JayMan · @JayMan471
26th Mar 2015 from TwitLonger
Pseudoerasmus, here are the problems with your reasoning:
1. All human behavioral traits are heritable (the First Law). So, it makes sense to *a priori* pursue a genetic explanation for an observed group difference.
2. The supposed exception of trust from the First Law above is suspect for this very reason, in addition to additional problems like the lack of clear predictivity/reliability of the measurement.
3. As trust measures are suspect, in the end, there is limited substance to the purported "Hapsburg trust effect" (at the moment) to begin with.
4. Even if the finding is legit, the *cause* is unclear. What were the people like *before* Hapsburg control? Further, history isn't random. *Why* were the Hapsburg boundaries where they were in the first place?
The points HBD Chick and I make are based primarily on the known genetic roots of behavioral traits. The entire body of HBD has established that "environmental" forces have limited ability to explain group differences *across space* (across time is different), so finding correlations between geography (a proxy for demographic composition) and some social consequence can safely be taken to mean that that demographic composition is causal. That's the basis to much everything we say.