[ExI] extropy-chat Digest, Vol 91, Issue 3

[Keith Henson]

On Sun, Apr 3, 2011 at 1:42 AM,  Kelly Anderson <kellycoinguy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Sat, Apr 2, 2011 at 11:41 AM, Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Kelly, I really recommend reading Clark's research paper, Genetically
>> capitalist. ?Or his book or both.
>
> Do you have a URL? I'm not afraid of additional facts, no matter how
> politically incorrect they may be.

I have cited the paper on this mailing list at least a dozen times in
the last few years, back to Dec 2007

http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2007-December/039363.html

I should add that Google is your friend.  The entire first page of
results for Genetically Capitalist in are about this paper, the third
one in the list point to the above URL

>> Mirco has a solid understanding of the situation.
>>
>> There are substantial differences in populations because of different
>> past selection pressures. ?It's not politically correct to say so of
>> course.
>
> I may be wrong, but I don't think genetics plays a bigger part in
> recent zeitgeist shifts than memetics.

The poor don't currently starve in western culture.  Incidentally, you
could Google memetics "Keith Henson" to see what I have contributed to
this area back to the mid 80s.

> You'll never convince me that
> I'm smarter than my non-Caucasian children... :-)

If you say so, I have no argument.  Given the spread we know, there is
much overlap between groups even if the Chinese average smarter than
people from Western Europe..

But in any case Clark was not talking about smartness, he was talking
more about the personality traits needed to become well off in a
stable agrarian society.  The twin studies have made it very clear
that personality traits are largely the results of genes.

If you want to argue that genes have little or no effect, I have this
horse that needs to learn calculus.

Keith