May 8, 2013

The Social Darwinist roots of Chinese mediocrity and amorality

Yeah, we know -- the Chinese have a higher average IQ and lower propensity toward violence than blacks or Hispanics. Real high standard to hold the non-whites to -- are you more tolerable as neighbors than the average black/Hispanic.

East Asian mediocrity looks like a puzzle, then, given their higher test scores. And while most people wouldn't come right out and say it, they think that being smarter makes you more morally sensitive and perhaps more moral in conduct as well. So Asian amorality presents another puzzle.

Earlier I suggested that the relative lack of disgust in Asians is the main factor behind their amoral nature. They don't get as easily grossed out by a range of gross things as Western people would. And throughout human evolution, disgust has gotten put to new use in the moral domain -- we refer to something as "morally repugnant," we make a disgusted face and shrink back when we hear about something puzzlingly immoral, and our entire concept of a hypocrite or a traitor seems to be derived from disgust -- ingesting something you had believed to be healthy, but was actually poisoned.

I don't think I've ever had a big theory about why Asians don't accomplish as much as their brains would suggest.

But after reading Ron Unz's article about the Social Darwinist pressures that shaped the Chinese population, in particular the grinding meritocracy, the two puzzles make more sense.

Basically, everything bad you could imagine was constantly nipping at the heels of the average Chinese -- famine, downward mobility, epidemic disease, and so on. Worse than in Europe, where folks were more spread out, sparing themselves the nastiest effects of insectoid hive living. And social mobility was based on meritocratic principles, rather than strictly inherited rank / caste, or joining an upstart armed faction that hoped to dethrone the established faction by force (life has been more peaceful in China for awhile now).

The constant rising and falling of an individual's social status meant that he could not consider any set of tasks to be beneath him -- whatever it took to get through the here and now, and perhaps save up for later, he had to take. Work as a farm laborer one week, rent himself out as a soldier the next, use his new wealth to open a shop and supervise laborers, and then work as a laborer for some other merchant once he went under himself, and so on. Nothing could be felt to be out of bounds.

Unz says that this would have selected for more hardy people even among the brainy -- they would only get to profit from their brains some of the time, and would have to do manual labor the rest of the time. They had no niche to continually colonize, as the Ashkenazi Jews did with white collar finance jobs. That sounds true enough to me. Your typical elite Jew is pretty pathetic with around-the-house kind of stuff, while the Chinese might know something about drywall, planting shrubs, fixing leaks, and so on.

So, there we have the explanation for Asian mediocrity -- they never had a brainy niche to thrive in full-time, and instead were selected to be a Jack-of-all-trades.

That would also seem to explain the relative disappearance of disgust in Asians (at least the Chinese). If nothing could be felt to be out of bounds, what happens if your next set of tasks is disgusting, either viscerally or figuratively? And what happens when you find yourself in such a cheek-by-jowl environment, surrounded by sick and dirty neighbors? These aspects of the Chinese ecology would select for folks with a dialed-down sense of disgust.

This is important to keep in mind any time you hear about how the Chinese are going to best the Americans or Westerners in some area because we are too timid, while they plow ahead. It may be true in some limited range of cases, namely those where political correctness ties the hands of Western researchers or other actors. In all other areas, we're still going to come out ahead.

Even in the domains under PC quarantine, we shouldn't confuse ourselves about what path the Chinese (or whoever) will take. We like to romanticize those who are doing what we are too weak to do. But the Chinese are not iconoclasts -- not daring, not bold, and not anti-authoritarian. They are not the schoolyard rebel who goes where the teachers have told him not to, just because he likes acting recklessly and putting would-be authorities in their place by disobeying them.

Rather, they are more like the autistic children who wander out beyond the prescribed boundaries because they've tuned out other people's demands on their behavior in the first place.

I'll be glad if they do work in fields that are out-of-bounds in the West, but I'm also realistic about the broader prospects for cutting-edge Asian science, whether hard or soft. Iconoclasts have struck a nerve, and so that's a sign that there's really something there to extract. Asians are more blind wanderers than iconoclasts, so in addition to getting some work done where we could not, they're going to waste far much more time, money, and effort in other pursuits. The schoolyard rebel must know where a truly enjoyable place is, whereas the autistic kid may stray over there for awhile, but will also spend most of his time in boring places.

The lack of passion that characterizes autistics also means that we shouldn't expect a whole lot to get done even when the Chinese do hit upon a profitable spot to dig. They'll dig, and dig a little more, and then that'll be it. Their mindset seems to have been selected to not count too much on one narrow range of tasks to make a living from, hence no obsessive single-mindedness. While they may be driven to succeed in some general sense, like how much wealth they own, they don't seem ambitious to rise to the top of any particular domain of life. Whatever will boost their status this week, they'll do it.

To conclude, the main contrast is with Ashkenazi Jews. They had a narrow specialized set of tasks that served as selection pressures. They are more single-minded and driven to make it in whatever they set their minds to in early adulthood, and no matter how weird the domain may seem, their goal is to be #1.

To take a random example, Lloyd Kaufman, the co-founder of Troma Entertainment, has obsessed over how to be the best of low-budget horror / sleaze / farce movies in the world of home video. It's not Harvard Medical, Stanford Law, etc., but he's going to be #1 at something. And he graduated from Yale, so he could've tried to go that route if he'd wanted to. I assume he also had plenty of nagging from his Jewish mother to do something more respectable.

If he'd been Chinese, he might've wandered into making movies like The Toxic Avenger, but probably wouldn't have felt it was his calling in life. In fact, I don't think I've ever heard an Asian talk about what they felt their "calling" was, what they "were meant to be" in life, and so on. Meh, maybe this, maybe that, I don't mind doing whatever. I'm sure his tiger mother would push him toward the same professional careers that the Jewish mother would, but he's going to be more acquiescent since he doesn't feel a strong inner drive toward a specific goal in the first place.

37 comments:

  1. What evidence for Asian mediocrity? It's not just that they're "not as bad as blacks/hispanics" (in the same way that hispanics are in between blacks and whites), but that they are "whiter than whites" per Rushton's Rule of Three (which is not accurate in all respects, but is in the ones mentioned). You contrast them with Ashkenazi Jews. Well AJs are a tiny sliver of the world's population with an average IQ even higher than east asians.

    What evidence is there that the playground rebel truly knows something significant when you've already stated they rebel for the mere purpose of defying authority? As adults we would chalk up their behavior to childish ignorance. I would say instead there is no such thing as chaotic good.

    Coming from a background in software, I'd say a lot of impressive things have been created by people with autistic tendencies, but one of those notable tendencies is an obsessiveness with narrow fields which you claim isn't found among EAs. Again I'd like to see evidence.

    To be fair, there long-running argument that Chinese science has tended to be more empirical while the West was more theoretical. This led Western science to be mostly useless if not harmful most of the time, but also enabled some breakthroughs.

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  2. "What evidence for Asian mediocrity?"

    As in accomplishment. Europeans invented and discovered basically everything, and are more creative by leaps and bounds in all the arts. See Human Accomplishment.

    Rushton's Rule is violated in all domains of creativity, achievement, etc. Even at the lower level of craftsmanship, rather than theoretical stuff -- Made in Japan is the only thing you'd be happy to see. Made in Random European Country or Made in America are much better than Made in China / Vietnam / even Korea in most cases.

    "people with autistic tendencies, but one of those notable tendencies is an obsessiveness with narrow fields which you claim isn't found among EAs."

    I said single-mindedness, ambition, and drive, which is motivational / behavioral, going beyond a merely cognitive fixation on some narrow range of interests.

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  3. This seems to make sense. I guess you could also argue that blacks have too strong of an inner drive - this is why they either live in a ghetto or are a famous musician/sportsmen. Blacks also only establish themselves in those limited areas, not joining the business or professional elite. This goes in line with "wanting to do a certain thing, no matter what".

    It would also explain the historical inability of blacks to integrate into the middle-class. They refuse to do work they deem demeaning.

    Asians avoid both extremes - they haven't really broken into celebritydom the way blacks have, in any field(artistic, intellectual, and political). Their aptitude for "geeky" pursuits, such as mathematics, is more an adaptation to modern society than it is genuine passion - hence why they tend not to make advances in those fields. Society needs geeky professionals, so they might as well do that.

    I would say most white people have inner-drive. Even SWPLs have hobbies where they channel their real passion; and those without the money to engage in leisure activities, still get passionate about watching sports or politics. We see that in an ages-old Western cultural meme: "work sucks". Compare with the Confucianist ideal of fulfilling one's duty.

    -Curtis

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  4. "Made in Japan" used to be like "made in China" is today, but Japan kept growing and got rich. China and Vietnam are relatively poor and still modernizing. Korea is still poorer than the US but also still catching up.

    Singapore and Hong Kong and Taiwan (non-Communist Chinese states) make great products. Singapore is richer than the United States and still growing much faster than America. Taiwan makes our semiconductor electronics.

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  5. "Made in Japan" used to be like "made in China" is today, but Japan kept growing and got rich.
    --------------
    Before that, it was "Made in Germany". Based off the top of my head of my knowledge of antique smalls, china, holiday trinkets, toys, ephemera, etc. this was from the late 1800s until the 1920s-30s.
    __________

    Agnostic,
    I have no idea if you're theory is correct, but it makes me chuckle a little knowing that he will likely be horrified at the conclusions you've come to drawn on his own work.

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  6. Does this merge in with your theory of low Asian "conscientiousness" and tendency towards addictions when not monitored?

    The constant rising and falling of an individual's social status meant that he could not consider any set of tasks to be beneath him -- whatever it took to get through the here and now, and perhaps save up for later, he had to take.

    Wouldn't the logic of this indicate that if many Western people were peasants and trapped in that role, then you'd have got a dialed down sense of disgust because they had not choice but to accept their lot?

    The logic of Clark is that these people were replaced by aristocrats and middle classes, of course.

    I like the idea that social mobility selected for "flexible" personality type that would do whatever it took, but I can't say I would really see it as likely to select for decreased disgust as such.

    (indeed, in a situation which was replete with gross stuff that could make you sick, it would seem like a fitness advantage to have a better and more accurate physical disgust threshold. people talk about the decadent rich, not so much about the decadent peasant.)

    I think an environment such as Unz suggests would also select for an "all against all" competitive personality type - social bonds are easily broken by based on what gets one ahead, and there is more fitness advantage in trying to outmaneuver your neighbor (while trusting the government) than work with him against the rich.

    The idea of a meritocratic state of being where there is more to be gained by ambition selecting against ambition, and for securing your position against rising meritocrats, seems odd. It still seems like it should select for activity to do both.

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  7. Having thought about it more, I really like this notion of Jews (and possibly other peoples from caste like societies, such as Hindus) as having a kind of "constrained dynamism", where their role isn't up for negotiation, but being ambitious within it and stretching its limits is, while the Chinese have an "ambitious flexibility", where their role may change at all times, including in a downwards direction, and new social roles are up for grabs so its worth looking for new opportunities rather than bother to excel within your role. And Europeans are inbetween but probably more towards the Jewish end (Japanese being intermediate again but more towards the Chinese end).


    I wonder if this may help explain some of the cultural concepts of sense of self.


    Chinese famously have a contextual sense of self, where there is little stable sense of self and identity is up for renegotiation and redefinition depending on social role. You could see that this might be an advantage in a very society with very flexible roles (but is not necessarily particularly innovative overall). Why get too attached to building an identity when it might constrain you from taking on all these new roles? The sense of self is very flexible and potential for growth but has little central coherence and potential increase in scale.


    On the contrary, there are the Jews, who seem in stereotype to have quite a strong sense of self, but which is absolutely not up for negotiation at all. There is no flexibility as to their numerous eccentricities. Why be flexible when you're pretty much always going to be the same guy in the same situation? Better to try to be the biggest (brashest?) version of that guy you can be. Self acceptance is the name of the game.


    Intermediately, the Europeans. Their roles in society are quite fixed, so having a firm sense of identity is an advantage, but their roles are also quite flexible (because their is some mobility between castes / classes / jobs), so having the ability to renegotiate the self and reconceptualize the self is also an advantage. Not necessarily self consciousness but self awareness.

    Europeans have a self which is neither so flexible and impermanent as the Chinese, nor which is so rigid as the Jews. Unlike the Jewish sense of a strong personal identity, personal growth can mean change, not just more "self discovery" and "self actualization" (being yourself but bigger and better). This is what is called Western individualism.

    (The US may be interesting here as, as it is almost unquestionably both a culturally Judaized society and an offshoot of the most Western Europeans, it is on the transition point between the most extreme form of Western individualism and the Jewish sense of identity).

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  8. Bob Hope steps off the plane in Taiwan and flinches.

    "It's just shit, Bob," says his straight man.

    "Yes, but what have they DONE to it?"

    Rice paddies fertilized with human manure for five thousand years can't develop a tender sensibility.

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  9. "(indeed, in a situation which was replete with gross stuff that could make you sick, it would seem like a fitness advantage to have a better and more accurate physical disgust threshold. people talk about the decadent rich, not so much about the decadent peasant.)"

    Not really, if you had to handle such stuff directly. For instance, in India,the "untoucahble class" cleaned trash off the streets. In that case, those who less of a disgust reflex would def. be more successful.

    "I think an environment such as Unz suggests would also select for an "all against all" competitive personality type - social bonds are easily broken by based on what gets one ahead, and there is more fitness advantage in trying to outmaneuver your neighbor (while trusting the government) than work with him against the rich."

    Yeah, that makes sense.

    But that being said, European peasants were not in the same boat as Chinese ones. Medieval and Industrial Europe were arisotcracies. Because the working-class had little opportunity to advance, they would have been less pliable.

    -Curtis

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  10. Not really, if you had to handle such stuff directly. For instance, in India,the "untoucahble class" cleaned trash off the streets. In that case, those who less of a disgust reflex would def. be more successful.

    Even for them, for having an overpowering disgust "reflex" where its flight rather than fight, maybe yes they would have less.

    For having a sense that stuff is disgusting but has to be confronted, eliminated and cleansed, rather than just accepted apathetically or tuned out, probably they would have much more of this.

    But either way, occupations where disgusting stuff is a real hazard (peasant, toiletcleaner, etc.) would select for a stronger and more appropriate reaction to it, whether its an avoidant or confrontational response (depending the circumstances).

    Liberalism is connected to the disgust reaction. And the most Liberal group in the West, Ashkenazi Jews, have the evolutionary niche most removed from any kind of physically dirty work.

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  11. Oh, I thought cognitive specialization made people more autistic? Like engineer marrying engineer?

    So you could be a cognitive generalist and autistic?

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  12. Concerning the Chinese, you've discussed Tiger mothering, low social/emotional intelligence, a blunted disgust response, and now cognitive generalization?

    So in order to do something well, you'd need the opposite? No Tiger mothering, high emotional intelligence, a sharpened disgust reflex, and cognitive specialization?

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  13. Aren't there downsides to being cognitively specialized?

    You lose some abilities, no?

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  14. Asians never invented anything? Not gunpowder (including its use in war), the compass or printing?

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  15. quit arguing like a retard

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  16. The Overseas Chinese mercantile minorities are specialized, right? So are they more high achieving?

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  17. Have you read "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" by Amy Chua? It's really good, and touches on a lot of the themes you mention.

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  18. "quit arguing like a retard"

    Says the person who said that Chinese invented and discovered basically nothing.

    Maybe if you didn't profoundly overstate your arguments, you'd have less "retard" comments. I can understand wanting to push buttons and put edgy things out on the interwebs for pageviews, but you can't defend any of those edgy claims because they're so obviously untrue. I find that it lessens your credibility, but maybe that's just me.

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  19. Chinese and other Asian civilizations have been around a lot longer than Western civilization. It seems to me that the "amorality" and lack of disgust are simply adaptive traits of a civilization that has existed longer than ours.

    I mean not to offend here. But this suggests that the occidental is immature.

    The making of political causes out of issues, common to both the left and the right, that have no practical effect on day to day living, is definitely indicative of an immature nature.

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  20. "And the most Liberal group in the West, Ashkenazi Jews, have the evolutionary niche most removed from any kind of physically dirty work."

    Jews also run the porn business.

    -Curtis

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  21. Actually, those examples fit Agnostic's point. The Chinese were unable to utilize any of those inventions in a meaningful way; so, once again, its more like the autistic accidentally breaking a rule, or accidentally stumbling upon something new, rather than the genuinely creative rebel.

    -Curtis

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  22. " (including its use in war)"

    They didn't use it in war in a meaningful way, or else they would have armies of riflemen when the Europeans showed up, which they didn't.

    Think of a child mixing a bunch of different shit together in a bowl, and then accidentally coming up with gunpowder. "What happens if we light it on fire?" Small boys, unaware of demands on them, like to do all kinds of stuff which can inadvertantly come up with something real.

    Its not the same thing as real creativity, which involves a knowledge of trying to attempt something impossible, and therefore, courage. "We dare to go to the moon".

    -Curtis

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  23. "Maybe if you didn't profoundly overstate your arguments"

    Open up a book titled The 1000 Most Important Inventions, or whatever, and tell me how many were invented by the largest population on the planet.

    It's only overstated to the Asia-philes that roam the HBD-shere.

    East Asians were, are, and will be huge underachievers. They're lucky that WoW and Counterstrike weren't around centuries ago, or they wouldn't have figured out anything at all.

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  24. Europe pulled ahead with the industrial revolution, and that is a major point in its favor. But throughout most of history, east asia seems the more advanced and inventive. Some of that is presumably due to it being older and more densely populated.

    Rifles weren't even the common infantry weapon during America's war of independence. Asians developed unrifled infantry guns, cannons and even exploding shells. Europe learned about this technology from asia, but for a long time gunpowder weapons still weren't good enough to displace what they already had. One theory I've heard for how European gun technology outpaced that of the Ottomans is the metallurgical advances resulting from church bells, but I don't know how that accurate that is.

    Of course I'm going to concur with pzed. If you don't be called out for bullshitting, then don't bullshit. To claim that east asian civilization wasn't inventive is just idiotic on its face. There's a more narrow issue involving the "Great Divergence" from mere centuries back, it doesn't lend itself to blather about some perennial folkgeist.

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  25. "And the most Liberal group in the West, Ashkenazi Jews, have the evolutionary niche most removed from any kind of physically dirty work."

    Jews also run the porn business.


    Not the niche they evolved to fit tho (procuring prostitutes for Royals and aristos and general pimping was rather a sideline, I should think).

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  26. The Five Jays5/11/13, 1:31 PM

    Here's a question for you, Agnostic, are whites wired differently than other races with regard to fear?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXY5Qee1Qbs

    Notice how this Russian kid is smiling as he's hanging by his finger tips a 500 feet above the ground.

    He's not doing this for money or fame, but the sheer joyous adrenaline rush.

    Young white men dominate every extreme sport, from rock climbing to sky diving, to anything else you can name. Chinese workers will risk their lives working high-steel to make money, but whites will pay money to risk their lives.

    My theory about the white advantage is that, although we're not as smart as Asians, or as physical as Africans, we're crazy in ways that no other group can match.


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  27. "But throughout most of history, east asia seems the more advanced and inventive"

    Not really, the Chinese didn't use their inventions for practical purposes. It was more through childlike experimentation, rather than the focused problem-solving that Dusk in Autumn claims whites are better at it(and why we don't have to fear China). The application of Chinese inventions shows this more childlike nature - for instance, explosives were used to put on fireworks displays etc.

    Once again, we have the impression of a child entertaining himself. East Asians have long been said to have neotenous facial features, so maybe this fits in with that. Autistics have also been said to have more childlike features (neoteny.org).

    I guess I misspoke when I said that Asians/autistics aren't creative, but their creativity is more of a playful nature, based on unfocused experimentation. "What happens if I do such-and-such?" This is childlike and, as Agnostic points out, ignores demands on behavior.

    Europeans had and have more adultlike creativity - systematically trying to find the solution to a problem.

    East Asians gather lots of information to make sense of the world, as a child does(and as autistics are perpetually trapped into doing); but they seem unable to utilize it for focused problem-solving.

    (Note, obviously this doesn't apply to all East Asians).

    -Curtis

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  28. Why are East Asians more neotenous/childlike(even having more childish facial features)? Its probably because they are adapted as farmers in a hierarchical system. They were not responsible for defending themselves, but relied on pastoralist overlords(such as the Manchus, for instance).

    Children gather as much information as they can about the world, but are not creative as problem solvers, because their problems are managed by their parents.


    -Curtis

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  29. "My theory about the white advantage is that, although we're not as smart as Asians, or as physical as Africans, we're crazy in ways that no other group can match."

    I wouldn't say so, since Asians and blacks both do crazy, extreme things. I've read accounts of several Koreans who dropped dead playing Starcraft, for instance. Seriously, though, Asians have a tradition of dangerous behavior - for instance, ritual suicide in medieval and ancient Japan. Blacks, of course, lead riskier lives by many different measures.

    However, doing something extreme or dangerous is not the same thing as taking a calculated risk. The samurai were mandated by tradition to kill themselves in certain situations. A risk, by its nature, is doing something which is not traditional.

    As to the white obsession with extreme sports, this seems an indication of how subdued white culture has become. Because whites no longer tolerate violence among young men, and because whites are cocooned and go outside their houses less, there are less opportunities for white men to prove their gutsiness in their daily lives. They have to schedule their risk-taking, like good little cocooners.
    Many black men, on the other hand, live in a less cocooning, more confrontational, risk-taking community. They have no need to schedule an opportunity to show how tough they are, since they engage in dangerous behavior on a daily basis.

    -Curtis


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  30. Curtis, that's actually the opposite of the claim I referenced for how western science managed to outpace Asia. Eastern science was all about practicality (gunpowder was of course used for weapons, even if they also used it for fireworks), and it advanced by trying various things to see if they worked. Western science was often referred to as "natural philosophy", and its practitioners integrated it into an understanding of the broader world. Often, as with Aristotle, that understanding would be way off base and an empiricist would never have need to conjecture that far off. But around the Renaissance some folks got on the right track and the western style of logical system building & extrapolation became an asset.

    East asians have neotenous features, but I don't know if they have neotenous personalities. To borrow from Robin Hanson's "farmers vs foragers" theory, 21st century westerners are extending their adolescence through prolonged schooling and our wealth allows us to adopt the playful carefree attitude of children. East asians have been farmers for a very long time and still have farmer attitudes, harsh Malthusian existence doesn't leave much room for childishness.

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  31. Your posts on East Asians are really thought provoking. I've enjoyed all of them.

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  32. Ok, TGGP. Sorry I got some of my facts wrong.

    -Curtis

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  33. I wouldn't say you necessarily got your "facts" wrong, there's just another broad-brush summary which is rather popular among historians. There wasn't really a particular "fact" to be falsified.

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  34. Eastside School5/17/13, 4:14 PM

    Thanks for bringing this up. I used to actually buy into the whole "Asian superiority" myth, but with a little more experience I find them to be utterly inferior people, smart and hard working, of course, but without a trace of imagination or creativity or respect for others. Their corruption, and contempt for white Americans, goes without saying. I have a theory that may partly explain their mediocrity, my theory is slightly out there but please bear with me. I think it's Christianity, or lack thereof. Christianity posits the absolute and sacred importance of the individual, and Europeans have had two millenia of this indoctrination. Two millenia of the individual being told that he's important. Both scientific discovery and creative endeavour, any new idea, any advance, is based on the individual. On the other hand, the individual is meaningless in Asian culture. The group is everything, and the most horrible insult in Mandarin is to say that an individual's parents are not married to each other. I'll skip the effect that de-emphasizing the individual would have on the ethical environment, and its relationship to creating a high-trust society.

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  35. Yeah China is an older civilization, clearly more advanced than the west, it has it's genetic stock 'refreshed' with the mandate of heaven, where the aristocracy is replaced every few hundred years by those with balls.

    And if lack of disgust is true, it's a great benefit. The jews high disgust is to fault for their inability to do the dirtiest work, killing, which is why they get killed enmasse alot and also destroy nations if they come to makeup the elite. Amorality is a dark triad trait that improves your survival chances as, they see reality more clearly.

    And the social mobility of China was leagues ahead of Europe, so inventors literally had to create the Iphone if they had any chance to escape the underclass. Not so in China, you just have to have some talent and work hard, and you have your ticket to the good life.

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  36. "Amorality is a dark triad trait that improves your survival chances as, they see reality more clearly."

    Europeans are doing just fine without having been bred to poison infant formula or to run over babies multiple times to ensure death when they accidentally hit them while driving.

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  37. Really the biggest problem with asians is that they are just not that happy. (according to that happiness survey) A double edged sword of their amorality and realistic view of their world. Nihilism is a heavy burden and one that an entire nation shouldn't have to bear. But they do, the price of survival perhaps.

    Too much morality is bad for you too, largely driven by fear and a arguably morbid fascination with abstraction. Been there done that. The catholics seem to have the best mix, and also are the most mixed genetically. So perhaps the catholic portions of Europe will survive Islam. (Chile did help out Croatia, both catholic, with weapons in the Serbia/Kosovo crisis)

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