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gwern comments on This Failing Earth - Less Wrong
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And you shouldn't, too. Ancient India tried both intelligence and warriors, infact it tried a 4-fold caste system.
It might have worked for a while, and probably did. Indian monuments and works of art, literature and philosophy from that period are good. Faith differences were resolved by dialogue and not by the sword. Trade happened with Egypt and China. Damascus steel originated actually in India. Surgeries took place and the traditional texts prescribed rituals for 120 yrs of life.
And some where in the past, entropy took over. Too many different tribes with different ideas came and the system could not handle them. Education became the ability to articulate properly the texts that were already in place and little new knowledge was added. The prosperity that was previously present was lost, slowly, but surely.
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OK, so India shows us one way which doesn't work so well. What should we make of other examples?
I'm sure everyone here has read at least a little about the Ashkenazi researches. What did the Jewish ghettos get right? Was the selection pressure too weak in Indian society in general? Or was shooting for multiple targets a bad thing - maybe the Sudras mixed too much with Brahmins and the net effect was nil.
Respectfully, you're making a very big assumption there - that anything at all was "got right".
Before concluding that the eugenic forces the molded the Ashkenazi were beneficial, you should ask yourself: What did they lose?
It's very rare indeed that a population-level genetic change can take place without some tradeoffs being made.
(Well, maybe I overestimated how much people know about the Ashkenazi.)
What they got was a ridiculously high average IQ (I've seen between 120 and 130). What the population paid for this was a ridiculously high rate of diseases related to the central nervous system.