“As well try to predict the warlike or peaceful nature of the United Kingdom by looking at a topographical map of Great Britain”—such things are _done_ and _super-done_. Mountains (and difficult-to-cultivate steppes? Is this maybe something about pastoring vs. agriculture essentially?) predict average warlikeness fairly well. Who were the most peaceful Ancient Greeks? Thessalians. Why? Thessalia is, like, the only place in Greece vaguely resembling a grassland, where all other Greece is covered in hills. Caucasus is one major battleplace for centuries. Sco’land? You bet. The East seems to be generally more relaxed, but still less so in Tibet than in Eastern China. Early-Rome-time Italy? Relatively peaceful Greek colonies in the Southern coasts, war-like Etrusci and Gauls and, certainly not the least, Romans near Appenines and Alps. (Note that Rome is relatively far from the sea, compared to usual Greek colonies.)
“It also brings together a group of people with some pre-existing common characteristics: male, nerdy, often abrasive, not very successful, interested in speculation, high-systematizing”—can male be an artifact of nerdy, abrasive, and high-systematizing correlation with gender? After all, as you note, when a girl accepts all the other things she is usually easily accepted, and gender is only a proxy for predicting the qualities.
“I think America has better values than Pakistan does, but that doesn’t mean I want us invading them, let alone razing their culture to the ground and replacing it with our own”—why not? No, seriously. America invaded several Muslim (fundamentalist Muslim, not we-kinda-like-Quran-stop-accusing-us-of-ISIS Muslim) countries already anyway. Why not raze the fundamentalist culture to the ground and replace it with universal?
“except that “race” is a much more complicated concept than ethnicity”—W. H. A. T. Arm people with five-to-eight differential features, and you get a good proxy for all the six main races AND predictions for unclear cases. I’d like to see you try doing that to an ethnicity (without language cheat, which is known to backfire).
“As well try to predict the warlike or peaceful nature of the United Kingdom by looking at a topographical map of Great Britain”—such things are _done_ and _super-done_. Mountains (and difficult-to-cultivate steppes? Is this maybe something about pastoring vs. agriculture essentially?) predict average warlikeness fairly well. Who were the most peaceful Ancient Greeks? Thessalians. Why? Thessalia is, like, the only place in Greece vaguely resembling a grassland, where all other Greece is covered in hills. Caucasus is one major battleplace for centuries. Sco’land? You bet. The East seems to be generally more relaxed, but still less so in Tibet than in Eastern China. Early-Rome-time Italy? Relatively peaceful Greek colonies in the Southern coasts, war-like Etrusci and Gauls and, certainly not the least, Romans near Appenines and Alps. (Note that Rome is relatively far from the sea, compared to usual Greek colonies.)
“It also brings together a group of people with some pre-existing common characteristics: male, nerdy, often abrasive, not very successful, interested in speculation, high-systematizing”—can male be an artifact of nerdy, abrasive, and high-systematizing correlation with gender? After all, as you note, when a girl accepts all the other things she is usually easily accepted, and gender is only a proxy for predicting the qualities.
“I think America has better values than Pakistan does, but that doesn’t mean I want us invading them, let alone razing their culture to the ground and replacing it with our own”—why not? No, seriously. America invaded several Muslim (fundamentalist Muslim, not we-kinda-like-Quran-stop-accusing-us-of-ISIS Muslim) countries already anyway. Why not raze the fundamentalist culture to the ground and replace it with universal?
“except that “race” is a much more complicated concept than ethnicity”—W. H. A. T. Arm people with five-to-eight differential features, and you get a good proxy for all the six main races AND predictions for unclear cases. I’d like to see you try doing that to an ethnicity (without language cheat, which is known to backfire).