Across the United States, there is a general pattern – at least among Whites – of urban dwellers tending to be more liberal and rural dwellers tending to be more conservative. Indeed, this pattern is so pronounced that Steve Sailer managed to produce a now well-known (at least in the HBD-sphere) hypothesis of White American voting habits: his affordable family formation theory (see also a longer discussion here). This theory posits that in more sparsely populated areas, cost of land is lower, hence space and goods to raise children are cheaper, leading to people having more of them. This then causes rural Whites – so the hypothesis goes – to become more child-centric in their thinking and voting than their urban counterparts, leading them to favor conservative candidates (hence, the name “the dirt gap” for this hypothesis). Sailer’s theory received some support from an analysis of the effective cost of living across U.S. counties, which found that it is, overall, higher in the “blue” counties than the red ones.
However, even though there is a considerable correlation – particularly between state fertility rates and voting habits – it’s unclear if the causation is as Sailer suggests. Looking at the areas that defy the dirt gap sheds some insight into this pattern. In fact, in so doing, in this post, I will explore the roots of America’s conservative-liberal divide.
The deviations from the dirt gap follow a predictable pattern, which plays into a topic previously discussed on this blog. In particular, there are large areas of the country that have fairly low population density but also tend to lean to the political left, as gauged by voting habits in the presidential election. This map of the vote by population density in the 2012 presidential election (the darker, the more densely populated; the redder, higher the Republican vote, the bluer, the higher the Democrat vote) drawn by Chris Howard (over which I have drawn the borders of the American Nations as described by Colin Woodard) makes three such regions clear.
By contrasting the above map with this one, it becomes clear that, in general, the reddest areas of the country are indeed the emptiest ones and the bluest ones the most crowded. However, three areas in particular jump out, which I’ve highlighted here:
Three areas feature an anomalous level of blueness despite being relatively unpopulated, at least as far as Democratic voting areas go. These areas – northern New England proper, the upper Mississippi valley, and the Minnesota Arrowhead/Lake Superior region and the surrounding area are – unsurprisingly – all in Yankeedom, with some parts in the Midlands and New France. All are overwhelmingly non-Hispanic White. All are relatively sparsely populated, and yet all vote Democrat. All are devoid of and are generally outside the orbit of major metropolitan areas, with the upper Mississippi valley area having only smallish metro areas (Iowa City, Waterloo, and the Quad Cities area) and northern New England having the Burlington, Vermont-Plattsburgh, New York metro as its most populous area.
If we were to believe that population density and the urban-rural divide were the prime drivers of voting habits (second only to race) – as is commonly assumed by many simplistic analysts, then these areas should not exist. Yet they do.
As we have seen with this blog, political orientation, as with all things, is largely heritable. Indeed, a recent meta-analysis of behavioral genetic (class twin) studies by Peter Hatemi et al which observed ~19,000 subjects across five countries found that heredity accounts for upwards of 40% of the variance in political orientation (this is the low end estimate, since measurement error attenuates the results).
Further – and just as significant – the shared environment measure isn’t significantly different from zero, also consistent with other behavioral genetic results. This means that family environment and upbringing (parenting) have no effect on one’s adult political views, which is in line with the notion that parenting doesn’t have much of a lasting effect on how we turn out at all. Because evidence indicates that heredity is of paramount importance in shaping political views, I explore genetic explanations for persistent differences in regional ideological and political differences.
That said, contextual factors can affect the voting habits of individuals and groups even with no change in their heritable dispositions. This is why one cannot focus too much on any single electoral outcome, but must focus on broad trends, especially persistent patterns of behavior. Understanding relevant context may help explain particular electoral results. Hence, I will try to examine these as well.
So what’s the deal with these three regions? Unfortunately, I am only intimately familiar with one of them, as I live deep in the northern New England zone in here in Maine. As well, I have been to the periphery of the upper Mississippi region. I will examine the characteristics of each in turn.
Northern New England (from Maine to northern New York) is perhaps the area of Yankeedom that most consists of the descendents of the original Puritan settlers. However, this area gradually diffuses into New France, with Maine’s Aroostook county hosting a strong Acadian-French speaking population (where I live, French speakers are far from an uncommon occurrence). French Canadians make up a considerable share of the population all along this region. Like the rest of New England, this area received a considerable Catholic Irish influx, but less so than southern New England. Scots are also present, mostly arriving from farther east in Yankeedom (from the Maritimes). This area is not very wealthy, with the major industries (lumber, paper) mostly long since gone. The area is largely dependent on tourism, maple syrup production (particularly in Vermont), and fishing (particularly lobster) along the Maine coast.
The largest urban center in the region (when southern Maine and southern New Hampshire are exempted as being part of the Boston metro area) is in Vermont, the Burlington metro area straddling the beautiful Lake Champlain. This city is home to the University of Vermont (one of the “Public Ivies“). The state of Vermont is the most Left-leaning of the area, notable for being the home of the socialist senator Bernie Sanders. But like Sanders, most of the residents of the state originate from outside Vermont, from both within the region and from without. These newcomers have impressed themselves on to the area’s Puritan culture and have moved it squarely to the political left.
The eastern Iowa area, sitting on the border of Yankeedom and the Midlands, contains elements of both. This area of the Mississippi Valley received a considerable German settlement, as did much of the Midland Midwest. Indeed, this area was one of the strong concentrations of German settlement. A considerable Scandinavian presence was also established here. Catholic Irish are also present. These attest to the area’s Midland tradition of ethnic pluralism.
In keeping with its Yankee characteristics, this area is home to two large universities (indeed, also both “Public Ivies”), the University of Wisconsin–Madison on its periphery and the University of Iowa in Iowa City in its heart. The regions around these schools retain a certain liberal characteristic – appearing as if the entire region was in their sphere.
And finally, the upper Great Lakes area is the most sparsely populated of the three here, being essentially completely devoid of large cities, the biggest being Duluth, Minnesota. All I know about this area is that it interestingly appears to correspond to the area where self-identified Swedish-, and to lesser extent, Finnish- and Norwegian-Americans are most concentrated:
Indeed, the Swedish (keeping the limitations of self-reported ancestry in mind) zone seems to capture the most liberal areas. Considering Scandinavia in general today, and Sweden in particular, perhaps the area’s liberal tendencies aren’t all that surprising.
I invite readers more intimately familiar with these areas to please share what you know in the comments.
So what explains the political inclinations of these areas? What do they have in common? Is religiosity a common theme?
This is a map of religious adherents (from Valpo), which can be taken as a rough gauge of the religiosity of the country. As reported previously, northern New England proper is the least religious area of the country, with the Pacific Northwest (the Left Coast) being next least religious. However the other two anomaly regions along aren’t necessarily as irreligious. In fact…
…the eastern Iowa area is actually quite Catholic (Dubuque, Iowa is a considerable Catholic stronghold). While some of these individuals are from traditional American Catholic groups, such as the Irish, the bulk appear to be German Catholics. Indeed, Catholic Germans appear to explain much the distribution of Catholics in the upper western Midwest seen on this map, corresponding well to the distribution of self-reported German Americans.
(The Catholics in eastern New England are primarily Italians and Irish, in the south; and French, in the north.)
So if population density cannot explain the liberal affinity of these areas, neither can religion or religiosity. Indeed, the eastern Iowa border region appears to liberal and education-minded while remaining at least nominally religious. So what else can we look at? Indeed, for that matter, how, exactly, does the affordable family formation theory hold up, in general, and across these “anomalous” regions in particular?
These are comparison maps from Hawley, 2010. This is a direct examination of the Affordable Family Formation theory. There are some large correspondences, but huge disparities exist.
Indeed, none of the three liberal “anomaly” areas fit here. All are areas where the effective price of housing is low. Affordable family formation cannot directly explain these areas.
In fact, there appear to be large problems with the affordable family formation model. Indeed, much of the Interior (Far) West is incongruent, being racked with high effective land prices but nonetheless solidly Republican. Broadly, we see that it seems to work well for a few large areas: the Great Plains, the Left Coast, and the New York City and Boston metro areas.
Even the South doesn’t necessarily fit into the pattern (even discounting the areas that are majority Black). Indeed, at least one region exists as the reverse of the three liberal anomalies above:
The southern Piedmont is an area of relatively high population density (mostly suburban) and generally conservative voting patterns. This area consists of the suburbs of the metropolises of southern Appalachia and the Deep South/Tidewater. A stark city/suburb split is evident here. While the suburbs of these cities are indeed cheaper to live in than their Northeastern counterparts, even the few relatively expensive areas are solidly conservative.
So what then is the best explanation for the political landscape across America? As Razib Khan once noted when he touched on the matter, the best fit is the American Nations model.
It should be no big surprise that the anomalous areas (in terms of population density) all fit in the respective nations in the current political alliance as they exist today:
Yankeedom, New France, and the Midlands are dominated by groups that today espouse beliefs n line with what are currently modern liberal ethos (such as universalism, faith in government, education, and egalitarianism), as per the original settlers and the people that subsequently came to live among them. By contrast, the Cavaliers and the Scotch-Irish of the current Dixie nations (and to a certain extent the Far West) espouse views generally in line with modern conservatism – restrictive sexual mores, religious faith, an innate propensity towards children and family, and a distrust/de-emphasis of outsiders to the group. This is partly related to the respective levels of historic of inbreeding in each of these groups (see Tentative Ranking of the Clannishness of the “Founding Fathers” and How Inbred are Europeans?)
This split across the American nations is visible across history, as we can see from these maps of historical presidential election results by county (from here):
A look back through these results shows that the alliances between the respective American nations shift with time, and hence voting habits follow the divide of the coalitions of their day. Hence, the recent political regional divide should not be thought of as being absolutely definitive. They do nonetheless speak to deep divisions between individuals and the respective regions/nations.
Colin Woodard noted the importance of ethnonational divisions over the urban-rural divide in his analysis of the recent Virginia gubernatorial race:
Some suggested this was nonsense, the results being better understood in “rural vs. urban” terms, which Democrat Terry McAuliffe dominating the cities, Tea Party Republican Ken Cuccinelli the rural areas. In a postscript I provided some early evidence this was a mistaken idea. Now I have some solid data to prove it.
I asked one of my student research collaborators — Miami University of Ohio’s Nicollette Staton – to run the results both by region and by the National Center for Health Statistics’ six-tiered urban-to-rural spectrum, which categorizes every U.S. county by level of urbanity, from those in major metropolitan regions (1) to the completely rural (6). The results were even starker than I expected.
In Greater Appalachia, Cuccinelli won every category of county, from the very largest cities in the section (where he won 49.1 to 45.7) to counties without so much as a big town (62.8 to 30.8). In every category save the largest (category 2 in Greater Appalachia), he won by more than 20 points.
By contrast, in Tidewater, McAuliffe won by large margins in counties large and small, taking five of the six categories. In the biggest cities he won 56.3 to 37.3. In the most rural counties he won by a convincing 51.0 to 41.1.
Of course, it’s not that the Cavaliers of the Tidewater area are all that Democratic today; rather the Tidewater area contains the state’s Black population, and I suspect this carried McAuliffe to victory. This might be revealed by this part of Woodard’s analysis:
The only category he lost [in the Tidewater] – “category 5” which consists of rural counties with a decent size town within them – was by far the least consequential, accounting for less than 12,000 of the more than 1.6 million votes cast in Tidewater that day and only 6% of the region’s overall rural vote. (Curiously, though, Cuccinelli won this sliver of counties by a staggering 61 to 32.9.)
That all said, the affordable family formation theory does still have much to offer here in terms of an explanation for what we see. Parts of the current “blue” nations, Yankeedom and the Midlands, contain considerable (relatively) conservative districts (at least as seen in the most recent presidential elections). In the Midlands especially, this appears to correspond, to a degree, with the pattern the affordable family formation theory would predict. This is especially visible across the Plains.
Much of the Plains was settled by diffusion from the more populated “seed”/coastal areas. Such areas may have favored individuals with strong family values, as these individuals would need to continue moving in order to continue reproducing. Indeed, this attitude towards marriage, family, and children is one of the modern hallmarks of the psychological differences between liberals and conservatives, as testified by my examinations of their fertility gap (see also Who’s Having the Babies?):
Indeed, the attitude towards sex, marriage, and family are defining traits that distinguish liberals and conservatives today, conservatives being more child- and family- centric. In the past, this difference may not have had the consequences for fertility that it does for the two groups in today’s world (where it is possible to delay fertility). Avi Tuschman wrote a book, Our Political Nature: The Evolutionary Origins of What Divides Us (which I have yet to read) detailing these inherent political dispositions and possible explanations for why they are so (see his Atlantic article, as well as HBD Chick on his work, also here).
The fertility differentials between liberals and conservatives show that the likely primary source of the baby gap Steve Sailer noted across the states is the relative proportions of each of these types of individuals in each state.
So now we see that there are several broad factors that separate liberals and conservatives. These include ethnic origin (the angle explored by David Hackett Fischer and by Colin Woodard) and attitudes towards family and children (the angle of looked at by Steve Sailer and by Avi Tuschman). But what else divides these different type of individuals? Another factor, and one that also lends itself to the pattern Steve Sailer observed, is sensitivity to crowding itself.
Discussion over at the site Neuropolitics once claimed that conservatives have much less tolerance for crowding than do liberals. If so, this would mean that individuals with conservative mindsets are uncomfortable being around large numbers of people, and would tend to be pushed away from urban centers. (John Durant has noted that he believes that conservative attitudes may be a form of pathogen avoidance, which may also explain conservative aversion to high population densities.) Liberals on the other hand appear to be more comfortable in cities, and may remain close to their birth areas if they come from denser areas; indeed, they may preferably move towards them. (I will note for the record that my wife and I, despite being liberals, are not very tolerant of crowds and much prefer our wide-open spaces.)
We have indeed heard these types of ideas here before. These were part of my Pioneer hypothesis. I once posited that natural selection trends towards more conservative minded people on the front of geographically expanding populations and more liberal-minded people in geographically bounded ones. The key limitation for this hypothesis, and why I have been unable to adequately test it, is that I don’t know if conservatives had a fertility advantage in the far past, prior to the 20th century (see Expectations and reality: a window into the liberal-conservative baby gap). Likely, considering, the prevalence of liberals today, if conservatives couldn’t have had much of a fertility advantage in the past, but the traits may have existent in some of semi-balanced equilibrium, being, broadly, equally good strategies. We do see that in geographically expanding populations, certain traits are indeed selected for, as was the case with the French Canadians. However, no group in the U.S. was under exactly the same circumstances, as all regions of the U.S. have received substantial subsequent immigration, particularly Yankeedom and the Midlands. That said, the expansion of the colonial American groups was, for a time, very similar to that of the New French, especially in New England and Greater Appalachia. Today, while Yankeedom and the Midlands, in toto, lean left as part of the Blue state alliance, parts of each are considerably conservative. Many of these areas are regions that were fronts of expansion from their respective colonial bases. Perhaps this is the legacy of individuals who had to spread out into a homestead of their own, away from the filled settlement (if, albeit, often just outside it, given the stronger family ties typical of conservatives). The distributions of some religions that are prominent in the western reaches of the Midlands perhaps attest to this:
If you’re an individual intimately familiar with these regions, I invite you to comment and please share what you know.
Of course, the Far West contains a conservative bunch of Yankees that split off from their cousins in New England: the Mormons. Mormons perhaps exemplify the process of more conservative-minded (at least, what would be such in today’s world) expanding away from more liberal source stock.
Alternatively, these could be the result of simple selective migrations – the founder effect. Perhaps these western areas across the Great Plains and the Far West were just settled by religious pioneers.
Indeed, founder effects – which are broadly responsible for the development of the American nations – works for liberals too. We see that across the Left Coast, which received individuals high on “openness to experience” (see also a critical take on that particular dimension: Openness to Experience – That Liberal Je Ne Sais Quoi | Staffan’s Personality Blog) and introversion. This may be partially responsible for the distribution of personality across the country (see also here for maps of each of the Big Five dimensions):
Self-sorting migration likely reinforces these divides, as noted above. Additionally, these processes alter not just the receiving regions, but the sender regions too (see Boiling Off | West Hunter). The Midwest in particular has lost a considerable fraction of its people – often for the coasts. Perhaps the upper Midwest have lost enough of its “bright lights, big city” folks to render the remaining population more home and family bound in their thinking. Just the same, more family-centric people probably flee expensive coastal metros for the cheaper interior.
In general, the affordable family formation theory is likely correct in that people shuffle themselves around for cheaper/more expensive districts based on their political (and hence, marriage and children) inclination.
We have seen that there are likely several factors involved in shaping the modern American political landscape. Of which, the strongest may be ethnonational origin. This is buttressed by population density pressure, founder effects, internal self-sorting, and perhaps even recent evolution. There remains much that we don’t know, and hence, a lot remains to discover. Indeed, genetic sampling and admixture analysis of White Americans in different parts of the country might go a long way to understand key political divides. However, the heritable roots of these differences mean that the divisions among White Americans are largely intractable, and the divides we see will be with us – in one form or another – for a long time to come.
Also known as Racial Reality.
(You may recall him from here)
All Human Behavioral Traits are Heritable
How Much Hard Evidence Do You Need?
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Your move…
Oh, and how’s that business you’ve invested in, Occam’s Butterknife Factory, coming along?
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Colin Woodard’s book, American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, is currently generating a lot of buzz. This is, in good part, thanks to an article that appeared in Tufts Magazine in which Woodard describes his work. Like David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America before it, Woodard’s book argues that the long standing cultural and political divisions in America stem from the various regions’ respective inheritance from the British and other European settlers (particularly the French, the Germans, the Dutch, and the Spanish) that founded these regions. I have outlined much of these books’ arguments here in my blog in my series of posts on the topic, noting that these differences stem from the genetic differences in the descendants of these initial settlers (suffused with the genes of subsequent immigrants, particularly in the old North). In particular, see these key posts:
- A Tentative Ranking of the Clannishness of the “Founding Fathers” – discusses the behavioral traits of the colonial settlers in terms of HBD Chick’s hypothesis
- Flags of the American Nations – Describes the American nations as they exist today and their respective histories
- Maps of the American Nations – More on the geographic origin and distribution of the American nations and presents a series of maps and other evidence that shows their importance today
- Germania’s Seed? – Examines the regional origin of German-Americans and asks whether their specific regions of origin within Germany impacts German-American ways today
This is the latest version of Colin Woodard’s map showing the rough delineations of the modern American Nations. One of my own maps overlays upon this one regional voting habits, in this case the results of the 2012 presidential election:
In this post, I will present a few more maps signifying the American nations, in this case, in the form of their religious beliefs (from here):
These are the Congregationalists – the traditional Puritan church. While generally weak today, they are nonetheless mostly confined to Yankeedom.
These are modern Quakers. While, again, fairly weak today (having been, like the Congregationalists, subsumed by newer sects), they are strongest in the narrow band that makes up the Midlands.
These are Presbyterians – the traditional church of the Scots. We see that it is relatively strong in the areas that received the Ulster Scots, across Greater Appalachia and parts of the Far West.
This is the Episcopals, the modern derivatives of the Anglican Church. This group is perhaps the most divorced from its origins of the representative church of the Cavaliers of the lowland South (the Tidewater and the Deep South). It remains quite alive in the Tidewater area, however.
These are the Baptists and Pentacostals, who have become the church of choice of the Tidewater, of the Deep South, and especially of Greater Appalachia. Indeed, Baptism links these three nations into their current alliance as the Dixie bloc.
Here are various German sects (Mennonites and Amish), mostly confined to the Midlands:
And here are the Lutherans, the religion primarily of the Scandinavian-Americans (and some Germans), who occupy the far northwest reaches of Yankeedom and the Midlands:
These regional divisions play out into the respective nations’ politics, as we see here with this:
This is a map of the religious identification of the House Representatives from each congressional distinct. Certain patterns are evident: Presbyterians are largely confined to Greater Appalachia; Anglicans are most represented in the Tidewater/Deep South; the Midlands show a mix owing to its multicultural history. El Norte is dominated by Catholics. Today, Yankeedom has come to be dominated by Catholics thanks to the strong presence of Italians and Irish there (and the French in the northern sections).
Of course, a special group, today unique to the Far West, are the Mormons:
The Mormons are Puritans that, like their antecedents in England, went through a religious revival and became a type of rebel/outcast group. And like their Puritan ancestors, they migrated west and set up a stronghold across the Far West, particularly in their state of Utah – just as their Puritan ancestors did in New England.
Indeed, a certain penchant for reformation/radical revival is a tradition in Yankeedom, as we see from a region of western New York State that’s been named the “burned-over district”. This is the region which spawned Mormonism, among other variously successful religious and other movements.
Finally, this map of overall religiosity:
This is a map of the percent of the people in each state who claim no religious affiliation. As we see, today, northern New England proper is the least religious area of the country, followed by its daughter areas across the Left Coast.
Religion is a reflection of political, social, and cultural mentality and identity. This is because the primary purpose of religion is to establish group cohesion. New sects often rally around religious causes because it’s a powerful way of identifying one’s group and symbolizing one’s commitment to the group. We saw that with the groups that founded America, particularly the Puritans and the Quakers, and we see that with many of the subsequent movements that have come up across the country over the years. A group’s religious beliefs shed great insight into the (inherited) psychology of its adherents, and this is part of the reason that individual believers are drawn to their faith. Today, religion serves as one of the many markers of the American Nations.
Recently, it has become a craze to demonize hydrogenated vegetable oils, also known as trans fats.
Indeed, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (F.D.A.) is seeking to outright ban this class of substances, since they are, after all, “artery-clogging” and “a threat to public health.”
Trans fats are found in most pre-packaged foods, especially anything that contains oils. They are also the main constituent (shortening) of cake frosting (after sugar). And of course, there is margarine, which has become a popular beating stick (no pun intended) of the group of people who seek to vindicate butter and saturated fats (who feel – likely rightfully – that these latter items have been unduly vilified).
The F.D.A. decreed that trans fats should “no longer be ‘generally recognized as safe.'” Why is this so? As explained in a New York Times article:
Partially hydrogenated oils are cheaper than saturated animal fats like butter, and for years were thought to be healthier. They are formed when liquid oil is treated with hydrogen gas and made solid. They became popular in fried and baked goods and in margarine. Crisco, originally marketed in the beginning of the 20th century, was the archetype, although it now contains no trans fat.
But over the years, scientific evidence has shown they are dangerous because they raise the levels of so-called bad cholesterol and can lower the levels of good cholesterol.
Sounds like some awful stuff, right? Their solution:
Banning them completely could prevent 20,000 heart attacks and 7,000 deaths from heart disease each year, the F.D.A. said.
“This is the final slam dunk on the trans fat issue,” said Barry Popkin, a nutrition epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
So case closed, right?
Well, if you’ve been following along with this series, you’d know I’m going to say not so fast.
How do we know that trans fats are dangerous? As per usual, most of the evidence for the harm posed by trans fats comes from correlations seen in observational studies. As Wikipedia put it:
The major evidence for the effect of trans fat on CHD comes from the Nurses’ Health Study — a cohort study that has been following 120,000 female nurses since its inception in 1976. In this study, Hu and colleagues analyzed data from 900 coronary events from the study’s population during 14 years of followup. He determined that a nurse’s CHD risk roughly doubled (relative risk of 1.94, CI: 1.43 to 2.61) for each 2% increase in trans fat calories consumed (instead of carbohydrate calories). By contrast, it takes more than a 15% increase in saturated fat calories (instead of carbohydrate calories) to produce a similar increase in risk. “The replacement of saturated fat or trans unsaturated fat by cis (unhydrogenated) unsaturated fats was associated with larger reductions in risk than an isocaloric replacement by carbohydrates.”[59] Hu also reports on the benefits of reducing trans fat consumption. Replacing 2% of food energy from trans fat with non-trans unsaturated fats more than halves the risk of CHD (53%). By comparison, replacing a larger 5% of food energy from saturated fat with non-trans unsaturated fats reduces the risk of CHD by 43%.[59]
Another study considered deaths due to CHD, with consumption of trans fats being linked to an increase in mortality, and consumption of polyunsaturated fats being linked to a decrease in mortality.
Oh Jesus…
Medical science, especially that part that gives rise to health prescriptions, unfortunately suffers from an over-reliance on observational studies. These studies only give you correlations. They are incapable of establishing the causal relationship between the phenomena studied. See, again, the words of Gary Taubes:
The shortcomings of observational studies are obvious and should not be controversial. These studies, regardless of their size or number, only indicate associations—providing hypothesis generating data—not causal relations. These hypotheses then have to be rigorously tested. This is the core of the scientific process. Without rigorous experimental tests, we know nothing meaningful about the cause of the disease states we’re studying or about the therapies that might work to ameliorate them. All we have are speculations.
Even more basic, the concern about the effects that trans fats have on cholesterol levels, may be misplaced. The relationship between cholesterol and illness (again, itself gleaned from correlational studies) is hardly as clear cut as it seems. This isn’t even mentioning the fact that statins, drugs used to lower high cholesterol levels, appear to be completely ineffective in reducing mortality in “healthy” subjects. (As well, they may have limited effectiveness for those who do have heart disease).
OK, at this point, you might be thinking that all I have done so far is call into question the evidence on which the assumed dangers of trans fats rests. It’s one thing to point out that the case is not quite as solid as we’d like. That still doesn’t demonstrate that the claim that trans fats are dangerous is wrong. Indeed, you’d be correct on this point. However, now allow me to do you one better:
These graphs show the mortality rates from cardiovascular disease (CVD) in the U.S. over time. As we can see, the present incidence of CVD mortality is considerably lower than it was in the middle of the 20th century.
Now here are some graphs on trans fat consumption (from here and here):
The total trans fat consumption, captured by the use of things margarine and shortening, doesn’t quite appear to follow CVD mortality. I’ve put in a separate margarine graph to show that it may appear to follow CVD mortality if looked at in isolation. But when shortening (which is largely trans fat) and oils (which are often hydrogenated) are considered, the pattern becomes highly questionable.
I did find one paper that tried to estimate the actual trans fat consumption over time: 
The estimates show great variability, including a marked disparity in the early 1990s – which is related to a shift in the measuring system used. The various methods used are described in the paper. Each has only limited accuracy in assessing population-wide average consumption for reasons described in the paper. As well, unfortunately, this doesn’t go far back enough to see if trans fat consumption tracks the mid-century peak in CVD mortality.
In short, despite the professed dangers of trans fats, one of the most basic signs of this danger is missing. If trans fats were primarily behind the incidence of heart disease, then we’d expect rates of CVD incidents to track (likely in a time-lagged fashion) the level of trans fat consumption. However, it’s not at all clear that we see this. However, our understanding of the true level of trans fat consumption is limited by the inherently poor reliability of the methods used to measure it.
At this point, I should point out the work of Fred Kummerow, who has studied the role of trans fat consumption in heart disease and claims that there is a causal link. However, most of Kummerow’s evidence comes from comparison of diseased patients with “healthy” patients (in a surgical setting), autopsies, animal studies, and limited lab cell/tissue analysis. In short, he has little that truly demonstrates a causal link between dietary trans fat consumption and disease. Blood and tissue analysis, of both living and dead human patients, while interesting, is limited in its ability to shed insight into causation. This is because detecting the presence of a substance in the blood or tissues doesn’t necessarily mean it got there through ingestion. That logic is how we got into the trap with cholesterol’s purported role with heart disease. The human body can manufacture a variety of substances. The extent that it does so is heavily under genetic influence. The presence of the chemicals seen in diseased patients could be symptom, not a cause, of the underlying disease.
So if dietary trans fat can’t explain heart disease, what does? The short answer is we don’t know. Contrary to what health experts might lead you to believe, fundamentally, we have no idea what causes heart disease. There are all sorts of hypotheses, but, as we see, all face significant trouble when subjected to scrutiny. Indeed, see here and here for some additional hypotheses and scrutiny of some popular ones.
The former source touches on a very key point: the failure of randomized controlled trials to affect the incidence of heart disease. We’ve already seen the failure of the Look AHEAD trial. Indeed, a slew of clinical trials testing various prescriptions of have netted negative results:
The MR-FIT trial in the USA was the most determined effort to prove the case. This was a massive study in which over 350,000 men at high risk of heart disease were recruited. In one set of participants, cholesterol consumption was cut by 42 percent, saturated fat consumption by 28 percent and total calories by 21 percent. This should have made a noticeable dent in heart disease rates.
But nothing happened. The originators of the MR-FIT trials refer to the results as “disappointing,” and say in their conclusions: “The overall results do not show a beneficial effect on Coronary Heart Disease or total mortality from this multifactor intervention.”
…
It is not as if this was one negative to set against a whole series of positive trials. In 1998, the Danish doctor Uffe Ravnskov looked at a broader selection of trials: “The crucial test is the controlled, randomised trial. Eight such trials using diet as the only treatment has been performed but neither the number of fatal or non-fatal heart attacks was reduced.” As Ravnskov makes clear, no trial has ever demonstrated benefits from reducing dietary saturated fat. At this point most people might think it was time to pull the plug.
Indeed, the one “successful” intervention, the Spanish “Mediterranean diet” trial, was rebuked by Stephan Guyenet for being improperly controlled.
That is even going beyond the issue of the generalizability of results from the Spanish population to non-Spaniards.
This brings us to one thing we do know about heart disease: it is (like all things) heavily influenced by genetics. Indeed, a recent GCTA (Genome-wide Complex Trait Analysis) study that looked at 38,167 individuals from Iceland found that the broad-sense heritability of coronary artery disease is at least 55% (at least in the Icelandic population, that is, of course). That is, heredity is the single largest known factor involved your chances of developing heart disease. (As an aside, the study authors claim that their data show that the shared environment is important source of the variance in these traits, based on the differing heritability measures of more distant relatives. However, if you look closely at their confidence intervals, you’ll see that this conclusion is not warranted.)
In fact, a quick return to the age-adjusted incidence of CVD mortality in the U.S. over time shows something interesting:
Assuming that these numbers are trustworthy, (especially for the early 20th century when reliability of cause of death declarations come into question), it seems the total CVD mortality has in fact remained fairly flat throughout for much of the 20th century, only to decline a few decades ago. If we consider “diseases of the heart” alone, we see an interesting rise and fall. What’s up with that?
Allow me to present something else:
These are the top causes of death in the United States since 1900 (from Slate). As we see, prior to the 1930s, the biggest killers were infectious diseases. The increase in modern human lifespan is heavily due to three simple things: improved sanitation, vaccines, and antibiotics. Notice how the incidence of heart disease significantly rises as deaths from infectious diseases fall. This means that the mid-century rise in deaths from heart disease could simply be a result of the fact that more people were living long enough to die from heart disease. Even the age-adjusted rates don’t full account for this factor, because people who lived longer could have systematically more vulnerable to heart disease (heart disease is heritable). The increasing rates of deaths from cancer likely have a similar explanation, and illustrates this process.
It is possible that there was never much we could do about heart disease, aside from getting at better at keeping people alive who’ve already had heart attacks. Unfortunately, it is possible that some people’s bodies are designed in such a way that they develop arterial blockages. The superficial correlations with “lifestyle factors” gleamed from observational studies could be a due to individuals with such a genetic propensity also happening to live certain ways. These factors may have nothing to do with one another causally. Even depression (and by extension, stress), which has been linked to heart disease, may be so linked because of common genetic factors.
With all this talk of genetics, there might be one thing in the environment we might be able to link to heart disease. That thing is smoking (from here):
Smoking rates over time track CVD death rates in the U.S. As well, see this (from Wikipedia):
-
- Percent of males smoking by country
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- Cardiovascular mortality rate by country
There appears to be a strong spatial and temporal association between smoking and heart disease. However, that association appears to be primarily due to rates of these things in the Slavic world and the Middle East.
Of course, it’s worth noting that I’ve previously shown that CVD mortality rates can be linked to climate, at least in Europe.
Over the years we’ve been fed all sorts of health advice, different people telling us – preaching to us – what we should do to stay healthy and live as long as possible. It’s becoming increasingly clear that much of it – if not all of it – is bullshit. Indeed, as a result, the health beliefs that most people have today are basically religion. Everyone has their own ideas on how to stay healthy, and little of it is based on any good science (as commenter Sisyphean pointed out). It’s not like we can completely blame folks for this; the advice they’ve been receiving has been confusing and often contradictory, as exemplified by the love-hate-love relationship with butter and saturated fats, and now with trans fats. However, at this point, while I’d agree that, if you want to live as long as you can, it’s good advice to not eat rat poison or go for a stroll into the middle of a busy highway, I can’t vouch for the rest of it. The best advice might just be eat, drink, and be merry – at best, doing what seems to work for you. Least of all, don’t buy what the health experts are pushing until they show you the randomized controlled trials that back them up.
Once again, I’m using Tangerine Dream’s “Cloudburst Flight”, which to me has become a general theme for this series:
Last week, Ross Douthat wrote an article (Why Not Medicaid For All?) claiming Obamacare – and socialized medicine in general – would, if adopted in the U.S., have the deleterious effect of discouraging medical innovation, an area where the United States currently leads.
This was brought to my attention by a tweet by Kay Hymowitz. The theme of Douthat’s piece was that the more capitalist health care system of the U.S. generates medical innovations from which other countries benefit.
The broad idea is that since profit-driven companies perform medical research, that our current healthcare system is what drives these people to produce. “Socialist” healthcare systems (i.e., the rest of the developed world) only perform so well because of American innovation. Douthad is arguing that socialized medicine would remove the incentive for innovation, leaving medical technology stagnant. In short, he is trying to counter liberal arguments for universal healthcare that appeal to the universal healthcare systems of the other developed nations, which liberals claim (in good part, correctly) are superior to our own in terms of cost and performance.
To reinforce this point Hymowitz also tweeted another article that talks about the prescription drug development process. The article illustrates that drug developers try to reap their profits in the American market, since the lowered prices mandated by foreign governments limits the profitability of sales overseas.
Hence, if we in the States were to also become socialized, innovation would collapse, so the story goes.
Indeed, the U.S. does produce a disproportionate share of medical innovation. Here’s a quote from Tyler Cowen on the matter (emphasis mine):
But the American health care system may be performing better than it seems at first glance. When it comes to medical innovation, the United States is the world leader. In the last 10 years, for instance, 12 Nobel Prizes in medicine have gone to American-born scientists working in the United States, 3 have gone to foreign-born scientists working in the United States, and just 7 have gone to researchers outside the country.
The six most important medical innovations of the last 25 years, according to a 2001 poll of physicians, were magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography (CT scan); ACE inhibitors, used in the treatment of hypertension and congestive heart failure; balloon angioplasty; statins to lower cholesterol levels; mammography; and coronary artery bypass grafts. Balloon angioplasty came from Europe, four innovations on the list were developed in American hospitals or by American companies (although statins were based on earlier Japanese research), and mammography was first developed in Germany and then improved in the United States. Even when the initial research is done overseas, the American system leads in converting new ideas into workable commercial technologies.
So case closed right? We need to maintain our quasi-capitalist healthcare system so we can continue to generate innovation from which the rest of the world – and their socialist healthcare systems – will benefit.
Of course, this is nonsense. Hopefully, reading the above passage should give a strong clue why this is so.
Sure, the U.S. is highly innovative. But is it unusually so? The U.S. is a big country – does it generate more innovations per capita? I decided to find out.
I found one very comprehensive source on the matter. In 2011, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) released their “Medical Technology Innovation Scorecard“, which ranks an assortment of developed countries on a variety of measures related to their state of their medical care, technology, and innovative ability. I strongly recommend reading the report yourself, but I will cite a selection of the very interesting charts from the report:
As we can see, according to these data, out of the countries sampled, the United States is not exceptional when it comes to healthcare technology, research activity, or system capacity on a per capita basis. Indeed, as with so many other things, the U.S. is very close to its progenitor nation, Great Britain (and secondarily, Germany), despite the latter having fully socialized medicine.
Interestingly, according to this report, for its size, Israel appears to be exceptionally innovative. Indeed, the Israeli healthcare system is apparently one of the best in the world, and is fully universal.
This should come as a surprise to no one. The reason that Israel’s performance shouldn’t be surprising is due high average IQ of its Ashkenazi population. In fact, the whole reason the U.S. leads the world in medical innovation is not because of something special about American for-profit system; it’s simply due to its sheer size. The U.S., as the most populous high-IQ country (at least, with a fully market economy) simply has the largest number of high-IQ individuals; it has the largest “smart fraction“, in terms of absolute numbers. In short, it’s the same reason the U.S. leads the world in science overall:
(From Zones of Thought | West Hunter)
That all these nations with socialist medicine perform so well indicates that medical innovation would continue just fine if the U.S. joined the rest of the developed world and offered universal healthcare to its citizens.
Of course, that may take a long time to happen – if it happens at all. As we saw in my previous post on the matter, the ethnonational divisions that exist in the U.S. complicate such an expansion of healthcare coverage. Particularly, the Deep South and Greater Appalachia oppose such an expansion. A big part of this is racial/tribalist in nature. As I noted previously:
The clannish elements of British American society, the descendants of the Cavaliers and the Ulster Scots, are indifferent to contributing a common pot, and they are certainly uncomfortable about anything they contribute to the common pot going to non-kin, especially people who aren’t even of the same race.
The denizens of the Deep South/Tidewater live in states with large Black minorities. Deep Southern Whites correctly see their funds being redistributed from themselves to non-Whites, particularly Blacks. Hence, they oppose it.
Conservatives – such as Douthat and the individuals he cites – will continue to cook up one reasonable-sounding explanation after another about why we can’t or shouldn’t have universal healthcare. Among them is the cost issue – conservatives often claim (perhaps correctly) that our current system enables incredibly inflated cost of American healthcare. However, their solution to curtail such costs is a move to an even more market-based system (i.e., catastrophic insurance and “health saving accounts”). All of these arguments against universal healthcare are nonsense. No country in the developed world does this, and they all control costs just fine. This is in good part because of government price controls that force costs down. Conservatives might have it backwards on this one. As as we see here, the need to maintain such a system so that American innovation can continue to spill over to the world is unfounded.
This brings us back to tribalism and visceral conservative opposition to “socialism”. That is the real barrier. And, thanks to American racial diversity, it may be, at least for some time, an insurmountable one. Hopefully I have done proud to my liberal stripes with this post. Conservatives need to have their nonsense squashed just like liberals do, and I am only all too happy to do it.
Clearly the fitting song for this post:
Or at least a Grumpy one…
A new study (recently discussed by Steve Sailer) has found that the children of gay and lesbian parents have a lower high school graduation rate than those of straight parents.
The finding of this study seems straightforward – indeed, I was able to say it in a sentence. However, the conclusions we are able to draw from these finding are anything but.
The study looked at sample of 20% of the individuals in the 2006 Canadian census. Unlike previous studies, it has the strength of being able to examine a large, truly random sample.
Previous studies into the matter have claimed to find no significant differences between the children of gay and parents vs. those of straight parents. However, those studies apparently suffered from serious methodological weaknesses. The author of the current study explains:
Generally speaking the literature is characterized by several different types of data bias and small samples that lack any power … Although a proper probability sample is a necessary condition for making any claim about an unknown population, within the same-sex parenting literature researchers have studied only those community members who are convenient to study … Of the fifty-three studies reviewed here, only seven used probability samples. All of the other studies arrived at their samples through means that introduced various levels of bias. Some studies recruited individuals from sperm bank data sources or other types of reproduction technology providers. Other studies used Internet surveys where the respondents were recruited by various methods: parent forums, gay and lesbian web-sites, and online advocacy organizations. Many studies recruited through LGBT events, bookstore and newspaper advertisements, word of mouth, networking, and youth groups. A common method of recruitment was to use a combination of the above methods to form a sample base, and then recruit friends of the base. Still other studies failed to even mention how their samples were arrived at. Each different procedure has a different and unknown source of bias.
…
Aside from the problem of non-random samples, most of the existing parenting studies contain tiny sample sizes. Of the fifty-three studies examined here, only two had sample sizes larger than 500. Much more common were sample sizes between 30-60. The problem with such small sample sizes is that the data cannot generate any power for statistical testing, and low power means there is a small chance of rejecting a false null hypothesis. Hence, the very small sample sizes found in many of these studies creates a bias towards accepting a null hypothesis of ‘‘no effect’’ in child outcomes between same-and opposite-sex households.
OK, so this study “corrects” for these shortcomings by relying on a large, random sample. Still, the rarity of same-sex couples meant that there were few in the sample. Indeed, there are apparently only 423 gay and 969 lesbian families in the entire nation of Canada. Nonetheless, its sample is larger than most such studies.
The study found that children with lesbian “parents” were only 60% as likely to graduate from high school (sons 76%, daughters 45%), while children with gay male “parents” were only 69% as likely (daughters 15%, sons 161%). The disparity remained significant even when certain controls were introduced (such as parental education).
So case closed, right? We can now safely conclude that two opposite-sex parents are important for children’s development, yes? Of course not, not even close.
First of all, despite this study’s improvements over its antecedents, it suffers from a fundamental weakness. It is in essence a classic family study, one that looked at associations within families and then emboldens others to draw conclusions (as illustrated by the title “A Married Mom and Dad Really Do Matter: New Evidence from Canada”) about “family constellation variables.” Yup, there’s your problem: classic confusion of correlation with causation.
You can’t make causal determinations from standard family studies. Even with heterosexual parents, finding associations between parents and their biological children tells you nothing about whether anything about the parents’ rearing of the children had anything to do with what you find, not for the least reason being heredity. Just as finding that substance abusing parents have children that go on to do the same, heredity confounds you at every turn. This is because, as readers should know by now, all human behavioral traits are heritable.
Hence, a key problem is that comparing gay/lesbian parents to straight parents – even when you put in your “controls” – is essentially comparing apples to oranges. I don’t have to tell you that gays and lesbians – particularly the ones that try to live in married/civil union couples are systematically different from straight individuals. A passage from the study illustrates this point:
in the context of gay parenting … avenues through which these households are formed are many and complicated. As noted by Stacey and Biblarz … these families often have experienced a prior divorce, previous heterosexual marriages, intentional pregnancies, co-parenting, donor insemination, adoption, and surragacy.
The biological children of gay and lesbians can hardly considered to be genetically comparable to those of straight individuals, even discounting the sexual orientation itself.
That’s if they’re even their biological children. Here’s another finding of the study:
There are a higher number of visible minority children for gay households (28 % compared to 13 % for common law couples), and a higher number of disabled children (13 % compared to 6 % for opposite sex married parents). This may imply a high number of adopted children in gay households, but interestingly there are no cases of inter-racial same-sex families within the 20 % sample.
I don’t even need to touch the higher fraction of “visible minority” and disabled children in the same-sex parent sample. That’s just icing on the cake at this point.
Having same-sex parents, in and of itself, likely has no impact on children’s development. It would be really strange that if it did, since parenting in general (across the broad range that constitutes “normal” parenting) has no impact on how children turn out. That was the revelation in my first blog post, and it’s a fact that remains underappreciated to this day. This study of gay parents doesn’t change our understanding.
The failure to recognize the broad null effect of nurture (“The Nurture Assumption”) is pervasive even in the HBD community, the people who should of all know better.
Indeed, a recent blog post reciting some quips from Robert Plomin (a foremost behavioral geneticist) rekindled a discredited idea to explain the consistent non-effect of the shared environment term (the fact that there is no correlation between children raised together once you take genes into account) (emphasis in original):
In short, parents think they treat their kids the same… but the kids think the parents treat them differently, and outside observations would support this claim. If anything, the outside observer sees slightly more unequal treatment than the kids themselves do. This indicates that the vast majority of parenting effects would show up in the non-shared environment.
That said, modern study designs have indeed allowed us to decompose the known sources of non-shared environmental influences. Here is the relevant data from the paper:
The proportion of total variance accounted for in outcomes such as adjustment, personality and cognition was 0.01 for family constellation, 0.02 for differential parental behaviour, 0.02 for differential sibling interaction and 0.05 for differential peer or teacher interaction. Moreover, these effects are largely independent and they add up to account for 13% of the total variance. If non-shared environment accounts for ~40% of the variance in these domains, we could say the cup is already more than one quarter full.
Parent-child interaction was the Occam’s Butterknife way for developmental psychologists to rescue parenting after studies failed to turn up evidence for its effects. Judith Rich Harris and Steven Pinker both long since dispatched this idea, as I explained:
It requires that there are no across the board differences from one set of parents to another. To see why, imagine parents did have some effect. Even if there were differences in the exact treatment each child received, there are going to be systematic similarities with the way each set of parents treat all their children. If such an effect existed, it would turn up in the shared environment, since kids growing up together would be impacted by these across the board similarities. But the shared environment influence is in fact negligible.
…
It requires perfect crossover interaction. Let’s say you assume that parental effects – whatever their across the board similarity for a given set of parents – had totally idiosyncratic effects on children. Then in order to explain the null effect of the shared environment, the sum of these effects on children’s traits had to be exactly zero. Any number of children exhibiting one sort of effect would have to be balanced by an equal number of children exhibiting the exact opposite effect. That is a rather large stretch.
Occam’s razor and….
…
The notion that parental influences exist, but the factors that vary among parents in how they treat their children across the board must either have no consistent effect or must perfectly cancel across children such that it gives the appearance in the data that it has no effect at all requires us to entertain many more causal entities that the simpler idea that they just have no effect at all.
Of course, it gets worse for parenting, thanks to studies into the effects of birth order:
In any case, there is additional trouble for the idea of significant parental impact: it has to contend with the absence of birth order effects. Thorough analysis has failed to find any systematic differences in children due to birth order. Birth order is one case of systematic, non-genetic differences in the home environment of children. It’s hard to reconcile the existence of parental effects with the failure to find anything when looking at a reliable systematic difference in the parental environment.
Parenting is simply less important than most people think. But as with the issue with health and obesity, even individuals who understand the pervasiveness of nature and the apparent stochasticity of what we call “environment” like to believe there is some way they can exert control (see locus of control, courtesy Richard Harper).
To be fair to parenting, over at my comment at the blog I left the current unknowns about parenting:
Now, to be completely fair to parenting, some commenters on the matter, such as Steve Sailer, posit that parental effects are largely unimportant when looking at higher-SES, Western parents. The difference from one set of middle-class Western parents to another set may not matter much, but the difference might matter if we compared White Western parents to say poorer Latin American parents. On that we have to say the data don’t yet rule such a difference out. My own suspicion is that even in those cases, we will find that the difference – if any – stems from environmental impacts that only act in a negative way; e.g., we know that childhood malnourishment can stunt IQ, but nutrition beyond what’s adequate won’t raise IQ. In the same way, children from poorer families might miss out on critical developmental inputs. As well, they may miss out on key opportunities to achieve, which itself is perhaps more a function of the outside the home environment in which these poor children happen to dwell.
Only further research with non-Western, non-White samples can hope to answer this question. In either case, for now, the message is clear, parenting matters a lot less than society merits it, be those parents married, unmarried, straight, gay or lesbian.
As for the song for this post, while this song doesn’t have much to do with the subject, for some reason, it seems to me to fit:
Roosh V, a pick-up artist, and one of the foremost voices in the “manosphere” – especially its reactionary wing, has been getting some attention lately. This past evening, ABC’s 20/20 featured an exposé into the “manosphere”, the world of men who make an effort to improve their romantic/sexual success with women and discuss their frustrations with such.
The “manosphere”/”Game” world overlaps to a degree with the HBD-sphere. Many of its adherents and key voices are individuals with reactionary/paleoconservative ideology (one which I – as a fairly unique Left-leaning HBD’er – do not share), as is the case with the overarching community that includes HBD. And like the HBD-sphere, it has its own conventional wisdom that may not necessarily adhere to facts. RooshV recently posted a list of “Community beliefs”, encapsulating some of this community wisdom in one place. In this post I will do a quick analysis of these beliefs to see how well they hold up to the facts.
Here are the stated “Community Beliefs.” Let’s break them down one by one:
1. Men and women are genetically different, both physically and mentally. Sex roles evolved in all animals. Humans are not exempt.
True. Indeed, that men and women are genetically different is in fact tautological: it is this genetic difference (XY vs. XX chromosomes) that defines male vs. female. But, in the sense that this genetic difference entails biological mental differences, this is correct (see my page HBD Fundamentals: On biological sex differences).
2. Women are sluts if they sleep around, but men are not. This fact is due to the biological differences in gender.
True with caveats. As Eliot Spitzer, Anthony Weiner, John Edwards, and Arnold Schwarzenegger could tell you, it’s not like our society gives a pass to philandering men. That said, promiscuous women are looked down upon more than promiscuous men for one simple reason: paternal uncertainty. Unlike women, men have no way (prior to DNA testing, anyway) to guarantee that a child they have putatively fathered is in fact theirs. Human males invest in their children, but any investment in a non-biological child is wasted, evolutionarily. As such, female fidelity became a valued trait, since it increases the chances that any children born to a woman’s mate are in fact biologically his.
3. Men will opt out of monogamy and reproduction if there are no incentives to engage in them.
Muddled. In the absolute sense (all men), it’s clearly nonsense. In the particular sense (some men), it’s unclear. For one, which men? How big a fraction of all men are we talking about? In which societies (“different peoples is different”)? But the most confused bit the claim “no incentives.” What would it mean for men to have “no incentives” to engage in monogamy or reproduction? Are biological drives not incentives? Men are continuing to marry and have children. Indeed, the most monogamous men may be having the most children.
Latvian women. My wife is (partly) one.
If taken in the weaker sense, that some men will forgo monogamous mating if given the option, this may be partially true. We do have some evidence that effective sex ratios impact male/female mating behavior. Particularly, when there is an excess of single females relative to single men, men become less likely to commit and exhibit greater preference for short-term mating. Females may adjust their behaviors accordingly, as perhaps Latvian women have.
4. Past traditions and rituals that evolved alongside humanity served a net benefit to the family unit.
Muddled. Whose traditions and whose family units are we talking about?
Even if we restrict ourselves to Europe and the Near East, a whole slew of “family units” and accompanying traditions evolved:
As documented by Emmanuel Todd (discussed further by HBD Chick and by Craig Willy), even in fairly recent history, humans have invented all sorts of family arrangements. Each may have been a response to the circumstances each group faced in their various environs, or they may be a reflection of the underlying traits of these peoples, or both. As we can see, what constitutes the “family unit” has varied greatly across various human societies.
5. Testosterone is [one of] the biological cause[s] for masculinity. Environmental changes that reduce the hormone’s concentration in men will cause them to be weaker and more feminine.
True, as corrected. While testosterone is the most well-known and arguably primary androgen, it’s not the only one nor is it the only one which is important. The other androgens, which “are of equal importance in male development,” include:
- Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA)
- Androstenedione (Andro)
- Androstenediol
- Androsterone
- Dihydrotestosterone (DHT)
Testosterone, or even the other androgens, aren’t quite the “things” that makes males male. Testosterone is found in women, for example. Further, while testosterone levels do indeed fluctuate in men in response to the environment, and while testosterone supplementation does alter male behavior, male-typical behavior cannot be simply reduced to the presence of testosterone. Giving a woman testosterone or other androgens will affect her behavior, but it won’t be enough to turn her into a man (see belief #1).
6. A woman’s [mate] value is mainly determined by her fertility and beauty. A man’s [mate] value is mainly determined by his resources, intellect, and character.
True (as corrected) with caveats. First, even when corrected, it’s an oversimplification. “Mainly” is too strong of a word. Health is an important quality in both sexes. Intelligence is valuable for women as well men, as is a woman’s character (particularly her fidelity – see belief #2).
7. Elimination of traditional gender roles and the promotion of unlimited mating choice in women unleashes their promiscuity and other negative behaviors that block family formation.
Sort of. As discussed in the posts by Peter Frost linked under belief #3, unbalanced sex ratios can often lead to later marriage and more preference towards short-term mating. To the extent that this now occurs, we like to think that this is a modern phenomenon. But, as M.G. once discussed, a similar period occurred in America before – incidentally during of a time of great societal inequality and national strife in the turbulent Interwar years.
Further still, despite the loosening of sexual mores, as Frost noted, there are racial constraints on how much it can change. Despite whatever prevailing trends, family formation is going to remain the norm among slower life-history groups, like Europeans. Family formation may be less common among say Blacks, who have traditionally had unstable polygynous pairings.
8. Socialism, feminism, and cultural Marxism cause societies to decline because they destroy the family unit, decrease the fertility rate, and require large entitlements that impoverish the state.
Nonsense. Let’s take a look at something from some of my earlier posts:
The countries with the most “socialist” policies in place also have the highest fertility rates. Now before any of you criticize the NW Euro fertility rates being driven by non-European immigrants, in all the more fecund NW Euro countries, native fertility rates are 1.7 children/child-bearing woman or higher. Fertility rates are lower – indeed much lower – in the less feminist, less socialist Southern and Eastern European countries.
Even the other aspect of fertility that (rightly) concerns people – eugenic fertility – may be best achieved with “socialist” policies (as I’ve previously explained). These include programs to help working mothers, such as state supported day care and paid maternity leave. (Though of course, even these cannot completely compensate for basic effective cost of living – which, in the developed world, is the main driver of fertility rates.) Many in the right-wing corners of the manosphere wish for a return to the pre-sexual revolution days. That is simply not going to happen. Women in the West aren’t going to completely abandon education and careers – that’s here to stay. The best ways to encourage eugenic fertility is to reduce the conflict between education/work and family for high-IQ women. I will take up this issue again in a future post.
As with the HBD community, the manosphere circulates truths not necessarily known to the mainstream world, but it also propagates a fair amount of rubbish. As I do with HBD and the human sciences in general, I try to seek out the truth of the matter, and set the record straight whenever I can.
Some food for thought:
People who follow me know that I stress the three laws of behavioral genetics, starting with the all-important First Law, all human behavioral traits are heritable.
OK, but that established, most people aren’t necessarily interested in heritability per se; they want to know about changeability. Can the trait in question be changed? Sure, there are non-genetic inputs to physical and behavioral traits, including “environmental” ones (note that I distinguish “non-genetic” from “environmental”). And indeed, human traits can certainly be affected by global and local environmental forces (again, notice that I distinguish the two).
That said, that doesn’t necessarily mean we can shape traits to be what we want them to be, even if we limit our target range. See this series of insightful tweets from Sam S/”misdreavus”, a regular commenter at HBD blogs who frequents Cochran’s & Harpending’s in particular. “misdreavus” is definitely one of the greatest – if not the greatest HBD commenter who doesn’t yet have his own blog (a title I would have given to Jason Malloy before he started blogging over at Human Varieties):
https://twitter.com/HellfireAwaits/status/391096875022970880
https://twitter.com/HellfireAwaits/status/391097249561710592
https://twitter.com/HellfireAwaits/status/391097574158913536
https://twitter.com/HellfireAwaits/status/391098111394738176
https://twitter.com/HellfireAwaits/status/391098118785077248
https://twitter.com/HellfireAwaits/status/391097574158913536
https://twitter.com/HellfireAwaits/status/391098111394738176
https://twitter.com/HellfireAwaits/status/391098977593987072
https://twitter.com/HellfireAwaits/status/391099519166730240
https://twitter.com/HellfireAwaits/status/391099526594842624
https://twitter.com/HellfireAwaits/status/391100136572452864
https://twitter.com/HellfireAwaits/status/391100142440284160
https://twitter.com/HellfireAwaits/status/391100949239836672
Good points. Expect more on the topic in the future.
See also: 100 Blog Posts – A Reflection on HBD Blogging And What Lies Ahead: Health wisdom and obesity
Even George W. Bush Has Heart Disease
My posts on free will:
What if it’s not their fault? The myth of free will.
Sam Harris on free will
No, You Don’t Have Free Will, and This is Why
Another map of the American nations:
This is where the states stand on Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid. As you can see, it’s far from universally embraced. Now let’s compare that to this map:
And for that matter, this map:
Most of the usual suspects. Most prominent among those who reject the Medicaid expansion are those in the Deep South/Tidewater. By contrast, much of Yankeedom, the Midlands, and the Left Coast have embraced it openly, as expected.
Interestingly, much of Greater Appalachia has embraced the Medicaid expansion as well. This highlights a very important aspect of the healthcare discussion, as with socialist ideals in general: the importance of homogeneity.
A few recent articles have correctly noted that the Deep South’s opposition to Obamacare stems from simmering racism. More accurately (though not by much), I’d say it stems from clannish peoples not wanting share the spoils of the commonweal with those outside the “tribe”:
From Racism and Cruelty: What’s Behind the GOP’s Healthcare Agenda? | The Nation
Before he was disgraced into resigning his presidency over the Watergate burglary scandal, Richard Nixon had successfully engineered an even more odious plot known as his Southern Strategy. The trick was devilishly simple: Appeal to the persistent racist inclination of Southern whites by abandoning the Republican Party’s historic association with civil rights and demonizing the black victims of the South’s history of segregation.
That same divisive strategy is at work in the Republican rejection of the Affordable Care Act. GOP governors are largely in control of the 26 states, including all but Arkansas in the South, that have refused to implement the act’s provision for an expansion of Medicaid to cover the millions of American working poor who earn too much to qualify for the program now. A New York Times analysis of census data concludes that as a result of the Republican governors’ resistance, “A sweeping national effort to extend health coverage to millions of Americans will leave out two-thirds of the poor blacks and single mothers and more than half of the low-wage workers who do not have insurance, the very kinds of people that the program was intended to help. …”
Also this piece from Paul Krugman – The War On The Poor Is A War On You-Know-Who:
What the report makes clear is that the current Republican obsession with attacking programs that benefit Americans in need, ranging from food stamps to Obamacare, isn’t about some philosophical commitment to small government, still less worries about incentive effects and implicit marginal tax rates. It’s about anxiety over a changing America — the multiracial, multicultural society we’re becoming — and anger that Democrats are taking Their Money and giving it to Those People. In other words, it’s still race after all these years.
Of course, in Krugman’s case, he’s unsurprisingly blind to the deleterious effects the demographic change he extols will have, but he is spot on about conservative White opposition to social welfare programs.
As HBD Chick put it (on her post liberal (white) guilt as altruistic punishment):
i said: “…lady a is ok with contributing to the commonweal, but lady b (and her man, bubba) are not (even though, at the same time, they might be VERY ok with TAKING from the common pot!).”
for the record, i think this is one of the fundamental problems with “lady b”/clannish societies, and that is that, while they generally do not want to contribute to the common pool (to varying degrees), they are VERY happy to TAKE from the common pool as much as possible to the benefit of themselves and their extended family members.
The clannish elements of British American society, the descendants of the Cavaliers and the Ulster Scots, are indifferent to contributing a common pot, and they are certainly uncomfortable about anything they contribute to the common pot going to non-kin, especially people who aren’t even of the same race.
The denizens of the Deep South/Tidewater live in states with large Black minorities. Deep Southern Whites correctly see their funds being redistributed from themselves to non-Whites, particularly Blacks. Hence, they oppose it.
Which brings me to Greater Appalachia. The Appalachian states that accept the Medicaid expansion are largely homogeneously Scotch-Irish. Further still, they would certainly be on the receiving end of tax revenue from Obamacare. Hence, they are more receptive to the Medicaid expansion, perhaps correctly reasoning that they stand to gain from its implementation (at least within-state).
Interestingly, the Far West is a bit topsy-turvy from what we’d expect. The northern more homogenous Far Western states oppose the Medicaid expansion, while the ones that contain “El Norte” embrace it. In the former case, I suspect that the rugged individualism of the Far Westerners overrides their recognition that they’d (largely) stand to gain from Obamacare. However, Montana did set up its own single-payer universal health care system ahead of Obamacare. This may exemplify the sentiment in somewhat clannish peoples: commonweal, but only for those in the tribe.
On that note, to be fair to the progenitors of the nations of the Old North, both the descendants of the Puritans and the descendants of the Quakers are likely minorities in their respective nations – the latter certainly so (since they were since the beginning). I suspect that the purer Yankee and Quaker elements would, if left to their own devices, set up their own – internal – universal health care system, much as Vermont has. They favor the commonweal – within group. Both the Puritans and the Quakers were “in-betweeners”, and may not have favored complete universalism.
As for here in Yankee/New French Maine, we’re unfortunately stuck with the brilliance of our esteemed French-Canadian Governor Paul LePage. He vehemently opposes the Medicaid expansion here. Perhaps this may have something to do with his New French origin. The French Canadians seem to have either picked up some clannish elements here in America or perhaps brought these traits with them, owing to their regional origin in France (see also Maps of the American Nations).
In either case, it is clear that the American nations persists, and perhaps, as John Derbyshire recently put it, “The War Between the States goes on,” where one battlefield (out of many) is healthcare.
See also: The Audacious Epigone: Endovelicus
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