This was a good read. Any attempt to understand how one's adversaries think is always worthwhile. However, it would have been more convincing if (a) it had been proof read to remove numerous grammar and spelling mistakes (such as 'illicit' in place of 'elicit') and (b) had not attempted to claim that its arguments had a “scientific" basis, which is easily dismissed.
As regards spelling & grammar, the only section I read fully was the last part, ‘The Neocon’.
And yes, framing this as an ‘academic model’ would be better as far as I am concerned.
Marx’s claim to a scientific and hence indisputable and inevitable basis for his analysis of Capitalism I believe was inspired by Darwin’s contemporary and revolutionary theory of evolution. I myself studied mathematics, physics, chemistry and (a little) biology at school and these become less scientific and the level of complexity increases. I have never been able to accept psychology as a “science”, and especially not "evolutionary psychology", which is a hotbed of politically motivated opinion. Some branches of political philosophy do attempt to develop a logical and empirical basis, but any subject which largely hinges on subjectively guided action, ie human affairs, has an objective and quantifiable basis which is inherently far too complex to claim to be truly scientific.
That said, the word "scientific" can be said to have many somewhat separate meanings, depending on context. Nonetheless, when it is used in politics it is invariably an unjustified attempt to legitimise the argument as scientifically proven.
Psychology has been moving towards the genuinely scientific, and does now have more of a claim to being scientific than politics or economics, but we still know very little about how the human brain really works.
Perhaps the recent revolution in AI might be a big step towards a true understanding on how we all think. Can you even be sure this text was not generated by ChatGPT!).
I think you should look into the ethnic and ideological background of the original neocons.
Those that don’t fit that background are opportunists who want to wealth and power or useful idiots that share the manifest destiny fantasy of America and that is where their ultimate loyalty lies. Not so for the main ideological, political, and financial drivers behind the scenes.
The neolibs share mostly the same means and goals but use different justifications. Again the same for the background and ultimate goals applies here.
I looked into the origins of the mindset evolutionarily, that was the anthropology part.
If we focused our look onto the modern Neocons starting in the 1960s or so, i believe most of them would be of Jewish, German or Anglo-Saxon origin ethnically.
I believe however that personality types depend much more on culture than on ethnic origins, although I do not exclude correlations with the latter either.
Is this more or less the direction you were thinking toward?
Yes, although I would separate one group out as the progenitor and main driver of these ideas. The work by evolutionary psychologist Kevin MacDonald and his three part treatise on that group is very illuminating on the history that shaped their personality and the implications both positive and negative.
I think you will find his work matches much of what you said and applies uncannily to a great degree to that specific group.
The psycological description of the neocons is very well founded and the mapping between those traits and what we have observed in American foreign policy is almost perfect.
Prof. John Mearsheimer has a book titled The Great Delusion where he describes the reasons of the failed American foreign policy effort to export liberal democracies. In his book JM resorts to different mechanisms, but he cannot explain this double down that you describe here. Taking into account your aporoach The Great Delusion would be 95% correct.
GM. I find difficult to understand Haidt point, my first reaction was "lib professor says conservative are bad".
I.e., i find his definition of "conservatism/liberalism" inconsistent, because
(1) liberals too are stong in loyalty and disgust, simply the choose a different "our" and "gross" [of course, this is peak Schmitt and I know it], e.g. according to woke people a black person can do no crime, so Haidt is simply biased or
If one of this hypothesis is true, psycho-realism is no more, because it do not explain Neocon mentality more than every-person-in-power mentality - and of cours this means that an haegemonic China will behave exactly like the USA.
Moreover, i think realism has no fault, Mearsheimer has: he says that States want to survive and power is the only source of survival, than he is baffled that GAE keep expanding untill he got rekted by Russia? The Ukraine is peak realism.
That's the beauty of the scientific endeavor: If one stumbles upon a truth, then it does not matter who says it. Hence, Haidt being liberal or conservative, white or black, man or woman has no bearing on the truth content of his statement.
He did name the two value types liberal and conservative, which is contentious for sure, as it is politically tainted. However, you may as well name them type A and B, it does not really matter.
(1) is not entirely true: independent studies confirm that politically conservative people are indeed more sensitive to disgust, biologically and neurologically so. They tested this with E. Coli and other bacteria, smells and other means. So this is not merely a shift as you suggest, but a higher sensitivity in absolute terms.
(2) I am not familiar with Kurzban. However, I can agree with the point that dividing morality into the five dimensions chosen by Haidt and colleagues might not be sufficient.
Be all that as it may, what do you think about the profoundly irrational policies pursued in recent decades? The ones that fit so neatly with the Neocon archetype?
That are not irrational: if the default state of internal relations is anarchy and the default currency is power, to expand until a pushback is rational. The only irrational choice (China accession to the WTO) can be explained by Keynes101.
That said, my point on Haidt is not the dichotomy, but the definition of conservative: (paleo)conservative has the sovereignty doctrine that can be generalized and used to avoid conflicts, liberals are retard-loyal (e.g. Biden or "minority" crimes) so, as I said, (1) or both are loyal and capable to avoid conflicts and Haidt chose a "tainted" word or (2) "conservative" is a misnomer for "powerful people". As I said, I find Kurzban's theory of morality a greater argument about powerful people hypocrisy than Haidt's.
Ultimately I find all this unconvincing, but I say this with positivity and a desire to constructively point to a few things that are why I find it so, since I think your approach is good and I strongly agree that our best chance is in trying to approach geopolitics scientifically (Nils Melzer, former UN special rapporteur on torture, wrote a very good multidisciplinary paper "Biopsychosocial factors conducive to torture and ill-treatment". available on the UN website if you search, in my opinion seminal in making a case for this, because the old approach of ideas like "good" and "evil" driving statecraft have failed to accomplish their goals for biopsychosocial reasons). This is a rather long comment that could well be its own article, but I hope such in-depth critique is appreciated.
Personality no doubt has a role, but I think you unintentionally overlook the role of epigenetics in personality (scientists do too, since epigenetics is relatively new), which are environmentally influenced even if in part hereditary. I think human personality is better understood through science like biology and zoology than models of psychology, which do not seem firmly rooted in the study of nature, but more subjective and difficult to falsify.
I find it also worth mentioning from looking at one of the linked studies on intelligence, it measures it based on ability to perform cognitive tasks; this is a different approach from the one I'm more familiar with evolutionary anthropologists using, which prefers to look at the genes associated with educational attainment that correlate very strongly with intelligence while being able to be identified more objectively.
I am not saying one approach or the other to be better, rather saying intelligence can be complicated to measure confidently even if most don't realise it can be done, and although it is hereditary in a major way, we should not forget it is the phenotype that pushes the genotype to its limits and drives it evolution. In other words, the environment pushes genes to their limits and drives their evolution, thus the environment directly influences intelligence. This is basically what gene-culture coevolution is.
This is why groups that have specialised in trade tend toward having higher IQ and ability in mathematics, for example Igbo, Parsi, and Ashkenazim. On the other hand, there are cultures that do not fare as well in standard IQ tests like they do, but perform far better on other cognitive tasks, for example at accurately guessing the number of animals in a group at a glance, spatial tasks and the like (you can probably guess these are hunter-gatherers or their recently civilised descendants and not traders).
The above is from memory and providing citations would make this response take more time than it already has, but if interested, I've found anthropologist Peter Frost to be a consistently good source on these matters and excellent at providing citations, and I know a lot of this is from reading his work. Besides published scholarly work, he has a Substack and blog.
My point more than anything to do with intelligence per se is that it would be a mistake to act as if intelligence, because it is moderately to strongly hereditary, is out of our control and cannot be influenced. Even if it is strongly hereditary, that doesn't mean we don't have some ability to influence it environmentally.
In my opinion, it's silly to compare the Big Five to the Standard Model of physics, which is a description of nature supported by evidence and mathematics with very strong, objective explanatory power, although ironically I think the comparison also does not serve well since physics is facing a lot of issues these days as some like particle physicist Sabine Hossenfelder have written extensively on (highly recommend her books), so even if it were the Standard Model of psychology, it must have a lot of problems to be resolved in the future! As far as I know, it is not well-supported by any biological proofs.
After initial scepticism when I heard of it, I find history PhD Jim Penman's model of history through biology in describing all this much more convincing and to offer far more explanatory power while also having a solid foundation in science better than what I've seen psychologists offer, as he is able to cite research on human physiology regarding hormones and provide comparative examples in the other primates and mammals more broadly, looking at behaviour and physiological responses to form a hypothesis that explains why some societies succeed and outcompete other societies.
It is falsifiable, largely based in epigenetics and zoology, and seems quite excellent to me in its ability to predict behaviour in societies and how they change through time, and how this affects e.g. the proclivity toward war and violence (which neocons obviously possess), and economic success and decline.
Further, it explains much of what psychologists measure in the Big Five such as conscientiousness and openness to experience in terms of physiology and epigenetics. If it is correct, understanding these personality traits as simply "hereditary" is not only erroneous but misleading, dangerous really, because if they are epigenetic and based on environmental influences, parenting practices, and the other factors he goes into, then we can influence them, and if we think it's only genetic and out of our control, we risk influencing them poorly in all the wrong directions. Highly recommend giving the academic version of his "Biohistory" book a read, it's available for free on his website and well-cited.
Hi Emma, thank you for taking the time and writing that lengthy comment. Let me start by addressing the hereditary issue. I am acutely aware of the fact "hereditary" does not mean "carved in stone". I also put it in the article as follows:
"Nature and nurture interact with one another in complex ways and over both individual lifespans and generations. Some of the underlying mechanisms for this interaction are only starting to get unraveled, like epigenetics, early childhood brain wiring, and so on."
As you can see, I also precisely address epigenetics as you pointed out. However, the fact remains that even with the nature/nurture interaction, we barely observe any changes of what we inherit within a lifetime. Besides, the most influential environment that alters gene expression is that of early childhood, which we don't get to choose either, just as we don't get to choose our parents.
Thus, the main thesis I wanted to convey remains true: Once we reach adulthood, know our values and want to be a certain way, we are basically stuck with the inheritance, genetic or otherwise, that the gene-lottery gave us.
Perhaps one day, when we properly understand epigenetics, we can artificially switch genes on and off, but today is not that day.
As for the other sources: Thank you, I know some of them, will look into the others.
This was a good read. Any attempt to understand how one's adversaries think is always worthwhile. However, it would have been more convincing if (a) it had been proof read to remove numerous grammar and spelling mistakes (such as 'illicit' in place of 'elicit') and (b) had not attempted to claim that its arguments had a “scientific" basis, which is easily dismissed.
Thank you for your input. I went over the text again and corrected the typos.
As for the scientific basis, I am not sure what you mean. Are you questioning the scientific basis behind Realism or behind psychology as a field?
Perhaps you will find 'academic' model to be more fitting.
As regards spelling & grammar, the only section I read fully was the last part, ‘The Neocon’.
And yes, framing this as an ‘academic model’ would be better as far as I am concerned.
Marx’s claim to a scientific and hence indisputable and inevitable basis for his analysis of Capitalism I believe was inspired by Darwin’s contemporary and revolutionary theory of evolution. I myself studied mathematics, physics, chemistry and (a little) biology at school and these become less scientific and the level of complexity increases. I have never been able to accept psychology as a “science”, and especially not "evolutionary psychology", which is a hotbed of politically motivated opinion. Some branches of political philosophy do attempt to develop a logical and empirical basis, but any subject which largely hinges on subjectively guided action, ie human affairs, has an objective and quantifiable basis which is inherently far too complex to claim to be truly scientific.
That said, the word "scientific" can be said to have many somewhat separate meanings, depending on context. Nonetheless, when it is used in politics it is invariably an unjustified attempt to legitimise the argument as scientifically proven.
Psychology has been moving towards the genuinely scientific, and does now have more of a claim to being scientific than politics or economics, but we still know very little about how the human brain really works.
Perhaps the recent revolution in AI might be a big step towards a true understanding on how we all think. Can you even be sure this text was not generated by ChatGPT!).
To me, on average, human psychology is built on the construct of making the simple, complicated. It seems to be that simple.
I think you should look into the ethnic and ideological background of the original neocons.
Those that don’t fit that background are opportunists who want to wealth and power or useful idiots that share the manifest destiny fantasy of America and that is where their ultimate loyalty lies. Not so for the main ideological, political, and financial drivers behind the scenes.
The neolibs share mostly the same means and goals but use different justifications. Again the same for the background and ultimate goals applies here.
Thank you Phoenix for your comment.
I looked into the origins of the mindset evolutionarily, that was the anthropology part.
If we focused our look onto the modern Neocons starting in the 1960s or so, i believe most of them would be of Jewish, German or Anglo-Saxon origin ethnically.
I believe however that personality types depend much more on culture than on ethnic origins, although I do not exclude correlations with the latter either.
Is this more or less the direction you were thinking toward?
Yes, although I would separate one group out as the progenitor and main driver of these ideas. The work by evolutionary psychologist Kevin MacDonald and his three part treatise on that group is very illuminating on the history that shaped their personality and the implications both positive and negative.
I think you will find his work matches much of what you said and applies uncannily to a great degree to that specific group.
The psycological description of the neocons is very well founded and the mapping between those traits and what we have observed in American foreign policy is almost perfect.
Prof. John Mearsheimer has a book titled The Great Delusion where he describes the reasons of the failed American foreign policy effort to export liberal democracies. In his book JM resorts to different mechanisms, but he cannot explain this double down that you describe here. Taking into account your aporoach The Great Delusion would be 95% correct.
Great work and thanks for sharing.
GM. I find difficult to understand Haidt point, my first reaction was "lib professor says conservative are bad".
I.e., i find his definition of "conservatism/liberalism" inconsistent, because
(1) liberals too are stong in loyalty and disgust, simply the choose a different "our" and "gross" [of course, this is peak Schmitt and I know it], e.g. according to woke people a black person can do no crime, so Haidt is simply biased or
(2) "conservatism" is nothing more than Kurzban's a-morality (https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/the-evolved-functions-of-morality) and Haidt's argument should be seen as a "general theory of sociopathy success with extra step".
If one of this hypothesis is true, psycho-realism is no more, because it do not explain Neocon mentality more than every-person-in-power mentality - and of cours this means that an haegemonic China will behave exactly like the USA.
Moreover, i think realism has no fault, Mearsheimer has: he says that States want to survive and power is the only source of survival, than he is baffled that GAE keep expanding untill he got rekted by Russia? The Ukraine is peak realism.
That's the beauty of the scientific endeavor: If one stumbles upon a truth, then it does not matter who says it. Hence, Haidt being liberal or conservative, white or black, man or woman has no bearing on the truth content of his statement.
He did name the two value types liberal and conservative, which is contentious for sure, as it is politically tainted. However, you may as well name them type A and B, it does not really matter.
(1) is not entirely true: independent studies confirm that politically conservative people are indeed more sensitive to disgust, biologically and neurologically so. They tested this with E. Coli and other bacteria, smells and other means. So this is not merely a shift as you suggest, but a higher sensitivity in absolute terms.
(2) I am not familiar with Kurzban. However, I can agree with the point that dividing morality into the five dimensions chosen by Haidt and colleagues might not be sufficient.
Be all that as it may, what do you think about the profoundly irrational policies pursued in recent decades? The ones that fit so neatly with the Neocon archetype?
That are not irrational: if the default state of internal relations is anarchy and the default currency is power, to expand until a pushback is rational. The only irrational choice (China accession to the WTO) can be explained by Keynes101.
That said, my point on Haidt is not the dichotomy, but the definition of conservative: (paleo)conservative has the sovereignty doctrine that can be generalized and used to avoid conflicts, liberals are retard-loyal (e.g. Biden or "minority" crimes) so, as I said, (1) or both are loyal and capable to avoid conflicts and Haidt chose a "tainted" word or (2) "conservative" is a misnomer for "powerful people". As I said, I find Kurzban's theory of morality a greater argument about powerful people hypocrisy than Haidt's.
Ultimately I find all this unconvincing, but I say this with positivity and a desire to constructively point to a few things that are why I find it so, since I think your approach is good and I strongly agree that our best chance is in trying to approach geopolitics scientifically (Nils Melzer, former UN special rapporteur on torture, wrote a very good multidisciplinary paper "Biopsychosocial factors conducive to torture and ill-treatment". available on the UN website if you search, in my opinion seminal in making a case for this, because the old approach of ideas like "good" and "evil" driving statecraft have failed to accomplish their goals for biopsychosocial reasons). This is a rather long comment that could well be its own article, but I hope such in-depth critique is appreciated.
Personality no doubt has a role, but I think you unintentionally overlook the role of epigenetics in personality (scientists do too, since epigenetics is relatively new), which are environmentally influenced even if in part hereditary. I think human personality is better understood through science like biology and zoology than models of psychology, which do not seem firmly rooted in the study of nature, but more subjective and difficult to falsify.
I find it also worth mentioning from looking at one of the linked studies on intelligence, it measures it based on ability to perform cognitive tasks; this is a different approach from the one I'm more familiar with evolutionary anthropologists using, which prefers to look at the genes associated with educational attainment that correlate very strongly with intelligence while being able to be identified more objectively.
I am not saying one approach or the other to be better, rather saying intelligence can be complicated to measure confidently even if most don't realise it can be done, and although it is hereditary in a major way, we should not forget it is the phenotype that pushes the genotype to its limits and drives it evolution. In other words, the environment pushes genes to their limits and drives their evolution, thus the environment directly influences intelligence. This is basically what gene-culture coevolution is.
This is why groups that have specialised in trade tend toward having higher IQ and ability in mathematics, for example Igbo, Parsi, and Ashkenazim. On the other hand, there are cultures that do not fare as well in standard IQ tests like they do, but perform far better on other cognitive tasks, for example at accurately guessing the number of animals in a group at a glance, spatial tasks and the like (you can probably guess these are hunter-gatherers or their recently civilised descendants and not traders).
The above is from memory and providing citations would make this response take more time than it already has, but if interested, I've found anthropologist Peter Frost to be a consistently good source on these matters and excellent at providing citations, and I know a lot of this is from reading his work. Besides published scholarly work, he has a Substack and blog.
https://peterfrost.substack.com/
My point more than anything to do with intelligence per se is that it would be a mistake to act as if intelligence, because it is moderately to strongly hereditary, is out of our control and cannot be influenced. Even if it is strongly hereditary, that doesn't mean we don't have some ability to influence it environmentally.
In my opinion, it's silly to compare the Big Five to the Standard Model of physics, which is a description of nature supported by evidence and mathematics with very strong, objective explanatory power, although ironically I think the comparison also does not serve well since physics is facing a lot of issues these days as some like particle physicist Sabine Hossenfelder have written extensively on (highly recommend her books), so even if it were the Standard Model of psychology, it must have a lot of problems to be resolved in the future! As far as I know, it is not well-supported by any biological proofs.
After initial scepticism when I heard of it, I find history PhD Jim Penman's model of history through biology in describing all this much more convincing and to offer far more explanatory power while also having a solid foundation in science better than what I've seen psychologists offer, as he is able to cite research on human physiology regarding hormones and provide comparative examples in the other primates and mammals more broadly, looking at behaviour and physiological responses to form a hypothesis that explains why some societies succeed and outcompete other societies.
It is falsifiable, largely based in epigenetics and zoology, and seems quite excellent to me in its ability to predict behaviour in societies and how they change through time, and how this affects e.g. the proclivity toward war and violence (which neocons obviously possess), and economic success and decline.
Further, it explains much of what psychologists measure in the Big Five such as conscientiousness and openness to experience in terms of physiology and epigenetics. If it is correct, understanding these personality traits as simply "hereditary" is not only erroneous but misleading, dangerous really, because if they are epigenetic and based on environmental influences, parenting practices, and the other factors he goes into, then we can influence them, and if we think it's only genetic and out of our control, we risk influencing them poorly in all the wrong directions. Highly recommend giving the academic version of his "Biohistory" book a read, it's available for free on his website and well-cited.
https://biohistory.org/
Hi Emma, thank you for taking the time and writing that lengthy comment. Let me start by addressing the hereditary issue. I am acutely aware of the fact "hereditary" does not mean "carved in stone". I also put it in the article as follows:
"Nature and nurture interact with one another in complex ways and over both individual lifespans and generations. Some of the underlying mechanisms for this interaction are only starting to get unraveled, like epigenetics, early childhood brain wiring, and so on."
As you can see, I also precisely address epigenetics as you pointed out. However, the fact remains that even with the nature/nurture interaction, we barely observe any changes of what we inherit within a lifetime. Besides, the most influential environment that alters gene expression is that of early childhood, which we don't get to choose either, just as we don't get to choose our parents.
Thus, the main thesis I wanted to convey remains true: Once we reach adulthood, know our values and want to be a certain way, we are basically stuck with the inheritance, genetic or otherwise, that the gene-lottery gave us.
Perhaps one day, when we properly understand epigenetics, we can artificially switch genes on and off, but today is not that day.
As for the other sources: Thank you, I know some of them, will look into the others.
Cheers
Here I am, Josemiguel Nieto…