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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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I wasn't talking about PhD's
I don't think that it depends on what, specifically, you define as "smart," it's a more general argument.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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But as some on this thread might say: you can't even define smart.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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I don't think you need to define "smart" in a detailed manner, rather, as a property of humans that has a distribution, from very smart to very unsmart, and some mean smartness...
the distribution would be due to genetic diversity
the more people, the greater the number of people (but not a greater fraction) appear at all parts of the distribution, including the smartest end
if you have enough people, 1 in a billion smartness will express itself... with fewer people the chances are much smaller.
it works on both ends of the spectrum.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Is the average intelligence of the entire world's population evolving or devolving? I'd say it's definitely going up. Does that mean we are collectively 'smarter' as a species relative to our population growth and resource utilization? I think not. Collectively we're no smarter than a bacteria culture in a petri dish dashing for the edge and burning through the growth media as fast as it can.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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And we're back to the nature vs nurture debate and how exactly do we measure intelligence? It doesn't matter how many intelligent people we have at the top end of the curve if their society does not utilize that intelligence and if as healeyje points out, we as a species don't utilize it either.
The average Japanese IQ is now 110 while it remains 100 for Americans. Are Japanese really getting smarter or does their educational system with almost twice as many hours of study make them better at taking all kinds of tests? If you really think they have gained ten IQ points since WWII, that would certainly answer DMT's skepticism about how fast evolution can take place.
Meanwhile, world poverty is decreasing and levels of education increasing. The number of children with stunted physical growth and mental retardation due to chronic protein malnourishment is also generally decreasing. However, I'm wondering if the increase in the number of smart people due to population growth really outnumbers the generation of Yemenis who are undergoing starvation right now, or those previous lost generations in places like Ethiopia and Sudan? Or is it less deleterious to lose intelligent people in low opportunity countries than the already privileged societies?
Or maybe the combination of a large population and a rigorous educational system as in China, will produce a localized population that is smarter than the world average? One could guess that something similar (the invention of language?) is how H. sapiens out evolved and out competed the four other species that were on the earth together with it only 30,000 year ago.
Thinking about on going evolution poses lots of interesting and controversial ethical questions, that's for sure.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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This makes another eerie parallel with Macroscope, in which there has been a project to attempt to increase intelligence. Children of bright parents have been brought together and their environment has been made conducive for learning and creativity. The result is a significant modest increase in their average IQ but although the rate of mental development was sped up, the limits of intelligence were not raised above what could be found in children who had grown up in un-enhanced environments.
But the people running the project were not aware of Schön...
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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RA Fischer was an important contributor to statistical analysis, biostatistics and population genetics. Interestingly, from a contemporary point of view, he was the head of the Department of Eugenics at University College London in 1933.
His book, The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection includes five chapters (out of 12) related to the genetic variation of humans, and in particular, the question of differential fertility as a driver of societal "stability."
He comments on the falling fertility rates among the "upper classes" of England,
"Since the birth-rate is the predominant factor in human survival in society, success in the struggle for existence is, in societies with an inverted birth-rate, the inverse success in human endeavour. The type of man selected, as the ancestor of future generations, is he whose probability is least winning admiration, or rewards, for useful services to the society to which he belongs."
Fisher was a life long believer in eugenics and the differences of various groups of humans.
The use of "societal status" does make an interesting question, and certainly the "nature/nurture" debate is at least partially based on our judgement of what constitutes good nurturing, which is informed by our cultural experiences.
As far as I know, there is no definitive definition of nurture, at least as far as it would enable us to attempt to assess its role in "intelligence."
But even in this thread, where we would say something like a Ph.D. is not necessarily smart, there are many cultural biases at work.
Fisher's informed opinion forces us to confront this sort of thinking, to wit, what part of our societal experience colors our scientific outlook. (MikeL would have a lot to say here).
One can look to Fisher's work (and its extensions) to try to answer Dingus' question, how quickly does the genetic "mean" change. But I think that is a misplaced question that implies that the mean is "directed." A better way of looking at it is to ask, given a radical change to the environment in which the population exists, what is the mean genetic characteristics of those individuals that survive that change.
Fisher's fundamental theorem of natural selection, which states that "the rate of increase in fitness of any organism at any time is equal to its genetic variance in fitness at that time."
which is to say that genetic variability is a good thing.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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homo industrialus
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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I don't think you need to define "smart" in a detailed manner, rather, as a property of humans that has a distribution, from very smart to very unsmart, and some mean smartness...
If there is a "mean smartness" it, of course, begs the question what is the upper limit of smartness? Or consciousness, intelligence, self-awareness, "epistemological facility" for that matter. I don't think it necessary to define consciousness to realize its "reality," since it is the immediate and precisely intimate experience of each of us.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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And not to belabor the point but if humans edit the DNA sufficiently the result will not be homo sapains but something else, something new, homo technoligus, a new species. I think we’ve been headed down that road for some time now. If we can still interbreed with one another, we will be the same species. Look at how different dogs are and yet they are all the same species and for the most part can interbreed.
And Ed, I was obviously alluding to the mean intelligence for humans, not the total number of smart humans. The bottom line going forward as I see it is that humans will not continue to get smarter genetically. Those selection pressures are largely done with. That leaves technology and culture.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Mh2 - it was Plato who first proposed such a scheme to increase the intelligence and good governance of the human race.
DMT - I was definitely confused and not the for the first time! We are in fact in agreement. In as much as I was contradictory, I think that's because there is evidence both ways on which direction we are going in our development / evolution.
eeyonkee - I think culture and technology will hold up as long as there is no world wide catastrophe whether nuclear war, space debris, a worldwide pandemic, or the end of fossil fuels. After one of those events, it will be back to nature as usual. Meanwhile micro evolution carries on.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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...as long as there is no worldwide catastrophe whether nuclear war, space debris, a worldwide pandemic, or the end of fossil fuels...
It'll for sure be a worldwide pandemic given the accelerated pace of habitat destruction and species extinction.
As a side note, this journal came out in 2014 and is fairly interesting (Peter Woit mentioned it in his blog): Inference: International Review of Science.
There is also a long discussion in the comments to that blog post questioning the quality and intent of said journal.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Ed: A better way of looking at it [a genetic mean] is to ask, given a radical change to the environment in which the population exists, what is the mean genetic characteristics of those individuals that survive that change.
Perhaps. It makes sense, to some extent.
I have a minor concern with this line of thinking, however. This line of thinking seems particularly “statistical,” and I think statistics has an undeniable bias towards what is average. Is this what we are or how we should be considered—as an average of characteristics?
IMO what we are drawn towards is what exceptional beings have shown us. Far afield, in Tibetan mythology, deities emerge into the earthly (material) plane to pass on hidden knowledge about reality that beforehand could not be understood by even the most advanced minds. Those transmissions or empowerment were given to the most advance beings at those times. (Sometimes treatises would be hidden in caves until minds were ready to understand.)
Focusing on a human statistical mean as a measure of the progress of evolution is sort of like using economics to predict how a human being will make purchasing decisions. Looking at mass data sets is one descriptor of note, but maybe not the most influential or explanative.
What drove us to undertake a challenging climb? What the majority experienced, or what an exemplar showed us? One can talk about the average climbers, but that’s not what we do here.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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If there's a worldwide pandemic then I'm sure it will be the tough old peasants in the developing world who will carry on the human race. I am reminded of how I came down with typhoid fever in Nepal only four months after the innoculation. My Sherpa trekking companions and I ate and drank exactly the same things. I was in bed for three weeks with a high fever and they never even had a headache. I was told at the local hospital that they ingested so many typhoid bacilli on a routine basis their natural immunity was stronger than my inoculation.
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Zay
climber
Monterey, Ca
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Are you there, Werner? It's me margarate.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jan wrote: If there's a worldwide pandemic then I'm sure it will be the tough old peasants in the developing world who will carry on the human race. I am reminded of how I came down with typhoid fever in Nepal only four months after the inoculation. My Sherpa trekking companions and I ate and drank exactly the same things. I was in bed for three weeks with a high fever and they never even had a headache. I was told at the local hospital that they ingested so many typhoid bacilli on a routine basis their natural immunity was stronger than my inoculation.
And they began their exposure at birth so, yeah, no doubt.
By and large, it's African and South American hunter-gatherers who have the most diverse gut flora hence likely the strongest immune systems so you're probably not far off there.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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using economics to predict how a human being will make purchasing decisions
Let me alter this a little: "using economics to influence how a human being will make decisions about their health."
Average health may be as hard to define and measure as average intelligence is.
"...most apparently well individuals actually suffered from some detectable disorder.”
from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peckham_Experiment
And how to move the average toward better health?
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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I'm not so sure about that. I think the boundary zone between near species is much wider and fuzzier with hybridization than we were taught to think. I doubt its a binary 'beyond here thar be a new species' line of demarcation.
Dingus, ma man, that right there is some penultimate middle-of-the-roading...
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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A little more about averaging to find essential characteristics of human evolution. I’ve been suggesting that averaging doesn’t tell us much about the mechanisms of social evolution. I’ve been arguing here for a while (and on the science vs. religion thread) that looking at physical evolution may not be nearly as relevant to reproduction rates as social evolution—which is not based upon physical genetics that I can see.
In sociology, there are a bunch of scholars who are known as population ecologists. In my fields of study, we looked at the ability of competitors in a domain (think industry) to survive “the liability of newness.” What we were interested in was the munificence of pools of resources in domains (i.e., organizational fields) and abilities of firms to find and thrive in them. What we saw was that some firms would stumble or discover organizational innovations, but that copying or replicating those innovations would occur rather rapidly unless innovative firms could erect barriers to imitation. (The barriers could be IP protection, inimitable skill sets, monopolies, rapid innovation skills, unique cultures, etc.). The concept, called, mimetic isomorphism, has been found in most competitive industries. (There is also coercive and normative isomorphism, but I’m trying to keep it simple.)
Although the research has focused on organizations and their structuring, I could think that similar behaviors would be found among individuals, especially with the increase of globalization. Culture becomes the mechanism that encourages mimicry of what’s cool, productive, advanced, and progressive. It could be said that various media (especially social media) very rapidly communicate and distribute what’s leading or evolutionary socially. The mutations are innovations, and the assimilation of those innovations don’t need centuries of millennia to penetrate within and across “markets.”
What is interesting to me is what this line of thinking means for the munificence of resources in social environments. Supposedly, resources have always been thought to be scarce. Competition among species was expected to lead to dominate species because they were better organized or better structured to find and use those resources than other species. It was my read that scholars didn’t expect to find many equally capable species within the same environment, but one might argue socially—for the human species—that is exactly what we see. Data showing over population among humans suggest that the social environment is broadly munificent. Indeed, we see broad fragmentation of different social milieu, and most of those social environments are surviving and maybe even thriving. The physical / materialistic, dog-eat-dog world of primitive human development may have given way to social competition as the predominate evolutionary model.
Darwin’s model may need major reconsideration. Indeed, one can argue in every instance that nothing is permanent. Everything changes; and it implies that every thing needs to change.
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