Recently attended a concert that included a performance of a piano sonata that lasted about half an hour.

For some reason, I had assumed the pianist would have sheet music to work from, although a moment’s thought would have showed how impractical this would be.

The complexity of the composition was amazing. Leaving aside the skill needed to produce the sounds, the memory feat was astonishing to me, though everybody else seemed to take it for granted.

“Research shows* that people can’t generally memorise more than 7 things unless they’re sooooper smart�

Let’s see now. I feel like my memory was never that good and it’s failing, but in my youth I could indeed memorise pages and pages of many different poems that I have completely forgotten, and I have forgotten so much more of what I once learned that I don’t need or use any more. But I still know thousands of words in several languages and learn new ones every day so I guess I’m well above what research shows.

Interestingly, since the advent of the spell-checkers in computer programmes, I’ll have to say that my spelling has deteriorated and if I were to write by hand I’d make more mistakes than I used to. And since computers default to US spelling I sometimes get confused and question if my own English spelling of certain words is correct and have to check. Also I don’t bother memorising as much as I gather I’ve got all the world’s encyclopedias, atlases, and all information in my pocket phone so why bother taxing my brain with it all.

But the concept of “photographic memory” intrigues me. Why can’t I and everyone have it? That’s one gift I could do with.

Miller’s “answerâ€� was, and remains, a very good example of the ‘charlatan’s squirm’ – that thing that bullshit-artists do when confronted with screamingly-obvious everyday examples that blast their hypothesis to shreds.

Psychosophaster: “Research shows* that people can’t generally memorise more than 7 things unless they’re sooooper smart�

Noticer: “How many lines are there in a sonnet, chucklehead?�

Psychosophaster: “Chunking�.

* “Research shows� is one of those tropes used by bullshitters to try to pre-empt counter-argument. It is the pseudoscience equivalent of “Up to X% off� (the actual discount will be between -&inf; and X), with a modal interval [0, X/3].

When the “up to X% off� bullshit has been challenged, the defence is: Puffery.

Wait, chunking is the answer for keeping more than 7 things in working memory, right?
The magical number 7 only applies to working memory, no?

Memorizing concertos and plays is not about chunking, it’s about repetition until it get stored in long-term memory, surely?

The author tells me he is updating his paper, so I will let you know when the new version is available.

I suppose you’re referring to Majid not Miller, seeing Miller published that paper 63 years ago?

But the current teacher … better have a memory span of more than just 7 genders, if they want to keep their job or avoid trouble with the law

Today’s winner.

And before someone replies that I don’t really understand the intricacies of this particular science. Like that maybe one memory item isn’t really just one item but maybe several, or even thousands or millions of different items. So maybe an autist who can remember 7 metropolitan telephone directories, or maybe 5 or 9 such directories, is actually that normal average person in this scheme of things. Some science this. But to tell the truth I’m not that gifted; I can’t even remember all the different genders that exist, and they’re still less than a hundred. Oh but I’m not sure I ever bothered to actually learn them, though I might have casually scanned the current, or not so current list, sometime.

But the current teacher, or some commenter on Facebook or Twitter, better have a memory span of more than just 7 genders, if they want to keep their job or avoid trouble with the law, or at least not get censured by the controllers of the social media networks. Now why doesn’t the author of this article complain to Zuck and his gang, and those gender academics, and the judges, that they should abolish all those gender lists and just stick to two or three genders, as it is scientifically impossible for anybody to memorise more than 7 (or at the most 9) items? But then they’d probably reply that all should keep a gender list handy, sort of like a shopping list, if they have problems with their memory.

Bibi Andersson, the wife, passed away recently, I think. A true beauty.

This should have been published on April 1st.

And how do birds navigate their migrations with a memory span of so few items?

And a Shakespearean actor has a memory span of how many items, considering each word is a separate item? Or someone who has memorised the entire Koran and can recite it off by heart ? Or someone who has mastered several languages? Or those who memorise train timetables and the London telephone directory? In fact someone with a memory span of 7 items would be useless at doing anything at all and would just be vegetable fit only to survive on a drip.

Who’s grasping? Anything on this topic I may submit isn’t for the sake of argument. I find it interesting because it is consonant with my experience – something you couldn’t even begin to touch.

That said, you’re convinced not to be convinced. I don’t care. Do what you must; think what you like. But grasping for straws? Ha! That’s a hoot!

Why basic phone numbers have 7 alphanumerics, now all numerics.
Adding area codes has increased from the 7+2 to 10 digits held in memory.

a leopard is unlikely to appear in your path, as they are predominately ambush and stalking hunters, and night predators. They know that if the prey sees them, the game is lost.
http://www.krugerpark.co.za/Kruger_National_Park_Wildlife-travel/kruger-park-wildlife-leopards.html

Intelligence is a scheming tool to grab more stuff…

“The function is survival by any mechanism any means possible, whatever can happen can happen, no umpires no rules, just a blood sport; and for nothing, nothing in the end, just a raised hand ‘I win, you die.’ And it’s a crude and stupid game. Our intelligence only exists because it was a scheming tool, because it made us better at stealing star energy from other organisms. That’s the only reason why it exists. And it still remains its only function. To be used as a scheming tool to derive gratification or satisfaction of our selfish individual desires.” -Gary Inmendham

Gladiator War (Graphic Content)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PJiJQtaBZeAEylHpv4HVmF86IU24ZZzQ/view

> One can fully comprehend a process

Or not. Tour states, “I am not qualified to enter the public discussion on evolution vs. creation.” Weasel out of that, EliteCon.

Short term memory is expensive, like registers in a CPU. Your little 3 lb. brain uses around 1/4 of your blood supply, and God help you if your oxgen is cut off for more than a couple minutes. Evolution will only give you as much as is useful wherever you happen to be evolving, it is not seeeking to create God-humans. We’ll have to do that ourselves, but be careful what you wish for, many people have pursued such fantasies.

Then there are bird brains, which appear to be a lot more compact than ours, and that our brains are mostly fat. It’s not just how big it is, but how it is organized and “educated”, intelligence is accrued as well as innate, like so much that is really useful, all brains need to be “trained” or “programmed”, they don’t come ready to go. And the bigger it gets, the more complicated it gets, and less reliable, and the more you have to invest in training to get the benefit of the higher smarts. Then, when a leopard appears in your path, what you need is not to think it over. Being dumb can be good in dumb circumstances.

It’s a very messy subject.

“The short answer is “no.â€� Just because you don’t understand something is no reason to call yourself a “skepticâ€� and imply that an entire field of study is wrong.”

The meaning hear is not a lack of comprehension, but rather a recognition that something about what is advanced doesn’t make sense. One may grasp the analysis but chagrin the conclusions, in fact based on the analysis, one may conclude

the conclusion itself makes no sense or doesn’t follow —-

Hence the expression,

“I got it and I don’t get it.”

One can fully comprehend a process and be skeptical of the conclusions, the methodology . . . etc.

Tour assume his own ignorance of evolution means that all the experts in the subject are wrong too.

Tour: I simply do not understand, chemically, how macroevolution could have happened. Hence, am I not free to join the ranks of the skeptical and to sign such a statement without reprisals from those that disagree with me?

Larry Moran (Professor Emeritus in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto) responds: The short answer is “no.” Just because you don’t understand something is no reason to call yourself a “skeptic” and imply that an entire field of study is wrong.

A chemist who doesn’t understand evolution
https://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2014/03/a-chemist-who-doesnt-understand.html

Keep grasping for straws.

Creationist fanatics repeat the same garbage over and over, and their claims are indexed and listed on the Index to Creationist Claims. http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html Who want’s to play creationist bingo?

is there any research into brain damage and brain injury where people suddenly have a lot less item memory span? someplace in the brain where if you take a direct head in the head, all the victims immediately can’t remember 7 things anymore but now they’re down to 3 or 4?

then compare that area between normal healthy adults and so if there’s any correlation between MRI there and paper and pencil test ability.

should do a comparative biology study where we calculate ratios for total brain volume, specific relevant brain area volume, and body size, to item memory span. we’ll probably find a decreasing ratio there, as brains get twice as big but you only get 50% more item memory span.

also do the obvious comparison between humans along the standardized intelligence test spectrum. dumb humans are probably less than 7, the smartest humans up to 10. which brings up a conundrum. the difference between an animal with an item span of 4 or 5, versus the average human, with a span of 7, is just as big as the difference between an average human and a really smart human. about 3 items. but a really smart human’s brain is not twice as big as an average human’s brain. it’s bigger, but not nearly by as much. so what’s so important, what’s the difference, in a really smart human’s brain?

can we infer that really smart humans are about as much smarter than average humans, as average humans are as much smarter than primates?

would be interesting though if this capability did not degrade much even in dumb humans. that is, maybe 6 or 7 remains about what even dumb adults can do, revealing that this is probably an important working number for humans to be able to juggle mentally. in the same way really dumb human groups around the world can still have good hand-eye coordination and so on. that’s less dependent on g.

Agreed. Though I’m perfectly willing to coexist with anyone who doesn’t see eye-to-eye with me on all things theological.

Incidentally, have you yet to see James M. Tour’s lectures? That guy is devastating!

Video Link

One of my favorite films. That stunning blonde is mute throughout the entire film until she breaks her silence with, “It is finished!”.

The music isn’t all that memorable, honestly, and since I don’t need to “hear” subtitles, I play classical music while the DVD soundtrack is muted.

Beginning with the opening scene, right when the sun pierces through the clouds, Vaughan Williams’ Intrada is indexed to play. So much more appropriate than the actual film score. JMO.

Video Link

This reminds me of the rule that only the brightest people could remember as many as 9 items at a time, the ordinary human managing three.

And sometimes three is a bit much.

Video Link

A quintessentially jewish thing to do (by that “Buddhist” heart LOL)

would have been interesting had you kept pseudoscience of evolution out of it. this is the main reason the world is unraveling.

7 is a perfect number for Hebrews and is found everywhere: seven days, seven continents, oceans, heavens, gifts of grace, seals of prophecy, etc. 8 is also very special: octaves…

dear intellectuals and learned men, please stop deceiving the masses with pseudoscience and at least have the humility of admitting your ignorance.

Video Link

Extrapolating just a bit, this helps to explain why most people can’t be bothered by things like the existence of eight billion people on the planet, or the influx of a hundred million to their country. Hardly anyone can meaningfully conceive of such numbers.

Try to picture a million people, then try to picture a billion. How different do they look, given that one is a thousand times the other? Frankly it’s beyond our ken.

And speaking of Boris Johnson, from today’s Daily Mail:

REVEALED: The NY socialist at the heart of a scandal that could stop Trump’s favorite becoming British PM: American who reported Boris Johnson’s late night fight is the daughter of Broadway legend Mitch Leigh who wrote ‘The Impossible Dream’

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7172107/Palm-reading-New-York-Buddhist-heart-Boris-Johnson-scandal-London.html

Probably unnecessary to add, the real name of “Broadway legend Mitch Leigh” was Irwin Michnick.

Nothing warms Chinese grandparents’ hearts like hearing the little ones recite from memory the San Zi Jing, the Three Character Classic–China’s equivalent of Fun with Dick and Jane:

Watch and weep at this performance: https://youtu.be/Ob_vOvcBKvM

Video Link

Or learn it yourself, right here:

The seventh seal is the killer…

This reminds me of the rule that only the brightest people could remember as many as 9 items at a time, the ordinary human managing three. It was illustrated by a Punch cartoon showing two Cambridge Dons walking across the grass of a college quadrangle. The one was turning to the other and saying “and ninthly!”. It’s old joke.

At Oxford, attended by Boris Johnson, they allegedly stop at 6. PPE graduates who join the Civil Service get sent to do a Masters in Economics. Cambridge Economics graduates start straight away.

Does memorising a tune count?

https://news.sky.com/story/seals-can-copy-human-speech-and-sing-star-wars-theme-tune-new-study-says-11745715

That’s nothing but a sophism, a mumbo–jumbo of words which don’t mean anything.

Nonsense. Are you denying that you exist as a “self” that is consciously aware of its existence? That is, quite literally, insanity, as it requires disbelieving exactly what you experience with every passing second.

Hook a neural net to a camera, it will also be observing the “external world�.

Mechanistically sensing it, with no entity present realizing that it is a self being an observer of the sensory information. I’m not talking about the simple fact that sensing is taking place.

Make that net siufficiently complex and it will be the exact same thing as you and I.

A faith statement. Why would adding layers of complexity necessarily make a “self” spring into existence?

That’s nothing but a sophism, a mumbo–jumbo of words which don’t mean anything. Hook a neural net to a camera, it will also be observing the “external world”. Make that net siufficiently complex and it will be the exact same thing as you and I

Access to expensive gyms.

That’s true.

And yes, attraction is mediated through the mind, which processes data on the environment (it is not just an ‘instinct’ from the Stone Age).

However, I’m not sure that’s what’s going on in the Japanese case. Or the upper class American case (where the ‘uselessness’ signal would be big muscles – little utility in modern economy, access to expensive guns, lots of free time).

Yes, it is extremely unhealthy.

Emasculate men plague both ancient & modern China and Jewish communities. We have already seen what this has caused, namely tribes that can only manipulate but do not want to fight. Any tribe that follows this trend is likely to be conquered by the next dominant nomadic tribe.

The most important thing for women is social hierarchy. Sometimes animals signal their extreme fitness (in this case their social dominance) by displaying a costly and useless feature, like a peacock’s tail or perhaps the lack of muscles for a Japanese male. Until very recently a male couldn’t avoid being at least somewhat muscular, unless he was very rich and could afford several servants doing the simplest tasks for him. So the lack of muscles, like the long fingernails of Chinese mandarins (or the bound feet of their women) showed extreme social dominance: it was a very costly feature, which only upper class men could afford. Even now, you have to be at least middle class (and more likely upper middle class) to be able to follow such a silly fashion.

Anyway, such signaling is a sign of decadence, and should be frowned upon.

I agree. Its not healthy.

But it does suggest that female desire is more elastic than many think, and sometimes – seemingly – not driven by any obvious concern with evolutionary fitness.

Humans can be quirkier than we think.

I believe there was/is a fad in Japan where men were slimming down to extreme thinness because Japanese women find it cute.

Even if it’s true (I’m somewhat skeptical), it’d be a very good example of some over-civilized unnatural fad, not much different from body building, except in the other direction, and perhaps even less healthy.

While I don’t think that, all else being equal, muscular guys ever had a problem getting laid, it’s a well known phenomenon that while guys wanted to look like Bruce Willis in his prime, women preferred Brad Pitt (in his prime) or Ryan Gosling. It doesn’t matter. You can hardly change your body type, and working towards bigger muscles is always better than the alternative of becoming a couch potato. While running marathons is ultimately neither very healthy nor a very good way to achieve being tough and wiry, it’s certainly beneficial to add some endurance training (not necessarily running) to your schedule. Having Bruce Willis as an ideal is usually a good motivator for ectomorphs to work their way towards looking like Brad Pitt in Fight Club.

You mean these guys?

Athletic ectomorphs are definitely preferred to body builders, but some places and times women prefer slender and refined with little to no muscle. I believe there was/is a fad in Japan where men were slimming down to extreme thinness because Japanese women find it cute.

But yes, thin athletic ectomorphs, all things considered, are probably the ideal for women.

You are right about this build being ideal for soldiering, too. In Israel, soldiers in physically demanding units typically have that thin athletic build rather than the beefy American look. But American soldiers until the Vietnam war were also thin and wiry – the beefy look is really quite recent, and rather deplorable. Its probably connected to our culture of excess.

You can find portraits of nobility from the 17th century, and they are exactly as you say, thin and athletic looking. And portraits of 19th century English nobility show them that way, too.

Beefy muscularity has always been associated with farmers, laborers, and peasants.

Among educated upper class women in America, big muscles are a big turn off. Steve Sailer made a post about that a while ago.

Upper-middle class English women are well-known for their absolute hatred of muscular rowers. I remember from my time at school and university that such people were practically social pariahs who were always avoided by women.

Women like athletic muscular ectomorphs, not body builders. Muscular ectomorph is not very muscular for a body builder, but he could still be quite strong (obviously weaker than mesomorphs), especially relative to body weight, and has better endurance and ability to survive a famine. Ectomorphs are better suited to be soldiers, hence, nobility was probably more like that. (It’d be interesting to see a study. Charlemagne was very tall and thin.)

Very true.

Among educated upper class women in America, big muscles are a big turn off. Steve Sailer made a post about that a while ago.

In large parts of continental Europe and East Asia, ditto.

And there was a study a while back about the ideal man in Jane Austen times – thin, non-square face, little musculature, pale.

The big muscle thing is an American or Anglo thing that has to do with very specific cultural and sociological reasons. And even in America it’s class based.

But people don’t realize that because they are historically and culturally ignorant, because they tend to take what’s happening in their time and place as eternal truths about humanity, and because alt right and “game” type people want it to be true that women like big muscles, because it vindicates their childish world view.

I’m a bit partial to the general outline of Niven and Pournelle’s Lucifer’s Hammer – I think it would make a great movie with a few small modifications.

In that novel, there were roving gangs of blacks who ally with white pols and adopt cannibalism as a unifying religious ceremony, and try to attack the last surviving nuclear power plant, after the comet hits. These perhaps should be dressed in Black Hebrew Israelite costumes, but not otherwise changed. Meanwhile, the black astronaut that lands in a white farming community, and has implied future miscegenation with some mudsharking white women, should be cut out completely.

Sounds interesting.

I personally prefer stories about black worlds though because as long as whites or NE Asians continue to exist so will civilization which makes the story just another story of human recovery from WWII 2.0 instead of a real collapse story.

Think about that scenario: Assume that everyone other than blacks and Australoids magically disappear for whatever reason, what will happen? Well, blacks in North America etc will be reduced to cannibalism since they tend to be really poor at farming and pastoralism. Blacks in Africa will also experience an immediate collapse and widespread cannibalism but it won’t be that serious because at least they know non-intensive farming.

We can think about for example vehicles. Can blacks occasionally produce some vehicle? Yes. However they are highly dependent on non-blacks for parts. In a black world there will be less and less vehicles until there won’t literally be even one operational vehicle left. In terms of military affairs there might be tank battles or even air battles between black countries or armed groups for a while..until all sides can no longer produce even one tank.

It is a pity that China produces mass propaganda against the Japanese, but seems to have language which bans racism against blacks, no doubt because of their mineral and farming interests in Africa. I would like to see China produce this type of entertainment, in order to combat Hollywood propaganda.

Yeah commies are traitors who aid Sub-Saharan Africa against the will of the public. We call it

�之于韭，
用之于匪，
赠之于�。

aka “Money is robbed from the defenseless ordinary Chinese people, used by the commie bandits and sent to Africa as aid.” But yes many of us hate blacks because they are nothing but sources of never-ending trouble. They are already attempting to ruin Guangzhou. Thankfully the city isn’t Detroit yet.

Public opinion in China is massively against this kind of fly-by-night Frankenstein science, as shown by a poll I saw from one of the bloggers here (I believe it was AE? Could have been Sailer). It was support for “eugenic” genetic manipulation of an unborn human baby, and support was barely higher than in Western countries, perhaps not even high enough to conclude a generally greater openness to it as distinct from noise in the data.

Paraphrasing a comment on that: the Chinese are human too, who knew?

Wow Anatoly’s really gone off the deep end, unless April 11th has been declared double April fools? No conceivable ethical considerations? Shows the poor excuse for “ethics” some people operate under, what could be more deeply unethical than creating abominations like animal-human hybrids in a fit of pique? So in your mind they have an ethical interest in not being humanely killed and eaten, but no legitimate interest in not being the subject of doctor frankenstein’s mad experiments, the results of we have no idea and to which they could never possibly consent? How does increased intelligence have a real benefit to their quality of life? I suspect there are many more very depressed people per capita than there are among even animals in captivity. And I mean even feeling the need of extending the realm of serious quality of life consideration or the concept of “consent” to animals shows the absurdity of the “ethical calculus” of utilitarian “ethics”, hybrids of this sort are a crime against nature and human dignity.

And the economic argument is literally laughable; you can recognize the economic wrongheadedness of importing a foreign underclas which has net negative human capital, and yet a race of literal ape-men is just the boon the economy needs? You might think of taking a vacation and unwinding for a bit, you’ve got a screw loose mate.

“Christian-liberal morality” is a term I like to use because I simply consider SJ and Communism to be extremely distorted versions of Christianity.

China on the other hand is Social Darwinist.

Yes, but you are white. You probably have some kind of Christian morality, be it Christian or SJW, as Karlin points out. Chinamen don’t have any problems with this.

I’m a bit partial to the general outline of Niven and Pournelle’s Lucifer’s Hammer – I think it would make a great movie with a few small modifications.

In that novel, there were roving gangs of blacks who ally with white pols and adopt cannibalism as a unifying religious ceremony, and try to attack the last surviving nuclear power plant, after the comet hits. These perhaps should be dressed in Black Hebrew Israelite costumes, but not otherwise changed. Meanwhile, the black astronaut that lands in a white farming community, and has implied future miscegenation with some mudsharking white women, should be cut out completely.

It is a pity that China produces mass propaganda against the Japanese, but seems to have language which bans racism against blacks, no doubt because of their mineral and farming interests in Africa. I would like to see China produce this type of entertainment, in order to combat Hollywood propaganda.

A surprising amount of sci-fi seems to fall into two political camps – SJWism, or libertarianism. I have wondered if that is a reflection of the psychology of the authors or of the publishing process. Very little of it seems to be race realist, or traditional conservative.

We can fix that.

We can write a bunch of “post-apocalyptic world” stories for fun. Basically a religious war in the Middle East caused all high-IQ races to be involved and ethnobioweapons from unknown sources began to devastate the world. When all high-IQ races destroyed each other blacks (and maybe Amerinds, Pacific Islanders and Australoids) surprisingly found that they are the only inhabitants of the world. Due to their low IQ & high time preferences tech rapidly declined and the world deteriorates into a mess.

Then either the world manages to be partly rebuilt or the world will be destroyed forever depending on your flavor. For example we can claim that a few Igbos, Ashantis and Yorubas become the new rulers of the world and manage to rehabilitate tech to the point that 100 years later they manage to go to space again. We can also claim that the world just gradually collapses to Iron Age levels permanently.

Animal uplifting is a very dangerous idea. We already have blacks bitching about muh slavery and shiet every single day. Do we really need humans to apologize to cows for eating beef for many years? Seriously animal uplifting can easily lead to uplifted animals attempting to exterminate humanity.

And Karlin away from the monkeys!…

I had two thoughts after reading this:

1. OMG! They gave the monkeys autism!

2. For the love of God, keep the monkeys away from crack.

If Detroit’s current population was replaced with GM intelligent chimps, would that lower or raise the crime rate?

I’m thinking they would become like Larry Niven’s Kzinti.

Your upgraded chimps might object to being treated like animals. They’re gonna want reparations.

I think elephants may already be smarter than people. If people were smart they would live in peace and prosperity.

Heh, why not? It’s a clown world anyway. Uplift them all, to the point they can even uplift themselves. Cue Terran domination of the entire universe as literally 100% of the Earth’s biomass is sapient, allowing for ludicrous and infinitely-increasing brainpower

When it comes to tales of uplifted animals used as slaves by future society Cordwainer Smith’s Instrumentality of Man stories must be considered. He made the liberation of these creatures, granted human-like intelligence partial humanity while co-existing with old instincts, a central element of many imaginative works.

It’s a reflection of the times. Very little modern literature is race-realist or traditionally conservative especially after WWII. The greatest American sf editor, John W. Campbell, had views close to race-realism though most of his writers (Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, van Vogt) didn’t share them. He once forced Heinlein into writing a yellow-peril U.S. invasion story, Sixth Column, Robert never really agreed with.

Used to be an idea that we would genetically modify lions so that they would be able to hunt and eat but not ever attack a person. It was just a vague idea in sci-fi, not really spelled out, but I think that is a potentially interesting path, if you were set on playing God – implanting instincts into animals.

Of course, if you were making them smarter, you might eventually get to Phillip K. Dick’s idea of Martian predators that would use telepathy to ask, “Can I eat you?” That would be pretty unsettling.

I agree about uplifting animals, if I can get my cat to do housework instead of sleeping all day that’d be great.

Joking aside, it does seem that creating slaves is part of motivation here… But this time it will be A-OK because they are “just” sentient animals, not humans.

Consciousness doesn’t exist

So you deny your immediate, moment-to-moment experience of being an observer of both yourself and the external world?

I actually would like to see a historical analysis of this sort of thing: the nature of women’s physical preferences in recent centuries.

Like, for one thing, I can tell you that the vast majority of Americans once were not like the supposed ideal man of today.

They were strong enough to do hard work all day long but they were remarkably SKINNY.

The transition to “big muscles” as opposed to “wiry and tough” began with the conquest of the American prairies and the subsequent explosion in our agriculture and surplus. As Steve Sailer has pointed out, my native state of Pennsylvania in the mid 20th century produced awesome (white) football players (and other athletes) from a region (Western PA) that was a hub of steel and coal. Pennsylvania’s stereotypical product was the likes of Mike Ditka or Chuck Bednarik, whereas England’s northern athletes seem to have been far smaller. But England didn’t border on the farms of Iowa and Ohio.

That was football. In baseball, the best players were usually “stout” with short but powerful arms (Babe Ruth) or rather thin. Shoot, you could probably blow over Ty Cobb with a stiff breeze. Then again, baseball’s also a sport where an actual alcoholic (Mickey Mantle) could be the best player in the world for like 15 years

Though Watts is a despicable leftist, who literally had a vasectomy to prevent global warming (I’m kidding you not)…

It sounds like an entirely praiseworthy action in this particular case.

Right, I know that

But it’s usually used by people who think it’s good to be a Shabbos goy. The classic example would be neoconservatives

Hence why I asked

Generally, females will want to mate with males in possession of stronger muscles, not brains.

This isn’t true. It only seems that way because you live in a social system deliberately designed to pervert the natural order.

Women are supposed to be the ones driving the mating strategy and bearing the brunt of the consequences for mating choices.

Absent a government system funding a safety net to encourage women’s bad choices and fixing the wreckage, women don’t care about strong muscles at all.

Imagine if you lived in a dystopia where government propaganda and welfare agencies encouraged men to murder and steal to their heart’s content; we’re living exactly in that dystopia, except with gender roles swapped.

The problem with bringing back to life extinct species is that their gut microbiota DNA (gut metagenome) will never be available and the gut microbiota (which is specific the functioning of a species) is fundamental to the correct functioning of an organism.

Absolutely! And since this importance seems especially true for humans (explaining our relatively small genome) it would pose a particular problem for bringing back anything from genus Homo. (Not that I see the slightest reason to do so.)

What is your definition of “Judeo-Christian�?

It’s a nicer way of calling someone a “Shabbos goy”.

Shouldn’t we strive to uplift humanity first? Plenty of people around the world still die of starvation, disease, war. Suicides rates world wide are slightly decreasing, but in the US slightly increasing?

Well, if animals are uplifted, they could become as intelligent as humans. For instance, chimps would only need around 7-8 S.D.’s worth more of IQ to be competitive with humans. This would allow them to compete in the market economy.

With so many people still unemployed around the planet (the world economy is rather good right now too), does this sound a little bit hollow if not a ridiculous proposition, or is it just me?….

If this continues to fruition, could those like Karlin be creating a new class of Democratic voters in the US? What next, walls to keep the animals from immigrating to the US? 🙂 .

Uplifted primates and elephants are one thing. But do we really want to see uplifted lions and tigers? I think not.

In any case, I’m not a fan of animal uplift. I prefer them just as they are now.

I have read it also. TBH, I thought the general plot was sort of bland and derivative, though I did appreciate the vampire as apex super-intelligence, like unto us as we are to cows. Though even that indirectly reminded me of the shark DNA mixed into some of the smart dolphins in one of Brin’s uplift books – the predator instinct on the loose in the ship, through irresponsible DNA engineering.

I appreciated it because I think there is a general lack of HBD in sci-fi. Funniest of all is perhaps Star Trek with its endless alien miscegenation.

A surprising amount of sci-fi seems to fall into two political camps – SJWism, or libertarianism. I have wondered if that is a reflection of the psychology of the authors or of the publishing process. Very little of it seems to be race realist, or traditional conservative.

The problem is people are not adapted to modern living – that is the reason why intelligence is linked to low fertility now. It is a problem of the modern environment. And why it would be hard to make smart, functional animals.

You need to tailor the psychological traits. Most of these animals don’t have hands, so it is like you are making double amputees. If a dog were too smart, he would probably be melancholy or go insane and maul everyone.

That is why, if we must make smart animals, then I favor it being done in small doses, more like a breeding program, copying and spreading the smart genes within a species.

You also don’t want to trigger the egalitarian response in people or all these animals will be on basic and breeding like rabbits.

Intelligence appears to be a dysgenic trait for reasons I don’t understand.

It has a lot to do with costs. Intelligence is pretty expensive. So it cannot be a luxury product. Use it or lose it.

Having said that, animals seem to have gotten progressively smarter over the course of geological history. So it’s probably pretty useful, provided that you are competing with other intelligent animals. Apparently there was a runaway process with humans over the last couple million years. Yes, short term it’s a disadvantage in most modern human societies right now, but if you take a longer view, it’s been moderately to highly beneficial for most of human history.

How crazy or cogent was the rest of his work?

Not yet, in 2100 maybe.

Do you have a link to a story for that?

I used to read his blog.

I agree about uplifting animals, if I can get my cat to do housework instead of sleeping all day that’d be great.

That said, what I find puzzling and scary is why evolution didn’t take care of it by itself. Intelligence appears to be a dysgenic trait for reasons I don’t understand.

We know for a fact that human level intelligence is very easy to make – it only took a few million years to diverge us from our ape ancestors. Few millions years to build our current level of intelligence is a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms.

If it’s so fast an easy, why don’t we see hundreds of ape species constructing buildings, farming, and composing poems? Beyond apes, why dont we see dolphins teaching algebra to their kids? Why are the very few fellow hominids that embarked on the same course as us (Neanderthals etc) extinct?

Why are our very own species dysgenic when it comes to intelligence? Generally, females will want to mate with males in possession of stronger muscles, not brains. If education is proxy for intelligence, based on fertility rates, universities are genetic extermination camps. Japanese are some of the smartest people on the planet, and they are self eliminating as we speak. It’s as if there is a barrier in intelligence that nature doesn’t want crossed.

And it’s puzzling why. I understand that human brain is an energy sink and requires a lot of food, but lots of animals require a lot of food (elephants, whales etc), it doesn’t seem to stop them. And you’d think that the ability to predict the future and act accordingly would be a major evolutionary advantage. And yet it isn’t. Very strange. We are missing something here, and that something may lead to extinction of humanity if we dont figure it out. Scary stuff.

Though Watts is a despicable leftist, who literally had a vasectomy to prevent global warming (I’m kidding you not),

That is amazing. Do you have a link to a story for that?

I’m reminded of the story of Henry Wise and John Brown.

Henry Wise was a fervent Southern pro-slavery radical, whose radicalism was almost too much for his fellow Southern Democrats; John Brown, of course, was the exact opposite.

Wise, in interrogating Brown after Harpers Ferry, came to respect Brown. They admired the other’s craziness, which led to action. Years after the war, Wise sincerely told a shocked and misunderstanding crowd of his fellow white Virginians that John Brown was, “a great man!”

In a certain sense, I respect Watts’s dedication to his insanity. Thank you, Watts, for taking your insanity to a logical extreme.

What is your definition of “Judeo-Christian”?

Ceteris paribus, it does.

All of that is true.

There are also reasons to think that animal intelligence would be bad for humans. I care about the interests of (even non-white) humans more than animals. Intelligent animals would be both more able to compete with humans for resources and have a claim to them and could be more dangerous to humans.

If increasing the number of sentient beings is good, then increasing the number of humans would be better (both from a human stand-point and neutrally) as less risky and requiring fewer resources.

Doesn’t have to cause more suffering.