Men probably have systematic preferences for how to treat their children according to traits the children do or do not posses and a variety of cues that have evolved to ensure they invest in genetically related children.
But this may have little to do with conscious awareness of such information or emotional distress caused by it.
We know almost nothing about the effects of sex for children and teenagers.
“Teenagers” doesn’t really describe anything in the real world except perhaps a subculture.
Black people are actually genetically superior in important ways—they’ve had such bad luck from geography and racism that their advantages don’t show up as superior results.
Well we already have data about the social status of people who propose such theories.
It’s easy to recognize two reasons why my impression that New Guineans are smarter than Westerners may be correct. First, Europeans have for thousands of years been living in densely populated societies with central governments, police, and judiciaries. In those societies, infectious epidemic diseases of dense populations (such as smallpox) were historically the major cause of death, while murders were relatively uncommon and a state of war was the exception rather than the rule. Most Europeans who escaped fatal infections also escaped other potential causes of death and proceeded to pass on their genes. Today, most live-born Western infants survive fatal infections as well and reproduce themselves, regardless of their intelligence and the genes they bear. In contrast, New Guineans have been living in societies where human numbers were too low for epidemic diseases of dense populations to evolve. Instead, traditional New Guineans suffered high mortality from murder, chronic tribal warfare, accidents, and problems in procuring food.
Intelligent people are likelier than less intelligent ones to escape those causes of high mortality in traditional New Guinea societies. However, the differential mortality from epidemic diseases in traditional European societies had little to do with intelligence, and instead involved genetic resistance dependent on details of body chemistry. For example, people with blood group B or O have a greater resistance to smallpox than do people with blood group A. That is, natural selection promoting genes for intelligence has probably been far more ruthless in New Guinea than in more densely populated, politically complex societies, where natural selection for body chemistry was instead more potent.
… in mental ability New Guineans are probably genetically superior to Westerners …
Clearly Jared Diamond is a shunned outcast and publicly apologized for his inappropriate speculation.
“Underdog is actually better but has just had bad luck” or “overdog is only winning because he is evil” is a narrative humans love and are significantly biased towards. Unless overdogs actually consider it plausible that they will be threatened even they derive status from claiming they where just lucky. Or that most (but clearly not them personally) overdogs are unethical.
Nationalism is more destructive than religion, and almost as much of a collective hallucination.
Which the New Guinea quote is a sarcastic parody of. It’s a “one could just as easily say” gambit. I don’t have much time for GG&S, but you have to be willfully misreading that passage- or deaf to tone and context- to interpret it as a paen to the New Guinean master race.
I am a fan of Diamond’s work in general and GG&S in particular. It sure doesn’t feel like like I am “willfully misreading” him. I would lean more towards being “deaf to tone and context” (although it seems unlikely that I don’t understand the context, since I have read the entire book and watched the documentary based on it). On the other hand, I have been accused of being too literal in the past, so I can’t merely dismiss your criticism.
On a related note, I must admit that I was rather disappointed with Diamond for dismissing previous attempts to answer the “cargo question” for being racist rather than being false (which is question-begging).
“Teenagers” dosen’t really describe anything in the real world except perhaps a subculture.
Maybe not everywhere in the real world; but in most industrialized countries, a looooong time does elapse from puberty until independence from parents.
Men probably have systematic preferences for how to treat their children according to traits the children do or do not posses and a variety of cues that have evolved to ensure they invest in genetically related children.
But this may have little to do with conscious awareness of such information or emotional distress caused by it.
“Teenagers” doesn’t really describe anything in the real world except perhaps a subculture.
Well we already have data about the social status of people who propose such theories.
Clearly Jared Diamond is a shunned outcast and publicly apologized for his inappropriate speculation.
“Underdog is actually better but has just had bad luck” or “overdog is only winning because he is evil” is a narrative humans love and are significantly biased towards. Unless overdogs actually consider it plausible that they will be threatened even they derive status from claiming they where just lucky. Or that most (but clearly not them personally) overdogs are unethical.
Metternich would approve!
Interestingly, that Diamond quote comes shortly after his dismissal of previous attempts at “big history” for being “racist”.
Which the New Guinea quote is a sarcastic parody of. It’s a “one could just as easily say” gambit. I don’t have much time for GG&S, but you have to be willfully misreading that passage- or deaf to tone and context- to interpret it as a paen to the New Guinean master race.
I am a fan of Diamond’s work in general and GG&S in particular. It sure doesn’t feel like like I am “willfully misreading” him. I would lean more towards being “deaf to tone and context” (although it seems unlikely that I don’t understand the context, since I have read the entire book and watched the documentary based on it). On the other hand, I have been accused of being too literal in the past, so I can’t merely dismiss your criticism.
On a related note, I must admit that I was rather disappointed with Diamond for dismissing previous attempts to answer the “cargo question” for being racist rather than being false (which is question-begging).
Maybe not everywhere in the real world; but in most industrialized countries, a looooong time does elapse from puberty until independence from parents.
But this period doesn’t usually end in teen years.