> 4. there is more "evolutionary pressure" in harsher environments where the survival curve is steep than in environments where food is everywhere and plentiful. this should be obvious to you. i find it helps using an example when explaining this to hesitant people. i always compare an ancient rice farmer in northern snowswept china with an equally ancient hunter-gatherer tribe of africans on the serengeti. a rice farmer has to think abstractly about harvests that haven't yet happened and seasons that don't yet exist, if he doesn't want his family to starve to death. many ancient farmers did starve to death - the stupid ones who couldn't think abstractly about the future and delay the gratification of eating all the grain seeds today instead of planting them. whereas a tribe of hunter-gatherers on a humid savanna has maybe a day or two after killing a gazelle to eat it before it rots. the optimal survival strategy there is to kill an animal, share it with the entire village before it rots, and be done with it in two days then look for the next gazelle.  then i ask them if they think those two sets of brains will develop the same. > 5. r/k selection this one is actually a fallacy that i cringe when i see race realists making. families in medieval europe would have like 12 kids, in the hope that some would survive to adulthood. anywhere with disease, high infant mortality and occasional famines, r-selection is the winning strategy. keep spreading truth, brother.
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