"Game", High-IQ, and Evolutionary Success
Critics of HBD and high-IQ sometimes assert that intellectual abilities are mostly neutral, and sometimes detrimental, in attracting potential mates. They contend high-IQ is an overrated benefit to those that possess it. Obsidian, a frequent commenter at Roissy, persistently attempts to divert discussion from low-IQ NAMs (blacks) to high-IQ nerds (whites/Asians). He claims that, in accordance with racial differences, blacks have a naturally higher capacity for "game".
Does this constitute a less "successful" life? From an evolutionary perspective (the only metric that actually matters), an organism's success/fitness is their ability to leave behind offspring. If we assumed blacks had more "game" in potential attraction situations, one would necessarily conclude that, despite their intellectual deficit, the average black is more "successful" than the average white or Asian. (Note: I've argued this assumption is untrue and the overt/crass black male game only works on black women. However, we can assume it's true and still proceed with the argument.) Though it seems that the average black's characteristics, which generally come at the expense of higher intelligence, still produce a net gain in fitness. Blacks tend towards the left half, so this is substantiated by data on IQ and sexual activity of adolescents.
However, this view of evolutionary success is short-sighted as it mistakenly defines the organism as the basic unit of natural selection. Instead, natural selection acts on genes, not the individual that holds them. Richard Dawkins explains this in his seminal work, The Selfish Gene. He was able to account for altruism and kin selection, the notion that "some organisms tend to exhibit strategies that favor the reproductive success of their relatives, even at a cost to their own survival and/or reproduction". In essence, genes act in their best interest to propagate, not necessarily what allows that specific organism to reproduce. So, it is correct to assert that a person's fitness is lowered by high-IQ social problems, but one must consider his genes and his "extended family" to fully gauge the impact of high-IQ social ineptitude.
The high-IQ individual does produce less offspring, but it's inconsequential if one accepts that ethnicity and race are biologically based. The high-IQ individual's genes are shared by those of his extended family. While he lacks the ability to attract women, there are alternative means to reproduce "his" genes. High-IQ individuals are generally the backbone of technological, medicinal, and social progress that increase longevity and leisure time, decrease critical illnesses, and undermine social upheaval.
It's ostensibly clear that these measures greatly help the rate of sexual encounters amongst his extended family, which from a gene-centered model would be equivalent to him reproducing himself. Societies and civilizations progress and spread, in geographic and population terms, through the innovation of high-IQ persons. Newton lived a celibate, ascetic existence, haunted by his extreme social phobia. Nonetheless, his work propelled technological advancement and helped the reproduction of England's citizens. Jonas Salk had three children, but allowed hundreds of thousands of other children to reproduce themselves.
By also noting the decrease in criminal activity and social conflict amongst high-IQ populations, it's clear high-IQ persons are in fact more successful than low-IQ persons who possess more "game". They're successful on a genetic level because their achievements help society (many times, this defines their extended family) grow.
First of all One and I seem to agree, that on average Black Men have more “natural Game” than do Men of other races-in the USA, that means, White, Asian and Hispanic. Roissy has said as much previously here in the forum, as have other contributors."Game" represents a higher aptitude for female social interaction, ultimately leading to more sexual encounters and higher birth rates. Obsidian consistently claims that HBDers, almost all of whom reside on the Bell Curve's far right side, conveniently ignore the potential downsides of high-IQ:
there is no discussion about the very real downsides of being *too smart* if you’re a guy (and to a lesser extent, if you’re a gal-but you can still get some dick if you want it). In fact, its almost as if the hardest chargers for HBD simply don’t see any downside for being an Egghead.Two importance points to note here: does high-IQ hinder social acuity and what constitutes "success"? I often abide by stereotypes, so I don't dismiss the nerd caricature. I had trouble identifying research, but I found this link between socialization and IQ:
Terman's longitudinal study assessed mental and social health relative to intelligence, placing subjects in three categories: satisfactory adjustment, some maladjustment, and serious maladjustment. Incidence of increase in both categories of maladjustment correlated with verbal intelligence into the highest ranges.Generally, high-IQ individuals have some difficulty cultivating social bonds, especially with women. It's not surprising that the PUA community contains many high intelligence individuals . The link above would imply very intelligent men are less able to pursue sexual relationships and have children.
Does this constitute a less "successful" life? From an evolutionary perspective (the only metric that actually matters), an organism's success/fitness is their ability to leave behind offspring. If we assumed blacks had more "game" in potential attraction situations, one would necessarily conclude that, despite their intellectual deficit, the average black is more "successful" than the average white or Asian. (Note: I've argued this assumption is untrue and the overt/crass black male game only works on black women. However, we can assume it's true and still proceed with the argument.) Though it seems that the average black's characteristics, which generally come at the expense of higher intelligence, still produce a net gain in fitness. Blacks tend towards the left half, so this is substantiated by data on IQ and sexual activity of adolescents.
However, this view of evolutionary success is short-sighted as it mistakenly defines the organism as the basic unit of natural selection. Instead, natural selection acts on genes, not the individual that holds them. Richard Dawkins explains this in his seminal work, The Selfish Gene. He was able to account for altruism and kin selection, the notion that "some organisms tend to exhibit strategies that favor the reproductive success of their relatives, even at a cost to their own survival and/or reproduction". In essence, genes act in their best interest to propagate, not necessarily what allows that specific organism to reproduce. So, it is correct to assert that a person's fitness is lowered by high-IQ social problems, but one must consider his genes and his "extended family" to fully gauge the impact of high-IQ social ineptitude.
The high-IQ individual does produce less offspring, but it's inconsequential if one accepts that ethnicity and race are biologically based. The high-IQ individual's genes are shared by those of his extended family. While he lacks the ability to attract women, there are alternative means to reproduce "his" genes. High-IQ individuals are generally the backbone of technological, medicinal, and social progress that increase longevity and leisure time, decrease critical illnesses, and undermine social upheaval.
It's ostensibly clear that these measures greatly help the rate of sexual encounters amongst his extended family, which from a gene-centered model would be equivalent to him reproducing himself. Societies and civilizations progress and spread, in geographic and population terms, through the innovation of high-IQ persons. Newton lived a celibate, ascetic existence, haunted by his extreme social phobia. Nonetheless, his work propelled technological advancement and helped the reproduction of England's citizens. Jonas Salk had three children, but allowed hundreds of thousands of other children to reproduce themselves.
By also noting the decrease in criminal activity and social conflict amongst high-IQ populations, it's clear high-IQ persons are in fact more successful than low-IQ persons who possess more "game". They're successful on a genetic level because their achievements help society (many times, this defines their extended family) grow.
21 comments:
Do we HBDers have to limit ourselves to a purely atheistic/genetic argument for value, though?
Couldn't we also argue that even if atheistic materialism is true that creating advanced civilizations is good in and of itself because humans value civilization as good?
You need to consider that more sexual partners often means fewer children. Especially nowadays with contraception and abortion.
From an evolutionary point of view, if you are able to seduce a lingerie model, you are basically doing the same thing as masturbating.
Also, I think "game" is overrated in a lot of respects. Most average guys without "game" are able to find a decent woman who is willing to marry them and provide children. So in a society where marriage is the norm, your typical guy without "game" is likely to do just fine.
Of course, in a sexually loose society, one would expect "game" to be more important. So yes, I would expect that black people would have better natural game than whites.
Another thing is that "game" as overrated as an art form. Simply if a guy isn't afraid to approach a lot of women and get rejected a lot, he can get plenty of girls.
So a little confidence and shamelessness is all that's necessary, in my opinion.
Few things bother me more than the liberal assertion that most HBDers are just single, impotent, sexually frustrated men looking for a way to get back at the blacks and low-IQ whites who took the women they wanted to have. Because it's really hard not to see it that way sometimes. At least this chart makes it seem like a problem that's general to the whole high-IQ population, though, and not just the math-loving Internet HBD people.
But I'm still left wondering why high IQ men in general seem to have a better time finding a woman and getting married as adults despite minimal sexual activity during their teenage years. Perhaps the HBD people are actually more attractive than they think but just have unrealistically high standards for women and can't bring themselves to love a woman who doesn't meet those standards perfectly.
Also, even for the people who do have success with women, it's hard to avoid the impression that they see it as an end in itself, and are not actually interested in marriage and having children. In other words they worship the same underclass behavior that they condemn in blacks, low-IQ whites, and Third World polygamist societies. How can I feel comfortable joining a movement like that? This is the main reason why I prefer to identify myself simply as a Republican and hide my associations with HBD.
"But I'm still left wondering why high IQ men in general seem to have a better time finding a woman and getting married as adults despite minimal sexual activity during their teenage years."
I have a hypothesis to offer. Actually a two-part hypothesis.
First, there's the phenomenon of positive feedback. If a guy doesn't succeed with women, he is likely to feel he is a loser, which will undermine his confidence and further reduce his chances of success. And the opposite is true too.
The second part of the hypothesis is that what girls value changes as they age. A typical 16 or 17 year old american girl doesn't put a lot of value on a guy who succeeds academically. She is more interested in the captain of the lacrosse team than the captain of the math team.
But a lot of girls change in their outlook as they reach their mid 20s. Many of those smart guys are making a good living and more women are looking for such a man.
Once a guy has met a few girls who are actually interested in him, his whole outlook can change overnight.
Anyway, that's my hypothesis.
"Also, even for the people who do have success with women, it's hard to avoid the impression that they see it as an end in itself, and are not actually interested in marriage and having children"
I agree 100%. As noted above, seducing a woman is fundamentally no different from masturbating.
"In other words they worship the same underclass behavior that they condemn in blacks, low-IQ whites, and Third World polygamist societies."
Except that at least the thugs are accomplishing something from an evolutionary perspective in that they actually father children.
I'm not sure whether your article is trying to look at HBD and sexual attraction in an evolutionary sense, or in the modern context?
I'm fascinated by the racial dating gap, but the reason for it is pretty simple:
you just have to explore the importance of intelligence in different environments. Intelligence evolved to a higher level in whites and asians due simply to the challenges of adjusting to the weather patterns of higher latitude, while africans didn't have those challenges.
So, as a tradeoff between high testosterone he-man societies v. lower testosterone nerdy societies, each race evolved to their own part of the spectrum based on what the environment demanded.
Audacious Epigone showed GSS data that men who have the fewest partners have the most children. So the guys who marry their one partner have the most children. Makes sense when you consider that religious people have more children. I think it is like 2.3 tfr. Blacks are about 2.1, and atheists about 1.6. Of course blacks and high IQ "nerdy" atheists are much smaller groups than religious people so they produce fewer smart kids in absolute numbers. The brainy atheist scientist may well have a smart but more religious sister who marries and has three kids. She likely carries enough smart genes that when combined a smart mate produces smart kids. Not too long ago, Razib mentioned that people tend to marry people near their own IQ like within 10 points approximately. So game may matter less with smarter people. Really smart women are not going to fall for game as much. They are more likely to be more reasonable and have more reasonable criteria. Razib has a post about liberalism among scientists. He also shows some data that younger scientists are more religious. Likely liberalism more than intelligence depresses births. It is hard to separate, but I seem to remember his making this connection as well.
More high IQ people need to see themselves and their children as the vastly important human capital and natural resource that they are. These folks would come closer to saving the planet by having a few more kids rather than trying to reduce their own carbon footprint.
"Once a guy has met a few girls who are actually interested in him, his whole outlook can change overnight."
Indeed, that's what happened with me about age 20. Once your confidence increases & you have that belief things change dramatically.
"A typical 16 or 17 year old american girl doesn't put a lot of value on a guy who succeeds academically. She is more interested in the captain of the lacrosse team than the captain of the math team."
Therein lies your problem.
You look at the typical 16 yr old girl, as does the captain of the math team. We wholly ignore the overweight glasses wearing 16 yr old math nerd girl who actually wants the captain of the math team above all. Meanwhile, the captain of the math team wants the head cheerleader along with a few other cheerleaders just for kicks.
husbands and wives have close IQs. High IQ men do suffer somewhat from a dearth of women in their IQ range. They suffer even more from the fact that high IQ women do not especially resemble what males idealize- modelesque sex goddesses.
"Meanwhile, the captain of the math team wants the head cheerleader along with a few other cheerleaders just for kicks."
It seems to me there's a difference between what he wants and what he will be content with. Anyway, I think the problem (such as it is) is more subtle than that.
The 17 year old captain of the math team hasn't gotten much positive feedback from girls and he feels uncomfortable approaching any girl, cheerleader or not.
"Therein lies your problem."
I don't really see it as a problem. It's pretty common for good students to be celibate during high school.
Anyway, our hypothetical nerdy guy needs only to meet 1 decent woman who is hot for him.
"High IQ men do suffer somewhat from a dearth of women in their IQ range."
I have a high IQ and haven't noticed that. Perhaps IQ is a bit like height. A smart woman is attracted to a man who is a bit smarter than her just like a tall girl wants a man who is a few inches taller than her.
Or perhaps men's extra intelligence tends to be more mathematical and spatial than women's. For example, my wife is roughly equal to me in verbal intelligence but I'm far better than her at math.
So we can have a perfectly intelligent conversation together even though I would probably score a decent amount higher than her on an IQ test.
"Do we HBDers have to limit ourselves to a purely atheistic/genetic argument for value, though?"
I don't want to, but by what other metric can one judge successful and unsuccessful species and subspecies? Any other way for humans is inherently subjective. Let's say "success" is defined as a society maximizing "happiness". Well what the hell is happiness?
For whole societies, only propagation of genes and spreading of that population matters for "success". That's why societies with loads of high-IQ people are the most "successful" (Europe/Asia).
"true that creating advanced civilizations is good in and of itself because humans value civilization as good?"
I believe I've argued that in a previous psot on subjective morality (or accepted it axiomatically). Actually, my argument would still work with that as the basic premise. Instead of defining "success" in terms of evolutionary fitness, do it in terms of the axiomatic notion of "civilization=good". Then proceed with my same exact argument and it still works (finally concluding high-IQ people are more important for "success" than high gamers or people that have a lot of children themselves).
This is naive group selectionism and it won't fly. The better explanation is that the genes for high IQ on average tend to produced individuals of moderately high IQ who are better at reproducing, but occasionally produces a few very high IQ individuals who have trouble reproducing. The advantage of producing moderately high IQ individuals outweighs the disadvantage of producing a few very high IQ individuals.
I think we have got so used to the artificial age segregation of institutionalized schooling that we overlook more natural situations. When you look at our own society 50 years ago, or other societies where men and women aren't so artificially age segregated, you quickly see that a smart 25 year old is far more attractive to a typical 16-17 year old girl than any guy her same age. The problem for most teen girls is that they have no contact with an appropriate pool of men. Maybe this is why their behavior seems irrational. In an age segregated environment, men who physically mature faster have an advantage competing against males who haven't fully developed yet. In effect they seem older and more successful and therefore more attractive. Much of that can and will be lost over five to ten years. If all women the world over choose older mates on average, you have to conclude it is for a reason. There is no society anywhere in which women on average marry men their own age or younger. 50 years ago, men 20-25 could date high school girls and everyone thought it was normal. My parents and their friends, relatives, cousins etc. fit this scenario. As soon as a young woman graduated high school, she often married a man five or more years older. These weren't low class losers. These men were engineers and college graduates, navy pilots etc. Some had their own small businesses or were working in a family business.
My point is men and women are looking for the best mate possible. Rational criteria for men looking for women are youth, beauty, and intelligence, in that order. Rational criteria for women are competitive success in the real world, intelligence, and looks in that order. Maybe women fall for game as an intuitive proxy for an attitude that could correlate with success. However the smarter she is, the less likely she is to fall for just the smell of success, and more likely to more rationally evaluate the evidence.
Also at the racehistory blog, there is a post that makes the point that Africans/African American men have higher estrogen, not higher testosterone. He evaluates the data and discusses it.
"This is naive group selectionism"
No it's KIN selection and it's valid because ethnic and racial groups share genes. As Dawkins shows, genes might act against the wishes of their organism if it means the gene will still propagate more frequently (the genes do so through closely related organisms).
Dawkins argues this in Selfish Gene.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selfish_gene#Many_phenomena_explained
"We wholly ignore the overweight glasses wearing 16 yr old math nerd girl."
I know some of these 16 year old math nerd girls. They are cute little asians. The white math nerd girls tend to be the late onset of puberty types. They are also thin and cute although they look more like girls than women.
The fat, early onset puberty types, with or without glasses, tend to be the dull ones, in math anyway.
The trouble with this is that it doesn't distinguish between "having sex" and "leaving offspring".
In evolutionary sense, having sex = leaving offspring much of the time. That is no longer the case. In fact, many of the high volume sexers are *not* leaving offspring, despite large amounts of sex. Evolution has not yet adjusted for the presence of ubiquitous effective contraception and legal abortion. Both of those impact dramatically the ability of any male to leave offspring despite how much sex he has.
We would need studies of how many offspring -- not how much sex -- people tend to have at various IQ levels, as well as the relative success of such offspring in reproducing themselves down the line (what thursday is pointing towards) to really get a grasp of this.
But the idea that blacks are more reproductively successful simply because they have an easier time in the pump and dump market is too simplistic, precisely because it doesn't actually take into account the offspring left, and the success of such offspring down the line.
If it were true, for example, that blacks were vastly more reproductively successful than high IQ whites and asians, places like Silicon Valley and Manhattan should be filled with Isaac Newton replicants. That's not actually happening. The highest educated (which would include many right enders) have the highest rates of marriage, and high rates of marital stability as well -- with children. Again, one would need to look at how such children are faring down the line compared with the ghetto spawn to see how things really look.
I don't see where you get your idea that high IQ people are doing better at kin selection in the modern world. How could that be the case when the white and Asian populations are shrinking? Yes, Newton increased the fitness of Englishmen but a modern day English scientist does no such thing. If he invents a cure for AIDs, missionaries and the UN will bring it to Africa and increase the fitness of a race in competition with that of the inventor. If he invents a better form of contraception it'll be used more by his high IQ kin and decrease fitness. Rising living standards in no way increases fitness in the modern world.
The simplest way to see where the trends are going is to measure who is having kids and who isn't. There's no silver lining there.
"From an evolutionary perspective (the only metric that actually matters), an organism's success/fitness is their ability to leave behind offspring."
What use is evolution to me? I'm already here, I don't have an upgrade option. Evolution is not the 'only metric that actually matters', in fact nothing 'actually matters' in itself. Only people care about stuff, and I for one don't care about population trends in this planet full of imbeciles. Serve them right if they bred themselves into retardation, I'll be gone long before that.
My opinion about race and game is, to be blunt, kinda straight outta the Jim Crow South - "ya gotta keep em separated".
In my years in the trenches, I've seen that, yes, indeed, black males have, on average, better game than whites or Asians. Black males are relatively fearless in approaching beautiful women - they don't seem to have much of the "am I good enough for her?" that wh/as have - blacks just dive right in, without even questioning themselves much. With my own eyes, I've watched blacks shrug off rejections that would crush wh/as males, I've watched black males bring up sex and sexual topics with a forthrightness that would embarrass most wh/as males , and I've watched regular displays of charm / humor / spontaneity from black males that would be high-end social skillz from a wh/as male.
I agree with Johnson's explanation for this : surviving the ice age had white/Asians evolve away from our boisterous animalistic chimpanzee roots, and toward more intelligent, introspective, hesitant, and self-conscious behavior.
The thing of it is, human females, also for the evolutionary reasons we all know about, are naturally drawn to confident, charming, funny, dominant, initiative-taking alpha males. So, when brought into an environment with black males, white and asian females will often be drawn to being charmed by and giving themselves to black males, who more demonstrate those traits.
But, in the long term, such relationships are often not good for wh/as females, or for wh/as society. Would you rather live in the UK or Nigeria, France or Senegal, Europe or Africa? Of course, Europe is cleaner, more healthy, and more pleasant in many ways - I would say, this is because of how evolution shaped whites. And, along with lower confidence and lower verbal charm, wh/as males also have more loyalty and empathy, less likelihood towards cheating, lying, and domestic violence than black males. A white/European society with lots of women giving birth to black men's babies is a society headed towards a loss of economic competence and an economic shrinkage kinda like, oh I don't know, maybe like the one we're seeing now; and many white women who date black men find themselves subtly dirtied and damaged in some way, when they grow up and are ready to actually find a stable [white] long-term partner.
In the end, bringing wh/as females around black males is like those situation where a non-indigenous flora or fauna are introduced to an eco-system (rats in Hawaii, bamboo in some parts of the tropical western hemisphere), and it runs wild, cuz the eco-system has no evolved defense for it. Yeah, sparks fly, wh/as females eat up black male's game, when around them - but "letting nature/evolution take its course" in this instance might not always be the best thing.
The median number of female partners for men who score 10 on the wordsum is the same as it is for men across the 5-9 range. Lower than that, and the median drops off. And 10s are indistinguishable from 7-9ers when it comes to marriage and divorce rates. Again, as you go down the wordsum scale, maladjustment (as measured by marriage rates) increases.
Of course, 10 approximates somewhere around an IQ of 125 and up, so it may be that those 3+ SDs above the mean have miniscule representation even among those receiving the highest possible score on the wordsum test.
@ AE:
I imagine Wordsum is an estimation of verbal IQ. The people in question here, fitting with the nerd stereotype, probably have high logical/mathematical IQ. So I odn't know if the Wordsum scores would encompass or reflect them accurately.
Enlightening post. This makes a great deal of sense. Even within the sphere of one's immediate family, high IQ should more often lead to financial success, which is heritable in modern society. If one has few children but creates a financial dynasty (like the Rockefellers or the Morgans) some members of that family will likely have greater social skills and reproduce profligately. More and more I have come to think of evolution as acting on individual genes rather than genomes and I think this is the best model since associated genes in one generation won't necessarily be correlated in the next due to meiosis and recombination.
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