As always, fascinating and interesting. I'm especially curious about executive function being quite heritable -- that seems unlikely to me. Most of what executive function really is, from my understanding, is "self-regulation." My observation (and certainly my experience) has been that if you grow up in circumstances detrimental to learning this (high conflict/lots of trauma/lots of unpredictability) you are almost certainly *also* getting terrible parental modeling. But when you grow up and get out of the unpredictable, dangerous environment and are able to start choosing your own models, these skills are absolutely learnable. I have a long way to go, but someone who measured my executive function the week after I left my parents' house vs today would see at least 2-3 standard deviations worth of improvement. I am also thinking of a family I know, with four kids. Regardless of any excuses (including being able to pay for it themselves) the kids do not get smartphones until their 16th birthday, period. And those kids all have good attention spans, including the ability to sit and read books for hours -- as do 100% of the homeschooled, not-on-smartphones kids I know.
Am I perhaps misunderstanding "heritable" here? I usually understand it to mean "inherited in the biological sense and mostly out of a person's control".
Some of it is biological, for sure. I can see that in my own children.
I've always viewed it as, "How people look at the world around them." Some people don't care to know how things work, or why people do certain things, some people do. When you start to question things and begin to learn, it seems to foster more learning. People who don't have that initial “drive,” are far less likely to pick up on what's going on around them, or be able to make sense of it. I believe that behavior carries on the older they get.
That "drive" to know why, is what makes people take the necessary steps to become more intelligent and learn on their own.
I believe that’s why you will still see people who are in terrible living circumstances grow out of, and away from those people who are holding them back.
If someone has a thirst for knowledge, they’ll *find* a way to learn.
I'm not sure how you would separate this as a biological factor vs children learn everything by modeling so if their parents are curious, ask these questions, care to learn, investigate things, etc., the child will learn that as a natural part of life.
Heritable traits evince their heritability as one ages, too, because parental and peer influence bleeds out. That's why very bright children - while they may test fairly high on IQ as kids - don't reach their "adult" IQ usually until they've turned 20 and often 25.
I've had people send me a LOT of stuff on, for example, racial IQ gaps. The numbers seem pretty clear, but it's equally clear that Asian kids grow up in families with high expectations, are not allowed endless screentime, study many more hours than kids from other racial groups, etc., and all of those things *also* contribute to academic success.
It makes me really wish there was some way to see a longitudinal study of black and white kids raised by Asian parents with Asian standards and see what happened, LOL.
As you may have picked up, I tend to think differences in average IQs between groups is a more complex story than folk who like to cite it typically imply.
Helen is correct. Between my two boys there are differences. They have both grown up in the same house, with the same parents (me and my wife) yet they are different.
My first son is like me, he wasn't born, he was hatched and came out an engineer, complete with a prenatal toolset! 😂🤣 Even as a baby he was extremely aware of everything. He would cry when I put him in his baby swing. I could put a pacifier in his mouth and he was just chill out. Then, as soon as I turned around, he would spit it out! So, I put the pacifier back in his mouth, and watched him with a mirror. As soon as he could no longer see my eyes, he spit the pacifier out again -- to get me to come back over! He was still an infant, he couldn't walk yet.
My other son is much more of an artist and more spontaneous. They are separated by (3) years, but they have been drastically different at each age. It's *not* because we've treated them vastly different.
As they get older their differences are more noticeable. But it's cool because together they can do anything! 😉👉
Heritable just means you get it from your parents. It need not be genetic, but usually is.
What you are touching on is the difference between innate and mobilised capacity. Rudyard Lynch (Mr Whatifalthist on YouTube) points out that the Puritans ran the most effective broad social uplift program in history. This is because they not only had effective guardrails on behaviour but very well enforced ones. So even folk with relatively poor executive function were integrated into useful productivity and reasonable parenting.
One of the basic conundrums of society is folk with weak executive function need strong guardrails and folk with strong executive function find such guardrails annoyingly constraining. (The failure of libertarianism in a nutshell.)
That executive function appears to be almost entirely heritable (and I am relying on the scholarly literature here) does not at all imply that culture does not matter, nor that personal agency does not matter. I remember a friend telling me that her father, commenting on a young lad who was not all that bright, but who was doing notably better than his immediate peers, that he may have been somewhat limited in brains, but at least he was sensibly using what he had.
It was the importance of alcohol bans in remote Aboriginal communities for social and civil peace (I grew up in country Qld, so am familiar with these) that made me realise why sometimes what goes by the old-fashioned name of "paternalism" can matter in policy terms.
When the booze bans were lifted, those communities were riven by awful domestic and inter-tribal violence, so much so that the bans had to be re-imposed only weeks later.
I used to have some sympathy for libertarianism, and can still "speak libertarian", but outside economics, its policy ideas are often cock-eyed nonsense precisely because of the executive function issue Lorenzo raises in this piece.
...And this is how you know that the "elites" are evil people.
This is a very interesting essay, which is very WELL cited, meaning that you two are not the only people who understand this progression of human blight. This also means that many people in positions of power are well aware of this process as well.
This essay is critically important because it gets to the "why." Everyone knows that the poor side of town is not the place to hang out at night, but few stop to think about how it gets to that point.
Also, it seems that the systematic way in which this all plays out is self supporting. It's not only self supporting, it's self supporting by people (in relatively high societal positions) who don't understand their particular role(s) in the outcome.
The strangest part about all of this, for me, is the time aspect. Most of the people taking part in this scheme aren't going to be alive long enough to see the outcome realized. I suppose that's because of the disconnect between those carrying out the work, and those who understand the outcome. But it begs the question, who is really driving this?
Who is pushing for these outcomes that, usually, will not be achieved until long after they're dead?
Or, to add a bit of a twist, who is currently working to make these outcomes achievable in a MUCH shorter period of time (one person’s lifetime)? Akin to what we are seeing play out in front of our eyes.
*** Well, that is where I see the problem: with the exception of a fraction of personality disordered (who well may be the driving force, or perhaps initiators/theorists behind it all), the majority of these 'elites' sincerely believe 'they' are standing for good and the folks against their beliefs are evil. ***
The "fraction of the personality disordered" always tend to be those who end up in positions of power. They tend to be the sociopaths. The people who can "do what needs to be done" to bring about the outcomes they, or those controlling them, desire. Hayek covers this in depth.
In my mind the system of government supports (welfare) traps a lot of people who can't see a way forward, upward. My late wife who taught special ed in a Title 1 school had to teach how to use the bus and where the public library for their area was. While they were somewhat aware of the school library, the kids then could help their parents in using the library. She also held seminars on financial management for those parents helping many better manage budgets. I have always imagined that people really do aspire to better things. Education is critical to that.
Lorenzo has explained in a dystopian way, the dilemma of fiscal-sink locations. I saw Dr Carson's efforts to try for opportunity/enterprise zones as one way to improve areas. Nothing seemed to really happen and few even knew of the program. Apparently such notions have been around a long time ~ 70's but never seem to get much done. A GAO report in '82 detailed issues that likely persist even now. The inability to join business and community likely affects too many ricebowls including regulations. Besides many think business is evil while jobs are good.
Given the fiscal-sick view, the well off enjoy things they way they are. Except now crime arrives in the larger community affecting many more people. Addicts and mentally ill people live on the streets which some think is being kind?
Regime-curated dysfunction is rooted in competition for power. Dysfunction constrains the subaltern classes. A demoralised, undereducated, population is relatively easy to govern. Managing expectations downwards relieves pressure on the elite.
“Poor folk dispersed among middle-class folk tend to do better, because there are far more folk pursuing middle-class life strategies to model, while middle-class norms are mutually reinforcing. “
No, they just ruin your neighborhood. White or black, they’re ruinous. This may have once been true , section 8 housing is sold as such, but subsidies , single mommy action heroines and drugs make the poor “poor” wherever they go in 🇺🇸, they simply metastasize their degeneracy.
It is depressing. They’re not born ruined, not beyond saving. They’re getting a subsidy for their weaknesses. The Feds and State level offer H---- USA (Where I lived 11 years) subsidies to take the troublesome from surrounding upscale multimillion dollar properties towns where Celebrities X and Y (you’d know the X Y names) live. Unscrupulous landlords rent to the troublesome as they don’t live there, its the identical incentives you refer to happening at small scale on a wide scope.
They could be saved, but that would mean standards enforced by the community and frankly state intervention as regards drug dependency, not to mention the subsidies for single mothers drop to bare sustenance if the Father is in the home > I regard this last point as evil, and the critical breakdown. It is EVIL to force families to choose between Fathers and Food, but the American State does.
Everything you recommend can be true, was true, would be true again rapidly with Fathers present and a community of men to socially enforce standards on the other men of the neighborhood. How we do it... might not fit in the Law office or the Groves of Academe. If it saves lives and children, do let us handle our business. Strong working class communities save many, many lives. That they can hold off an Imperial State ...they did not. This was NJ BTW, which had the purest heroin in the world at the time, I doubt matters improve.
This essay is important for identifying top level and mid functionary policy as not misguided just ruthless, it’s important for many readers to understand the system. All I’ve done here is explain the incentives and results are comprehensive and what its like on the ground.
Do keep at it... you’re carrying an important message.
Under-policing fiscal sinks makes a grim sort of sense, but it’s too conspiratorial for my taste. Too many people would have to be in on the secret for such schemes to have gone unnoticed for so long. It seems to me that there are less Machiavellian explanations.
The most obvious is that the rich and powerful have the influence to ensure that their side of town gets more city and county resources of all kinds, including police presence.
In addition, for at least the last few decades, policing fiscal sinks areas runs the risk of violent interactions between officers and members of minority groups. Such incidents can quickly spark riots, especially given a hostile press that is wedded to the oppressor-oppressed narrative. Such a dynamic would provide plenty of incentive for cities to back away from aggressive law enforcement.
And how does the campaign to place soft-on-crime DAs into office fit in with the cost-benefit calculation that under-policing implies? In the U.S., financier George Soros has funded the political campaigns of a number of such DAs. His motivation doesn’t seem to have anything to do with writing off urban areas because they don’t provide significant tax revenues.
And what is the motivation of the DAs that he helps get elected? Surely it’s more likely to be anger against a society that they consider to be unjust than maximizing cost-benefit ratios.
Finally, if the decision to abandon fiscal sinks is all about money, it hasn’t worked very well. Homelessness and crime are driving taxpayers away from blue cities and states in the U.S.. At some point, wouldn’t the conspirators change their tactics if they were motivated by the bottom line and not by ideology?
Due to how feedback in government works, fiscal-sink localities tend to systematically lose out in budgeting, so service-allocation, decisions, including for policing. The pattern of under-policing fiscal sink localities is so common — you see it across the Americas and in Western Europe, to varying intensities — it has to come from the inherent incentives of government.
The pattern is most intense where either there is not much of a welfare state (so lack of tax revenue is the key feature of fiscal-sink localities) or policing decisions are local and the welfare state is funded at higher levels of government.
The anti-policing activism comes from very different motivations. It comes from a mixture of luxury beliefs + folk who do not bear the costs of their decisions + social alchemy theory (burn away the structures of oppression and the transformational future will emerge). Yes, it is mad, but it provides highly motivating senses of transcendence and meaning for lots of people.
Have deleted another valueless comment. Once again, pls don't lower the tone around here.
This is fascinating, thank you for posting it.
Thank you. Very disturbing image, but a sad reality everywhere.
As always, fascinating and interesting. I'm especially curious about executive function being quite heritable -- that seems unlikely to me. Most of what executive function really is, from my understanding, is "self-regulation." My observation (and certainly my experience) has been that if you grow up in circumstances detrimental to learning this (high conflict/lots of trauma/lots of unpredictability) you are almost certainly *also* getting terrible parental modeling. But when you grow up and get out of the unpredictable, dangerous environment and are able to start choosing your own models, these skills are absolutely learnable. I have a long way to go, but someone who measured my executive function the week after I left my parents' house vs today would see at least 2-3 standard deviations worth of improvement. I am also thinking of a family I know, with four kids. Regardless of any excuses (including being able to pay for it themselves) the kids do not get smartphones until their 16th birthday, period. And those kids all have good attention spans, including the ability to sit and read books for hours -- as do 100% of the homeschooled, not-on-smartphones kids I know.
Am I perhaps misunderstanding "heritable" here? I usually understand it to mean "inherited in the biological sense and mostly out of a person's control".
Some of it is biological, for sure. I can see that in my own children.
I've always viewed it as, "How people look at the world around them." Some people don't care to know how things work, or why people do certain things, some people do. When you start to question things and begin to learn, it seems to foster more learning. People who don't have that initial “drive,” are far less likely to pick up on what's going on around them, or be able to make sense of it. I believe that behavior carries on the older they get.
That "drive" to know why, is what makes people take the necessary steps to become more intelligent and learn on their own.
I believe that’s why you will still see people who are in terrible living circumstances grow out of, and away from those people who are holding them back.
If someone has a thirst for knowledge, they’ll *find* a way to learn.
I'm not sure how you would separate this as a biological factor vs children learn everything by modeling so if their parents are curious, ask these questions, care to learn, investigate things, etc., the child will learn that as a natural part of life.
Heritable traits evince their heritability as one ages, too, because parental and peer influence bleeds out. That's why very bright children - while they may test fairly high on IQ as kids - don't reach their "adult" IQ usually until they've turned 20 and often 25.
I've had people send me a LOT of stuff on, for example, racial IQ gaps. The numbers seem pretty clear, but it's equally clear that Asian kids grow up in families with high expectations, are not allowed endless screentime, study many more hours than kids from other racial groups, etc., and all of those things *also* contribute to academic success.
It makes me really wish there was some way to see a longitudinal study of black and white kids raised by Asian parents with Asian standards and see what happened, LOL.
As you may have picked up, I tend to think differences in average IQs between groups is a more complex story than folk who like to cite it typically imply.
As is so often the case, Thomas Sowell is both informative and clarifying on the matter. https://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/12/03/thomas-sowell-on-the-bell-curve/
Helen is correct. Between my two boys there are differences. They have both grown up in the same house, with the same parents (me and my wife) yet they are different.
My first son is like me, he wasn't born, he was hatched and came out an engineer, complete with a prenatal toolset! 😂🤣 Even as a baby he was extremely aware of everything. He would cry when I put him in his baby swing. I could put a pacifier in his mouth and he was just chill out. Then, as soon as I turned around, he would spit it out! So, I put the pacifier back in his mouth, and watched him with a mirror. As soon as he could no longer see my eyes, he spit the pacifier out again -- to get me to come back over! He was still an infant, he couldn't walk yet.
My other son is much more of an artist and more spontaneous. They are separated by (3) years, but they have been drastically different at each age. It's *not* because we've treated them vastly different.
As they get older their differences are more noticeable. But it's cool because together they can do anything! 😉👉
Heritable just means you get it from your parents. It need not be genetic, but usually is.
What you are touching on is the difference between innate and mobilised capacity. Rudyard Lynch (Mr Whatifalthist on YouTube) points out that the Puritans ran the most effective broad social uplift program in history. This is because they not only had effective guardrails on behaviour but very well enforced ones. So even folk with relatively poor executive function were integrated into useful productivity and reasonable parenting.
One of the basic conundrums of society is folk with weak executive function need strong guardrails and folk with strong executive function find such guardrails annoyingly constraining. (The failure of libertarianism in a nutshell.)
That executive function appears to be almost entirely heritable (and I am relying on the scholarly literature here) does not at all imply that culture does not matter, nor that personal agency does not matter. I remember a friend telling me that her father, commenting on a young lad who was not all that bright, but who was doing notably better than his immediate peers, that he may have been somewhat limited in brains, but at least he was sensibly using what he had.
It was the importance of alcohol bans in remote Aboriginal communities for social and civil peace (I grew up in country Qld, so am familiar with these) that made me realise why sometimes what goes by the old-fashioned name of "paternalism" can matter in policy terms.
When the booze bans were lifted, those communities were riven by awful domestic and inter-tribal violence, so much so that the bans had to be re-imposed only weeks later.
I used to have some sympathy for libertarianism, and can still "speak libertarian", but outside economics, its policy ideas are often cock-eyed nonsense precisely because of the executive function issue Lorenzo raises in this piece.
...And this is how you know that the "elites" are evil people.
This is a very interesting essay, which is very WELL cited, meaning that you two are not the only people who understand this progression of human blight. This also means that many people in positions of power are well aware of this process as well.
This essay is critically important because it gets to the "why." Everyone knows that the poor side of town is not the place to hang out at night, but few stop to think about how it gets to that point.
Also, it seems that the systematic way in which this all plays out is self supporting. It's not only self supporting, it's self supporting by people (in relatively high societal positions) who don't understand their particular role(s) in the outcome.
The strangest part about all of this, for me, is the time aspect. Most of the people taking part in this scheme aren't going to be alive long enough to see the outcome realized. I suppose that's because of the disconnect between those carrying out the work, and those who understand the outcome. But it begs the question, who is really driving this?
Who is pushing for these outcomes that, usually, will not be achieved until long after they're dead?
Or, to add a bit of a twist, who is currently working to make these outcomes achievable in a MUCH shorter period of time (one person’s lifetime)? Akin to what we are seeing play out in front of our eyes.
Quite.
They are people indeed. But their intentions are questionable.
*** Well, that is where I see the problem: with the exception of a fraction of personality disordered (who well may be the driving force, or perhaps initiators/theorists behind it all), the majority of these 'elites' sincerely believe 'they' are standing for good and the folks against their beliefs are evil. ***
The "fraction of the personality disordered" always tend to be those who end up in positions of power. They tend to be the sociopaths. The people who can "do what needs to be done" to bring about the outcomes they, or those controlling them, desire. Hayek covers this in depth.
https://ogre.substack.com/p/free-readers-digest-copy-of-the-road
I think the trouble is they tend not to see others than their social peers as people. They see the "Blacks"; the "Poor; etc. They do not see people.
In my mind the system of government supports (welfare) traps a lot of people who can't see a way forward, upward. My late wife who taught special ed in a Title 1 school had to teach how to use the bus and where the public library for their area was. While they were somewhat aware of the school library, the kids then could help their parents in using the library. She also held seminars on financial management for those parents helping many better manage budgets. I have always imagined that people really do aspire to better things. Education is critical to that.
Lorenzo has explained in a dystopian way, the dilemma of fiscal-sink locations. I saw Dr Carson's efforts to try for opportunity/enterprise zones as one way to improve areas. Nothing seemed to really happen and few even knew of the program. Apparently such notions have been around a long time ~ 70's but never seem to get much done. A GAO report in '82 detailed issues that likely persist even now. The inability to join business and community likely affects too many ricebowls including regulations. Besides many think business is evil while jobs are good.
Given the fiscal-sick view, the well off enjoy things they way they are. Except now crime arrives in the larger community affecting many more people. Addicts and mentally ill people live on the streets which some think is being kind?
Regime-curated dysfunction is rooted in competition for power. Dysfunction constrains the subaltern classes. A demoralised, undereducated, population is relatively easy to govern. Managing expectations downwards relieves pressure on the elite.
“Poor folk dispersed among middle-class folk tend to do better, because there are far more folk pursuing middle-class life strategies to model, while middle-class norms are mutually reinforcing. “
No, they just ruin your neighborhood. White or black, they’re ruinous. This may have once been true , section 8 housing is sold as such, but subsidies , single mommy action heroines and drugs make the poor “poor” wherever they go in 🇺🇸, they simply metastasize their degeneracy.
That’s a depressing thought. The current evidence on that strikes me as mixed.
It is depressing. They’re not born ruined, not beyond saving. They’re getting a subsidy for their weaknesses. The Feds and State level offer H---- USA (Where I lived 11 years) subsidies to take the troublesome from surrounding upscale multimillion dollar properties towns where Celebrities X and Y (you’d know the X Y names) live. Unscrupulous landlords rent to the troublesome as they don’t live there, its the identical incentives you refer to happening at small scale on a wide scope.
They could be saved, but that would mean standards enforced by the community and frankly state intervention as regards drug dependency, not to mention the subsidies for single mothers drop to bare sustenance if the Father is in the home > I regard this last point as evil, and the critical breakdown. It is EVIL to force families to choose between Fathers and Food, but the American State does.
Everything you recommend can be true, was true, would be true again rapidly with Fathers present and a community of men to socially enforce standards on the other men of the neighborhood. How we do it... might not fit in the Law office or the Groves of Academe. If it saves lives and children, do let us handle our business. Strong working class communities save many, many lives. That they can hold off an Imperial State ...they did not. This was NJ BTW, which had the purest heroin in the world at the time, I doubt matters improve.
This essay is important for identifying top level and mid functionary policy as not misguided just ruthless, it’s important for many readers to understand the system. All I’ve done here is explain the incentives and results are comprehensive and what its like on the ground.
Do keep at it... you’re carrying an important message.
Under-policing fiscal sinks makes a grim sort of sense, but it’s too conspiratorial for my taste. Too many people would have to be in on the secret for such schemes to have gone unnoticed for so long. It seems to me that there are less Machiavellian explanations.
The most obvious is that the rich and powerful have the influence to ensure that their side of town gets more city and county resources of all kinds, including police presence.
In addition, for at least the last few decades, policing fiscal sinks areas runs the risk of violent interactions between officers and members of minority groups. Such incidents can quickly spark riots, especially given a hostile press that is wedded to the oppressor-oppressed narrative. Such a dynamic would provide plenty of incentive for cities to back away from aggressive law enforcement.
And how does the campaign to place soft-on-crime DAs into office fit in with the cost-benefit calculation that under-policing implies? In the U.S., financier George Soros has funded the political campaigns of a number of such DAs. His motivation doesn’t seem to have anything to do with writing off urban areas because they don’t provide significant tax revenues.
And what is the motivation of the DAs that he helps get elected? Surely it’s more likely to be anger against a society that they consider to be unjust than maximizing cost-benefit ratios.
Finally, if the decision to abandon fiscal sinks is all about money, it hasn’t worked very well. Homelessness and crime are driving taxpayers away from blue cities and states in the U.S.. At some point, wouldn’t the conspirators change their tactics if they were motivated by the bottom line and not by ideology?
Due to how feedback in government works, fiscal-sink localities tend to systematically lose out in budgeting, so service-allocation, decisions, including for policing. The pattern of under-policing fiscal sink localities is so common — you see it across the Americas and in Western Europe, to varying intensities — it has to come from the inherent incentives of government.
The pattern is most intense where either there is not much of a welfare state (so lack of tax revenue is the key feature of fiscal-sink localities) or policing decisions are local and the welfare state is funded at higher levels of government.
The anti-policing activism comes from very different motivations. It comes from a mixture of luxury beliefs + folk who do not bear the costs of their decisions + social alchemy theory (burn away the structures of oppression and the transformational future will emerge). Yes, it is mad, but it provides highly motivating senses of transcendence and meaning for lots of people.