai or singapore or wherever.
@g.w. – “If the true cause is the deliberate poisoning of the culture then the people who did it started out not caring about the lower class…. The English middle class assortatively mated but they weren’t a hostile elite – not in England anyway….”
i think it’s pretty typical that the upper echelons don’t care about the lower classes — they usually only care about them as a tool for hanging on to power somehow — either use the plebs as cannon fodder or pay them off with welfare checks to keep voting the right way. middle classes are less hostile to the lower classes ’cause they’re stuck in the middle and wield less power than the upper classes — and they live not so far away from the lower classes, so they don’t want everything to go to h*ll in those neighborhoods.
@spandrell – “well stupid people will use their freedom to do stupid things. Which is what happened.”
very true.
@spandrell – “About any ethnic divide due to assortative mating; well I guess there is, but does it matter? It’s not like stupid WASPs are immune to the decadence.“
no, prolly not. but we’re talking about frequencies again. if stupid people do stupid things, then which group has got the lower average iq — whites in new hampshire (i.e. descendants of english settlers who arrived in this country a long time ago) or more recent immigrants from sicily? so, which group, on the whole, is more likely to use their freedom to do stupid things?
which is why i want to know if the fishtown population was composed of the same sort of whites in 2010 as in 1960.
Is there any data on white ethnic respective IQs? The old WASPs may be higher than average, but is the difference that big? Besides Sicilians anyway, those are easy.
@spandrell – “Is there any data on white ethnic respective IQs?”
well, there’s lynn & vanhanen’s stuff for whites in europe and other caucasian populations. whether american populations are representative of their fellow ethnics back in the old countries is another question.
but it’s not just iq, i would say. murray talks about things like “industriousness” and “honesty” as well. in fact, his “founding virtues” sound a lot like the traits of anglos — and they are a special group with a special evolutionary history and some special traits (see clark).
well, every group is special, of course, in their own way! (~_^) just saying that murray’s traits sound a lot like clark’s traits which are pretty much anglo traits. and if, say, fishtown used to be populated by more anglos and is not anymore, well that could partly account for the changing behaviors. (that’s just one possible scenario, of course.)
hbdchick:
If you’ve familiar with “Albion’s Seed”, and most people in the HBDsphere are, then I’m sure you know that not even WASPs are all _really_ WASPs. :)
Good points all. Though I suppose you could look at divorce rates, single motherhood, etc., just in a few New England strongholds (Vermont, New Hampshire maybe?) and get some better (more representative) trend lines. Also, we see similar things happening in England I read, though not so much in Germany, France, or even Italy so far as I know. So maybe this is all about culture?
Wanderer makes interesting points. If by “hostile elites” he means “Ashkenazi elites” I think he may be referring to the resentments and prejudices Polish and Russian emigrants brought to America at the turn of the last century based on their historical experiences back home. The notion that Southern Baptists or Evangelical Christians in general are latent anti-Semites, whose true colors will be exposed any minute now, is a prejudice plain to see. The irony is that these groups are probably the most philo-Semitic groups in history (along with New England Puritans) and their Biblically-based worldview forms the basis of American popular support for Israel.
As the generations change I am hoping this situation will change, that American Jews will realize working-class whites (including Polish Catholics btw) are the best friends they have in America, and that it is in their interests to start championing the interests of of this large middle-stratum of our population.
On the evidence it seems unlikely our gentile elites, with whom Ashkenazis are in competition, are about to assume this role. That’s an hbd irony which I don’t understand.
I think Murray is right that there has been a significant decline in middle-class values among white Americans, though I’m not sure it’s something restricted to the lower classes. Middle-class suburbanite white kids who listen to rap music and lionize decadent, gaudy, and often outright criminal negroes, white sports stars who’ve taken up the negro custom of trash-talking their opponents, in lieu of the old WASP values of good sportsmanship, and the general tendency to excuse underclass behavior all seem like leading indicators of a culture in decline.
My take on the whole thing:
It seems to me that most of the problems Murray laments about (and I haven’t read his book, just this paper) stem from the effects of the genetic stratification of society. Back in 1960 and before, when society was just beginning to become as meritocratic as it is today, in all classes you would see a more even mix of IQs (the upper classes having a higher mean, of course). Back then there were plenty of high-IQ individuals in the lower classes simply because they lacked the opportunity to advance to anything better. You had plenty of brilliant (and highly conscientious, etc) individuals working in the factories or plowing the fields. Then came the GI Bill, gifted Ed, test-based admission into elite schools, and all of that changed. The lower classes became stripped of their smartest members and the upper classes began to be made up of high-IQ elites; the class hierarchy became an IQ (and conscientiousness, motivation, persistence, and other heritable traits) hierarchy. In other words, it became a caste system, something Henry Harpending just commented on his and Greg Cochran’s blog.
On top of that, then you had cultural changes like the sexual revolution. No longer required to wed before having sex or having children, many no longer do. A lot of what Murray describes about marriage rates, out-of-wedlock births, and single motherhood sounds like what Steve Sailer says happened to Blacks since that era. No doubt lower-class Whites, now having much lower IQs than their counterparts in 1960, were affected by these problems as well.
And, to tie in what you discussed here, yes, there are differences between different White ethnicities that are relevant here. The sorting of IQ would also lead to a sorting of ethnicities. Italian-Americans (who overwhelmingly hail from Southern Italy), Irish and Scotch-Irish Americans would be overrepresented in the lower classes while English and other Germanic Americans and Jews would be overrepresented in the higher ones. I wouldn’t be surprised if the ethnic composition of the real Fishtown, PA is significantly different now than it was in 1960. I will also add that by looking at the New York Times 2010 U.S. Census Map, it appears that the real Fishtown is a White enclave surrounded by Hispanic (probably Puerto Rican) and Black areas. Studies have indicated that Whites in mixed-race areas tend to be less trusting and more apprehensive than those living in all-White areas, probably due to their negative experiences (and in this case likely the lower IQs of the Whites in mixed areas themselves).
Murray seems to leap to environmental explanations because he seems to be confident that by looking at Whites only, he’s ruled out the genetic ones. I’ve learned—especially since studying HBD—to not resort to an environment explanation unless you can completely eliminate a genetic one. In this case, it doesn’t appear that Murray has done so. Murray complains about the ills of single-motherhood, but Judith Rich Harris would probably say “not so fast”. Genetic factors are at play here at well, evident as soon as you consider—even among Whites—what type of woman is likely to be a single mother, and what type of man is likely to have left his children to be raised by their mother.
And of course, the godless heathen that I am, I am particularly skeptical about Murray’s emphasis on the importance of religion. As you of all people know, Christianity may have shaped Europeans to be the people that they are today, but that’s a far cry from saying that it’s still important to maintain morality in today’s world, especially when one considers that it doesn’t appear that Murray has ruled out all of the effects of genetic stratification in his explanation of the decay of industriousness and morality among the lower classes. But Murray is a Christian so I guess some of this is to be expected.
But on the subject of religion, one can see interesting evidence that ethnicity among Whites is still quite important in America. If one looks at this map of the dominant religion in different parts of the U.S., and compares it to this map of the dominant ethnicity in U.S., one can pick out some interesting parallels. The Scotch-Irish (The “American” ancestry group) South is prominent, as is the Lutheran Scandinavians of the upper Plains and the English Mormons around Utah. An even finer look at these reveals stronger ties, as one can see here of this map of Baptist adherents. There’s a quite a few connections one can draw when one looks at religions in the U.S. here with U.S. ancestries here. It reminds me of similar comparisons you made of religion and ethnicity in Europe. This also suggests that part of the increasing political division in U.S. is an ethnic division, and may not be easy to ameliorate.
@ihtg – “If you’ve familiar with ‘Albion’s Seed’, and most people in the HBDsphere are, then I’m sure you know that not even WASPs are all _really_ WASPs.”
exactly. and that fact ties exactly into my point: if, for instance, fishtown was inhabited in 1960 by hackett’s puritans, and then in habited in 2010 by people from the borderlands … well, i would expect to see changes in behavior patterns.
i’m not saying that that’s what happened. i’m just wondering if murray took into account that all whites are not exactly the same. hbd, after all.
@luke – “So maybe this is all about culture?”
yeah, i’m sure culture plays a role here. culture is just part of the human environment — and many creatures will behave differently in different environments, especially humans i think — so, change the environment and behavior is likely to change.
i just would like murray to have ruled out more direct, biological reasons for the apparent changes in behavior he’s found. “control for” differences in hbd, you know? (^_^)
@luke – “On the evidence it seems unlikely our gentile elites … are about to assume this role. That’s an hbd irony which I don’t understand.”
well, that’s a question that the hbd chick blog is trying (hopefully not in total vain) to answer! stay tuned…. (~_^)
@jayman – “Studies have indicated that Whites in mixed-race areas tend to be less trusting and more apprehensive than those living in all-White areas, probably due to their negative experiences (and in this case likely the lower IQs of the Whites in mixed areas themselves).”
everybody’s less trusting in mixed areas according to putnam, no? and they’re less trusting across the board — i.e. people are less trusting of other people from their own ethnicity or race or whatever in mixed communities. not good.
@jayman – “Murray seems to leap to environmental explanations because he seems to be confident that by looking at Whites only, he’s ruled out the genetic ones. I’ve learned—especially since studying HBD—to not resort to an environment explanation unless you can completely eliminate a genetic one.“
exactly my problem with the research, too. unless in the book he confirmed that the whites he looked at from the different time periods were the same ethnicity. i dunno. haven’t looked at the book.
@jayman – “Christianity may have shaped Europeans to be the people that they are today, but that’s a far cry from saying that it’s still important to maintain morality in today’s world….”
i’m a godless heathen, too (~_^) — and i certainly don’t need religion to be a moral person — neither do all the other godless heathens that i know.
having said that, i’ve come ’round to believing that a lot of people on this planet — a LOT — actually need religion to behave properly in this life. they really need the Big Eye in the Sky keeping tabs on all that they do to be more moral. this is more the case with low-iq folks, of course.
i don’t think religion=morality in humans, but there is a strong connection for a lot of folks.
Is there any data on white ethnic respective IQs? The old WASPs may be higher than average, but is the difference that big? Besides Sicilians anyway, those are easy.
Pinch of salt, as this is a conversion from Wordsum, but
http://inductivist.blogspot.com/2010/06/low-southern-italian-iq.html
German Americans are the lowest of what I think of as the largest groups of White ancestries in America, out of England, Scotland, Ireland, Italy, Germany, and are quite low in general. All more or less what I would expect. The pattern is British>Scando>Central European>Irish>Italian>German>Other South European.
Whites who give “American only” as the answer are 10 “points” (converted from Wordsum) lower than the average, which is a big difference though!
Razib shows the pattern persists across most regions in America and across educational levels:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2011/12/sdsd/#more-15127
I wouldn’t be too surprised if that was the European genetic pattern as well (I wouldn’t be surprised if the US had been slightly affected by sampling effects either).
I’m surprised by the idea as religion, honesty and industriousness as traits of the elite. My perception of present day elites is one of people who look down on manual labour and work, are less religious than the average and are not particularly straightforward or interested in truth.
“if stupid people do stupid things, then which group has got the lower average iq — whites in new hampshire (i.e. descendants of english settlers who arrived in this country a long time ago) or more recent immigrants from sicily? so, which group, on the whole, is more likely to use their freedom to do stupid things?”
I don’t think this applies in the case of an actively maladaptive culture.
Say you have a population made up of three broad caste groups with average IQs 85, 100, 115. In a neutral culture the proportions who run with scissors of their own volition might be 5%, 1%, 0.1%. Also, in a neutral culture those percentages would be the same with each generation as they’re a simple function of IQ. In this case the highest IQ caste are effectively immune.
The big thing about the Victorians was they tried to create an actively adaptive culture. They wanted a culture which prompted the IQ 85 caste into making IQ 100 life decisions and the IQ 100 caste into making IQ 115 life decisions. I mentioned indirect IQ before but maybe a better phrase would be usable IQ in contrast to capacity IQ which represents maximum potential. A near proxy to what i mean would be education so in that context the average capacity IQ of a nation would be the average IQ while the usable IQ would be a measure of how much of the population had been educated to their maximum potential. I think it should be obvious that a Victorian style actively adaptive culture would maximize usable IQ.
Say for the sake of argument the castes remained distinct with regression to the mean then IQ would still be produced along a range. The IQ 100 caste might produce 85, 100 or 115 IQ children. In an actively adaptive culture their IQ 115 children would be educated to an 115 level. Even if their subsequent children regressed to the mean the nation would have benefited in the meantime. Also the higher caste might be producing 100, 115 or 130 IQ children. In times of overlap where an IQ 100 family produced a 115 child at the same time as an IQ 115 family produced an IQ 100 child then the middle caste child has the education to do the 115 IQ job.
It should be obvious this is a more efficent system for a nation as a whole and nations that operated this way would become much richer and more prosperous than ones that didn’t – as was proven in NW Europe and offshoots until the adaptive culture was turned on its head.
Personally i would also say this system maximizes the long-term interests of the upper caste as although it increases the competition for their children it also increases the national surplus so their children will be competing for shares of a much bigger pie. However it might take a certain kind of evolved personality to see things that way. It should also be obvious that the upper caste might prefer a different sytem – one where in overlap situations the 115 kid from the middle caste can’t compete with the IQ 100 kid from upper caste family because they weren’t educated to their full potential.
So going back to the original point – in a neutral culture the proportions of each caste group who run with scissors of their own volition might be 5%, 1%, 0.1%. In an actively adaptive culture it might be 1%, 0.1%, 0.1%. The lower IQ groups are bumped up to the level above by cultural pressure.
However if you have an actively maladaptive culture encouraging people to run with scissors and that pressure is maintained over time then IQ is only partial immunity. The proportions might become 25%, 5%, 1% initially but the negative pressure accumulates over time – we didn’t get to Lady Gaga in one go. So in an actively maladaptive culture no one is immune *over time*. The dumbest get destroyed by the poison-culture first and quickest but everyone arrives at the same place in the end.
In an adaptive culture the different IQ groups converge towards an adaptive mean – at different speeds. A gap opens up as the brightest reach the optimal endpoint soonest and then closes again as the rest of the nation catchs up at their own speed.
In a maladaptive culture the same thing will happen except in reverse. The dumbest segments will crash to the maladaptive mean early and fast. The rest will arrive slower. During the process gaps will open up between caste groups and then close again as different groups reach the end point e.g. a bigger gap opened up between black and white working class in the early days of the poison-culture as blacks succumbed first but that gap is now closing somewhat as the white working class converges on the same poisoned mean.
So, long answer, but i don’t think different levels of average IQ among different white ethnic groups makes much difference in the context of an actively maladaptive culture *in the long-run*. For example in this context if the metric was %age born out of wedlock then the difference between an average IQ 95 white group and an average 100 IQ white group might be ten years i.e. one group simply reachs that metric point faster but they both get there in the end.
Gene-culture coevolution.
@jayman – “Christianity may have shaped Europeans to be the people that they are today, but that’s a far cry from saying that it’s still important to maintain morality in today’s world….”
I think all religions were at least partially attempts at creating actively adaptive culture designed to get the dumber segments to make higher IQ decisions. The biggest problem with religion is the “were” i.e. they were attempts made at certain times and places in the past and prescriptions that were adaptive at the time might not be so now.
I think the best example of this is infant mortality. If you’re in a time when women needed to have eight live births to get two adults then women would have to be oppressed into producing eight live births. At a later date when two live births mostly produced two adults then the original level of oppression would become a waste of human capital.
You could make a similar argument about tolerating homosexuality: “lesbian? tough – eight kids. homosexual? tough – eight kids.”
@GeorgiaResident
“I think Murray is right that there has been a significant decline in middle-class values among white Americans, though I’m not sure it’s something restricted to the lower classes.”
It’s not. There’s s constant pressure with a differential attrition rate per decade since the 60s related to IQ (and other things imo), something like
- black, 20%
- low IQ white, 10%
- middle IQ white, 5%
- high IQ white, 2.5%
except there seems to be an upper limit – there’s a stubborn block of 20% or so black families still clinging on even as the white percentage keeps increasing – and the attrition rate has increased over time as peer pressure flips from resisting the poison-culture to reinforcing it.
@Luke Lea
“Also, we see similar things happening in England I read, though not so much in Germany, France, or even Italy so far as I know. So maybe this is all about culture?”
Assume for the sake of argument that the culture is being actively poisoned as a way of opening up caste gaps for the benefit of a higher average IQ caste then what would be the mechanism? How was the old culture changed? A lot of the change came through education and academia but i’d say most of it happened via cinema and television. If so then a lot of the poison will be coming out of Hollywood and New York. If so then the effectiveness of the poison might be proportional to
- IQ, as discussed
- time, as discussed
- other susceptibility
- anglophonism – if that’s a word – the proportion of english-speakers in a population
So the influence of the Hollywood and New York media will be greatest in the Anglosphere, Scandinavia, Holland etc and weakest in Italy, Greece etc.
Other susceptibility would be things other than IQ that made different population groups more or less susceptible to cultural poisoning via the media. I’d suggest more outbred populations are likely to be more susceptible for reasons suggested by this blog – which is a factor that might balance out some of the average IQ differences between white groups as the two things seem to be mostly inversely related.
Another example might be muslim groups in the west who although they may have a lower average IQ they simply don’t let their kids watch western media especially New York and Hollywood media. They get satellite TV from the middle east and only let their kids watch that.
@matt – “German Americans are the lowest of what I think of as the largest groups of White ancestries in America, out of England, Scotland, Ireland, Italy, Germany, and are quite low in general.”
that’s funny. what happened there?
@g.w. – “I don’t think this applies in the case of an actively maladaptive culture.”
i think it still applies — but it doesn’t, of course, completely explain what’s going on in our messed up society. i fully agree — things are messed up and maladaptive and it’s related to cultural messages that are all wrong for keeping things functional.
i just want murray to be more precise about his data. and maybe he has been! maybe he’s dealt with this in the book and i’ve created a whole kerfluffle here for no reason. (wouldn’t be the first time. (~_^) )
@g.w. – “Say you have a population made up of three broad caste groups with average IQs 85, 100, 115. In a neutral culture the proportions who run with scissors of their own volition might be 5%, 1%, 0.1%.”
yeah, but what if the 1960 fishtown population had an average iq of 100, but now the 2010 fishtown population has an average iq of 90? there will be more running with scissors nowadays in fishtown than back in the ’60s.
plus what jayman said about fishtown now being surrounded by puerto rican and black neighborhoods. well, no wonder the residents of fishtown are now locking their doors! and who’s committing the crimes in fishtown? does he really have that pegged down? maybe he does, but i wanna know. (maybe i should buy the book! (~_^) )
@g.w. – “The big thing about the Victorians was they tried to create an actively adaptive culture. They wanted a culture which prompted the IQ 85 caste into making IQ 100 life decisions and the IQ 100 caste into making IQ 115 life decisions.”
yeah, i absolutely get that, and i know that our culture today is NOT doing that. what did i see on television over christmas (which i did not watch) — some program called “Teen Mom.” wtf?! why on EARTH is anyone glamorizing that situation. never mind all the other shows on tv with trashy people — all the reality shows. sheesh.
the thing that was also a bit confusing with murray was that he was also harkening back to the founding of the u.s. well, that was a whole different group of people/whites altogether!
The irony is that these groups are probably the most philo-Semitic groups in history (along with New England Puritans) and their Biblically-based worldview forms the basis of American popular support for Israel.
“Philo-Semitism” is pretty vague. Jews argue and disagree among themselves about whether a particular group/action/comment is anti/philo Semitic. So while we may definitively conclude that certain contemporary evangelicals are philo-Semitic, if you read Jewish writing about evangelicals it’s clear that they reserve any confident judgment that they’re philo-Semitic, even if they might appreciate their support for Israel. There’s a caution and wariness there.
The question of philo-Semitism seems to be about whether one is “good for the Jews”. And that’s an open question in perpetuity, that’s going to vary according to circumstance and situation, and that different Jews are going to differ on and argue and debate about.
I disagree that the New England Puritans would be considered “philo-Semitic.” They took the Old Testament Hebrews as a sort of model for their own communities. There was no Israel to support, so they couldn’t score any points for that. And they held many of the anti-Semitic prejudices and attitudes common among everyone at the time, and tried to bar them from their communities, schools, industries, etc. Jews do not tend to consider gentile groups which emulate their kind of group consciousness and cohesion to be philo-Semitic. In fact they tend to find them to be the worst, most extreme anti-Semites.
and re. upper-class white america? murray talks about “the neighborhoods where the elites live—places like Northwest Washington, the Upper East Side of New York, the North Shore of Chicago, the western suburbs of Boston, and Beverly Hills.” well, three out of five of those i KNOW are not characterized as wasp neighborhoods (upper east side, north shore and beverly hills).
Yes, if you’ve been in these contemporary elite environments, and environments like them such as the Ivy League, you know that they’re heavily Jewish, not just in terms of representation but in cultural tone as well, with a large mix of whites from various white ethnicities, and some Asians. WASPs are not heavily represented nor do they set the dominant cultural tone.
murray says that the white american upper and lower classes used to be more alike in values — that all white americans really sorta viewed themselves as a kinda big middle class — and that most of the members of both classes shared the same, four core “founding virtues” of all white americans: industriousness, honesty, marriage and religion.
…
murray also refers back to the founding population of the u.s. — to the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. well, most of those people were wasps — and they had a very special evolutionary history (also clark). you really almost can’t compare anything that happened with those first settlers to anything that happened post-late-1800s immigration to this country — unless you just compare those early settlers to new englanders today.
The Mormons in Utah are one of the few English, New Eng Puritan, WASP, etc. strongholds left in the US.
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2008/11/different-american-conservatisms.php
This type used to be more represented, both demographically and culturally, throughout the US but now seems to be reduced largely to the Mormons in Utah and upper New England, which is an older, more rural, less populated region.
The Mormons are a self-selected group so obviously they may not be a perfect representation. But they may reflect some older ways that were more prevalent when the country was more English/WASP demographically and culturally.
Note how Mormons today are generally considered “weird”, not simply for their strange theological beliefs, but for their ways and culture and attitudes, such as their prudishness, temperance, industriousness, etc.
added a little update to the post.
@hbd chick
“yeah, but what if the 1960 fishtown population had an average iq of 100, but now the 2010 fishtown population has an average iq of 90? there will be more running with scissors nowadays in fishtown than back in the ’60s”
I think that’s a big part of the story in the decay of “Fishtown” (in this case, lower class Whites in general). In 1960 and before, society wasn’t as stratified genetically by IQ and other traits. The high-school-diploma-and-lower crowd had a higher average IQ than they do today, simply because many otherwise capable people didn’t yet go to college. That, I think, is the major source of the trouble for lower class Whites, perhaps more than ethnic differences; they have been “brain drained”.
“i think it still applies…yeah, but what if the 1960 fishtown population had an average iq of 100, but now the 2010 fishtown population has an average iq of 90?”
You’re right of course however what i’m trying to get across is the effect of a maladaptive culture is cumulative. It’s not a yearly casualty rate of 5%, 1%, 0.1% it ‘s a casualty rate of 5%, 1%, 0.1% per year and the rate increases over time as peer pressure tips from being a brake to an enouragement so IQ is only a temporary defence.
“plus what jayman said about fishtown now being surrounded by puerto rican and black neighborhoods”
true again, (adjacent) peer pressure.
@hbchick in re. ‘Teen Mom’: “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant” is my new lowest common denominator of reality shows. There are a few videos up on Youtube, and on both clips from the show and parodies of it you see some hilarious comments from people defending those who appeared on the show.
As far as changes in ethnic groups go, is it possible to get aggregate last name data for an individual census tract for censuses that recent? I’ve only heard of such data being available for 1930s and 1940s stuff. You wouldn’t think that it would be all that sensitive, really.
@g.w. – “what i’m trying to get across is the effect of a maladaptive culture is cumulative. It’s not a yearly casualty rate of 5%, 1%, 0.1% it ‘s a casualty rate of 5%, 1%, 0.1% per year and the rate increases over time as peer pressure tips from being a brake to an enouragement so IQ is only a temporary defence.”
i see, i see. you’re talking about herding behavior (most people are such sheeple).
did you see this recently?:
“Minority Rules: Scientists Find the Tipping Point”
“If just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief, their belief will be adopted by the majority, a new study says.”
if they’re right, then the cumulative effect you’re talking about doesn’t have to accumulate very much before maladaptive behavior is everywhere. changes in group opinion on some matter (like on whether or not tattoos are cool) might start off slowly, moving gradually through the herd year after year, but once the tipping point is reached (only 1 in 10 people!), then it moves like a wave through the herd. =/
@paul – “re. ‘Teen Mom’: ‘I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant’ is my new lowest common denominator of reality shows.”
oh, lord. *facepalm*
@fred – “The Mormons in Utah are one of the few English, New Eng Puritan, WASP, etc. strongholds left in the US.”
the mormons are interesting, but i think the new englanders are very interesting ’cause they’re so liberal/politically correct in so many ways. but then new england is pretty homogeneous, isn’t it, so maybe they can afford to be?
New England used to be solidly Republican and quite conservative and stodgy up until the 60s and 70s.
I believe it is pretty homogeneous racially but it is less WASP than it used to be, with lots of Catholic ethnics, French Canadians, and transplants from around the country. Many wealthy New Yorkers move or vacation or have second homes in places like Vermont.
@Matt
Pinch of salt indeed! :) While I find those results very interesting, and certain results not surprising (high scores in the NE and low scores in the South), others, like the low score of those of “German” ancestry that are not college educated, are pretty fascinating. Unfortunately, the results can’t be given too much worth because of complications, such as the likely poor reliability of self-reported ancestry. They are still interesting, though.
hbdchick
“i see, i see. you’re talking about herding behavior (most people are such sheeple).”
herding is apt. according to various older relatives once upon a time black family structure was still 70-80%. by the time i started it was maybe 50% and dropping maybe 5% a year. at the time it was easy to see it as a straightforward black vs white thing because of the gap between various family cohesion type social metrics was so wide. however under the surface the same thing was happening in the lower IQ white population too only slower, say 1% a year but the critical point is it sped up as the cumulative percentage of already decomposed families increased, say to 2% a year after it hit 10% of the total and 3% a year after it hits 20%.
so now the black-white gap is closing as the lower IQ whites catch up with the blacks (who seem to have bottomed out at a stable percentage) and the gap widening is between upper and lower castes however it’s a relative gap. if you look under the surface the upper caste may now be in the 1% per year phase whereas at the time of the black-white gap opening up they were maybe in the 0.1% a year phase.
i would describe it as a struggle between two forces. the old culture aimed to get everyone making IQ 115 decisions and the forces were
- constant positive reinforcement from the culture producing institutions
- cumulative positive reinforcement i.e. tradition, providing peer pressure
- natural positive reinforcement from the 115 people
- natural downward force from the IQ 100 people
- natural downward force from the IQ 85 people
the effect of this was to get the IQ 85 people making IQ 100 decisions and the IQ 100 people making IQ 115 decisions but it can’t happen overnight because it relies on a cumulative effect to provide peer pressure.
in a nutshell i’m saying the process requires a combination of
- trickle-down adaptive cultural pressure from the elite
- trickle-sideways adaptive cultural pressure from the people who have adopted the elite’s cultural values in previous years
it’s been the same in reverse for the new maladaptive culture except it promotes IQ 85 behavior for everyone instead of 115.
when the polarity of the culture was reversed the forces became
- constant positve reinforcement of maladaptive values
- resistance from the accumulated peer pressure of the old culture, tradition, which weakens over time
- cumulative peer pressure of the new culture as more families decompose increasing over time
- innate resistance from the 115 people
- lower level of innate resistance from the 100 people
- innate reinforcement from the 85 people
the IQ 85 people start to succumb first and because of the cumulative peer pressure effect once the rot starts it rapidly gains momentum. IQ 95 people will be a bit slower to reach the peer pressure tipping point but once reached the decline becomes very rapid. IQ 100 again a bit slower to the tipping point but fast after. ditto IQ 105 etc. this is what you see on the ground – slow, then suddenly quick.
there may be an IQ cut-off point that provides complete immunity to a constant maladaptive pressure but i don’t think it’s anywhere near average because of the cumulative peer pressure as more people succumb.
i think mr murray’s or mr kling’s readership are looking at a snapshot in time and deluding themselves that they’re immune in the longer term.
.
“did you see this recently?”
yes i did. that’s more or less what i mean except when they say only 10% is needed i’d say only 10% may be needed at the beginning but the process involves building peer pressure as you go i.e. you need 10% to get to 20%. you need 20% to get to 30% etc. so at the end it’s 100%.
i guess another way of putting it is (again assuming three broad castes and OCD on my part)
murray / kling: there’s a neutral culture (freedom) and people choose an adaptive or maladaptive course based on IQ leading to
IQ 085: choose maladaptive
IQ 100: choose maladaptive
IQ 115: choose adaptive
the quibble with that being 30 years ago the snapshot would have been
IQ 085: choose maladaptive
IQ 100: choose adaptive
IQ 115: choose adaptive
one argument might be that 30 years ago it was actually
IQ 085: choose maladaptive
IQ 095: choose maladaptive
IQ 100: choose adaptive
IQ 115: choose adaptive
and the IQ 100 had been replaced in the meantime by IQ 95, which is possible
My take is it’s not a neutral culture. For example the Cosmo culture promotes casual sex and careers without giving equal stress to the facts about youth and fertility and as a result a lot of women over the last 30 years left it to late – particularly the more educated ones. This isn’t neutral it’s actively maladaptive for those women.
if you have a corrosive culture where IQ acts as a brake rather than immunity then the process is more one of a variable cumulative attrition rate for each group e.g. 5%, 3%, 1% per unit of time with +1% added for every 10% of the group effected for peer pressure so for percentage effected over time you get something like:
IQ 085: 5 10 16 22 29 36 44 52 62 73 85 98
IQ 100: 3 06 09 12 16 20 25 30 36 42 49 56 62 70 79 88 98
IQ 115: 1 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 12 14 16 18 20 23 26 29 32 36 40 45 50 56 62 69 76 84 92 100
Gap 085-100: 2 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 26 31 36 42 (then closes)
Gap 100-115: 2 4 6 08 11 14 18 22 27 32 37 42 46 52 59 65 73 (then closes)
@g.w. – “IQ 100 again a bit slower to the tipping point but fast after. ditto IQ 105 etc. this is what you see on the ground – slow, then suddenly quick.”
i see what you’re saying (i think) — the higher up the iq scale you go, the slower the group is to reach the tipping point, but once your group does reach the tipping point, then … bam!
i find the tipping point and the rapid spread thereafter of whatever behavior/meme we’re talking about to be very interesting. that’s the herding part i was getting at.
herding behavior is a favorite after dinner conversation here in this house. (~_^) i’m regularly annoyed that i can never find any good info on herding behavior — like a nice article full of graphs on herding patterns amongst wildebeest savanna — ’cause i have a feeling the charts on that — especially the rapid change of direction a galloping wildebeest herd will sometimes take — would look an awful lot like rapid swings on the stockmarket or some other quirky human herding behavior.
the annoying/sad part is, people will believe anything. they really will. it’s the Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds thing i’m talking about, so we didn’t have to go down this road of everyone thinking tattoos and single mom “families” were great things. everyone could just as easily have believed something else (more functional).
it can’t last. it’s gotta come crashing down one of these days. =/
@fred – “I believe it is pretty homogeneous racially but it is less WASP than it used to be, with lots of Catholic ethnics….”
well there’s your problem! (~_^)
“’cause i have a feeling the charts on that — especially the rapid change of direction a galloping wildebeest herd will sometimes take — would look an awful lot like rapid swings on the stockmarket or some other quirky human herding behavior.”
yes i think so
“it can’t last. it’s gotta come crashing down one of these days. =/”
soon imo. i think we’re past the tipping point now but there isn’t the internal pressure from pre-existing nations to cause a collapse like there was in the Soviet Union. so it’ll probably take an external shock imo. i’m assuming it’ll be something to do with losing reserve currency status but it may be something else. whatever it is the stage after that will be the federal government switching to authoritarian mode or trying to and failing. hopefully the latter.
@g.w. – “soon imo. i think we’re past the tipping point now but there isn’t the internal pressure from pre-existing nations to cause a collapse like there was in the Soviet Union. so it’ll probably take an external shock imo.”
well i just hope that it isn’t a big friggin’ war — like a world war, i mean. ugh. =/
“well i just hope that it isn’t a big friggin’ war”
we’re already in WWIII but it’s being fought with currencies so hopefully not as bloody :)
(the sides are Russia and China vs the US btw)
@g.w. – “the sides are Russia and China vs the US btw”
the usual suspects. =/
yes, although actually it might be more accurate to say Russia and China vs Wall St. and Washington. and as Washington is pretty much Wall St. in drag maybe more accurate still to say Russia and China vs Wall St.