Gregory Clark: belief

Transcript context

…In your view, has cousin marriage been a big problem for the Arab Middle East, that you end up with something that’s too clannish? What I would say is, if it’s systematically carried out, it should lead to a reduction in the distribution of abilities within a society compared to the very assortative Northern European pattern or other patterns. I honestly don’t know whether it actually leads to these other problems in terms of the clannishness of society. Potentially, yes, but it’s not something that I’ve actually studied yet. It at least seems that today, something about the caste system is finally paying off for India. From South India, you have these incredible chess players — that’s g-loaded, CEOs in tech. Why is it that now the caste system, in this one particular way, is succeeding, but in earlier times, you don’t see anything nearly as comparable? What has changed? What’s the environmental change? And doesn’t that mean environment really, really matters? It’s not all just genes.…

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