tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post8441388908621763094..comments2024-03-28T16:22:14.888-07:00Comments on Steve Sailer: iSteve: Japan 1601-1852Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger96125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-37214187805146775982010-11-04T13:17:08.793-07:002010-11-04T13:17:08.793-07:00A 'conservative' who believes in progress?...A 'conservative' who believes in progress?<br /><br />Wonders never cease(/sarc)<br /><br />A better question would be whether the Industrial Revolution etc was of any ultimate benefit to the Japanese people.brucenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-86804799534217158222010-11-03T09:19:43.968-07:002010-11-03T09:19:43.968-07:00I think it's a tough argument to claim that th...I think it's a tough argument to claim that the Netherlands were more indispensible to "the world" than Germany, although both with England are in a different tier than most other Western European countries in their contributions.<br /><br />Hopefully Anonymous<br /><br />http://www.hopeanon.typepad.comAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-20040095598505699882010-11-02T14:16:07.421-07:002010-11-02T14:16:07.421-07:00Foreign conquest is certainly very bad for a peopl...Foreign conquest is certainly very bad for a people. <br /><br />Foreign conquest is not always bad.<br />The rise of Britain began with the Norman conquest. The former British colony of Singapore is richer than thailand. South Africa is richer than never colonized Ethiopia.Jimnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-710978518150410902010-11-02T08:14:43.195-07:002010-11-02T08:14:43.195-07:00May I throw in a few points without connecting the...May I throw in a few points without connecting them:<br />(1) the advantage of an island isn't isolation. Until the railways water transport was much better than land transport. So an island nation has better internal transport. The sea isn't a defence by itself, but it means you defend yourself with a navy, not an army. Naval and civil shipping was the main motor of technology ans science in the take-off period.<br /><br />(2) It wasn't "the West" or Western Europe, it was certain countries or regions within Europe. Some European countries never contributed anything, some had their moment and declined. Perhaps England and the Netherlands were the only ones the world couldn't have done without - and it's not a coincidence these two colonised the future United States.<br />(3) How about luck? The English had several strokes of luck, eg the feudal aristocracy obligingly exterminated themselves in the Wars of the Roses in the 15th century.<br />(4) As late as 1600, I for one if I'd been a well-informed observer would have bet that Venice rather than England was the nation of the future. So what happened to Venice? They seemed to have it all.<br />(5) England first got the virtuous cycle going whereby scientific discoveies feed into industrial advance that makes better scientific experiments possible. Is this something to do with the English long-standing lack of interest in philosophy (in the modern restricted sense)? And has the US benefited from inheriting and maintaining this healthy attitude (in spite of the majority of Americans not being of English descent since some point early in the last century)?<br />(6) Muslim rulers were always very business-friendly. What didn't happen for them was merchant capital moving into manufacture. Why?ITriedtobeaCynicnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-30185344417166996132010-11-01T21:28:57.436-07:002010-11-01T21:28:57.436-07:00Dan Kurt: if you were really a high IQ guy you cou...Dan Kurt: if you were really a high IQ guy you could easily have found those links on inductivist and infoproc by simply searching for sub-strings. But I guess you aren't as interested in investigating the data as you are in expounding your priors.<br /><br />For instance, just cut and paste the following into Google: "asian-white-iq-variance-from-pisa.html"<br /><br />Svigor: the PISA and TIMMS data, which are nationally representative, show roughly a half standard deviation difference between euro countries and Japan/S. Korea/Taiwan. That's consistent with what is found for Asian-Americans, and more or less explains their overrepresentation on math and science Olympiads.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-80343941149565098672010-11-01T15:04:03.755-07:002010-11-01T15:04:03.755-07:00The Chinese did invent gunpowder. They just never ...<i>The Chinese did invent gunpowder. They just never invented big cannons. </i><br /><br />As a curiosity only - that should probably be called fireworks powder in their hands. They never invented anything useful to do with it. Nor did they invent corning, which greatly increased the explosive power of gunpowder.<br /><br />Similar things can be said about the Chinese invention of printing - though they did invent paper. When Gutenberg invented movable metal type and mass production printing presses it lead to a revolution in the exchange of ideas in Europe and was an important part of the modern rise of science. Nothing remotely similar happened in China with their block printing non mass production techniques. <br /><br />A good deal of the touting of the inventions of non Euro civilization post early Mesopotamia and Egypt is boosterism (rather than and even handed relative evaluation) intended to deflate the enormous Euro intellectual contributions of the last 500 years.Doug1https://www.blogger.com/profile/13948793969077395057noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-48982624035992843932010-11-01T12:30:51.398-07:002010-11-01T12:30:51.398-07:00And the evidence suggests that East Asian American...<i>And the evidence suggests that East Asian Americans are roughly as smart as East Asians on average. That means that there's no strong selection effect. If anything, it appears that Euros are vastly under-represented in the high IQ category relative to East Asians.</i><br /><br />Not so fast. From what I read, the studies of China aren't particularly representative, either. Lots of surveys of rich eastern cities - the rural and interior regions, not so much. So the data held up as evidence against a selection effect could very well show a selection effect.Svigorhttp://majorityrights.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-6511514559830548472010-11-01T10:27:13.323-07:002010-11-01T10:27:13.323-07:00"The muslims merely amputated a hand for thef..."The muslims merely amputated a hand for theft, the English hanged the thief."<br /><br />The "muslims" (read "middle east and India" were doing a lot more to people than amputating hands); they were famous for their inventiveness in the ways of torture. Dracul the Impaler spent his youth among the Turks as a captive. He learned the impaling from them, though there may have been indigenous inventors.<br />"Don't be such a Turk to me" was a synonym for "don't be cruel to me," that shows up in novels until the 20th century. <br />I used to think the British laws were draconian, but actually it depended on the judge and relatively few death sentences were actually carried out--the authorities preferred to practice deportation. I don't have stats but I'm talking about the 18th century, from the early period on. In fact, in the 1700s, ordinary people starting complaining about executions occurring too near residences and public places, causing great unpleasantness. Even in the late 1500s, the crowds attending a drawing and quartering of a group of "traitors" was so insensed by the sufferings of condemned, that the authorities decided to just hang the remainder of the condemned to death the next day without gory embellishment. Some of the complaints in the 1700s, appearing in newspapers of the day, are pretty hilarious except of course it wasn't really funny. But they read like a Monty Python skit and did much to discourage public executions. Executions were mostly private after the early 1800s.<br /> The British were brutal only by the standards of today. By the standards of the 18th century, they were popularly (meaning by other countries) considered much milder in their punitive measures, even in the military. Thackeray mentions that in Barry Lyndon. My own research has mostly been a morbid study of torture prevalent in central Europe and even fair France. Between them and the "Turks," believe me, the Brits couldn't hold a candle to them.scaffnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-67987385265822244962010-10-31T17:16:10.822-07:002010-10-31T17:16:10.822-07:00"I'm sympathetic to HBD but I would be in..."I'm sympathetic to HBD but I would be interested if anyone could explain why IQ variation does not change with genetic variation."<br /><br />I was under the impression that the Finns, genetically less variable, have significantly lower IQ standard deviation than usual. Opposite with the Italians.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-77313153996123499692010-10-31T12:10:24.694-07:002010-10-31T12:10:24.694-07:00Many Asian geeks may have higher IQs but white guy...Many Asian geeks may have higher IQs but white guys have bigger balls. Asians are better at and more comfortable with fitting into systems that's already been established(this goes for Mexicans of Indian descent as well, who can work hard under the gringo-made system but less able to create their own enterprises)whereas whites are more likely to venture into the unknown territory for the excitement and thrill. <br />Asians, being smarter than Mexicans, tend to achieve more, but most of what they've done in the past 100 yrs were taken from the West--science, technology, political ideas, etc. <br /><br />Brains vs balls, it makes a difference. Zhou Enlai was smarter than Mao Zedong but the latter became the top ruler. Why? Bigger balls. Speer was smarter than Hitler, but Hitler ran Germany. Why? Bigger balls. <br />Many Jews under Stalin were smarter, but Stalin had the bigger balls and ruled USSR. <br /><br />Man is half-carnivore, half-herbivore, and herbivores follow carnivores. Carnivores are better at grabbing power, herbivores are better at maintaining power for the long haul. Carnivores are better explorers, herbivores are better followers and settlers. <br /><br />Jews have an advantage since they have both carnivore and herbivore traits. As carnivores, they are more sly and adaptive--more like the crafty and cautious weasel than a lion or bear. As herbivores, they have better good nomadic instincts for navigation and settling in pastures where the grass is green. <br /><br />Anglo-entrepreneur vs Jewish entrepreneur. In the long run, the latter will win, as demonstrated in the film EUREKA by Nicholas Roeg. Anglo-adventurer seeks glory and excitement, but upon finding them, he grows weary, bored, and lost; decadent. The Jews, with 1000s of yrs of survival under all sorts of environments, have the sly and ruthless mentality and traits that enable them to never lose their focus on power even after the thrill is gone. <br />Anglos are for power and money FOR something(beauty, glory, fame, thrills)whereas Jews are for power and money for power and money. <br /><br />Of course, if the balls are too big, things get too wild and funky, and leads only to social chaos. Al Sharpton has big balls but it's like his hormones dominate every aspect of his thinking and behavior.asdfsdfsafnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-64111574781586476242010-10-31T03:25:03.295-07:002010-10-31T03:25:03.295-07:00By the way, if anyone's interested in the Roma...By the way, if anyone's interested in the Roman/Classical period specifically, here's a pdf relating to a comparative study of the Roman and Chinese Empires, which purports some extent to explain the difference between their formation and decline (amongst other things). <br /><br />http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ABUV07YH<br /><br />To me some of the difference it expresses seems to be that the Chinese Empire formed during a period of interstate warfare by closely related ethnic groups with little room for expansion, so they responded by rationalising their war machine and government, giving them a "strong" central government (somewhat akin to the wars of the European early modern period, only without a hegemon ultimately emerging in that case), whereas the Roman Empire, rather than rationalising its structures seems to have continually expanded citizenship rights outside its polis, in order to gain allies and "outsize" its more ethnically foreign rival (Carthage). Perhaps an eerie echo of the modern West and the problems with our "advanced" conception of citizenship and rights? Although it seems like its rights (property rights at least) which can lay some of the claim as to why we are rich.<br /><br />It would be interesting to integrate this with Peter Frost's theory of genetic pacification in the Roman Empire and with other HBD insights: <br /><br />http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/EP08376389.pdf<br /><br />and with Peter Turchin's "mega empires" theory (i.e. empires form primarily to protect against and in proximity to the steppe, where horse nomads live and secondarily to protect against other empires; because the locus of organised steppe nomads shifted to north east asia, imperial continuity was strongest there)<br /><br />http://tinyurl.com/38lxtqeMattnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-88572228129360891772010-10-31T03:08:31.234-07:002010-10-31T03:08:31.234-07:00"re: Two URLS that were given in post were DE..."re: Two URLS that were given in post were DEAD giving these returns:<br /><br />1) Inductivist<br />Moved by data, not doctrine.<br />No posts with label East As."<br /><br />This is the Inductivist link you are looking for:<br /><br />http://inductivist.blogspot.com/search/label/East%20Asians<br /><br />"Using GSS data, I combined Chinese and Japanese Americans (only those born in this country) and got a standard deviation (SD) of 2.04 across 50 respondents. For whites born in the country, the SD is 2.08--not different, basically. SD tends to increase along with higher means, so if we take that into account by using the coefficient of variation (CV), we get .30 for Asians and .33 for whites. <i><b>No difference, or a trivial difference at best.</b></i>"<br /><br />....<br /><br />I'm sympathetic to HBD but I would be interested if anyone could explain why IQ variation does not change with genetic variation. I would guess it would be mainly because IQ sensitive genes (which give rise to the variation) are under strong selection and so don't change with normal loss of genetic information (due to serial bottlenecks). This might also explain why hybrid groups don't have more IQ variation?Mattnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-52206270117299298952010-10-31T03:04:55.506-07:002010-10-31T03:04:55.506-07:00"The muslims merely amputated a hand for thef..."The muslims merely amputated a hand for theft, the English hanged the thief."<br /><br />English punishments were harsh back then. I suspect it's partly evidence of a low conviction rate. Also, the culture romanticised outlaws (Robin Hood, Dick Turpin, English pirates etc). So there was more emphasis on making an example of those the authorities did manage to catch.<br /><br />Later on there was transportation, first to America, then, more famously, to Australia. That was tough, but probably better than amputation.georgesdelatournoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-20246083738704864802010-10-31T02:56:22.719-07:002010-10-31T02:56:22.719-07:00there's no evidence that East Asian Americans ...<i>there's no evidence that East Asian Americans are significantly smarter than East Asians in general.</i><br /><br />Seems like there's a lot of evidence they're more high achieving however... which is really what we're interested in here.Mattnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-34005272694685379092010-10-31T02:05:52.669-07:002010-10-31T02:05:52.669-07:00Steve,
David Landes in his "Wealth and Pover...Steve,<br /><br />David Landes in his "Wealth and Poverty of Nations" makes a convincing (to me) case that, because of its social structure, Japan would have gotten to the industrial revolution in a few decades even if Perry had never arrived. I read the book many years ago, so I won't attempt to summarize the argument, but you should check Landes's book - it is old enough now to be cheap, and it illuminates many other interesting questions too.<br /><br />I haven't read the comments, so I don't know if someone else has already suggested Landes.Alatnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-60510816781391007602010-10-30T22:54:22.621-07:002010-10-30T22:54:22.621-07:00Anonymous wrote
"The muslims merely amputated...Anonymous wrote<br />"The muslims merely amputated a hand for theft, the English hanged the thief."<br />==========================<br /><br />However, England no longer hangs thiefs, or anyone else while Muslims, frozen in time, continue to amputate hands, etc.Melykinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-78938862725559754882010-10-30T22:09:34.836-07:002010-10-30T22:09:34.836-07:00I have no idea why you're so hostile Dan. None...I have no idea why you're so hostile Dan. None of the data I've seen suggests that East Asians have a lower SD than whites, though I have seen some data suggesting that blacks have a lower SD than whites, in addition to having a lower average.<br /><br />Furthermore, if you examine elite high IQ competitions in the United States, East Asian Americans and Jewish Americans are disproportionately over-represented relative to European Americans, and there's no evidence that East Asian Americans are significantly smarter than East Asians in general.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-7598269407639544532010-10-30T22:06:46.908-07:002010-10-30T22:06:46.908-07:00"Right, so all those over-achieving East Asia..."Right, so all those over-achieving East Asians are making America weak?"<br /><br />Yeah, from doing stuff like spying, industrial and military, and taking our manufacturing, including the spare parts for our war machines. Also, building satellite-killer weapons.JSMnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-47043026699099084242010-10-30T20:42:59.363-07:002010-10-30T20:42:59.363-07:00re: "All the data I have seen suggests E Asia...re: "All the data I have seen suggests E Asian IQ SD is the same as for Euros." Anonymous<br /><br />Yes all people are the same. Men and women are identical. There is no such thing as human bio-diversity. Happy now?<br /><br />A serious answer to your question would be that a concerted effort has exerted to deny such differences in SD between races just as have been claimed that NO iQ differences exist between races. <br /><br />Some data can be found on both sides of the SD question to bolster the arguments. It depends upon who you read and trust. In this it is similar to the topic of Human Caused Global Warming.<br /><br /><br />re: Two URLS that were given in post were DEAD giving these returns:<br /><br />1) Inductivist<br />Moved by data, not doctrine.<br />No posts with label East As.<br /><br />and,<br /><br />2) Page not found<br />Sorry, the page you were looking for in the blog Information Processing does not exist.<br /><br />Please learn how to post URLs on Blogger. Start with TinyURL.com.<br /><br />Please don't use Anonymous. Identify yourself at the end of your post with a Handle, name or nickname. Have the courage to identify yourself so one can follow your posts.<br /><br />Dan KurtDan Kurthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06164801060857631895noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-11379645550040994832010-10-30T20:19:12.151-07:002010-10-30T20:19:12.151-07:00Japan was actually *abandoning* labor-saving techn...Japan was actually *abandoning* labor-saving technology during this period. See Chapter 6 of Matt Ridley's <i>The Rational Optimist</i> (a good read, IMO).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-81770526551468175012010-10-30T20:13:30.301-07:002010-10-30T20:13:30.301-07:00In contrast, there is a DIRECTNESS when one speaks...<i>In contrast, there is a DIRECTNESS when one speaks English. It's YOU and I, not USTED</i><br /><br />Actually, "you" (nominative "ye") is the plural/polite form of "thou."Silvernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-39144377812067721032010-10-30T18:47:52.488-07:002010-10-30T18:47:52.488-07:00Dan Kurt
There's plenty of evidence to sugges...Dan Kurt<br /><br />There's plenty of evidence to suggest that Europeans are under-represented in the high IQ category relative to East Asians. East Asian Americans are disproportionately over-represented in every elite high IQ competition in the United States, such as the International Mathematics Olympiad, the International Physics Olympiad, etc, often by a factor of 10-20x.<br /><br />See here. <br /><br />http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/national/10math_report.pdf<br /><br />"Analysis of the USA and Canadian boy participants<br />led to a similar conclusion: Asian and ethnic Jewish<br />boys were approximately ten- to twenty-fold more<br />likely to become IMO participants than other non-<br />Hispanic white boys."<br /><br />And the evidence suggests that East Asian Americans are roughly as smart as East Asians on average. That means that there's no strong selection effect. If anything, it appears that Euros are vastly under-represented in the high IQ category relative to East Asians.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-24278279700797995812010-10-30T17:28:48.439-07:002010-10-30T17:28:48.439-07:00Dan Kurt -- which groups have IQ SD of 12?
All th...Dan Kurt -- which groups have IQ SD of 12?<br /><br />All the data I have seen suggests E Asian IQ SD is the same as for Euros.<br /><br />http://inductivist.blogspot.com/search/label/East%20Asians<br /><br />"Using GSS data, I combined Chinese and Japanese Americans (only those born in this country) and got a standard deviation (SD) of 2.04 across 50 respondents. For whites born in the country, the SD is 2.08--not different, basically. SD tends to increase along with higher means, so if we take that into account by using the coefficient of variation (CV), we get .30 for Asians and .33 for whites. No difference, or a trivial difference at best."<br /><br />See also:<br />http://infoproc.blogspot.com/.../asian-white-iq-variance-from-pisa.htmlAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-11122951374380350502010-10-30T14:28:53.824-07:002010-10-30T14:28:53.824-07:00"My own biases are in favor of Eastern Christ..."My own biases are in favor of Eastern Christianity, so of course I would say "classical civilization" ended finally in 1453..."<br /><br />That's not what the word "classical" means to most of the people who use it in the historical context. Arguments about semantics are boring, I know, so I'll just try to explain why I think that something very important (I call it classical civilization, you don't, but that's just words) peaked during the century or two after Alexander the Great and completely died by the 5th century AD. <br /><br />It's known that the old libraries of antiquity (the Alexandrian library being he most famous) contained hundreds of thousands of titles. If you collect all the pagan Greco-Roman literature that's survived to our days, you'll only fill several hundred volumes. 99.9% of pagan Greco-Roman literature is gone forever. <br /><br />It's been determined that it was already gone by the 5th century because 5th century authors tend to mostly quote the stuff we have now, while earlier authors mostly quoted stuff that has not come down to us. <br /><br />It's important to note that the stuff that has survived is not representative of what the ancients considered important or of what modern historians would consider important. Works by Archemedes, Aristotle, Livy, etc. have been lost. It seems that the stuff that's survived did so more by accident than because anyone wanted it to survive.<br /><br />And the production of highly original material slowed down long before the 5th century. Basically, there was a gradual decline in quality starting in the last centuries BC, and then a clean break in the late 4th and 5th centuries AD, after which old culture wasn't just ignored, but was actively stamped out. There's no way to avoid thinking about what happened as a clean break.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-78961044463077526692010-10-30T13:27:13.431-07:002010-10-30T13:27:13.431-07:00Jay vs. Average Joe seems like a non-argument. No...Jay vs. Average Joe seems like a non-argument. Nobody today means "a patchwork of sovereign peoples," they mean "mixing everyone together within formerly European territories."Svigorhttp://majorityrights.comnoreply@blogger.com