Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Some sources/influences on my previous post, and my thinking in general, are listed below. I'm not recommending that everyone run off and buy all of these books, but they might pique your curiosity. Of course, to the extent one has time, it's always good to read and re-read the classic h-bd/evolutionary psychology writers such as Herrnstein & Murray, Sailer, Pinker, Dawkins, Dennet, and E.O. Wilson.
I consider all of these works, as those of Murray, Sailer, Pinker, Plomin et. al. to be good examples of what George Orwell called "the empirical habit of thought," which I believe is critical to understanding human diversity and defeating what Godless Capitalist termed the "Death Star 2.0" [see comments] version of PC. In fact, all the books below except (perhaps) for the textbook Multivariate Data Analysis make what are at least crypto pro-hbd statements. As an aside, one problem with crimethinking is that it tends to be decentralized and hard to find, much less to unite and make use of. Thus, I think it is useful to "think outside the box" in terms of finding pro h-bd works and thinkers. Descartes' Error--Antonio Damasio Spiritual Evolution--George Vaillant The Wisdom of the Ego--George Vaillant The Natural History of Alcoholism: Revisited--George Vaillant What You Can Change and What you Can't--Martin E.P. Seligman Multivariate Data Analysis--Hair et. al. 1984--George Orwell Comment: O'Brien in 1984 spookily reminds me of Richard Lewontin and his disturbing capacity for doublethink and goodthinkfulness (i.e. willingness to swallow and propagate orthodoxy in the face of well-known facts, such as Lewontin's denying race and genetic influences on behavior in spite of his rather extensive knowledge of genetics and population genetics in particular). Lewontin strikes me as the kind of person who, if he were in power, would force people to be "re-educated" for speaking of the biological basis for human behavior, while unknown to the public, promoting the study of pharmacology, gene therapies, and genetic engineering as tools to increase his power and the power his pseudo-socialist State. In fact, the potential usefulness of biotechnology as a mind control tool is the one thing that makes me have some misgivings about it (though I am still very much in favor of the advancement of biotech). Labels: Books, crimethink, Evolutionary Psychology, human biodiversity |