Tabula rasa, or science denial of the left

[Chan Island]

Wat. This is so stupidly wrong that I'm actually shocked anyone would claim it.

No it's literally what every fucking person says who knows anything about anything. It's literally one of the first things you learn in economics - the paradox that countries with no national resources (Japan, Germany, United Kingdom, Netherlands, South Korea) tend to be the richest on the planet while those abundant in resources are poor. The concept of the resource curse has literally been one of the most studied economic concepts since Adam Smith.

The IMF classifies 51 countries as "resource-rich" - only two are in Europe. One is Norway, which was already wealthy before its natural resources were found and exploited (although it never had any coal, iron etc.) and the other is Albania (gas, mining) and the irony is its in the bottom three poorest in Europe.

Before you say something is so stupidly wrong, conduct some basic study into the absolute foundations of civilisation and economics.
https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/ ... ries-44938
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419 ... 169112.pdf
https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/Sta ... ries-25902
https://www.nber.org/papers/w5398.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse

that I'm actually shocked anyone would claim it.

Right back at you - but I have tonnes of links, books, journals and articles behind me.

Europe has tons of fertile farmland,

By total area, India is first (that's above Europe as a whole), followed by the US (Native Americans didn't seem to make much use of that..) followed by Australia then Brazil then Kazakhstan. In 6th is the EU as a whole, although no individual EU nation appears in the top 25. In Europe as a whole, first is Ukraine, followed by Russia, followed by Turkey, followed by Spain, followed by France. Which shows that total size is literally the inverse of economic prosperity. After France, Poland/Germany/UK are roughly even at 18k km2, then Italy at 16k and then you're down to sub-10k.

Here are a few countries which have more fertile farmland than the largest in the EU (France): Algeria, Iran, Pakistan, Sudan, Ethiopia (lul famine), Indonesia, Mongolia, Bolivia ... I can't be bothered to name them all. The reality is that if you name any country outside of the EU, you're likely to land on a country with more fertile land area than France. In layman's terms: the majority of the world's countries have more fertile land than Europe.

Europe as a whole has 13.6% of the world's arable land while holding 9.5% of its population. In top 5 countries by arable land per person, it's Australia then Kazakhstan then Canada then Argentina then Niger. You'll note the ironic absence of all but one continent.

http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/RL/visualize

very diverse and abundant mineral deposits

Okay this really needs a source. Good luck finding one. Europe is blessed with coal (as is most of the world) but beyond that it is famously abundant in nothing but useless sedimentary rock.

Coal was a necessity for the industrial revolution, but so were other minerals. Iron, for example, is not even found in Europe except in Sweden, whose role with the rock was made rather famous in WW2.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/267 ... y-country/

Copper, absolutely essential in the early days for electricity and in the early motor industry and basic consumer goods, is nearly nonexistent in Europe
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... 29.svg.png

Bauxite - basically aluminium - barely features in Europe.
https://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs ... -bauxi.pdf

Zinc - with a variety of modern uses - has a rare appearance from Ireland, an otherwise usual appearance from Sweden/Russia/Poland and doesnt exist elsewhere in Europe, but is dominated by overseas production
https://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs ... 9-zinc.pdf

honestly. What the fuck are you on about?

great forests to use as lumber sources.

Europe is very average on forest area, unless you exclude Russia and the Nordic countries, in which case it is tragically a basketcase. The EU as a whole has about 1.5 million km2 forest area, compared to 10 million for South America, 7.5 million for APAC, 6.5 million for Africa and 4 million for North America.

The UK, for example, has around 13% of its land area covered in forest. In the Netherlands this is 9 percent. Compare this to 40% in the Central African Republic, exactly 50% for DR Congo, 60% for Honduras/Brazil, 70% for Laos....
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... by-country

In terms of total area, it's Russia > Canada > Brazil > US > China > Australia > DR Congo > Argentina > Indonesia > India. The highest EU country is Sweden at 24th in the world with 1/3 of the trees in Indonesia.

Again, I realise the hypocrisy in arguing all of the above while Russia is there in almost every statistic, but it is very much reflective of everything I said since Russia is one of the poorest countries in Europe, whereas the wealthy ones have literally none of the qualities and features you listed as examples. All other civilisations before European colonisation have had all of these resources in abundance, and never made effective use of them as Europeans did.

To reinforce this (far more interesting than most of this thread) point, it should also be pointed out that the lack of resources was exactly why Europeans were so keen to go and find some elsewhere, and to research new technologies that are more efficient with what is available, and fight people to win them overseas.

Some good books on the topic include Charles C. Mann's book 1493,
Stephen Alford's London's Triumph (who's scope is more the city of London itself, however the same truths emerge),
Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind,
Roger Crowley's Conquerers

and (my favourite and would recommend for everyone generally) Darren Acemoglu's and James A. Robinson's Why Nations Fail.

[Darussalam]

These are his cites. The first is the Jensen & Rushton study that has come under intense fire.. here from a report in the American Psychological Association..

From which..

J. P. Rushton and A. R. Jensen (see record 2005-03637-001) ignore or misinterpret most of the evidence of greatest relevance to the question of heritability of the Black-White IQ gap. A dispassionate reading of the evidence on the association of IQ with degree of European ancestry for members of Black populations, convergence of Black and White IQ in recent years, alterability of Black IQ by intervention programs, and adoption studies lend no support to a hereditarian interpretation of the Black-White IQ gap. On the contrary, the evidence most relevant to the question indicates that the genetic contribution to the Black-White IQ gap is nil.

However it would be disingenuous of me not to note that this comes from Nisbett, and his interpretation is also in question, though mostly as a battle between him and Rushton to be honest.

Yet to say that study is 'proof' is simply untrue.

One group of scholars, including Richard E. Nisbett, James R. Flynn, Joshua Aronson, Diane Halpern, William Dickens, Eric Turkheimer (2012) have argued that the environmental factors so far demonstrated are sufficient to account for the entire gap, Nicholas Mackintosh (2011) considers this a reasonable argument, but argues that probably it is impossible to ever know for sure; another group including Earl B. Hunt (2010), Arthur Jensen, J. Philippe Rushton and Richard Lynn have argued that this is impossible. Jensen and Rushton consider that it may account for as little as 20% of the gap. Meanwhile, while Hunt considers this a vast overstatement, he nonetheless considers it likely that some portion of the gap will eventually be shown to be caused by genetic factors.

Both authors of the study have written a more than sufficient refutation of Nisbett's points and then some. James Lee also have written a review on Nisbett's book, which largely reiterates the same thing.

To quote from Lee,
"The ultimate test of the hereditarian hypothesis is of course the identification of the genetic variants affecting IQ and a tally of their frequencies in the two populations. Because of their likely small effects, we may have to identify dozens of such variants before we are able to make any confident inferences regarding the overall genotypic means of different populations. Although this task is currently within our technological means, it seems practically out of reach in the very short term. Ancestry estimation is much less costly than gene-trait association research and thus offers the advantage of an immediate increment toward the resolution of this issue."

https://osf.io/ydc3f/
https://osf.io/z8dy5/
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... ifferences

These, and a few more studies presented below, I think are quite sufficient demonstration that hereditarianism "passed the test".

Finally, I think it is necessary to note something. Contrary to what you might think, Nisbett does not deny genetic explanation for differences in intelligence within groups. Nor I believe Turkheimer, or other authors for that matter - they certainly consider genetic component as a more important factor than you do. Now, you claim neutrality with "some of them are genes, some of them are environment", but as evident below, I don't think your neutrality is being genuine. And later on, Nisbett et al., acknowledged the role of genetics in score difference between Asian-Americans and European-Americans, and (anecdotally) apparently approved of Cochran and Harpending's hereditarian paper on Ashkenazi IQ.

As acknowledged in the article by Nisbett published in 2012, among others,
"When the Neisser et al. (1996) article appeared, the controversy over whether genes influence intelligence was mainly in the past. That controversy has faded still further in the intervening years, as scientists have learned that not only intelligence but practically every aspect of behavior on which human beings differ is heritable to some extent."

This is the arch-environmentalist Nisbett we're talking about (one of the few that are credible and aren't outright cranks) - at worst, his description is credible enough. At best, it might be understating!

The third link is to a Florida twins study, there's another oft cited in Missouri. Yet there are major issues with twins studies.. twins are not genetically identical and intelligence is not isolated to a single gene.
Other studies have examined variations across the entire genomes of many people (an approach called genome-wide association studies or GWAS) to determine whether any specific areas of the genome are associated with IQ. These studies have not conclusively identified any genes that underlie differences in intelligence. It is likely that a large number of genes are involved, each of which makes only a small contribution to a person’s intelligence.

Link

Polygenic traits are widely understood to be a thing in biology. So what? First, through eliminating all other possible variables in the research it is still possible to conclude whether there is genetic factor that explains the disparity or not, regardless of whether the trait will turn out to be monogenic or polygenic. Second, I am quite certain that one of the studies I cited and you omitted contained just exactly the explanation that the inheritable part of intelligence is polygenic. I quote!:

We conducted a genome-wide analysis of 3511 unrelated adults with data on 549 692 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and detailed phenotypes on cognitive traits. We estimate that 40% of the variation in crystallized-type intelligence and 51% of the variation in fluid-type intelligence between individuals is accounted for by linkage disequilibrium between genotyped common SNP markers and unknown causal variants. These estimates provide lower bounds for the narrow-sense heritability of the traits. We partitioned genetic variation on individual chromosomes and found that, on average, longer chromosomes explain more variation. Finally, using just SNP data we predicted ∼1% of the variance of crystallized and fluid cognitive phenotypes in an independent sample (P=0.009 and 0.028, respectively). Our results unequivocally confirm that a substantial proportion of individual differences in human intelligence is due to genetic variation, and are consistent with many genes of small effects underlying the additive genetic influences on intelligence.

In addition, twin studies are often found to have major flaws.

Many twin pairs experienced late separation, and many pairs were reared together in the same home for several years
Most twin pairs grew up in similar socioeconomic and cultural environments
MZA correlations were inflated by non-genetic cohort effects, based on common age, common sex, and other factors
Twins share a common pre-natal (intrauterine) environment, and the MZA pre-natal environment is more similar than the DZA pre-natal environment
TRA study findings might not be (or are not) generalizable to the non-twin population
In studies based on volunteer twins, a bias was introduced because pairs had to have known of each other’s existence to be able to participate in the study
MZA samples were biased in favor of more similar pairs, meaning that studied MZA pairs are not representative of MZAs as a population

Link

Take a look at these two, twins who were effectively separated at birth with one sent to the US and one remaining in the UK, and rather wide different environmental factors..

Overall, the twins’ differences were more frequent than their similarities. Differences were most apparent in general intelligence, Stroop completion times, ideational fluency, psychomotor completion times and medical health. Similarities included mental status, job satisfaction and social support. The personality data yielded mixed findings.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4563825/

Jay Joseph's criticism of twin studies seems to primarily stem from his rejection of the EEA - Equal Environment Assumption. In the classic twin study design, identical (MZ) twin pairs are compared to fraternal (DZ) twin pairs so as to estimate the relative contributions of heredity and environment to individual differences. According EEA, to the shared environment of MZ twins is not more similar than that of DZ twins, which is an assumption that he rejected. First of all, an extensive literature has existed which accepted the reliability of EEA - Barnes et al., and Felson among them. The key is that while it's true that environment of MZ twins might be more similar to each other than the environment of DZ twins, there is little evidence that they experience more similar trait-relevant environments. Adoption studies and standard twin studies also give very similar results - indicating that the flaws in EEA certainly do not substantially influence the intended purpose of twin studies in the first place.

The second is from Tabarrok's criticism here:

Even more important, for an article that goes on about “modern genetics” the author seems completely unaware that it is now possible to do a whole-genome analysis. That is, instead of assuming that siblings share 50% of their genes on average it is possible to estimate, sibling-pair by sibling-pair, how many genes siblings share and then correlate that with various characteristics. Obviously, it takes a lot more data to do a study like this but it has been done. Visscher et al., for example, use data from 3,375 sibling pairs to estimate the heritability of height. Interestingly, they find a heritability of 0.8, very close to that found in traditional studies.

Even if we didn't have twin studies, genome-wide association studies exist. Coincidentally, they also have similar result with adoption studies AND twin studies. Tabarrok also linked to the study that I gave above. Trivia: Tabarrok is so racist, he's an open border proponent.

EDIT: note that I myself called citing just Nisbett in refutation of Jensen as also disingenuous - so to your question yes, if you presented the opposite argument citing the opposite side only then I'd call you out on it.

I'm aware. It's just that that you don't really mean it, and your attempt at neutralism here is not very convincing. "You must present both sides" here is disingeneous - to me, the sides are asymmetrical in quality and popularity, and the environmentalists don't really do much to present their case even though they're supposed to be the ones who are obviously right. If the environmentalists are the first to present their evidences here, you wouldn't go into tangent about how they should present #bothsides, because why should they?

I mean.. to be honest nature and nurture are being found to be less of two separate things, it's not like any debate can fall to one or the other side. Genes are not static in expression or immune to modification due to environment, especially during childhood.

This cohort comprised over 3,000 pregnant women recruited in the Philippines in 1983. These women came from all different walks of life: They differed in access to clean water or a roof over their heads, whether they lived in an urban or a rural area, and whether they came into frequent contact with animals. From the data, they looked at over 500 of those women in order to figure out if their child’s environment growing up led to epigenetic modifications to their DNA—and later to a change in inflammatory proteins in their blood in adulthood.

Once their children were born, the investigators kept track of them and of the environments they were exposed to throughout their lives. Once they turned 21, the investigators took a blood sample that they used to measure the DNA methylation throughout their genome, as well as inflammation-related proteins that have been previously associated with cardiovascular diseases and other aging-related diseases.

The authors determined that the childhood environment of these youths affected the level of inflammation-related proteins (biomarkers) in their blood during adulthood, likely as a result of methylation of some of their inflammation-related genes. The dysregulation of these proteins can affect health and risk of disease.

The nutritional, microbial, psychological and social environments that children are exposed to growing up are critical for their physiology and health later in life, says McDade. As to the effects of specific childhood environments, he pointed to prolonged breastfeeding, exposure to microbes, and an abundance of family assets that led to better regulation of the inflammatory proteins.

Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science- ... HFPiMae.99

Yes. What you have discovered is called "epigenetics", a study that has boomed lately in the present decade. It's not as revolutionary as frequently hyped (bonus question: guess why epigenetics is overhyped than what it actually is). It's not without detractors, but that doesn't really matter - even if epigenetics do inform us about causal mechanism behind inherited phenotypes, giraffes still didn't gradually inherit the length of their stretched necks.

The presence of epigenetics does not shut down discussion on whether something is inherited trait or not, in any way. Is it possible that Africans inherit low average cognitive ability due to epigenetics mechanism influenced by centuries of oppression? Sure, I'm not averse to that conclusion. On the other hand, that seems unlikely. Population groups which were used to be oppressed or poor - Jews, Koreans, Chinese, all have high IQ scores, and their scores are already high when they were opressed/poor. I already mentioned the Ashkenazi IQ here, but let me cite it again:

http://web.mit.edu/fustflum/documents/p ... socsci.pdf

In the 1920s a survey of IQ scores in three London schools (Hughes, 1928) with mixed Jewish and non-Jewish student bodies showed that Jewish students had higher IQs than their schoolmates in each of three school, one prosperous, one poor, and one very poor. The differences between Jews and non-Jews were all slightly less than one standard deviation. The students at the poorest Jewish school in London had IQ scores equal to the overall city mean of non-Jewish children.

The main thing is that in your opening remarks you state that 'leftist' believe evolution stops qt the neck - that is really a straw man that I don't see anyone claiming here. Everyone and anyone accepts that genes play a part, environment also plays a part, genes can influence environment and environment influences genes.

'Evolution stops at the neck' refers to the prevailing belief of human cognitive (and behavioral, but the latter hasn't been addressed much in this thread) equality, where inherited human cognitive ability is equally distributed across groups and couldn't possibly not be, to be held even in opposition of empirical evidence. I don't think this is a strawman. Consider the following statement: intelligence is not equally distributed across groups, some groups have higher average intelligence than other and a substantial reason of this disparity is hereditary in nature. If you're repulsed by the idea then you believe in the faith of cognitive equality.

Yet the final point is if you take something static like IQ and apply it against various categorisations you're going to find a ranking, and you might think that consequential within a species but if you take humans as a whole relative to the IQ of any other animal and the variation is very much insignificant.

I'm not talking about animals in general - I'm talking about humans in particular. The thing is, variations in average intelligence within human subgroups is significant. You might be worrying about nebulous notions like human equality, racial superiority, or other things that are mainly useful on podiums and campus protests. But IQ correlates with many useful things: educational and professional achievement, national productivity, scientific innovation, etc. etc. I'm not saying that it's an objective measurement of innate human worth. But if you want to trace back and resolve many problems in human society, accepting cognitive ability measurement as a tool of analysis is certainly useful, moreso than holding intelligent people for "holding the marginalized down".

Poor nutrition, poor education, poor childhood circumstances are going to have an effect on IQ results, not IQ results causing poor nutrition, poor education and poor childhood. Are you really saying evolution is the cause of the Flynn effect, that magically everyone's evolving intelligence at a rate that then drives economic improvement or is it more likely that economic improvement is driving better IQ results.

There's really just too many variables to come down on one side or the other and the truth is there's likely no side, there's no means of saying 50% or 60% or whatever because of how highly dependent they are on each other and the high rate of variability not just in genes and expression but environmental factors.

Ok, what? In a span of two paragraphs you just claimed two contradictory things. First is that poor environment definitely causes IQ and it couldn't be the other way around, second is that #bothsides should just lay it down because we couldn't know for sure. All motte and bailey does is confusing the discussion around.

I repeat: we know a way to find out whether IQ is influenced by external factors, or IQ influences these external factors. And what we find is mostly that IQ is more influential to economic growth than vice versa. Poorest Jewish children have IQ equivalent to middle-class English children in 1920s United Kingdom, Koreans did not have the IQ of Ghana when they have equal GDP per capita, hell China is not a very developed country and yet its average IQ score exceed many countries more developed than it, on par with wealthy Western European countries.

And you're literally shifting around explanations for which IQ might not be [genetic] in the orthodox sense, in the single post. First you think twin studies are wrong, then it might boil down to epigenetics, then external factors influence IQ and it cannot be the other way around period, and now we don't know for sure. Which one is right, again?

It's worth studying of course, the more we know.. but it really has little to say about any superiority or inferiority of races.

Actually that's wrong. It proves that there's one superior race with the right of dominion over the world, and it's the Jews. Duh.

[Genivaria]

Wat. This is so stupidly wrong that I'm actually shocked anyone would claim it.

No it's literally what every fucking person says who knows anything about anything. It's literally one of the first things you learn in economics - the paradox that countries with no national resources (Japan, Germany, United Kingdom, Netherlands, South Korea) tend to be the richest on the planet while those abundant in resources are poor. The concept of the resource curse has literally been one of the most studied economic concepts since Adam Smith.

The IMF classifies 51 countries as "resource-rich" - only two are in Europe. One is Norway, which was already wealthy before its natural resources were found and exploited (although it never had any coal, iron etc.) and the other is Albania (gas, mining) and the irony is its in the bottom three poorest in Europe.

Before you say something is so stupidly wrong, conduct some basic study into the absolute foundations of civilisation and economics.
https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/ ... ries-44938
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419 ... 169112.pdf
https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/Sta ... ries-25902
https://www.nber.org/papers/w5398.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse

that I'm actually shocked anyone would claim it.

Right back at you - but I have tonnes of links, books, journals and articles behind me.

Europe has tons of fertile farmland,

By total area, India is first (that's above Europe as a whole), followed by the US (Native Americans didn't seem to make much use of that..) followed by Australia then Brazil then Kazakhstan. In 6th is the EU as a whole, although no individual EU nation appears in the top 25. In Europe as a whole, first is Ukraine, followed by Russia, followed by Turkey, followed by Spain, followed by France. Which shows that total size is literally the inverse of economic prosperity. After France, Poland/Germany/UK are roughly even at 18k km2, then Italy at 16k and then you're down to sub-10k.

Here are a few countries which have more fertile farmland than the largest in the EU (France): Algeria, Iran, Pakistan, Sudan, Ethiopia (lul famine), Indonesia, Mongolia, Bolivia ... I can't be bothered to name them all. The reality is that if you name any country outside of the EU, you're likely to land on a country with more fertile land area than France. In layman's terms: the majority of the world's countries have more fertile land than Europe.

Europe as a whole has 13.6% of the world's arable land while holding 9.5% of its population. In top 5 countries by arable land per person, it's Australia then Kazakhstan then Canada then Argentina then Niger. You'll note the ironic absence of all but one continent.

http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/RL/visualize

very diverse and abundant mineral deposits

Okay this really needs a source. Good luck finding one. Europe is blessed with coal (as is most of the world) but beyond that it is famously abundant in nothing but useless sedimentary rock.

Coal was a necessity for the industrial revolution, but so were other minerals. Iron, for example, is not even found in Europe except in Sweden, whose role with the rock was made rather famous in WW2.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/267 ... y-country/

Copper, absolutely essential in the early days for electricity and in the early motor industry and basic consumer goods, is nearly nonexistent in Europe
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... 29.svg.png

Bauxite - basically aluminium - barely features in Europe.
https://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs ... -bauxi.pdf

Zinc - with a variety of modern uses - has a rare appearance from Ireland, an otherwise usual appearance from Sweden/Russia/Poland and doesnt exist elsewhere in Europe, but is dominated by overseas production
https://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs ... 9-zinc.pdf

honestly. What the fuck are you on about?

great forests to use as lumber sources.

Europe is very average on forest area, unless you exclude Russia and the Nordic countries, in which case it is tragically a basketcase. The EU as a whole has about 1.5 million km2 forest area, compared to 10 million for South America, 7.5 million for APAC, 6.5 million for Africa and 4 million for North America.

The UK, for example, has around 13% of its land area covered in forest. In the Netherlands this is 9 percent. Compare this to 40% in the Central African Republic, exactly 50% for DR Congo, 60% for Honduras/Brazil, 70% for Laos....
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... by-country

In terms of total area, it's Russia > Canada > Brazil > US > China > Australia > DR Congo > Argentina > Indonesia > India. The highest EU country is Sweden at 24th in the world with 1/3 of the trees in Indonesia.

Again, I realise the hypocrisy in arguing all of the above while Russia is there in almost every statistic, but it is very much reflective of everything I said since Russia is one of the poorest countries in Europe, whereas the wealthy ones have literally none of the qualities and features you listed as examples. All other civilisations before European colonisation have had all of these resources in abundance, and never made effective use of them as Europeans did.

I notice that you're making an argument against something I never said, at no point did I say that Europe had more resources than anywhere else, so your rant on how there are more resources outside of Euopre then in it is completely irrelevant to what I said.
I also notice how you completely ignored the point about urbanization.

[Darussalam]

I notice that you're making an argument against something I never said, at no point did I say that Europe had more resources than anywhere else, so your rant on how there are more resources outside of Euopre then in it is completely irrelevant to what I said.
I also notice how you completely ignored the point about urbanization.

Pretending that your readers are retarded to the point of brain hemorrhage isn't very conducive to honest debate, and quite insulting.

It's blatantly obvious that by claiming Europe industrialized because of abundant natural resources you are implying that Europe has more abundant resources than continents which didn't industrialize.

Since the beginning this is the point contested by Trumptonium, so it's not as much moving the goalpost as kicking it spinning to Alpha Centauri.

[An Alan Smithee Nation]

Where's Bottle?

[Seangoli]

I notice that you're making an argument against something I never said, at no point did I say that Europe had more resources than anywhere else, so your rant on how there are more resources outside of Euopre then in it is completely irrelevant to what I said.
I also notice how you completely ignored the point about urbanization.

Pretending that your readers are retarded to the point of brain hemorrhage isn't very conducive to honest debate, and quite insulting.

It's blatantly obvious that by claiming Europe industrialized because of abundant natural resources you are implying that Europe has more abundant resources than continents which didn't industrialize.

A significant portion of their advancement involved the extensive trade networks set up by the Italian states, incorporating technology, philosophy, amd sciences developed across the world. Particularly following the Crusades, this trade influenced the Renaissance era of expansion and innovation many fold and disseminating from there. A luxury afforded to them, in part, due to their reluctance to war between themselves and relative peace as no singular state was powerful enough to conquer another and its allies.

A huge part of what led to the innovations of Europe following the middle ages had to do with the pecularities of Italian local politics, which was in no small part fueled by favorable Geography as being in the middle od the Mediterranean. This allowed them to be the center of commerce amd trade for much of Europe, both for imports amd exports in not only goods but also in ideas.

[Genivaria]

I notice that you're making an argument against something I never said, at no point did I say that Europe had more resources than anywhere else, so your rant on how there are more resources outside of Euopre then in it is completely irrelevant to what I said.
I also notice how you completely ignored the point about urbanization.

Pretending that your readers are retarded to the point of brain hemorrhage isn't very conducive to honest debate, and quite insulting.

It's blatantly obvious that by claiming Europe industrialized because of abundant natural resources you are implying that Europe has more abundant resources than continents which didn't industrialize.

Since the beginning this is the point contested by Trumptonium, so it's not as much moving the goalpost as kicking it spinning to Alpha Centauri.

I can't "move the goalpost" when that's never what I fucking said.
I said that they had resources AS WELL AS factors that encouraged urbanization.

Pretending that your readers are retarded to the point of brain hemorrhage

I'm not pretending any such thing, I'm quite clearly stating that you can't fucking read or refuse to.

[Genivaria]

Pretending that your readers are retarded to the point of brain hemorrhage isn't very conducive to honest debate, and quite insulting.

It's blatantly obvious that by claiming Europe industrialized because of abundant natural resources you are implying that Europe has more abundant resources than continents which didn't industrialize.

A significant portion of their advancement involved the extensive trade networks set up by the Italian states, incorporating technology, philosophy, amd sciences developed across the world. Particularly following the Crusades, this trade influenced the Renaissance era of expansion and innovation many fold and disseminating from there. A luxury afforded to them, in part, due to their reluctance to war between themselves and relative peace as no singular state was powerful enough to conquer another and its allies.

A huge part of what led to the innovations of Europe following the middle ages had to do with the pecularities of Italian local politics, which was in no small part fueled by favorable Geography as being in the middle od the Mediterranean. This allowed them to be the center of commerce amd trade for much of Europe, both for imports amd exports in not only goods but also in ideas.

I think it is simply true that the single greatest factor on the development of human civilizations is geography, the greatest factor among that is access to coastlines and great rivers.
Not only do we have famous examples like the Nile River and Mesopotamia, but the ONLY settled city in pre-colonial America north of Mexico was on the Mississippi River.

And one of the the greatest factors in city building in the America's as a whole would be the relative lack of beasts of burden, the only one they really had was the Llama which basically didn't north of modern Mexico.

[Alvecia]

A significant portion of their advancement involved the extensive trade networks set up by the Italian states, incorporating technology, philosophy, amd sciences developed across the world. Particularly following the Crusades, this trade influenced the Renaissance era of expansion and innovation many fold and disseminating from there. A luxury afforded to them, in part, due to their reluctance to war between themselves and relative peace as no singular state was powerful enough to conquer another and its allies.

A huge part of what led to the innovations of Europe following the middle ages had to do with the pecularities of Italian local politics, which was in no small part fueled by favorable Geography as being in the middle od the Mediterranean. This allowed them to be the center of commerce amd trade for much of Europe, both for imports amd exports in not only goods but also in ideas.

I think it is simply true that the single greatest factor on the development of human civilizations is geography, the greatest factor among that is access to coastlines and great rivers.
Not only do we have famous examples like the Nile River and Mesopotamia, but the ONLY settled city in pre-colonial America north of Mexico was on the Mississippi River.

And one of the the greatest factors in city building in the America's as a whole would be the relative lack of beasts of burden, the only one they really had was the Llama which basically didn't north of modern Mexico.

Civilisation, coming soon to a dank river valley near you.

[Trumptonium1]

I notice that you're making an argument against something I never said, at no point did I say that Europe had more resources than anywhere else, so your rant on how there are more resources outside of Euopre then in it is completely irrelevant to what I said.
I also notice how you completely ignored the point about urbanization.

there is no meme good enough to succinctly express how disappointed I am in your education system right now

[USS Monitor]

No it's literally what every fucking person says who knows anything about anything. It's literally one of the first things you learn in economics - the paradox that countries with no national resources (Japan, Germany, United Kingdom, Netherlands, South Korea) tend to be the richest on the planet while those abundant in resources are poor. The concept of the resource curse has literally been one of the most studied economic concepts since Adam Smith.

The IMF classifies 51 countries as "resource-rich" - only two are in Europe. One is Norway, which was already wealthy before its natural resources were found and exploited (although it never had any coal, iron etc.) and the other is Albania (gas, mining) and the irony is its in the bottom three poorest in Europe.

Before you say something is so stupidly wrong, conduct some basic study into the absolute foundations of civilisation and economics.
https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/ ... ries-44938
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419 ... 169112.pdf
https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/Sta ... ries-25902
https://www.nber.org/papers/w5398.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse



Right back at you - but I have tonnes of links, books, journals and articles behind me.



By total area, India is first (that's above Europe as a whole), followed by the US (Native Americans didn't seem to make much use of that..) followed by Australia then Brazil then Kazakhstan. In 6th is the EU as a whole, although no individual EU nation appears in the top 25. In Europe as a whole, first is Ukraine, followed by Russia, followed by Turkey, followed by Spain, followed by France. Which shows that total size is literally the inverse of economic prosperity. After France, Poland/Germany/UK are roughly even at 18k km2, then Italy at 16k and then you're down to sub-10k.

Here are a few countries which have more fertile farmland than the largest in the EU (France): Algeria, Iran, Pakistan, Sudan, Ethiopia (lul famine), Indonesia, Mongolia, Bolivia ... I can't be bothered to name them all. The reality is that if you name any country outside of the EU, you're likely to land on a country with more fertile land area than France. In layman's terms: the majority of the world's countries have more fertile land than Europe.

Europe as a whole has 13.6% of the world's arable land while holding 9.5% of its population. In top 5 countries by arable land per person, it's Australia then Kazakhstan then Canada then Argentina then Niger. You'll note the ironic absence of all but one continent.

http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/RL/visualize



Okay this really needs a source. Good luck finding one. Europe is blessed with coal (as is most of the world) but beyond that it is famously abundant in nothing but useless sedimentary rock.

Coal was a necessity for the industrial revolution, but so were other minerals. Iron, for example, is not even found in Europe except in Sweden, whose role with the rock was made rather famous in WW2.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/267 ... y-country/

Copper, absolutely essential in the early days for electricity and in the early motor industry and basic consumer goods, is nearly nonexistent in Europe
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... 29.svg.png

Bauxite - basically aluminium - barely features in Europe.
https://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs ... -bauxi.pdf

Zinc - with a variety of modern uses - has a rare appearance from Ireland, an otherwise usual appearance from Sweden/Russia/Poland and doesnt exist elsewhere in Europe, but is dominated by overseas production
https://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs ... 9-zinc.pdf

honestly. What the fuck are you on about?



Europe is very average on forest area, unless you exclude Russia and the Nordic countries, in which case it is tragically a basketcase. The EU as a whole has about 1.5 million km2 forest area, compared to 10 million for South America, 7.5 million for APAC, 6.5 million for Africa and 4 million for North America.

The UK, for example, has around 13% of its land area covered in forest. In the Netherlands this is 9 percent. Compare this to 40% in the Central African Republic, exactly 50% for DR Congo, 60% for Honduras/Brazil, 70% for Laos....
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... by-country

In terms of total area, it's Russia > Canada > Brazil > US > China > Australia > DR Congo > Argentina > Indonesia > India. The highest EU country is Sweden at 24th in the world with 1/3 of the trees in Indonesia.

Again, I realise the hypocrisy in arguing all of the above while Russia is there in almost every statistic, but it is very much reflective of everything I said since Russia is one of the poorest countries in Europe, whereas the wealthy ones have literally none of the qualities and features you listed as examples. All other civilisations before European colonisation have had all of these resources in abundance, and never made effective use of them as Europeans did.

To reinforce this (far more interesting than most of this thread) point, it should also be pointed out that the lack of resources was exactly why Europeans were so keen to go and find some elsewhere, and to research new technologies that are more efficient with what is available, and fight people to win them overseas.

Some good books on the topic include Charles C. Mann's book 1493,
Stephen Alford's London's Triumph (who's scope is more the city of London itself, however the same truths emerge),
Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind,
Roger Crowley's Conquerers

and (my favourite and would recommend for everyone generally) Darren Acemoglu's and James A. Robinson's Why Nations Fail.

Same as why Mongolian hordes invading other countries used to be such a thing, since Mongolia is also short of many resources.

[USS Monitor]

I repeat: we know a way to find out whether IQ is influenced by external factors, or IQ influences these external factors. And what we find is mostly that IQ is more influential to economic growth than vice versa. Poorest Jewish children have IQ equivalent to middle-class English children in 1920s United Kingdom, Koreans did not have the IQ of Ghana when they have equal GDP per capita, hell China is not a very developed country and yet its average IQ score exceed many countries more developed than it, on par with wealthy Western European countries.

Environment can vary in many different ways, not just GDP. Two countries can have equal GDP, but different literacy rates, different levels of urbanization, different levels of lead contamination, etc., etc.

There could easily be some of the variation that comes from genetic causes, but you are overstating the extent to which other variables can be controlled and the extent to which a genetic explanation can be proven.

[Genivaria]

I think it is simply true that the single greatest factor on the development of human civilizations is geography, the greatest factor among that is access to coastlines and great rivers.
Not only do we have famous examples like the Nile River and Mesopotamia, but the ONLY settled city in pre-colonial America north of Mexico was on the Mississippi River.

And one of the the greatest factors in city building in the America's as a whole would be the relative lack of beasts of burden, the only one they really had was the Llama which basically didn't north of modern Mexico.

Civilisation, coming soon to a dank river valley near you.

I mean't to link this on my previous post but here's the Mississippian culture

[Trumptonium1]

I repeat: we know a way to find out whether IQ is influenced by external factors, or IQ influences these external factors. And what we find is mostly that IQ is more influential to economic growth than vice versa. Poorest Jewish children have IQ equivalent to middle-class English children in 1920s United Kingdom, Koreans did not have the IQ of Ghana when they have equal GDP per capita, hell China is not a very developed country and yet its average IQ score exceed many countries more developed than it, on par with wealthy Western European countries.

Environment can vary in many different ways, not just GDP. Two countries can have equal GDP, but different literacy rates, different levels of urbanization, different levels of lead contamination, etc., etc.

There could easily be some of the variation that comes from genetic causes, but you are overstating the extent to which other variables can be controlled and the extent to which a genetic explanation can be proven.

I don't subscribe to the theory, for the record (although I do think some cultures are more superior than others, and that may affect variables) but it is certainly an interesting fact that wealthier countries in the Caribbean have IQ scores closer to their African ancestry than countries on equal levels of development and/or wealth/education.

I do think that IQ has a genetic link, though. There's simply way too many examples of people in relative poverty escaping that poverty with greater success if they had better off ancestors, and its certainly correlated with wealth/status. It's most commonly quoted and seen in former deposed French aristocrats when the country turned anti-noble, only for them to return to success when it was lifted, a theory backed by French ANF. It backs the old adage: Take money away from the rich and spread it equally and a few years later the rich will be rich again. Racial? Don't think so, but who am I to know. I don't think it has a racial link, but a cultural one appears to be logical. To convince me wrong you'd have to point out that there appears to be some IQ difference in relatively peaceful multiracial single-culture countries.

[Genivaria]

I notice that you're making an argument against something I never said, at no point did I say that Europe had more resources than anywhere else, so your rant on how there are more resources outside of Euopre then in it is completely irrelevant to what I said.
I also notice how you completely ignored the point about urbanization.

there is no meme good enough to succinctly express how disappointed I am in your education system right now

The American Education System is indeed in a sad state, but then so is your lack of an actual argument.
"Well you're stupid!" Is not a valid argument.

[Ostroeuropa]

Whether or not nature has made us equals is not relevant. Nature is there to be commanded and altered to our preferences. It is fundamental to being a human that nature is not sufficient for our purposes and so must be forced into compliance with them, that is what we are and what we do. Any inequalities arising from biology exist because we allow it, and will end because we demand it. Technology and Sociology are both tools that can be used to accomplish this.

[USS Monitor]

Environment can vary in many different ways, not just GDP. Two countries can have equal GDP, but different literacy rates, different levels of urbanization, different levels of lead contamination, etc., etc.

There could easily be some of the variation that comes from genetic causes, but you are overstating the extent to which other variables can be controlled and the extent to which a genetic explanation can be proven.

I don't subscribe to the theory, for the record (although I do think some cultures are more superior than others, and that may affect variables) but it is certainly an interesting fact that wealthier countries in the Caribbean have IQ scores closer to their African ancestry than countries on equal levels of development and/or wealth/education.

I do think that IQ has a genetic link, though. There's simply way too many examples of people in relative poverty escaping that poverty with greater success if they had better off ancestors, and its certainly correlated with wealth/status. It's most commonly quoted and seen in former deposed French aristocrats when the country turned anti-noble, only for them to return to success when it was lifted, a theory backed by French ANF. It backs the old adage: Take money away from the rich and spread it equally and a few years later the rich will be rich again. Racial? Don't think so, but who am I to know. I don't think it has a racial link, but a cultural one appears to be logical. To convince me wrong you'd have to point out that there appears to be some IQ difference in relatively peaceful multiracial single-culture countries.

If you're talking about stuff that happened within a single generation where people were raised in rich households, but then lost their wealth, they would still have any skills they learned from their parents growing up and those skills would still be useful. And they'd still be likely to have a lot of their old social network. Even over two generations, you might still be looking at knowledge that was passed down rather than something genetic.

[The Emerald Legion]

The issue with racism and it's fake moustache and nose incarnation of Race realism is not that there may or may not be statistical variances in perceived racial groups abilities, preferences or whatever.

It's that those statistical differences are utterly irrelevant. If 90% of people who wear green hats are especially good at accounting, that doesn't mean you should assume that anyone who wears a green hat is a good accountant.

Just because someone is part of a group that is statistically inferior at a given task doesn't make it any less of an injustice to not consider them as you would anyone else of their chosen vocation.

It's about morality. Not science.

[Sokolovra]

The idea that there are more than two genders is an idea peddled by leftists and their powerful allies to destroy the nuclear western family.

[USS Monitor]

The idea that there are more than two genders is an idea peddled by leftists and their powerful allies to destroy the nuclear western family.

Not the topic.

[Kowani]

The idea that there are more than two genders is an idea peddled by leftists and their powerful allies to destroy the nuclear western family.

How is this relevant in any way?

[Genivaria]

Whether or not nature has made us equals is not relevant. Nature is there to be commanded and altered to our preferences. It is fundamental to being a human that nature is not sufficient for our purposes and so must be forced into compliance with them, that is what we are and what we do. Any inequalities arising from biology exist because we allow it, and will end because we demand it. Technology and Sociology are both tools that can be used to accomplish this.

This message brought to you by Humanity Fuck Yeah!.

[Imperialisium]

Final Summation of this thread can be seen as:

Science is seldom pretty and even rarer...are the conclusions agreed upon uniformly or set in stone. Further, keep in mind, within every stereotype is a kernel of truth. The problem is, whether we agree or not; ultimately, however, it is still there.

Thus, argument and contention as seen above!

[Napkiraly]

Pretending that your readers are retarded to the point of brain hemorrhage isn't very conducive to honest debate, and quite insulting.

It's blatantly obvious that by claiming Europe industrialized because of abundant natural resources you are implying that Europe has more abundant resources than continents which didn't industrialize.

A significant portion of their advancement involved the extensive trade networks set up by the Italian states, incorporating technology, philosophy, amd sciences developed across the world. Particularly following the Crusades, this trade influenced the Renaissance era of expansion and innovation many fold and disseminating from there. A luxury afforded to them, in part, due to their reluctance to war between themselves and relative peace as no singular state was powerful enough to conquer another and its allies.

The Renaissance was one of the most violent periods in European history, particularly in Italy where this series of conflicts was being fought in the middle of the Renaissance.

This isn't including the Wars of Religion which would kick off around this point or the previous few centuries of conflicts both in Europe and abroad.

[Genivaria]

A significant portion of their advancement involved the extensive trade networks set up by the Italian states, incorporating technology, philosophy, amd sciences developed across the world. Particularly following the Crusades, this trade influenced the Renaissance era of expansion and innovation many fold and disseminating from there. A luxury afforded to them, in part, due to their reluctance to war between themselves and relative peace as no singular state was powerful enough to conquer another and its allies.

The Renaissance was one of the most violent periods in European history, particularly in Italy where this series of conflicts was being fought in the middle of the Renaissance.

This isn't including the Wars of Religion which would kick off around this point or the previous few centuries of conflicts both in Europe and abroad.

And once again we find that years of conflict encourages military innovation, it was around this time that gunpowder warefare kicked off IIrc.