The end of the European age

I made the above chart for a presentation I’m working on. You notice that in 1913 Europe is 28% of the world’s population. In 2000 it is 13% of the world’s population. In 2019 Europe is almost certainly closer to ~10% of the world’s population (the above estimates for Europe include Russia).

To the right, I’ve posted the screenshot of an Ngrams search of books with the term “Eurocentric.” Notice that that term shoots up just as European hegemony went into freefall.

Today there is a lot of talk about postcolonialism, “colonizers,” “white supremacy,” and whatnot. And yet what else is this but a shadow of ages gone by?

We as humans are always fighting the last war. European societies are geriatric. They are wealthy, healthy, and have great aesthetic qualities. Many people would love to live in Europe. But unless you are an acolyte of Madison Grant, who believes in the peculiar and unparalleled genius of European peoples, the numbers are telling a story you can’t avoid.

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Milan Todorovic
Milan Todorovic
4 years ago

I don’t know what the topic of your presentation is, but you are free to use points from my OT comment. Every point requires longer elaboration and can be a standalone PhD topic. Re EU population just to add that in last 10000 the density of Balkan population was very high and there was always about 1 million people. What about 95% of world population in Vincha (Balkan) during the peak of the Ice Age? You may add this to your diagram. In Serbia and its proximity are so far about 800 Vincha archeological places which were coincidentally discovered and not yet explored. Vincha place itself (14 km from Belgrade) is probably only 5% explored. In one other place, radius 5km, which is even not archeological site, recently was found 300 female figurines from Vincha period and it was organized an exhibition of their dresses.

It is a paradox that from, for example, 12000 years of Euro history, almost 10000 haven’t been properly explored and many things were also falsified. You may (or may not) consider my assertion that Western scholars artificially split haplogroups ‘I’ and R1 on I1, I2 and R1A, R1B to give more importance to Western Europe. For example, group ‘I’ (named – Dinaric, based on the mountain in Serbia) was split on I1 (younger, Scandinavian) and I2 (older, Balkan). Btw, Dinaric people are tall with long arms and legs, narrow faces, tough and persistent, something ideal for basketball (Novak Djokovic is also I2). West-East split was on R1A (Slavic) and R1B (west european). Nomadic R1B came from ‘steppes’ via north Africa and Gibraltar to Europe. However, recent explorations in Vincha found traces of R1B as well.

VijayVan
4 years ago

One can add Japan also to the list. China may be in 50 years.

VijayVan
4 years ago

\“Eurocentric.” Notice that that term shoots up just as European hegemony went into freefall.\
Something like ‘Brahminical hegemony’ shooted up in India just when Brahmins or brahminism was nowhere in the ring.
It is easy to fight yesterday’s battles , best battles are those which should have been and never was.

Curious
Curious
4 years ago

I wonder if the total world white population (including European descendents in the Americas, Australia/New Zealand, Asia and in Africa) also peaked around 1910-1920. If so, Lothrop Stoddard was actually quite prescient in his book The Rising Tide of Color and The End of World White Supremacy published in 1920. The book is an interesting read and is very analytical rather than strident or polemical. With a foreword by noted conservationist Madison Grant no less.

Curious
Curious
4 years ago
Reply to  Curious

This book was pretty popular at the time, its conclusions well understood and it was even alluded to in The Great Gatsby.

Scorpion Eater
Scorpion Eater
4 years ago

I know it is fashionable to claim that end of White/European age is nigh. Somehow I believe that White cultures will continue to punch above their for many more years to come.

The problem with the Eastern world is its lack of ideas. In the last 20 or 30 years since I have been observing this world, all the major technological ideas like Internet, dot-com, smartphones, social media, crypto-currencies, Uber, driverless cars etc came from West. (Actually they all came from America, as opposed to Europe, which is an important subtext). By contrast, what new ideas has East given us in the same period? We all know China is rising, but what innovative path is it treading beyond simply boosting its GDP by building ghost cities and manufacturing cheap replica cellphones. Similarly, despite all the talk of India being an IT superpower, the sobering fact is that even the largest of Indian IT companies are simply service providers (body shoppers if you will) to the real technological companies based in US.

Even for the social unrest issues of the world, China can’t offer anything newer than just building reeducation camps for its disaffected ethnic minorities. That is a 100 year old idea coming for soviet gulag system.

Though the rapidly aging and declining population of Europe will guarantee one thing. No major war will come out of Europe. Old people cant fight wars. America is of course a different matter. If it continues to take in controlled number of immigrants, it will maintain a healthy population base of young people, and will be able to launch wars of choice for many more years to come.

Santosh
Santosh
4 years ago
Reply to  Scorpion Eater

I don’t know about China but India on a fundamental level does not care about creating “new ideas” of the above kind. India is majorly concerned about maintaining and perpetuating some kind of Indian exceptionalism on a mundane level and religion on the ultimate level. And since all religion is already given and unchanging, there cannot be any new ideas in that area. But privileging religion above everything else need not have any negative impact on science development – maybe the weird Indian cultural exceptionalism or such ideas have something to do with it. Maybe our apparently lower average IQ is to blame, as some say. There must be umpteen other hypotheses too but I of course am not able to even list them, let alone evaluating them.

thewarlock
thewarlock
4 years ago
Reply to  Santosh

the AASI heavy S Indians of non Brahmin origin and their success in various fields are some of the biggest challenges to race and IQ arguments about India

Also S Indian Brahmins like Iyers often have the AASI levels of N Indian mid castes

Santosh
Santosh
4 years ago
Reply to  thewarlock

Well I am verily the incarnation of superficiality that people performing intelligent hard work (oh the superficiality! I have things reading lots of books from anthropology, history, genetics, etc., performing lots and lots of statistical analyses, being razor-sharp at logic, etc. in my mind when I say “intelligent hard work” lol) Mr. Razib Khan completely justifiably are repulsed by, but my very lazy, poorly formed and so cordially unsolicited views on the matter are as follows:

1. All Indian castes are apparently separate populations. So each caste may be having a normal distribution of IQ within itself?
2. But then some castes like the Tamil Brahmins (and in general other types of Brahmins) do seem to have a significantly superior average IQ compared to other castes. Why might that be?

My brain begins to stop working at this point and things get even more vague:
3. Is it just the case that we are seeing an already stabilised ceiling IQ in the case of the relatively earlier modernised Brahmins (the Tamil Brahmins being the standard stereotypical example) and the other castes are on way to reach their genetic potential with increasing general health and prosperity in all groups too? If so, would this ceiling average figure in their case be comparable to the IQs of the Brahmin groups?

4. Or is it the case that the founding population of the Brahmins in 1000 BC or whenever were selected for their intelligence so thoroughly and completely that the effects even last after all these years?

5. Why do some landowning-background caste people of the plateau-area Deccan seem to have very high IQs? Has it got to do something with the recent Deccan famines during the British empire? Does the relationship between the higher IQs of the Bengalis compared to other people have something to do with the Bengal famines too?

6. How do genes associated with IQ transmit with generations in populations? Is there thorough recombination between genes (or gene collections taking into account all the contributing population of the pure AASI/pure Iran_N/pure-Steppe_MLBA (well, a pure Steppe_MLBA does not make any sense but so does a lot of things in my post probably lol)) from AASI, Iran_N, Steppe_MLBA, etc. genes for IQ involved or is it the case that we can isolate individual genes pertaining to intelligence as sourced from one of (pure) Iran_N, (pure) AASI, Steppe_MLBA, etc.?

Etc. Etc. Lol!

Santosh
Santosh
4 years ago
Reply to  Santosh

Please forgive the stupid conjunction in the beginning of my question no. 2 (“But then some castes like…” oh god the cringe is so strong) lol. I am not as stupid as to not even know the basics of mean and standard deviation of a normal distribution (but in my defense perhaps, I don’t use statistics very much on a daily basis lol). Which brings me to this: it would perhaps be fun to have cool IQ-score distribution charts for all (or some important) castes on Brown Pundits some time.

H.M. Brough
H.M. Brough
4 years ago
Reply to  Santosh

South Asia and (moreso) sub-Saharan Africa have poor average IQs, this can be improved to a degree by grabbing low-hanging fruit (correcting malnutrition, endocrinopathies, infection/parasitism, and poor primary education), but it won’t converge to White levels, and it will set a hard ceiling on what these societies are capable of.

I would expect an eventual per-capita GDP convergence to Peru-Brazil levels, but not much more than that. Which would still make their economies gigantic in absolute terms due to sheer population size.

Prats
Prats
4 years ago
Reply to  H.M. Brough

“but it won’t converge to White levels, and it will set a hard ceiling on what these societies are capable of.”

This kind of IQ dogma doesn’t take into account future technological innovation and models of economy.
(Assuming there is some objective truth in it in the first place)

In a world run by robots, much more economic value will be attached to things like wisdom or community or empathy. How do you measure those?

In any case, Indians should not worry about these 20th century fads and do what they ought to do.

Indo-Carib
Indo-Carib
4 years ago
Reply to  H.M. Brough

” but it won’t converge to White levels, and it will set a hard ceiling on what these societies are capable of”

Citation needed.

H.M. Brough
H.M. Brough
4 years ago
Reply to  Indo-Carib

It’s a matter of guesswork what India’s mean genotypic IQ is, but I would start with Mauritius, which has an overwhelmingly Indian population with no selective immigration (that I know of). Its average IQ is 89. I think that’s what India at large can expect to hit (if it does everything right, which is a tall order).

If I was a betting man, I would say Africa at large can expect to his 80-85 (American Blacks are at 85, but their average IQ is boosted by white admixture.)

Indo-Carib
Indo-Carib
4 years ago
Reply to  Indo-Carib

H. M. Brough:

Firstly, Mauritius is only about 60% Indian. The majority of the remainder of the population is Creole (African) with small numbers of French and Chinese. Second, Richard Lynn’s IQ data (which I assume you’re referring to) is completely unreliable.

H.M. Brough
H.M. Brough
4 years ago
Reply to  Indo-Carib

Actually it’s about 70% and (more importantly) there are no large high-IQ minorities to skew the count, which is why I picked the country.

Again, I will say this is back-of-napkin stuff, not dispositive.

Indo-Carib
Indo-Carib
4 years ago
Reply to  Indo-Carib

Source?

Prabh
Prabh
4 years ago
Reply to  Santosh

Actually Pt. S. Rath of Orrisa states that capacity of man to know Actual AryaGod is 12.5 percent iirc. There r always new frontiers in religion spirituality mysticism: to these Great Men mahapurush does the world belong as per Shastra and these r after all only the only true curers of all maladies unlike allopathy that is like bad car mechanic: side effects of toxic “medication” worse than ailment etc.
True pleasure is to be had beyond 17th dimension. Etc

Santosh
Santosh
4 years ago
Reply to  Santosh

The aside about IQ aside though, as some people here have pointed out before (I of course had no divination of anything of this kind before they made me aware of it), quality primary education to a lot of people as opposed to (or better, in addition to) super-high-quality higher education to some may at least have a significantly increased output of science and other such things, irrespective of the mean and maximum IQs of Indians. As H.M. Brough notes with his characteristic sharpness and insightfulness above, at least a very significant part of it is low-hanging fruit stuff (Prats is as usual so extraordinarily creative that I have no words but to be simply sated in awe; I hope you two guys won’t be so highly cringing at my fangirling lol). We can worry (or not worry) about the genetic potentials after the basics are achieved.

H.M. Brough
H.M. Brough
4 years ago
Reply to  Razib Khan

You’re probably right.

IMO the singularity gang are a bunch of tards. I’d say the major scientific developments have been achieved, and we’ll see some incremental gains, but no transformative discoveries or inventions (like Relativity or Germ Theory.)

Which scares me because unlike the last time we were in technological stasis, we are now fossil-fuel dependent with a much larger population.

Sumit
Sumit
4 years ago
Reply to  H.M. Brough

We still haven’t fully incorporated the gains from the major 19th and 20th century scientific advances.

So for example our current computer hardware is maybe million of times faster than what it was 50 years ago.

Software is maybe 20x better or lets say 100x.

And then our business processes and social systems are often just starting to change.

This is just with regards to computers and networking. We have yet to fully exploit our current scientific understanding in countless areas which were completely revolutionized by modern science in the last couple of centuries.

Scorpion Eater
Scorpion Eater
4 years ago
Reply to  H.M. Brough


I’d say the major scientific developments have been achieved, and we’ll see some incremental gains, but no transformative discoveries or inventions

Note down this assertion of yours in a diary, read it again after 30 years, and you will be surprised to know that how totally, absolutely, and by orders of magnitude wrong you were!

Not only the technology is rapidly advancing, the pace of advance itself is accelerating. The world will be an unrecognizable place 30 years in the future.

Scorpion Eater
Scorpion Eater
4 years ago
Reply to  Razib Khan

most of history is innovation-stasis. i think we may go back to that state.

That is an impossibility in 21st century.

Having said that, Europe’s declining population, technological stagnation and declining clout on world stage is self evident.

I think we need to treat America and Europe separately. America’s natural impulse for the domination of their environment, and a robust tradition of investing in science and tech will ensure its dominance in the foreseeable feature.

I think what might happen is that white nationalists on both side of atlantic may form an alliance to ensure their mutual survival. US might clamp down on immigration from Asia and Latin America, and incentivize immigration from Europe. Trump already eluded to this when he once urged that US should take more immigrants from countries like Norway. This will allow Europe and America to jointly hold the fort, till Asia also reaches the state of precipitous population decline (which may come surprisingly soon).

H.M. Brough
H.M. Brough
4 years ago
Reply to  Scorpion Eater

White nationalism is a nothingburger, and even if it was important, it’s too late. America is set to become majority non-White in a few decades, that’s baked into the cake even if we close the border today because of racial TFR differentials.

Realistically, what’s going to happen is that immigration policy continues to be substantially unchanged. The Grassley Bill failed in a landslide, and that merely aimed to cut the rate (let alone close the border.) Because of GOP defectors, it’s a fair bet that immigration is here to stay.

A future Democrat-controlled House may liberalize immigration further, but the Senate (which structurally favors the GOP) would block it. The only way things could change would be a few landslide elections leading to Democrats controlling everything.

Jaggu Janga
4 years ago

Europe is peoplez of the book and they r becoming more Muslimz. So Europa is destined to rise in the eyes of Almighty Allah. The flag of Islam on Westminster quwwat al Islam masjid is what we will soon see Inshallah! When the whitest of ‘em all Germanics become Ghazi, who can withstand them?! The world iz da endz of the bredrin’ as salam.

Milan Todorovic
Milan Todorovic
4 years ago

SE>”Somehow I believe that White cultures will continue to punch above their for many more years to come.”

Thanks for encouragement and support, Scorpio. I, myself, will keep punching. However, as you sang, ‘winds of change’ are blowing. Theoretically, in every interaction the white race is on losing side. It was long time ago when white race in its interactions could create (nominally) white outcomes – Greeks, Germans, Hungarians and it could equally fight for e.g. Chinese for a thousand of years. But, see what the demographic situation is now. White race originated in Vincha in conjunction with respective genes and language (based on the language/genes, the correct name should be Serbian race instead of Caucasian) and over time spread all around world. It is a separate topic that in the world exist organized powerful movements to destroy white race. Some ‘positive discrimination’ acts in US or recent organized chaotic migrations to Europe are visible tips of this iceberg. Right now, this process looks irreversible, but it is not excluded (I am pessimistic) that megatrends change in few decades.

Roy
Roy
4 years ago

“The world iz da endz of the bredrin’ as salam.”

Spare us the pidgin rubbish.

उद्ररुहैन्वीय

@HM Brough

// IMO the singularity gang are a bunch of tards. I’d say the major scientific developments have been achieved, and we’ll see some incremental gains, but no transformative discoveries //

A few points:

1) The singularity seekers are wrong but not for the reasons you think. In fact, they are wrong for precisely the same reason you are wrong.

2) The point about all major scientific developments having been achieved are usually made by two types of people: the ignorant or the pessimist. The pessimist is far worse of the two.

3) You need to read more physics. (It may come across as patronising but I am saying this very genuinely). The more you read it, the more you realize that it is still set up in the old Newtonian-Lagrangian formalism, and a major part of the difficulty in expanding the frontier of physics is not a function of the nature appearing any less weird / more explainable but our thinking being constrained by classical baggage. Physicists are victims of physics formalism dogma.

Mitchell Porter
Mitchell Porter
4 years ago

It is suggested above that the future will consist of “innovation-stasis” and “incremental gains”. But we are still just beginning to see what artificial intelligence and genetic engineering can do. Even if the future retains divisions that descend from today’s racial and civilizational differences, they may be expressed in a radically new medium…

As an absurd but vividly illustrative scenario, imagine distinct populations of androids modeled on Bollywood stars, Red pioneers, anime characters, and superhero comics, carving out competing interplanetary empires within the late-21st-century solar system. I did say it was absurd; but any attempt to foresee the thousand-year implications of understanding the atom, the gene, and the brain, will be a caricature at best.

उद्ररुहैन्वीय

The funny thing is neither AI (which is in a serious formalism bottleneck) nor genetic engineering are going to be nearly as transformative – not even close – compared to another insight that we are right at the cusp of: quantum computation.

Also, the very mention of “interplanetary empires” suggests a formalism straitjacket. Human beings have always measured resource/bounty in terms of increasing area or volume. Yet in physical terms there is no less “room” in the nano scale than there is in the giga. Our culture’s obsession with ever larger empires is nothing more than an inherited parochialism. (I guess I should thank Marvel for doing its bit in promoting Ant Man)

Janamejaya
Janamejaya
4 years ago

“The funny thing is neither AI (which is in a serious formalism bottleneck) nor genetic engineering are going to be nearly as transformative – not even close – compared to another insight that we are right at the cusp of: quantum computation.”

How many years or decades do you think we are away from a full blown Quantum Computing revolution that will make the current hardware systems and more importantly software obsolete?

I have been following up on the state of art in this field and it seems to me the decoherence is still a big problem to be solved and currently nobody has a clue how to do it economically.

Researchers seem to be skirting around the decoherence problem by optimizing algos to run faster or by using ML to chose more stable qubits etc.

Also could you elaborate on the formalism bottleneck you feel AI has. Do you mean to say that a lot of research on Deep Learning etc is ad-hoc application of mathematics to specific issues and there doesn’t exist a Grand Unified Theory which explains performance of ML algorithms? I would say Vapnik’s Theory of statistical learning (VC dimensions etc) is a work in this direction.

Scorpion Eater
Scorpion Eater
4 years ago

Yet in physical terms there is no less “room” in the nano scale than there is in the giga.

Spoken like a true pundit. +1.

Bengalightment
Bengalightment
4 years ago

South asians are as smart as white people….bengalis and pakistanis did slightly worse than indians may be due to age and institution factors…and pakistanis have a lot of similarity with different European groups Source:
https://akarlin.com/2012/08/minorities-cognitive-performance-in-the-uk/

Brown Pundits