The first three entries have been taken from this comment board.

I have been invited to respond to the thread on my work. There is way too much to respond to all at once, so I would prefer to deal with things as they come up in the future. One post, by Jason Malloy, struck me. He notes that the people doing the criticizing have, for the most part, not read my books. It is frustrating to me that this is the case, because the vast majority of the questions could be answered by reading the books. He also notes that D.S. Wilson and I are on the same wavelength theoretically. The basis for the theory is cultural group selection; a fairly short version of this can be found in my review of Wilson's book, but the longer version is in my book A People That Shall Dwell Alone (2nd, ed., www.iUniverse.com, 2002). Re Tooby: I have replied to him [here]. I am co-authoring an article attacking evolutionary psychology that will appear in Psychological Inquiry later this year. Meanwhile Tooby and Cosmides continue to advertize on their website that their refutation of me is "coming soon." I have been waiting for over two years. Kevin M.

...I'm about halfway through volume 1 of KMD's trilogy, and I find the net depiction of Jews to be that of a selfish, malevolent group parasitising off of gentiles. David Sloan Wilson's commentary notwithstanding, it is pretty clear that KMD does not assign blame equally - his negative adjectives are saved for Jews, and the positive contributions of Jews are raised only to be dismissed. Those without a book can take a look at the table on this page - it captures much of its flavor.

Again - to restate things as compactly as possible, KMD has the following issues:

1) Lack of empirical data + clear anti-Jew bias means that he's unlikely to convince skeptical critics

2) Group evolutionary strategy hypothesis yields several testable assumptions, but there has been no articulation, let alone testing of said assumptions. KMD claims to be doing science - but where's the empiricism?

3) His central claim is that the proposed differences in group evolutionary strategy persist to explain Jew-gentile group differences even today. But as I said in earlier posts, he's mixing up the traits of modern Jews and ancient Jews and selecting the most negative ones as the ones that were present during evolutionary times. He does the same thing for modern and ancient gentiles, though he selects the most positive traits.

4) He talks a lot about cultural - meaning non-genetic - mechanisms for facilitating group selection, such as the injunctions in the Torah. But I'm at a loss to see how such injunctions are relevant to the behavior of the >50% of Jews who outmarry, don't observe, don't have arranged marriages, don't read the Torah, etc. In other words: he proposes that the historical mechanisms for group selection can explain group behavior today, but that said historical mechanisms are (mainly) cultural rather than genetic. But then the absence or attenuation of that cultural influence should result in no discernible group difference - yet he posits that the group differences are robust even beyond the point of cultural assimilation, which leads us back to genetics.

[Re: clannishness]

...the 50% outmarriage rates for Jews are absolutely off the charts. Compare to the outmarriage rates of Asians (in the 20's to 30's for females, less for males) here and whites (only 3% or so!) here. Literally more than 1 in 2 Jews marries a non-Jew. We're talking about a half-life of a generation, and the trend is only accelerating. Now, it's an open question as to whether this is a good thing, but I don't think it comports with KMD's idea that cultural differences during evolutionary times explain the differences between Jews and gentiles in modern times. Why would these insular, xenophobic, superstitious Jews (to use KMD's adjectives) outmarry and reject religion at much higher rates than whites?

Two short and sweet questions about KMD.

Central to his illustration about the malign influence of Jews, and to their supposedly invidious tribal profile, is (a) Jewish control of pro-immigration (that is, ruinous) lobby of the US and (b) Jewish racial purity laws.

(a) I'd like to point out that he's all wrong about Jews controlling the pro-immigration lobby. Quite apart from the whole issue of whether immigration is good or bad (we can discuss that at length somewhere else, and we should) I would say that the Catholic Church has been much more decisive an influence in promoting massive immigration to the US. And what kind of immigration? Need I say. The major Jewish orgs have been reliably pro-immigration, yes, but they've only reacted to an environment that waxes and wanes on the subject of immigration depending on the economic environment. In short: KMD is engaging in what he would call crypsis, a subterranean effort to introduce his own agenda into a discussion. What's his agenda? That of the lapsed and bitter Catholic, who is angry at Protestant/Jewish usurpation.

b. I e-mailed KMD a citation of the Goldberg study which proved that Jewish maternal lineages are local. To his credit he responded that the study surprised him, he was not a geneticist, and he would have to study it further. In his response was a quotation from somewhere in the OT warning Jews against the evils of foreign women. I wrote to him that the rabbis wouldn't have had to warn so much if the Jews hadn't been outmarrying so much...he never wrote back.

At least he wrote me back, Jared Diamond never did.

In short, KMD is a scientist in drag.

Calling Derb a "sad figure...a judaized intellectual..." isn't engaging in an exchange of ideas.

....I'd appreciate input on my observations about how wrong KMD is on the decisive role Jews played in polluting ;) America with open immigration, his ignoring of the large role the Catholic church has played (and continues to play, see
http://www.cjd.org/paper/deport.html
and
http://www.cliniclegal.org/mission.html

and his taking a pass on the subject of those local Jewish maternal lineages.

There is way too much to respond to all at once, so I would prefer to deal with things as they come up in the future.

Consider this the future, KMD. Why don't you respond to these two short and sweet little issues?

"an r-selected strategy is probably much more successful today in the United States than it was 100 years ago...."

This does not bode well for the g factor gene pool of the future.

Razib,

What is your point? Are you saying that people who are in favor of liberal democracy have reason for complacency and that current demographic trends are not a threat to it? Are you arguing the Fukuyama viewpoint that liberal democracy is inevitably going to sweep the world? If so, why do you believe that? I don't see it myself.

ok, let me clarify-EVEN if jews are driven by a "group evolutionary strategy"-the US can't exactly summarily expell all jews and claim to be a liberal democracy. immigration policy is a different issue. similarly, even if black americans are on average more prone to violence-i thing michael levin's suggestion that there be different punishments for different races (lower age of adulthood for blacks and increase punishment scale since they don't respond to rehabilitation) is a non-starter.

so, even if we closed the borders today-there would still be jews and other non-WASP groups in the united states. what do we do about this? even taking into account human biodiversity, we need to be careful about government responses based on statistical averages.... i think a lot of the jewish (and in other threads black) readers of the site think that inviting this discussion is evidence that some have sinister motives. some probably do, but not all do-and the truth can only set us free and give us a more accurate view of the world to mold our responses.

finally-i think that one must be careful to divide everyone into believers of the "proposition nation" or "ethno-racial nation" camps. there are positions in between-i think i've made it clear that the axiomatic (propositional) and organic roots of american liberalism is what gives it strength.

what is wrong with a voluntary ethno-nation??

what axiom is that then razib?

the axioms are from locke & montesqieau and illustrated in the declaration of independence. the united states is to some extent a "constructivist" nation as hayek would say. of course, those axioms initially applied only to white males of property, though later expanded over time-but there is a reason we don't have a hereditary nobility.... (and naturalizing american citizens have to give up titles)

btw, i didn't say there was anything wrong with a voluntary ethno-state-you people need to stop ascribing normatives to me when i try to stay away from that shit. as someone who only dates white, i really don't want europeans to merge into other races :) i understand why those who wish the united states to have never abandoned the pre-1965 post-1924 immigration are defense, but i'm certainly not one to say that such talks is indefensable or beyond the pale. anyway, i'm cranky on this topic because i think i've made it clear that i am pretty open true diversity and the voluntary need/urge to separate, but people always assume that i wouldn't be. my own personal inclinations don't run that way-but why would you assume i want my personal to be the political?

Cranky Razib:

if you believe that race is more than skin deep, you will be deemed racist and fascist by most Western intellectuals: they just don't get the difference between probabilities and binary classifications, generalizations and stereotypes. Thus if you take seriously many of the documented innate differences between races, you have three strategies: cognitive dissonance (eg, Pinker), withdrawal from debate (most of us with day jobs), run an anonymous blog, or become an intellectual pariah (some deserved, like KMD, some undeserved, like Rushton).

Society will be like this for a while, so whatever you do, don't expect most people, even most thoughtful people, to understand.