Category Archives: Human Biodiversity

Western Misunderstandings of ‘Individual Choice’

Posted by Giovanni Dannato on

Builds Upon: Driving Lessons For the Vehicle of Consciousness

Western Enlightenment culture idolizes the conscious human will.

Our entire culture is based on the assumption that every human is a conscious rational decision maker.

This is a deeply flawed understanding of what people really are.

The conscious is a junior partner to the subconscious and traditional peoples have always known this.
Most things people do are determined through instinct as it relates to survival and reproduction. Most conscious things we do are mere reactions to forces over which we have no control. Mystics such as Gurdjieff have repeatedly pointed out:

We don’t really do anything at all!

The naïve Western understanding of human nature creates a social environment in which advertisers have little responsibility for the memes they spread. Corporations can run rampant while following the letter of literal-minded laws.

Social movements driven by well-meaning idealism set up those they ‘help’ for even worse disaster because they don’t understand what people are. If only people are given the chance to exercise ‘free choice’ they tell themselves, the world can change!

They do not understand that human will is a weak and delicate thing that must be carefully cultivated and protected. Without special effort and training, we are just monkeys fighting over sex and bananas.
There is nothing self evident about will or rights. For the most part, these are unique, radical ideas that sprouted from Western Christianity.
If we go back and read the Bible, it doesn’t take long to figure out that Jesus’ ideas are totally new and confusing to nearly everyone he meets. If we examine the vast majority of people on Earth today, they have far more in common with typical Judeans of Jesus’ time than with naive educated Westerners.

Any traditional culture has mechanisms to protect their people from predatory influences whether through religion or animistic magical practices.
Without these mechanisms, Western civilizations malfunction on a massive scale.

We choose what to do, but we don’t choose what we want to do. “Attraction is not a choice” as it is formulated by pick up artists or anyone selling anything.

A strong society grounded in right ideas protects its people from those who would ‘hack’ their wills and parasitize them. Especially proles or women, most of whom are at best marginally capable of thinking for themselves.

Societies like our own that refuse to understand what people are inevitably stumble and falter.

The champions of capitalism relentlessly criticize communists for misunderstanding the basics of human nature, but barely 20 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the victors at the end of history find themselves little better off.
They too failed to understand what humans are.

Longevity Outliers: People To Watch

Posted by Giovanni Dannato on

HaastBill Haast died at about 100 1/2 years of age. He was old enough that it doesn’t seem like dumb luck or genes. He wasn’t even ill until the last few years of his life.

His life long career was running a snake venom bank. He was bitten by snakes 172 times. One of his fingers was withered away from the snake bites. He survived bites that were not supposed to be survivable. His blood was a medical treasure that was used successfully as an anti-venom on numerous occasions. He saved dozens of lives just by being maxed out with anti-bodies. Even better: he injected himself with snake venom for decades until his death.
More than a few, including Haast himself, supposed his unexpected longevity was because of, rather than in spite of his constant exposure to venom. The idea: venom was like a set of dumbells for his immune system that kept him resilient against all kinds of stressors well into old age. Where most of us might atrophy in the absence of significant challenges, Mr. Haast’s body seems to have kept up the fight long past his genetic expiration date.

As with with many complex systems, the workings of the human body might seem counter-intuitive and contradictory at first. But everything has a way of making sense once we understand the key principles.
If we are to understand these principles that determine our health and longevity we do well to keep our eye on outliers.
These people are likely candidates to become major movers and trend creators. Finding them is how one discovers undervalued ‘stocks’ in the world of ideas.

Alan KurzweilRay Kurzweil:
He’s a successful entrepeneur in speech recognition software. (He custom made some of his stuff for Stevie Wonder.) He takes a couple hundred supplements every day and undergoes vitamin injections at a longevity clinic. His plan: delay death and allow technology to give him progressively better life extensions until finally he can be uploaded into a machine with plenty of backups of himself should anything ever happen to the master copy.
He’s a guru in his own right and makes millions from giving talks every year. He’s in his sixties and going strong.

Ron Teeguarden:
A white American practitioner and merchant of Chinese herbalism in his sixties. This man has access to both detailed knowledge and the best herbs from the most exclusive sources.
If indeed this tradition is even a fraction as effective as it is purported to be, its effects must surely manifest in him.
This man stands out because his specialty is tonic herbs. He focuses on making healthy people healthier. He talks extensively about slowing aging and guarding against age related illness.

Kurzweil with his no-nonsense pills and anti-oxidant injections seems like a natural nemesis. I’m very interested to see how they(and their followers) will compare to one another in ‘performance.’ Time will surely tell.

Jack LaLanne:
Fitness guru who died at age 96.
He serves as a barometer to demonstrate the limits of exercise as a longevity strategy. His case demonstrates that there is a critical point where we hit the wall no matter how diligent we might be.
On the other hand, he nearly made it to the century mark without any history of centenarian family members and enjoyed a life more or less free of illness up to the day he died.

Winston Churchill:
Lived into his 90s despite disavowing physical fitness, smoking, drinking, and having an extremely high stress job as prime minister(the second time while in his 80s).
Demonstrates: Maybe genes are just that powerful, maybe a determined attitude towards life makes a huge difference.
OR the smoking and drinking in some sort of moderation served a similar role as snake venom by keeping his immune system constantly on its toes.
Also, maybe toxic substances in the blood stream within range of tolerance keeps otherwise lethal infections and parasites away? This would be especially important when we’re nearing that final wall established by genetics and could explain numerous nona and centenarian smokers/drinkers.(George Burns, Jeanne Calment)

The Bau Clan:
There’s a historically isolated town called Stoccareddo in Northern Italy where a few families of red haired Germans were intermarrying for centuries. The result is a town where everyone lives to be a centenarian.
Implications: Many possible eugenics programs have already been pursued. Just not intentionally. One could learn a lot about human genetic potential by searching out isolated communities.
Lesson: Inbreeding in a population is not necessarily bad. As with animal husbandry it potentially allows the distillation of desirable traits. Though any distillation might also magnify undesirable traits, OR the distillation of a desirable trait might have certain undesirable side effects.(Tay-Sachs?)
As with all traits, there are tradeoffs.

Calorie Restriction Adherents:
Though they follow the results of scientific experiments, they don’t necessarily grasp the principle they are relying on: extending the body’s resilience by keeping it on the defensive.
They’re the logical result of a mass society with its philosophy of micro-specialization. However, their strict focus makes them ideal outliers. Their philosophy is young and to my knowledge not many of them have yet reached advanced age.

I would invite commenters to contribute additional longevity outliers.

Could An Ancient Slave Driver Provide Better Healthcare Than Your Modern Doctor?

Posted by Giovanni Dannato on

Builds Upon: Epigenetic Effects of Malnutrition? ,
The System Gets What It Selects For

For a savvy buyer of horses in the 19th century, looking at the teeth was like reading rings on a tree stump. Though the horse might have been treated well in preparation for market, all the seasons of scarcity and abuse before would be evident.
The outer hair and skin can be tweaked, trimmed, polished, and flattered in countless ways.
The teeth however, reveal age, diet, an entire life history.

The 19th century horse buyer probably didn’t fully understand all the exact reasons why examining the mouth was so important.
But the incentives were correctly aligned: he had a direct self interest in purchasing the best horse possible.
Let’s suppose this man who bought the horse also ran a stagecoach business in which his horses were worked every day.
It was in his interests to keep his profit margins up by taking care of his money-generating horses as best as possible.

Now let’s consider a similar type of professional whose specialty is members of his own species: a slave driver.
Let’s take an overseer from the Ancient Mediterannean, the American South… you get the idea.
Obviously if the market was saturated in the aftermath of a conquest, slaves were probably treated brutally and worked to death with little care for their livelihood.
But let’s assume we’re looking at some time period where the supply of slaves was mainly determined by the slow human rate of human reproduction and their value was high.

Now let’s pretend for a moment that we’re an overseer.

Not only does our boss have a certain amount of work he wants done, we’re in direct competition with other overseers even if we’re meeting all the quotas. If the people we’re responsible for are sick and unproductive, the master isn’t likely to listen to our excuses if someone else consistently outperforms us.

All the incentives point to finding out what works, no matter what it takes.
If there isn’t any obvious way to meet our goals, we have to find a way.

Thus for anything short of advanced surgery, I’ve often wondered:
If I became ill, might a taskmaster do a better job of restoring me to health than a modern MD?
After all, a doctor doesn’t lose their job if they fail to solve the problem. They can just chalk it up to ‘natural causes’ and move on to the next patient.

—————–

1.
I’m not suggesting that the doctor is wrong or that he’s performed any kind of
malpractice.
Rather, beyond a certain level of inconvenience and difficulty, he will let nature take its course. The incentives for him to perform well are relatively weak.

The overseer doesn’t have this option. He’s forced to find clever ways to prevent natural causes from taking an undesirable course.

2.
The overseer has an opportunity to observe and interact with his subjects across a period of time. He can get to know all the important patterns and try out different solutions.

Meanwhile, a doctor usually gets called in when possibly preventable problems have snowballed into an emergency situation. There’s little time for experimentation. The doctor is forced to rely on a set of procedures taught to him by his guild. The patient is a stranger. He often has to make decisions with very little knowledge of the patient’s personal history.

3.
A modern doctor usually just has to patch people up well enough that they can work a desk job. Short cut medications that result in drowsiness and lethargy are acceptable solutions.

The taskmaster has to get his sick people back to physical labor at 100% capacity as quickly as possible.

4.
A doctor’s job is done when his treatments have been applied.

The taskmaster has to always be looking ways to sharpen his game. Even when his charges
are in perfect health and behaving well, it still behooves him to look for ways to get an
edge over his competitors. Always room to improve.

——————-

It’s occurred to me that in the dark recesses of historical libraries there must be
elaborate texts on the health and care of slaves. If we were to dig up some of these documents, might we not find valuable knowledge?

Previously, I mentioned a curious dentist who noticed an important pattern during his worldwide travels: that crooked teeth and poorly formed skeletal structure correlated with nutrient poor modern diets and especially with a lack of vitamins A and K.

Ought we to be surprised, then if an overseer from thousands of years ago looked into the mouths of modern children with braces and retainers and recognized instantly both the nature of the problem and how it could have been prevented?
Though the overseer would not have the remotest clue what a vitamin is, perhaps self interest might have pushed him to acquire an understanding of human health and physiology in some ways beyond that of modern health professionals.

If we were to compile the knowledge of ancient taskmasters into a modern health book, hide the nature of the original sources by publishing it under a single nondescript pseudonym, give it a faddish title, furnish it with a charismatic spokesperson… might it be a bestseller? A bestseller that would crash overnight if fans ever discovered where all that useful information really came from?

Epigenetic Effects of Malnutrition?

Posted by Giovanni Dannato on

Some years ago, I heard a tale of prison violence. Or rather, I heard of a prison that become much less violent after a seemingly trivial change: a more nutritious diet.

My first thought was that this seemed counterintuitive. I would have guessed that better nourished people are much more capable of being violent. So clearly there was an important principle at work that I had failed to understand.
Why would better food suddenly and dramatically cause a bunch of people with histories of violence to be less violent than before? Why with all these people crammed together, sharing the same space, would their habits ever change?

I think this problem must have simmered on a very far back burner until I started reading about epigenetics, the way environmental circumstances change how genes are expressed. I kept reading about all these creatures that undergo abrupt changes based on what is going on around them. Alpha males of various species go through visible physical changes to signal dominance as soon as they assume power. Certain hermaphroditic species change gender in response to their reproductive needs.

So why ought not human gene expression also be highly dependent on the circumstances of the environment? Surely this might explain the dramatic changes in behavior such as a sudden decrease in patterns of violent behavior.

After thinking about it a bit, I started to perceive patterns that seemed to make a lot more sense.

-What does a properly nourished person gain from behaving violently towards other people? Very little in proportion to the risks involved. Thus one might expect their body to shift hormones and activate instinctive protocols to discourage violence.

-If malnourished, perhaps the body perceives the threat of scarcity and starvation. Hormonal profile changes to encourage violent, selfish behavior. Instincts drive the individual to competition before cooperation.

Though few people actually starve in industrialized societies, millions starve for quality nutrients. Like a thirsty shipwreck survivor surrounded by ocean water, 1st world citizens often binge on empty calories only to find their cravings remain unabated.
Even in the midst of abundance, then, might their bodies perceive scarcity and shift survival strategy accordingly?
Might this help explain the seemingly illogical aggressive zero sum behavior that has become prevalent in industrialized nations?

When elderly people describe a more benevolent world in their youth, have they fallen victim to wishful nostalgia as we so often assume, or do they perceive very real epigenetic differences in the population?

Another thought in this vein: I’ve long been fascinated by the Weston A. Price foundation.
This is not to say I believe in or follow everything they say any more than I do a doctor’s advice just because of his big shot credentials…
But this organization’s analysis of diet, nutrition, and its link to the nature of human societies makes by far the most sense. The ever changing “food pyramid” promoted by “official” sources and the diet “plans” of profiteering health gurus are sad jokes in comparison to these people’s insights.

In their materials they make some important connections between malnutrition early in life and later developments.
It is already well known that children that are starved early on experience stunted growth, both physically and mentally.
But since Weston A. Price was a dentist, he looked at people’s teeth wherever in the world he went. He found that poorly formed teeth and facial structure had a high correlation with the prevalence of modern industrial diets, especially those in which children were deprived of vitamin A rich foods.

This really flipped a switch in my head: I’d grown up surrounded by kids with braces and retainers. It had always been just normal that some people genetically had bad teeth and mouths. No one thought about it.

Yet another aspect of my birth society was turned upside down when I realized that in fact the commonality of crooked teeth might not be normal, but an indicator of malnutrition on a societal, institutional level.
In my time teaching English in South Korea, I quickly saw why there is a prevalent stereotype of nearsighted, bucktoothed Asians. Because it’s true.
Their cuisine includes virtually no foods with vitamin A(Westerners at least have dairy) and both poor bone formation and poor eyesight are classic symptoms of vitamin A deficiency during childhood. Not only did my Korean students have crooked teeth, I’d roughly estimate about a quarter to a third of them were already wearing glasses before the age of 11. And I couldn’t tell how many were wearing contacts.

My point here: If childhood vitamin deficiency has permanent effects on the human body, might it also have permanent effects on an individual’s epigenetically determined behavioral predispositions. If so, might we have a better understanding why agricultural societies that rely on just a few monotonous or nutritionally incomplete staple foods tend to be tumultuous, violent, and selfish far beyond any level that makes sense?
In societies where even kings and millionaires might in some ways be malnourished, might they in part be acting out an instinctual protocol meant for conditions of scarcity?
If the bodies and subconscious instincts of most people perceived abundance, would rates of violence plummet just as in prisons and society as a whole become more cooperative in nature?

A final, and unpleasant speculation for this post:
Might people’s instinctual unfavorable reactions to ‘ugly’ people with poorly formed facial features and teeth go beyond reproductive strategy? Might it also be an inborn defense measure against those who are most likely to be predisposed to desperate measures?

Is IQ ‘Intelligence?’

Posted by Giovanni Dannato on

In standardized tests and on IQ tests we’re usually faced with problems that test our ability to quickly and accurately manipulate logic tokens, recognize patterns, and solve puzzles.

These tests are usually meant to be taken by “anyone.” In other words: nothing on the test can give the test-taker an advantage over any other.

Solution: Avoid problems with relevance to anything in the real world.

Perhaps this helps explain why “intelligent” in our society means an absentminded professor who can crunch equations with ease but is worthless at doing anything else.

Also, “anyone” means that the test can be administered to people who speak different languages or come from other cultures.

Solution: Use lots of spatial and visual oriented problems.

But what if you’re someone like me who forgets that the right hand of someone across from me is on my left?

The absentminded math professor types also tend to be good at the technical aspects of music. They seem to be strong in just this sort of spatial reasoning.

So is the test for “anyone” or is it just testing for people who fit the typical psychological profile of the people who made the test?

How well does recognizing patterns in shaded squares or deciphering gibberish languages translate into reasoning about less tangible things like concepts, ideas, and meanings?
Does testing for syntactic acrobatics predict aptitude in semantic understanding?

There is obviously some correlation between IQ and intelligence.
After all:
-Average IQ of different nations seems to correlate fairly well with the level of organization of those societies. (Abstract reasoning required for high levels of cooperation in a mass society?)
-High IQ groups such as Ashkenazi Jews, Parsees, or Brahmins highly overrepresented in science, art, music, politics, business and finance, theatre, literature, academia, prestigious professions such as medicine and law… Pretty much any activity that requires someone to think or be creative seems to have some correlation with IQ.

It would seem intelligent people are disproportionately represented amongst those with high IQ(probably why it is still used), but does high IQ actually indicate intelligence?

When I’ve heard people talk about meeting MENSA members or joining MENSA they’ve usually been unimpressed. I’ve heard tales of how the MENSA members were preoccupied with some number they had achieved but seemed to otherwise do very little to demonstrate any unusual ability to think or be creative.

Perhaps more telling is the story of the super elite high IQ associations. The members had achieved scores higher than those of the most famous scientists and they were in a position to associate more closely than most of those famous scientists ever could.

Unsurprisingly, these individuals set out some ambitious goals. Among which were:
-To challenge the power of a corrupt academia and eventually replace it.
-To attract the brightest people and develop their talents under the tutelage of their mental equals.
-To eventually have a world benevolently run by the brightest minds.

Not only did these groups fail in their objectives. Their unity devolved into the same sort of petty infighting one would expect from a group of average intelligence.
The group broke down. Some members left or were kicked out. Impotent splinter cells resulted. And as far as I know that’s pretty much how things have stayed.

So some of the highest IQ people in the world have succeeded in assembling yet the result was hardly a golden age.

Now it’s possible that IQ just indicates a certain potential. Thus maybe there’s a 1/500 chance of someone with 200 IQ of making a groundbreaking discovery.
While virtually zero chance of someone of average intelligence doing the same.
Likewise being an Ashkenazim doesn’t mean one must be accomplished in the creative or logical disciplines but it hugely increases the probability.

However, the story of High IQ clubs makes me think that IQ correlates somewhat with intelligence, but doesn’t come close to being an indicator of intelligence itself.
For instance:
The assumption that a high score on an IQ test would be enough of a commonality between the members to work together seamlessly on a project of world improvement.

Surely anyone truly intelligent would understand that humans are social animals that tend to associate based on visceral emotional responses to:
-race
-age
-gender
-economic class
-ugly or beautiful
-popularity
-commonality of experiences
-personal interests, hobbies
-nationality, culture of origin, language, dialect of language
-psychological profile
-hormonal profile
-clean or messy…

You get the idea.

The people who are better at IQ tests than anyone else were unable to reason through some very basic properties of human nature when trying to form a working organizational structure.

Such elementary shortcomings strongly suggest that IQ doesn’t mean what we think it means.
That at best it tests for ability to shuffle meaningless data around by rote.

And as it happens, most of the people who can think for themselves are better than average at shuffling around data. Because their process of reasoning inevitably involves working with data and drawing conclusions from it.

Now why would so many people with high IQs lack the ability to apply their logic skills to more than a few specific applications?

I will hearken back to a previous post; Human Husbandry.

Since the dawn of agriculture, kings, dictators, power elites have only ever shared their grain with people who are useful to them.
These power wielders have always wanted inventive people who can come up with shiny new weapons or methods of production to give them an edge over competing landlords.

Kings are comfortable with a harmless geek squad that takes orders and mindlessly delivers the goods, whether it be a catapult, a steam engine, or an i-phone. Paradoxically, the same people who can assemble such miraculous contraptions are blithely oblivious of the human suffering or social strife that might result from their creations.
Consider the shock and disbelief of some of the scientists who worked on the Manhattan project when their handiwork was unleashed on the world. Just what did they think they were doing? Did they think it was all just a game?

Meanwhile, there is the person who can apply to social structures and orthodox beliefs the same principles required to build a siege engine or electronic gadget. This person is no asset to the king but a threat to the state itself.

So is it any surprise that after generations of pyramidal civilization that the archetypal whiz kid almost seems to have certain neural pathways soldered shut? To be bright and capable but to mysteriously lack the complete and highest intelligence?

Genetic and Memetic Legacies

Posted by Giovanni Dannato on

Scientifically speaking, the purpose of life is to make babies and ensure that they have babies in turn.
This is our legacy.

But so too can our memes reproduce, recombine, and perpetuate themselves long after we’re dead.

Because our behaviors, impressions, and ideas are not easily tangible or measurable they tend to be relegated to the realm of things that are subjective and more or less unreal much like art, beauty, or meaning.

But consider a man who has fathered a family but cannot relate to his own children. He has succeeded genetically, but failed utterly to pass on his world view, his perspective, his memes to the next generation.
In a way, his flesh lives on but his mind and very soul perishes. And as many a father has found, there is something nightmarish in this.

Let’s also consider the great luminary who leaves behind no children but creates ideas that echo through the centuries.
Their spirit lives on, but their ideas are twisted by the great majority who do not have it in their nature to understand.
The greatest ideas accomplish little if there are not those of the right flesh to receive, understand, and enact them in subsequent generations.

I would suppose then, that a complete legacy is both genetic and memetic in nature?

Human Husbandry

Posted by Giovanni Dannato on

Builds Upon: The Myth of a Constant Humanity

In North Korea today, the food supply produced by the country’s agriculture is distributed by priority. The rulers keep the people most useful to them in the capital city and make sure they are fed. The further people live from the capital, generally the lower priority it is to feed them. Food spreads outward from the main distribution center in diminishing ripples. At the center there is food. On the margins there is famine.

From the origins of agriculture thousands of years ago, every person to amass stores of grain has been in a unique position to determine the future of the human race.

The first people to hoard their grain wouldn’t have shared with just anyone. Someone had to be sufficiently useful in some way to get a share of grain.
Once agriculture allowed human populations to grow beyond the natural carrying capacity of the environment, people effectively became domesticated livestock: There was no way for them to walk away and return to the wild.

If one was not useful enough to get sufficient shares of grain, the result was starvation and lack of necessary resources for reproduction.

The human livestock who proved useful to those who controlled the grain supply were fed well and enabled to reproduce.
Thus the art of human husbandry was born.

Human breeding projects produced breeds of dogs meant to accomplish specific tasks, whether pulling carts, digging up gophers, tracking down wild animals, herding sheep, or fetching downed birds from swamps.
Each breed is not only physically suited for their job. To some extent, the task they are meant to perform is written in their very instincts. What they are bred to do is what they naturally want to do.

We are naïve not to realize that humans in agricultural civilizations have developed in a way not dissimilar from dogs. While efforts to breed humans might not ever have been as focused and deliberate as with other forms of livestock, there has been strong selective pressures towards necessary functions.

The idea of humanity being universal is sadly mistaken. Certain kinds of people are going to show certain breed-specific tendencies no matter how they’re nurtured.

Puppies and wolf cubs diverge into dramatically different behavior patterns as soon as they start to grow beyond infancy. The puppies are sensitive to human body language, gestures, emotions from an early age. The wolf cubs become increasingly aggressive. They have no aptitude for understanding basic human gestures such as pointing at an object. Indeed, they lack the desire to make eye contact with people that comes naturally to domesticated dogs.

We humans who trace our ancestry through the grain fed civilizations should recognize that we inevitably have little in common with hunter gatherers.
Dogs and wolves in the wild share the same DNA. They are still the same species capable of interbreeding. Yet the way that DNA manifests shows greater differences than exists between many separate species.
We have only to see a wolf next to a basset hound or chihuahua to immediately perceive the stark differences between them.
Meanwhile, it takes some detailed knowledge to distinguish between entirely different species of birds and insects found in one’s own back yard.

It seems characteristic of domestication to exhibit a variety of traits wider than the natural world would ordinarily permit. Humans certainly follow this pattern. In the same high school, one can quickly see both a 300 pound varsity football player and 99 pound nerd walking down the same hallway.
If we stop and think, it’s really not so different than comparing an attack dog to a lap dog, a worker termite to a soldier termite. The football player is three times the size of the nerd.
If the nerd and the football player were to stand side by side, a visitor from another planet could be forgiven for assuming that they represented two different species. Certainly one would never see such immense physical differences in bands of humans living in the wild.

As with breeds of dog, the physical differences are only the beginning. Perhaps the most important difference between wolves and dogs is hormonal.
Since the 1950s, there’s been a breeding program in Russia that’s found it’s possible to breed all the signature traits of domesticated dogs into wild foxes merely by selecting for lower levels of aggression. This one criterion resulted in ability to read human body language, affection towards humans, tail wagging, splotched coats, curled tails, and floppy ears. A key variable that differed between aggressive and non-aggressive foxes: their natural levels of adrenaline. Thus, with a change in hormonal profile, a whole set of distinct traits specific to a breed results.

One might guess the football player and the nerd would have vastly different, perhaps even opposite hormonal profiles.
Perhaps increased testosterone in the football player tends to result in a higher level of aggression and a more gregarious, energetic personality.
The lower levels of testosterone in the nerd lead to lower aggression and more restrained, less energetic behavior.
Each of these breeds have had their function in thousands of years of agricultural societies. That’s why their genes have made it to the present day.
In each case someone at the top had a reason to give their ancestors shares of grain.

Let’s take an artist and a police officer.

The police officer who approaches your car with that certain slow confident swagger is typical of his breed. He’s blocky and strong, probably between 180 and 220 pounds depending on height. He has a tendency towards fat. His skin is coarse, his complexion tends toward ruddiness, his chin is likely strong. His face is squareish and thick, his hands heavy and powerful. He likely has a tendency to grow lots of body hair.
His personality is gregarious and strong. He’s not particularly sentimental and certainly not contemplative. He does what he’s supposed to do, even under lots of pressure. In fact, he thrives on the rush he gets from confrontations. His lifespan is not particularly long. He goes into quick decline in old age. Years of stress and aggression take their toll. His breed burns hot from an early age and therefore tends to burn out earlier than average.

The artist approaches cautiously and nervously. He weighs between 100 and 140 pounds. His physique is very slender and delicate. His body stores little fat and doesn’t have a whole lot of muscle tissue either. His skin is very smooth and his chin is probably weak. His face is slender with fine features. He tends to be more pale than other men. His fingers are tiny and nimble, perfect for accomplishing skilled work. He’s extremely sentimental and cares deeply about people suffering thousands of miles away. He is sensitive and spiritual but lacks the conviction and dominance to move beyond sentiment. He instinctually avoids physical risk and danger. Despite his physical frailty, his breed is frequently long lived. He matures later than most youths. His life flame is weak, but it endures.

Now let’s say you’re the ruler of an early city state in the Fertile Crescent.

You have a need for faithful guard dogs who will keep you in power. The solution is to cultivate a modified group of hunter types. You give some of your grain to strong aggressive men who excel at working in groups and are loyal to their masters. Within a few generations, you have a breed of archetypal police/soldiers. They grow stronger and larger than people in the wild. They’re too slow and heavy to hunt across long distances any more. Their abundant muscle tissue takes far too much energy to maintain outside of civilization. They need the master’s grain to survive.

You’ve found a few of your subjects can craft jewelry, sculptures and works of art. You give grain to the few who please you best. Before long, you’ve a class of vulnerable artists who would never survive without the physical protection they earn in exchange for their skills.

Though there are many breeds, most people under you live as tenant farmers working in your fields. They quickly become better adapted to a life of steady labor. They retain a good portion of the hunter gatherer’s attunement to nature and the seasons. Their frames are lean, efficient, and strong, made to endure, but lacking in the energy intensive bulk and power of the soldier.
They are able to survive famines and malnutrition.
If you’re the ruler, it’s only in your interests to allow them just enough to survive. This practice has selected for the hardiest specimens.
The more generations a civilization has relied upon agriculture, the more farmers continue to become more small and wiry so that any given task can be accomplished with the minimum possible energy investment. They can live off of a steady monotonous diet without storing much energy as fat. Their pancreases steadily enlarge as those who cannot survive on grains get weeded out across generations.

The balance of breeds is drastically shifting with the advent of industrialization.
The tenant farmer archetype is dwindling as the bedrock of the human race in industrialized nations. The breed of the urbanite is ascendant. In a society of strangers where increasingly many people live in crowded areas, those who can promote themselves and their skills best reliably secure mates and sufficient shares of grain to survive and raise children. Hard or reliable work only matters insofar as one is capable of advertising it.
The urbanite enjoys a middling lifespan. They frequently have a small to average frame 120-160 pounds. Their skeletal/facial structure tends to be finer and more delicate. A lack of selection for physicality has filtered down through the generations. They have lost nearly all of the hunter gatherer’s attunement to the natural world. The city is a safe zone they have no reason to ever leave. They are bred to make their way in the world by talking, bargaining, negotiating. They are never truly happy if they’re not talking or interacting. They have an eye for decoration, clothing, and colors. They are driven by emotions and sentiment. They are aggressive and competitive by nature but lack the contemplative nature required to understand what it is they do or why. This lack of self-reflection allows them to be merciless without pangs of conscience. They need to be this way to effectively fight their way to the top of a crowd and then take full advantage. Urbanites are fad followers, shifting their loyalties all the time. They can thus weed out those who can’t keep up with the trends. As with all breeds, they have ways of establishing who is sufficiently aligned with them to be included in their group.

If I had to guess, I would say I best fit the profile of the tenant farmer. I’m slender, but built for strength and endurance. Yet I lack the explosive power of a soldier termite.
I enjoy physical labor that urbanites and artists avoid like the plague. I pick up on the rhythms of living things and pay attention to the phases of the moon. I’m not a big talker and easily lapse into blissful contemplation if doing a monotonous task in the outdoors.
I avoid stressful situations and enjoy a steady, relaxed lifestyle that’s not too eventful…

The truth of human husbandry is obvious if one spends even a few minutes looking at a crowd of humans or thinking about the people they’ve known throughout their life.
Certain types of people tend to have similar tendencies, interests, food preferences with very few exceptions.
If one reflects on it: Perhaps caste based societies are not quite as tyrannical as we would ordinarily suppose.
If every breed is bred and sorted according to their natural proclivities across generations, is it perhaps a stable and equitable system for most people despite the lack of mobility.

Perhaps the most effective demonstration is to look at populations in the industrialized world who are but a few generations removed from tribal/hunter gatherer existence. Whether descendants of West African slaves, Pacific Islanders, Native Americans, or Australian Aborigines the differences are unmistakable:
-A pancreas that explodes like a water balloon on a diet consisting primarily of refined starches.
-A tendency to easily store fat combined with a tendency to gorge themselves when food is abundant. (adaptation for dry seasons/famines/general scarcity).
-Superior power, speed, coordination, and/or endurance in comparison to more heavily domesticated humans. A wild or more wild existence has selected heavily for these traits.
-Poor abstract reasoning skills. Capacity for heavy abstraction, logic is mostly a trait of domesticated humans. Strong sense of intuition allows their communities develop sophisticated customs and systems of resource management without deliberate planning or rationalizing. Some of this sense has been bred out of domesticated humans.
-Unphilosophical, generally pursue pleasurable stimuli without too much thought. Easily become addicted to drugs. Are quick to engage in behaviors that hurt mass society as a whole for their own immediate benefit. They are not well adapted participate in a larger collective body such as a city or nation. Whenever nation states are formed from peoples of less domesticated bloodlines, the result is almost without exception disastrous.
-Natural attunement to dancing and rhythm. Have a natural feel for instinctive human courtship rituals. Often charismatic and assertive. Meanwhile, the longer a population of domesticated humans has relied on arranged marriages, the more natural courtship behaviors have been bred out of them.
-A tendency to be more physically aggressive and more easily resort to force during disputes.

It has been the custom of Western industrialized societies to promote the belief that humans are determined only by environment and nurture when even the most cursory examination reveals that such views are wrong.
Most of us know better, but we want to believe that everyone is fundamentally equal and has an equal shot. We fail to think about the fundamental differences between strains of humans because the implications are frightening and lead to frightening places.

Yet we cannot ignore these differences forever. Humans have selectively bred plants, animals, and other humans for thousands of years.

At the present time, there are technologies developing that will eventually allow much more deliberate modifications to the genetic makeup of living things, including that of humans.
To fail to understand the truth of human husbandry at this critical time in history is to go into hiding and denial. The human races as we know them will not last.