Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Someone using the nickname Amelek left this comment on the thread about Vox Day and genomics. I've read it several times and still have no idea what the point is. It's a study in obfuscation and the production of word salad, a tour de force of meaningless drivel.
I have no idea what the point of the comment was. But I'm beginning to understand why the Israelites attacked the Amelekites in the Old Testament.
Ignorance of genomics? Thank G_d there have been no mindless regurgitations of Lewontin's Fallacy here as the sight of a grown man reduced the an extended phenotype of the ethnic interests of the Fallacy's inventor would be unbearable for me. Funny thing, when more than one loci is tested, the Fallacy is exposed as just that. Lack of faithism? We cannot be so lucky. Humanism is a faith. By observing the behavior of its proponents one would be tempted to think that they tacitly believe they will enjoy some cosmic reward for what will in the result in the liquidation of ancient nations, peoples and cultures. But were it so, yet there will be no such reward, as their teleology, and its alleged consequences (the 'elevation' of all incarnations of Man to the 'exalted' state 'intellectual' dilettantes and pleasure seeking consumers), is a delusion. Sorry, the individual, as the evolved unit of reproduction of our species, does as life commands, he passes along his own genes, and can most consistently expect to be aided in that by those most closely genetically related to him, as they also share more of his unique genes and gene frequencies than relatively genetically distant people. And if he does not, he can expect to be driven into the ground by people(s) not so tender-minded. Self-evidently, all else being equal, a more cohesive group will out-compete a less cohesive group for finite resources in the (often unconscious) effort to boost their respective reproductive fitnesses. And should that surprised? The genetic continuity of one's group is a real life interest, however humble, however unsexy, and the sense of moral superiority and temporary bit of status one is rewarded with for paying lip service to the faithism de jure is not. And ironically, as our wages are leveled with that of the Third World, and our nations, at the catastrophic cost of social fragmentation and environmental degradation are flooded with the bottomless seas of the Third World, our elites recite the platitudinous drivel of liberal humanism as it augments and justifies their own clutch on power.neo-liberalism + cultural Marxism = elite power
And those that aid them in that, are reduced to dishonorable, hypocritical dupes and squalid traitors.
Good luck making any sense out of that mishmash of bullshit.
Politics
Comments
Actually, if you just pick some sentences at random and read them out of order, it sort of makes sense...
Posted by: DuWayne | March 23, 2010 9:21 AM
Starbursts!
That screed gave me a Sarah Palin chill!
Posted by: Rick R | March 23, 2010 9:22 AM
Gene Ray*, is that you?
* of http://timecube.com/ fame.
Posted by: Chilidog | March 23, 2010 9:22 AM
Reminds me strongly of the output of "Dissociated press" and similar systems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociated_press
A little human editing to smooth the flow of text, and correct obvious grammatical errors, and you wind up with something that looks awfully similar to that comment.
Posted by: Ray Ingles | March 23, 2010 9:28 AM
Reads to me like the incoherent ramblings I used to hear in Greenville, SC from Bob Jones grads.
Posted by: Ira | March 23, 2010 9:33 AM
Lets see if I can translate.
Posted by: Abby Normal | March 23, 2010 9:33 AM
Spambots have been getting very sophisticated lately...
Posted by: Dunc | March 23, 2010 9:43 AM
Here's a more recent comment I found by our new commenter Amalek which was comprehensible but particularly divorced from reality.
Posted by: Michael Heath | March 23, 2010 10:01 AM
Indeed, they're already able to fill in as conservative intellectuals.
Posted by: Röstigraben | March 23, 2010 10:03 AM
I'd compare this to Dr. Bronner's "God Soap" labels, but the good Doctor' ravings show a degree of good spirit and decency that this nutjob lacks.
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 23, 2010 10:06 AM
"And, paradoxically, because our salaries are aligning with the Third World, and our nations, the price of catastrophic social fragmentation and environmental degradation are flooded with bottomless sea of Third World elites recited in our banal nonsense of the liberal humanism that is increases and justifies its own coupling effect."
google translate: to Catalan. Then to Bulgarian. Back to English.
doesn't get better, drat.
Posted by: VikingMoose | March 23, 2010 10:11 AM
"Bottomless Seas of the Third World" would be a decent band name. Or at the very least a great album title.
Posted by: peaches | March 23, 2010 10:48 AM
Posted by: catgirl | March 23, 2010 10:52 AM
I'm going to have to reference 4chan here, actually;
Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?
Posted by: LtStorm | March 23, 2010 10:54 AM
By sheer coincidence I'mcurrently re-reading Francis Wheen's book 'How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered The World' and came across the perfect description of this passage.
"One can gaze at this paragraph for hours and be none the wiser. Read it back to front, break it up into constituent clauses, ingest a few hallucinogenic drugs to aid comprehension: it remains gibberish."
Posted by: Matty | March 23, 2010 11:10 AM
All your base are belong to us?
Posted by: Personal Failure | March 23, 2010 11:25 AM
I got it. He's got a lyrical flair that complexifies what are really simple eternal truths:
It's like Shakespeare, really*.
*Note that, due to brain trauma, I've got "Shakespeare" and "racebaiting" mixed up in my head. That I know I've got them confused and yet still continue to do so is just another indicator of how traumatic the trauma is. Either that or I just like to get into fights at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival.
Posted by: Modusoperandi | March 23, 2010 11:29 AM
Modusoperandi:
To be fair, Shakespeare did pick at race a few times. From writing Othello about a Moor to accusing Italians men of marrying children in Romeo & Juliet.
Posted by: LtStorm | March 23, 2010 11:34 AM
"Sorry, the individual, as the evolved unit of reproduction of our species, does as life commands, he passes along his own genes, and can most consistently expect to be aided in that by those most closely genetically related to him, as they also share more of his unique genes and gene frequencies than relatively genetically distant people."
Umm, is he promoting what I think he's promoting? 'Cause it's illegal in most states to schtup the people with whom one shares considerable genetic material. And it tends not to make for very healthy offspring, contrary to what he seems to believe.
Posted by: tawaen | March 23, 2010 11:58 AM
A slightly more serious attempt at rough translation. Note that much of it appears to be more phatic than semantic, trying for dog-whistle cues to pick out who in the audience has gotten the correct Pavlov conditioning. In addition to the conditioned response, the message may also be relying an instinctual level response to some INGROUP/PURITY/AUTHORITY tones; EG, (doi:10.1007/s11211-007-0034-z) by Haidt.
Wikipedia entry on Lewontin's Fallacy. Essentially, it appears to be asserting "race is real" as a clustering phenomenon; as Abby Normal suggested and based on the rest, it's probably a "white power" style of dog whistle.
"The Secularists/LiberalHumanists are also a religion, but an enemy one. They are out to destroy the traditional faiths such as Christianity. They expect doing this will lead the universe to reward them some other way, for some incomprehensible reasons so utterly unconnected to reality that I can't understand them, instead of the sensible expectation of a reward in Heaven as we were promised by God."
"Liberals don't recognize how INGROUP is the main protection against the dog-eat-dog of Social Darwinism. If we don't want to perish, we should emphasize INGROUP." (The sense of INGROUP here is focused on genetic grouping, and thus probably linked to race based on the earlier. There may also be some [rugged] individualism tones I'm not fully catching here.)
"Multiculturalism weakens society; unified monocultures find it easy to attack and destroy them."
"Buying into the religion of Secularism/LiberalHumanism will lead to People Like Us dying out."
"Multiculturalism will make us so poor we starve, cause society to break down, and poison our environment (instead of environments far away). The elite[= those with any leadership role resulting from ability] are only interested in personal power for the INGROUP of the elite[=ibid], and thus don't notice/care about these obvious bad consequences for our INGROUP of Real Americans."
"Four legs good, two legs bad!"
Sigh. That translation was probably more effort than it was worth.
Posted by: abb3w | March 23, 2010 11:58 AM
Here's a serious edit (wrong, maybe, but serious):
Ignorance of genomics? Thank G_d [God] there have been no mindless regurgitations of Lewontin's Fallacy here [“here” meaning “in this thread”]
[Lewontin said, more or less, that the concept of race is almost insignificant or not useful – The phrase “Lewontin’s Fallacy” comes from a 2002 paper that said Lewontin is wrong.]
As [meaning “because”] the sight of a grown man [presumably Ed] reduced [to] . . . an extended phenotype of the ethnic interests of the Fallacy's inventor would be unbearable for me. [Rephrase: Lewontin’s denial of the significance of race is based on his own ethnic interests. If Ed (or perhaps other commenters as well) had supported Lewontin’s ideas in this thread, he would have become a representative/symbol of Lewontin’s own ethnic self-interests. That would have been unbearable for me.]
Funny thing, when more than one loci is tested [reference to the statistical studies at the base of Lewontin’s argument], the Fallacy is exposed as just that.
[Can there actually be a] Lack of faithism? We cannot be so lucky. Humanism is a faith. By observing the behavior of its proponents[ ,] one would be tempted to think that they tacitly believe they will enjoy some cosmic reward for what will . . . result in the liquidation of ancient nations, peoples and cultures. [Rephrase: Humanists act out of faith, not reason. Humanists, in playing down the importance of race, are trivializing ancient cultures and people. Humanists act like they think they will be rewarded for this attitude.]
But were it so, yet there will be no such reward, as their teleology [meaning “the Humanists’ faith”], and its alleged consequences (the 'elevation' of all incarnations of Man to the 'exalted' state 'intellectual' dilettantes and pleasure seeking consumers), is a delusion. [Rephrase: the aim of Humanism is to raise people to what Humanists believe would be an elevated and exalted state – a state of pointless intellectual play and consumerism in search of pleasure. That aim cannot be achieved.]
Sorry, the individual, as the evolved unit of reproduction of our species, does as life commands,
[What life commands is that the individual] passes along his own genes, and can most consistently expect to be aided in that by those most closely genetically related to him, as they also share more of his unique genes and gene frequencies than relatively genetically distant people. And if he does not, he can expect to be driven into the ground by people(s) not so tender-minded. [Rephrase: Nature arranges that people get support from others of their own race to pass along their genes. People who don’t seek out this sort of support do not pass along their genes.]
Self-evidently, all else being equal, a more cohesive group will out-compete a less cohesive group for finite resources in the (often unconscious) effort to boost their respective reproductive fitnesses. [Rephrase Groups that stick together on the basis of race will win out over groups that don’t do that]
And should that [surprise us]? The genetic continuity of one's group is a real life interest, however humble, however unsexy, [Rephrase: it’s important to assure the continuation of one’s own race]
and the sense of moral superiority and temporary bit of status one is rewarded with for paying lip service to the faithism de jure is not [Rephrase: People who follow modern Humanism and agree that race is not a necessary genetic grouping will not continue their genetic lines].
And ironically, as our wages are leveled with that of the Third World, and our nations, at the catastrophic cost of social fragmentation and environmental degradation are flooded with the bottomless seas of the Third World, our elites recite the platitudinous drivel of liberal humanism as it augments and justifies their own clutch on power. [Rephrase: It’s ironic that these two things are happening at the same time – 1) The elite people in our society use a meaningless rhetoric – the rhetoric of liberal humanism. 2) Our wage scales, social cohesion and environmental protections are deteriorating to the level of the Third World]
neo-liberalism + cultural Marxism = elite power
And those that aid them [meaning "neo-liberals"] in that [meaning "limiting powers to the elite"], are reduced to dishonorable, hypocritical dupes and squalid traitors.
Posted by: JuliaL | March 23, 2010 12:03 PM
Word salad is exactly right. I don't know if this is a put on, but this looks like a typical, higher IQ schizophrenic screed. Most often, something like this is found in a beat up notebook full of similar thought-disordered rantings or on old paper scraps stuffed into pockets. I suppose comment threads will increasingly replace stuffed pockets.
Posted by: Dr X | March 23, 2010 12:10 PM
And it's not unusual for similarly afflicted persons to gravitate toward crackpot, paranoid ideologies that provide a semblance of cohesion to an otherwise chaotic internal world.
Posted by: Dr X | March 23, 2010 12:16 PM
I really disagree that it's just word salad. However ugly or illogical the content, there is content. It's actually no worse than many, many of the first drafts of college student papers.
While I'm not going to spend enough time to correct all proofreading, organizational, etc. problems, here is more or less what his comment would have looked like had he hired me to edit it (or help him edit it), to say what he meant while preserving his own voice and tone:
Ignorance of genomics? Thank G_d there have been no mindless regurgitations of Lewontin's Fallacy here in this thread. Lewontin said, more or less, that the concept of race is almost insignificant or not useful – The phrase “Lewontin’s Fallacy” comes from a 2002 paper that said Lewontin is wrong.
Lewontin’s denial of the significance of race is based on his own ethnic interests. If Ed (or perhaps other commenters as well) had supported Lewontin’s ideas in this thread, Ed would have become a representative/symbol of Lewontin’s own ethnic self-interests. That would have been unbearable for me. Lewontin's work is easy to refute: when more than one loci is tested using the statistical studies at the base of his argument, Lewontin’s work is exposed as a fallacy.
We can’t be so lucky as to eliminate dependence on faith. Humanists act out of faith, not reason. Humanists, in playing down the importance of race, are trivializing ancient nations, cultures and people. Humanists act like they think they will be rewarded for this attitude. The aim of Humanism is to raise people to what Humanists believe would be an elevated and exalted state – a state of pointless intellectual play and consumerism in search of pleasure. It is a delusion to believe that aim can be achieved.
Whether you like it or not, the individual, as the unit of reproduction for the species, does as life/nature commands. Nature arranges that people get support from others of their own race to pass along their genes. People who don’t seek out this sort of support do not pass along their genes. It’s self-evident that, all else being equal, evolutionary fitness means that groups that stick together on the basis of race will win out over groups that don’t do that.
And should that surprise us? People have a real life interest in preserving the genetic continuity of one's group, and it’s important to assure the continuation of one’s own race. People who agree that race is not a necessary genetic grouping will not continue their genetic lines.
It’s ironic that these two things are happening at the same time – 1) The elite people in our society use a meaningless rhetoric – the rhetoric of liberal humanism. 2) Our wage scales, social cohesion and environmental protections are deteriorating to the level of the Third World.
Neo-liberalism plus cultural Marxism equals power for the elite only. And those that aid neo-liberals in preserving power only to the elite are dishonorable, hypocritical dupes and squalid traitors.
Posted by: JuliaL | March 23, 2010 12:26 PM
"neo-liberalism + cultural Marxism = elite power"
You see here is a man than understands if A = B then A + B = C.
Posted by: Holytape | March 23, 2010 12:29 PM
Well, the proof is right before us: he appears to come from a long line of sibling-schtuppers and his intellect is incomprehensible to beings like us.
Posted by: D. C. Sessions | March 23, 2010 12:31 PM
This has to be one of the most entertaining comment threads I've ever read. Thanks for all the hard work abb3w and JuliaL along with Holytape's brilliant coupling @ 25.
Posted by: Michael Heath | March 23, 2010 12:52 PM
I usually like my word salad with a nice caesar dressing.
Posted by: bdc | March 23, 2010 1:19 PM
Shaka, when the walls fell!
Posted by: LightningRose | March 23, 2010 1:22 PM
Anyone know if Francis E. Dec had a kid? I mean, this is no 'Gangster Computer God', but it comes close!
Posted by: EdgyB | March 23, 2010 2:10 PM
Michael Heath,
Well, it certainly amused me. Reminded me of the old days of struggling to convince someone new to writing that the first step to success in a written discussion is to be understandable. And it used to be particularly amusing to see how often, once the text had become readable, that the writer was horrified by what he had said, and began frantically to try to convince both me and himself that he didn't mean any of it.
Posted by: JuliaL | March 23, 2010 2:29 PM
>...paying lip service to the faithism de jure...
Shooting fish in a barrel it may be, but I can't resist pointing out one other little malapropism that amuses me: I'm pretty sure Amelek wanted to write "du jour" above (=French, "of the day"), not "de jure" (latin, "concerning law").
Posted by: Robin | March 23, 2010 2:48 PM
Why has no one noticed that the phrase "more than one loci is" is nonsense? One could either say "more than one locus is" or "many loci are," but not both!
Posted by: Flavin | March 23, 2010 3:44 PM
The phrase "cultural Marxism" when used by scary internet wingnuts is interesting. As far as I can make out its extension is "anyone who believe more in the possibility of human progress than the writer" and it's intension is "a shadowy conspiracy to overthrow Western civilisation, with its roots in the Frankfurt School".
Posted by: Matt Heath | March 23, 2010 4:25 PM
I meant that the extension of "cultural Marxism" is "believing more than the author in the possibility of human progress" not "anyone..." . Proofreading fail.
Posted by: Matt Heath | March 23, 2010 4:28 PM
Flavin,
Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that there are so many flaming piles of stupid in that comment that pulling out just one example is kind of beside the point. You know, kind of like complaining about an unextinguished campfire in Yellowstone in the summer of 1988.
Posted by: Shawn Smith | March 23, 2010 4:42 PM
Shawn,
I know, I know, it's a small nit to pick. But there have been commenters willing to dig through this confused pile of shit in an attempt to wrest some kind of meaningful thought from it. I wondered why, in all their efforts, they hadn't noticed (and had in fact reproduced) that one small error.
Posted by: Flavin | March 23, 2010 4:45 PM
Flavin,
In reference to "loci":
I imagine that pretty much everybody noticed it. In my case, it was left alone because I was trying to keep something of the "voice and tone" of the original. I was working to clarify the content, not to correct proofreading in a way that would lose the flavor of the comment. I think that's what others were doing as well.
Posted by: JuliaL | March 23, 2010 6:20 PM
JuliaL, really? I was just ridiculing him.
Posted by: Modusoperandi | March 23, 2010 6:25 PM
Well, --- yes, really. I just liked the sound of it. I thought it kept a nice little frantic, sort of fake-math feeling that the original has.
Posted by: JuliaL | March 23, 2010 6:47 PM
Having read an enormous number of first draft college student papers (no matter how much I beg and incentivize the little buggers not to hand in first drafts), I must disagree. The average first draft college freshman paper is at least two orders of magnitude above this in comprehensibility.
Posted by: James Hanley | March 23, 2010 7:11 PM
P.S. Or maybe my college just has better students than JuliaL's does! ;)
Posted by: James Hanley | March 23, 2010 7:28 PM
I confess to wording the comment quoted above intentionally cryptically to bypass potential censorship the result of Pavlovian outrage. I suppose it could be summed up thus: human bio-diversity per ancestry is a real, robust phenomenon. And as such has profound consequences.
P.S. The Frankfurt School was simply one manifestation of of the prodigious Jewish millenarian ethnic aggression focused on pathologizing and subverting group cohesion of host populations to facilitate competition for resources by the Jewish group as against the host population. Man is of life and life is Darwinian. Pretty straight forward I should think. I see no reason whatever I should bury my head in the sand to satisfy this particular age's hysterical moralism.
Posted by: Amalek | March 23, 2010 8:42 PM
James Hanley,
Ah, but I taught the process of writing, especially using various programs on the computer, so I begged my students to write everything from their first thought about the subject. My students were not just freshmen, sophomores, and juniors, but also business people (from welders to licensed engineers, aircraft maintenance supervisors, military officers, etc.). I'm talking about the real first drafts, the idea-gathering ones, not a draft that any college student would normally hand in to a teacher.
And absolutely yes, I've seen many such drafts this bad, written by people with graduate degrees. The problem with our odd comment is not so much that the writer had nothing to say, but that he didn't take that second step of noticing that readers are people too and have to taken into account.
One marine biologist who complained of writer's block produced a draft he thought finally suitable for publishing. He asked me to review it. At one point, I said to him that I could tell he was emphatically declaring the relationship of some east coast oysters to X, but I needed him to tell me whether he meant that these oysters always do X, or that they never do X. He exclaimed that I just didn't understand oysters, and got another opinion from someone in the biology department. When that person asked the same question, the biologist reluctantly changed the sentence. Our writer-of-the-odd-prose here probably thinks our confusion was the result of our not understanding the nature of race and genetics, when the problem was his not understanding that he needs to speak in reasonably normal English.
Posted by: JuliaL | March 23, 2010 8:43 PM
Oh, excuse me, Amalek. I didn't realize you had intentially made the comment hard to understand.
Posted by: JuliaL | March 23, 2010 8:45 PM
Wonder what district Amalek lives in.
Posted by: jws | March 23, 2010 8:53 PM
So, to sum up, Amalek is an arrogant, dishonest, white-supremeacist conspiracy nut with an overinflated ego, a raging persecution complex, and no interest whatsoever in speaking clearly or being understood.
Posted by: phantomreader42 | March 23, 2010 9:42 PM
Phantomreader42 is a moralistic half-wit who could not be more blind to the real exigencies of life than if he were to walk about with a paper bag over his head, so to speak, and I am not entirely sure he doesn't actually do that.
Posted by: Amalek | March 23, 2010 9:59 PM
So, Amalek, in your delusions it is honest to be intentionally unclear and falsely accuse others of plotting genocide, it is rational to assume you're being persecuted and censored without the slightest speck of evidence, but calling you on your insanity or asking you to support your claims marks a person as less than human.
Kiss my pasty white ass, then go die in a fucking fire, you self-centered, pseudo-intellectual, inbred xenophobic moron.
Posted by: phantomreader42 | March 23, 2010 10:14 PM
JuliaL,
OK, you win. I actively discourage my students from doing that. I'm sure you have the edge on me in knowing how to teach writing, so I won't argue pedagogy, I'll just argue maintenance of sanity!Posted by: James Hanley | March 23, 2010 10:35 PM
So, does anyone else think Amalek is that other twit that got banned awhile ago. "Captain Chaos" or something. Citing the same study, spewing the same racist bullshit. It all sounds very familiar.
Posted by: Taz | March 23, 2010 10:41 PM
Well, that's certainly a lot of words.
On the whole, this guy seems to be arguing against evolution and humanism (as though they're one and the same), but he also says it's self-evident that cohesive groups will outcompete non-cohesive groups (which isn't what evolution says...evolution has little to do with groups). So even when he seems to be saying that evolution is true he gets it wrong, but who the hell knows if he's defending it or not. It seems as if the blog ate half his post leaving random sentence fragments and half-formulated ideas.
Posted by: Ryan | March 23, 2010 10:54 PM
Preferring instead to charge headlong into the dead certainty of ridicule, the result of Sokalian obfuscation?
Posted by: DaveL | March 23, 2010 10:57 PM
@the comment posted by Michael Heath in #8
I'm thinking my girlfriend (whose grandparents survived the Holocaust and whose entire family is from Europe) would be surprised to find out she isn't white.
Posted by: Ryan | March 23, 2010 10:58 PM
All I can say it, heaven forbid that good, solid, industrious and intelligent people like this lose their great genetic heritage to mongrelism.
Posted by: Modusoperandi | March 23, 2010 11:33 PM
Modus,
Truly an appalling picture you linked to. In a decent world, such people really would be denied the right to reproduce. I mean, the guy's wearing a Cardinals shirt, for pete's sake!
Posted by: James Hanley | March 23, 2010 11:44 PM
It reads like a mash-up of a white supremacist, Dennis Miller (who in my opinion forces his seeming "intellectualism" onto his comedy, piggyback as it were, achieving neither) and the word-salad of Sarah Palin. Could it be that Amelek is a future science correspondent for Fox news?
Posted by: turuk | March 23, 2010 11:46 PM
Ryan,
Jews are a Middle Eastern derived people who live amongst us in diaspora, they are not white. Kinda like Gypsies, except they hail from the Indian subcontinent, they aren't white either. Btw, the ten million Ukrainians that Jews Lazar Kaganovitch and Genrikh Yagoda, and their predominantly Jewish NKVD liquidated in 1932-33 definitely were white. Don't tell me you are a Holodomor "denier" or "minimizer," now.
"this guy seems to be arguing against evolution"
No.
"and humanism"
Yes.
"but he also says it's self-evident that cohesive groups will outcompete non-cohesive groups"
That is true and indisputable.
"which isn't what evolution says...evolution has little to do with groups"
LOL! Nope, no social animals on this planet of ours we call earth.
Read this, dipstick:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_selection
"So even when he seems to be saying that evolution is true he gets it wrong,"
So anyone who disagrees with your mistaken impressions is "wrong?" That has at least the advantage of being logically consistent, from your benighted perspective that is.
Posted by: Amalek | March 23, 2010 11:47 PM
"'but he also says it's self-evident that cohesive groups will outcompete non-cohesive groups'
That is true and indisputable."
Citation Required - Dingo
Posted by: DingoJack | March 24, 2010 12:42 AM
2+2=4
Citation required?
Posted by: Amalek | March 24, 2010 1:05 AM
Amalek,
Did you actually read that Wikipedia page you linked? This is from the intro:
So what Ryan said about evolution having "little to do with groups" seems, from your own citation, completely correct.
Posted by: Flavin | March 24, 2010 1:31 AM
Jeez, I don't read here for a couple of days, and a god(s) damned Nazi drops in. That'll teach me to slack off.
Posted by: Tyler DiPietro | March 24, 2010 1:57 AM
Amalak - I'll certainly like to see you try (or even try to prove it). :)
Yes, citation is required because your strong assertion requires equally strong evidence to back it up.
Low genetic variability of the koala Phascolarctos cinereus in south-eastern Australia following a severe population bottleneck B. A. Houlden [et al.]
Introduction: Race, Genetics, and Disease : Questions of Evidence, Matters of Consequence Joan H. Fujimura
Some reading (fyi) concerning the effects of monocultures. - Dingo
Posted by: DingoJack | March 24, 2010 2:18 AM
My goodness, does even one of you have an IQ over 150?
Dingo,
"Previous studies have reported that related human couples tend to produce more children than unrelated couples but have been unable to determine whether this difference is biological or stems from socioeconomic variables. Our results, drawn from all known couples of the Icelandic population born between 1800 and 1965, show a significant positive association between kinship and fertility, with the greatest reproductive success observed for couples related at the level of third and fourth cousins. Owing to the relative socioeconomic homogeneity of Icelanders, and the observation of highly significant differences in the fertility of couples separated by very fine intervals of kinship, we conclude that this association is likely to have a biological basis." - Agnar Helgason,1,2* Snæbjörn Pálsson,1,3 Daníel F. Guðbjartsson,1 þórður Kristjánsson,1 Kári Stefánsson1,4, An Association Between the Kinship and Fertility of Human Couples, Science 8 February 2008:
Vol. 319. no. 5864, pp. 813 - 816
DOI: 10.1126/science.1150232
You see, the Icelandic, world renowned for their hereditary defects, are so addled by inbreeding that it increases their reproductive fitness and makes their nation one of the most developed and congenial societies on earth. Much of their island is a frozen wasteland, yet look what they do with it. Haiti is a lush tropical island, and look what the Haitians do with it. Hmm, wonder why that is? Must be whitey's fault.
Flavin,
"So what Ryan said about evolution having "little to do with groups" seems, from your own citation, completely correct."
It was that brightest of all bulbs Ryan who fired a glib shot across the bow, I merely responded in kind. Group selection ought be considered in the context of HUMAN evolution as to its salience to the latter - which I suggest is significant, or at least more significant than you would would grant, that is, no siginificance at all - considering the vein of this discussion...which concerns the implications of HUMAN evolution.
Tyler DiPietro,
"Jeez, I don't read here for a couple of days, and a god(s) damned Nazi drops in. That'll teach me to slack off."
I'm not a professional academic, this is more or less a hobby of mine. I assume some of you are (professional academics). Knock the led out.
Posted by: Amalek | March 24, 2010 3:59 AM
Wait, so you cite an Icelandic study to support your claim to support your claim that more cohesive groups outcompete less cohesive groups, but it doesn't say that at all. It says people related by the third or fourth degree of blood are more fertile than those who are less related.
Are we supposed to use fertility as a proxy for group success? Because Haiti has a much higher fertility rate than Iceland does.
In terms of increasing fertility, "fucking without contraception" has third-degree kinship beat hands down.
Posted by: DaveL | March 24, 2010 5:44 AM
Speaking for myself, the answer is no. And judging from your failed attempts to develop a coherent argument, I'd say the same about you. But don't feel too bad about that, an IQ of over 150 would put someone in genius territory and it's not a necessary condition to partake in a discussion. But more to the point, how does the study you quote support your claims about group selection? Higher fertility among closely related couples doesn't say anything about group cohesion. As far as I know about that theory, it's an attempt to explain the evolution of social traits like altruism that don't directly benefit the individual bearer. How someone goes from that assumption to social darwinism and plain racism is beyond me. You claim that Jews are intentionally subverting group cohesion in Western societies, yet offer absolutely no evidence of this vast conspiracy, in the fine tradition of European, American and Muslim antisemites over the centuries. What's more, it's people like you who play directly into the hands of cretinists who like nothing better than pouncing on any apparent link between Darwin and Hitler to discredit the theory of evolution.
Posted by: Röstigraben | March 24, 2010 6:56 AM
Amalek -
Why the concern about IQ? You should know that IQ is virtually worthless as a psychometric. While it can aid in making predictions about a person in a very narrow range, basing any claims about actual intelligence on IQ is bullshit. Men who focus so strongly on their IQ are generally just compensating - much like men who drive very large trucks...
The only thing that has "subverted" group selection, is technology. Jews has nothing to do with it. Indeed, if you really want to blame a particular group, blame the Romans first, then the Anglosaxons and other white Europeans who colonized wide swaths of the world and fucked with specific groups that had been more or less isolated since early modern humans started to wander out of the northern African continent.
And for the record, race really is a social construct. With the exception of a few genetic anomalies in certain groups, humans are humans are humans, no matter what we look like. That specific populations who were either isolated due to geography or groups who were isolated by choice managed to develop various genetic anomalies does not equal different races.
What I think is ironic, is that you blame Jews for breaking down group selection. You might not be aware, but Jews have historically been a rather insular ethnic group.
And for the record, as it does seem important to you, my own IQ is greater than two standard deviations above average. The implications of that however, are absolutely zilch. There are plenty of commenters around these parts who, regardless of their IQ, are better debaters than I am and some who are rather cleverer than myself. Ultimately, my having a rather high IQ simply means that I am rather good at noting patterns and tend to be very good at extrapolating critical information missing from the whole. It comes with both advantages and some very profound disadvantages.
Meanwhile, one of the very best engineers I have ever worked with was classified as retarded when he was in elementary school, an assumption that followed him all the way through. His education was catered to someone who has a sub-par intellect and as such he could barely read and had trouble stringing together a coherent sentence. But he could repair any machine or power tool in front of him - regardless of whether he had ever seen one like it before. Generally just reengineering the part that had failed, so he could make repairs with what we had on hand on a jobsite.
It was not his intellect that failed him. Rather it was the assumptions made about the implications of his IQ that caused the educators in his life to fail him.
Posted by: DuWayne | March 24, 2010 9:24 AM
Woo hoo! I now know I'm not some honkey-cracker-can't dance-whitey! That explains my unusually high CQ--cool quotient. And that also proves that playing D&D;, reciting Monty Python scripts, and going to Renaissance festivals *are* cool activities.
And yes, I've done my part to subvert group cohesion in Western societies. I actively incited societal unrest by alternatively promoting both sides of the "Less filling. Tastes great" controvery in the early 1990s.
Posted by: Mandrake | March 24, 2010 9:36 AM
Mandrake -
CQ actually is a valid metric and if you add a couple things to your list (the more that are relevant to you, the higher your CQ) you aren't far from the mark. Other important additions;
The ability to drone on...I mean to discuss and possibly debate a particular period in history for hours.
Having absolutely no idea who any celebrities in the news are, unless they happened to be involved in science fiction.
The ability to describe in detail the things you know about three or more science fiction authors, two of whom should be dead.
Owning multiple volumes of romance poetry, bonus if you have read all of their published correspondence.
Owning a hard cover copy of the Federalist Papers, bonus if you have a similar copy of the anti-Federalist papers.
The ability to cite from memory, at least five of the U.S. founding fathers.
Being upset with the BBC, because the new doctor is another white dude. (partial credit if you at least know what that means)
Being a tither with excitement to learn that there will indeed be another series of Torchwood.
Having the habit of reading papers published in science journals that have nothing to do with your field or anything you will ever actually be working on.
There are many more, but I really need to get my homework done if I am going to make it to GR tonight to see Ed speak...
Posted by: DuWayne | March 24, 2010 10:38 AM
Ryan--
Your girlfriend might not be surprised to be told she isn't white. "White" is not a constant: by the standards of urban North America today, I'm white. By the standards of Germany in the 1930s, my mother and grandmother weren't. And there are still places where Jews don't count as white.
For that matter, one of my closest friends was surprised the first times people called him white, and still inclined to disagree. Light-skinned, yes, but born and raised in Ireland, and in England, where he went to graduate school, anyone that clearly Irish--with those Celtic looks and that accent--isn't white.
Posted by: Vicki | March 24, 2010 10:44 AM
I confess to wording the comment quoted above intentionally cryptically to bypass potential censorship the result of Pavlovian outrage. I suppose it could be summed up thus: human bio-diversity per ancestry is a real, robust phenomenon. And as such has profound consequences.
So you're confessing that abb3w's translation is correct, and you really are a clueless racist trying to use sciencey language to make your bigotry look intelligent? (LOVE your clever misuse of "bio-diversity!")
Oh well, at least you have enough sense of shame to try to hide your stupidity in a fog of incoherent crap. Perhaps some day you'll learn to hide your stupidity even better by SHUTTING THE FUCK UP and GETTING AN EDUCATION.
But you're right about one thing, though: it is indeed better to be seen as incoherent than to be seen as completely full of shit.
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 24, 2010 11:00 AM
Amalek - Why the concern about IQ?
Because it's a simple, sciencey, conclusive-looking number that racists like Amalek can use to reinforce their simple picture of innate, genetically-determined white superiority. Amalek isn't the first racist to flog this bit of pseudoscience, and I'm sure he won't be the last. (Hell, isn't that what the whole IQ concept was tailored for in the first place?)
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 24, 2010 11:10 AM
A Mensa candidate and a moron - what a complete surprise!
Really, if I where a member of Mensa I'd never admit it. It seems to have been populated by those who can barely function in the real world, it's simply become a measure of how socially maladjusted an individual is relative to the general population. - Dingo
Posted by: DingoJack | March 24, 2010 11:25 AM
James Hanley,
Rats, I was hoping you wouldn't go there. On that basis, you win.
Posted by: JuliaL | March 24, 2010 11:52 AM
I love how his solution for building a more cohesive group is to be less tolerant of differences. And by love I mean scoff at.
Posted by: Abby Normal | March 24, 2010 12:01 PM
"Shaka, when the walls fell!"
Posted by: LightningRose | March 23, 2010 1:22 PM
Thank you...that was perfect.
Posted by: Sean O'Doherty | March 24, 2010 3:40 PM
Let me just state for the record that both LightningRose and Sean O'Doherty are terribly dorky.
Posted by: Modusoperandi | March 24, 2010 4:53 PM
Modusoperandi, that's like the Borg calling the Bynar 11001001.
Posted by: Abby Normal | March 24, 2010 5:41 PM
Would I have attained the rank of Captain in Startrek Online if I was a dork? I think not.
Posted by: Modusoperandi | March 24, 2010 8:25 PM