I was interested in your thoughts on this Article..

http://statsaholic.blogspot.com/2009/12/startling-new-research-shows-that.html

Given your comments on the importance of Gene Combinations in EGI, I’d especially be interested in your opinion on the last paragraph:

“One significant implication of this finding is that if an American Soldier faced off against an Iranian soldier in battle, on average it would actually be in the best genetic interests of White Americans if the Iranian was the one who emerged victorious and alive from the martial contest.”

Thank you.

Kin Based Altruistic Self-Sacrifice = KASSP
and
Ethnic Kin Based Self-Sacrifice = Ethnic KASSP.

The difference between KASSP and “Kin-based ASS” is that KASSP isn’t the behavior, but rather the biological (and possibly cultural) factors involving in making the behavior more likely to transpire in a particular individual.

EKASSP isn’t a very good acronym not that I think about it.

http://whiteamerica.us/index.php/blog/blog/kevin_macdonald_is_confused_about_ethnic_altruism/#23416

That is a fascinating idea, and it makes a lot of sense to me.

Does this mean that someone with a high Kin-based Altruistic Self Sacrifice Propensity (or KASSP) would also tend to have a high Ethnic Kin-based Altruistic Self Sacrifice Propensity (or EKASSP)?

Because if it does, it suggests that High EKASSP Whites could do more good if they concentrated on bestowing their ASS on Whites that have high KASSP.

Also it suggest that a evolution toward higher EKASSP could be going on with White Americans (not that the effect couldn’t be overwhelmed by concurrent cultural changes) due to the fact that the “Red States” have higher White Birthrates that would presumably correlate both with higher KASSP and higher EKASSP.

Rational thought mechanisms that may have to counter hard-wired instincts come into play in promoting EGI in complex environments in which the threats are more subtle, and are being masked by state actors who wish to reconcile majorities to their own dispossession.

The benefits of blog comments threads are clearly evident.

On another note, I’d like to comment on the whole idea of “a gene for altruism/self-sacrifice (ASS, no pun intended) that is selected against by ethnic altruism.”

I doubt that any such “gene” actually exists, and much of this anti-Salterian hot air is therefore irrelevant. ASS is likely a highly complex behavior, with both genetic and environmental/cultural components. Similar to “g” it is also likely that the genetic component of ASS derives from many genes acting in concert – a co-adapted gene complex, for example. With a nod to Occam’s Razor, it is probable that the mental modules responsible for ethnic ASS is the same as that for close kin ASS (which is why nation states often use blood-and-soil kin metaphors to motivate populations in times of war). No doubt that rational thought mechanisms are employed to shift from kin ASS to ethnic ASS, particularly when the threat is more subtle than outright warfare. All these traits are highly unlikely to be encoded by one, or a few. genes.

If correct, we have a behavior, partly cultural, the genetic component of which is derived from many genes distributed at varying frequencies in populations, and which “piggybacks” on kin altruism modified by “g” and rational thought. It would be very difficult to select out these traits in populations by the types of actions that Salter proposes, particularly when co-ethnics are more likely to share with you the same co-adapted gene complexes (and culture) than other races.

Now, true enough, harkening back to some of Hamilton’s ideas of invigorating “barbarians” reintroducing altruism to exhausted cosmopolitan populations -if true – suggests that gene complexes encoding ASS can alter in frequency over time. However, this would be due to mechanisms other than Salterism; and, indeed, the best way then to avoid this is to avoid the “exhausted cosmopolitanism” characterizing modern post-Western “multicultural” societies. Helping co-ethnics that share your “ASS complexes” is a better strategy for preserving the genetic component for altruism than is the promotion of selfish individualism which would have the exact opposite effect.

Taking into consideration the need to build social structures that reward ethnic ASS is a project that activists need to consider as well. We can structure our own environments, to the extent we are able, to “select for” what we wish. Sentient animals do have this advantage of the non-sentient (some of which are featherless bipeds).