Uriah

Nerds may not be perfect in many ways, but one thing you can never take away from them is that when they get together in groups they’re extraordinarily good at killing people.

NW Europeans are not smarter than other Eurasians. It wasn’t an Englishman that invented paper, gunpowder, or the water mill. There were early signs of a military superiority in the far ranging conquests of the Vikings and the French in the Holy Land, but nothing overwhelming.

But from the moment Gutenberg invented the printing press the rest of the world was doomed. The easy spread of literacy allowed the mental advantages of autistic milk drinkers to become apparent in the formation of scientific societies.

This advantage must have reached new heights with the internet. Why is semantic memory more important than episodic memory in warfare? It seems obvious, nw euros & Mongols, but where does it come in? Do they remember orders better? Learn from past experiences better?

Semantic memory is a byproduct of mental organization, clustering facts into categories like "mammal". I'm arguing that his type of memory is a only a "tell", an indirect indicator, like the tip of a much larger iceberg of superior planning and organization.

NW Europeans love to organize and plan so much that they do so even when there is no immediate advantage, in the sense of nerdy hobbies. I grew up in rural Minnesota and it was conspicuous to me how many Norwegian boys love military history, war gaming, and such. In their bones.

As a Swede, I feel seen. I notched black boys' lack of interest in military history. But this gets to the heart of the matter: Why isn't it just IQ? The Chinese & Japanese seem more orderly than Dutch, Swedes, & Germans. How does 100IQ Swede outperform 105IQ Chinese in planning?