My controversial take is that even moral proclivities are somewhat hereditary. Some people are inherently more honest, compassionate, honorable, etc. we just haven't taken the efforts necessary to decouple from cultural influence and really try to quantify it. And I suspect whilst the East Asians and Ashkenazi populations might have the edge in the abstract reasoning that constitutes IQ, the WASPs have the lead in the communal morals. Which could help explain some of the surprising outcomes of their respective empire building attempts. The efficiency gains of a high-trust, low-friction, self-policing population at 100 iq could outweigh the gains slightly higher reasoning abilities alone might contribute when trying to scale up a nation.

And because we no longer recognise these differences or take steps to specifically cultivate them, our society as it stands is structured in a way that those communal and pro-social traits are on the cusp of endangerment in the population as a whole.

My controversial take is that even moral proclivities are somewhat hereditary. Some people are inherently more honest, compassionate, honorable, etc. we just haven't taken the efforts necessary to decouple from cultural influence and really try to quantify it. And I suspect whilst the East Asians and Ashkenazi populations might have the edge in the abstract reasoning that constitutes IQ, the WASPs have the lead in the communal morals. Which could help explain some of the surprising outcomes of their respective empire building attempts. The efficiency gains of a high-trust, low-friction, self-policing population could outweigh the gains slightly higher reasoning abilities alone might contribute when trying to scale up a nation.

And because we no longer recognise these differences or take steps to specifically cultivate them, our society as it stands is structured in a way that those communal and pro-social traits are on the cusp of endangerment in the population as a whole.