Although this topic is fascinating, I just can’t help feeling really sad when reading about North East Asian demographic trends.
The article also made me wonder if Peter has researched or written anything about Islamic software being imposed on the hardware of us ”WEIRDos”? In my opinion, this is the defining conflict in the West.
For example, many people in Sweden have an aversion to the increasing prevalence of the hijab/niqab/burqa. Imposing this culture on our egalitarian one feels like abuse, because we have this long history of women’s rights dating back to the Viking Age (if not further), and in general, much about this Islamic mindset just feels unnatural for Europeans.
It is unnatural. I am no longer a practicing Christian but I have no problem with the ringing of church bells on Sunday. That's part of our culture. But we should not allow Islamic calls to prayer in the name of "fair play." Public calls to prayer, like church bells, are a means to assert control over the culture, and our culture has been historically Christian.
As for the extinction-levels of fertility in East Asia, I too feel sad. We are losing those people who have contributed the most to human advancement. We may be entering a new dark age.
In North America, fertility has declined sharply in high-IQ groups. This decline is starting to bottom out, and we're seeing even sharper declines in lower-IQ groups. But this self-correcting process is being obstructed by — wait for it — "social conservatives" seeking to ban not only abortion but also IVF and surrogacy.
For now, IVF and surrogacy are the only things we have to reverse the fertility decline among high-IQ individuals. Perhaps Christianity will change its ways and become less anti-white and more hbd-friendly, but I don't see that happening any time soon. Until then, we have to rely on high-tech tricks that tend to raise fertility among those people who have more foresight and lower time preference.
My problem with IVF is that there might be an unintended consequence that the high-IQ people will delay having children even more, feeling misguidedly sure that it will work when they’re something like 40+, when in reality is seems to have a fairly high failure rate (but perhaps that has and is getting better).
Personally, I think the policy of Mongolia or Kazakhstan (can’t remember which one) is the way to go, where they give awards to mothers that have had many children. This has increased the fertility rate above replacement levels, and seems to work by making it more high status to have children, and high IQ people are probably more sensitive to status.
The only problem with this, in my country, is that we initially would end up giving many awards to mothers of multiple children in immigrant communities, who we for obvious reasons don’t want to encourage that much.
The "hero mother" policy seems to work only in countries that are still socially conservative. As they become westernized, it becomes less and less effective. In Canada or Sweden, the same policy would be most effective in socially conservative groups, like Muslim immigrants.
In Canada, one in six couples has infertility problems, and these problems (as in our case) are not necessarily age-related. Today, the West needs a "quick fix" because we don't have enough time to turn our culture around. It's like the Titanic and the iceberg, we can try to change course, but there may not be enough time to avoid a collision.
The decline in High IQ fertility is not an issue of economic means, but a choice in career & wealth over family. It’s a choice and they choose self. Hopefully we can have a future genesis moment where family and relationships replace financial wealth and hard assets as the gold standard of happiness.
Yes, in the long run, there will be selection for people who can replace themselves demographically while maintaining a high-trust society with high mean IQ and low levels of interpersonal violence.
Unfortunately, those three words are critical — "in the long run." The elites throughout the Western world are committed to mass immigration, even in little countries like Latvia. A lot of deprogramming has to be done, within a relatively short span of time.
"Hopefully we can have a future genesis moment where family and relationships replace financial wealth and hard assets as the gold standard of happiness."
You seem to imply that highly intelligent people are avaricious. This is not correct; people of high intelligence tend to relish gaining knowledge, not wealth.
Selection for higher cognitive ability tends to coincide with selection for lower time preference. If you have low time preference, you will be intimidated by the costs of having a family, since you are more aware of the full lifetime cost. So you may postpone having children until it's too late to have any.
This is partly why I lean toward some "leftist" remedies. Our economy has become designed for individuals who have as little baggage as possible. Families are increasingly a poor fit for our current economic model.
Yes, we currently trade off fertility for economic value. ie there is an opportunity cost to having a family that our economy is not pricing correctly.
However, those people who appreciate the consequences of [ultra] below replacement birth rates and who also have lower time preference will, given the opportunity, have more kids on the basis that they'll own the future. Ofc this requires they have a positive agentic, as opposed to nihilistic, model of the future.
"Selection for higher cognitive ability tends to coincide with selection for lower time preference. If you have low time preference, you will be intimidated by the costs of having a family, since you are more aware of the full lifetime cost."
Absolutely, I didn't mean to imply that highly intelligent had no concern for money. But their concern is not of the avarice type; it's a big difference.
As a society, we should encourage procreation among people who are stable, intelligent, responsible, and honest. At the level of each couple, we should inform them about their options for childbearing, and any possible genetic risks.
Beyond that, however, I wouldn't want to go further. I don't think that people have reached the point where they fully understand what it takes to create an advanced society. For now, it is sufficient to prevent them from making stupid mistakes with irreversible consequences.
"I don't think that people have reached the point where they fully understand what it takes to create an advanced society."
Well, then it would be a great idea to work toward informing them. The current knowledge needed for genetic enhancement is not sufficient, but the groundwork is there, and research should be continued. I regret that I will not live long enough to see great advancements in the ascension of humanity, but I do believe it will happen.
I disagree, for the coming decades at the very least, we need to stick to selection at the phenotypic level. GWAS studies show that many hundreds [and more] of genes contribute to various desirable traits. Our current, and likely near future, knowledge of these interactions is way short of that needed for active genetic interventions.
" Our current, and likely near future, knowledge of these interactions is way short of that needed for active genetic interventions."
I think we are closer than you think, but the advantage for humanity is tremendous. It is not necessary to know all the genes involved in a polygenic trait to benefit. At the current time, through IVF, it is possible to select for some of the genes involved in intelligence.
I think the problem with many (white) women is that they think of morality in terms of care.
If someone is an Islamist, for example, that is just because of a ”misunderstanding” in their view, and if we take better care of the person in question (e.g. by better schooling, housing, healthcare etc.), then they will do better and become just like us.
So in a lot of feminized societies (like ours — because in many organizations and institutions in the West now, women dominate) you end up with this problem that you can’t deal effectively with free riders and anti-social elements.
That's the main thing that I'm dealing with now. Just seeing a tiny bit of positivity from white women can inspire me. Women in societies in the past kept women in check too. Matriarchal figures would literally beat the shit out of younger women who were misbehaving. I would like to see aggressive behavior from white women who support their culture against others
Anecdotal - but I'm a White woman who cares to a consuming degree. I find there are others like me. *And I completely agree with Monkey Brains - if White men will simply LEAD, White women will follow.
And lastly pagan women would laugh at you. Boudicca formed an army largely of women and the dregs of society because the men had become demoralized. And no I'm not advocating men being passive, but if you cannot act like a functional adult you are essentially an animal
Yes, Boudicca was an amazing woman. And agreed, women have just as much responsibility as men do in the replacement of their people. We function, generally, differently - so the means by which men and women take this responsibility and initiative will differ.
The initiative is to support your men, and men to support their women. Aggression and passion should be the norm for both genders. Again Pagan women in European history seem to have understood this. They were aggressive, outspoken, willing to fight and die. Both genders should be able to do this. What initiative are white women taking? At large they consume materialist trends, are passive when there is open evidence of their people being killed, and even worse will side with other races over us.
This is a strange comment. We may also argue "massive damage" White men have placed on White women via addictions to porn, by voting for ridiculous politicians that made 1913 FED Reserve possible - and more. But this is a rather unproductive line of thinking for those who care about White unity between men and women. I'd also add White women have gotten the bulk of the propaganda geared toward Whites for 100+ years. They were the #1 targets. This isn't an excuse - it is simply an explanation. And, again, White unity matters - so I'm unsure wtf your commentary here is meant to work up to - but good luck to you ~
I don't disagree that white men have done shit that's helped fuck up society. That's not the point. The point is why aren't white women showing their open support by aggressively condemning people who hate on whites, in this case men? Why don't they shame interracial couples?
Yes of course white men are to blame for watching porn, but don't take away the agency of the women in porn. They have lots of power. They could stop filming right now and affect the companies tremendously
IQ has everything to do with civilizations greatness, but you need more than that of course. You need to be intelligent but also courageous, audacious and curious.
I agree, but one must consider what 'civilizational greatness' means. Is it measured by the ability to conquer others, or to build a better society for your people?
Main* . While European colonialism was the most benign form in history, and gave to those countries much more than they deserve I'm not particularly interested in Europe doing it again. But we should have the POTENTIAL to destroy everyone if need be.
They spent so much on their colonies and never got the money back. They introduced medicine, infrastructure, technology etc which raised the living standards
British and German colonialism in particular had an indirect approach to rule, allowing tribes to maintain their regions and power as long as they didn't enslave people or practice human sacrifice
On a microcosm, imagine a city state like Constantinople (the only size I'd be interested in ruling) that is so far advanced technologically that it can annihilate Israel or Iran equally without needing much of an invasion force. Perhaps anti gravity propulsion like the Nazis worked on and special teams, but besides that long range weapons that annihilate countries.
As an East Asian, one thing I'd like to add is that geography plays a bigger factors than a lot people give it credit for.
East Asia has massive basins, which in combination with reliable weather basically eliminated food scarcity in large. The plains of East Asia are massive and concentrated near large rivers create huge population imbalance. East Asia's mountain range covers the plains, not divide them. That kind of geography fosters larger, united, and self sustaining states (China) instead of multiple fragmented ones in Europe.
During most of Chinese history, the northern invaders were a massive issue. At one point, the Mongols successfully annexed a divided China. Its central position also left it vulnerable from all sides, so stability is an uphill battle. China has to bend its culture to great extends to maintain stability. Further expansions and China wouldn't have enough firepower to guard its territories from foreign nations and local rebellions. Hence, China grew to be opportunistic instead of ambitious. Their territorial integrity depends on careful troop distribution so risky expeditions were unaffordable. That's why they use their newly developed weaponry defensively instead of offensively. China was simply too big to expand.
Smaller continental East Asian states (modern day Korea, Vietnam) are subject to Chinese influence and depended on China, thus adopting the conservative culture. Their expansions, similar to China, were also opportunistic since they were sandwiched by formidable nations that can annex their territories at any time. They couldn't afford to expand proactively.
Japan has less Chinese influence due to its isolation and geographically similar to Europe, so it underwent its own feudalism. After the period, it also sailed to other nations, but those places either have strong local kingdoms, European establishment, or resource poor. Its failures to annex Korea deterred the conservative shogunate from further expansions. It's only until the Meiji era that it dropped Confucian conservatism and went through industrialization, followed by immediate expansion, though their territorial gains were lost following WW2. Japan could and did expand just like any other colonial power.
In contrast, Europe were divided geographically, enough to deter frequent expansion but not enough to enough to stop third party interference. The basin distribution were also fragmented, so the developing powers have to clash against one another to expand. The Renaissance's prosperity boom and new technology created a massive incentive to expand instead of trade, but waging war against the equally developed neighbors is too costly, so naval nations started annexing their less advanced trade partners and thus marking the start of colonialism.
It's not simply just culture. Their geography shaped a stability first culture and created unchecked neighbors, which in turn stifled territorial growth despite advanced weaponry.
One could similarly argue that Great Britain had limited opportunities for geographic expansion. On one side, the country was hemmed in by France — the most powerful state in Europe at the time. On the other side, there was the barrier of the Atlantic Ocean. Moreover, the main ocean current — the Gulf Stream — flowed toward Great Britain, and not away, thus further blocking trans-oceanic expansion.
Yet the British overcame all of these obstacles. They created the largest-ever global empire.
France is kept in check by the Holy Roman Empire and later the German Empire. If other european powers left France alone, it and Great Britain would have multiple hundred years wars.
Great Britain is, despite everything, still miles ahead militarily compared to the measly locals they conquered. They used the tail end of the Gulf Stream to propel themselves (thus using the current to its own advantage). Their geography is exactly their advantage, not their obstacle. Their small size and flat terrain makes it easy to centralize, their trees are top tier for ship building, their ores are vast and easily accessible, their land is good enough to sustain a strong navy but not enough to confine growth inward, their proximity to the Atlantic allows them to easily roam around, etc.
Are we talking about the period of colonial expansion? By that time, the Holy Roman Empire was too fragmented to be a major obstacle to France. It was really Great Britain that became France's main opponent, followed by Prussia and Austro-Hungary.
To travel from Great Britain to the American colonies, British ships had to go against the current. This was, incidentally, a major deterrent to travel across the Atlantic during early times.
The British navy was dependent on timber from Canada and Russia. There wasn't enough at home.
There is a lot of post hoc in your reasoning. If I were an alien and had only a map of the world, I wouldn't guess that Great Britain became the world's leading power.
I don't think saying that Great Britain has good geography and sufficient natural resources qualifies as a post hoc argument.
The HRE has never been a centralized empire. I was referring to the German states within the empire, which are in no way obscure.
The British already circumvented the westerlies by catching the trade winds. The maritime intelligence of the Iberans was acquired by other European powers by late 1590s, a decade before the first settlement in America. The currents and wind aren't unidirectional, obviously.
The British only relied on foreign wood from the 17th century, almost 200 years since the commencement of their overseas ventures.
If we're talking about the very beginning of colonial expansion, in the 15th century, then we're talking about Western Europe in general, and not just England. Ultimately, the cause was the replacement of feudalism by the market economy, which was much more dynamic and which enabled the expansion of the middle class.
This was a gradual process, but the main trigger was the Black Death of the mid-14th century, which caused massive depopulation — particularly among people who had previously been embedded in lifelong feudal relationships. Such people became independent agents who could sell their goods and services to the highest bidder. The result was an economic expansion that supported the new voyages of discovery.
Alongside this economic expansion, we see a rise in mean IQ from the 14th to the 19th centuries — as shown by ancient DNA, and apparently due to the higher rate of natural increase within the middle class.
"Alongside this economic expansion, we see a rise in mean IQ from the 14th to the 19th centuries — as shown by ancient DNA, and apparently due to the higher rate of natural increase within the middle class."
Hasn't European intelligence been flat for at least the past 2000 years?
This is persuasive, but these explanations appear to be second-order effects of underlying genetic differences. In the race realist paradigm, IQ isn’t everything.
Specifically, there is a compelling body of research showing babies of European descent are more reactive to stimuli than babies of East Asian descent. It isn’t hard to see how this could manifest in a disinclination to embark on adventures of conquest, to rebel against bad emperors, to challenge the status quo, to radically innovate, etc., despite the high IQ. Of course there are plenty of exceptions where Asians have done such things, but the overall trend seems obvious to me.
The abstract to one paper provides as follows:
“Four-month-old infants from Boston, Dublin, and Beijing were administered the same battery of visual, auditory, and olfactory stimuli to evaluate differences in level of reactivity. The Chinese infants were significantly less active, irritable, and vocal than the Boston and Dublin samples, with American infants showing the highest level of reactivity. The data suggest the possibility of temperamental differences between Caucasian and Asian infants in reactivity to stimulation.”
You may be right. There is a general trend toward social and cultural isolationism in East Asia. This may simply be a response to the adverse effects of foreign religions, like Buddhism and Christianity, or it may be older. East Asians have followed their own trajectory of developing high-trust societies, and this shyness, often bordering on social withdrawal, may be inherent to that trajectory.
European genetics suggest we had the highest IQs coupled with a much more aggressive exploratory mentality. Christian doctrine rewarded exploring the cosmos, for the sake of God. Chinese mentality was the opposite, afraid of exploration and challenging the order of society. The west always had the right ying and yang of rebellion and order
This might tie in with the Imperial Exam, which rewarded intellectual conformity and penalized independent thinking. There was also the fear of foreign religions that would persuade people to seek advancement in the afterlife, rather than in this world.
Very interesting take on motives for expansion and hegemony.
From my perspective, I am sympathetic to distrust of both religion and government. Throughout history, there has been contention between government and religion because both seek to control people. This was certainly the case in Europe. Religious leaders and monarchs were at each other's throats until they learned that they could compromise and share control.
My take would be different. Westies had a kind of adventurousness, which is hard to put into words accurately. Conquistadors regularly violated Christian norms about how to treat natives and were at odds with the Church. Many were willing to leave their home country forever and settle far away. Many were willing to marry a native woman. Many were religious heretics escaping persecution. This smacks of individualism, which likely came from the ban on cousin marriage. Note that for the aristocracy it was not really enforced. But these adventurers were not aristocrats.
I was going to suggest that mid-19th-century Europeans might actually have had similar genotypic IQ to east-asians, given that western fertility has been dysgenic for about 150 years.
I guess cultural/religious/historical/institutional factors (or other personality diffs) might explain why they didn't split the planet between them, although I'm a little curious as to why China didn't just ban/regulate/tax Christianity like it did with the Buddhist monasteries, or why the allegedly anti-natal aspects of Christianity didn't wreck western demographics & labour participation. I dunno, maybe Peter can clarify.
Mean IQ seems to have peaked in Western Europeans and North Americans around 1910. At that time, it may have been even higher than East Asian IQ. There is no consensus on this point because (1) the reality of the Flynn Effect is still debated and (2) there seem to be qualitative differences between East Asian and European IQ.
China did attempt to suppress Christianity at several points in its history, but not in the same total way Japan did during the Tokugawa era.
Chinese bans on Christianity:
1812 — Jiaqing Emperor decree: Missionaries and Chinese converts involved in Christian activity were to be executed, imprisoned, or exiled.
Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901): Thousands of missionaries and Chinese Christians were killed; Christianity was violently targeted.
After 1949, the Communist Party treated Christianity as a foreign imperialist threat. Churches were confiscated, foreign missionaries deported, and ties to the Vatican and foreign churches cut.
Cultural Revolution (1966–1976): full ban. All religious activity was banned, including Christianity. Churches were destroyed, clergy persecuted, and worship forbidden.
As for the anti-natalist aspects of Christianity (celibacy of priests, monks, and nuns), these were offset by the increase in stable procreative relationships within the higher social classes. While high-ranking men still had mistresses, they had to show some discretion. Marriage was considered to be normal and expected for all men, unless they wished to enter the priesthood or become monks.
"Mean IQ seems to have peaked in Western Europeans and North Americans around 1910."
This has been discussed in some of your articles before, and I agree. This would imply that those of this peak were born a generation before. You have supplied empirical analysis, which was the way to go. I used advancements in theoretical physics as a proxy for IQ (crude, I'll admit), but it does seem to agree with your findings.
The Icelandic data indicate that the cognitive decline had already begun among those participants who were born in the 10-year group centered on 1915, so the peak was some time earlier. We really need ancient DNA to get a firm date.
Also, different populations may have peaked at different times. I suspect the English were the first to reach peak IQ.
Kong, A., Frigge, M. L., Thorleifsson, G., Stefansson, H., Young, A. I., Zink, F., ... & Stefansson, K. (2017). Selection against variants in the genome associated with educational attainment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(5), E727-E732. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1612113114
East Asians tend to be more relational and less abstract in their way of thinking. This may be associated with the cognitive demands of rice farming versus those of wheat farming. See:
Frost, P. (2020). The large society problem in Northwest Europe and East Asia. Advances in Anthropology, 10(3), 214-234. https://doi.org/10.4236/aa.2020.103012
It is also possible that the Imperial Exam became a selection pressure for a certain type of learning that discourages innovation and emphasizes "correct" answers.
Christianity might not have wrecked Western European fertility because the percent of people joining the church varied inversely with marginal farm labor productivity. As population grew, the additional peasants worked less fertile land or overworked existing land. Under those conditions, many would join the church. Those that joined the church had markedly lower fertility, putting the brakes on over-population. (There’s more to it than people joining the church — see https://grokipedia.com/page/Western_European_marriage_pattern.)
The black plague was, from an economic historian’s perspective, a fascinating reversal of the trend—population plummeted, so good land was cheap and peasants made out like bandits for a couple generations. They moved to where underworked land was (causing their feudal lords to complain bitterly about their lost serfs), married younger, had bigger families, and generally joined the church less.
A disproportionate number of priests, monks, and nuns came from the aristocracy. They played a key role in creating what would later become our educational and health care system, in addition to preserving the intellectual legacy of Antiquity, but they didn't have children. If they had been allowed to procreate, Europe might have recovered faster from the cognitive decline of the Imperial Era.
Of course, waiting isn't so bad if change is in the right direction. Between a third and a half of all Europeans perished during the Black Death. Tragically, we couldn't import Somalis, so we had to wait three centuries for the population to recover.
“A disproportionate number of priests, monks, and nuns came from the aristocracy.” I’m not sure we can say that. Here are things I am sure we can say: Some orders (like the Cistercians) were heavily noble. The leadership of most monasteries and convents were noble. The priests, monks, and nuns that we know about are disproportionately aristocratic, because they were literate. Choir monks were (almost by definition) heavily aristocratic. Many convents survived by taking dowries from women who joined, which means they had to be monied at least. And the practice of oblate would tend to militate for slight noble overrepresentation in many countries (but not, for example, in Poland).
But that doesn’t tell us much about the overall class-of-origin breakdown within the clergy as a whole. For example, most orders had lay brothers, who were the ones who worked the order’s direct agricultural holdings and did the scut work for the nobility within the order. And the mendicant orders were hugely popular with men and women of peasant origin — and they were far larger than the noble orders like the Cistercians.
So we’re nobles over represented in the clergy as a whole? Maybe. I haven’t seen any academic piece saying so (and I’ve spent a chunk of this afternoon looking). Have you?
Janin, H., & Carlson, U. (2023). Medieval Monks and Monasteries. McFarland.
p. 14 - "Monasteries contributed significantly to social stability in both Western and Eastern Europe by offering honorable careers to the unmarried second sons and the daughters of rich aristocratic families."
p. 15 - "Virtually all of them [mendicant friars] came from what we would now call middle-class families, were relatively well-educated ..."
I'm a little confused as to why second sons would have difficulty getting honourable careers outside of the friary. Was setting up shop as an artisan or merchant beneath them, or something, assuming there wasn't a war on somewhere?
I remember Galton being pretty ambivalent on this topic as well. In theory the medieval monastic system could have been rigged up as a kind of religiously-motivated eugenic welfare system, where the poorest and most destitute were sheltered and provided for but wouldn't have the opportunity to have children, or it could have wound up as a way to sterilise a significant fraction of the literati elite, or some combination of both.
The ancient DNA evidence (which is still limited for the early Middle Ages) suggests that European cognitive evolution was neither positive nor negative before the Black Death of the 14th century. It was essentially in a situation of stasis. This is consistent with economic and social history: Europe, especially Western Europe, was pushing up against the limits of feudalism. Further progress was becoming difficult.
I fondly remember you denied that Christian celibacy slowed European cognitive re-growth - more precisely, you refused my point that it was Late Antiquity difficulties and not Christianity that culled the half-Syrians that destroyed Roman IQ in the Imperial Age. Glad you changed your mind.
Mean IQ declined in central Italy during the Imperial Era. In my opinion, this decline was driven by a collapse of fertility within the elite. Others, notably Davide Piffer, attribute the IQ decline to the cura annonae (the distribution of free or subsidized bread to the poor of Rome), as well as immigration from the eastern provinces.
I disagree with Davide for three reasons:
- preliminary analysis of ancient DNA from Greece shows a similar IQ decline during the Imperial Era, yet Greece did not benefit from the cura annonae
- skeletal evidence indicates a decline in physical health during the Imperial Era throughout the Roman Empire. Whatever the benefits of the cura annonae, they were not sufficient to offset other negative trends.
- The fertility decline within the elite was widely noted at the time
To settle this disagreement, we need a full analysis of the Greek data, as well as data from other parts of the Empire.
There was no "culling of half-Syrians." When the capital was moved from Rome to Constantinople in 330, most of Rome's civil service left as well, including many Greek-speaking people with origins in the eastern provinces. Does this exodus explain the reversal of the IQ decline? I'm skeptical. The existing data don't show a lower mean IQ in the Greek-speaking eastern provinces. Again, this debate won't be settled until we have a full analysis of the Greek data.
I never denied that the celibacy of priests, monks and nuns had a negative impact on mean IQ. My position was, and still is, that this negative impact was offset by the rise in fertility within the elite, who now had to conform to Christian moral norms, which re-normalized marriage, forbade divorce and forbade non-procreative sexual relationships.
Only one point: "When the capital was moved from Rome to Constantinople in 330, most of Rome's civil service left as well, including many Greek-speaking people with origins in the eastern provinces." the imperial bureaucracy itself was minuscle in regards of the numbers of Oriental slaves Rome imported after the Second Punic War. Genetic datas (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aay6826) described a total upheval of I century (BC and AD) Rome (the city) population, the original Italic population was litteraly wiped off, only ruling class tombs were autochthon-"settled" and the "settlers" came from the rural population. The moder "Great Replacement" is nothing more than the farcical second coming of original Roman Replacement - something that give a curious insight of the "Red Caesar" meme about Trump.
High IQ is not, in itself, a sufficient factor to create a civilization. In most cases, it has arisen within trading peoples that exist within a much larger host population, with relations between the two being, at best, characterized by indifference.
Europe and East Asia are unusual in that selection for higher IQ transformed the entire population. This happened for two main reasons:
- Boundaries between social classes were not rigid (as in India and/or ethnically stratified societies). The demographic surplus of the higher classes, notably the middle class, could move downward and eventually replace the lower classes.
- Religion became sufficiently strong to control sexual behavior within the higher social classes, thus countering the fertility decline that tends to afflict higher classes when they achieve a certain level of material affluence.
Yes, you're right. I may be overreacting to certain people, like Elon Musk and Richard Hanania, who see IQ as the most important factor in building a nation.
If you wish to build a high-trust society, you also need empathy, guilt proneness, rule following, and xenophobia.
Admittedly, empathy clashes with xenophobia. People have to understand that empathy cannot be unconditional. If your empathy is being manipulated, you must exit that relationship and shun that person.
In a study of alleles associated with educational attainment (a reliable proxy for cognitive ability), Piffer (2019) found that the Chinese scored higher than any European population, except for Ashkenazi Jews:
Piffer, D. (2019). Evidence for Recent Polygenic Selection on Educational Attainment and Intelligence Inferred from Gwas Hits: A Replication of Previous Findings Using Recent Data. Psych, 1, 55-75. https://doi.org/10.3390/psych1010005
Already suspect is the exception of Jews, which throws this whole study in a bind. Jews don't have higher iqs. All studied that suggested that have been debunked, and conflated verbal IQ as the best measure of intelligence
Please read the study. It's about the genetic data, not data from IQ tests. Ashkenazi Jews are more likely to have alleles associated with higher educational attainment.
Thousands of genes have been linked to cognitive ability. If we know the alleles at these genes, we can reliably estimate the mean IQ of a population. By "reliably" I mean a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.935 (EA3) or 0.997 (EA4).
These alleles have been identified through two studies. The first one identified alleles at 1,271 loci through a genome-wide association study of over one million people. The second one identified alleles at 3,952 loci through a genome-wide association study of about three million people.
References
Lee, J. J., Wedow, R., Okbay, A., Kong, E., Maghzian, O., Zacher, M., ... & Cesarini, D. (2018). Gene discovery and polygenic prediction from a genome-wide association study of educational attainment in 1.1 million individuals. Nature Genetics, 50(8), 1112-1121. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-018-0147-3
Okbay, A., Wu, Y., Wang, N., Jayashankar, H., Bennett, M., Nehzati, S. M., ... & Esko, T. (2022). Polygenic prediction of educational attainment within and between families from genome-wide association analyses in 3 million individuals. Nature Genetics, 54(4), 437-449. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-022-01016-z
Ok. Genes do not function as switches. iq is hereditary. But there are no clear genes that are associated with it. Dennis Noble has exploded this concept. The system is genetic, the specific genes aren't
Thousands of alleles are associated with differences in IQ. Keep in mind that the word "associated" is a very weak term. It doesn't indicate a cause-and-effect relationship.
This doesn't mention the tendency of Confucian bureaucrats to starve the military of funds and talent and their incentive to discriminate against merchants
Yes, merchants were viewed with suspicion and considered less honorable than landowners, but this was also a characteristic of European societies until the post-medieval period. The expansion of the Western European middle class from the 14th century onward was both a cause and effect of a new attitude toward merchants.
I wouldn't say that Confucian bureaucrats "starved" the military of funds. They imposed limits, as was the case with the Roman Empire.
The pull of a universalizing religion was so strong in the east that there were too many monks and nuns sucking resources and renouncing family. Yet it was the success of a universalizing religion in pulling people's allegiances away from family that drove the dominance of western Europe?
First of all I wouldn't trust current china with the correct representation of their average natinal IQ.
Secondly I don't think one can extrapolate lineally the contemporary IQ score into the past and analyze a culture based in this assumption.
Thirdly for the ussumption the average IQ of nations is represented by a bell curve, Asian ones could have steeper inclinations than European ones. Which would mean Asians gather more arround the mean, while Europe exels on the extremes. So more dumb but also more genious people.
This isn't extrapolation from the present. We have ancient DNA from different periods of Chinese history. The Chinese population seems to have reached its current IQ level around a millennium and a half ago. I discussed the ancient DNA data in one of my previous articles:
Korean Christians have *more* kids than the national average. While in China, there are hardly any Christians. In Nort Korea tfr is at 1,4 - with zero Christians and no *Western software* running. I am anti socialism, but even I would not call their dynnastic totalitarism 'socialist'
There is no government-published data on South Korean fertility by religion. At present, Christian Koreans seem to have only a modestly higher fertility.
In any case, when I talk about "Western software" I'm not talking solely or even mainly about Christianity. I'm talking about the individualistic mindset of modern Western culture.
North Korea has a fertility rate of 1.7-1.8 children per woman. South Korea has a fertility rate less than half that.
I talked to a young South Korean father of two. Who was on a Christian vacation in the Philippines. His impression was strongly that he and his wife would not have more than one kid if not for their faith/church.
Of course, I wish for more data but I am willing to "bet on it' (Bryan Caplan substack), he is right.
SorryI misremembered the NK TFR , you are right ofc - below 2
"Kim Jong-un cries as he asks North Korean mothers to have more babies"
A third of South Koreans are Christian. If their fertility is close to replacement, the non-Christians must be having zero babies. Keep in mind that the national fertility rate is 0.76 (2026).
My claim is 'more than the national average'. 500$?
Here in Germany, TFR of German couples without any migration background is indeed significantly lower than the average. Looking around in my kids' classrooms: 'German' TFR might be closer to 1 than statistics suggest. Not that I care.
Undoubtedly there is some difference in fertility between Christian Koreans and non-religious Koreans.
My argument is simply that the individualism of Western culture has a stronger effect on East Asians than on Westerners themselves. This individualism is more developed in post-Christian Western culture than in its earlier forms.
"Frost does touch on individualism himself, but it functions as a supporting detail in his argument rather than the fulcrum of it. There is real truth in what he says. But underneath both of those things, the rise of fair institutions and the willingness to engage with outsiders, sits something more basic and more psychological: individualism. Joseph Henrich makes this case at length in his book WEIRD, showing how the medieval church, by breaking up extended family and clan networks across Europe, nudged people toward seeing themselves as independent individuals rather than as extensions of a family line. That shift, he argues, rewired how people thought, felt guilt, and made decisions."
The Emperors of the Roman Empire in the East (Byzantium), also had a problem with too many monks and nuns. I think regulation and taxation helped to remedy it as well.
> If as race realists seem to believe higher intelligence reliably produces civilizational superiority, then East Asian civilizations should have dominated the world.
The conclusion does not follow from the premise. Civilizational superiority is not the same as national warfare dominance (or necessitates an interest for it).
Maybe it's even the more stupid and agressive that tend to dominate.
Although this topic is fascinating, I just can’t help feeling really sad when reading about North East Asian demographic trends.
The article also made me wonder if Peter has researched or written anything about Islamic software being imposed on the hardware of us ”WEIRDos”? In my opinion, this is the defining conflict in the West.
For example, many people in Sweden have an aversion to the increasing prevalence of the hijab/niqab/burqa. Imposing this culture on our egalitarian one feels like abuse, because we have this long history of women’s rights dating back to the Viking Age (if not further), and in general, much about this Islamic mindset just feels unnatural for Europeans.
It is unnatural. I am no longer a practicing Christian but I have no problem with the ringing of church bells on Sunday. That's part of our culture. But we should not allow Islamic calls to prayer in the name of "fair play." Public calls to prayer, like church bells, are a means to assert control over the culture, and our culture has been historically Christian.
As for the extinction-levels of fertility in East Asia, I too feel sad. We are losing those people who have contributed the most to human advancement. We may be entering a new dark age.
In North America, fertility has declined sharply in high-IQ groups. This decline is starting to bottom out, and we're seeing even sharper declines in lower-IQ groups. But this self-correcting process is being obstructed by — wait for it — "social conservatives" seeking to ban not only abortion but also IVF and surrogacy.
For now, IVF and surrogacy are the only things we have to reverse the fertility decline among high-IQ individuals. Perhaps Christianity will change its ways and become less anti-white and more hbd-friendly, but I don't see that happening any time soon. Until then, we have to rely on high-tech tricks that tend to raise fertility among those people who have more foresight and lower time preference.
My problem with IVF is that there might be an unintended consequence that the high-IQ people will delay having children even more, feeling misguidedly sure that it will work when they’re something like 40+, when in reality is seems to have a fairly high failure rate (but perhaps that has and is getting better).
Personally, I think the policy of Mongolia or Kazakhstan (can’t remember which one) is the way to go, where they give awards to mothers that have had many children. This has increased the fertility rate above replacement levels, and seems to work by making it more high status to have children, and high IQ people are probably more sensitive to status.
The only problem with this, in my country, is that we initially would end up giving many awards to mothers of multiple children in immigrant communities, who we for obvious reasons don’t want to encourage that much.
Kazakhstan's total fertility rate has fallen over the past few years:
2020 - 3.13
2024 - 2.80
2025 - 2.57
2026 - 2.41
https://x.com/BirthGauge/status/2062854485748162587/photo/1
The "hero mother" policy seems to work only in countries that are still socially conservative. As they become westernized, it becomes less and less effective. In Canada or Sweden, the same policy would be most effective in socially conservative groups, like Muslim immigrants.
In Canada, one in six couples has infertility problems, and these problems (as in our case) are not necessarily age-related. Today, the West needs a "quick fix" because we don't have enough time to turn our culture around. It's like the Titanic and the iceberg, we can try to change course, but there may not be enough time to avoid a collision.
The decline in High IQ fertility is not an issue of economic means, but a choice in career & wealth over family. It’s a choice and they choose self. Hopefully we can have a future genesis moment where family and relationships replace financial wealth and hard assets as the gold standard of happiness.
This trend is self-selecting for people who get more joy out of having children relative to wealth creation alone.
Yes, in the long run, there will be selection for people who can replace themselves demographically while maintaining a high-trust society with high mean IQ and low levels of interpersonal violence.
Unfortunately, those three words are critical — "in the long run." The elites throughout the Western world are committed to mass immigration, even in little countries like Latvia. A lot of deprogramming has to be done, within a relatively short span of time.
"Hopefully we can have a future genesis moment where family and relationships replace financial wealth and hard assets as the gold standard of happiness."
You seem to imply that highly intelligent people are avaricious. This is not correct; people of high intelligence tend to relish gaining knowledge, not wealth.
Selection for higher cognitive ability tends to coincide with selection for lower time preference. If you have low time preference, you will be intimidated by the costs of having a family, since you are more aware of the full lifetime cost. So you may postpone having children until it's too late to have any.
This is partly why I lean toward some "leftist" remedies. Our economy has become designed for individuals who have as little baggage as possible. Families are increasingly a poor fit for our current economic model.
Yes, we currently trade off fertility for economic value. ie there is an opportunity cost to having a family that our economy is not pricing correctly.
However, those people who appreciate the consequences of [ultra] below replacement birth rates and who also have lower time preference will, given the opportunity, have more kids on the basis that they'll own the future. Ofc this requires they have a positive agentic, as opposed to nihilistic, model of the future.
"Selection for higher cognitive ability tends to coincide with selection for lower time preference. If you have low time preference, you will be intimidated by the costs of having a family, since you are more aware of the full lifetime cost."
Absolutely, I didn't mean to imply that highly intelligent had no concern for money. But their concern is not of the avarice type; it's a big difference.
"For now, IVF and surrogacy are the only things we have to reverse the fertility decline among high-IQ individuals."
This is why I am a strong advocate for genetic enhancement.
As a society, we should encourage procreation among people who are stable, intelligent, responsible, and honest. At the level of each couple, we should inform them about their options for childbearing, and any possible genetic risks.
Beyond that, however, I wouldn't want to go further. I don't think that people have reached the point where they fully understand what it takes to create an advanced society. For now, it is sufficient to prevent them from making stupid mistakes with irreversible consequences.
"I don't think that people have reached the point where they fully understand what it takes to create an advanced society."
Well, then it would be a great idea to work toward informing them. The current knowledge needed for genetic enhancement is not sufficient, but the groundwork is there, and research should be continued. I regret that I will not live long enough to see great advancements in the ascension of humanity, but I do believe it will happen.
I disagree, for the coming decades at the very least, we need to stick to selection at the phenotypic level. GWAS studies show that many hundreds [and more] of genes contribute to various desirable traits. Our current, and likely near future, knowledge of these interactions is way short of that needed for active genetic interventions.
" Our current, and likely near future, knowledge of these interactions is way short of that needed for active genetic interventions."
I think we are closer than you think, but the advantage for humanity is tremendous. It is not necessary to know all the genes involved in a polygenic trait to benefit. At the current time, through IVF, it is possible to select for some of the genes involved in intelligence.
I believe you are too short-sighted.
Do white women support deporting them? That's the main problem
I think the problem with many (white) women is that they think of morality in terms of care.
If someone is an Islamist, for example, that is just because of a ”misunderstanding” in their view, and if we take better care of the person in question (e.g. by better schooling, housing, healthcare etc.), then they will do better and become just like us.
So in a lot of feminized societies (like ours — because in many organizations and institutions in the West now, women dominate) you end up with this problem that you can’t deal effectively with free riders and anti-social elements.
Don't tolerate who don't tolerate you. If numbers are big, they will have own parties with leftist rhetoric and welfare maxxing.
Yes but in pagan white society white women were not passive children. They willingly fought and died, or committed suicide when they were invaded.
That's the main thing that I'm dealing with now. Just seeing a tiny bit of positivity from white women can inspire me. Women in societies in the past kept women in check too. Matriarchal figures would literally beat the shit out of younger women who were misbehaving. I would like to see aggressive behavior from white women who support their culture against others
I can solve every other problem we have, with superior fire power but I can't figure if white women actually give a damn or not
Anecdotal - but I'm a White woman who cares to a consuming degree. I find there are others like me. *And I completely agree with Monkey Brains - if White men will simply LEAD, White women will follow.
And lastly pagan women would laugh at you. Boudicca formed an army largely of women and the dregs of society because the men had become demoralized. And no I'm not advocating men being passive, but if you cannot act like a functional adult you are essentially an animal
Yes, Boudicca was an amazing woman. And agreed, women have just as much responsibility as men do in the replacement of their people. We function, generally, differently - so the means by which men and women take this responsibility and initiative will differ.
The initiative is to support your men, and men to support their women. Aggression and passion should be the norm for both genders. Again Pagan women in European history seem to have understood this. They were aggressive, outspoken, willing to fight and die. Both genders should be able to do this. What initiative are white women taking? At large they consume materialist trends, are passive when there is open evidence of their people being killed, and even worse will side with other races over us.
You're also deflecting the massive damage white women placed on white men by belong to make us softer or passive
This is a strange comment. We may also argue "massive damage" White men have placed on White women via addictions to porn, by voting for ridiculous politicians that made 1913 FED Reserve possible - and more. But this is a rather unproductive line of thinking for those who care about White unity between men and women. I'd also add White women have gotten the bulk of the propaganda geared toward Whites for 100+ years. They were the #1 targets. This isn't an excuse - it is simply an explanation. And, again, White unity matters - so I'm unsure wtf your commentary here is meant to work up to - but good luck to you ~
How were white women propagandized about?
I don't disagree that white men have done shit that's helped fuck up society. That's not the point. The point is why aren't white women showing their open support by aggressively condemning people who hate on whites, in this case men? Why don't they shame interracial couples?
Yes of course white men are to blame for watching porn, but don't take away the agency of the women in porn. They have lots of power. They could stop filming right now and affect the companies tremendously
Then you're Openly admitting women are not functional adults and shouldn't be doing anything except carrying kids.
Men have become so cucked and pathetic they now blame their own impotence on women.
IQ has everything to do with civilizations greatness, but you need more than that of course. You need to be intelligent but also courageous, audacious and curious.
I agree, but one must consider what 'civilizational greatness' means. Is it measured by the ability to conquer others, or to build a better society for your people?
Main* . While European colonialism was the most benign form in history, and gave to those countries much more than they deserve I'm not particularly interested in Europe doing it again. But we should have the POTENTIAL to destroy everyone if need be.
This is what we call revisionism
In return the people had to work, just like any system, and they received shelter, good food, and plenty of time off
They ended horrible practices, the British having to force Nigerians to end slavery because they didn't want to
They spent so much on their colonies and never got the money back. They introduced medicine, infrastructure, technology etc which raised the living standards
British and German colonialism in particular had an indirect approach to rule, allowing tribes to maintain their regions and power as long as they didn't enslave people or practice human sacrifice
No it actually isn't. Another fake moralist who has never read any primary sources
On a microcosm, imagine a city state like Constantinople (the only size I'd be interested in ruling) that is so far advanced technologically that it can annihilate Israel or Iran equally without needing much of an invasion force. Perhaps anti gravity propulsion like the Nazis worked on and special teams, but besides that long range weapons that annihilate countries.
Again, you look at the ability to conquer; I look at the ability to protect.
You should have the potential to conquer others, but your mine focus would by definition be improving your own society above others.
"You should have the potential to conquer others, but your mine focus would by definition be improving your own society above others."
I believe your definition is too bellicose. I would say, 'You should have the power to stop others from conquering you.'
As an East Asian, one thing I'd like to add is that geography plays a bigger factors than a lot people give it credit for.
East Asia has massive basins, which in combination with reliable weather basically eliminated food scarcity in large. The plains of East Asia are massive and concentrated near large rivers create huge population imbalance. East Asia's mountain range covers the plains, not divide them. That kind of geography fosters larger, united, and self sustaining states (China) instead of multiple fragmented ones in Europe.
During most of Chinese history, the northern invaders were a massive issue. At one point, the Mongols successfully annexed a divided China. Its central position also left it vulnerable from all sides, so stability is an uphill battle. China has to bend its culture to great extends to maintain stability. Further expansions and China wouldn't have enough firepower to guard its territories from foreign nations and local rebellions. Hence, China grew to be opportunistic instead of ambitious. Their territorial integrity depends on careful troop distribution so risky expeditions were unaffordable. That's why they use their newly developed weaponry defensively instead of offensively. China was simply too big to expand.
Smaller continental East Asian states (modern day Korea, Vietnam) are subject to Chinese influence and depended on China, thus adopting the conservative culture. Their expansions, similar to China, were also opportunistic since they were sandwiched by formidable nations that can annex their territories at any time. They couldn't afford to expand proactively.
Japan has less Chinese influence due to its isolation and geographically similar to Europe, so it underwent its own feudalism. After the period, it also sailed to other nations, but those places either have strong local kingdoms, European establishment, or resource poor. Its failures to annex Korea deterred the conservative shogunate from further expansions. It's only until the Meiji era that it dropped Confucian conservatism and went through industrialization, followed by immediate expansion, though their territorial gains were lost following WW2. Japan could and did expand just like any other colonial power.
In contrast, Europe were divided geographically, enough to deter frequent expansion but not enough to enough to stop third party interference. The basin distribution were also fragmented, so the developing powers have to clash against one another to expand. The Renaissance's prosperity boom and new technology created a massive incentive to expand instead of trade, but waging war against the equally developed neighbors is too costly, so naval nations started annexing their less advanced trade partners and thus marking the start of colonialism.
It's not simply just culture. Their geography shaped a stability first culture and created unchecked neighbors, which in turn stifled territorial growth despite advanced weaponry.
Excellent analysis of the geographical influence on a nation's development.
Russia has the same 'vast area to protect' problem as China does.
The United States has vast ocean borders to the east and west, which gives it a great advantage from invasion.
One could similarly argue that Great Britain had limited opportunities for geographic expansion. On one side, the country was hemmed in by France — the most powerful state in Europe at the time. On the other side, there was the barrier of the Atlantic Ocean. Moreover, the main ocean current — the Gulf Stream — flowed toward Great Britain, and not away, thus further blocking trans-oceanic expansion.
Yet the British overcame all of these obstacles. They created the largest-ever global empire.
France is kept in check by the Holy Roman Empire and later the German Empire. If other european powers left France alone, it and Great Britain would have multiple hundred years wars.
Great Britain is, despite everything, still miles ahead militarily compared to the measly locals they conquered. They used the tail end of the Gulf Stream to propel themselves (thus using the current to its own advantage). Their geography is exactly their advantage, not their obstacle. Their small size and flat terrain makes it easy to centralize, their trees are top tier for ship building, their ores are vast and easily accessible, their land is good enough to sustain a strong navy but not enough to confine growth inward, their proximity to the Atlantic allows them to easily roam around, etc.
Are we talking about the period of colonial expansion? By that time, the Holy Roman Empire was too fragmented to be a major obstacle to France. It was really Great Britain that became France's main opponent, followed by Prussia and Austro-Hungary.
To travel from Great Britain to the American colonies, British ships had to go against the current. This was, incidentally, a major deterrent to travel across the Atlantic during early times.
The British navy was dependent on timber from Canada and Russia. There wasn't enough at home.
There is a lot of post hoc in your reasoning. If I were an alien and had only a map of the world, I wouldn't guess that Great Britain became the world's leading power.
I don't think saying that Great Britain has good geography and sufficient natural resources qualifies as a post hoc argument.
The HRE has never been a centralized empire. I was referring to the German states within the empire, which are in no way obscure.
The British already circumvented the westerlies by catching the trade winds. The maritime intelligence of the Iberans was acquired by other European powers by late 1590s, a decade before the first settlement in America. The currents and wind aren't unidirectional, obviously.
The British only relied on foreign wood from the 17th century, almost 200 years since the commencement of their overseas ventures.
If we're talking about the very beginning of colonial expansion, in the 15th century, then we're talking about Western Europe in general, and not just England. Ultimately, the cause was the replacement of feudalism by the market economy, which was much more dynamic and which enabled the expansion of the middle class.
This was a gradual process, but the main trigger was the Black Death of the mid-14th century, which caused massive depopulation — particularly among people who had previously been embedded in lifelong feudal relationships. Such people became independent agents who could sell their goods and services to the highest bidder. The result was an economic expansion that supported the new voyages of discovery.
Alongside this economic expansion, we see a rise in mean IQ from the 14th to the 19th centuries — as shown by ancient DNA, and apparently due to the higher rate of natural increase within the middle class.
"Alongside this economic expansion, we see a rise in mean IQ from the 14th to the 19th centuries — as shown by ancient DNA, and apparently due to the higher rate of natural increase within the middle class."
Hasn't European intelligence been flat for at least the past 2000 years?
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!yhUf!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd7983529-93c1-4c31-b393-7faf31a444d1_1483x500.png
From https://lymanstone.substack.com/p/european-iq-gains-did-not-cause-industrializatio
*British permanent settlement in America
This is persuasive, but these explanations appear to be second-order effects of underlying genetic differences. In the race realist paradigm, IQ isn’t everything.
Specifically, there is a compelling body of research showing babies of European descent are more reactive to stimuli than babies of East Asian descent. It isn’t hard to see how this could manifest in a disinclination to embark on adventures of conquest, to rebel against bad emperors, to challenge the status quo, to radically innovate, etc., despite the high IQ. Of course there are plenty of exceptions where Asians have done such things, but the overall trend seems obvious to me.
The abstract to one paper provides as follows:
“Four-month-old infants from Boston, Dublin, and Beijing were administered the same battery of visual, auditory, and olfactory stimuli to evaluate differences in level of reactivity. The Chinese infants were significantly less active, irritable, and vocal than the Boston and Dublin samples, with American infants showing the highest level of reactivity. The data suggest the possibility of temperamental differences between Caucasian and Asian infants in reactivity to stimulation.”
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232569336_Reactivity_in_Infants_A_Cross-National_Comparison
I read your article here as describing outer manifestations of this underlying genetic trait.
You may be right. There is a general trend toward social and cultural isolationism in East Asia. This may simply be a response to the adverse effects of foreign religions, like Buddhism and Christianity, or it may be older. East Asians have followed their own trajectory of developing high-trust societies, and this shyness, often bordering on social withdrawal, may be inherent to that trajectory.
European genetics suggest we had the highest IQs coupled with a much more aggressive exploratory mentality. Christian doctrine rewarded exploring the cosmos, for the sake of God. Chinese mentality was the opposite, afraid of exploration and challenging the order of society. The west always had the right ying and yang of rebellion and order
This might tie in with the Imperial Exam, which rewarded intellectual conformity and penalized independent thinking. There was also the fear of foreign religions that would persuade people to seek advancement in the afterlife, rather than in this world.
Very interesting take on motives for expansion and hegemony.
From my perspective, I am sympathetic to distrust of both religion and government. Throughout history, there has been contention between government and religion because both seek to control people. This was certainly the case in Europe. Religious leaders and monarchs were at each other's throats until they learned that they could compromise and share control.
My take would be different. Westies had a kind of adventurousness, which is hard to put into words accurately. Conquistadors regularly violated Christian norms about how to treat natives and were at odds with the Church. Many were willing to leave their home country forever and settle far away. Many were willing to marry a native woman. Many were religious heretics escaping persecution. This smacks of individualism, which likely came from the ban on cousin marriage. Note that for the aristocracy it was not really enforced. But these adventurers were not aristocrats.
Almost like IQ has nothing to do with civilizational greatness
I was going to suggest that mid-19th-century Europeans might actually have had similar genotypic IQ to east-asians, given that western fertility has been dysgenic for about 150 years.
I guess cultural/religious/historical/institutional factors (or other personality diffs) might explain why they didn't split the planet between them, although I'm a little curious as to why China didn't just ban/regulate/tax Christianity like it did with the Buddhist monasteries, or why the allegedly anti-natal aspects of Christianity didn't wreck western demographics & labour participation. I dunno, maybe Peter can clarify.
Mean IQ seems to have peaked in Western Europeans and North Americans around 1910. At that time, it may have been even higher than East Asian IQ. There is no consensus on this point because (1) the reality of the Flynn Effect is still debated and (2) there seem to be qualitative differences between East Asian and European IQ.
China did attempt to suppress Christianity at several points in its history, but not in the same total way Japan did during the Tokugawa era.
Chinese bans on Christianity:
1812 — Jiaqing Emperor decree: Missionaries and Chinese converts involved in Christian activity were to be executed, imprisoned, or exiled.
Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901): Thousands of missionaries and Chinese Christians were killed; Christianity was violently targeted.
After 1949, the Communist Party treated Christianity as a foreign imperialist threat. Churches were confiscated, foreign missionaries deported, and ties to the Vatican and foreign churches cut.
Cultural Revolution (1966–1976): full ban. All religious activity was banned, including Christianity. Churches were destroyed, clergy persecuted, and worship forbidden.
As for the anti-natalist aspects of Christianity (celibacy of priests, monks, and nuns), these were offset by the increase in stable procreative relationships within the higher social classes. While high-ranking men still had mistresses, they had to show some discretion. Marriage was considered to be normal and expected for all men, unless they wished to enter the priesthood or become monks.
https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/how-christianity-rebooted-cognitive
"Mean IQ seems to have peaked in Western Europeans and North Americans around 1910."
This has been discussed in some of your articles before, and I agree. This would imply that those of this peak were born a generation before. You have supplied empirical analysis, which was the way to go. I used advancements in theoretical physics as a proxy for IQ (crude, I'll admit), but it does seem to agree with your findings.
The Icelandic data indicate that the cognitive decline had already begun among those participants who were born in the 10-year group centered on 1915, so the peak was some time earlier. We really need ancient DNA to get a firm date.
Also, different populations may have peaked at different times. I suspect the English were the first to reach peak IQ.
Kong, A., Frigge, M. L., Thorleifsson, G., Stefansson, H., Young, A. I., Zink, F., ... & Stefansson, K. (2017). Selection against variants in the genome associated with educational attainment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(5), E727-E732. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1612113114
Thanks.
"...qualitative differences between East Asian and European IQ."
This is an interesting sub-topic. Can you link us to any information on this?
East Asians tend to be more relational and less abstract in their way of thinking. This may be associated with the cognitive demands of rice farming versus those of wheat farming. See:
https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/how-rice-farming-remade-east-asians
I've also written about these differences in:
Frost, P. (2020). The large society problem in Northwest Europe and East Asia. Advances in Anthropology, 10(3), 214-234. https://doi.org/10.4236/aa.2020.103012
It is also possible that the Imperial Exam became a selection pressure for a certain type of learning that discourages innovation and emphasizes "correct" answers.
https://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2011/02/east-asian-intelligence.html
Christianity might not have wrecked Western European fertility because the percent of people joining the church varied inversely with marginal farm labor productivity. As population grew, the additional peasants worked less fertile land or overworked existing land. Under those conditions, many would join the church. Those that joined the church had markedly lower fertility, putting the brakes on over-population. (There’s more to it than people joining the church — see https://grokipedia.com/page/Western_European_marriage_pattern.)
The black plague was, from an economic historian’s perspective, a fascinating reversal of the trend—population plummeted, so good land was cheap and peasants made out like bandits for a couple generations. They moved to where underworked land was (causing their feudal lords to complain bitterly about their lost serfs), married younger, had bigger families, and generally joined the church less.
A disproportionate number of priests, monks, and nuns came from the aristocracy. They played a key role in creating what would later become our educational and health care system, in addition to preserving the intellectual legacy of Antiquity, but they didn't have children. If they had been allowed to procreate, Europe might have recovered faster from the cognitive decline of the Imperial Era.
Of course, waiting isn't so bad if change is in the right direction. Between a third and a half of all Europeans perished during the Black Death. Tragically, we couldn't import Somalis, so we had to wait three centuries for the population to recover.
"Tragically, we couldn't import Somalis, so we had to wait three centuries for the population to recover."
Tragically? I don't see how importing Somalis improves civilization. That would not be in the right direction.
My turn for levity.
Fair enough.
“A disproportionate number of priests, monks, and nuns came from the aristocracy.” I’m not sure we can say that. Here are things I am sure we can say: Some orders (like the Cistercians) were heavily noble. The leadership of most monasteries and convents were noble. The priests, monks, and nuns that we know about are disproportionately aristocratic, because they were literate. Choir monks were (almost by definition) heavily aristocratic. Many convents survived by taking dowries from women who joined, which means they had to be monied at least. And the practice of oblate would tend to militate for slight noble overrepresentation in many countries (but not, for example, in Poland).
But that doesn’t tell us much about the overall class-of-origin breakdown within the clergy as a whole. For example, most orders had lay brothers, who were the ones who worked the order’s direct agricultural holdings and did the scut work for the nobility within the order. And the mendicant orders were hugely popular with men and women of peasant origin — and they were far larger than the noble orders like the Cistercians.
So we’re nobles over represented in the clergy as a whole? Maybe. I haven’t seen any academic piece saying so (and I’ve spent a chunk of this afternoon looking). Have you?
Janin, H., & Carlson, U. (2023). Medieval Monks and Monasteries. McFarland.
p. 14 - "Monasteries contributed significantly to social stability in both Western and Eastern Europe by offering honorable careers to the unmarried second sons and the daughters of rich aristocratic families."
p. 15 - "Virtually all of them [mendicant friars] came from what we would now call middle-class families, were relatively well-educated ..."
I'm a little confused as to why second sons would have difficulty getting honourable careers outside of the friary. Was setting up shop as an artisan or merchant beneath them, or something, assuming there wasn't a war on somewhere?
Interesting! That’s contrary to what I understood about mendicant orders. Thanks!
I remember Galton being pretty ambivalent on this topic as well. In theory the medieval monastic system could have been rigged up as a kind of religiously-motivated eugenic welfare system, where the poorest and most destitute were sheltered and provided for but wouldn't have the opportunity to have children, or it could have wound up as a way to sterilise a significant fraction of the literati elite, or some combination of both.
The ancient DNA evidence (which is still limited for the early Middle Ages) suggests that European cognitive evolution was neither positive nor negative before the Black Death of the 14th century. It was essentially in a situation of stasis. This is consistent with economic and social history: Europe, especially Western Europe, was pushing up against the limits of feudalism. Further progress was becoming difficult.
I fondly remember you denied that Christian celibacy slowed European cognitive re-growth - more precisely, you refused my point that it was Late Antiquity difficulties and not Christianity that culled the half-Syrians that destroyed Roman IQ in the Imperial Age. Glad you changed your mind.
Mean IQ declined in central Italy during the Imperial Era. In my opinion, this decline was driven by a collapse of fertility within the elite. Others, notably Davide Piffer, attribute the IQ decline to the cura annonae (the distribution of free or subsidized bread to the poor of Rome), as well as immigration from the eastern provinces.
I disagree with Davide for three reasons:
- preliminary analysis of ancient DNA from Greece shows a similar IQ decline during the Imperial Era, yet Greece did not benefit from the cura annonae
- skeletal evidence indicates a decline in physical health during the Imperial Era throughout the Roman Empire. Whatever the benefits of the cura annonae, they were not sufficient to offset other negative trends.
- The fertility decline within the elite was widely noted at the time
To settle this disagreement, we need a full analysis of the Greek data, as well as data from other parts of the Empire.
There was no "culling of half-Syrians." When the capital was moved from Rome to Constantinople in 330, most of Rome's civil service left as well, including many Greek-speaking people with origins in the eastern provinces. Does this exodus explain the reversal of the IQ decline? I'm skeptical. The existing data don't show a lower mean IQ in the Greek-speaking eastern provinces. Again, this debate won't be settled until we have a full analysis of the Greek data.
I never denied that the celibacy of priests, monks and nuns had a negative impact on mean IQ. My position was, and still is, that this negative impact was offset by the rise in fertility within the elite, who now had to conform to Christian moral norms, which re-normalized marriage, forbade divorce and forbade non-procreative sexual relationships.
This is the original thread https://www.anthro1.net/p/how-christianity-rebooted-cognitive/comment/77117738
Only one point: "When the capital was moved from Rome to Constantinople in 330, most of Rome's civil service left as well, including many Greek-speaking people with origins in the eastern provinces." the imperial bureaucracy itself was minuscle in regards of the numbers of Oriental slaves Rome imported after the Second Punic War. Genetic datas (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aay6826) described a total upheval of I century (BC and AD) Rome (the city) population, the original Italic population was litteraly wiped off, only ruling class tombs were autochthon-"settled" and the "settlers" came from the rural population. The moder "Great Replacement" is nothing more than the farcical second coming of original Roman Replacement - something that give a curious insight of the "Red Caesar" meme about Trump.
High IQ is not, in itself, a sufficient factor to create a civilization. In most cases, it has arisen within trading peoples that exist within a much larger host population, with relations between the two being, at best, characterized by indifference.
Europe and East Asia are unusual in that selection for higher IQ transformed the entire population. This happened for two main reasons:
- Boundaries between social classes were not rigid (as in India and/or ethnically stratified societies). The demographic surplus of the higher classes, notably the middle class, could move downward and eventually replace the lower classes.
- Religion became sufficiently strong to control sexual behavior within the higher social classes, thus countering the fertility decline that tends to afflict higher classes when they achieve a certain level of material affluence.
In the case of China, the Imperial Exam seems to have facilitated selection for high IQ. See: https://davidepiffer.com/p/did-confucian-institutions-select
"High IQ is not, in itself, a sufficient factor to create a civilization."
This is true, but IQ is an important factor in the creation of an advanced civilization.
Yes, you're right. I may be overreacting to certain people, like Elon Musk and Richard Hanania, who see IQ as the most important factor in building a nation.
It's not the most important factor, but ONE of the most important factors. Here is what I call the twelve I's of human traits.
Integrity, intelligence, ingenuity, innovativeness, inquisitiveness, intuitiveness, industriousness, insight, inspiration, imagination, inventiveness, and intentness. Admittedly, some are similar.
If you wish to build a high-trust society, you also need empathy, guilt proneness, rule following, and xenophobia.
Admittedly, empathy clashes with xenophobia. People have to understand that empathy cannot be unconditional. If your empathy is being manipulated, you must exit that relationship and shun that person.
"If you wish to build a high-trust society, you also need empathy, guilt proneness, rule following, and xenophobia."
Absolutely, my list was not meant to be all-inclusive, just a starting point with a little whimsy.
Except the argument that Asians have higher IQs is completely debatable. The data suggest at most were the same, not that they're higher
In a study of alleles associated with educational attainment (a reliable proxy for cognitive ability), Piffer (2019) found that the Chinese scored higher than any European population, except for Ashkenazi Jews:
Piffer, D. (2019). Evidence for Recent Polygenic Selection on Educational Attainment and Intelligence Inferred from Gwas Hits: A Replication of Previous Findings Using Recent Data. Psych, 1, 55-75. https://doi.org/10.3390/psych1010005
Already suspect is the exception of Jews, which throws this whole study in a bind. Jews don't have higher iqs. All studied that suggested that have been debunked, and conflated verbal IQ as the best measure of intelligence
Please read the study. It's about the genetic data, not data from IQ tests. Ashkenazi Jews are more likely to have alleles associated with higher educational attainment.
All we can know is that we can test intelligence and that it's hereditary not that their are specific genes that determine it
Thousands of genes have been linked to cognitive ability. If we know the alleles at these genes, we can reliably estimate the mean IQ of a population. By "reliably" I mean a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.935 (EA3) or 0.997 (EA4).
These alleles have been identified through two studies. The first one identified alleles at 1,271 loci through a genome-wide association study of over one million people. The second one identified alleles at 3,952 loci through a genome-wide association study of about three million people.
References
Lee, J. J., Wedow, R., Okbay, A., Kong, E., Maghzian, O., Zacher, M., ... & Cesarini, D. (2018). Gene discovery and polygenic prediction from a genome-wide association study of educational attainment in 1.1 million individuals. Nature Genetics, 50(8), 1112-1121. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-018-0147-3
Okbay, A., Wu, Y., Wang, N., Jayashankar, H., Bennett, M., Nehzati, S. M., ... & Esko, T. (2022). Polygenic prediction of educational attainment within and between families from genome-wide association analyses in 3 million individuals. Nature Genetics, 54(4), 437-449. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-022-01016-z
Again, genes are not specific markers. This is the same for black athleticism . Blakcs do not have more markers for athleticism than whites
You're using the term "genetic marker" in a strange sense.
Jews have no genes associated with higher intelligence. And the real world shows this
I said "alleles." A gene can have one of several possible alleles.
When we control for general samples vs urbanized Asians, whites are on par or higher
Source?
Ok. Genes do not function as switches. iq is hereditary. But there are no clear genes that are associated with it. Dennis Noble has exploded this concept. The system is genetic, the specific genes aren't
Thousands of alleles are associated with differences in IQ. Keep in mind that the word "associated" is a very weak term. It doesn't indicate a cause-and-effect relationship.
That's absolutely false
The goyim are coping hard lmfao
🤣 they aren't. I already debunked this. Proving my point that Jews are genetically inferior to whites 😁
Wrong
This doesn't mention the tendency of Confucian bureaucrats to starve the military of funds and talent and their incentive to discriminate against merchants
Yes, merchants were viewed with suspicion and considered less honorable than landowners, but this was also a characteristic of European societies until the post-medieval period. The expansion of the Western European middle class from the 14th century onward was both a cause and effect of a new attitude toward merchants.
I wouldn't say that Confucian bureaucrats "starved" the military of funds. They imposed limits, as was the case with the Roman Empire.
The pull of a universalizing religion was so strong in the east that there were too many monks and nuns sucking resources and renouncing family. Yet it was the success of a universalizing religion in pulling people's allegiances away from family that drove the dominance of western Europe?
First of all I wouldn't trust current china with the correct representation of their average natinal IQ.
Secondly I don't think one can extrapolate lineally the contemporary IQ score into the past and analyze a culture based in this assumption.
Thirdly for the ussumption the average IQ of nations is represented by a bell curve, Asian ones could have steeper inclinations than European ones. Which would mean Asians gather more arround the mean, while Europe exels on the extremes. So more dumb but also more genious people.
This isn't extrapolation from the present. We have ancient DNA from different periods of Chinese history. The Chinese population seems to have reached its current IQ level around a millennium and a half ago. I discussed the ancient DNA data in one of my previous articles:
https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/cognitive-evolution-in-eastern-eurasia
Korean Christians have *more* kids than the national average. While in China, there are hardly any Christians. In Nort Korea tfr is at 1,4 - with zero Christians and no *Western software* running. I am anti socialism, but even I would not call their dynnastic totalitarism 'socialist'
There is no government-published data on South Korean fertility by religion. At present, Christian Koreans seem to have only a modestly higher fertility.
In any case, when I talk about "Western software" I'm not talking solely or even mainly about Christianity. I'm talking about the individualistic mindset of modern Western culture.
North Korea has a fertility rate of 1.7-1.8 children per woman. South Korea has a fertility rate less than half that.
I talked to a young South Korean father of two. Who was on a Christian vacation in the Philippines. His impression was strongly that he and his wife would not have more than one kid if not for their faith/church.
Of course, I wish for more data but I am willing to "bet on it' (Bryan Caplan substack), he is right.
SorryI misremembered the NK TFR , you are right ofc - below 2
"Kim Jong-un cries as he asks North Korean mothers to have more babies"
A third of South Koreans are Christian. If their fertility is close to replacement, the non-Christians must be having zero babies. Keep in mind that the national fertility rate is 0.76 (2026).
My claim is 'more than the national average'. 500$?
Here in Germany, TFR of German couples without any migration background is indeed significantly lower than the average. Looking around in my kids' classrooms: 'German' TFR might be closer to 1 than statistics suggest. Not that I care.
Undoubtedly there is some difference in fertility between Christian Koreans and non-religious Koreans.
My argument is simply that the individualism of Western culture has a stronger effect on East Asians than on Westerners themselves. This individualism is more developed in post-Christian Western culture than in its earlier forms.
We should care.
Without providing a link, Lipton Matthews cites this article and gives it a good rap in his 2026-07-23 article "Why Europeans dominated the world and not East Asians": https://lipton.substack.com/p/why-europeanc-dominated-the-world.
"Frost does touch on individualism himself, but it functions as a supporting detail in his argument rather than the fulcrum of it. There is real truth in what he says. But underneath both of those things, the rise of fair institutions and the willingness to engage with outsiders, sits something more basic and more psychological: individualism. Joseph Henrich makes this case at length in his book WEIRD, showing how the medieval church, by breaking up extended family and clan networks across Europe, nudged people toward seeing themselves as independent individuals rather than as extensions of a family line. That shift, he argues, rewired how people thought, felt guilt, and made decisions."
The Emperors of the Roman Empire in the East (Byzantium), also had a problem with too many monks and nuns. I think regulation and taxation helped to remedy it as well.
> If as race realists seem to believe higher intelligence reliably produces civilizational superiority, then East Asian civilizations should have dominated the world.
The conclusion does not follow from the premise. Civilizational superiority is not the same as national warfare dominance (or necessitates an interest for it).
Maybe it's even the more stupid and agressive that tend to dominate.
After the mid-19th century, imperialism became a fool's game for the West.
China expanded from a small country to a huge empire of 10M km^2 today, so they would disagree