A lot that could be said about many of the ideas presented. My experience is as an Engineer turned pastor who had a contingent of recent refugees from Liberia in the church. They were all ages. As I watched them develop and adapt to the culture in and around Minneapolis, Minnesota, several things were apparent. The high moral values that they had when they arrived were gradually diminished as they became more like the general black community. Their ability to compete for jobs was intellectually based primarily, but also was impacted by their morality. Trustworthiness is important in any business relationship. One of the leaders of this group told me that he wished that the president of Liberia was half black and half white so that person would be more intelligent and less emotionally driven in decision making. This man, Albert, was from one of over a dozen different tribes in Liberia and only escaped with his life because when he was captured by the rebels, someone recognized him as a good football (soccer) player that he had personally competed against. From that incident he had determined that Albert was a good guy and could be let go along with his young son, Albert Jr. The fears that these people had, the remarkable horrors that they suffered during the civil war, the lack of education, the tribal rivalries that were carried over to the US, and several other factors all contributed to a lower standard of living in general although perhaps higher than the indigenous blacks in the area. They were less likely to be involved in crimes and alcohol and drug abuse so had that advantage because of religion. I would guess that collectively their intelligence was lower than average but have no testing basis to prove that. My only observation was to compare them to the Hispanic population in the church who were also recent immigrants but were quicker to learn how to do the work tasks we did while rebuilding our church building.
The greatest minds in western history were almost exclusively men of deep religious faith. The current malaise reflects a bovine atheism had has infected the academy and other pseudo-elites. Indeed the scientific world view could *only* have emerged in a Christian context.
I have long experience of working in Uganda with people that I would describe as possibly average in intelligence but extremely high in spirituality and capable of acting on their faith. Americans are street-smart but almost never really act on their faith…we Americans tend to write a check and pat ourselves on the back for’doing something good’.
This is a very necessary dialogue…and we should start by challenging the assumption that a scientific and logical IQ is the most desirable trait. Maybe the ability to surrender your life to Jesus is more important than the ability to fix every problem through intellect.
Well, the pattern seems to be that the more social problems you solve through collective intellect, the less need you have for Jesus to take the wheel. There's certainly a vital role for spirituality but not in the organization and promotion of a prosperous and progressive society.
I think that a truly God fearing group of people who feel safe with one another and are free to do good work and benefit from the results have historically outperformed groups that were irreligious and bogged down by fears for life, limb, property and future prosperity.
I agree with you. The problem with such conservative religious groups is that the risk averse system they operate by isn't sustainable and is easily threatened by progress and progressive ideas. The challenge of such groups is how to balance the art of retaining those pro social and protective aspects of their community while accommodating progress. This is tough and I doubt can be achieved without deliberately letting go of or softening some of their longstanding traditions.
I currently am in an area with a small Amish community. They are risk adverse to adopting technology for personal ease but are some of the most imaginative and inventive people I know due to their need to figure out work arounds to the technical limitations that they have put on themselves. In the way they take on huge projects and get them done reveals that they are not risk adverse. I grew up in a fairly religious, agrarian community and risk taking was very much a part of every farmers life. I don’t think that your theory is correct, especially here in the rural areas of the USA. I see more emotional wreckage in the people who live in cities and have abandoned the idea that all humans are responsible to the Creator and that they will ultimately be judged by their actions as well as their beliefs.
By "risk averse" I definitely do not mean a lack of imagination or adaptive intelligence. I used it to denote the over-sensitized resistance to anything that smacks of progress or qualitative change. And I'm not morally judging this attitude. I'm just describing it and the challenges it poses to any anti-modernizing culture. I'll never make the assertion that subcultures like those of Amish people would be better off joining the general flow.
But then it's somewhat a luxury that the America-sheltered Amish community can afford. It's relatively safer to practice their countercultural value system within a setting where they don't need to worry about the political and existential problem of physically defending themselves against external aggressors. My criticism is targeted more at third world cultures which are neither antimodern yet rigidly holding on to value systems that are not developmentally competitive. If such societies can't learn how to balance the evolution of their traditional values with the stability of their collective identity, they'll end up losing bearing in the emerging modern context.
With this definition “ brain academically fit for purpose”, do you also imply these individuals are high IQ as well? (Despite their religiously shaped mindset). Moreover, with the assumption that personality is largely inherited can it be inferred that Nigerians thriving abroad are those higher in “openness” and “consciousness”? (Especially in the US, since immigration is not really selective in Europe)
These are very good questions Walter. And I'm not sure if I can answer them satisfactorily.
On your first question: I know a psychiatrist, female mid thirties, single, already an overachiever for someone of her age in Nigeria. She impressed me very much not with her knowledge per se (though that too), but with how she processes that knowledge in communication. And there're very few Nigerian psychiatrists who impress me. However, this Dr. is not as equally impressive in cognitive domains outside her psychiatry field. Her mind works like most average Nigerians I described in the article. She's, though to a lesser degree, inclined to process broader reality through non scientific lenses, religious, and given to the other prevailing cultural tendencies. I'm inclined to think her hard IQ would not be much above average and she is probably another version of my MSc colleague who I said clocked 115. It's puzzles like these that made me split the IQ into hard and soft (narrow and broad, specific and general) dimensions. Her type wouldn't do too badly (not exceptionally either) in those hard domains (as measured by say WAIS) but would even do worse in the soft less structured cognitive domains such as engagement with broader reality and philosophical constructions.
To your second question: I don't think they're are high in openness at all, especially openness to ideas as opposed to openness to experience. They're as culturally rigid as Nigerians back home. However, you'd find more proportion of people who're open to ideas in this cohort (Nigerians abroad) than at home due to selective pressure. But I do think they're are extremely high in conscientiousness compared to average Nigerians. I mean they wouldn't be much successful without this trait. It is this assymetry in the relative distribution of traits conscientiousness and openness among Nigerians abroad that I suppose is partly responsible for their inability to adapt culturally while being incredibly successful professionally.
This is tangential: One factor that you mention repeatedly that strikes me as very important is the growth of Pentecostalism as a movement and Pentecostal churches as organizations. To my eyes, this is *very* non-traditional relative to African culture and IIUC non-traditional even relative to Christian missionarying in Africa. (it seems to have started in the US and be only 100 years old there.) Also, the organizations look a lot like successful startup companies to my eye, there's a lot of money moving through them, and much money and power in the hands of the leaders. Certainly that part of Africa is prospering!
I wrote a take on the group differences in IQ issue some time ago in which I argued that IQ had both genetic and cultural components. That the former changes via biological evolution that happens at the individual level and the latter changes via cultural evolution that happens at the group level. IQ differences between groups then comes primarily from cultural evolution in which some groups are more successful, achieve a rising level of sophisticated societies and rising average level of IQ. Developed societies have higher IQs because they are developed.
Societies become developed due to *choices* made by governing elites. In Europe and Western Asia you have four early civilizational centers (Eqypt, Mesopotamia, Indus Vally, Central Asian) contributing cultural elements to latter civilizations, who completed with each other, some more and some less successful, eventually producing in Europe a set of polities at similar levels of development and sharing the same religion competing with each other. In their competition, new forms of organization arose (see below) that led to European dominance for several centuries.
No, it is difference in perspective. If one assumes a priori that differences in group average IQ are of genetic origin, the product of biological evolution, making them essentially fixed on human timescales, the differential economic outcomes for different groups would then reflect the different IQ input.
If one assumes that the differences of group average IQ are cultural, the product of cultural evolution, then the arrow of causation is flipped around, and IQs rise as civilization advances.
The reason I prefer the latter is this conundrum. All modern people are descended from humans living 12-36 thousand years ago. These ancient people were anatomically the same as us with brains that averaged slightly larger than ours. Compare those to the humans who have lived since 10000 BC. The second group is directly descended from the first group and necessarily inherited all their genes from them. And yet this first group achieved bupkis civilization-wise over TWICE as much time as this second group who has built an impressive civilization.
I find it hard to believe that this enormous difference in sheer achievement is due to some genetic change introduced sometime around 10000 BC—by aliens? :). I think culture simply makes more sense:
"If one assumes that the differences of group average IQ are cultural, the product of cultural evolution, then the arrow of causation is flipped around, and IQs rise as civilization advances."
But I do not assume that. It is illogical.
"These ancient people were anatomically the same as us with brains that averaged slightly larger than ours."
Brain size is not the only contributor to advanced cognitive ability.
"I think culture simply makes more sense."
And I disagree. While society formation facilitated the usefulness and value of advanced cognitive ability, DNA evolution was the decisive factor.
Your supposition of cultural differences begs the question: what caused the cultural differences?
You write “While society formation facilitated the usefulness and value of advanced cognitive ability, DNA evolution was the decisive factor.”
You say that a DNA evolution that had not happened in the tens of thousands of years before 10000 BC did happen around that time to give rise to civilization?
That is an extraordinary claim. You provided no links to provide the extraordinary evidence to support it.
"You say that a DNA evolution that had not happened in the tens of thousands of years before 10000 BC did happen around that time to give rise to civilization? That is an extraordinary claim."
I did not say that; don't make false claims. DNA evolution has been going on for a billion-plus years.
It is plain logic.
You did not answer my question about cultural differences.
You wrote "While society formation facilitated the usefulness and value of advanced cognitive ability, DNA evolution was the decisive factor."
That is, DNA evolution was the decisive factor in society formation.
Society formation happed abruptly. After tens of thousands of years of relative statis, societies began to rapidly rise.
You claim that was due to DNA evolution. So yes, you did imply that.
As for cultural differences, they evolve. Unlike genes which evolve at the individual level, culture evolves at the group level. And it is *much* faster than DNA evolution. I already gave a link where I discussed this.
Related to you opinion that "these paradoxical intellectuals of religious persuasion, seriously have what it takes to lead Nigeria out of poverty and backwardness", how do you square what appears to be a very large church budget (if not exactly 10% of members' incomes, then at least close to it) with so little to show for it in terms of provision of community/public services?
You said: "In their respective ecclesiastical jurisdictions, they run organizations that are incredibly effective compared to what you observe in the general society", but I don't see any evidence for the organizations being well run. At least considering the enormous resources they can dispose of. The universities you mention do not appear to be tuition-free, and Redemption Camp seems to have no more than 20,000 people.
Am I missing something? Where can we see the evidence that these organizations, which manage what could be the equivalent of 4%-5% of their membership's GDP, are much more effective than Nigerian public bodies (which manage some 17% of Nigeria's GDP), or private enterprises?
I'm comparing these religious organizations specifically with what obtains in the country in general. Are you contending that your average federal, state, or local governments are slightly better run and managed than these religious organizations? Are you aware that the two very new universities established by Oyedepo has overtaken all other Nigerian universities with decades of headstart in world rankings?
If your contention is that, given the amount of resources these religious organizations have access to, they're still underperforming, I would have to agree. But relative to Nigeria, I don't think you can successfully make that claim.
I don't have enough data to say that they underperform compared to federal, state or local Nigerian governments. But I suspect they underperform compared to public institutions in most middle-income countries (I'm far from certain). If that is the case, I don't see how the leaders (or leadership) of those organizations would be able to lead Nigeria out of poverty.
It's a big if, so take this with a big grain of salt.
Yes, it's a big "if" and I hope I have not argued that they can do so using the model they use to run their organizations. The reason why I mentioned them is because they are a highly visible and distinct type of elite in the country, sometimes wielding power and influence greater than those wielded by political elites. Compared to the political elite type, they are better educated, morally grounded, and have higher public trust. So, given these background characteristics, I think it's reasonable to argue that they are likely to do a better job if surrounded with the right institutional mechanisms of check and balances.
"I think it's reasonable to argue that they are likely to do a better job if surrounded with the right institutional mechanisms of check and balances."
Thanks. I understand your argument now, and I think it's very compelling.
“So in 200 years, Africa has progressed as much as it took 700 years for Europe to progress.”
That is rather a nonsensical argument.
It didn’t take, for example 200 years for Africans to invent the steam engine. They got it soon after it became common in Europe. Africans didn’t have to re-invent everything.
The GDP of Korea was roughly the same as the GDP of many African countries immediately after WW2.
Yet Korea developed into a first world nation and industrial powerhouse in 50 years, Africa didn’t.
I suspect IQ differences may be a big part of the explanation.
Japan is of course another example. Or Russia, which was a backwards agricultural nation at the turn of the 20th century, having more in common with African nations than the UK, but still managed to put a man in space 60 years later.
Even when African countries have oil wealth, like some of the small west African nations do, it ends with poor results.
Colonialism is a convenient scapegoat, but the poor results is more likely to be a combination of biology (IQ) and culture.
Very interesting, Charlatan. Like you, I hope for prosperity in Africa's future but have deep concerns.
I was curious if you've encountered hypotheses about the societal effects of cousin marriage. There are a couple of reasons why this might be of importance. First, cousin marriage causes the harmful mutations we all carry to be more likely to be paired together with a duplicate instead of with a healthy gene, which causes various negative health effects, including reductions in intelligence. Second, some have argued (see https://hbdchick.wordpress.com/2013/08/15/clannishness-defined/) that cousin marriage over time causes the evolution of a mindset that prioritizes extended family much more highly than strangers. There is some evidence that places with high rates of cousin marriage (between and within countries) have higher rates of corruption as people do business with others just because they are family, prioritize their own clans over others, siphon money away to give to family, etc. The argument goes that Western Europe stopped having cousin marriage a while ago and thus the people evolved a mindset of being more egalitarian and meritocratic at the expense of favoring extended family.
After having become aware of this hypothesis, I later encountered descriptions of the three major ethnic groups in Nigeria. I learned that the Hausa struggle economically and educationally more than the Yoruba and Igbo, and I saw that the Igbo are perceived as particularly meritocratic and successful in business. I immediately guessed that the Hausa have high rates of cousin marriage, that the Yoruba have lower rates, and that the Igbo have the lowest rates of cousin marriage. When I looked it up, indeed it seems that the Hausa prefer cousin marriage, the Yoruba don't particularly encourage it but sometimes have it happen, and that the Igbo prohibit cousin marriage.
What are your thoughts on this from a Nigerian perspective? Does it ring true?
I certainly can't fault your observations and inferences. I haven't looked into that particular question but it's one I don't have much sympathy for as having strong explanatory potential for what's fundamentally wrong. I believe that a group with high rate of cousin marriage can be very successful if there are other group norms that select for things like merit, honesty, and hard work. Except those who believe in the theory say these values are antithetical to a sociocultural ecosystem where cousin marriage predominates.
Also, if indeed cousin marriages were common in Europe in the past, and your argument that it dilutes the genetic intelligence pool, how then were they able to eventually override this practice? Why has Africa or any other place with high cousin marriage been unable to transcend this practice? I believe there's a third mediating factor at play, but I have no idea what it is.
My understanding is that the Roman Catholic Church engaged in a centuries long campaign to outlaw cousin marriage sometime in the period between 500 - 1000 AD. They did this to weaken the power of secular rulers and families and enhance their own power, and also changed some related rules of inheritance so that widows could hold property and donate it to the Church. I think that it might be the case that exogamy and nuclear families have an even longer history in Northern Europe than that, but suffice it to say that it was all just an accident of history, just people making decisions that had unforeseen and wide ranging consequences.
It's the old chicken and egg problem. Does clannishness cause cousin marriage or the reverse?
Either way, as you say, I think it is more important to focus on the clannishness itself. This clannishness is probably beneficial in pre-Agrarian Societies but it hinders progress to Commercial and Industrial Societies.
About 15 years ago, I met an interesting Nigerian man at an airport bar. The airplane that was supposed to take us to the next stage of our journey had had some sort of mechanical failure and we had to wait until another arrived to take us where we wanted to go. My Nigerian acquaintance mentioned that he was a successful owner of a small chain of grocery and hardware stores in South Africa. "In South Africa?" I asked. "Are the business laws in Nigeria so terrible then that you could not set up your business there?" "Ah," he replied, the business laws in Nigeria are pretty bad, that is true. But the secret to my success is that in South Africa I don't have any relatives! In Nigeria there is no way that I could be as successful as I am now, because as soon as I got a tiny bit of success the relatives would show up and demand that I give them things for free. And if I objected, they would just steal everything or burn the shop down."
Any wealth you create, he claimed. is expected to be shared with all the members of your family which makes it hard to create more -- especially since the number one thing his family wanted to spend his money on was on transfers to the more favoured members of the family -- which he wasn't. So these days, while he does send money to Nigeria, he gets to decide how much to send. And he sends it to a cousin in the Christian church,which does a better job of seeing that the people who get the money are the people in his extended family who really need it. If he lived at home, his grandmother's sister would decide, and her criteria for who should get the money is that her favourites should have plenty for celebrations and parties, and everybody else should show off how much wealth they have by wasting it conspicuously.
In terms of the parable of the grasshopper and the ants, his family was all-grasshopper. And he said that this was typical. He also said that nobody in the west can ever understand the politics of envy and resentment in the way it is understood in Nigeria. The Christian churches, which offer a very welcome alternative to your family/clan in terms of social support, have done a liitle bit to combat this notion, but in general Nigerians think that it is good to be full of envy and resentment because it causes you to root out social cheaters who are 'unfairly and selfishly keeping more than they should'. Being envious and resentful is seen as extremely virtuous. Conscientious, even. Everything is zero-sum and being too successful is a vice. Unless you are a _big man_, enormously successful. Then you can embezzle, steal and defraud all you like, provided you give great parties, or otherwise pay off those who might be in a position to do something about this.
So, everybody is trying to get away with as much corruption as they can, while being supremely vigilant in keeping other people from doing the same -- and the only way they see success as a matter of successfully getting away with it. All wealth is to be extracted -- from the ground in terms of natural resources, from your family members -- and if the institution of slavery ever got instituted again, by enslaving members of your out-group.
Nobody, in Nigeria, thinks that wealth can be created, which is one reason why blaming colonialism makes so much sense to so many people. If nobody can create wealth, then those who are wealthy must have stolen it from somebody. And why no party all your wealth away before somebody comes by and steals it from you?
He concluded that it is hopeless until the notion that you can create wealth takes root in the culture, and he doesn't see how that can happen. So he left. I suspect he would be in favour of Charter Cities, but the current problem with the people of Prospero in Honduras shows the weakness -- a new government can always decide that the politics of envy demand that you destroy the thing.
What do the Nigerians here think? Did he describe society as you know it, or is he just an outlier in attitudes? (He must be, to some extent, if he has a chain of stores in South Africa). And it is not too surprising that somebody who left the country in order to escape family obligations thinks that the kin/clan/family structure he was born into is oppressive. But would others agree?
Yes, everything he said is correct but certainly overblown. He may be describing his own experience but that experience, if real, is by no means characteristic of life in Nigeria.
Yes, the idea of 'Black Tax's is real - your extended family is entitled to feel entitled to your wealth. But if you choose not to be that charitable, the penalty is rarely death or physical attack. You may be ostracized, maligned, and be targeted with voodoo charms (for those who believe in such things). However, most wealthy Africans (especially those whose wealth was gotten by means not exclusively meritocratic) already subscribe to the idea of Black Tax. So there's rarely any friction here.
Your Nigerian acquaintance is also right that Nigeria is bad for nurturing anything good, original, and progressive. It's a full Randian world of 'Takers' and 'Snatchers'. The phenomenon of "Learned Helplessness" is also at work in the sense that here's a people trapped by the delimiting elements in their culture but are not critical enough to interrogate these elements. This, while not ignorant of their own struggles as a people, they locate the origins of those struggles in external forces ranging from supernatural to international conspiracies (some of which have some merits). But I've never met any contemporary influential and intelligent African who reasons from first principle about issues of national import. The first principle, when applied to the question of relative backwardness, stipulates that you must start from intrinsic causation and then work your way out towards increasingly external causation. Why is this approach important? Because, if it's indeed correct that the fundamental problem is located in innate factors, then every other attempt to solve the problem by focusing on extra-innate factors is doomed to fail. That something has an intrinsic causation doesn't mean it doesn't have a solution, it only demands a different set of approach to solving it.
To be incapable of admitting intrinsic limitation is by itself a fundamental limitation. And Africa, encouraged by the intellectual leftists of the world, is extremely averse to admitting this, ensuring that she's forever trapped in her stasis.
»Nobody, in Nigeria, thinks that wealth can be created
I borrow this thread a little to discuss this very interesting statement. To me it appears true: Wealth is not being created in Nigeria to any important degree. Not much wealth was created in other parts of the world before the industrial revolution either. Until very recently resources were fought over in this kind of zero-sum game all over the world.
The problem is that as long as there is no high-tech industry, the people who fight over the spoils are acting rationally. The ancestors of us Europeans did so too, until they slowly were convinced that doing so was stupid.
Convincing people that producing wealth is better than stealing wealth is always difficult. Probably even more so in a place where little wealth is being produced.
I don't think it was only Industrial societies that beat Malthusian conditions. Commercial societies did too. The Dutch saw a steady increase in GDP per capita for hundreds of years. Even Agrarian societies can overcome it to some extent (that's colonialism). In fact, the decline of some great societies may have been due to population decline due to prosperity (as we see today) not the converse.
However, Industrial societies completely reversed this trend. That should have lasted and we should be past the Third Energy Transition, perhaps on the way to fourth, if not for the Luddites concerns (and Malthusian worries) of the environmentalists. https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/we-need-to-complete-the-third-energy
This is why I believe that the West's downfall is due to failing to internalize that the days of Malthusian concerns are over. Due to their low fertility the world looks like it may taken over by societies who never transitioned to Industrial Societies or even Commercial Societies and still live in Malthusian conditions.
Thus, the Malthusian mentality is far greater a problem than the 'Malthusian fact'.
>>I don't think it was only Industrial societies that beat Malthusian conditions
It wasn't. The first improvement to beat current Malthusian conditions was cooking. Then came better hunting methods. Then came agriculture. Then came better agriculture, then came more advanced trade... Industrialism was just a big step on a road taken maybe a million years ago.
The difference between before industrialism and during industrialism is that before industrialism, anti-Malthusian progress was very uneven and with long times in between. During the between-times, conditions really were Malthusian. Thereby most of the world for most of the time was run by people with zero-sum mentalities. They were the winners because during their lifetimes, the game was zero-sum.
Industrialism permanently changed this through making progress continuous. The world doesn't get less Mathusian every few hundred years or so, but every decade. And this has at least partially allowed a new kind of elite to take over: a productive elite. Before industrialism, elites consisted almost exclusively of cleptocrats and no one found that strange. Industrial societies have elevated their productive leaders to previously unseen levels.
You are entirely right that it was a certain pro-production, anti-cleptocracy mentality that made this development possible. If people didn't believe that Malthusianism could be defeated to some level, they would only anxiously cling to their preferred cleptocrat leader and hope for some scraps.
I agree with you so far. But I don't think that Malthusianism should be seen as an either/or phenomenon. It is always there and it is always negotiable. The more technology there is, the more negotiable it is. I don't think industrialism arose because people took the plunge and suddenly disregarded Malthusianism, but because non-zero-sum ways of life slowly evolved when technology made such ways of life possible. In order to avoid large-scale Malthusian disasters, I think this kind of slow cultural evolution is needed everywhere. Belief is one part of the equation. But technology must be there too for it to add up. Belief only can lead to disaster, as it has done so many times before.
Re the question whether the industrial revolution caused the capitalist mindset or vice versa, I recently read this interesting essay which shows that capitalism preceded the industrial revolution by about one hundred years
This interesting article shows that the roots of progress are well over on thousand years old.
None of this proves that culture does not have materialistic roots, and I wasn't arguing that here. I am arguing that culture, ideas and belief are very powerful, perhaps the most important force for change. It is often hard to tease out cause and effect in history. In my first comment on the previous post I noted that as a religious person my prior is to assume that ideas and beliefs had a major role in shaping societies, though I of course acknowledge that materialistic progress (and IQs) did too.
From a practical perspective my reservation about focusing on industrial and technological progress is that it implies that Southeast Asia (Japan, South Korea) is a model to follow. If Sub-saharan Africa woould follow that route it would probably be great for the rest of the world, but perhaps not for Sub-Saharan Africa, as we now see where Japan and South Korea are headed. Industrialization is great, but I think it shouldn't be viewed as the sole goal. However, perhaps this is too theoretical as I don't know of any current plans to build massive car companies in Africa.
I think I agree with you. The only question is how much emphasis to put on belief in the potential of exponential growth with exponential growth of human population and thereby human ingenuity. It appears to me that this is something which deserves far more attention than it gets. And I think that the zero-sum mentality (and disbelief in the power and possibility) of exponential growth) caused far more disasters than erroneous belief in human potential. What was Marxism and Nazism if not for zero-sum mentality?
And Charlatan is essentially telling us that zero-sum mentality is Africa's greatest problem. The reason they are so slow in adopting tech is because of their zero-sum mentality
The truth is I am not sure what disasters were ever caused by erroneous belief in human potential. I guess the victims of the Malthusian disasters?
Marxism and Nazism are business as usual in human affairs. Marxism urges the people to create a war coalition and take valuable things by force. Nazism says that the ingroup deserves more than the outgroup because it is nobler. During human history, that is as normal as normal can be. The only special thing with Nazism and Marxism is that it happened during the industrial era, which made the killing industrial, which is abhorrent in its very own right. Otherwise, being a Nazi or Stalinist is the normal way of being human.
There is a project under development that holds that normal way of being human under control: Civilization. As I believe that you are pointing out, the foremost challenge is to uphold and develop civilization. In general, humans don't lie down and starve when they get too little to eat. They become uncivilized instead. At least enough people do to initiate severe disruptions of societal stability, which in turn accelerate starvation (many, if not most, starvation disasters in history have been caused by war). For that reason Malthusian disasters are often not entirely obvious: They tend to be obscured by general disruption to civilization.
Civilization is something brittle. It can be weakened by a number of different forces. Food scarcity is only one of those. But when food scarcity appears, civilization is almost certain to suffer drawbacks. For that reason I think that great efforts need to be spent to avoid situations of food scarcity. You are right that those efforts should not be allowed to weaken civilization in themselves. I believe that it can be a very difficult balance at times: on the one hand, believing in the force of civilization, on the other hand seeing its limits.
> For that reason I think that great efforts need to be spent to avoid situations of food scarcity.
This really hit home for me the Israel/Gaza analogy. (I feel funny continuously returning to it but you too once pointed out that the attitudes to Israel/Gaza represent one's attitudes toward the developed world/undeveloped world.) Most people I know find UNRWA's policies very puzzling. Besides for the fact that this is an agency that focuses solely on Palestinians and their classification as refugees is unique, the whole attitude seems quite puzzling. Almost all Jews too are refugees from Europe and North Africa. A large proportion of property there should belong to Jews. But we picked ourselves up and started a new life. Shouldn't Palestinians be expected to do the same by now?
But I guess from the materialist perspective culture (and IQ) is too hard to change and the job of the international community is to ensure that 'no one goes hungry' to ensure 'global peace'.
Only to add (or rather reiterate) that this is really an old and fundamental debate whether the main underpinning of civilization are the form of its culture. I think this often the primary debate between religion and secularism. Not this is always the debate (and certainly many 'religious' people have abhorrent beliefs and many secular people are careful to refine their beliefs), but I think it is the most common and most fundamental.
>the only special thing with Nazism and Marxism is that it happened during the industrial era, which made the killing industrial, which is abhorrent in its very own right.
Certainly the industrial killing made possible a scale which was never possible earlier. But I think the most abhorrent part of it happening during the industrial age is that these people should have realized by then than the power of investing in (capitalist) industrialism is far greater than the gains from zero-sum wars. In hindsight we see clearly that very few people gained from Marxism and Nazism and almost everyone involved suffered massive losses. But the industrial age was already over one hundred years old. Yes, in many ways it was still in its infancy, with massive inequalities, but it should have been clear that there was progress and the progress was more important than any gains from a zero-sum mentality.
I think this proves my point that in the industrial age it is of utmost important to put the rest Malthusian attitudes which (a) focus on inequalities (ever read this? https://ia803002.us.archive.org/25/items/HarrisonBergeron/Harrison%20Bergeron.pdf ) (b) condone violence and even murder as a solution for inequalities (c) assume that the energy capacity of the world is limited (e.g., environmentalism).
"I can see from this comment (and also your post at ISOE) that you're pretty pessimistic about change arising from within, but what are the most likely avenues by which external aid could make a genuine difference? Do you think education, or nutritional supplementation (say, via iodine) would have a meaningful impact? What about reducing the birth rate among the poorer classes to reduce the rates of malnutrition and stunting?"
My response to Apple Pie as I've also noted to friends in the EA community is to look at the works of Lant Prtichett and Bill Easterly on foreign aid and interventions. While nutrition, education, and fewer dependents mattter, without real economic growth with respect for property rights, contracts, and rule of law, nothing will change. And it's not pessimism, it's the reality we confront as Africans that there's no magic and we have to do the hard work of societal coordination along a set of desired goals. This is essentially a political problem to the extent to which it overlaps with the IQ problem.
I was also an IQ skeptic, mostly because i was a blank slatist until i came across the works of Charles Murray and read Hive Mind by Garett Jones. Hive Mind is specific to national IQ which makes sense as humans evolve along population lines. Evolutionary pressure acts on populations for the traits to truly become adaptive. And we build all kinds of norms and practices (culture) along those lines.
All said, i agree with Charlatan on his observations about Nigeria and Nigerians. University was my first exposure to the extent of religious fervour in Nigeria. It was shocking and somewhat anticlimactic. A lecturer of ecology once proclaimed in class that parthenogenesis, a non-human phenomenon, happened in humans once: in the birth of Jesus, and nobody should ask him any question how it happened. He was an Eckankar. This same lecturer (and some others) would ask students to answer his questions the exact way he gave us in the lecture notes, so students resorted to studying the marking schemes. All kinds of perverse behaviours exist in Nigerian universities that consistently undermine learning and this bleeds into the wider society.
Nigerian students are in perpetual survival mode (to pass, rather than learn and think) in an environment where, philosophically, you're supposed to exist in some kind of cognitive abundance. I was so depressed in my second year, i almost dropped out. I lacked the motivation to study and deliberately self-sabotaged in the hopes that I'll fail out. But i didn't, though got lower grades instead.
While i agree with all the issues Charlatan has outlined - the elite problem, the low IQ problem, the personlity issues...i especially like how he's arrived at his position. He gets it. I also understand the need for a cognitve niche of sorts but i dont think Charter Cities will solve this particular problem of low IQ and it's cultural manifestation in Africa.
A people that have no respect for formal, impersonal rules can't stick to the terms of a Charter City. A people that have no respect for science and facts of the world can't urbanise or progress to the point of prosperity.
"So, I love talking about charter cities. I think they're on the right set of issues of how do we get to the institutional conditions that can create a positive environment for high productivity firms and engagement and improved governance. And they have a coherent argument, which is good, that, it's a low level trap and there's no path out of the low level trap and so we need big shock to get out of it.
But I don't think they're ultimately correct about the way in which you can establish the fundamentals. You can't just big jump your way to having reliable enforcement mechanisms and until you get to reliable enforcement mechanisms, the whole Charter City idea is still kind of up in the air."
I can immediately link "reliable enforcement mechanisms" to what Stefan Dercon says in his book Gambling on Development and on the IU podcast.
So, if we want change, we need to first delegtimise the current crop of elite and the status quo. We have to create and articulate the vision of the future we want to create. Draw up a 10-15 year plan of the new ideas we want in the cultural zeitgeist and coordinate, loosely or collectively, to make it happen.
Essentially, we have to create new elites. In the West, new technology helps them refresh their elite pool from time to time. Before colonialism, the elite pool in Africa has a lot of inertia, and hasn't changed much since. We still have the colonial elites ruling till date. People who were trained just to be colonial administrators not to think or solve societal problems. And this persists with our education system and mechanical learning protocols.
Is it possible for a different set of elites to steer the inherited wheel of colonial administration using existing corpus of facts and knowledge about the world to escape the poverty trap like Singapore, China, Japan, South Korea did? Yes. Can you manage it with the current crop of African elites and hope for change? No.
We need to look at the IQ of people that drove change in the Asian countries mentioned above and the quality of minds they worked with. That's what we have to do. A cognitive niche of people who understands what it takes to build a truly modern society.
I love your submissions Ronke. I agree with your critic of charter cities as the way forward. Actually, in the original draft of my article, I have a whole session on charter cities which had to be cut out due to the length of the essay.
I'd actually love to share the link to the original draft with you so you can read my take on charter cities and my idea of how it'd have to be implemented if it's to work. I'd then love to hear your feedback afterwards.
In fact, Poor Economics, by Banerjee and Duflo brought home to me the futility of interventions. I wonder how much aid and "kinky" ideas per Lant, could have brought China the kind of growth it had through market reforms and technological adoption.
A genuine pleasure to read this essay - you keep the questions open and interrogate the topic fearlessly.
It would seem that the summary proposal has force: that culture and, yes, personality, are more impactful than IQ.
Perhaps we can consider the word “disposition.”
Regarding IQ, someone once said that having intelligence is like having a four-wheel drive, that it will only get you lost in more remote locations. I think it was Garrison Keillor.
What might fascinate us here would be to discover how a change in cultural/personality dynamics might lead to a change in IQ outcomes, but that's speculative at this point.
We have plenty of our own battles here in the United States, the cultural distrust of ambition and success.
But I have said it before, and I still believe, that “we aspire to what our friends and family admire.”
"Regarding IQ, someone once said that having intelligence is like having a four-wheel drive, that it will only get you lost in more remote locations. I think it was Garrison Keillor."
It sure as hell sounds like something stupid enough to have come from Keillor. High intelligence will get you into uncharted territory, which is how humanity ascends.
Agreed. I would say this however. IQ is a necessary but insufficient condition. If you've ever led teams of people, you've seen the damage a destructive smart person can do. Quite often, they have to be let go.
Over the last several decades, cracks have formed in the idea of the American Dream. I would argue that a kind of progressive self-loathing has crept into our value system. It has been kindled and stoked by our education systems.
A certain amount of healthy self-criticism is a good thing, but we have taken it too far.
We seem to be trying to reverse this "progressive" trend right now, but the self-loathing is not going away anytime soon.
Like I already commented elsewhere, I believe countries like the US have a culturally inbuilt corrective mechanism. The cultural conversation is robust and highly open. Those kind of "progressive self-loathing" are, well, progressive to begin with. It's, to my knowledge, a distinctively modern phenomenon in direct opposition to nationalist/tribal sentiments that have always prevailed the world over since the beginning of time. I believe (and other "progressive" nations) are simply ahead of the curve in their cultural evolution.
It is quite possible that we are returning to a more individualist, scientific, objective view of the world. The world of real experience, personal responsibility and genuine consequences. And we are deeply skeptical of the spiritual explanation of events.
One thing that doesn't get talked about enough is that we also have an ownership society wherein most people who are in positions of authority and power have significant ownership stakes in American enterprises through the stock market and their retirement funds.
I think this ownership society ultimately brings us back to what will lead to the best practical outcomes.
Yes there is “intelligent life” in Africa. There are elephants, for example.
A lot that could be said about many of the ideas presented. My experience is as an Engineer turned pastor who had a contingent of recent refugees from Liberia in the church. They were all ages. As I watched them develop and adapt to the culture in and around Minneapolis, Minnesota, several things were apparent. The high moral values that they had when they arrived were gradually diminished as they became more like the general black community. Their ability to compete for jobs was intellectually based primarily, but also was impacted by their morality. Trustworthiness is important in any business relationship. One of the leaders of this group told me that he wished that the president of Liberia was half black and half white so that person would be more intelligent and less emotionally driven in decision making. This man, Albert, was from one of over a dozen different tribes in Liberia and only escaped with his life because when he was captured by the rebels, someone recognized him as a good football (soccer) player that he had personally competed against. From that incident he had determined that Albert was a good guy and could be let go along with his young son, Albert Jr. The fears that these people had, the remarkable horrors that they suffered during the civil war, the lack of education, the tribal rivalries that were carried over to the US, and several other factors all contributed to a lower standard of living in general although perhaps higher than the indigenous blacks in the area. They were less likely to be involved in crimes and alcohol and drug abuse so had that advantage because of religion. I would guess that collectively their intelligence was lower than average but have no testing basis to prove that. My only observation was to compare them to the Hispanic population in the church who were also recent immigrants but were quicker to learn how to do the work tasks we did while rebuilding our church building.
The greatest minds in western history were almost exclusively men of deep religious faith. The current malaise reflects a bovine atheism had has infected the academy and other pseudo-elites. Indeed the scientific world view could *only* have emerged in a Christian context.
I have long experience of working in Uganda with people that I would describe as possibly average in intelligence but extremely high in spirituality and capable of acting on their faith. Americans are street-smart but almost never really act on their faith…we Americans tend to write a check and pat ourselves on the back for’doing something good’.
This is a very necessary dialogue…and we should start by challenging the assumption that a scientific and logical IQ is the most desirable trait. Maybe the ability to surrender your life to Jesus is more important than the ability to fix every problem through intellect.
Well, the pattern seems to be that the more social problems you solve through collective intellect, the less need you have for Jesus to take the wheel. There's certainly a vital role for spirituality but not in the organization and promotion of a prosperous and progressive society.
I think that a truly God fearing group of people who feel safe with one another and are free to do good work and benefit from the results have historically outperformed groups that were irreligious and bogged down by fears for life, limb, property and future prosperity.
I agree with you. The problem with such conservative religious groups is that the risk averse system they operate by isn't sustainable and is easily threatened by progress and progressive ideas. The challenge of such groups is how to balance the art of retaining those pro social and protective aspects of their community while accommodating progress. This is tough and I doubt can be achieved without deliberately letting go of or softening some of their longstanding traditions.
I currently am in an area with a small Amish community. They are risk adverse to adopting technology for personal ease but are some of the most imaginative and inventive people I know due to their need to figure out work arounds to the technical limitations that they have put on themselves. In the way they take on huge projects and get them done reveals that they are not risk adverse. I grew up in a fairly religious, agrarian community and risk taking was very much a part of every farmers life. I don’t think that your theory is correct, especially here in the rural areas of the USA. I see more emotional wreckage in the people who live in cities and have abandoned the idea that all humans are responsible to the Creator and that they will ultimately be judged by their actions as well as their beliefs.
By "risk averse" I definitely do not mean a lack of imagination or adaptive intelligence. I used it to denote the over-sensitized resistance to anything that smacks of progress or qualitative change. And I'm not morally judging this attitude. I'm just describing it and the challenges it poses to any anti-modernizing culture. I'll never make the assertion that subcultures like those of Amish people would be better off joining the general flow.
But then it's somewhat a luxury that the America-sheltered Amish community can afford. It's relatively safer to practice their countercultural value system within a setting where they don't need to worry about the political and existential problem of physically defending themselves against external aggressors. My criticism is targeted more at third world cultures which are neither antimodern yet rigidly holding on to value systems that are not developmentally competitive. If such societies can't learn how to balance the evolution of their traditional values with the stability of their collective identity, they'll end up losing bearing in the emerging modern context.
With this definition “ brain academically fit for purpose”, do you also imply these individuals are high IQ as well? (Despite their religiously shaped mindset). Moreover, with the assumption that personality is largely inherited can it be inferred that Nigerians thriving abroad are those higher in “openness” and “consciousness”? (Especially in the US, since immigration is not really selective in Europe)
These are very good questions Walter. And I'm not sure if I can answer them satisfactorily.
On your first question: I know a psychiatrist, female mid thirties, single, already an overachiever for someone of her age in Nigeria. She impressed me very much not with her knowledge per se (though that too), but with how she processes that knowledge in communication. And there're very few Nigerian psychiatrists who impress me. However, this Dr. is not as equally impressive in cognitive domains outside her psychiatry field. Her mind works like most average Nigerians I described in the article. She's, though to a lesser degree, inclined to process broader reality through non scientific lenses, religious, and given to the other prevailing cultural tendencies. I'm inclined to think her hard IQ would not be much above average and she is probably another version of my MSc colleague who I said clocked 115. It's puzzles like these that made me split the IQ into hard and soft (narrow and broad, specific and general) dimensions. Her type wouldn't do too badly (not exceptionally either) in those hard domains (as measured by say WAIS) but would even do worse in the soft less structured cognitive domains such as engagement with broader reality and philosophical constructions.
To your second question: I don't think they're are high in openness at all, especially openness to ideas as opposed to openness to experience. They're as culturally rigid as Nigerians back home. However, you'd find more proportion of people who're open to ideas in this cohort (Nigerians abroad) than at home due to selective pressure. But I do think they're are extremely high in conscientiousness compared to average Nigerians. I mean they wouldn't be much successful without this trait. It is this assymetry in the relative distribution of traits conscientiousness and openness among Nigerians abroad that I suppose is partly responsible for their inability to adapt culturally while being incredibly successful professionally.
This is tangential: One factor that you mention repeatedly that strikes me as very important is the growth of Pentecostalism as a movement and Pentecostal churches as organizations. To my eyes, this is *very* non-traditional relative to African culture and IIUC non-traditional even relative to Christian missionarying in Africa. (it seems to have started in the US and be only 100 years old there.) Also, the organizations look a lot like successful startup companies to my eye, there's a lot of money moving through them, and much money and power in the hands of the leaders. Certainly that part of Africa is prospering!
Very interesting perspective. I love it.
I wrote a take on the group differences in IQ issue some time ago in which I argued that IQ had both genetic and cultural components. That the former changes via biological evolution that happens at the individual level and the latter changes via cultural evolution that happens at the group level. IQ differences between groups then comes primarily from cultural evolution in which some groups are more successful, achieve a rising level of sophisticated societies and rising average level of IQ. Developed societies have higher IQs because they are developed.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/a-novel-take-on-group-differences
Societies become developed due to *choices* made by governing elites. In Europe and Western Asia you have four early civilizational centers (Eqypt, Mesopotamia, Indus Vally, Central Asian) contributing cultural elements to latter civilizations, who completed with each other, some more and some less successful, eventually producing in Europe a set of polities at similar levels of development and sharing the same religion competing with each other. In their competition, new forms of organization arose (see below) that led to European dominance for several centuries.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/a-take-on-how-the-scientific-revolution
"Developed societies have higher IQs because they are developed."
Another case of the cart before the horse syndrome.
High-IQ societies have developed societies because they are high IQ.
No, it is difference in perspective. If one assumes a priori that differences in group average IQ are of genetic origin, the product of biological evolution, making them essentially fixed on human timescales, the differential economic outcomes for different groups would then reflect the different IQ input.
If one assumes that the differences of group average IQ are cultural, the product of cultural evolution, then the arrow of causation is flipped around, and IQs rise as civilization advances.
The reason I prefer the latter is this conundrum. All modern people are descended from humans living 12-36 thousand years ago. These ancient people were anatomically the same as us with brains that averaged slightly larger than ours. Compare those to the humans who have lived since 10000 BC. The second group is directly descended from the first group and necessarily inherited all their genes from them. And yet this first group achieved bupkis civilization-wise over TWICE as much time as this second group who has built an impressive civilization.
I find it hard to believe that this enormous difference in sheer achievement is due to some genetic change introduced sometime around 10000 BC—by aliens? :). I think culture simply makes more sense:
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/rise-of-civilization-part-i
From such considerations come a cultural take on IQ:
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/a-novel-take-on-group-differences
"No, it is difference in perspective."
It is a difference in logic.
"If one assumes that the differences of group average IQ are cultural, the product of cultural evolution, then the arrow of causation is flipped around, and IQs rise as civilization advances."
But I do not assume that. It is illogical.
"These ancient people were anatomically the same as us with brains that averaged slightly larger than ours."
Brain size is not the only contributor to advanced cognitive ability.
"I think culture simply makes more sense."
And I disagree. While society formation facilitated the usefulness and value of advanced cognitive ability, DNA evolution was the decisive factor.
Your supposition of cultural differences begs the question: what caused the cultural differences?
You write “While society formation facilitated the usefulness and value of advanced cognitive ability, DNA evolution was the decisive factor.”
You say that a DNA evolution that had not happened in the tens of thousands of years before 10000 BC did happen around that time to give rise to civilization?
That is an extraordinary claim. You provided no links to provide the extraordinary evidence to support it.
"You say that a DNA evolution that had not happened in the tens of thousands of years before 10000 BC did happen around that time to give rise to civilization? That is an extraordinary claim."
I did not say that; don't make false claims. DNA evolution has been going on for a billion-plus years.
It is plain logic.
You did not answer my question about cultural differences.
Our positions are irresolvable.
You wrote "While society formation facilitated the usefulness and value of advanced cognitive ability, DNA evolution was the decisive factor."
That is, DNA evolution was the decisive factor in society formation.
Society formation happed abruptly. After tens of thousands of years of relative statis, societies began to rapidly rise.
You claim that was due to DNA evolution. So yes, you did imply that.
As for cultural differences, they evolve. Unlike genes which evolve at the individual level, culture evolves at the group level. And it is *much* faster than DNA evolution. I already gave a link where I discussed this.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/rise-of-civilization-part-i
Thanks for this fascinating post!
I do have a question, though.
Related to you opinion that "these paradoxical intellectuals of religious persuasion, seriously have what it takes to lead Nigeria out of poverty and backwardness", how do you square what appears to be a very large church budget (if not exactly 10% of members' incomes, then at least close to it) with so little to show for it in terms of provision of community/public services?
You said: "In their respective ecclesiastical jurisdictions, they run organizations that are incredibly effective compared to what you observe in the general society", but I don't see any evidence for the organizations being well run. At least considering the enormous resources they can dispose of. The universities you mention do not appear to be tuition-free, and Redemption Camp seems to have no more than 20,000 people.
Am I missing something? Where can we see the evidence that these organizations, which manage what could be the equivalent of 4%-5% of their membership's GDP, are much more effective than Nigerian public bodies (which manage some 17% of Nigeria's GDP), or private enterprises?
I'm comparing these religious organizations specifically with what obtains in the country in general. Are you contending that your average federal, state, or local governments are slightly better run and managed than these religious organizations? Are you aware that the two very new universities established by Oyedepo has overtaken all other Nigerian universities with decades of headstart in world rankings?
If your contention is that, given the amount of resources these religious organizations have access to, they're still underperforming, I would have to agree. But relative to Nigeria, I don't think you can successfully make that claim.
That's my contention.
I don't have enough data to say that they underperform compared to federal, state or local Nigerian governments. But I suspect they underperform compared to public institutions in most middle-income countries (I'm far from certain). If that is the case, I don't see how the leaders (or leadership) of those organizations would be able to lead Nigeria out of poverty.
It's a big if, so take this with a big grain of salt.
Yes, it's a big "if" and I hope I have not argued that they can do so using the model they use to run their organizations. The reason why I mentioned them is because they are a highly visible and distinct type of elite in the country, sometimes wielding power and influence greater than those wielded by political elites. Compared to the political elite type, they are better educated, morally grounded, and have higher public trust. So, given these background characteristics, I think it's reasonable to argue that they are likely to do a better job if surrounded with the right institutional mechanisms of check and balances.
"I think it's reasonable to argue that they are likely to do a better job if surrounded with the right institutional mechanisms of check and balances."
Thanks. I understand your argument now, and I think it's very compelling.
“So in 200 years, Africa has progressed as much as it took 700 years for Europe to progress.”
That is rather a nonsensical argument.
It didn’t take, for example 200 years for Africans to invent the steam engine. They got it soon after it became common in Europe. Africans didn’t have to re-invent everything.
The GDP of Korea was roughly the same as the GDP of many African countries immediately after WW2.
Yet Korea developed into a first world nation and industrial powerhouse in 50 years, Africa didn’t.
I suspect IQ differences may be a big part of the explanation.
Let's just say I totally endorse this line of logical thinking applied to wealth differentials among Nations.
Japan is of course another example. Or Russia, which was a backwards agricultural nation at the turn of the 20th century, having more in common with African nations than the UK, but still managed to put a man in space 60 years later.
Even when African countries have oil wealth, like some of the small west African nations do, it ends with poor results.
Colonialism is a convenient scapegoat, but the poor results is more likely to be a combination of biology (IQ) and culture.
Interesting!
Very interesting, Charlatan. Like you, I hope for prosperity in Africa's future but have deep concerns.
I was curious if you've encountered hypotheses about the societal effects of cousin marriage. There are a couple of reasons why this might be of importance. First, cousin marriage causes the harmful mutations we all carry to be more likely to be paired together with a duplicate instead of with a healthy gene, which causes various negative health effects, including reductions in intelligence. Second, some have argued (see https://hbdchick.wordpress.com/2013/08/15/clannishness-defined/) that cousin marriage over time causes the evolution of a mindset that prioritizes extended family much more highly than strangers. There is some evidence that places with high rates of cousin marriage (between and within countries) have higher rates of corruption as people do business with others just because they are family, prioritize their own clans over others, siphon money away to give to family, etc. The argument goes that Western Europe stopped having cousin marriage a while ago and thus the people evolved a mindset of being more egalitarian and meritocratic at the expense of favoring extended family.
After having become aware of this hypothesis, I later encountered descriptions of the three major ethnic groups in Nigeria. I learned that the Hausa struggle economically and educationally more than the Yoruba and Igbo, and I saw that the Igbo are perceived as particularly meritocratic and successful in business. I immediately guessed that the Hausa have high rates of cousin marriage, that the Yoruba have lower rates, and that the Igbo have the lowest rates of cousin marriage. When I looked it up, indeed it seems that the Hausa prefer cousin marriage, the Yoruba don't particularly encourage it but sometimes have it happen, and that the Igbo prohibit cousin marriage.
What are your thoughts on this from a Nigerian perspective? Does it ring true?
I certainly can't fault your observations and inferences. I haven't looked into that particular question but it's one I don't have much sympathy for as having strong explanatory potential for what's fundamentally wrong. I believe that a group with high rate of cousin marriage can be very successful if there are other group norms that select for things like merit, honesty, and hard work. Except those who believe in the theory say these values are antithetical to a sociocultural ecosystem where cousin marriage predominates.
Also, if indeed cousin marriages were common in Europe in the past, and your argument that it dilutes the genetic intelligence pool, how then were they able to eventually override this practice? Why has Africa or any other place with high cousin marriage been unable to transcend this practice? I believe there's a third mediating factor at play, but I have no idea what it is.
My understanding is that the Roman Catholic Church engaged in a centuries long campaign to outlaw cousin marriage sometime in the period between 500 - 1000 AD. They did this to weaken the power of secular rulers and families and enhance their own power, and also changed some related rules of inheritance so that widows could hold property and donate it to the Church. I think that it might be the case that exogamy and nuclear families have an even longer history in Northern Europe than that, but suffice it to say that it was all just an accident of history, just people making decisions that had unforeseen and wide ranging consequences.
It's the old chicken and egg problem. Does clannishness cause cousin marriage or the reverse?
Either way, as you say, I think it is more important to focus on the clannishness itself. This clannishness is probably beneficial in pre-Agrarian Societies but it hinders progress to Commercial and Industrial Societies.
Excellent article. Though there's one thing you forgot to note: both IQ and personality traits are mostly genetic
"Though there's one thing you forgot to note: both IQ and personality traits are mostly genetic."
Indeed, they are.
True but that's a different argument not directly relevant to the essay.
About 15 years ago, I met an interesting Nigerian man at an airport bar. The airplane that was supposed to take us to the next stage of our journey had had some sort of mechanical failure and we had to wait until another arrived to take us where we wanted to go. My Nigerian acquaintance mentioned that he was a successful owner of a small chain of grocery and hardware stores in South Africa. "In South Africa?" I asked. "Are the business laws in Nigeria so terrible then that you could not set up your business there?" "Ah," he replied, the business laws in Nigeria are pretty bad, that is true. But the secret to my success is that in South Africa I don't have any relatives! In Nigeria there is no way that I could be as successful as I am now, because as soon as I got a tiny bit of success the relatives would show up and demand that I give them things for free. And if I objected, they would just steal everything or burn the shop down."
Any wealth you create, he claimed. is expected to be shared with all the members of your family which makes it hard to create more -- especially since the number one thing his family wanted to spend his money on was on transfers to the more favoured members of the family -- which he wasn't. So these days, while he does send money to Nigeria, he gets to decide how much to send. And he sends it to a cousin in the Christian church,which does a better job of seeing that the people who get the money are the people in his extended family who really need it. If he lived at home, his grandmother's sister would decide, and her criteria for who should get the money is that her favourites should have plenty for celebrations and parties, and everybody else should show off how much wealth they have by wasting it conspicuously.
In terms of the parable of the grasshopper and the ants, his family was all-grasshopper. And he said that this was typical. He also said that nobody in the west can ever understand the politics of envy and resentment in the way it is understood in Nigeria. The Christian churches, which offer a very welcome alternative to your family/clan in terms of social support, have done a liitle bit to combat this notion, but in general Nigerians think that it is good to be full of envy and resentment because it causes you to root out social cheaters who are 'unfairly and selfishly keeping more than they should'. Being envious and resentful is seen as extremely virtuous. Conscientious, even. Everything is zero-sum and being too successful is a vice. Unless you are a _big man_, enormously successful. Then you can embezzle, steal and defraud all you like, provided you give great parties, or otherwise pay off those who might be in a position to do something about this.
So, everybody is trying to get away with as much corruption as they can, while being supremely vigilant in keeping other people from doing the same -- and the only way they see success as a matter of successfully getting away with it. All wealth is to be extracted -- from the ground in terms of natural resources, from your family members -- and if the institution of slavery ever got instituted again, by enslaving members of your out-group.
Nobody, in Nigeria, thinks that wealth can be created, which is one reason why blaming colonialism makes so much sense to so many people. If nobody can create wealth, then those who are wealthy must have stolen it from somebody. And why no party all your wealth away before somebody comes by and steals it from you?
He concluded that it is hopeless until the notion that you can create wealth takes root in the culture, and he doesn't see how that can happen. So he left. I suspect he would be in favour of Charter Cities, but the current problem with the people of Prospero in Honduras shows the weakness -- a new government can always decide that the politics of envy demand that you destroy the thing.
What do the Nigerians here think? Did he describe society as you know it, or is he just an outlier in attitudes? (He must be, to some extent, if he has a chain of stores in South Africa). And it is not too surprising that somebody who left the country in order to escape family obligations thinks that the kin/clan/family structure he was born into is oppressive. But would others agree?
Yes, everything he said is correct but certainly overblown. He may be describing his own experience but that experience, if real, is by no means characteristic of life in Nigeria.
Yes, the idea of 'Black Tax's is real - your extended family is entitled to feel entitled to your wealth. But if you choose not to be that charitable, the penalty is rarely death or physical attack. You may be ostracized, maligned, and be targeted with voodoo charms (for those who believe in such things). However, most wealthy Africans (especially those whose wealth was gotten by means not exclusively meritocratic) already subscribe to the idea of Black Tax. So there's rarely any friction here.
Your Nigerian acquaintance is also right that Nigeria is bad for nurturing anything good, original, and progressive. It's a full Randian world of 'Takers' and 'Snatchers'. The phenomenon of "Learned Helplessness" is also at work in the sense that here's a people trapped by the delimiting elements in their culture but are not critical enough to interrogate these elements. This, while not ignorant of their own struggles as a people, they locate the origins of those struggles in external forces ranging from supernatural to international conspiracies (some of which have some merits). But I've never met any contemporary influential and intelligent African who reasons from first principle about issues of national import. The first principle, when applied to the question of relative backwardness, stipulates that you must start from intrinsic causation and then work your way out towards increasingly external causation. Why is this approach important? Because, if it's indeed correct that the fundamental problem is located in innate factors, then every other attempt to solve the problem by focusing on extra-innate factors is doomed to fail. That something has an intrinsic causation doesn't mean it doesn't have a solution, it only demands a different set of approach to solving it.
To be incapable of admitting intrinsic limitation is by itself a fundamental limitation. And Africa, encouraged by the intellectual leftists of the world, is extremely averse to admitting this, ensuring that she's forever trapped in her stasis.
»Nobody, in Nigeria, thinks that wealth can be created
I borrow this thread a little to discuss this very interesting statement. To me it appears true: Wealth is not being created in Nigeria to any important degree. Not much wealth was created in other parts of the world before the industrial revolution either. Until very recently resources were fought over in this kind of zero-sum game all over the world.
The problem is that as long as there is no high-tech industry, the people who fight over the spoils are acting rationally. The ancestors of us Europeans did so too, until they slowly were convinced that doing so was stupid.
Convincing people that producing wealth is better than stealing wealth is always difficult. Probably even more so in a place where little wealth is being produced.
This is what I was getting at in this comment https://woodfromeden.substack.com/p/guest-post-the-global-iq-debate-a/comment/92540329 and in comments on the previous post.
I don't think it was only Industrial societies that beat Malthusian conditions. Commercial societies did too. The Dutch saw a steady increase in GDP per capita for hundreds of years. Even Agrarian societies can overcome it to some extent (that's colonialism). In fact, the decline of some great societies may have been due to population decline due to prosperity (as we see today) not the converse.
However, Industrial societies completely reversed this trend. That should have lasted and we should be past the Third Energy Transition, perhaps on the way to fourth, if not for the Luddites concerns (and Malthusian worries) of the environmentalists. https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/we-need-to-complete-the-third-energy
This is why I believe that the West's downfall is due to failing to internalize that the days of Malthusian concerns are over. Due to their low fertility the world looks like it may taken over by societies who never transitioned to Industrial Societies or even Commercial Societies and still live in Malthusian conditions.
Thus, the Malthusian mentality is far greater a problem than the 'Malthusian fact'.
You really got half a point here.
>>I don't think it was only Industrial societies that beat Malthusian conditions
It wasn't. The first improvement to beat current Malthusian conditions was cooking. Then came better hunting methods. Then came agriculture. Then came better agriculture, then came more advanced trade... Industrialism was just a big step on a road taken maybe a million years ago.
The difference between before industrialism and during industrialism is that before industrialism, anti-Malthusian progress was very uneven and with long times in between. During the between-times, conditions really were Malthusian. Thereby most of the world for most of the time was run by people with zero-sum mentalities. They were the winners because during their lifetimes, the game was zero-sum.
Industrialism permanently changed this through making progress continuous. The world doesn't get less Mathusian every few hundred years or so, but every decade. And this has at least partially allowed a new kind of elite to take over: a productive elite. Before industrialism, elites consisted almost exclusively of cleptocrats and no one found that strange. Industrial societies have elevated their productive leaders to previously unseen levels.
You are entirely right that it was a certain pro-production, anti-cleptocracy mentality that made this development possible. If people didn't believe that Malthusianism could be defeated to some level, they would only anxiously cling to their preferred cleptocrat leader and hope for some scraps.
I agree with you so far. But I don't think that Malthusianism should be seen as an either/or phenomenon. It is always there and it is always negotiable. The more technology there is, the more negotiable it is. I don't think industrialism arose because people took the plunge and suddenly disregarded Malthusianism, but because non-zero-sum ways of life slowly evolved when technology made such ways of life possible. In order to avoid large-scale Malthusian disasters, I think this kind of slow cultural evolution is needed everywhere. Belief is one part of the equation. But technology must be there too for it to add up. Belief only can lead to disaster, as it has done so many times before.
Re the question whether the industrial revolution caused the capitalist mindset or vice versa, I recently read this interesting essay which shows that capitalism preceded the industrial revolution by about one hundred years
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/a-take-on-how-the-scientific-revolution
I am not a history buff, and I am sure you know more history than I do, especially European history, but as an American this seems intuitive, as British colonialism was very much of the capitalist spirit https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-european-settlers-in-north-america
This interesting article shows that the roots of progress are well over on thousand years old.
None of this proves that culture does not have materialistic roots, and I wasn't arguing that here. I am arguing that culture, ideas and belief are very powerful, perhaps the most important force for change. It is often hard to tease out cause and effect in history. In my first comment on the previous post I noted that as a religious person my prior is to assume that ideas and beliefs had a major role in shaping societies, though I of course acknowledge that materialistic progress (and IQs) did too.
From a practical perspective my reservation about focusing on industrial and technological progress is that it implies that Southeast Asia (Japan, South Korea) is a model to follow. If Sub-saharan Africa woould follow that route it would probably be great for the rest of the world, but perhaps not for Sub-Saharan Africa, as we now see where Japan and South Korea are headed. Industrialization is great, but I think it shouldn't be viewed as the sole goal. However, perhaps this is too theoretical as I don't know of any current plans to build massive car companies in Africa.
I think I agree with you. The only question is how much emphasis to put on belief in the potential of exponential growth with exponential growth of human population and thereby human ingenuity. It appears to me that this is something which deserves far more attention than it gets. And I think that the zero-sum mentality (and disbelief in the power and possibility) of exponential growth) caused far more disasters than erroneous belief in human potential. What was Marxism and Nazism if not for zero-sum mentality?
And Charlatan is essentially telling us that zero-sum mentality is Africa's greatest problem. The reason they are so slow in adopting tech is because of their zero-sum mentality
The truth is I am not sure what disasters were ever caused by erroneous belief in human potential. I guess the victims of the Malthusian disasters?
This is an enormously interesting discussion.
Marxism and Nazism are business as usual in human affairs. Marxism urges the people to create a war coalition and take valuable things by force. Nazism says that the ingroup deserves more than the outgroup because it is nobler. During human history, that is as normal as normal can be. The only special thing with Nazism and Marxism is that it happened during the industrial era, which made the killing industrial, which is abhorrent in its very own right. Otherwise, being a Nazi or Stalinist is the normal way of being human.
There is a project under development that holds that normal way of being human under control: Civilization. As I believe that you are pointing out, the foremost challenge is to uphold and develop civilization. In general, humans don't lie down and starve when they get too little to eat. They become uncivilized instead. At least enough people do to initiate severe disruptions of societal stability, which in turn accelerate starvation (many, if not most, starvation disasters in history have been caused by war). For that reason Malthusian disasters are often not entirely obvious: They tend to be obscured by general disruption to civilization.
Civilization is something brittle. It can be weakened by a number of different forces. Food scarcity is only one of those. But when food scarcity appears, civilization is almost certain to suffer drawbacks. For that reason I think that great efforts need to be spent to avoid situations of food scarcity. You are right that those efforts should not be allowed to weaken civilization in themselves. I believe that it can be a very difficult balance at times: on the one hand, believing in the force of civilization, on the other hand seeing its limits.
> For that reason I think that great efforts need to be spent to avoid situations of food scarcity.
This really hit home for me the Israel/Gaza analogy. (I feel funny continuously returning to it but you too once pointed out that the attitudes to Israel/Gaza represent one's attitudes toward the developed world/undeveloped world.) Most people I know find UNRWA's policies very puzzling. Besides for the fact that this is an agency that focuses solely on Palestinians and their classification as refugees is unique, the whole attitude seems quite puzzling. Almost all Jews too are refugees from Europe and North Africa. A large proportion of property there should belong to Jews. But we picked ourselves up and started a new life. Shouldn't Palestinians be expected to do the same by now?
But I guess from the materialist perspective culture (and IQ) is too hard to change and the job of the international community is to ensure that 'no one goes hungry' to ensure 'global peace'.
Agreed.
Only to add (or rather reiterate) that this is really an old and fundamental debate whether the main underpinning of civilization are the form of its culture. I think this often the primary debate between religion and secularism. Not this is always the debate (and certainly many 'religious' people have abhorrent beliefs and many secular people are careful to refine their beliefs), but I think it is the most common and most fundamental.
>the only special thing with Nazism and Marxism is that it happened during the industrial era, which made the killing industrial, which is abhorrent in its very own right.
Certainly the industrial killing made possible a scale which was never possible earlier. But I think the most abhorrent part of it happening during the industrial age is that these people should have realized by then than the power of investing in (capitalist) industrialism is far greater than the gains from zero-sum wars. In hindsight we see clearly that very few people gained from Marxism and Nazism and almost everyone involved suffered massive losses. But the industrial age was already over one hundred years old. Yes, in many ways it was still in its infancy, with massive inequalities, but it should have been clear that there was progress and the progress was more important than any gains from a zero-sum mentality.
I think this proves my point that in the industrial age it is of utmost important to put the rest Malthusian attitudes which (a) focus on inequalities (ever read this? https://ia803002.us.archive.org/25/items/HarrisonBergeron/Harrison%20Bergeron.pdf ) (b) condone violence and even murder as a solution for inequalities (c) assume that the energy capacity of the world is limited (e.g., environmentalism).
Thanks for posting this. I'd love Charlatan's comments on this!
"I can see from this comment (and also your post at ISOE) that you're pretty pessimistic about change arising from within, but what are the most likely avenues by which external aid could make a genuine difference? Do you think education, or nutritional supplementation (say, via iodine) would have a meaningful impact? What about reducing the birth rate among the poorer classes to reduce the rates of malnutrition and stunting?"
My response to Apple Pie as I've also noted to friends in the EA community is to look at the works of Lant Prtichett and Bill Easterly on foreign aid and interventions. While nutrition, education, and fewer dependents mattter, without real economic growth with respect for property rights, contracts, and rule of law, nothing will change. And it's not pessimism, it's the reality we confront as Africans that there's no magic and we have to do the hard work of societal coordination along a set of desired goals. This is essentially a political problem to the extent to which it overlaps with the IQ problem.
I was also an IQ skeptic, mostly because i was a blank slatist until i came across the works of Charles Murray and read Hive Mind by Garett Jones. Hive Mind is specific to national IQ which makes sense as humans evolve along population lines. Evolutionary pressure acts on populations for the traits to truly become adaptive. And we build all kinds of norms and practices (culture) along those lines.
Here's a podcast with Garett Jones that i helped produce --> https://www.ideasuntrapped.com/p/10-more-hive-mind
All said, i agree with Charlatan on his observations about Nigeria and Nigerians. University was my first exposure to the extent of religious fervour in Nigeria. It was shocking and somewhat anticlimactic. A lecturer of ecology once proclaimed in class that parthenogenesis, a non-human phenomenon, happened in humans once: in the birth of Jesus, and nobody should ask him any question how it happened. He was an Eckankar. This same lecturer (and some others) would ask students to answer his questions the exact way he gave us in the lecture notes, so students resorted to studying the marking schemes. All kinds of perverse behaviours exist in Nigerian universities that consistently undermine learning and this bleeds into the wider society.
Nigerian students are in perpetual survival mode (to pass, rather than learn and think) in an environment where, philosophically, you're supposed to exist in some kind of cognitive abundance. I was so depressed in my second year, i almost dropped out. I lacked the motivation to study and deliberately self-sabotaged in the hopes that I'll fail out. But i didn't, though got lower grades instead.
While i agree with all the issues Charlatan has outlined - the elite problem, the low IQ problem, the personlity issues...i especially like how he's arrived at his position. He gets it. I also understand the need for a cognitve niche of sorts but i dont think Charter Cities will solve this particular problem of low IQ and it's cultural manifestation in Africa.
A people that have no respect for formal, impersonal rules can't stick to the terms of a Charter City. A people that have no respect for science and facts of the world can't urbanise or progress to the point of prosperity.
Here's Lant Prtichett on Charter Cities --> https://www.ideasuntrapped.com/p/lant-pritchett-on-everything-part-7d4
"So, I love talking about charter cities. I think they're on the right set of issues of how do we get to the institutional conditions that can create a positive environment for high productivity firms and engagement and improved governance. And they have a coherent argument, which is good, that, it's a low level trap and there's no path out of the low level trap and so we need big shock to get out of it.
But I don't think they're ultimately correct about the way in which you can establish the fundamentals. You can't just big jump your way to having reliable enforcement mechanisms and until you get to reliable enforcement mechanisms, the whole Charter City idea is still kind of up in the air."
I can immediately link "reliable enforcement mechanisms" to what Stefan Dercon says in his book Gambling on Development and on the IU podcast.
https://www.ideasuntrapped.com/p/gambling-on-development
https://youtu.be/wBMtHUsqZL8?si=uMIhZ3gVq7-3IoT8
So, if we want change, we need to first delegtimise the current crop of elite and the status quo. We have to create and articulate the vision of the future we want to create. Draw up a 10-15 year plan of the new ideas we want in the cultural zeitgeist and coordinate, loosely or collectively, to make it happen.
Essentially, we have to create new elites. In the West, new technology helps them refresh their elite pool from time to time. Before colonialism, the elite pool in Africa has a lot of inertia, and hasn't changed much since. We still have the colonial elites ruling till date. People who were trained just to be colonial administrators not to think or solve societal problems. And this persists with our education system and mechanical learning protocols.
Is it possible for a different set of elites to steer the inherited wheel of colonial administration using existing corpus of facts and knowledge about the world to escape the poverty trap like Singapore, China, Japan, South Korea did? Yes. Can you manage it with the current crop of African elites and hope for change? No.
We need to look at the IQ of people that drove change in the Asian countries mentioned above and the quality of minds they worked with. That's what we have to do. A cognitive niche of people who understands what it takes to build a truly modern society.
I love your submissions Ronke. I agree with your critic of charter cities as the way forward. Actually, in the original draft of my article, I have a whole session on charter cities which had to be cut out due to the length of the essay.
I'd actually love to share the link to the original draft with you so you can read my take on charter cities and my idea of how it'd have to be implemented if it's to work. I'd then love to hear your feedback afterwards.
Sure! I'd love to read the original draft/your take on Charter Cities. ronkiebankie at gmail dot com.
In fact, Poor Economics, by Banerjee and Duflo brought home to me the futility of interventions. I wonder how much aid and "kinky" ideas per Lant, could have brought China the kind of growth it had through market reforms and technological adoption.
Tradition is habitual resistance to reasons that favour a change of habitual behaviour.
A genuine pleasure to read this essay - you keep the questions open and interrogate the topic fearlessly.
It would seem that the summary proposal has force: that culture and, yes, personality, are more impactful than IQ.
Perhaps we can consider the word “disposition.”
Regarding IQ, someone once said that having intelligence is like having a four-wheel drive, that it will only get you lost in more remote locations. I think it was Garrison Keillor.
What might fascinate us here would be to discover how a change in cultural/personality dynamics might lead to a change in IQ outcomes, but that's speculative at this point.
We have plenty of our own battles here in the United States, the cultural distrust of ambition and success.
But I have said it before, and I still believe, that “we aspire to what our friends and family admire.”
"Regarding IQ, someone once said that having intelligence is like having a four-wheel drive, that it will only get you lost in more remote locations. I think it was Garrison Keillor."
It sure as hell sounds like something stupid enough to have come from Keillor. High intelligence will get you into uncharted territory, which is how humanity ascends.
Agreed. I would say this however. IQ is a necessary but insufficient condition. If you've ever led teams of people, you've seen the damage a destructive smart person can do. Quite often, they have to be let go.
It's curious that you suggest there's "cultural distrust of ambition and success" in the US with all the noise about The American Dream(?)
Over the last several decades, cracks have formed in the idea of the American Dream. I would argue that a kind of progressive self-loathing has crept into our value system. It has been kindled and stoked by our education systems.
A certain amount of healthy self-criticism is a good thing, but we have taken it too far.
We seem to be trying to reverse this "progressive" trend right now, but the self-loathing is not going away anytime soon.
Like I already commented elsewhere, I believe countries like the US have a culturally inbuilt corrective mechanism. The cultural conversation is robust and highly open. Those kind of "progressive self-loathing" are, well, progressive to begin with. It's, to my knowledge, a distinctively modern phenomenon in direct opposition to nationalist/tribal sentiments that have always prevailed the world over since the beginning of time. I believe (and other "progressive" nations) are simply ahead of the curve in their cultural evolution.
It is quite possible that we are returning to a more individualist, scientific, objective view of the world. The world of real experience, personal responsibility and genuine consequences. And we are deeply skeptical of the spiritual explanation of events.
One thing that doesn't get talked about enough is that we also have an ownership society wherein most people who are in positions of authority and power have significant ownership stakes in American enterprises through the stock market and their retirement funds.
I think this ownership society ultimately brings us back to what will lead to the best practical outcomes.
Edit: .... I believe America (and other "progressive" nations)...