• 1-minute Metallica Christmas video is better than you'd think.

• A couple favorite passages from Murray, culled from his own TLDR:

An IQ score is a better predictor of job productivity than a job interview, reference checks, or college transcript.

Most sweepingly important, an employer that is free to pick among applicants can realize large economic gains from hiring those with the highest IQs.

[…]

But low intelligence is a stronger precursor of poverty than low socioeconomic background. Whites with IQs in the bottom 5 percent of the distribution of cognitive ability are fifteen times more likely to be poor than those with IQs in the top 5 percent.

How does each of these causes of poverty look when the other is held constant? Or to put it another way: If you have to choose, is it better to be born smart or rich? The answer is unequivocally “smart.” A white youth reared in a home in which the parent or parents were chronically unemployed, worked at only the most menial of jobs, and had not gotten past ninth grade, but of just average intelligence—an IQ of 100—has nearly a 90 percent chance of being out of poverty by his or her early 30s. Conversely, a white youth born to a solid middle-class family but with an IQ equivalently below average faces a much higher risk of poverty, despite his more fortunate background.

[…]

Cognitive ability is a function of both genes and environment, with implications for egalitarian social policies. The more we succeed in giving every youngster a chance to develop his or her latent cognitive ability, the more we equalize the environmental sources of differences in intelligence. The irony is that as America equalizes the circumstances of people’s lives, the remaining differences in intelligence are increasingly determined by differences in genes. Meanwhile, high cognitive ability means, more than ever before, that the chances of success in life are good and getting better all the time. Putting it all together, success and failure in the American economy, and all that goes with it, are increasingly a matter of the genes that people inherit.

Add to this the phenomenon known as assortative mating. Likes attract when it comes to marriage, and intelligence is one of the most important of those likes. When this propensity to mate by IQ is combined with increasingly efficient educational and occupational stratification, assortative mating by IQ has more powerful effects on the next generation than it had on the previous one. This process too seems to be getting stronger, part of the brew creating an American class system.

But that's how long it would take, and good luck getting that credo put on a poster in your kid's first-grade classroom.

Remember privacy? Forget it:

The OmniVision OV6948, the world's smallest camera has just entered the Guinness Book of Records, measuring just 0.575 x 0.575 x 0.232mm

This short T-thread explains why you'd need so many generations to see a willful improvement in IQ… It's our ol' friend regression to mean.

he Ashkenazi didn't happen for us, or for each other, overnight.

The first good book about the Beatles, Norman's "Shout!," mentioned that Lennon's father had recorded a pop song, hoping to cash in on John's fame. I never wanted to hear it, but just listen to those first few seconds....

It also sounds like "Watching the Wheels."

This short T-thread explains why you'd need so many generations to see a willful improvement in IQ… It's our ol' friend regression to mean. ~ Crid at October 13, 2020 5:05 AM

I wonder if the enforced segregation and isolation of the Ashkenazi didn't work to their advantage.

"Never, ever fuck anyone who isn't smarter than you are."

After about 2 generations, population -> 0. Also, men have higher proportions at both ends of the curve: really dumb ones, and really smart ones. If they stuck to this rule, those really smart ones wouldn't reproduce at all.

"Fuck people who are smarter than you are, but if you're in that upper end, fuck the smartest one you can find."

I wonder if the enforced segregation and isolation of the Ashkenazi didn't work to their advantage.

Jews have religious/cultural norms that tend to keep outsiders...outside. They're not much for converting gentiles and frown upon marrying gentiles. Enforcing Jewish ghettos might be more important, since that kept them together and not spread out where they might mingle more freely and have less peer pressure to keep them "in line".

Hmm, statues including one of Lincoln torn down, Marx and Lennin statues safe.

Jews have religious/cultural norms that tend to keep outsiders...outside. They're not much for converting gentiles and frown upon marrying gentiles. Enforcing Jewish ghettos might be more important, since that kept them together and not spread out where they might mingle more freely and have less peer pressure to keep them "in line".

I R A Darth Aggie at October 13, 2020 8:05 AM

One of the trade offs of all that intellectual candle power can be, an increasing concentration of birth defects, and a general lack of fitness to reproduce at all.

I am the inheritor of a collection of Jewish and English antiques, which came to me, (a non Jew) as the only descendent of a large wealthy Dutch-English Jewish family with eight kids in 1850, and zero blood descendants alive today.

> I wonder if the enforced
> segregation and isolation
> of the Ashkenazi didn't
> work to their advantage.

While establishing that by "their advantage" we mean the development of their remarkably high IQ's…

Greg Cochran has affirmed precisely that. By a variety of norms, including being violently tormented and repeatedly decimated by their surrounding cultures, Ashkenazi numbers were kept low enough that families could, for centuries at a time, make a living in the intellectually demanding realms of clerkery and what we now somewhat derisively call "moneylending." It didn't make them popular. When it was time to marry off the daughter, they went looking for the most distant cousin they could find from the 'tribe'.

> After about 2 generations,
> population -> 0.

I see what you're getting at, but—

[A.] By definition, there would be no children born ever, if the rule were strictly enforced and if intelligence appeared to us only by it's measurement as a single number (G)… But intelligence is kaleidoscopic.

[B.] Built into the scheme is the presumption that it will fail, just as do social boundaries throughout humanity and every other sexually-reproducing animal. It's a central driver of evolution, and the plot device in an uncountable number of bodice-rippers.

Medieval Northern Europe— "The Hill Hikers regarded all River Dunkers as damp and befouled, but in that stormy afternoon at the foothills, Bjorn couldn't resist Inga's moist, salmon-reeking temptations…"

Mid-19th North America— "Charlotte knew that being alone with the slave Tandey from the granary was an infraction for which they could both have the flesh whipped from their bodies, but eventually his rippling muscles and triangular torso could no longer be ignored…"

Manya Valley, 587th Century before Christ— "While the haughty, twitching Scutisorex from the northside of the palm grove knew that the African shrews from the southside were coarse and small-minded, eventually specimen 2399-D-288-[1905] [female] was unable to contain her attraction to the incredible flexibility of 2399-D-266-[1904] [male]'s spine in the sagittal plane, with his consequently enhanced harvest of insect husks from the underbrush." [Harvard collection, all specimens.]

The point of the motto is to keep your eye on the ball: Don't fuck *down*, no matter how firm her rack.

> One of the trade offs of all that
> intellectual candle power can be,
> an increasing concentration of birth
> defects, and a general lack of
> fitness to reproduce at all.

Exactly, be careful what you wish for. Ashkenazi have paid a terrible price for these blessings, both by the surrounding culture and their own bodies.

Once again, citing Gregory Cochran by quoting myself from June 14, 2020 12:04 PM:

Listen to this podcast beginning at 1:47:55 for ten minutes—

"There's like four Ashkenazi diseases that can cause extra growth of dendrites or axons, and there aren't any others known!"

This violations of cultural norms protect us from disease and other bad outcomes, as well as making 'progress' in intellect (and other characteristics) more challenging.
The point of the motto is to keep your eye on the ball: Don't fuck *down*, no matter how firm her rack.

Crid at October 13, 2020 10:03 AM

It isn’t “fucking down”that is lowering the average IQ. It is that a materially abundant, climate controlled welfare paying modern western society has allowed large numbers of the stupid to out reproduce the intelligent who take advantage of technology to not have very many kids at all. Not even replacement rate for the past fifty years.
The third world has a lot more survivors than they did a hundred years ago. Those are Stone Age tribal cultures. Not the groups producing the next generation of rocket scientists.

World War three or an honest to god *real plague*will provide a course correction in time of course, But not soon enough to be of any concern to those of us past the age of reproduction. It also may not force the trend upwards unless we are indeed on our way into another ice age, or a world of constant conflict where the smartest survive.

"This short T-thread explains why you'd need so many generations to see a willful improvement in IQ… It's our ol' friend regression to mean."

If you came up with a scheme, like Heinlein's "Howard families", you might not get "intelligence" as your first indicator.

Mention was made of Ashkenazi diseases. Specialized vulnerabilities exist for others, like Zunis on the Mexican border.

I'm wondering what to make of the few cc larger capacity the northern Asian skull has. The more transistors, the faster the calculator?

Then sperm whales are frikken geniuses. At 5x human size that is a lot more transistors. Real world data both inside and between species shows it doesn't work that way.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-brain-size-doesnt-correlate-with-intelligence-180947627/

What I find more interesting is the power efficiency. A human brain runs on 10-25W of power. My desktop has a 700W power supply.

> society has allowed large
> numbers of the stupid to
> out reproduce the intelligent

"Society" should 'disallow' reproduction?

> society has allowed large
> numbers of the stupid to
> out reproduce the intelligent

"Society" should 'disallow' reproduction?

Crid at October 13, 2020 2:36 PM

Of course not. Might as well have said Western welfare states, who imported tribal cultures, but the Middle East experienced the same phenomena, in situ fueled by easy money from oil.

"Real world data both inside and between species shows it doesn't work that way."

You quoted a fluff piece, seriously lightweight for the Smithsonian, that also doesn't rule it out.

Note that CalTech doesn't care what ethnicity you are, and Asians dominate. Check valedictorians nationwide and see.

Your build code matters. "Equality" is a hoax to encourage optimism.

Actually, you can see a gradual increase in brain capacity in human evolution.

Hours of material near that link.

Maybe you should spend a bit more time researching this Rad. Just wanting something to be strong enough doesn't make it work that way. Wanting to put words into other people's mouths also doesn't make them say them.

An addendum, as an electrical engineer more transistors is often the wrong solution. Better transistors or better organized transistors do so much more. Hence why you are so much smarter than a sperm whale even with 20% of the gray matter to work with.