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More r/K Selection Theory Rebuttals
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I was alerted to a response to my article r/K Selection Theory Rebuttals on Twitter. I enjoy when people write responses to my pieces as I can better build my arguments. It’s also fun defending what I wrote.
This Pastebin is where the response is. He states that he disagrees with AC (Anonymous Conservative) on two things: calling them liberals when he would call then progressives and his clear conservative bias.
First it refers to a criticism of Ruston’s application of r/K to humans:
https://notpoliticallycorrect.me/2017/06/24/rk-selection-theory-a-response-to rushton/
This article applies r/K selection to differences between races, I don’t see how this is relevant. AC never discusses race and I’m only interested in how r/K selection applies to individuals within a civilization too.
It is very apt when rebutting AC’s ‘theory’. Human races are not local populations therefore it doesn’t apply to human races. To then bring this wrong theory to individual differences is stupid. Hell, I agree more with Rushton’s application than AC’s application and that’s saying something. The point of bringing up Rushton’s r/K theory is that he was the one who repopularized the theory and you have to give credit where it is due (I’m certain he heard of r/K from Rushton; the fact that he doesn’t give him credit there is dishonest, but AC is a dishonest guy so this is no surprise to me).
r/K selection applies to almost all life forms, next to other selection mechanisms. So it goes much deeper than the specific situation a specific race may have lived in. Even if people in races now commonly express more r-selected or K-selected behavior, I’d expect that to change if their children grew up in a different environment.
You only say that because organisms have offspring and at different rates. I won’t even go through the different cites that show that r/K theory is bunk, but I will cite one that shows that it’s been dead for years. Reznick et al, (2002: 1518) write: “The distinguishing feature of the r- and K-selection paradigm was the focus on density-dependent selection as the important agent of selection on organisms’ life histories. This paradigm was challenged as it became clear that other factors, such as age-specific mortality, could provide a more mechanistic causative link between an environment and an optimal life history (Wilbur et al. 1974, Stearns 1976, 1977). The r- and K-selection paradigm was replaced by new paradigm that focused on age-specific mortality (Stearns 1976, Charlesworth 1980).” This is simple. Age-specific mortality replaced r/K theory. People like AC attempt to ‘show’ their ‘hypothesis’ is true. They notice something in this snapshot in time then say oh this this and that make sense therefore this! It doesn’t work like that.
On his point that ‘he’d expect that to change if their children grew up in a different environment’, to say that one race is ‘r’ or ‘K’ over another, you must study the population in question in the location where the adaptations were hypothesized to have occurred (Anderson, 1991).
RR: “It is erroneously assumed that living in colder temperatures is somehow ‘harder’ than it is in Africa”
Yes, there is much less biomass available in colder temperatures. Of course Africans would still compete with each other for resources. The idea is also that there’s more requirement to think ahead, in order to prepare for the winter. Requiring more deferral of gratification.
The idea is dumb. Africa is harsher than Eurasia (Dobzhansky, 1950: 221). Did people in Africa not have to plan ahead? This is the same old rebutted cold winter garbage in terms of ‘selection for higher IQ;.
The article generally asserts that r/K selection is a simple model:
RR: “One of the main reasons that Rushton’s r/K continuum gets pushed is because it’s a ‘simple model’ that so ‘parsimoniously’ explains racial differences … But ecological systems are never simple”:
Where was an implication that any ecological system is simple? I’d say the tropics are way more complicated than cold area’s. The relevant aspect here is that a cold area is more difficult to live in, has less resources and thus supports fewer individuals. Which is a K-selected pressure.
It is a simple model. “Simple models will be successful only if their simplifying assumptions either match reality or are unimportant” (Anderson, 1991: 57). This does neither. It is surely not easy to live in the tropics. This canard that those in Africa had an easy life in comparison to the people who migrated out of Africa doesn’t make any sense. It’s like people think that food just dropped on their laps from the trees, they didn’t have to deal with predators or heat, etc. It’s an extremely simple model which is why it doesn’t work. Africans are ‘K-selected’ if Rushton is to be believed, not r-selected (Anderson, 1991).
AC’s book is for the public, not to be the bleeding edge of science. Most people have no idea about these theories. I think it would greatly improve their understanding of reality if they knew about it, it did mine. This seems like the situation with Newton’s theory of gravity. It’s been proven wrong, but we still use it when useful.
I get that, but his premises are wrong which means his theory is false. What ‘reality’? It’s just stories, fables. Whatever sounds good to AC, whatever he thinks will buttress his theory he’ll write. Anything about the ‘rabbits’ or ‘wolves’ (so-called r- and K-selected organisms respectively). r/K has been proven wrong and it’s still not useful so we should not use it.
RR: ‘So “the actual adaptation they have” is to “wear thick clothing“? This is bullshit and you know it’
No it’s not. The clothing is far thicker and thus harder to make with a higher required investment. It requires more quality of the individuals. The writer assumes a binary difference here, where none was asserted. Of course these things are on a spectrum.
Yes it is. Sorry, you didn’t understand what I meant here. The actual adaptation is not ‘to wear thick clothing’. What is ‘more quality’, is that a scientific term? What does that even mean?
RR: “The preparation does work.” (Preparation of anti-malarial remedies as seen in Wilcox and Bodecker, 2004)
Maybe it helps, much of traditional remedy use is based in tradition and superstition. Europeans where slaughtered by all kinds of diseases. It probably depends on the situation. If you can find a cure for the disease, then maybe it is a K-selected pressure.
It’s irrelevant that ‘much of the traditional remedy use is based in tradition and superstition‘, because these remedies are proven to work (Wilcox and Bodecker, 2004). “If you can find a cure for disease, then maybe it is a K-selected pressure“, you’re clueless and don’t know what you’re talking about.
RR: “Here is what people like Samuel Skinner and AC don’t get: r/K selection theory WAS discarded; it is no longer in use. Age-specific mortality better explains these trends than r/K selection”
But age-specific mortality doesn’t apply to humans and doesn’t explain differences between individuals within a species or population.
Are you saying that we can’t apply this theory to humans at all?
Yes it does apply to humans. Why talk about something when you don’t know about it? Should I care that it doesn’t explain differences between individuals within a species or population? Not everything needs to be some grand, overarching theory to explain everything so perfectly.
RR: “We found that high K scores were related to earlier sexual debut and unrelated to either pubertal onset or number of sexual partners.”
In humans that correlation is broken because of advanced society. However, we can still find that correlation in progressive or conservative politics.
Yet Rushton et al assert that Africans are r, for instance, and have more children but as you can see from Copping, Campbell and Muncer, (2014), earlier sexual debuts were seen in the so-called K dimension, completely against Rushtonian r/K theory and against whatever theory AC cooked up in his head.
There are several links to scientific papers, several of which are no longer working, but fails to summarize how they support his position.
They don’t work because sci-hub is down. I need to fix the broken links and I did summarize how they support me which is why I did “claim then (citation)”.
RR: “Individuals WITHIN A SPECIES are not R OR K”
Since environments can change, why would species not be able to adapt to the new situation?
That’s not even what the original theory spoke about. If the liberals environment changed, would they become K (according to AC)? You’re completely missing the r/K dynamic.
A Jelly fish has several reproductive strategies available and chooses based on available resources.
Humans are much more complicated, but we could still have that ability.
This doesn’t mean that r/K selection has any utility.
RR: “Something AC doesn’t get is that using the discredited r/K continuum, conservatives would be r”
I don’t get that either.
Because the continuum comes from Pianka (1970) and Rushton adapted it to show that lower IQ peoples who had more children were r-selected. Therefore, if this did apply to individuals within the human species then conservatives would be r while liberals would be K (they have fewer children and higher IQs).
RR: “women who reported being religious stated that having children was more important to them”
And are in favor of investing in those children through their mother staying home to take care of them. Where progressives are more likely to be in favor of the mother working and putting the children in day-care. Progressives are also in favor of birth control and abortion. Allowing them to maintain the r-selected sexual life style, without having the burden of a child. r/K selection is about the underlying psychology, not surface level attributes like total number of children.
Liberals still have fewer children than conservatives who have more. What you’re saying is largely irrelevant. “r-selected sexual lifestyle”, this is dumb. r/K selection is predicated on number of children which conceived, supposedly, differs on the basis of differential psychology, supposedly, between two human groups. It doesn’t, it’s wrong.
“I’ve already covered that libs are more intelligent than cons (Kanazawa, 2010; Kanazawa, 2014), and that conservative countries have lower IQs”
I don’t think we should expect a correlation between IQ and r or K in modern human societies. What happens is that high IQ people raise their children in abundance, which makes them more likely to be r-selected. Availability of resources is a trigger for r-selected psychology.
Riiiiight. But you would expect a correlation between other so-called r/K measures in modern societies? You don’t even make sense.
“Conservatives are more likely to be religious”
Yes because religions like Christianity are viewed as tradition. And progressives oppose tradition where conservatives favor it.
Right, and they have more children than liberals, which is r-selected behavior (supposedly).
This guy tried, but clearly, this wasn’t good enough. r/K is dead when speaking about race and the differences between human individuals. For anyone who believes AC’s bullshit, where did liberals and conservatives evolve these different behaviors? Are they local populations? People like AC ignoring the continuum by Pianka, yet use that same hierarchy are dishonest. They’re using a discredited continuum and attempt to prove their political biases. “The other team has X, Y, and Z bad while we have A, B, and C good! The other side does X and Y while we do A and B, therefore, we are better!” AC has a huge bias; he will never admit he’s wrong because he has a book to sell that pushes this discredited garbage. (Don’t worry, I’ll review it and pick it apart soon enough.)
To conclude, people really need to stop letting their biases get in the way of rational thought. If they did, they’d be able to look at these dumb theories for what they are: pseudoscience, cherry-picking and pigeon-holing the other group, the “enemy” with all of the bad qualities while their side has all of the good ones. However, as I’ve shown countless times, real life is completely different from the fantasy world AC and his followers live in.
r/K Selection Theory Rebuttals
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The other day Anonymous Conservative (AC) published an article titled Criticism Of r/K Theory In The Comments. I’m not too worried about what he wrote in the main article (I may tackle that later if I feel up to it), but what I am worried about is someone’s critique of my article r/K Selection Theory: A Response to Anonymous Conservative. Since this guy uses AC’s writings who, of course, is influenced by Rushton’s application of r/K to humans, it shows that he’s pretty clueless about 1) the theory as a whole and 2) the theory’s ultimate status in biology. (Also check out Phil’s comments in the AC thread.)
The individual in question, one ‘Samuel Skinner’ calls my critique of AC “genuinely bad” and that he would “cover the most obvious mistakes“, well let’s take a look at my ‘genuinely bad‘ critique to AC.
RR: You don’t get it. Mongoloids being r-selected is straight from Rushton. He asserts that they have cold-adaptations. Cold adaptations are due to cold weather. Cold weather is an agent of r-selection (temperature extreme).
Samuel Skinner: Mongoloids have a variety of genetic adaptions to cold. If you drop one buck naked in the winter, they will still freeze to death. The actual adaption they have is wearing thick clothing covering the entire body, something that is both K and not existent in Africa. Needless to say knowing how to gather materials, make clothing and maintain it is a K selective pressure.
So “the actual adaptation they have” is to “wear thick clothing“? This is bullshit and you know it. I covered human physiological adaptations to the cold last month: Human Physiological Adaptations to Climate. Clothes weren’t made in Africa? “Knowing how to gather materials, make clothing and maintaining it” is not a “K selective pressure“.
RR: Endemic (native) disease is an agent of K-selection. Since the disease is constant, then the population under that agent of K-selection can prepare ahead for disease.
Samuel Skinner: That requires the preparation to actually work; if preparation has less effect on genetic pay offs then having children faster, having children faster wins.
The preparation does work. In the case of malaria (an endemic disease), one-fifth of patients use traditional malarial remedies in malaria-stricken countries (Wilcox and Bodecker, 2004).
Endemic and infectious disease is an agent of K-selection:
(From Anderson, 1991: 53)
RR: Do groups not work together in Africa to reach common goals? In the Pleistocene as well? Citations? Think before you write (and cite), because hunting bands in our species began with Homo erectus.
Samuel Skinner: NPC talks about clannishness and IQ difference in other posts. So he does believe that groups in Africa do not work together to reach common goals. I’m honestly not sure what he is thinking here.
Yes I do. But to say that ‘Africans don’t work together’ is stupid because Africa is a huge continent. Which African ethnies? Etc. And that’s also an incorrect claim.
RR: Density-dependent pressures are things such as endemic disease in Africa—which is necessary for a K-selected history since density-dependent natural selection occurs at or close to the environmental carrying capacity
Samuel Skinner: Yes, if a disease is transmitted through person to person contact and non-discriminatory. Malaria is transmitted through mosquitoes; the amount adding additional people increases its rate is negligible.
“This therefore provides empirical confirmation that sex ratio has an immediate impact on transmission success and that it is density-dependent” (Mitri et al, 2009). Endemic disease (like malaria) work in a density-dependent fashion (Anderson, 1991: 51).
Here is what people like Samuel Skinner and AC don’t get: r/K selection theory WAS discarded; it is no longer in use. Age-specific mortality better explains these trends than r/K selection (Reznick et al, 2002: 1518). I’ve also covered how the so-called ‘unidimensional construct’ or r on one end and K at another is wrong: “It appears that the original HKSS items are best represented as four distinct but related dimensions, and do not represent a unidimensional construct. This conclusion is reinforced by relationships between HKSS total scores and life history measures: The significant correlations that were found were contrary to the predictions made by the Differential K literature (Figueredo et al., 2013; Rushton, 1985). We found that high K scores were related to earlier sexual debut and unrelated to either pubertal onset or number of sexual partners. This suggests that the HKSS does not reflect an underlying “K dimension” (Copping, Campbell and Muncer, 2014).
It truly is tiring rebutting the same old bullshit arguments on r/K theory. I see AC’s bullshit on Twitter when I search ‘r/K Selection Theory’, but the individual who pushes the bullshit will not accept my invitation to come to this blog and discuss it with me.
The most important thing to know here is that the unidimensional construct that Pianka (1970) formulated is wrong. Joseph Graves (2002) reviews some of the literature on the theory, showing that Pianka’s (1970) verbal theory is wrong, and that r/K selection fell out of favor in the late 70s. It’s worth noting that Pianka gave NO experimental rationale (Graves, 2002: 135) to his unidimensional construct (which Copping, Campbell and Muncer, 2014). Do you see how this theory holds no weight in evolutionary biology anymore?
Samuel Skinner also says: “So they changed the name and kept some of the components. If the components they dropped are ones AC is using, say so.”
Here is what Reznick et al (2002) write:
Although life-history theory has shifted away from a focus on r- and K-selection, the themes of density-dependent regulation, resource availability, and environmental fluctuations are integral to current demographic theory and are potentially important in any natural system
I see the term density-dependent regulation, which I do not see on AC’s blog (the only thing that comes up if you search that term on his blog are the responses to me… that should tell you something). In regards to resource availability Reznick et al (2002: 1517) write: We have also found a potential role of resource availability, either as a consequence of environmental factors that are correlated with, but otherwise independent of predators, or as a consequence of indirect effects of predation (Reznick et al. 2001)”. If I were you I’d read some of the literature on this before writing more bullshit.
Skinner also writes: “Again, not following. The link between fertility and disease is pretty clear- after a die off the population rebounds. If a population is near carrying capacity and suffers a die off, the growth rate of the survivors increases.” Except African populations have had much more time to reach their environmental carrying capacity and to experience the K-selected agents of natural selection, like endemic disease (Anderson, 1991: 59).
Then AC jumps in and writes: “You cannot take a Biology 101 class without learning about r/K. It is in the textbooks, and it is seen as an excellent theory, akin to Newtonian Physics. Sure relativity and Quantum Mechanics came along and showed that Newtonian physics wasn’t the entire ball of wax. But you still learn Newtonian Physics, because it is fundamental to understanding everything else.” This, again, is bullshit. AC, have you taken a Bio 101 class? I took one. Not one mention of this discredited theory, I have an in use biology textbook (Understanding Biology, 2nd edition, Mason et al, 2017; check pages 905-908 in the textbook to verify this) and in the section on reproductive strategies (which is what r/K selection theory is, at its core) r/K selection is not mentioned once. Why make claims that you know you cannot verify?
AC: “What we are doing here is not something where you can point to a single old study, and say, here it all is, in one place. Bringing all this together is new, even if what is being brought together is well established.“
That doesn’t mean it’s right.
AC: The issue is, you have one area of study of humans (political science) where it is long established that humans spontaneously diverge into two groups, which the literature has recognized are so divergent that they call them Left and Right, as in each points in the opposite direction.
So stop dodging me and answer this question: Are liberals and conservatives local populations? If so, where did they evolve?
AC: “Now I know you didn’t read the book because you are hung up on the use of the phrase “r/K Theory.” In the book there is a chapter devoted to that. I use the meme of r/K Theory for the same reason it is taught in biology – it is a quick way to bring people up to speed on the purposes of these traits, and how they affect reproduction/survival under different conditions.”
Don’t worry; I’ll read your book soon enough and will probably have tons of material to rebut. Anyway, using discredited bio theories isn’t a good way to push something.
AC: “If it is done right, this will ultimately be a massive field of study with thousands of biologists and political scientists taking it apart and trying to figure how aggressive stimuli affect people’s r/K traits, vs sexual stimuli, vs pleasureable things like food, vs quick blips of K followed by long periods of r, vs long constant K, vs disease mortality that is totally random, and on and on.”
You have some strange dreams. It won’t happen. Individuals WITHIN A SPECIES are not R OR K. R AND K ARE NOT ADJECTIVES (Anderson, 1991: 57).
AC: “On Rushton, unless he ever mentioned politics (he didn’t),“
That’s meaningless though. You’re using the continuum he grabbed from Pianka (1970). THEREFORE, you’re wrong with your application since Pianka (1970) was rebutted decades ago (Graves, 2002)!
AC: “You have married black conservatives and married white conservatives and married Asian conservatives. They all have more in common psychologically than the leftists of their fellow races. Mixing them along racial lines only muddies the waters, and hides that all races have been exposed to harshness and ease, and have adapted the requisite psychologies to function and persist under either.“
No it doesn’t ‘muddy the waters’. I believe now you’ll point to black Trump supporters going against BLM or white Leftists going against their interests. SO WHAT. You can create any just-so story you’d like, you won’t be right.
Something AC doesn’t get is that using the discredited r/K continuum, conservatives would be r (lower IQ, more children; women who reported being religious stated that having children was more important to them; Hayford and Morgan, 2008) in comparison to liberals who would be K (fewer children, higher IQs). Of course, he just immediately states that cons are K and libs are r, since the verbal theory from Pianka (1970) had the ‘good traits’ on K and ‘bad traits’ on r. (Read r/K theory: Conservatives = r, liberals = K (reminder to the ignorant)). I’ve already covered that libs are more intelligent than cons (Kanazawa, 2010; Kanazawa, 2014), and that conservative countries have lower IQs (and are non-white and third world) in comparison to liberal countries (which are majority white…). Conservatives are more likely to be religious (Morrison, Duncan, and Parton, 2015; McAdams et al, 2015), and religious people have lower IQs (Zuckerman, Silberman, and Hall, 2013; Ritchie, Gow, and Deary, 2014; Pennycook et al, 2016; Dutton and Linden, 2017). Intelligence is also associated with social and economic liberal views (Carl, 2014). Lastly, research into the psychology of continents shows that liberal continents are more intelligent than conservative continents (African countries conservative, European countries liberal… what’s that tell you?) (Stankov and Lee, 2016). So, using Rushton’s/Pianka’s continuum, who looks r and K now?
This, as usual, is the perfect example of implicit bias. My team is best and has the good traits, the other team is worse and has the bad traits. It’s dumb, it doesn’t make sense. AC will try to get ‘the truth’ about this theory out to people, well he has a foil in myself. I enjoy talking about this and debating it, but it seems like most people don’t understand the ecology behind the theory. They have their biases and will search for anything to confirm them. That’s not science.
Stop pushing r/K theory. It’s long dead. Just because some non-specialist idealogue pushes something and warps studies to fit his views while ignoring contrary evidence, DOES NOT mean that the theory is ‘back’ in style or anything to that effect. One biased person picked up the dead body of the (discredited) r/K continuum and attempted to revive it. Well I’ve shot it back down. It’s dead. Let it rest in peace and stop attempting to revive it.
Also see my other articles on r/K Selection Theory
r/K Selection Theory: A Response to Truth-Justice
r/K Selection Theory: A Response to Anonymous Conservative
E.O. Wilson on Rushton’s r/K Theory and More on Endemic Disease
r/K Selection Theory: A Response to Rushton
Also read: r/k selection political theory is rubbish
r/K Selection Theory: A Response to Truth-Justice
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After the publishing of the article debunking r/K selection theory last week, I decided to go to a few places and provide the article to a few sites that talk about r/K selection theory and it’s (supposed) application to humans and psychometric qualities. I posted it on a site called ‘truthjustice.net‘, and the owner of the site responded to me:
Phillippe Rushton is not cited a single time in AC’s book. In no way, shape or form does the Theory depend on his opinions.
AC outlines a very coherent theoretical explanation for the differing psychological behavior patterns existing on a bell curve distribution in our population. Especially when it comes to the functioning of the Amygdala for which we have quite a lot of data by now.
Leftists are indeed in favor of early childhood sexualization to increase the quantity of offspring which will inevitably reduce the quality and competitive edge of children. They rank significantly lower on the moral foundations of “loyalty”, “authority” and “purity” as outlined by Jonathan Haidt’s research into moral psychology. Making them more accepting of all sorts of degeneracy, deviancy, and disloyalty to the ingroup.
http://people.stern.nyu.edu/jhaidt/
They desire a redestribution of resources to the less well performing part of our population to reduce competitive stress and advantage while giving far less to charity and being significantly more narcissistic to increase their own reproductive advantage.
https://anepigone.blogspot.com/2008/11/more-income-more-votes-republicans_13.html
Their general mindset becomes more and more nihilistic, atheistic, anarchistic, anti-authority and overall r-selected the further left you go on the bell curve. A denial of these biological realities in our modern age is ridiculous when we can easily measure their psychology and brain functionality in all sorts of ways by now.
Does that now mean that AC is completely right in his opinions on r/K-Selection Theory? No, much more research is necessary to understand the psychological differences between leftists and rightists in full detail.
But the general framework outlined by r/K-Selection Theory very likely applies to the bell curve distribution in psychological behavior patterns we see in our population.
I did respond, however, he removed my comment and banned me after I published my response. My response is here:
“Phillippe Rushton is not cited a single time in AC’s book. In no way, shape or form does the Theory depend on his opinions.”
Meaningless. He uses the r/K continuum so the link in my previous comment is apt.
“AC outlines a very coherent theoretical explanation for the differing psychological behavior patterns existing on a bell curve distribution in our population. Especially when it comes to the functioning of the Amygdala for which we have quite a lot of data by now.”
No, he doesn’t.
1) Psychological traits are not normally distributed,
2) even if r/K were a valid paradigm, it would not pertain to within species variation,
3) it’s just a ‘put these traits on one end that I don’t like and these traits at the other end that I like and that’s my team while the other team has all of the bad traits’ thing,
4) his theory literally rests on the r/K continuum proposed by Pianka. Furthermore, no experimental rationale “was ever given for the assignment of these traits [the r/K traits Pianka inserted into his continuum] to either category” (Graves, 2002: 135), and
5) the r/K paradigm was discredited in the late 70s (see Graves 2002 above for a review)
“Leftists are indeed in favor of early childhood sexualization to increase the quantity of offspring which will inevitably reduce the quality and competitive edge of children. They rank significantly lower on the moral foundations of “loyalty”, “authority” and “purity” as outlined by Jonathan Haidt’s research into moral psychology. Making them more accepting of all sorts of degeneracy, deviancy, and disloyalty to the ingroup.”
I love Haidt. I’ve read his book and all of his papers and articles. So you notice a few things. Then see the (discredited) r/K paradigm. Then you say “oh! liberals are bad and are on the r side while conservatives are K!!”
Let me ask you this: where does alpha-selection fall into this?
“They desire a redestribution of resources to the less well performing part of our population to reduce competitive stress and advantage while giving far less to charity and being significantly more narcissistic to increase their own reproductive advantage.”
Oh.. about that… liberals have fewer children than conservatives. Liberals are also more intelligent than conservatives. So going by Rushton’s r/K model, liberals are K while conservatives are r (conservatives are less intelligent and have more children). So the two cornerstones of the (discredited) r/K continuum show conservatives breeding more and also are less intelligent while it’s the reverse for liberals. So who is ‘r’ and ‘K’ again?
“Their general mindset becomes more and more nihilistic, atheistic, anarchistic, anti-authority and overall r-selected the further left you go on the bell curve. A denial of these biological realities in our modern age is ridiculous when we can easily measure their psychology and brain functionality in all sorts of ways by now.”
‘r’ and ‘K’ are not adjectives (Anderson, 1991: 57).
Why does no one understand r/K selection theory? You are aware that r/K selection theory is density-dependent selection, correct?
“Does that now mean that AC is completely right in his opinions on r/K-Selection Theory? No, much more research is necessary to understand the psychological differences between leftists and rightists in full detail.”
No, he’s horribly wrong with his ‘theory’. I don’t deny psych differences between libs and cons, but to put them on some (discredited) continuum makes no sense in reality.
“But the general framework outlined by r/K-Selection Theory very likely applies to the bell curve distribution in psychological behavior patterns we see in our population.”
No, it doesn’t. Psych traits are not normally distributed (see above). Just like Rushton, AC saw that some things ‘fit’ into this (discredited) continuum. What’s that mean? Absolutely nothing. He doesn’t even cite papers for his assertion; he called Pianka a leftist and said that he tried to sabotage the theory because he thought that it described libs (huh? this makes no sense). AC is a clear ideologue and is steeped in his own political biases as well as wanting to sell more copies of his book. So he will not admit that he is wrong.
Let me ask you a question: where did liberals and conservatives evolve? What selective pressures brought about these psych traits in these two ‘populations’? Are liberals and conservatives local populations?
I’ve also summarily discredited AC and I am waiting on a reply from him (I will be surprised if he replies).
However, unfortunately for AC et al, concerns have been raised “about the use of psychometric indicators of lifestyle and personality as proxies for life history strategy when they have not been validated against objective measures derived from contemporary life history theory and when their status as causes, mediators, or correlates has not been investigated” (Copping, Campbell, and Muncer, 2014). This ends it right here. People don’t understand density-dependent/independent selection since Rushton never talked about it. That, as has been brought up, is a huge flaw in Rushton’s application of r/K theory to the races of Man.
Liberals are, on average, more intelligent than conservatives (Kanazawa, 2010; Kanazawa, 2014) Lower cognitive ability has been linked to greater prejudice through right-wing ideology and low intergroup contact (Hodson and Busseri, 2012), with social conservatives (probably) having lower IQs. There are also three ‘psychological continents’—Europe, Australia, and, Canada and are the liberal countries whereas Southeast Asia, South Asia, South America and Africa contain more conservative countries with all other countries including Russia, the US and Asia in the middle and “In addition, gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, cognitive test performance, and governance indicators were found to be low in the most conservative group and high in the most liberal group” (Stankov and Lee, 2016). Further, economic liberals—as a group—tend to be better educated than Republicans—so intelligence is positively correlated with socially and economically liberal views (Carl, 2014).
There is also a ‘conservative baby boom‘ in the US—which, to the Rushtonites, is ‘r-selected behavior’. Furthermore, women who reported that religion was ‘very important to them’ reported having higher fertility than women who said that it was ‘somewhat important’ or ‘not important’ (Hayford and Morgan, 2008). Liberals are more likely to be atheist (Kanazawa, 2010), while, of course, conservatives are more likely to be religious (Morrison, Duncan, and Parton, 2015; McAdams et al, 2015).
All in all, even if we were to allow the use of liberals and conservatives as local populations, like Rushton’s erroneous use of r/K theory for human races, the use of r/K theory to explain the conservative/liberal divide makes no sense. People don’t know anything about ecology, evolution, or neuroscience. People should really educate themselves on the matters they speak about—I mean a full-on reading into whatever it is you believe. Because people like TIJ and AC are clearly idealogues, pushing a discredited ecological theory and applying it to liberals and conservatives, when the theory was never used that way in the first place.
For anyone who would like a look into the psychological differences between liberals and conservatives, Jonathan Haidt has an outstanding book outlining the differences between the two ideologies called The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. I actually just gave it a second read and I highly, highly recommend it. If you want to understand the true differences between the two ideologies then read that book. Try to always remember and look out for your own biases when it comes to your political beliefs and any other matter.
For instance, if you see yourself frantically attempting to gather support for a contention in a debate, then that’s the backfire effect in action (Nyhan and Reifler, 2012), and if you have a knowledge of the cognitive bias, you can better take steps to avoid such a heavy-handed bias. This, obviously, occurred with TIJ. The response above is airtight. If this ‘continuum’ did exist, then it’s completely reversed with liberals having fewer children and generally being more intelligent with the reverse for conservatives. So liberals would be K and conservatives would be r (following Rushton’s interpretation of the theory which is where the use of the continuum comes from).
r/K Selection Theory: A Response to Anonymous Conservative
2800 words
I knew the article about r/K selection would stir a bit of debate. Anonymous Conservative has replied to both articles that were published the other day. However, he seems confused. He doesn’t talk about r/K selection theory in terms of density-dependence/independence. That’s what r/K theory was based on before it was discredited for age-specific mortality (Reznick et al, 2002). The theory was discredited decades ago. This article will be a response to him. How can you use age-specific mortality for your theory?
Combining all African and all European populations probably dulls the degree to which certain populations are r and K.
Combining the ethnies of all three populations makes no sense if you’re attempting to infer how behavior X evolved in ecosystem Y using r/K selection theory. To conduct such a study, you would need to study the races in the ecosystem that the selection was hypothesized to have occurred. r/K selection is—as I’ve already brought up—proven false. I will get to that below.
If r/K selection did apply to humans, then since Africans have been in their habitat—according to Rushton—for 140ky and Mongoloids have been in their habitat for 40ky, then Africans would have had more opportunity to approach the environmental carrying capacity while Mongoloids who migrated into novel environments (cold weather, as mentioned above) would experience r-selected traits since they are in a novel environment (r pressure) and facing cold weather (another r pressure). Per Rushton’s own arguments—along with how r/K theory was really used—Africans are K and Mongoloids are r.
Take the most r populations in Africa and you would also see highly obvious differences deviating from normal human behavior.
Which populations in Africa are ‘the most r’? What is ‘normal human behavior’?
Goal number one should be to get people forced to acknowledge that some humans are exhibiting the r-strategy compared to others.
If this were the case, then Mongoloids would be r while Africans would be K—if r/K selection theory weren’t discredited and if human races qualified as local populations. This, of course, comes from Rushton own words, who asserts that Mongoloids have cold-weather adaptations. So if Mongoloids have cold-weather adaptations and cold weather is an agent of r-selection as described previously, then Mongoloids are r-selected. This argument comes straight from Rushton’s own theory. Furthermore, Africans would be K-selected since endemic disease is an agent of K-selection. This is simple enough to understand, especially if you read a few papers on r/K selection.
I get the impression the author is a pot-stirrer ginning up debate, which I can respect. But I would counter that I think this argument requires a slightly more complex view on a few points, and it seeks to cite the established literature on r/K a little too much.
Citing papers is what’s needed when discussing scientific matters. If your arguments are not backed by scientific papers then your argument is pretty much moot.
Most of the literature on r/K is incredibly shallow in its analyses. I suspect nobody really cared about the theory on an emotional level, so nobody really bothered to look too closely at it, or tried to understand why some arguments would seemingly violate simple common sense. One person would assert things that would make no sense in certain contexts, and nobody would ever try to highlight the complexity required for a fuller understanding of the issue. It is either that, or the more powerful minds gravitated somewhere else in the sciences with more practical application.
This looks pretty clear-cut to me. r/K selection theory has been extensively tested and falsified. Of course people cared about it, it dominated biology and ecology literature for about twenty years after Pianka’s (1970) paper where he proposed his now debunked ‘r/K continuum’. As I have said, Pianka gave no experimental rationale on why he chose the traits he did for the continuum (Graves, 2002: 135). This is simple enough to understand on its own.
As an example, the author cites papers that say drought is an r-selective pressure. Drought can be r or K, depending on the abilities of the organisms confronted with it. Mice will die in a drought, and have short enough life cycles to reproduce in the wet periods following it. So with mice, after the drought, there will be free resources and that makes drought a huge r-selection pressure.
But suppose you have an organism with the intelligence to envision how to survive the drought, and which thinks in terms of long time frames. Now that drought will cull the relatively r-selected individuals who are designed to exploit a glut with no thought of the future, while favoring those who planned for the drought and stockpiled water, or organized a way to acquire it. Is the drought still an r-selective pressure? Being human, with a high IQ and an ability to plan for the future changes a lot of these rules.
Drought is an agent of r-selection. How about earthquakes and volcanic eruptions? Are those agents of K-selection as well if you can ‘plan for the future changes’? Provide references for your assertion or your claim is unfounded.
On the issue of colder climates being K, the author cites research which makes the case that cold climates kill back the population in the winter, and then allow explosive growth in the summer, and thus are r-selecting.
This will be true in things like insects with short lifespans and no ability to plan for the winter. But in humans, this will favor those who can defer pleasures in the summer, looking forward to the winter and sacrificing by setting aside resources to get themselves through the colder period. It will also favor groups which can work together in pursuit of common goals.
You don’t get it. Mongoloids being r-selected is straight from Rushton. He asserts that they have cold-adaptations. Cold adaptations are due to cold weather. Cold weather is an agent of r-selection (temperature extreme). If cold weather is an agent of r-selection and Mongoloids further migrated into a novel environment (another agent of r-selection), then, per Rushton’s own words, Mongoloids are r-selected. Conversely, Rushton describes endemic disease and drought in Africa (without references), but let’s assume it’s true. As described above, drought is an agent of r (see the table from Anderson above) while endemic disease is an agent of K-selection.
Endemic (native) disease is an agent of K-selection. Since the disease is constant, then the population under that agent of K-selection can prepare ahead for disease. Indeed, in Africa, measures can be taken to reduce the number of those infected with malaria, such as mothers shielding their babies from mosquitoes, to even herbal remedies which have been in use for thousands of years (Wilcox and Bodecker, 2004). If endemic disease is constant (and it is) and Africans are under that constant pressure, then they will be K-selected.
Do groups not work together in Africa to reach common goals? In the Pleistocene as well? Citations? Think before you write (and cite), because hunting bands in our species began with Homo erectus. The capacity for endurance running evolved in erectus which can be seen with the beginnings of our modern pelvis as well as the evolution of the gluteus maximus (Lieberman et al, 2006). So how can you assert that working together to reach common goals only occurred where it was cold—as if tropical environments don’t have their own challenges which require foresight and planning? Think about human evolution and how modern human cognition evolved in Africa.
This will be true of most hardships to some degree. Where they kill back the population massively and randomly, and then allow explosive regrowth, they are r-pressures. But where they are challenges that select for those who can prepare and overcome them, they will tend to favor K, even if they may, strictly by the numbers, appear to be r.
How can you prepare and overcome a violent winter storm, volcanic eruption, earthquake, and drought (which vary wildly)? At a certain point, you can be the smartest one around but one would still succumb to the elements.
He also speaks of aggression. There the question is, is aggression borne of a competitive psychology that embraces risk innately because it evolved to embrace risk in a competitive environment where resources are scarce, or is aggression an opportunistic seizure of free resources from the weak and helpless.
A criminal who sees an old lady and pushes her to the ground to steal her purse is not the same as a Marine who proceeds to selflessly storm enemy lines and kill fifteen men with his bare hands simply to try and save his fellow Marines in battle. The criminal will seek out the weak and vulnerable to victimize safely for personal gain, while the Marine would find that in conflict with his nature. The Marine will sacrifice himself for his group and nothing more, while the criminal would view that as pointless and stupid. Those are two vastly different forms of aggression.
Aggression and violence can be principled and daring, or opportunistic and cowardly. Each is driven by a different psychology, and you can see this difference extend to sexual drive, promiscuity, and even rearing investments. I think there needs to be a difference cited there. One aggressive psychology is r and one is K. One is designed to take free resources in a world with no consequences, while the other is programmed to fight with anyone to try and get a share of scarce resources, because if they didn’t they would starve.
I speak of aggression in regards to testosterone and Richard Lynn’s claims that gonadotropin levels and testosterone lend further support for Rushton’s theory. However, I’ve falsified Ross et al (1986) numerous times. Further, the correlation between testosterone and physical aggression is a pitiful .08 (Archer, Graham-Kevan, and Lowe 2005). The point is that testosterone is not related to aggression, nor crime. Furthermore, the time of day that crime is committed at the highest rates for teens (3 pm) and adults (10 pm) discredit the testosterone-causing-crime theory since testosterone levels are highest at 8 am and lower at 8 pm. You did not address my arguments on testosterone—try again.
Then there is disease. Disease can be r or K, depending on epidemiology. If a disease is sexually transmitted, it is going to take out those with a high sex drive, promiscuity, and reduced disgust. That doesn’t means the disease is K-selecting, so much as it preferentially kills those with an r-selected psychology, and fosters the rise of K.
What about if a disease is endemic? Endemic disease (Rushton’s assertion) is an agent of K, this is not up for discussion. Endemic disease reduces carrying capacity and thusly is an agent of K-selection.
This is simple enough to understand, especially if you understand r/K selection theory.
On the other hand, if a disease infects and kills randomly, such as one transmitted by mosquito, then it will open up free resources by killing the population back below the carrying capacity. That will favor the rise of the r-selected psychologies.
Nope.
I have found the vast majority are written by individuals looking to create quick rules of thumb for much more complex variables that can only be looked at in the context of the mechanisms they are a part of. In many cases, I see authors claiming something is always r or K, when the truth is they are more often the opposite for reasons which the authors seem strangely blind to.
The vast majority of what was written about r/K in its heyday was written by biologists and ecologists. Why reduce a complex biological system interacting with its almost equally complex environment down to a discredited theory? It doesn’t make sense to reduce what organisms do to some ‘simple model’ when the real world—and by proxy ecological theories—are much more complex than a ‘simple model’.
r and K are simple adaptation to either free or limited resource availabilities. To understand how the environment affects the evolution of r and K psychologies, you have to understand that those adaptations to free or limited resources imbue certain psychological predispositions. Once imbued, all other selective pressures have to be examined with an eye to how they either confer advantage or disadvantage on those who express those psychological traits.
r/K selection theory is based on density-dependence and density-independence. As a matter of fact, searching for ‘density-dependent‘ brings up no hits and for ‘density-independent‘, the only hit is for your response to my article. Which makes me believe that you don’t understand r/K selection theory since it’s based on density-dependence and density-independence. It’s also impossible to predict which life history traits will be favored by selection unless you know which particular ecological factors influence life history traits as well as needing a model as to how they function (Anderson, 1991). Rushton did neither, and so he was wrong with his application of r/K to human races.
A sexually transmitted disease that savages a population will open up resource availability and reduce the population well below the carrying capacity, and thus could be mistaken for an r-selecting pressure. But if it wipes out every promiscuous r-strategist, and leaves behind only the monogamous K-strategists, then it is not an r-selective pressure at all. It is favoring the K-psychology, even as from a raw numerical standpoint it would appear an r-pressure.
Which STD? Which population(s)? Source? Even then, STDs such as chancroid (in the US and Europe) were endemic in the early 20th century (Aral, Fenton, and Holmes, 2007). Which populations are you describing? An event like that would be part of the density-dependence aspect of what r/K described. The population would dip and then go right back to environmental carrying capacity (K).
It is necessary—for a K-selected history—to have some sort of density-dependent pressure. Density-dependent pressures are things such as endemic disease in Africa—which is necessary for a K-selected history since density-dependent natural selection occurs at or close to the environmental carrying capacity (Anderson, 1991: 58). If you truly understood r/K selection theory, you’d understand how it’s based on density dependence. You’d understand that ‘r’ and ‘K’ are not adjectives.
(Indeed, I suspect a golden age in the context of human history will be found to often be such an unusual circumstance, where a population is K-ified, even as it is placed in an r-selected environment of free resource availability. The opposite, an r-ified population placed in a grossly overpopulated environment of shortage will be found to reliably be Hell on earth. Guess which one we have coming.)
You should learn about what r/K selection really is (it is density-dependent selection).
The complete absence of that type of detailed understanding of the effects of selective pressures in the literature about r/K Selection Theory is why I don’t waste extensive time here quoting the source texts on the subject. Most seem strangely shallow in their analyses.
It is detailed, see the table above. Where does alpha-selection fit into your theory? Are conservatives alpha-selected? Not speaking about alpha-selection throws a wrench into the theory. The r/K continuum doesn’t even exist!
I am amused to see the author mention r/K Selection Theory has been linked to ideology, without any mention of where. My greatest hope has always been that r/K Theory would become so ever present in the dialog that nobody would remember where it first arose. When that happens, r/K will be everywhere, and nobody will have any idea who to blame.
Well, the ‘one’s to blame’ would be the originators of the theory, MacArthur and Wilson. But r/K selection is a dead concept in biology and population ecology. Don’t worry, r/K selection is dead and isn’t coming back. I’ve shown how it’s a discredited model.
In regards to r/K being falsified, when the theory was tested, key life history variables did not conform to the predictions of the theory (Graves, 2002: 137). People should stop pushing discredited theories.
By the way, in regards to the one comment that was left, why breakdown complex biological interactions with the environment into something so simple? Can you explain to me how and why complex biological systems interacting with their environment can be broken down ‘simply’? You, as well, have no idea what r/K selection is either.
Anonymous Conservative should try to be aware of his political biases. That much is clear. Although, now I know what will happen. We will see a case of the backfire effect where these corrections will increase his misconceptions of r/K selection theory (Nyhan and Reifler, 2012). Everyone should try keep this quote in mind at all times:
When you are studying any matter, or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only what are the facts and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to believe, or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were believed. But look only, and solely, at what are the facts. That is the intellectual thing that I should wish to say. —Bertrand Russel, 1959
r/K Selection Theory: A Response to Rushton
3300 words
by RaceRealist and Afrosapiens
Introduction
Jean Phillipe Rushton (1943-2012) was a British-born Canadian psychologist known for his theories on genetically determined racial differences in cognition and behavior between Africans, Europeans, and East Asians. While marginal among experts, Rushton’s theories are still widely accepted amongst the proponents of eugenics and racialism. This article will focus on Rushton’s Differential K-theory which tries to apply the r/K selection model to racial differences in behavioral traits. To be fair, Rushton wasn’t the only one to use r/K selection as an explanation for psychological differences within humanity. For instance, some have associated the continuum with left-wing vs. right-wing ideologies. And although ecologists (the specialists of ecosystems) find applying r/K selection to humans inappropriate, the behavioral sciences have identified life-history patterns that roughly correspond to the colloquial fast vs. slow life differences in life history. For that reason, Rushton may have accidentally discussed variables and trends that are largely acknowledged by experts but his theory lies on a misunderstanding of core principles of the r/K model as well as using flawed (or non-existent) data.
Agents of selection
To begin, confusion about the modes of selection in an ecological context needs to be cleared up. There are classes of natural selection in ecological theory to be discussed: r-selection where the agent of selection acts in a density-independent way; K-selection where the agent of selection acts in a density-dependent way; and alpha selection which is selection for competitive ability (territoriality, aggression). Typical agents of K-selection include food shortage, endemic and infectious disease, and predation. Typical agents of r-selection temperature extremes, droughts, and natural disasters. Typical agents of alpha-selection are limited resources that can be collected or guarded, examples being shelter and food (Anderson, 1991).
As you can see, the third mode of selection in ecological theory is alpha-selection—which Rushton failed to bring up as a mode of selection to explain racial differences in behavior. He didn’t explain his reasoning as to why he did not include it—especially since alpha-selection is selection for competitive ability. One may wonder why Rushton never integrated alpha-selection into his theory—either he was ignorant to the reality of alpha-selection or it could occur in numerous ecosystems—whether temperate/cold or tropical. The non-application of alpha-selection throws his theory into disarray and should have one questioning Rushton’s use of ecological theory in application to human races.
The Misuse of r/K Theory
Ecoregions
Rushton’s model starts with the erroneous assumption that the populations he describes as humanities three main races qualify as ecological populations. When studying the adaptive strategies of organisms, ecologists only consider species within their evolutionary niche—that is, the location that the adaptation was hypothesized to have occurred. When it comes to humans, this can only be done by studying populations in their ancestral environments. For this reason, Africans, Europeans, Amerindians—any population that is not currently in their ancestral environments—are not suitable populations to study in an evolutionary ecological context. The three populations no longer inhabit the environment that the selection was hypothesized to have occurred, so any conclusions based on observing modern-day populations must be viewed with extreme caution (Anderson, 1991). Even in the Old World, constant gene flow between ecoregions, as well as alterations of the environment due to agriculture and then industrialization, make such a study virtually impossible as it would require ecologists to study only hunter-gatherers that have received no admixture from other areas.
Rushton’s next misuse of the theory is not discussing density-dependence and density-independence and how they relate to agents of selection and the r/K model. K-selection works in a density-dependent way while r-selection works in a density-independent way. Thusly, K-selection is expected to favor genotypes that persist at high densities (increasing K) whereas r-selection favors genotypes that increase more quickly at low densities (increasing r) (Anderson, 1991). Rushton also failed to speak about alpha-selection. Alpha-selection selection for competitive abilities and, like with K-selection, occurs at high population densities, but could also occur with low population densities. Alpha-selection, instead of favoring genotypes that increase at high densities “it favours genotypes that, owing to their negative effects on others, often reduce the growth rate and the maximum population size” (Anderson, 1991: 52).
The r/K continuum
The r/K continuum—proposed by Pianka (1970)—has been misused over the decades (Boyce, 1984) and that is where Rushton got the continuum and applied it to human racial differences. Different agents of r-selection produce different selection pressures, as does K-selection. However, where Rushton—and most who cite him—go wrong is completely disregarding the agents of selection, along with perhaps the most critical part, reversing r and K in application to human races (if it were applicable to human races, that is), which will be covered below.
Dobzhansky (1950: 221) notes that “Tropical environments provide more evolutionary challenges than do the environments of temperate and cold lands.” It is erroneously assumed that living in colder temperatures is somehow ‘harder’ than it is in Africa. People believe that since food is ‘readily available’, that it must be ‘harder’ to find food in the temperate/Arctic environments so, therefore, selection for high intelligence occurred in Eurasians while Africans have lower intelligence since it’s so ‘easy’ to live in Africa, as well as other tropical environments.
Africans, furthermore, have been in roughly the same environment since the OoA migration occurred (the Ice Age ‘ended’ about 11,700 ya, although we are still in an Ice Age since the planets caps still have ice), and so any assumptions about it being ‘harder’ for the ancestors of Eurasians to survive and pass on their genes is a baseless assumption. Tropical environments that provide more evolutionary challenges than temperate and cold lands whereas the migration that occurred Out of Africa introduced humans to novel environments. As described above, endemic disease is an agent of K-selection whereas migration to novel environments are agents of r-selection. Thus, cold temperatures would be an agent of r-selection, not K-selection as is commonly believed, whereas endemic disease would be an agent of K-selection.
Even though intelligence nor rule-following were not included on the list of variables that Pianka (1970) noted on his r/K continuum, Rushton chose to include the variables anyway, even though selection for intelligence and rule-following can occur due to agents of r- or K-selection (Anderson, 1991: 55; Graves, 2002: 134-144). Pianka (1970) never gave experimental rationalization as to why he placed the traits he did on his continuum (Graves, 2002: 135). This is one critical point that makes his theory unacceptable in application to racial differences in behavior. By Rushton’s own interpretation of the r/K model, Africans would be selected for intelligence while Eurasians would be selected to breed more since novel environments (i.e., colder temperatures) are agents of r-selection, not K. Using the terms r- and K-selection to describe the traits of an organism is inappropriate; Rushton’s application of r/K theory to the traits of the three races, while ignoring that r/K describes a mode of natural selection “indicates circular reasoning rather than support for Rushton’s hypothesis” (Anderson, 1991: 59).
Reznick et al, (2002: 1518) write: “The distinguishing feature of the r- and K-selection paradigm was the focus on density-dependent selection as the important agent of selection on organisms’ life histories. This paradigm was challenged as it became clear that other factors, such as age-specific mortality, could provide a more mechanistic causative link between an environment and an optimal life history (Wilbur et al. 1974, Stearns 1976, 1977). The r- and K-selection paradigm was replaced by new paradigm that focused on age-specific mortality (Stearns 1976, Charlesworth 1980).” r/K selection theory was dropped for the much stronger life-history approach (Graves, 2002)—which uses some elements of r and K, but otherwise those terms are no longer used since other factors are more important as agents of selection, rather than density dependence and independence as was commonly thought.
Simple models?
One of the main reasons that Rushton’s r/K continuum gets pushed is because it’s a ‘simple model’ that so ‘parsimoniously’ explains racial differences. (e.g., cold winters supposedly take more intelligence to survive in and supposedly are an agent of K-selection.) But ecological systems are never simple; there are numerous interactions between the physical environment and the biological system which interact in complex ways.
Rushton’s use of this ‘simple model’—the r/K continuum—and its application to human races are wrong because 1) the three races described are not local populations; 2) the r/K continuum as described by Pianka (1970) is a poor representation of multidimensional ecological processes; and 3) cold weather is normally an agent of r-selection while endemic disease in Africa—as described by Rushton—is an agent of K-selection. Simple models are not always best—especially for organisms as complex as humans—so attempting to reduce complex biological and environmental interactions into a linear continuum is mistaken (Boyce, 1984). The simpler the ecological model, the more complex ecological sophistication is needed to understand and apply said model. So, although Rushton prefers simple models, in this context it is not apt, as complex biological systems interacting with their environments should not be reduced to a ‘simple model’.
Applying r/K to human races
If the r/K model were applicable to humans, then Caucasoids and Mongoloids would be r-selected while Negroids would be K-selected. Endemic and infectious disease—stated by Rushton to be an r-selected pressure—is actually a K-selected pressure. So Negroids would have been subjected to K-selected pressures (disease) and r-selected pressures (drought). Conversely, for Mongoloids, they migrated into colder temperatures which act in a density-independent way—hence, cold winters (temperature extremes) are an agent of r-selection.
Pianka’s (1970) r/K continuum “confuses the underlying pattern of life history variation with density-dependence, a process potentially involved to explain the pattern” (Gaillard et al, 2016). Furthermore, one cannot make assumptions about an organism’s traits and the selection pressures that caused them without studying said organism in their natural habitat. This seems to be impossible since one would need to study non-admixed hunter-gatherer populations that have received no outside contact.
Gonadotropin levels, testosterone, prostate cancer and r/K theory
Numerous attempts have been made to validate Rushton’s r/K theory. One notable paper by Lynn (1990) attempts to integrate gonadotropin levels and testosterone into Rushton’s r/K continuum. Lynn cites studies showing that blacks have higher testosterone than whites who have higher testosterone than Asians. He then implicates higher levels of both testosterone and gonadotropin levels as the cause for the higher incidence of prostate cancer (PCa) in black Americans.
Lynn (1990) asserts that by having fewer children and showing more care, this is shifting to a K strategy. So, according to Lynn, the best way to achieve this would be a reduction in testosterone. However, there is a fault in his argument.
The study he uses for his assertion is Ross et al (1986). He states that the two groups were both “matched for possible environmental factors which might affect testosterone levels” (Lynn, 1990: 1204). However, this is an erroneous assumption. Ross et al (1986) did control for relevant variables, but made two huge errors. They did not control for waist circumference (WC), and, perhaps most importantly, did not assay the subjects in the morning as close to 8 am as possible.
Testosterone levels are highest at 8 am and lowest at 8 pm. When doing a study like this—especially one to identify a cause of a disease with a high mortality rate—all possible confounds must be identified then controlled for—especially confounds that fluctuate with age. The cohort was assayed between the hours of 10 am and 3 pm. Since testosterone assay time was all over the place for both groups, you cannot draw evolutionary hypotheses from the results. Further, the cohort was a sample of 50 black and white college students—a small sample and a non-representative population. So it’s safe to disregard this hypothesis, on the knowledge that blacks don’t have significantly higher testosterone levels than whites.
Another correlate that is used to show that blacks have higher levels of testosterone is the higher rate of crime they commit. However, physical aggression has a low correlation with testosterone (Archer, 1991; Book et al, 2001) and thusly cannot be the cause of crime. Furthermore, the .14 correlation that Book et al, 2001 found was found to be high. Archer, Graham-Kevan, and Lowe (2005) show that even the .14 correlation between testosterone and aggression is high in a reanalysis of Book et al (2001) since they included 15 studies that should have been omitted. The correlation was then reduced by almost half to .08.
Other theories have been developed to attempt to explain the racial crime gap which centers around testosterone (Ellis, 2017), however, the theory has large flaws which the author rightly notes. Exposure to high levels of testosterone in vitro supposedly causes a low 2d/4d ratio and blacks apparently have the lowest (Manning, 2008). Though, larger analyses show that Asians—mainly the Chinese—have a lower digit ratio compared to other ethnicities (Lippa, 2003; Manning et al, 2007).
Testosterone also does not cause PCa (Stattin et al, 2003; Michaud, Billups, and Partin, 2015). The more likely culprit is diet. Less exposure to sunlight along with low vitamin D intake (Harris, 2006; Rostand, 2010) is a large cause for the prostate cancer discrepancy between the races since low vitamin D is linked to aggressive prostate cancer.
Even then, if there were, say, a 19 percent difference in testosterone between white and black Americans as asserted by Rushton and Lynn, it wouldn’t account for the higher rates of crime, nor higher acquisition and mortality from PCa. If their three claims are false (higher levels testosterone in African-Americans, larger penis size, and high levels of testosterone causing PCa), and they are, then this obliterates Rushton’s and Lynn’s theory.
Differential K Theory has, as noted above, has also been associated with a larger penis for black males in comparison to white males who have larger penises than Asian males (Lynn, 2012), which is not true, there is no reliable data and the data that does exist points to no evidence for the assertion. Lynn, (2012) also used data from a website with unverified and nonexistent sources. In a 2015 presentation, Edward Dutton cites studies showing that, again, Negroids have higher levels of testosterone than Caucasoids who have higher levels of testosterone than Mongoloids. Nevertheless, the claims by Dutton have been rebutted by Scott McGreal who showed that population differences in androgen levels don’t mean anything and that they fail to validate the claims of Lynn and Rushton on racial differences in penis size.
r/K selection theory as an attempt at reviving the scala naturae
Finally, to get to the heart of the matter, Rushton’s erroneous attempt to apply r/K selection theory to the human races is an attempt at reviving the scala naturae concept proposed by Aristotle (Hodos, 2009). The scala naturae organizes living and non-living organisms on a scale from ‘highest’ to ‘lowest’. However, these assumptions are erroneous and have no place in evolutionary biology (Gould, 1996). Rushton (1997: 293) attempted to apply r/K selection theory to human populations to try to revive the concept of the scala naturae, as can be clear by reading the very end of Race, Evolution, and Behavior.
This, of course, goes back to Rushton’s erroneous application of r/K selection theory to human races. He (and others) wrongly assert that Mongoloids are more K-selected than Africans who are more r-selected while Caucasians are in the middle—it also being asserted that K organisms, supposedly Mongoloids, “are the most K evolved” (Lynn, 2012). However, if r/K selection theory were applicable to humans, Mongoloids would be r and Africans would be K. Rushton further attempts to provide evidence for this ‘evolutionary progress’ by citing Dale Russel (1983; 1989) and his thought experiment troodon that he imagines would have eventually have gained human-like bipedalism and a large brain. Nevertheless, Rushton himself doesn’t say that it was only one dinosaur that would have supposedly had human-like intelligence and mobility, Reptile brains, however, lie outside of mammalian design (Hopson, 1977: 443; Gould, 1989: 318), and so, Russel’s theory is falsified.
This use of r/K selection theory as an attempt at bringing back the scala naturae may seem like an intuitive concept; some races/animals may seem more ‘advanced’ or ‘complex’ than others. However, since Rushton’s application of r/K selection theory is not correctly applied (nor does it apply to humans) and any of the claims that Rushton—or anyone else—makes while invoking the theory can be disregarded since he misused r and K selection.
In an attempt to “[restore] the concept of “progress” to its proper place in evolutionary biology,” Rushton (2004) proposed that g—the general factor of intelligence—sits atop a matrix of correlated traits that he proposes to show why evolution is synonymous with ‘progress’, including how and why K evolved organisms are so-called ‘more highly K evolved’—which is a sly attempt to revive the concept of scala naturae. Rushton’s (2004) paper is largely copy and pasted from his 1997 afterword in Race, Evolution, and Behavior—especially the part about ‘progress in evolution’ (which has been addressed in depth).
As can be seen, Ruston attempted to revive the scala naturae by giving it a new name, along with the misuse of ecological theory to make it seem like evolution is synonymous with progress and that K organisms are ‘more evolved’, makes no sense in the context of how ecological theory is (or was) applied to organisms. Rushton’s theory is correct, if and only if he applied r and K correctly to human races. Rushton did not apply r/K selection theory correctly to human races, so Rushton’s claims and any that follow from them are, on their face, immediately wrong. The claims by Rushton et al showing evolution to be ‘progressive’ have been shown to be demonstrably false since evolution is local change, not ‘progress’ (Gould, 1989; 1996).
Conclusion
Rushton’s r/K selection theory has enamored many since he proposed it in 1985. He was relentlessly attacked in the media for his proposals about black penis size, testosterone, brain size, sexual frequency, etc. However, the explanation for said racial differences in behavior—his r/K selection theory—has been summarily rebutted for misapplying ecological theory and not understanding evolution (Anderson, 1991; Graves, 2002). Even ignoring his racial comparisons, his application of the theory would still be unacceptable as he didn’t recognize agents of selection nor alpha selection.
Rushton is wrong because
(i) he misapplied r/K selection in application to human races (Africans would be K, Mongoloids would be r; rule-following and intelligence can be selected for in either environment/with any of the agents of r- or K-selection),
(ii) he arbitrarily designated Africans as r and Mongoloids as K due to current demographic trends (the true application of r and K is described above, which Rushton showed no understanding of),
(iii) the races do not differ in levels of testosterone nor penis size,
(iv) testosterone does not cause prostate cancer nor does it cause crime, so even if there was a large difference between blacks and whites, it would not explain higher rates of PCa in blacks, nor would it explain higher rates of crime,
(v) the scala naturae is a long-dead concept no longer in use by evolutionary biologists, along with its cousin ‘evolutionary progress’, while r/K selection is the attempt at reviving both,
(vi) human races are not local populations; since human races are not local populations then his application of r/K selection to humans is erroneous.
Rushton was informed numerous times he wrongly applied ecological theory to human populations. Yes, E.O. Wilson did say that if Rushton had noticed variation in any other animal that ‘no one would have batted an eye’, however, that does not say a word about Rushton’s incorrect application of r/K selection to human races. No race of humans is more ‘highly evolved’ than another.
Anyone who uses Rushton’s theory as an explanation for observed data is using incorrect/misapplied theory meaning that, therefore, by proxy, their theory is wrong. Rushton’s r/K theory is wrong, and people need to stop invoking it as an explanation for racial differences in behavior, politics, religion, and any other variable they can think of. If Rushton’s application of the theory is wrong, then it logically follows that anything based off of his theory is wrong as well.
Japan’s Population Decline and r/K Selection Theory
Edit, 7/18/17: r/K selection theory has been rebutted.
r/K Selection Theory: A Response to Rushton
E.O. Wilson on Rushton’s r/K Theory and More on Endemic Disease
r/K Selection Theory: A Response to Anonymous Conservative
r/K Selection Theory: A Response to Truth-Justice
r/K theory doesn’t apply to humans and if it did, Mongoloids would be r and Africans would be K. Cold with is an agent of r selection while endemic disease is an agent of K selection. Rushton used a debunked “continuum” for the basis for his theory and completely changed r and K. However it’s wrong. Rushton was wrong. Anonymous Conservative is wrong. Anyone who uses those two in reference to r/K is wrong by proxy since r/K is a debunked paradigm.
Japan has had a population crisis for a few years. Japan’s fertility rate was 1.4 in 2014. To have enough children to keep the population stable, the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) needs to be 2.1. As a country industrializes and becomes more prosperous, the TFR drops as higher IQ follows better nutrition. As a nation industrializes and becomes more complex, the attention of the populace shifts from one of having children and a family to one of success and intellectualism. As this occurs, the birth rate drops because the more intelligent a population is, the more likely it is for them to pursue higher education or monetary achievement. Clearly, the main reason Japan has concerns with their TFR is due to their high intelligence.
The Japan Times reported yesterday that almost half of single young men and women were virgins. A survey of Japanese men and women aged 18-34 found that 70 percent of unmarried men and 60 percent of unmarried women were not in a relationship. Also discovered, 42 percent of the men and 42.4 percent of the women admitted to being virgins. The survey was taken before in 2010, with 36.2 percent of men and 38.7 percent of women admitting to being virgins.
These surveys have been carried out every 5 years since 1987. Then, the rate of men who said they had no partner was 48.6 percent and for women it was 39.5 percent. The survey, which was conducted last June and accounted for 8,754 single people and 6,598 married couples across Japan, also found that 90 percent of the respondents wanted to get married “sometime in the future”, but for some people, this turns out to be a mistake. Moreover, 30 percent of the 2,760 men and 26 percent of the 2,570 women polled said they were not currently looking for a relationship. The increase in singles was most noted in the 20s, when women are the most fertile. The Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe also said he wants to increase the birthrate from 1.4 to 1.8 by 2025.
Lastly, the study found that the number of children for couples marries for 15 to 19 years was 1.94, a record low. This study did not ask questions about same-sex partners, but what we are concerned about is the TFR and how it’s driven by evolution, so this is a non-factor.
Japan’s population is dramatically shrinking. In 2010, they had a population of 128 million but by their 2015 census, they had a population of 127 million. This is due to the increase in virgins and an aging population. Why is this happening?
This is, of course, driven by r/K Selection Theory. Rushton thought of r/K Selection Theory, also known as Differential K theory, in 1985 with a paper titled Differential K Theory: The Sociobiology of Individual and Group Differences. Organisms can be r-selected, K-selected or somewhere in between. Humans as a species are K-selected, but some human races and ethnies are more K-selected than others.
Africans are r-selected, meaning that they have many children while not investing too much time in their offspring. They evolved to be r-selected to offset the high mortality rate due to the harshness of Sub-Saharan Africa. Due to this, black girls have an earlier menarche (period) so they can reproduce more to a) offset the high mortality rate and b) have a chance to reproduce more due to the high mortality rate. This is driven by disease, malnutrition, and parasitic load, which also drop IQ and contribute to the high birth rate since lower IQ populations have more children.
Caucasians are in the middle of r and K, and have fewer children and put more energy into caring for each one. This goes back to evolving in the Ice Age where cooperation and altruism were needed. More attention to children was needed for Eurasians evolving back then due to the harsh conditions of the Ice Age. So, a higher IQ evolved, and along with the higher IQ came a bigger brain. The bigger brains of Eurasians led to children being born earlier, and a bigger brain allowed for better care for the children along with numerous other positive variables to help survive in the harsh weather. Moreover, genes from Neanderthals are responsible for a 1 percent decrease in historic fitness (biological fitness) in Eurasian populations.
Orientals (Japanese, Chinese, Koreans) are further K than Caucasians are. This is reflected in brain size, where more K-selected populations have bigger brains, thus they can think further into the future and maximize care for their children. The opposite holds true for blacks. This is reflected in modern-day, first-world life where blacks have too many children to care for on their own accord and whites and Orientals have fewer children and put more investment into their children .
It’s not only Japan that’s having this problem with birthrates. It’s all of the West and East Asia. Higher IQ societies do have a longer life expectancy, while lower IQ societies have a lower one. Then, as described above, the lower IQ populations have more children to offset the mortality rate.
Japan’s birthrate concerns are due largely in part to genetic factors. This is currently occurring in all high IQ populations. Those populations have a large elderly population, with the young demographic quickly shrinking. Seeing this gradient throughout the world with IQ and fertility rates, we can make some general conclusions:
- Low IQ populations have more children while high IQ populations have less children.
- High IQ populations are more likely to have a large subset of virgins, as seen with this article. Lower IQ populations lose their virginity earlier.
This can be seen with the CLASH (CLimate, Aggression and Self-control in Humans) model (Van Lange, Rinderu, and Bushmen 2016). According the the CIA World Fact book 2014, in countries closer to the equator, the average age of first birth for a female was 20 years of age (the countries were the Gaza strip, Liberia, Bangladesh, Kenya, Mali, Tanzania, Uganda and various other middle African countries). Conversely, for countries further away from the equator, the average age of first birth was 28 years of age (Japan, Canada, and most European countries). Those populations that evolved in warmer climates where the changes in season are minimal with unpredictable harshness tend to enact faster life history strategies than those in colder climates.
Moreover, a slower life history strategy (K-selection), under a predictable environment would be better to enhance inclusive fitness. There is a growing body of evidence that predictable environments promote K-selection “in terms of lower mortality, morbidity, delayed reproduction, and a higher contribution towards one’s social capital.” This can be seen with the trends in Western and East Asian countries.
The trend that Japan is facing can be reversed with incentives for reproduction. However, the more intelligent a society is, the fewer children it will have due to evolutionary pressures. Is there a happy medium between IQ and fertility rates, where the population isn’t too dumb and the fertility rates aren’t too low? I’ll explore that in the future.
Climate, Violence, r/K Selection Theory and the Vindication of JP Rushton
1850 words
Why do violent crimes increase as temperatures increase? Why do violent crimes decrease as the temperatures decrease? These phenomena are noticed every year, and criminologists set out to find the relationship between climate and violence and whether or not there is a curvilinear hypothesis, which crime increases as the temperature increases, but at extremely high temperatures the crime rate begins to dip down.
When the weather gets colder, crime decreases. All though crime does decrease in the Winter months, crimes that take more planning, such as property crime and robbery increase. This is due, obviously, to the fact that people don’t want to spend too much time outside so they plan their crimes ahead to minimize the time spent outside whereas in hotter temperatures this does not occur. It is known that when it’s colder, resulting criminal actions are less random than those committed in hotter temperatures.
The two trains of thought for the temperature/crime theory are the curvilinear hypothesis, as noted above, and the linear hypothesis, which argues for that as the temperature increases, so does crime without a drop in extremely high temperatures.
Mishra (2014) showed that the relationship is not a curvilinear one, but that crime rises steadily as the temperature increases. Looking at Allahabad city, India from a 62 year period from the years 1952 to 2013 with the variables being temperature, humidity and rainfall, the results of the analysis shows that temperature has a significant effect on the proclivity to commit crime, as well as murder. Relative to the temperature, humidity shows a strong correlation with crime with rainfall showing a negative correlation.
Mishra took annual data from the National Crime Record Bureau with monthly data taken from the various police stations of Allahabad city. The temperature and rainfall data was taken from local news stations and the Indian Meteorological Department.
Results of his analysis showed significant correlations with violent crime and temperature (r=.75) with murders increasing as temperatures increase. The relationship between relative humidity and crime was strong as well (r=.68) with rainfall having a negative correlation (r=-.14). Out of all three of these variables, the average temperature has more of an effect on crime than relative humidity. Using a regression model, Mishra discovered a correlation of .56, showing that temperature alone accounts for 56 percent of the variation in crime pattern. Including all three variables in the regression model shows a correlation of .61. This confirms that among the climate elements tested that temperature itself had the highest effect on crime.
Figure 2 of the paper shows that as temperatures rise (starting at about 25 degrees celsius), that the crime rate increases.Since very high temperatures are associated with rainfall, there is a reduction in crime when this occurs, thermal stress is reduced. However, when rainfall and humidity were both unchanged, higher temperatures would not cause a decrease in violence. This result is inconsistent with the curvilinear hypothesis and does not support the claim that extremely high temperatures cause decreased violence.
Van Lange, Rinderu, and Bushmen (2016) thought of the model CLASH (CLimate, Aggression, and Self-control in Humans) which shows differences within and between countries and their proclivities for aggression and criminal behavior. With lower temperatures, along with seasonal variation like what is seen in Northern Europe, peoples had to adopt a slower life history strategy with more focus on planning for the future as well as a need for self-control due to the differing variations in climate and how that has an effect on acquiring food. The CLASH model further shows that slow life history strategy, thinking into the future and self-control are important determinants in predicting violence.
As I have discussed here before, r/K Selection Theory (Life History Theory) shows that those who live in colder temperatures adopt slower strategies which lead to more future planning along with more self-control along with more altruistic behaviors shown. In a more harsh environment, such as Africa, Latin America and other locations situated near the equator, faster life history strategies are needed to offset the harsh environment, which leads to evolutionary causes for earlier menarche in black and Mexican-American girls. Faster life history strategies are needed in locations near the equator due to the harshness of the environment. This is why Africans and other peoples located at or near the equator have more children, to offset the harsher environment. No planning ahead was needed, as most likely populations near the equator wouldn’t have lived long enough to see the delayed payoff. Conversely, those in northerly climes live longer due to the need to plan ahead, and along with this ability to plan ahead came higher intelligence, which leads to yet another selector for high intellect in populations that evolved further from the equator, earlier childbirth. On top of that selector, deleterious Neanderthal alleles decreased historic fitness levels 1 percent in non-African populations, which further lead to evolution of the ability to think into the future due to less children beared. Since the future becomes more predictable the further you travel away from the equator, it becomes adaptive for peoples to adopt a slower life history strategy out of necessity, as that’s the only way to survive and they will see the fruits of their self-control due to having a longer life expectancy due to superior future time orientation in comparison to those in southerly climes.
Since a faster life history strategy is correlated with threats of harshness and higher morbidity and mortality, from the life history perspective we would reason that those with lower SES would have to adopt a faster life history strategy in order to offset the fact that they are more likely to suffer premature disability or death. Lower SES is also correlated with other r-selected strategies such as earlier sexual activity (a variable correlated with lower IQ), higher rates of childhood pregnancy and childbearing, greater number of offspring and less care and attention shown to those offspring, this study. For the third time this month, proves Rushton right with his application of r/K Selection Theory on the three races of humanity.
Van Lange, Rinderu, and Bushmen state that neighborhood deterioration, assaults, muggings, drug addicts, and presence of gangs are associated with earlier and higher rates of sexual activity. Not coincidentally, this is seen in many majority black and ‘Hispanic’-majority cities in America. They also say that as resources become scarce that women gravitate towards men with more access to resources and those that will invest in their children’s reproductive values. Though this is hardly seen in low-income communities around America, you do see a lot of black women who gravitate towards the drug dealer or another black male who is involved with illegal activities who then acquire mass amounts of capital. This is an evolutionary strategy for all women, since money is correlated with intelligence and therefore a mate with more money has better means to take care of any offspring conceived.
The CLASH model extends r/K Selection Theory, particularly where r/K Selection Theory emphasizes unpredictability and harshness as a source of environmental stress, the CLASH model emphasizes predictability over environmental stress. That is, those who evolved in northerly climes can deal with stress better than those who evolved near the equator, therefore lessening the amount of crime in those populations due to them being able to constrain themselves more. The CLASH model proposes that the combination of predictability and control shape a slow life history strategy, future time orientation, with a focus on self-control. Moreover, in an analysis of 40 work-related values in 40 countries, it was found that the countries located the furthest from the equator tended to place a greater value on future rewards, such as perseverance and thrift.
In countries closer to the equator, according to the 2014 World Fact Book, the average age of first birth for a female was 20 years of age (the countries were the Gaza strip, Liberia, Bangladesh, Kenya, Mali, Tanzania, Uganda and various other middle African countries). Conversely, for countries further away from the equator, the average age of first birth was 28 years of age (Japan, Canada, and most European countries). Those populations that evolved in warmer climates where the changes in season are minimal with unpredictable harshness tend to enact faster life history strategies than those in colder climates.
The researchers state on page 31:
One standard deviation increase in temperature was associated with a 11.3% increase in intergroup conflict and a 2.1% increase in interpersonal conflict. Examples of interpersonal conflict include spikes in domestic violence in India and Australia, greater likelihood of assaults and murders in the USA and Tanzania, ethnic violence in Europe and South Asia, and civil conflicts throughout tropical climates. Hence, we conclude that it is both differences in average temperature and differences in seasonal variation in temperature that help explain cross-national differences in aggression and violence around the world.
And on page 41:
Assuming CLASH is accurate, it is interesting to consider that people’s thoughts and behaviors may be quite different, based on the physical circumstances their ancestors faced and that they face themselves. The world is getting smaller and smaller. Electronic and social media (e.g., WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook, email) connect us to people all over the world. Yet, people coming from differing ancestral histories and living in different locations face challenges of self-control in a variety of ways. A businessperson from London may expect a response the next day, but the alliance in Nairobi may want to take at least an extra day. If CLASH is correct, the same pattern should hold for within-country differences between a businessperson working in Chicago and the alliance working in New Orleans, or between a businessperson working in Melbourne and the alliance in Brisbane or Cairns (with London, Chicago, and Melbourne being relatively more remote from the equator, and facing greater variation in climate).
The correlation between temperature, crime and life history strategies is shockingly high. JP Rushton is now vindicated from all of the derision he experienced in the 30 plus years he was pushing his r/K Theory. This shows implications for the European ‘refugee’ crisis as well, due to the higher rates of all violent crime occurring ever since this mass exodus from MENA (Middle Eastern North African) countries.
The CLASH model is a great compliment to r/K Selection Theory and goes deeper into why behaviors differ in human populations based where ancestral evolution occurred. As temperatures increase, so does crime starting at 76 degrees Fahrenheit, with there being a negative correlation for crime committed during rainfall. The CLASH model vindicates Rushton’s supposedly ‘wacky theories’ on race, evolution and behavior. Further, the CLASH model also shows another cause for the current situation occurring in Europe. The people flooding into the continent have ancestral ties to hotter climes. They then bring their genetic proclivity to commit crimes with them to the new area, which then increases crime. This is one of many reasons for the cucking of Europe. As we look more into evolutionary causes for behavior and those behaviors that lead to more crime committed, Rushton and others will be further vindicated and when this occurs, with ample data, of course, sensible immigration policy can be had to quell the amount of crime committed by ‘migrants’ and other immigrants into our countries.
Neanderthals, Inbreeding, r/K Selection Theory and Eurasian Birthrates
1100 words
(Note, 6/24/17: Rushton’s r/K selection in applications to human races is dead. It’s been dead for almost 30 years after and ecologist critiqued his method and use of ecological theory in application to human races. Now, that doesn’t meant that everything written below—or even on my whole blog—is fully wrong, just that the attempted explanation is wrong. It still holds that Eurasians have worse fitness than Africans, which is partly due to deleterious Neanderthal variants, however, r/K theory does not explain it.)
Science Daily reported last week that Neanderthals left humans a genetic burden, which is having less offspring. Of course, these deleterious alleles only introgressed into non-African populations due to Africans not leaving Africa. This manifests itself today in birth rates within countries and between them based on the ethnic/racial mix. And (not) coincidentally, the areas with the highest rate of children are in sub-Saharan Africa.
The Neanderthals existed in small bands, so inbreeding was common. Due to this inbreeding, Neanderthals were more homogenous than we are today. When humans migrated out of Africa, they encountered the inbred Neanderthals who they interbred with. Harmful genetic variants acquired from Neanderthals are shown to reduce the fitness of populations with certain deleterious alleles. There are of course tradeoffs with everything in life. Increased intelligence and being better able to weather the Ice Age, among numerous other factors, were positive things gained from interbreeding with Neanderthals. Negative effects were the acquisition of deleterious alleles which still persist today in non-African hominids. These deleterious alleles decreased biological fitness which manifests itself in the birthrate of Eurasian populations throughout the world (the Germann and Japanese birthrate is 1.3 for reference).
Harris and Nielson also hypothesize that since Neanderthals existed in small bands that natural selection was less effective, allowing for weakly harmful mutations to pass on and not get weeded out over the generations. However, when introduced back into humans these effects become lost over time due to a large population with natural selection selecting against the deleterious Neanderthal alleles. Using a computer program, Harris and Nielson quantify how much of a negative effect the Neanderthal genome had on modern populations. The conclusion of the results was that Neanderthals are 40 percent LESS genetically fit than modern humans.
The researchers’ simulations also suggest that humans and Neanderthals mated more freely, which leads more credence to the idea that Neanderthals got absorbed into the Homo Sapien population and not mostly killed off. The estimation for Neanderthal DNA in modern hominids from the simulation was around 10 percent, which then continued to drop as the Neanderthal-Homo Sapiens hybrids interbred with those who hardly had any Neanderthal DNA. More evidence also shows that the percentage of Neanderthal DNA was higher in the past in Eurasians as well. Which makes sense since Asians have on average 20 percent more Neanderthal DNA than Europeans due to a second interbreeding event.
However, Harris and Nielson end up concluding that non-Africans historically had a 1 percent loss in biological fitness due to Neanderthal genetics. Moreover, a better immune system came from Neanderthal genetics. Skin color is another trait inherited from Neanderthals as well.
Along with the acquisition of deleterious Neanderthal alleles, early Eurasians also encountered the same environment as the Neanderthals. Those selection pressures, along with interbreeding due to small bands lead to a decrease in the number of children had. Fewer children are easier to care for as well as show more attention to. All of these variables in that environment lead to fewer children produced. It’s a better evolutionary strategy to have fewer children in more northerly climes than in more southerly ones due to the differing selection pressures. Environmental effects are also one reason why birthrates are lower for populations that evolved in northerly climes (Neanderthals and post-OoA hominids). Harsh winters lead to a decreased population size, as evidenced by the Inuit and Eskimoes, which their low population size didn’t allow for selection for high IQ despite having the same brain size as East Asians.
I couldn’t help but think that, yet again, for the second time in two weeks, one of JP Rushton’s theories was confirmed. This confirms one of the many variables of Rushton’s r/K Selection Theory. Just like I covered how Piantadosi and Kidd corroborated Rushton’s theory of brain size and earlier child birth. Neanderthals had bigger brains than we do today, and knowing what we know about the correlation between IQ, brain size and early childbirth, I would assume that Neanderthals also had earlier childbirths as well,.
Along with these deleterious gene variants from Neanderthals, other variables that contribute to the decline in Eurasian populations also include higher IQ as well, as JP Rushton says, is an extreme way to have control over their environment and individuality. These traits are seen in higher IQ populations in comparison to lower IQ populations. We could also make the inference that since Eurasian children have bigger heads, that multiple childbirths would be taxing on the Eurasian woman’s birth canal while it would be less taxing on the African woman’s.
This study also shows that Neanderthals also had less offspring due to being more intelligent. They had bigger brains than we do today, and since we know that higher IQ is correlated with fewer children conceived, we can say that they were pretty damn smart (they buried their dead 50,000 years ago. There was also a recent discovery of a 176,500-year-old Neanderthal constructions in a French cave). A main cause for the current trend in birthrates in Eurasian populations is due interbreeding with Neanderthals. These events also attributed more to the decline of the Neanderthals.
Deleterious Neanderthal alleles are yet another reason for lower Eurasian birthrates, which shows = that the current trend currently happening in the world with these populations is natural and evolutionarily based. I’ve said a few times that by showing positive things to women on television will increase the white birth rate, with Rushton cites National Socialist Germany as one example. By showing women happy with children, this lead to a massive boom in the German population. To ameliorate the effects of low natural birth rates, these positive things need to be shown on television to women to start to reverse the effects of low natural childbirths.
It’s been a great month for Rushton’s theories, with two of them being corroborated in one month. It’s only a matter of time before the denial of human nature is completely discarded from modern science. As the data piles up on human genetic diversity we will not be able to deny these clearly evident factors any longer.
Human Intelligence, Child Rearing and r/K Selection Theory
1300 words
In a paper titled Extraordinary intelligence and the care of infants, Piantadosi and Kidd (2016) add to the other hypotheses of higher cognition in humans (Cold Winter Theory and farming) by positing higher cognition evolved to better take care of offspring.
Their theory is that big brained parents have big brained children, with the big brained children needing to be born earlier as their head has to be small enough to pass through the birth canal. A lot of animals can stand up immediately after birth, when humans can’t even hold their head up (I will return to this point later). Human babies are born less mature than other primates, which means they are more vulnerable, thus higher cognition evolved to better care for children. All of the variables coalesce into the need for more intelligent parents, which lead to humans growing more intelligent as a result of this.
They found that weaning time, which acts as a measure of the prematurity of infants, was a much better sign of a primate’s intelligence than any other variable they looked at, including brain size. Piantadosi said “One of the motivating puzzles of our research was thinking about those theories and trying to see why they predict specifically that primates or mammals should become so intelligent, instead of other species that faced similar pressures.”
The researchers also state that this may explain how humans developed good social reasoning and the “theory of mind” which is the ability to anticipate the needs of others as well as recognizing that other’s needs may not be the same as their own. Kidd also says how the theory of mind is especially helpful since human babies won’t talk for a couple of years. Since women took care of the children, they had to evolve a higher verbal IQ to better care for them. Along with being better able to care for children, men had to evolve high intelligence to care for both the children and women as well as hunt for food and defend his family and other co-ethnics.
Piantadosi and Kidd’s (2016) data shows that the helplessness of a primate’s newborns predict their intelligence, as well as accounting for human uniqueness in intelligence and why this level of cognition took so long to evolve. They also show how dinosaurs, who evolved in the same conditions and had a longer time to do so, did not evolve the same level of super intelligence as primates did. They also matured in eggs, showing that there is no link between intelligence and infant immarurity and birth. Humans also mature slower and need longer parental care. Due to these pressures, a bigger brain evolved. Babies are born earlier and mature slower than other animals, leading to higher intelligence. This also shows how human intelligence is so different from our closest primate ancestors.
This theory compliments the cold winters theory as well as Cochran and Harpending’s argument that higher intelligence evolved due to the advent of farming. Adequate nutrition lead to the development of higher intelligence and bigger brains as well. It also compliments other theories, including that we evolved higher intelligence due to social reasoning and reproductive pressures (sexual selection).
This theory also shows more evidence for Rushton’s Differential-K Theory. As the researchers noted, babies were born less mature than other primates babies. We can also apply r/K selection theory to this as well. Black babies are born one week earlier than white babies who are born one week earlier than Asian babies. Despite black babies being born one week earlier than white babies, black babies can support their heads at 24 hours earlier than white babies. For Asians it’s unknown, as Rushton notes in Race, Evolution, and Behavior (pg. 148). Asian children are slower to develop than white children who are slower to develop than black children, with Asian children having the biggest brains of the three races. This theory of Piantadosi and Kidd (2016) perfectly compliments Rushton’s r/K selection theory. Asians are born one week earlier than whites who are born one week earlier than blacks, which correlates with the average intelligence scores of the three races.
The cold winters theory also shows another reason for bigger brains, as those who evolved in colder climates evolved bigger brains, and therefore higher intellect. The more intelligent parents who could provide more for their offspring prevailed over those less intelligent who could not survive. This lead to more mutations developing in those with high IQ alleles making higher intelligence more prevalent in those populations who evolved further away from the equator, as well as having an adequate population for more births to occur leading to more genetic mutations which leads to higher intelligence. Since those with higher intelligence can survive more efficiently than those with lower intellect, they were able to spread their genes more by having more offspring than those with low IQ alleles (the opposite of what is happening today).
As noted previously from Rushton’s data, those with higher intelligence are born earlier and mature slower than those with lower intelligence. Black children being able to, for instance, lift their head at 24 hours sooner than white children, along with all of Rushton’s data that shows that blacks mature the fastest on all variables. Black children have to mature faster due to a higher mortality rate, which is correlated with low IQ. This is also why black girls have an earlier menarche than white girls. Since black children are born with smaller heads, they, according to Piantadosi and Kidd’s data, have lower intelligence as a result. Black children average smaller brains than white children who averahe smaller brains (and heads) than Asian children. This shows with how Asians are born one week earlier than whites who are born one week earlier than blacks.
This study shows how r/K selection theory is not dead, nor is it not a theory to take seriously, as other researchers have stated since Rushton applied it to race, since it is shown to have good predicitive power. Piantadosi and Kidd’s data corrobarates Rushton’s findings on earlier births between the races, vindicating Rushton and his r/K selection theory. Piantadosi and Kidd show that a) helpless children need intelligent parents, b) intelligent parents must have large brains and c) large brains necessitate having helpless children. This would show, in accordance with r/K selection theory that a) helpless Eurasian children need more intelligent parents, b) Eurasian parents must have large brains and c) large brains nescisstate having helpless Eurasian children.
Piantadosi and Kidd’s theory compliments other theories of human intelligence, which strengthens the cold winters theory of intelligence more, as those with higher intellect have bigger brains, and are therefore born earlier than those with lower intellect and smaller brains. As time goes on, more and more researchers will, unknowingly to them, corroborate more and more of Rushton’s r/K Life History variables. As noted by E.O. Wilson (co-founder of r/K selection theory) in defense of Rushton in the early 90s:
“I think Phil is an honest and capable researcher. The basic reasoning by Rushton is solid evolutionary reasoning; that is, it is logically sound. If he had seen some apparent geographic variation for a non-human species – a species of sparrow or sparrow hawk, for example – no one would have batted an eye. … when it comes to [human] racial differences, especially in the inflamed situation in this country, special safeguards and conventions need to be developed.
As we understand human development more, Rushton’s r/K Life History Theory will be corrobarted. This three-way pattern Rushton noticed, “Rushton’s Rule of Three“, has been corroborated yet again by other researchers. As time goes on, the true nature of humanity, as well as human races, will be revealed unbeknownst to them.
I wonder if Piantadosi and Kidd realize that they have just corroborated one of Rushton’s theories?
Race Differences in Penis Size Revisited: Is Rushton’s r/K Theory of Race Differences in Penis Length Confirmed?
2050 words
In 1985 JP Rushton, psychology professor at the University of Ontario, published a paper arguing that r/K selection theory (which he termed Differential K theory) explained and predicted outcomes of what he termed the three main races of humanity—Mongoloids, Negroids and Caucasoids (Rushton, 1985; 1997). Since Rushton’s three races differed on a whole suite of traits, he reasoned races that were more K-selected (Caucasoids and Mongoloids) had slower reproduction times, higher time preference, higher IQ etc in comparison to the more r-selected Negroids who had faster reproduction times, lower time preference, lower IQ etc (see Rushton, 1997 for a review; also see Van Lange, Rinderu, and Bushmen, 2017 for a replication of Rushton’s data not theory). Were Rushton’s assertions on race and penis size verified and do they lend credence to his Differential-K claims regarding human races?
Rushton’s so-called r/K continuum has a whole suite of traits on it. Ranging from brain size to speed of maturation to reaction time and IQ, these data points supposedly lend credence to Rushton’s Differential-K theory of human differences. Penis size is, of course, important for Rushton’s theory due to what he’s said about it in interviews.
Rushton’s main reasoning for penis size differences between race is “You can’t have both”, and that if you have a larger brain then you must have a smaller penis; if you have a smaller penis you must have a larger brain. He believed there was a “tradeoff” between brain size and penis size. In the book Darwin’s Athletes: How Sport Has Damaged Black America and Preserved the Myth of Race, Hoberman (1997: 312) quotes Rushton: “Even if you take something like athletic ability or sexuality—not to reinforce stereotypes or some such thing—but, you know, it’s a trade-off: more brain or more penis. You can’t have both.” This, though, is false. There is no type of evidence to imply that this so-called ‘trade-off’ exists. In my readings of Rushton’s work over the years, that’s always something I’ve wondered: was Rushton implying that large penises take more energy to have and therefore the trade-off exists due to this supposed relationship?
Andrew Joyce of the Occidental Observer published an article the other day in defense of Richard Lynn. Near the end of his article he writes:
Another tactic is to belittle an entire area of research by picking out a particularly counter-intuitive example that the public can be depended on to regard as ridiculous. A good example is J. Philippe Rushton’s claim, based on data he compiled for his classic Race, Evolution and Behavior, that average penis size varied between races in accord with the predictions of r/K theory. This claim was held up to ridicule by the likes of Richard Lewontin and other crusaders against race realism, and it is regularly presented in articles hostile to the race realist perspective. Richard Lynn’s response, as always, was to gather more data—from 113 populations. And unsurprisingly for those who keep up with this area of research, he found that indeed the data confirmedRushton’s original claim.
The claim was ridiculed because it was ridiculous. This paper by Lynn (2013) titled Rushton’s r-K life history theory of race differences in penis length and circumference examined in 113 populations is the paper that supposedly verifies Rushton’s theory regarding race differences in penis size, along with one of its correlates in Rushton’s theory (testosterone). Lynn (2013) proclaims that East Asians are the most K-evolved, then come Europeans, while Africans are the least K-evolved. This, then, is the cause of the supposed racial differences in penis size.
Lynn (2013) begins by briefly discussing Rushton’s ‘findings’ on racial differences in penis size while also giving an overview of Rushton’s debunked r/K selection theory. He then discusses some of Rushton’s studies (which I will describe briefly below) along with stories from antiquity of the supposed larger penis size of African males.
Our old friend testosterone also makes an appearance in this paper. Lynn (2013: 262) writes:
Testosterone is a determinant of aggression (Book, Starzyk, & Quinsey, 2001; Brooks & Reddon, 1996; Dabbs, 2000). Hence, a reduction of aggression and sexual competitiveness between men in the colder climates would have been achieved by a reduction of testosterone, entailing the race differences in testosterone (Negroids > Caucasoids > Mongoloids) that are given in Lynn (1990). The reduction of testosterone had the effect of reducing penis length, for which evidence is given by Widodsky and Greene (1940).
Phew, there’s a lot to unpack here. (I discuss Lynn 1990 in this article.) Testosterone does not determine aggression; see my most recent article on testosterone (aggression increases testosterone; testosterone does not increase aggression. Book, Starzyk and Quinsey, 2001 show a .14 correlation between testosterone and aggression, whereas Archer, Graham-Kevan, and Davies 2005 show the correlation is .08). This is just a correlation. Sapolsky (1997: 113) writes:
Okay, suppose you note a correlation between levels of aggression and levels of testosterone among these normal males. This could be because (a) testosterone elevates aggression; (b) aggression elevates testosterone secretion; (c) neither causes the other. There’s a huge bias to assume option a while b is the answer. Study after study has shown that when you examine testosterone when males are first placed together in the social group, testosterone levels predict nothing about who is going to be aggressive. The subsequent behavioral differences drive the hormonal changes, not the other way around.
Brooks and Reddon (1996) also only show relationships with testosterone and aggressive acts; they show no causation. This same relationship was noted by Dabbs (2000; another Lynn 2013 citation) in prisoners. More violent prisoners were seen to have higher testosterone, but there is a caveat here too: being aggressive stimulates testosterone production so of course they had higher levels of testosterone; this is not evidence for testosterone causing aggression.
Another problem with that paragraph quoted from Lynn (2013) is that it’s a just-so story. It’s an ad-hoc explanation. You notice something with data you have today and then you imagine a nice-sounding story to attempt to explain your data in an evolutionary context. Nice-sounding stories are cool and all and I’m sure everyone loves a nicely told story, but when it comes to evolutionary theory I’d like theories that can be independently verified of the data they’re trying to explain.
My last problem with that paragraph from Lynn (2013) is his final citation: he cites it as evidence that the reduction of testosterone affects penis length…..but his citation (Widodsky and Green, 1940) is a study on rats… While these studies can give us a wealth of information regarding our physiologic systems (at least showing us which types of avenues to pursue; see my previous article on myostatin), they don’t really mean anything for humans; especially this study on the application of testosterone to the penis of a rat. See, the fatal flaw in these assertions is this: would a, say, 5 percent difference in testosterone lead to a larger penis as if there is a dose-response relationship between testosterone and penis length? It doesn’t make any sense.
Lynn (2013), though, says that Rushton’s theory doesn’t propose that there is a direct causal relationship between “intelligence”‘ and penis length, but just that they co-evolved together, with testosterone reduction occurring when Homo sapiens migrated north out of Africa they needed to cooperate more so selection for lower levels of testosterone subsequently occurred which then shrunk the penises of Rushton’s Caucasian and Mongoloid races.
Lynn (2013) then discusses two “new datasets”, one of which is apparently in Donald Templer’s book Is Size Important (which is on my to-read list, so many books, so little time). Table 1 below is from Lynn reproducing Templer’s ‘work’ in his book.
The second “dataset” is extremely dubious. Lynn (2013) attempts to dress it up, writing that “The information in this website has been collated from data obtained by research centres and reports worldwide.” Ethnicmuse has a good article on the pitfalls of Lynn’s (2013) article. (Also read Scott McGreal’s rebuttal.)
Rushton attempted to link race and penis size for 30 years. In a paper with Bogaert (Rushton and Bogaert, 1987), they attempt to show that blacks had larger penises than whites who h ad longer penises than Asians which then supposedly verified one dimension of Rushton’s theory. Rushton (1988) also discusses race differences in penis size, citing a previous paper by Rushton and Bogaert, where they use data from Alfred Kinsey, but this data is nonrepresentative and nonrandom (see Zuckermann and Brody, 1988 and Weizmann et al, 1990: 8).
Still others may attempt to use supposed differences in IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor 1) as evidence that there is, at least, physiological evidence for the claim that black men have larger penises than white men, though I discussed that back in December of 2016 and found it strongly lacking.
Rushton (1997: 182) shows a table of racial differences in penis size which was supposedly collected by the WHO (World Health Organization). Though a closer look shows this is not true. Ethnicmuse writes:
ANALYSIS: The WHO did not study penis sizes. It relied on three separate studies, two of which were not peer-reviewed and the data was included as “Appendix III” (which should have alerted Rushton that this was not an original study). The first study references Africans in the US (not Africa!) and Europeans in the US (not Europe!), the second Europeans in Australia (not Europe!) and the third, Thais.
So it seems to be bullshit all the way down.
Ajmani et al (1985) showed that 385 healthy Nigerians had an average penile length of 3.21 inches (flaccid). Orakwe and Ebuh (2007) show that while Nigerians had longer penises than other ethnies tested, the only statistical difference was between them and Koreans. Though Veale et al (2014: 983) write that “There are no indications of differences in racial variability in our present study, e.g. the study from Nigeria was not a positive outlier.”
Lynn and Dutton have attempted to use androgen differentials between the races as evidence for racial differences in penis size (this is another attempt at a physiological argument to attempt to show the existence of racial differences in penis size). Edward Dutton attempted to revive the debate on racial differences in penis size during a 2015 presentation where he, again, showed that Negroids have higher levels of testosterone than Caucasoids who have higher levels of androgens than Mongoloids. These claims, though, have been rebutted by Scott McGreal who showed that populations differences in androgen levels are meaningless while they subsequently fail to validate Rushton and Lynn’s claims on racial differences in penis size.
Finally, it was reported the other day that condoms from China were too small in Zimbabwe, per Zimbabwe’s health minister. This led Kevin MacDonald to proclaim that this was “More corroboration of race differences in penis size which was part of the data Philippe Rushton used in his theory of r/K selection (along with brain size, maturation rates, IQ, etc.)” This isn’t “more corroboration” for Rushton’s long-dead theory; nor is this evidence that blacks have longer penises. I don’t understand why people make broad and sweeping generalizations. It’s one country in Africa that complained about smaller condoms from a country in East Asia, therefore this is more corroboration for Rushton’s r/K selection theory? The logic doesn’t follow.
Asians have small condoms. Those condoms go to Africa. They complain condoms from China are too small. Therefore Rushton’s r/K selection theory is corroborated. Flawed logic.
In sum, Lynn (2013) didn’t verify Rushton’s theory regarding racial differences in penis size and I find it even funnier that Lynn ends his article talking about “falsification’ stating that this aspect of Rushton’s theory has survived two attempts at falsification, therefore, it can be regarded as a “progressive research program“, though obviously, with the highly flawed “data” that was used, one cannot rationally make that statement. Supposed hormonal differences between the races do not cause penis size differences; even if blacks had levels of testosterone significantly higher than whites (the 19 percent that is claimed by Lynn and Rushton off of one highly flawed study in Ross et al, 1986) they still would not have longer penises.
The study of physical differences between populations is important, but sometimes, stereotypes do not tell you anything, especially in this case. Though in this instance, the claim that blacks have the longest penis lies on shaky ground, and with what evidence we do have for the claim, we cannot logically make the inference (especially not from Lynn’s (2013) flimsy data). Richard Lynn did not “confirm” anything with this paper; the only thing he “confirmed” are his own preconceived notions; he did not ‘prove’ what he set out to.
NotPoliticallyCorrect 