Leftism and Genetic Mutations, By Brian Simpson

Joseph Bronski and Matthew Archer argued that the rise of Leftism since 1960 is a product of the accumulation of harmful genetic mutations in human gene pool. Their mutational load hypothesis is that:

1.Mutational pressure has increased over the last sixty years.

2.Mutational load causes Leftist political beliefs.

Noah Carl and Bo Winegard, in the material below, are critical of the idea that Leftism arises from dysgenic mutations. They accept assumption number 1, but are sceptical about assumption number 2, that the mutational load causes Leftism. Assumption 1 is supported by numerous studies linking Leftism with mental illnesses, especially among Leftist women. However, they point out that IQ, a sacred thing for the human biodiversity crowd, is higher for Leftists, so they reject the hypothesis that mutational load causes Leftism.

However, my take on this is that even granting the IQ issue, this is not the core issue of concern. A higher IQ may have arisen from cultural selection, that the elites have only allowed in the Left, so that people adopt Left beliefs to get jobs, such as at universities, and they breed. The core issue though is mental illnesses. IQ does not matter if someone is of high IQ, if they are fundamentally crazy, and out of tune with reality. IQ is about school intelligence, not real-world stuff, as indicated by people in Africa having low IQs by these measures, but still operating in their societies. The dysfunctions and dangers from Leftism come from the mental illness aspects which should be the core elements of this debate, not IQ. It is long time for racial realists to get over their IQ fetish!

Further, mental illness is only a necessary condition for the growth of Leftism; the cultural and political conditions, how Leftism serves the will to power of globalist elites, is much more important than biological concerns.

https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/can-mutation-load-explain-the-rise

"In a recent article in Aporia, Joseph Bronski and Matthew Archer argued that the rise of leftism since 1960 is partly explained by mutational pressure – the accumulation of harmful mutations in the gene pool. Elsewhere, Bronski has gone as far as suggesting that "Western political change is solely due to evolutionary pressure" – by which he means a combination of mutational pressure (favouring leftism) and selection pressure (favouring rightism).¹

This is certainly an interesting and provocative thesis. If true, it would upend our understanding of changes in the political landscape over the last sixty years. But is it true? We are not convinced. In the remainder of this article, we will lay out reasons why.

The mutational load hypothesis makes two key assumptions:

1. Mutational pressure has increased over the last sixty years (due to a combination of rising parental age and declining infant mortality).

2 Mutational load causes leftist political beliefs.

The first assumption seems highly plausible. The second, however, demands closer scrutiny. As evidence in favour of the assumption, Bronski points out that leftism is correlated with paternal age and mental illness – two potential proxies for mutational load. A major problem with his theory is that there's another potential proxy for mutational load, namely IQ, which is positively correlated with certain leftist beliefs.

What makes IQ a potential proxy for mutational load? Well, it is positively associated with indicators of physiological integrity such as grip strength and longevity. It is negatively associated with indicators of developmental instability such as various measures of fluctuating asymmetry. And individual differences in IQ are partly explained by rare, presumably deleterious, mutations.

Bronski conceptualises leftism in terms of one's views on three issues: women, homosexuals and racial minorities. He hypothesises that individuals with more "leftist" (i.e., less socially conservative) views on these issues have higher mutational load. Since IQ is an obvious potential proxy for mutational load, his theory predicts that such views should be negatively correlated with IQ. The problem is that studies consistently find the exact opposite.

A 2015 meta-analysis analysed 67 studies and found an average correlation between IQ and social conservatism of r = –.20. The relationship between IQ and political beliefs does vary depending on the issue: measures of fiscal conservatism are often associated with higher IQ. Yet measures of non-traditional attitudes to women, homosexuals and racial minorities are invariably associated with lower IQ. They are even associated with DNA-based predictors, suggesting that IQ actually causes such attitudes.

To take just one example: in the US General Social Survey, whites who score 0–1 out of 10 on the Wordsum vocabulary test are 33 percentage points more likely to say homosexuality is "always wrong" than whites who score 9–10 out of 10.² Which group is likely to have higher mutational load: the one scoring 0–1 or the one scoring 9–10? Surely, the former. Perhaps mutational load causes social conservatism.

You might say that Wordsum is an imperfect measure of intelligence which is in any case biased in favour of leftists, who tend to be verbally tilted. But even studies that extracted a latent g-factor from multiple subtests have reached the same result. For example, Ian Deary and colleagues observed that general intelligence at age 10 was positively associated with "liberal, non-traditional social attitudes" at age 30. (This was also true of both non-verbal subtests they analysed.)

The negative association between IQ and social conservatism casts serious doubt on the claim that mutational load causes leftist political beliefs – especially if we define leftism as non-traditional attitudes to women, homosexuals and racial minorities.

It is far from clear that mutational load causes leftist political beliefs. Such beliefs may be associated with mental illness and paternal age, but they are also associated with IQ. In particular, individuals with lower IQs (who presumably have higher mutational loads) tend to hold more traditional attitudes toward women, homosexuals and racial minorities.

What's more, studies tracking the liberalisation of attitudes over time find that period effects are at least as important as cohort effects. Period effects cannot be due to genetic changes because they involve multiple cohorts simultaneously shifting their beliefs.

Mutational pressure may have made a small contribution to the rise of "leftism" (i.e., the decline of social conservatism) over the last sixty years. But it seems very unlikely to be a major contributor.