Needless to say, such views have a track record for rather extreme evil.

Bullshit. By “a track record” you mean one example, because you don’t know any history. The actual track record of centuries of using language and culture as a Schelling point for state boundaries is a lot better than anything else that has been tried.

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It sounds pretty foolish to assign a probability to keeping your marriage together without taking into account the effects of your own deliberate maintenance of that marriage. This would be one of those situations where I’d throw out a-posteriori estimation and just try to optimize.

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It’s not just a Schelling fence, it’s that Russia’s current actions pattern-match on the German anschluss moves in Austria and Czechoslovakia in the 1930s. Russia does not view anything as dividing countries in accordance with citizens’ desires; they view it as Uniting the Motherland by Force If Necessary.

Needless to say, such views have a track record for rather extreme evil.

Now, was anyone worried about this prior to the actual military invasion? No: irredentist blood-and-soil nationalism has its pushers on the far-right in every country, and in some cases even in the mainstream right (though that’s generally a sign a country has become worryingly right-wing, in most Westerners’ eyes). The precise difference is that most of the time, blood-and-soil irredentism remains a ploy to stoke emotions and win votes for insane politicians from insane voters, in the context of a liberal democracy with open political debates and free speech. This time, that same ideology is coming from the mafia-don “president” of a country which commits state violence against political dissidents, has little free speech, and has much of its industry and media controlled by that same mafia-don and his comrades, and he has actually, factually deployed his army in service to that ideology.

In short, Putin is a fascist. Most countries have some fascists somewhere, but usually not in power and usually not capable of controlling public conversation. Putin is both in power and in control of the public conversation. Putin has deployed his armed forces to take territory on a blood-and-soil nationalist justification. He has then issued implicit threats to continue deploying his armed forces further away from his legal borders to take more territory on blood-and-soil nationalist grounds.

This has made a lot of people estimate the probability that Putin will start a nationalist land war in Eastern Europe as being fairly high — which is really, really bad.

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First, the website gives the general theory to Conservatives, so they can understand what it is talking about, without evidence. So note that when you say “I know a lefty woman who broke the rules,” the evidence supporting the theory (in the book) cites data which shows Leftists overall have more sexual partners, beginning at an earlier age, and shorter relationship durations. Show me a competing study demonstrating the opposite (and not conflating geography or other non-ideological variables with actual expressions of ideological preference), and then you have a debate.

There will always be exceptions to generalizations about humans in a world of billions of people, and that work doesn’t pretend to explain them all. It explains why two groups of thought coalesce, uniting disparate issues which appear unrelated, in a world which should seemingly contain a big blur of unlinked random preferences distributed randomly on many different issues. Yes not everybody fits perfectly, but the vast majority still fly off towards one side or the other of the ideological spectrum, these traits that attract people are exactly what you see in the study of reproductive strategies, and they are adaptive to variability in resource availability. In the book, we show a credible mechanism, from the genes involved, to how they structure the brains of ideologues, to how these structural differences produce the mindsets and behaviors you see in ideologues, to how most issue positions are optimized to best facilitate reproduction under conditions of resource excess or resource scarcity.

“Implying that Liberals don’t have an “in-group” loyalty misses whole spheres of Liberal thought and policy… I’d argue instead that Liberals like myself see everyone as our in-group.”

I will just point out, if resources snap, and the only people to eat are the people who form small groups and brain others to get resources, you will have difficulty, while a violent Special Forces A Team would not. True loyalty cannot be extended to everyone, because that implies an unwillingness to do unpleasant things to others, for those whom you are loyal to. I am capable of terrifying things for the ones I love, because I am loyal to them, and will do anything for them – even things which would repulse me and haunt me forever. You lack that, by your own description. That is in-group loyalty, it is by nature necessarily discriminating against outsiders, it is best exhibited if resources are scarce, and it is probably a disadvantage if resources are everywhere, since it promotes a pointless confrontationalism.

“Interesting that AC touts this as proven by all of history, but can’t bring up a single concrete historical example.”

Well, what is being discussed in what you quote occurred before known history, when these two opposite urges were probably burned into our primitive, barely human ancestors (these psychological programs predate any politics, having led to our ideologies only after intermingling with more modern developed intellects and governing structures). It is believed that our ancestors spread from a small population near a beach in Africa, likely numbering in the low thousands, out into new, uninhabited regions, and gradually colonized the entire globe. That those apex predators, migrating out into new, unpopulated ecosystems recently reclaimed from an ice age would have had little competitive stress would seem logical. So too, would the idea that some would have evolved behavioral predispositions to to continue to spread to avoid competition as populations became denser and resources were consumed to scarcity behind them. Afterward, as resources waxed and waned, it would probably have favored an adaptability.

That a long-form DRD4 gene is associated with migration, novelty-seeking, competitive drive, promiscuity, and liberalism would imply some linkage, and that it codes for a receptor whose transcription itself is regulated by resource availability and harshness would explain the adaptability.

As for history today, a graph of the rates of Conservative Policy Preferences would seem to follow, almost exactly, economic downturns in a graph of the Misery Index. That you can watch Conservative inclinations follow Economic Misery would further link them as programmed psychologies, designed to confront scarcity or abundance, and emerge in populations in response to each. Notice there is a prediction in there, for what will happen if our global economy collapses in the near future. We shall see, but I think the evidence clearly indicates that Liberalism isn’t so much thought out, as programmed to emerge when resources are free and conflict is consequently sparse. Reverse that, and Conservatism will return.

It isn’t that weird, if you think about it. Cut resources, and many will get grumpy, hostile, intolerant of out-groups, competitive, judgmental of social faux pas, demanding of group loyalty, less tolerant of out-groups, and fiercely protective of families, as they cling to the familiar in their family, take more of an interest in who their children associate/mate with, and ally against a harsh world outside. That is basically the same psychology you see in Conservatives, and in wolves. You don’t see it in gazelles, rabbits, lemmings, etc., and there is a reason for that.

I think this is one of the most fascinating concepts out there today, and could be of immense use in predicting what is to come. It both explains how events arise, as well as how they affect the future course of events, as produced by our natures.

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Even if it was, r/K selection theory describes species, and both liberals and conservatives are generally considered to be part of the same species and can even produce fertile offspring.

Yes, and even do so, upon occasion. I actually know a woman, faaaaaar lefty, who was married to a right-wing Republican for almost 50 years, until he died two years ago, and she’s still heartbroken over him. And the article linked contains some terrible generalizations about Liberal thought. (As well as some rather wrong generalizations about rabbits, which can be vicious.) Implying that Liberals don’t have an “in-group” loyalty misses whole spheres of Liberal thought and policy debate – the “environmental justice” movement alone I consider a strong argument against that line of rhetoric. I’d argue instead that Liberals like myself see everyone as our in-group. And I’d argue that in a more connected, more industrialized world, forming policy as if the United States and China and Peru are actually separate entities on different planets is quite silly and obsolete, and we could do much better as a single world economy and government. Maybe something on a federal system to allow some local autonomy, but coordinating on the global scale? We’re even groping toward such a system with the IMF, the UN, Interpol… halting and uncertain and sometimes ineffective progress, but the Articles of Confederation weren’t so effective either.
It’d be nice to see a conservative actually articulate the subtleties of Liberal thought the way I’ve seen Scott make sense of Reactionary thought, instead of deploying farms full of strawmen.

In addition, humans require the most parental investment of pretty much any species out there; if the r/K selection hypothesis were true, we would be absurdly K-selected and not r-selected at all.

To quote Anonymous Conservative:
“Or, as time goes on, the r-types may evolve strategies designed to see a few members persist during times of scarcity, so they may explode again once resources become plentiful.”
“Those among them who did the best from Darwin’s perspective, were those who adopted the most r-type strategy of free promiscuity, single parenting, and early age at first intercourse. They had no need for loyalty to in-group, and indeed, would have adopted a more selfish and cowardly psychology, to better disperse their genes, and serve their own self interests. They became our population’s r-type cohort, and even today, the gene which is associated with Liberalism is found in large numbers in migratory populations, even as social psychologists note that Liberals score highly in novelty seeking, such as preferring new and novel environments, or unusual foods.”
In other words: an r-strategist cohort fled from the advance of K-strategists.
“In between where the r-types fled to, and where the K-types were battling it out, there was likely a sort of geographical spectrum. At one end were the extreme r-types on the frontier, and at the other were the extreme K-types, battling with neighbors. But in the middle, were areas where some r-types were mingling with some K-types.”
Interesting that AC touts this as proven by all of history, but can’t bring up a single concrete historical example.

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In addition, humans require the most parental investment of pretty much any species out there; if the r/K selection hypothesis were true, we would be absurdly K-selected and not r-selected at all.

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I’m talking about an informal, non-political belief that men are just intractably difficult/inferior, and there’s nothing to be done about it except complain, endure, work around it, take charge of them and/or possibly leave.

I think I’ve seen some mild versions of it. I know three men who say their mothers were misandrist. One of them *might* have been influenced by feminism, and the other two almost certainly not. (I”m not being more specific about details for reasons of confidentiality.)

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