What implications do you think this model has for the future?

What do you think of Greg Cochran's theory that many of the fitness-impacting traits people try to ascribe to genes are better thought of as stemming from pathogens?

What is the world coming to when Half Sigma is earlier to reporting on a gene/IQ story than GNXP.

I'm really not competent to evaluate it, but I thought this was showing similar results as the earlier height study (hat-tip to Jason Malloy).

Reading this post, I had the impression you changed your mind about deleting your old post. Personally, I'm more enthusiastic about information being preserved forever through efforts like the internet archive. I haven't given it Steve Dutch levels of thought though.

I think I was able to find your old post through google's cache.

I suppose the question of being drowned in data depends on how good our filters are.

Just goes to show, it pays to regularly read GNXP!

"Free-will" is a poor explanation, but I believe there is unexplained variance for purely physical traits like height as well. What if it's not that or peer effects but noise?

A large population shouldn't have a mutational-meltdown type spiral. The fraction with more pro-natal personalities or subcultures should grown in proportion of the population. I recall Discover GNXP having some good graphs making such a point with hypothetical populations, and I believe using Russia as a starting point. Yes, here we go: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/10/the-wheel-of-history-turns-to-the-gods/

Brad Delong quotes Bob Herbert saying that in Northern Ireland, Catholics had IQs about 15 points lower than Protestants. Is that accurate?

What distances are these macaques claimed to travel across?

I didn't read all of Ashraf & Galor, but their reason for expecting a "hump-shaped" relation between genetic diversity and economic development is because of the relation between diversity and productivity. But jumping from genetic diversity to productivity-relevant diversity seems to me like a claim in need of evidence. Genotypes are relevant because of phenotypes, so to check their model they should have looked for variation in phenotype explaining the correlation between genetic diversity and development.

I remember being surprised by the political correlation mentioned in Honestly, Who Else Wound Fund Such Research? Ilkka Kokkarinen would not have been.

Daniel Larison criticizes Walter Russell Mead on "Jacksonian" etc divisions of foreign policy pretty frequently. I imagine he'll do the same here. There was a strong anarchist movement around Boston in the 19th century, with figures like Benjamin Tucker and Lysander Spooner. Ralph Waldo Emerson celebrated Massachusetts' history of anarchy. Thoreau may not have been an anarchist, but he did believe in civil disobedience and was jailed for refusing to pay taxes. While it's not relevant to the discussion, I felt like quoting this about him from Wikipedia: "Thoreau also wore a neck-beard for many years, which he insisted many women found attractive. However, Louisa May Alcott mentioned to Ralph Waldo Emerson that Thoreau's facial hair "will most assuredly deflect amorous advances and preserve the man's virtue in perpetuity."" And here's David Friedman on how technology may have affected the prevalence of facial hair.

Too bad the comments aren't well archived with the move from haloscan to js-kit.

I don't have anything substantive to add, but my Kapersky anti-virus has been lighting up on posts here, claiming to block trojans ending in the name Globus.class (Java is the application used rather than the browser).

Some of the serious "true believers" criticize the IPCC for understating the dangers, so I don't think it has quite the status of "holy text". If you want to irritate a Biblical literalist you tell them their books is the result of a large committee, those citing the IPCC highlight that fact. And wind farms aren't popular enough to defeat NIMBYism from liberals like the Kennedy clan.

Metamagenic, I found the idea interesting but one of my commenters thinks the researchers and/or their Institute are pushing creationism. I'm not going to leap to "therefore their argument is wrong", but since its above my head I would like to know more about their background.

I guess this is what comes after "War Before Civilization".