This section contains a list of essays by Blithering Genius about Biological Realism and Evolution, which I consider to be the best material there is on the Internet for fully understanding Evolution.
- Debunking the Selfish Gene by T. K. Van Allen
This book debunks the Richard Dawkins' concept of the selfish gene, which situates biological purpose in genes, rather than the organism as a whole. The author also presents an alternative theory of biological purpose: the phenocentric view.
- Life is Intrinsically Violent
Violence is inescapable from life due to the war, disease, and famine that are inevitably caused when a population reaches its carrying capacity. Eliminating violence within a society simply pushes the violence outwards.
- Why Selfishness Always Beats Altruism
People will use and define "altruism" and "selfishness" in confusing ways, but the most coherent definition of "altruism" always loses to the most coherent definition of "selfishness", energetically, biologically, and psychologically.
- Pathological Altruism
Pathological Altruism is a phenomenon of collective irrationality caused by social delusion, and a virtue-signaling tragedy of the commons.
- Understanding Evolutionary Reasoning and why r/K Selection Theory is Bogus
r/K Selection Theory is fallacious and has no explanatory power. The second half of this essay gives a great explanation of how evolution actually works.
- Why Kin Selection Theory is Wrong
There is very little evidence of kin altruism in nature, other than parental care of offspring. Kin Altruism is a myth used to justify utopian ideologies.
- We Cannot Transcend Evolution
We can never escape from the evolutionary process that creates and maintains the human form. We can change the environment in which this process operates, but we cannot escape from the process itself.
- Bees are not Social, Debunking Altruism Myths, and the Organism Unit of Selection
An insight into bee biology. Moreover, bees are not altruistic, and the primary unit of selection for bees is the Queen since all genes flow through her.
- The Balance of Nature
Ecosystems and organisms always tend towards evolutionary stable states.
- Competition in Nature
Competition in Nature exists between individuals, types/populations, genes/traits, and social groups. This essay talks about each of them.
- A Framework for Memetic Theory
Memes can be divided into Traditions and Fashions / Cults, based on how they usually spread from one person to another.
- Adaptive Coherence
Genes and memes work together hand-in-hand, and different biologies will produce different kinds of societies.
- Family, Transfers of Energy, and Exchanges of Labor
How net energy flows from father to mother to children; and the evolution of exchanges of labor within human tribes (moral accounting systems).
- Game Theory & Society
An Introduction To Game Theory And How It Shapes Society.
- A Paradox of Rationality & Cooperation
A narrative about the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, and explaining the rationale for cooperating or defecting on each turn.
- Interactive Game: The Evolution of Trust
This fun Javascript game by Nicky Case is great for better understanding game theory.
More Topics on Biological Realism
- FAQs About Race Realism
Addressing the common misconceptions of race realism and human biodiversity from a biological realist perspective. Race realism is a scientific position that acknowledges evolutionary differences, does not imply racism, and does not oppose race-mixing.
- FAQs About Race Realism - JayMan's Blog
JayMan's FAQs page on Race Realism is more developed than my own, and answers a different set of questions.
- Understanding What Race Is and Isn't
A racial category is a statistical cluster of genes that tends to be characterized by a phenotype. Blithering Genius talks about the implications of this, and debunks myths about race.
- The Difference Between Race Realism and Race Idealism
- Why Most Racial Disparaties Are Probably Mostly Genetic
Blithering Genius argues why the environmental factors affecting racial disparaties are highly dependent on genes, especially since most people in the Modern West are not lacking any important environmental input to their development.
- Sex, Death, and Complexity
Sex, death and complexity are all linked. Not all complex systems are organized around reproductive bottlenecks. But some are, and you are one of them.
- Diet and Human Evolution 1
Cooking was a very important part of human evolution, and Blithering Genius talks about this, with some external links to reliable sources.
- Diet and Human Evolution 2
The key traits that set humans apart from other great apes (bipedalism, tool use, social organization, and a larger brain) are all linked to changes in the human diet and the evolution that resulted from it.
- Evolution and Its Implications on Morality
The simplest resolution to the conflicts between evolution and morality is to discard morality, but unfortunately it is easier for most people to reject the truth about life than to reject morality.
- Why DTT is Wrong (Video)
DTT makes false assumptions, contradicts historical patterns, and ignores population dynamics. There are better explanations for why wealthier countries currently lower fertility rates. (slideshow presentation version, recommended)
- Why DTT is Wrong (Text)
DTT makes false assumptions, contradicts historical patterns, and ignores population dynamics. There are better explanations for why wealthier countries currently lower fertility rates. (text version)
- Overpopulation and Conventional Ignorance
BG talks about the eventual consequences that will arise as the worldwide overpopulation continues to increase without any selective pressures, besides being able to have more kids than anybody else during modernity.
- FAQs About Overpopulation and Population Control
Everything that was thought impossible, but was possible, only seemed impossible until it actually happened. The same applies to Overpopulation and Neo-Malthusianism.
- Is China Naturally Authoritarian?
WhatIfAltHist explains why China has historically had Authoritarian tendencies due to its culture and geography, and it doesn't have anything to do with the country's massive population.
- Understanding Chinese Civilization
WhatIfAltHist describes how geography, culture, and history have affected Chinese Civilization.
- Understanding Indian Civilization Part I
WhatIfAltHist gives a lecture on the history, geography, and formation of India, as well as the Caste System, Buddhism, and more.
- Understanding Indian Civilization Part II
WhatIfAltHist continues lecturing about the History of the Indian subcontinent from the Mauryan Empire, including topics like Hinduism, the social structure, the Golden Age, the Muslim invasions, and India's colonial history.
- Explaining South-East Asian Civilizations
WhatIfAltHist describes how the prehistory, geography, cultural influences, state formations, colonialism, and modern history of South-East Asia.
- The Peopling of the Americas
After all the large game animals were hunted to extinction, the Native Americans were constantly fighting violent tribal wars with each other for several millenia before the Europeans colonized the Americas. The absence of prevalent disease causes populations to be limited by warfare instead, which greatly reduces the potential for creating more complex civilizations. The Native Americans also practiced extensive agriculture.
- More on Farming and Inheritance Systems – Part I: IQ - JayMan
- HumanBiologicalDiversity.com
This website contains a treasure trove of links to studies on Human Biological Diversity (HBD).
- Collection of Information Related to Population Genetics
- Human BioDiversity Fundamentals - JayMan
- The Genetics of Prehistory
WhatIfAltHist describes the evolution of modern humans, human migrations, and prehistorical human genetics.
- An overview of reasons for a genetic Black-White IQ gap - Gnew
- Why Human BioDiversity (HBD) - JayMan
- The Son Becomes the Father - JayMan
- Environmental Hereditarianism - JayMan
- Predictions on the Worldwide Distribution of Personality - JayMan
- "Ethnic Genetic Interests" Do Not Exist (Neither Does Group Selection) - JayMan
- IQ Ceilings and Recent Human Evolution - JayMan
- How Much Hard Evidence Do You Need? - JayMan
- More Behavioral Genetic Facts - JayMan
- All Human Behavioral Traits are Heritable - JayMan
- Conservatives are having more children than liberals - JayMan
If this trend continues, the genes of the conservatives will outbreed and replace those of the liberals, given enough time.
- Recent Human Evolution - Wikipedia
This interesting Wikipedia article talks about some ongoing selective pressures on the human genome.
- You're Probably a Eugenicist
Do you oppose incest? Do you think it's okay to abort fetuses that have severe birth defects? Do you support improving the general welfare and prosperity of humankind? If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, then you're a eugenicist.
- Eugenostate Versus Ethnostate
Ethnostates are motivated by misunderstanding what race really is and would fail to solve the problems of modernity. By comparison, a eugenostate would accomplish everything that a ethnostate could only dream of achieving.
- Why Georgism and Population Control Both Imply Each Other
Why you can't have one without the other, stated using step-by-step reasoning. The essay concludes that we should prioritize the promotion of which one would be easier to get into the Overton Window, in order to achieve the other as well.
- The Case Against Mass Immigration
Blithering Genius makes the case that mass immigration can break down social structures, cause cultural instability, weaken competitiveness with other countries, increase a country's dysgenics, increase unsustainable population growth, and create economic imbalances. BG also debunks several popular arguments in favor of mass immigration.
- If Pro-Immigration And Pro-Diversity Arguments Were Taken To Their Most Logical Conclusion
- The Thermodynamics of Globalization
Why the West has Mass Immigration, even though it causes so many problems.
- The End of American Greatness
The Founding of The United States Created a Country Ripe with Many Freedoms, Abundant Natural Resources, and Whose Location Away From Europe Selected For Innovative People Who Had to be looking for the best location to start their life. Those conditions have since deteriorated, in large part due to the Thermodynamics of Globalization.
- The Mathematical Reason You should have 9 Kids - Eternal Anglo
Truth and Knowledge
- Why It's So Difficult To Change People's Minds
Belief structures, echo chambers, mental heuristics, confirmation bias, apophrenia, censorship, rational ignorance, appeals to authority, identities, genetic differences, and the current culture all make it very difficult for people to change their minds.
- Street Epistemology
How to make people question and reflect on their beliefs in a polite, conversational style.
- The Hard Limits of Rational Persuasion
Brittonic Memetics explains the difficulty involved in transmitting hard-to-understand ideas, and some solutions for remedying this from the POV of the most ardent truth-seekers.
- The Science of Thinking
Veritasium explains why how our brains automate much of thinking by using heuristics and long-term memory, and the key to getting smarter is to force ourselves to think through things methodically step-by-step.
- The Four Things it Takes to be an Expert
Veritasium explains how repeated attempts, a valid consistent environment, timely feedback, and pushing the boundaries of our skills are the four steps to becoming an expert at anything.
- Introduction to Critical Thinking Playlist - Wireless Philosophy
This video series covers important logical concepts, formal and informal fallacies, and sources of confirmation bias. It is very engaging, and I highly recommend it.
- Puzzles, Problems, and Paradoxes Playlist - Wireless Philosophy
This video series covers some of the most popular puzzles in paradoxes and philosophy with some great explanations and visuals.
- Solving the Münchhausen Trilemma
StateOfTheNihil explains why foundationalism, coherentism, and infinitism all fails to solve the Münchhausen Trilemma, and introduces his own solution called Empirically-Grounded Coherentism.
- Understanding the Laws of Formal Logic
StateOfTheNihil explains how the Laws of Formal Logic are true, and how they are related to the practice of knowledge formation.
- State of the Nihil's Epistemology
StateOfTheNihil explains his Theory of Epistemology.
- The Illusion Of Truth
Veritasium explains how the frequency of patterns and stimuli affects how true or false we judge propositions to be in the world.
- What is Truth?
AntiCitizenX explains propositions, truth values, different types of logic, truth functions, theories of truth, and defends the pragmatic theory of truth.
Other Epistemology Topics
- The Extended Tetris Effect
All the sensory input that we intake everyday has major effects on our subconscious and view of the world, similar to the Tetris Effect.
- The Nature of Answering "How?" and "Why?"
Attempting to explain "Why" things are the way before understanding "How" reality works leads to propositions that can be dismissed by Hitchen's Razor and Russel's Teapot Analogy.
- Theory of Information / Knowledge Processing and Best Medium Practices for Communicating Ideas
Different mediums and different formats of presentation confer different advantages.
- Evaluating Tabula Rasa
There is no straight-forward answer to whether the mind is tabula rasa or not.
- Classifying fields of knowledge, based on which respective metaphysical existences each field pertains to
This is a classification scheme for knowledge that I came up with that I sometimes reference in my other blog pages, mainly because the terminology is convenient to use.
- The A Priori And A Posteriori Distinction
I get these two terms and their related words mixed up all the time, and yet they're frequently used to talk about philosophy, so I have this page to remind me of what they are and how the terminology words are related to each other.
- My Philosophy of Mathematics
I need to update this file, but I used to believe that mathematic ontologies are discovered, whereas the methods, visuals, proofs, and notations that are used for making them understandable in a way that makes sense to us are invented.
- Philosophy of Mathematics Discussion
An Interesting Discussion on Philosophy of Mathematics
- Free Will and Determinism
Defining Different Definitions of Free Will and Determinism, and arguing in favor of hard determinism.
- The Case for Reductive Physicalism
Mary's Room, p-Zombies, the Swampman, etc do not refute reductive physicalism. The Hard Problem of Consciousness is not a real problem.
- Philosophy and Catepillars
Philosophy has become more important than ever since modern technological society has caused unprecedented evolutionary mismatch.
- The Ultimate Questions
Blithering Genius proposes that the three ultimate questions are: What is the basis for Truth? What is the basis for Value? What is the basis for Agency?
- The Problem of Recognizing Problems
Since technology and evolutionary mismatch have greatly removed humans away from their ancestral environment, there are problems that humans are adapted at recognizing, and problems that humans fail to recognize since they are not adapted to solving them.
- Irrationality is the Root Problem
A description of some common modern examples of the hypocrisy of people who are willing to criticize other people's beliefs while clinging to their own delusions, followed by some insightful thoughts on cognition and value judgements.
- The Homunculus Fallacy and its Inverse
This post explains the Homunculus Fallacy and the Inverse Homunculus Fallacy, with examples of each. The author derives a lot of important conclusions about the nature of knowledge as he explains why the fallacies are invalid.
- The Five Types Of Paradoxes - Jan Misali
- What is Random? - VSauce
- What is NOT Random? - Veritasium
- Is Success Luck or Hard Work?
We tend to underestimate the role that luck plays in success, but much of it is out of our control, and a degree of hard work is necessary to get anywhere in life.
- Why Visual/Audible/Hands-On Learning is a Myth
Veritasium explains how there is no scientific evidence to prove that people can be categorized as visual, audible, or hands-on learners. If anything, all of those mediums of teaching should be used whenever they're appropriate for the situation, and the public's failure to realize this has diminished the quality of education worldwide.
- Sacculina: What is the Self?
An Interesting Thought Experiment on what is the Self.
I have a Linguistics BA, hence why I have a whole section dedicated to posts talking about language and linguistics.
- Sapir-Whorf, Conway's Law, and Semantics
An overview of semantics, corpus linguistics, Conway's Law, the bidirectional Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, and a list of Sapir-Whorf examples.
- A Better Way To Think About Morphological Typology
The traditional system for classifying language typology conflates many different morphological characteristics into a 1D or 2D spectrum that does not descriptively characterize language morphology. I explain the more modern approach to classifying language morphology, as well as my own similar system of parameters for classifying language morphology.
- Mathematical Methods for Modeling Phonetics & Phonology
This is the senior thesis I wrote for my Mathematics BS. Language phonology can be modeled using set theory, string theory, combinatoritcs, finite-state transducers, and calculus-based statistics.
- Maximum Entropy Phonotactics by Bruce Hayes and Colin Wilson
Maximum Enropy Phonotactics uses more advanced mathematics than Optimality Theory, but it also models language phonology with even greater accuracy.
- Heuristic Strategies for Identifying Etymology in English and Various Other Languages
Being able to recognize patterns in pronunciation, spelling, and grammar are characteristic of a language's sources of vocabulary can help one identify/predict the etymological origins of a language's lexicon with high accuracy.
- The Consequences of a Constructed Universal Auxiliary Language (Worldlang)
I explain the effects that a Universal Auxiliary Language would have on the world, why it's a better solution to language barriers than building universal translator devices, the practicality of undertaking the establishment of such a phenomenon, and what would be needed to make it happen.
- Advantages And Disadvantages To Logographic Writing Systems
Logographic writing systems draw their advantages from linking meanings to writing, rather than sounds to writing, as a phonetic writing system would. From a linguist's perspective, they both have their strengths, and neither is better than the other.
- The Best Way to Learn Logographic Writing Systems: Heisig's Method
Heisig's Method is the best way to learn Hanzi and Kanji since it separating the learning process into two phases: memorizing the characters themselves and their semantics, and learning how to pronounce the characters and their various connotations. I explain why this is the superior and most efficient approach.
- FAQs and Common Misconceptions About Language
- Playlist: The History and Evolution of the English Language
- The Lojban Wiki
- Ithkuil: A Philosophical Conlang That Eliminates Semantic Ambiguity
- Book Summary: Through the Language Glass
StateOfTheNihil gives a summary of the book, Through the Language Glass, which is probably worth reading, unless you have a linguistics degree.
Hello and welcome to my philosophy blog. My name is Zero Contradictions, and on this home page you will find links to my philosophical writings (highlighted in red), as well as links to posts from blogs written by different authors that have influenced my own philosophy (highlighted in blue), and links to videos, channels, or audio recordings (highlighted in green). If you click one of the links in the navigation bar, then the page will scroll down to that section, which will be in one of the three columns.