Another Conversation

This time I would like to connect you to a conversation. Steve Sailer had two posts related to his review of Francis Fukuyama's new The Origins of Political Order, plus comment on the research on poverty and "depletable willpower" in an article at The New Republic. (Bird Dog at Maggie's linked to that earlier this week as well.) These posts included links to two fascinating sites I was previously unfamiliar with - hbd chick and Steve Hsu's Information Processing blog.

From sailer's original:

Unfortunately, Fukuyama never gets around to wrestling with the obvious question that has been central to the study of ethnic nepotism since Hamilton made explicit the genetic basis of tribal altruism in a 1975 paper: Who, exactly, are your kin? Where do your relatives end? The answer is: It depends. You grapple with this same question in your daily life, where the answers turn out to depend upon circumstance

hbd chick suggests that the forbidding of cousin marriage by the Roman Catholic church, centuries ago, contributed mightily to the greater cooperation among peoples and the expanded boundaries of what people considered "their tribe." This led to ultimately to ideas of nationhood founded on something other than relatively local blood ties. She references this a lot on her site, but perhaps it is best to start here, on the disappearance of European tribes.

Browsing her site, she also links to people kicking Steven Jay Gould, and discusses the weaknesses of moral arguments about what is "fair" in who lives on what land. My kind of blogger. And Sailer is also kicking Gould for the same reason this week, as is anthropologist John Hawks, who I have linked to before.


Hsu's site speaks to intelligence testing, racial differences - with an
emphasis on asian vs white - wealth distribution, the personality needed
for startups and the crossover dribble in basketball, Yeah, I'm in the right
territory with this guy, too.

And a really good site leads you pretty quickly to excellent commenters, to other sites, asf. I'll be browsing these for awhile,