"If you are still unconvinced, how else would one explain a 25-year old with a 150 IQ, but also with Asperger's Syndrome/autism spectrum disorder, living on the streets while a 90-IQ illegal immigrant is living reasonably comfortably, and an intellectually uncurious and largely vacuous (outside of the classroom/lab/workplace) individual with only a 115 IQ is living large?(" 
 
Aren't you assuming that intelligence should be socially adaptive in the first place?

Thanks for the link. 
 
Fowler's mailing list [1] is publicly accessible. 
 
[1] http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/neuropolitics

This is a very fascinating discussion. I am learning a lot: 
 
"We already know that the cognitive functions that underlie IQ scores aren't subject to recent selection, because they fit a bell curve so well. " 
 
What does this imply for the argument of Farewell to Alms, that selection for intelligence was widespread in pre-industrial Europe, China, and Japan?

(remember the rule of thumb that the more heritable a trait is the less fitness implication it has) 
 
Could you say more about this?

Razib, 
 
A great point. Stark includes other methods of growth, as well (the same cult-based growth that happens now with the Moonies, for instance), but you're right he doesn't address that angle.

Similarly, in "The Rise of Christianity," argues that one of the factors of Christianity's success in Rome is that when plagues came into cities, the gentry was likely to leave to the more hygienic countryside while the Christians set -up hospitals. This cut the death rate in half pretty quickly (as many victims actually died of dehydration), and built up immunities among the Christians.

Razib, 
 
"even ag societies not at the malthusian limit, like farmers on the american western frontier, probably are subject to more epidemics because of their relative density." 
 
Right. In "Farewell to Alms," Clark emphasizes that East Asian societies managed much higher population densities than Europe, because the European lifestyle was filthier (hence more disease, less people, higher living standards). 
 
Gene, 
 
"If feuds, violence, and war are all that separate you from starvation, you've reached the Malthusian limit." 
 
Could you rephrase? I don't understand this.

Razib, 
 
Often, hunter-gatherer societies are far healthier than their settled cousins. (Farewell to Alms mentions the heights of the American Indians encountered by the western explorers, for instance.) This is because hunter-gatherer societies can also be well below the Malthusian limit: if you kill enough people off through feuds, violence, and war, starvation never becomes an issue.

Carter was a micromanager -- an SNL parody from his time had him hosting a call-in show, and instructing a postal worker and how to use a mail sorter.  
 
He positions himself as coming from outside the beltway, but not as a dummy.

Just a note that a former grad student of one of the heritability-of-political-beliefs authors ran a more sophisticated Australian twin study, and found the same results.

I noticed the same thing. I had to close comments on every post relating to the Cedar Revolution because the Lebanese took it over as a hook-up location.

Razib, 
 
I think we largely agree. Islam developed from the materials which were around at the time, and after. Indeed, Islam would not be a powerful force without Sharia, which besides being a religious code was also a ruleset that allowed various legal systems (Roman, etc) to be swept aside. 
 
I wonder if in ancient days, a common law was more important to a culture than a common language.

There's really two falls: the fall of the Western Empire and then the rise of Islam. In the east, with the imposition of Sharia, pre-Islamic civilization, laws, culture, religion, and language were completely replaced. In the east, a de facto naval blockade on the west (pirate raids, etc) did most of the economic damage.

The review sure paints the book in a poor light. Sounds like he chooses one level of abstraction (biological genetics) and gives it pride-of-place, both over more concrete (physics, chemistry) and more abstract (psychology, economics) fields.

Razib, of course. I admire your blog & writing a lot. This post was very thought-provoking.

I agree with faux-reactionary. Fundementalism is a modernist, anti-tradiontalist movement, and is thus not reactionary at all. 
 
That said, minimizing our enemies is an old reflex. I would agree that fundementalists tend to be idealistic, but whether there is a connection to actual Aspergers (as opposed to some correlation with that end of the spectrum) is more questionable.

The French relationship to the Church has been odd for a while. Royal Gallicanism amounted to a de facto Protestantism (a la Anglicanism) while remaining inside the communion.  
 
The term "eldest daughter" is interesting, as it perhaps goes back to the medieval split between France and Italy over the natural home of the Church.

Interesting! It sounds like Instrumentalism is very close to Constructivism, with its emphasis on "viable/non-viable" (as opposed to True/False) claims.