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THE VIEW FROM CHAOS MANOR

View 364 May 30 - June 4, 2005

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Monday May 30 2005

MEMORIAL DAY

Updates later. See last weekend.

 

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Tuesday, May 31, 2005   

  This day was devoured by locusts. Partly I did some gardening Monday, and was exhausted. And partly had to pay bills and do errands. And a dentist appointment. And sloth.

 

 

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Wednesday,  June 1, 2005

I should be back on duty finally. Just a lot of small things that had to be done. Apologies.

I should have some comments on Deep Throat, but I'm a bit waiting to see what others think. Me, I think Felt wanted to be Director of the FBI after Hoover died, and didn't like the notion that someone from outside was brought in. Whether that makes him a hero isn't quite as clear to me as it seems to be to others. As to surfacing, well at least his grandchildren's education will be paid for by book co-written with whomever. But what he didn't do was go to a Grand Jury. Perhaps he couldn't.

The Nixon regime was the Stupid Party in an internal faction war with Dumb and Dumber, and thank God they withdrew that appointment to the EOP that I was in line for. I was disappointed at the time (1969) but I was rather happier about it later...

If Nixon had had the sense to take the tapes out to the White House lawn, put them in a barrel, and pour gasoline on them, and set fire to them, he would have remained in office -- and we might have been spared Jimmy Carter who almost managed to snatch defeat in the Cold War from the stalemate negotiated by Kissinger. Kissinger negotiated containment; which was fatal to Communism. But Carter withdrew from that and don't get me started. Jimmy Carter was personally a good man but a very bad President. Nixon was personally not a good man at all, but he wasn't a bad President. So it goes.

 

 

 

 

 

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Thursday,

Subject: Robert Heinlein's Colorado Home Photos

Dr. Pournelle,

Someone has digitized the June 1952 Popular Mechanics article on Rpbert Heinlein's home built in Colorado, complete with pictures of Mr. and Mrs. Heinlein.

http://www.nitrosyncretic.com/rah/pm652-art-hi.html 

Don

Don McArthur

I vaguely remembered the Popular Mechanics article but had entirely forgotten it. Having stayed at 1776 Mesa Ave, Broadmoor, Colorado Springs, it is much I recall although the article does not show that Robert kept clean pajamas and new underwear and socks for any visitors who were unexpected required to stay there overnight...

 

 

 

 

 

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Friday, June 3, 2005

It is column time and I am encumbered with much writing.

Mail is piling up in a backlog and I will try to deal with a lot of it this morning after my walk. There's a lot about the "true meaning" of Star Wars Episodes I - III, which may read more into it than is there, but which triggers interesting thoughts on Empire and Republic. I'll get that up.

There is also discussion on Global Warming with a NASA scientist. I had hoped to have some analysis by people more familiar with the subject than me, but it is unfair to keep this longer, so I will get that up shortly.

I have also delayed putting up Harry Erwin's Letter From England. I have fixed that.

There is now a lot of mail up, some important, with many comments.

============

And all of you go read

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=4032638 by our friend Greg Cochran. I expect much debate. This is one of the more important papers to come out of being serious about applying the theory of evolution. (If you cannot reach the web site, the article is appended below until I find a proper link to it.) 

The evolution of intelligence

Natural genius?

Jun 2nd 2005
From The Economist print edition

The high intelligence of Ashkenazi Jews may be a result of their persecuted past

THE idea that some ethnic groups may, on average, be more intelligent than others is one of those hypotheses that dare not speak its name. But Gregory Cochran, a noted scientific iconoclast, is prepared to say it anyway. He is that rare bird, a scientist who works independently of any institution. He helped popularise the idea that some diseases not previously thought to have a bacterial cause were actually infections, which ruffled many scientific feathers when it was first suggested. And more controversially still, he has suggested that homosexuality is caused by an infection.

Even he, however, might tremble at the thought of what he is about to do. Together with Jason Hardy and Henry Harpending, of the University of Utah, he is publishing, in a forthcoming edition of the Journal of Biosocial Science, a paper which not only suggests that one group of humanity is more intelligent than the others, but explains the process that has brought this about. The group in question are Ashkenazi Jews. The process is natural selection.
 

There are also comments:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/03/science/03gene.html?

"It would be hard to overstate how politically incorrect this paper is," said Steven Pinker, a cognitive scientist at Harvard, noting that it argues for an inherited difference in intelligence between groups. Still, he said, "it's certainly a thorough and well-argued paper, not one that can easily be dismissed outright."

Incidentally:

Hilarious meta confirmation. I don't know if it was intentional... but note in the article who is quoted.

Jared Diamond, UCLA.
Stephen Pinker, MIT.
Paul Rose, Penn State.
David Goldstein, Duke.
Neil Risch, Stanford/UCSF.
Monty Slatkin, Berkeley.

What do all 6 of these people have in common? Hint: they are Ashkenazi Jews. (The only possible non-Jew cited was Clark from Cornell)
.

Comments in Mail
=================

The high intelligence of Ashkenazi Jews may be a result of their
persecuted past

THE idea that some ethnic groups may, on average, be more intelligent
than others is one of those hypotheses that dare not speak its name.
But Gregory Cochran, a noted scientific iconoclast, is prepared to
say it anyway. He is that rare bird, a scientist who works
independently of any institution. He helped popularise the idea that
some diseases not previously thought to have a bacterial cause were
actually infections, which ruffled many scientific feathers when it
was first suggested. And more controversially still, he has suggested
that homosexuality is caused by an infection.

Even he, however, might tremble at the thought of what he is about to
do. Together with Jason Hardy and Henry Harpending, of the University
of Utah, he is publishing, in a forthcoming edition of the Journal of
Biosocial Science, a paper which not only suggests that one group of
humanity is more intelligent than the others, but explains the
process that has brought this about. The group in question are
Ashkenazi Jews. The process is natural selection.


History before science

Ashkenazim generally do well in IQ tests, scoring 12-15 points above
the mean value of 100, and have contributed disproportionately to the
intellectual and cultural life of the West, as the careers of Freud,
Einstein and Mahler, pictured above, affirm. They also suffer more
often than most people from a number of nasty genetic diseases, such
as Tay-Sachs and breast cancer. These facts, however, have previously
been thought unrelated. The former has been put down to social
effects, such as a strong tradition of valuing education. The latter
was seen as a consequence of genetic isolation. Even now, Ashkenazim
tend to marry among themselves. In the past they did so almost
exclusively.

Dr Cochran, however, suspects that the intelligence and the diseases
are intimately linked. His argument is that the unusual history of
the Ashkenazim has subjected them to unique evolutionary pressures
that have resulted in this paradoxical state of affairs.

Ashkenazi history begins with the Jewish rebellion against Roman rule
in the first century AD. When this was crushed, Jewish refugees fled
in all directions. The descendants of those who fled to Europe became
known as Ashkenazim.

In the Middle Ages, European Jews were subjected to legal
discrimination, one effect of which was to drive them into
money-related professions such as banking and tax farming which were
often disdained by, or forbidden to, Christians. This, along with the
low level of intermarriage with their gentile neighbours (which
modern genetic analysis confirms was the case), is Dr Cochran's
starting point.

He argues that the professions occupied by European Jews were all
ones that put a premium on intelligence. Of course, it is hard to
prove that this intelligence premium existed in the Middle Ages, but
it is certainly true that it exists in the modern versions of those
occupations. Several studies have shown that intelligence, as
measured by IQ tests, is highly correlated with income in jobs such
as banking.

What can, however, be shown from the historical records is that
European Jews at the top of their professions in the Middle Ages
raised more children to adulthood than those at the bottom. Of
course, that was true of successful gentiles as well. But in the
Middle Ages, success in Christian society tended to be violently
aristocratic (warfare and land), rather than peacefully meritocratic
(banking and trade).

Put these two things together-a correlation of intelligence and
success, and a correlation of success and fecundity-and you have
circumstances that favour the spread of genes that enhance
intelligence. The questions are, do such genes exist, and what are
they if they do? Dr Cochran thinks they do exist, and that they are
exactly the genes that cause the inherited diseases which afflict
Ashkenazi society.

That small, reproductively isolated groups of people are susceptible
to genetic disease is well known. Constant mating with even distant
relatives reduces genetic diversity, and some disease genes will
thus, randomly, become more common. But the very randomness of this
process means there should be no discernible pattern about which
disease genes increase in frequency. In the case of Ashkenazim, Dr
Cochran argues, this is not the case. Most of the dozen or so disease
genes that are common in them belong to one of two types: they are
involved either in the storage in nerve cells of special fats called
sphingolipids, which form part of the insulating outer sheaths that
allow nerve cells to transmit electrical signals, or in DNA repair.
The former genes cause neurological diseases, such as Tay-Sachs,
Gaucher's and Niemann-Pick. The latter cause cancer.

That does not look random. And what is even less random is that in
several cases the genes for particular diseases come in different
varieties, each the result of an independent original mutation. This
really does suggest the mutated genes are being preserved by natural
selection. But it does not answer the question of how evolution can
favour genetic diseases. However, in certain circumstances, evolution
can.

West Africans, and people of West African descent, are susceptible to
a disease called sickle-cell anaemia that is virtually unknown
elsewhere. The anaemia develops in those whose red blood cells
contain a particular type of haemoglobin, the protein that carries
oxygen. But the disease occurs only in those who have two copies of
the gene for the disease-causing haemoglobin (one copy from each
parent). Those who have only one copy have no symptoms. They are,
however, protected against malaria, one of the biggest killers in
that part of the world. Thus, the theory goes, the pressure to keep
the sickle-cell gene in the population because of its
malaria-protective effects balances the pressure to drive it out
because of its anaemia-causing effects. It therefore persists without
becoming ubiquitous.

Dr Cochran argues that something similar happened to the Ashkenazim.
Genes that promote intelligence in an individual when present as a
single copy create disease when present as a double copy. His thesis
is not as strong as the sickle-cell/malaria theory, because he has
not proved that any of his disease genes do actually affect
intelligence. But the area of operation of some of them suggests that
they might.

The sphingolipid-storage diseases, Tay-Sachs, Gaucher's and
Niemann-Pick, all involve extra growth and branching of the
protuberances that connect nerve cells together. Too much of this (as
caused in those with double copies) is clearly pathological. But it
may be that those with single copies experience a more limited, but
still enhanced, protuberance growth. That would yield better linkage
between brain cells, and might thus lead to increased intelligence.
Indeed, in the case of Gaucher's disease, the only one of the three
in which people routinely live to adulthood, there is evidence that
those with full symptoms are more intelligent than the average. An
Israeli clinic devoted to treating people with Gaucher's has vastly
more engineers, scientists, accountants and lawyers on its books than
would be expected by chance.

Why a failure of the DNA-repair system should boost intelligence is
unclear-and is, perhaps, the weakest part of the thesis, although
evidence is emerging that one of the genes in question is involved in
regulating the early growth of the brain. But the thesis also has a
strong point: it makes a clear and testable prediction. This is that
people with a single copy of the gene for Tay-Sachs, or that for
Gaucher's, or that for Niemann-Pick should be more intelligent than
average. Dr Cochran and his colleagues predict they will be so by
about five IQ points. If that turns out to be the case, it will
strengthen the idea that, albeit unwillingly, Ashkenazi Jews have
been part of an accidental experiment in eugenics. It has brought
them some advantages. But, like the deliberate eugenics experiments
of the 20th century, it has also exacted a terrible price.
 

Comments in Mail . See also this comment.

 

 

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Saturday, June 4, 2005

It has been a thin week for volume, but the Cochran piece was important and so was a lot of the mail, which generated most of my comments. Column week is always a bit thin. See Mail...

 

 

 

 

 

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Sunday, June 5, 2005

Getting the column done. The Economist piece about Cochran seems to have vanished so I have added a cached copy above.

There is another important article on Cochran's theories in The Atlantic:

http://www.perutechnologies.com/germtheory.html

The Atlantic is one of those magazines I don't generally like but once or twice a year they have something so important that it  more than makes up for the nonsense the rest of the year.

 

 

 

 

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This is a day book. It's not all that well edited. I try to keep this up daily, but sometimes I can't. I'll keep trying. See also the monthly COMPUTING AT CHAOS MANOR column, 8,000 - 12,000 words, depending.  (Older columns here.) For more on what this page is about, please go to the VIEW PAGE. If you have never read the explanatory material on that page, please do so. If  you got here through a link that didn't take you to the front page of this site, click here for a better explanation of what we're trying to do here. This site is run on the "public radio" model; see below.

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