It's refreshing to hear from the 19th century, before people started to over-indulge in polite hedging and endless qualifications. All most of us want is 'the main thing', which writers like Wallace and Engels give us.
Reading this made me think that it's rather infair that everyone knows the name 'Marx' but not everyone has never heard of Engels.
Strange the way that when someone (here Wallace and Galton) propose an idea it's difficult for others who come later to think passed it to some other possible solution. It's the same at our pub quiz. The first round is always to name the band from the song. As soon as one of our team suggests a band name I'm incapable of thinking of any alternative, so much so that we have now agreed to keep our suggestions to ourselves until each of us has had a chance to think for himself. Of course Engels, being dead by then, never had much of a chance to voice his opinion.
Engels was initially just as interested in the natural sciences as he was in the social sciences. He shifted toward the social sciences because he became convinced of the need for immediate political activism.
Employers are much smaller in number than employees. Therefore, the opportunities for collusion are greater among the former than among the latter. Employers earn income above and beyond the real value of their products, and this income may be used not only to make better widgets but also to rig the game in their favor.
Economic power will therefore become centralized in fewer and fewer hands, and this will translate into centralization of political power. This was the future that Engels, like Marx, wished to avoid.
Put like that, socialism sounds totally reasonable (which of course it is, on paper). Yet if the centralisation of political power was Marx and Engels' biggest worry then getting the state to own and run all businesses seems an odd solution.
It wasn't their solution. Neither Karl Marx nor Friedrich Engels proposed state socialism as the solution to capitalism’s contradictions. Both saw the state as an instrument of class domination that would ultimately wither away, not as the foundation of a socialist order.
Marx and Engels consistently described the state as an instrument of class rule, created to maintain the dominance of the ruling class. Because of this, they rejected the idea that socialism could be achieved by simply expanding or strengthening the existing state.
I see. Just shows you how one's lack of knowledge is invisible to...one i.e. Donald Rumsfeld's 'unknown unknowns'. So if Marx and Engels were looking down on us all they would probably bellow a thousand times a day, 'Hey, you lot down there! That's not what we meant at all!' However, I suppose I'm still right in assuming that even their non-statist socialism doesn't work, human nature being what it is.
All solutions "work" to some extent. Conversely, there is no perfect solution, since, as you said, human nature is what it is.
Also, the best solution varies from one human population to another. What works for a Western European population will not work as well for an East Asian population. And vice versa.
I always like it when I learn that human populations differ more than I had imagined. It makes the world seem less monochrome.
I used to work in Japan and was amazed to learn, when I entered a pharmacy with the intention of buying something to unblock my ears of wax, that Japanese people's earwax is powdery, not waxy. Who knew?
And I'm just as amazed to learn that different economic systems work better or worse depending on the population. I know economics is hardly a rigorous science but I had imagined its main tenets to be more universally applicable and generally less dependent on local custom than say, cuisine or dress design.
Why does power become more concentrated in capitalism but not in socialism? The problem with people like Engels is they never provided a full fledged chain of events to explain the many outcomes they predicted.
It becomes concentrated in both systems. The best solution to the contradictions of capitalism was the "New Deal" that developed in the 1930s, and which laid the basis for the postwar economic expansion:
- strict limits on immigration
- unionization and, more generally, support for family, community, and national culture as counterweights to oligarchic concentration.
- high minimum wage
- high level of corporate taxation
- aggressive anti-trust laws
- separation between the state sector and the business sector, i.e., no "revolving door" between the two.
Your deduction is correct. I think you took my comment far too seriously. It was meant as a joke at the expense of us English but you seem to have taken it personally.
Yes, my point is that I think most native speakers of English would understand this use of funny as meaning 'odd/peculiar' rather than 'funny ha-ha' and that you decided it was in your interest to change your original meaning to a different one i.e you are being dishonest. That is my point.
They did initially. During the 1920s, Communism was a potpourri of many tendencies, some of which were little more than experimental. It then hardened during the 1930s for several reasons:
- The need to project a single coherent ideology, particularly in the Soviet Union
- Many of the rejected ideas were half-baked. This was the case with the efforts to abolish the family, as well as "free love" and various forms of sexual experimentation
- The personal influence of Josef Stalin and the people around him
Certainly, but I meant in a more lasting way, instead of being rejected along with the other ideas you mention. A Soviet Union with more of this intellectual strain instead of Lysenkoism would be less self-sabotaging and less willfully ignorant of reality, and might have lasted longer. Much like the PRC is still here because Deng reached back and grasped at earlier communist writings that could be read as justifying very small-scale companies, thus taking the first step to allowing some capitalist elements in to save their economy.
There were reasons why Lysenkoism became so dominant. The Soviet Union wished to sell its way of life to the rest of the world, especially the emerging nations of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Meanwhile, the United States was doing the same thing.
In both cases, the underlying premise was that human nature is highly malleable. Anyone can become an American, just as anyone can become a Soviet! Just do as we do!
This premise has seeped into almost everything we say and think. If other people are not becoming like us, it's because they're not trying hard enough. Or it's because we're not letting them.
It makes sense that when intelligence was not being actively selected for that it could slowly regress instead of reliably remaining the same. Other survival factors, such as digestion or immunity, would come to the fore as areas of change.
"It is easy to observe that human cognition has developed far beyond what is necessary for survival."
You are talking like a person from a nice country with a high standard of living. This is largely why mean IQ has been declining throughout the West. People can survive with a lower IQ, and nothing terrible happens to them.
First, the goal is not simply "survival". It's also "survival + reproduction." And the reproduction has to be in line with population growth, whether positive or negative.
Can someone with an IQ of 90 survive and reproduce today? Probably. But let's go back in time — not only before the welfare state but also before the specialization of labor under industrial capitalism — which created large numbers of simple jobs that nonetheless paid a decent wage.
Before the late 1800s, a man with an IQ of 90 could have found work as a common laborer in a town or a shipyard. But such people were mostly bachelors. Yes, some did marry and have children, but they were a minority. Moreover, their children did not necessarily survive to adulthood and have children of their own.
As for a woman with an IQ of 90, the range of options was also limited, perhaps work as a charwoman. A married woman of that IQ level would need a man who could pull in a decent income, perhaps a widower.
Chances were not much better for a tenant farmer. Such people were being squeezed off the land. Farther back, in the Middle Ages, especially the period before the Black Death, a person with 90 IQ could have had a decent chance for reproduction as a serf on a manor. But those chances progressively dwindled away over the next few centuries.
This is a point that Gregory Clark has made and which has been confirmed by the latest work on ancient DNA by Davide Piffer and Gregory Connor: the English working class did not replace itself demographically during the long period (1350 to 1850) when mean IQ rose by a little over three quarters of a standard deviation. There was also a dramatic increase in the smart fraction: the smartest 1% in 1850 was smarter than the smartest 0.1% in 700.
There is no need to posit a need for self-reflection and self-actualization. Mean IQ rose to 100 and above because those were the people who had the best chances of survival and reproduction.
I suppose it could be competition with other high IQ individuals? All it would need for IQ to rise 'higher than necessary' is for intelligence to be seen as attractive by the opposite sex, or to bring status and lots and lots of stuff. There is no limit to people's desires. By the same token it probably makes no sense to say, 'That woman is prettier than is strictly necessary'.
I would submit that the reason why intelligence rose so far above what is necessary in the first place might be that imagination and inquisitiveness inspired those of intelligence to reach beyond survival.
In your 'explanation' the imaginative and the inquisitive are already intelligent. How does that explain how they became intelligent in the first place? Or are you claiming that imagination and a curious nature CAUSE higher intelligence to spring into being? I think it more likely that intelligent people tend to be more imaginative and curious, but the latter doesn't cause the former.
EO Wilson said opposable thumbs were the precursor to bigger brains. So tools are invented. But animal power now comes into the picture. Id think humans were beyond survival mode here. Using this power certainly helped move things to even bigger brains. Jared Diamond speaks of Africa and the new world lacking animal power, which might explain some of this, as well.
"I suppose it could be competition with other high IQ individuals? All it would need for IQ to rise 'higher than necessary' is for intelligence to be seen as attractive by the opposite sex, or to bring status and lots and lots of stuff."
Perhaps, but since most people are rather shallow and generally do not pick mates for intelligence, I suspect that plays a very small role. Also, people of high intelligence usually do not seek status or lots of stuff. They are more inclined to seek knowledge.
"By the same token it probably makes no sense to say, 'That woman is prettier than is strictly necessary'."
I don't see that as an equal comparison. Attractiveness is aesthetic, while intelligence is objective rather than subjective.
What I really meant was not so much that intelligence is in itself sexually attractive but what intelligence can give you is: a high status job, lots of money, a big house. For the shallow people you talk about, those are big attractions.
I would say that Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Besos are probably intelligent and though they might not have been motivated by achieving high status, it found them anyway. But I suspect highly intelligent people ARE motivated by achieving status. Everyone wants to be loved and admired, even clever people.
'I don't see that as an equal comparison. Attractiveness is aesthetic, while intelligence is objective rather than subjective'.
The point in using comparisons is precisely NOT to compare something to something else that is EXACTLY the same. For a comparison to work the two things must be different in some way.
You think that attractiveness is purely subjective? Since we often agree on who is physically attractive (Jenna Coleman) and who isn't (Joan Rivers) then attractiveness must be partly (though not wholly) objective. And maybe you didn't agree with my saying Jeff Besos is intelligent, in which case intelligence too might be partly (though not wholly) subjective.
"I would say that Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Besos are probably intelligent and though they might not have been motivated by achieving high status, it found them anyway."
It all depends on where you draw the lines on levels of intelligence.
On the contrary, I believe they were all motivated by 'achieving high status'. I would not describe them as highly intelligent. But most of all, they are rapacious.
At the risk of overusing Einstein as an example, it is hard to imagine fame and fortune being his motivation.
"You think that attractiveness is purely subjective?"
Attractiveness is an opinion; intelligence can be measured.
"[Galton] rightly believed that civilization can cause cognitive evolution to halt or even reverse. But he wrongly assumed that stagnation and decline were the usual outcome. In fact, civilization has more often been an impetus for higher levels of cognitive ability."
In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond claimed that Papua New Guineans tribesmen were not only not less intelligent than civilized Europeans and Asians, they were actually more intelligent. He argued that the day to day survival of tribal New Guineans depended on their applied intelligence. A stupid New Guinean wouldn't survive long, and thus be less likely to pass along his genes to the next generation. Not so in an agricultural civilization, which tended to perserve the stupid and facilitate the transmission of their defective genes. In a word, agricultural civilization is dysgenic. I don't think Diamond lived long enough to see the emerging evidence that the contrary appears to be true. But my sense is he would have rejected it on ideological grounds.
As an anthropologist, I understand why he made that remark. Selection has favored a different basket of mental and behavioral traits in hunter-gatherers, and some hunter-gatherer groups — particularly, Arctic hunting bands — compare favorably to modern Westerners in terms of being able to store large quantities of spatiotemporal information (for hunting game animals over long distances).
As for Papuan New Guineans, they are not hunter-gatherers. They are usually described as "tropical horticulturalists" or "semi-subsistence farmers." PNG is one of the world’s earliest independent centers of agriculture, with archaeological evidence of cultivation going back 7,000+ years. Today, about 85% of the population relies on semi‑subsistence agriculture.
Their level of cognitive ability is disputed. I have little faith in the IQ data, given the lack of familiarity with the testing procedure and the language used. Genomic data suggest a low polygenic score for cognitive ability, although I'm not familiar with the fragmentary data on PNG.
From a column by Davide Piffer:
"The Social complexity + farming model of intelligence
The study's demographic parameters also align with archaeological evidence that PNG experienced no Neolithic population explosion comparable to Eurasia. This demographic stasis preserved genetic architectures reflecting pre-agricultural selective regimes, while Eurasian populations underwent rapid expansion that continuously fragmented LD blocks over generations.
This connects to the social complexity + farming model (SCF), which predicts that PNG's late agricultural transition and low population growth produced weaker selective pressure on cognitive traits compared to populations with rapid Neolithic expansion. Ancient genome studies have validated this model by demonstrating post-Neolithic increases in cognitive-related polygenic scores in European and East Asian populations (Piffer & Kirkegaard, 2024; Piffer, 2025).
Estimates for the average IQ score of Papuans are in the 75-85 range, comparable to that of Africans. This is what would be predicted by the SCF model."
Thank you, I thought he died a few years ago. I always found it interesting that Diamond rejected as "repugnant" the possibility that Europeans might be smarter, on average, than anyone else, but then made a classic eugenics argument to the effect that Papuans were genetically more intelligent than Europeans (which could, of course, be true in principle). That is, Diamond implicitly claimed that environmental factors might elevate one group's intelligence over another's.... except, apparently, when he found it repugnant. Diamond's double standard seems pretty obviously motivated by a patronistic protectiveness for the Papuans.
"Wallace rightly believed that the pace of cultural change overtook the pace of genetic evolution in our species. But he wrongly concluded that the growing importance of culture caused genetic evolution to slow down and lose importance."
This misreads Wallace. In the relevant passages from The Origin of Races, he does not claim that genetic evolution in humans slowed down or lost importance. Instead, he argued that it shifted its focus — from physical traits to mental and behavioral ones. Here is what Wallace actually wrote:
"Again, when any slow changes of physical geography, or of climate, make it necessary for an animal to alter its food, its clothing, or its weapons, it can only do so by a corresponding change in its own bodily structure... But man, under similar circumstances, does not require longer nails or teeth, greater bodily strength or swiftness. He makes sharper spears, or a better bow... The capacities which enable him to do this are what he requires to be strengthened, and these will, therefore, be gradually modified by ‘natural selection,’ while the form and structure of his body will remain unchanged.Man, under the same circumstances, will make himself warmer clothing, and build better houses; and the necessity of doing this will react upon his mental organisation and social condition — will advance them while his natural body remains naked as before."
He continues:
"From the time, therefore, when the social and sympathetic feelings came into active operation, and the intellectual and moral faculties became fairly developed, man would cease to be influenced by ‘natural selection’ in his physical form and structure... But from the moment that his body became stationary, his mind would become subject to those very influences from which his body had escaped; every slight variation in his mental and moral nature which should enable him better to guard against adverse circumstances, and combine for mutual comfort and protection, would be preserved and accumulated; the better and higher specimens of our race would therefore increase and spread, the lower and more brutal would give way and successively die out..."
Wallace’s point is clear: in humans, natural selection continued, but it increasingly acted on mental and behavioral traits — intelligence, inventiveness, cooperation, planning, and moral qualities — rather than on purely physical traits like strength, speed, claws, or fur. Genetic evolution did not stop; its target simply changed.
Clearly, Engels borrowed this core insight from Wallace.
Hard to see how one could draw a different conclusion.
Interesting, as always.
It's refreshing to hear from the 19th century, before people started to over-indulge in polite hedging and endless qualifications. All most of us want is 'the main thing', which writers like Wallace and Engels give us.
Reading this made me think that it's rather infair that everyone knows the name 'Marx' but not everyone has never heard of Engels.
Strange the way that when someone (here Wallace and Galton) propose an idea it's difficult for others who come later to think passed it to some other possible solution. It's the same at our pub quiz. The first round is always to name the band from the song. As soon as one of our team suggests a band name I'm incapable of thinking of any alternative, so much so that we have now agreed to keep our suggestions to ourselves until each of us has had a chance to think for himself. Of course Engels, being dead by then, never had much of a chance to voice his opinion.
Engels was initially just as interested in the natural sciences as he was in the social sciences. He shifted toward the social sciences because he became convinced of the need for immediate political activism.
Employers are much smaller in number than employees. Therefore, the opportunities for collusion are greater among the former than among the latter. Employers earn income above and beyond the real value of their products, and this income may be used not only to make better widgets but also to rig the game in their favor.
Economic power will therefore become centralized in fewer and fewer hands, and this will translate into centralization of political power. This was the future that Engels, like Marx, wished to avoid.
Put like that, socialism sounds totally reasonable (which of course it is, on paper). Yet if the centralisation of political power was Marx and Engels' biggest worry then getting the state to own and run all businesses seems an odd solution.
It wasn't their solution. Neither Karl Marx nor Friedrich Engels proposed state socialism as the solution to capitalism’s contradictions. Both saw the state as an instrument of class domination that would ultimately wither away, not as the foundation of a socialist order.
Marx and Engels consistently described the state as an instrument of class rule, created to maintain the dominance of the ruling class. Because of this, they rejected the idea that socialism could be achieved by simply expanding or strengthening the existing state.
I see. Just shows you how one's lack of knowledge is invisible to...one i.e. Donald Rumsfeld's 'unknown unknowns'. So if Marx and Engels were looking down on us all they would probably bellow a thousand times a day, 'Hey, you lot down there! That's not what we meant at all!' However, I suppose I'm still right in assuming that even their non-statist socialism doesn't work, human nature being what it is.
All solutions "work" to some extent. Conversely, there is no perfect solution, since, as you said, human nature is what it is.
Also, the best solution varies from one human population to another. What works for a Western European population will not work as well for an East Asian population. And vice versa.
I always like it when I learn that human populations differ more than I had imagined. It makes the world seem less monochrome.
I used to work in Japan and was amazed to learn, when I entered a pharmacy with the intention of buying something to unblock my ears of wax, that Japanese people's earwax is powdery, not waxy. Who knew?
And I'm just as amazed to learn that different economic systems work better or worse depending on the population. I know economics is hardly a rigorous science but I had imagined its main tenets to be more universally applicable and generally less dependent on local custom than say, cuisine or dress design.
Why does power become more concentrated in capitalism but not in socialism? The problem with people like Engels is they never provided a full fledged chain of events to explain the many outcomes they predicted.
It becomes concentrated in both systems. The best solution to the contradictions of capitalism was the "New Deal" that developed in the 1930s, and which laid the basis for the postwar economic expansion:
- strict limits on immigration
- unionization and, more generally, support for family, community, and national culture as counterweights to oligarchic concentration.
- high minimum wage
- high level of corporate taxation
- aggressive anti-trust laws
- separation between the state sector and the business sector, i.e., no "revolving door" between the two.
From your use of the term pub, it appears you are from England.
Your deduction is correct. I think you took my comment far too seriously. It was meant as a joke at the expense of us English but you seem to have taken it personally.
"I didn't take it seriously at all. I said it was funny. Why would I take it personally? I am not English (well, only partially).
'But it's funny you speak so derogatorily of England'.
I think most native speakers of English would understand this use of funny as meaning 'odd/peculiar' rather than 'funny ha-ha'.
Do you have a point?
Yes, my point is that I think most native speakers of English would understand this use of funny as meaning 'odd/peculiar' rather than 'funny ha-ha' and that you decided it was in your interest to change your original meaning to a different one i.e you are being dishonest. That is my point.
Engels, huh? History might look different if these ideas had found a place in Communist thought.
They did initially. During the 1920s, Communism was a potpourri of many tendencies, some of which were little more than experimental. It then hardened during the 1930s for several reasons:
- The need to project a single coherent ideology, particularly in the Soviet Union
- Many of the rejected ideas were half-baked. This was the case with the efforts to abolish the family, as well as "free love" and various forms of sexual experimentation
- The personal influence of Josef Stalin and the people around him
Certainly, but I meant in a more lasting way, instead of being rejected along with the other ideas you mention. A Soviet Union with more of this intellectual strain instead of Lysenkoism would be less self-sabotaging and less willfully ignorant of reality, and might have lasted longer. Much like the PRC is still here because Deng reached back and grasped at earlier communist writings that could be read as justifying very small-scale companies, thus taking the first step to allowing some capitalist elements in to save their economy.
There were reasons why Lysenkoism became so dominant. The Soviet Union wished to sell its way of life to the rest of the world, especially the emerging nations of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Meanwhile, the United States was doing the same thing.
In both cases, the underlying premise was that human nature is highly malleable. Anyone can become an American, just as anyone can become a Soviet! Just do as we do!
This premise has seeped into almost everything we say and think. If other people are not becoming like us, it's because they're not trying hard enough. Or it's because we're not letting them.
I don't think so. Most of the smart people know what is going on, even with the same priors they reach different results.
It makes sense that when intelligence was not being actively selected for that it could slowly regress instead of reliably remaining the same. Other survival factors, such as digestion or immunity, would come to the fore as areas of change.
Excellent article, as usual.
"The advance of science is due not only to exceptional individuals but also to our willingness to recognize them and build on their work."
This is an extremely important point. Sadly, the part about 'willingness to recognize them', is hard for many to do.
It is easy to observe that human cognition has developed far beyond what is necessary for survival. The question is why?
"It is easy to observe that human cognition has developed far beyond what is necessary for survival."
You are talking like a person from a nice country with a high standard of living. This is largely why mean IQ has been declining throughout the West. People can survive with a lower IQ, and nothing terrible happens to them.
"This is largely why mean IQ has been declining throughout the West."
Yes, but why did it rise so far above what is necessary in the first place?
First, the goal is not simply "survival". It's also "survival + reproduction." And the reproduction has to be in line with population growth, whether positive or negative.
Can someone with an IQ of 90 survive and reproduce today? Probably. But let's go back in time — not only before the welfare state but also before the specialization of labor under industrial capitalism — which created large numbers of simple jobs that nonetheless paid a decent wage.
Before the late 1800s, a man with an IQ of 90 could have found work as a common laborer in a town or a shipyard. But such people were mostly bachelors. Yes, some did marry and have children, but they were a minority. Moreover, their children did not necessarily survive to adulthood and have children of their own.
As for a woman with an IQ of 90, the range of options was also limited, perhaps work as a charwoman. A married woman of that IQ level would need a man who could pull in a decent income, perhaps a widower.
Chances were not much better for a tenant farmer. Such people were being squeezed off the land. Farther back, in the Middle Ages, especially the period before the Black Death, a person with 90 IQ could have had a decent chance for reproduction as a serf on a manor. But those chances progressively dwindled away over the next few centuries.
This is a point that Gregory Clark has made and which has been confirmed by the latest work on ancient DNA by Davide Piffer and Gregory Connor: the English working class did not replace itself demographically during the long period (1350 to 1850) when mean IQ rose by a little over three quarters of a standard deviation. There was also a dramatic increase in the smart fraction: the smartest 1% in 1850 was smarter than the smartest 0.1% in 700.
There is no need to posit a need for self-reflection and self-actualization. Mean IQ rose to 100 and above because those were the people who had the best chances of survival and reproduction.
https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/cognitive-evolution-in-western-europe
Thanks for the explanation.
I suppose it could be competition with other high IQ individuals? All it would need for IQ to rise 'higher than necessary' is for intelligence to be seen as attractive by the opposite sex, or to bring status and lots and lots of stuff. There is no limit to people's desires. By the same token it probably makes no sense to say, 'That woman is prettier than is strictly necessary'.
I would submit that the reason why intelligence rose so far above what is necessary in the first place might be that imagination and inquisitiveness inspired those of intelligence to reach beyond survival.
In your 'explanation' the imaginative and the inquisitive are already intelligent. How does that explain how they became intelligent in the first place? Or are you claiming that imagination and a curious nature CAUSE higher intelligence to spring into being? I think it more likely that intelligent people tend to be more imaginative and curious, but the latter doesn't cause the former.
"I think it more likely that intelligent people tend to be more imaginative and curious, but the latter doesn't cause the former."
Maybe, but if you don't like my conjecture, don't use it.
EO Wilson said opposable thumbs were the precursor to bigger brains. So tools are invented. But animal power now comes into the picture. Id think humans were beyond survival mode here. Using this power certainly helped move things to even bigger brains. Jared Diamond speaks of Africa and the new world lacking animal power, which might explain some of this, as well.
"EO Wilson said opposable thumbs were the precursor to bigger brains."
Perhaps, at any rate, opposable thumbs were a big help in utilizing larger brains.
"I suppose it could be competition with other high IQ individuals? All it would need for IQ to rise 'higher than necessary' is for intelligence to be seen as attractive by the opposite sex, or to bring status and lots and lots of stuff."
Perhaps, but since most people are rather shallow and generally do not pick mates for intelligence, I suspect that plays a very small role. Also, people of high intelligence usually do not seek status or lots of stuff. They are more inclined to seek knowledge.
"By the same token it probably makes no sense to say, 'That woman is prettier than is strictly necessary'."
I don't see that as an equal comparison. Attractiveness is aesthetic, while intelligence is objective rather than subjective.
What I really meant was not so much that intelligence is in itself sexually attractive but what intelligence can give you is: a high status job, lots of money, a big house. For the shallow people you talk about, those are big attractions.
I would say that Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Besos are probably intelligent and though they might not have been motivated by achieving high status, it found them anyway. But I suspect highly intelligent people ARE motivated by achieving status. Everyone wants to be loved and admired, even clever people.
'I don't see that as an equal comparison. Attractiveness is aesthetic, while intelligence is objective rather than subjective'.
The point in using comparisons is precisely NOT to compare something to something else that is EXACTLY the same. For a comparison to work the two things must be different in some way.
You think that attractiveness is purely subjective? Since we often agree on who is physically attractive (Jenna Coleman) and who isn't (Joan Rivers) then attractiveness must be partly (though not wholly) objective. And maybe you didn't agree with my saying Jeff Besos is intelligent, in which case intelligence too might be partly (though not wholly) subjective.
"I would say that Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Besos are probably intelligent and though they might not have been motivated by achieving high status, it found them anyway."
It all depends on where you draw the lines on levels of intelligence.
On the contrary, I believe they were all motivated by 'achieving high status'. I would not describe them as highly intelligent. But most of all, they are rapacious.
At the risk of overusing Einstein as an example, it is hard to imagine fame and fortune being his motivation.
"You think that attractiveness is purely subjective?"
Attractiveness is an opinion; intelligence can be measured.
"You are talking like a person from a nice country with a high standard of living".
Here, I suspect you are mistaken. I think Realist is from England.
"Here, I suspect you are mistaken. I think Realist is from England."
No, I am from the United States. But it's funny you speak so derogatorily of England.
Yes, being from England myself I feel entitled to run the place down.
Self-deprecation.
Indeed.
"[Galton] rightly believed that civilization can cause cognitive evolution to halt or even reverse. But he wrongly assumed that stagnation and decline were the usual outcome. In fact, civilization has more often been an impetus for higher levels of cognitive ability."
In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond claimed that Papua New Guineans tribesmen were not only not less intelligent than civilized Europeans and Asians, they were actually more intelligent. He argued that the day to day survival of tribal New Guineans depended on their applied intelligence. A stupid New Guinean wouldn't survive long, and thus be less likely to pass along his genes to the next generation. Not so in an agricultural civilization, which tended to perserve the stupid and facilitate the transmission of their defective genes. In a word, agricultural civilization is dysgenic. I don't think Diamond lived long enough to see the emerging evidence that the contrary appears to be true. But my sense is he would have rejected it on ideological grounds.
As an anthropologist, I understand why he made that remark. Selection has favored a different basket of mental and behavioral traits in hunter-gatherers, and some hunter-gatherer groups — particularly, Arctic hunting bands — compare favorably to modern Westerners in terms of being able to store large quantities of spatiotemporal information (for hunting game animals over long distances).
As for Papuan New Guineans, they are not hunter-gatherers. They are usually described as "tropical horticulturalists" or "semi-subsistence farmers." PNG is one of the world’s earliest independent centers of agriculture, with archaeological evidence of cultivation going back 7,000+ years. Today, about 85% of the population relies on semi‑subsistence agriculture.
Their level of cognitive ability is disputed. I have little faith in the IQ data, given the lack of familiarity with the testing procedure and the language used. Genomic data suggest a low polygenic score for cognitive ability, although I'm not familiar with the fragmentary data on PNG.
From a column by Davide Piffer:
"The Social complexity + farming model of intelligence
The study's demographic parameters also align with archaeological evidence that PNG experienced no Neolithic population explosion comparable to Eurasia. This demographic stasis preserved genetic architectures reflecting pre-agricultural selective regimes, while Eurasian populations underwent rapid expansion that continuously fragmented LD blocks over generations.
This connects to the social complexity + farming model (SCF), which predicts that PNG's late agricultural transition and low population growth produced weaker selective pressure on cognitive traits compared to populations with rapid Neolithic expansion. Ancient genome studies have validated this model by demonstrating post-Neolithic increases in cognitive-related polygenic scores in European and East Asian populations (Piffer & Kirkegaard, 2024; Piffer, 2025).
Estimates for the average IQ score of Papuans are in the 75-85 range, comparable to that of Africans. This is what would be predicted by the SCF model."
https://davidepiffer.com/p/a-new-nature-study-rewrites-the-history
Diamond is still alive. Maybe there are comments from him on this stuff, not sure though.
Thank you, I thought he died a few years ago. I always found it interesting that Diamond rejected as "repugnant" the possibility that Europeans might be smarter, on average, than anyone else, but then made a classic eugenics argument to the effect that Papuans were genetically more intelligent than Europeans (which could, of course, be true in principle). That is, Diamond implicitly claimed that environmental factors might elevate one group's intelligence over another's.... except, apparently, when he found it repugnant. Diamond's double standard seems pretty obviously motivated by a patronistic protectiveness for the Papuans.
I've always respected Marx and Engels, in spite of their personal foibles and the fact socialism doesn't work well in practice.
Peter,
Your comment on Wallace is puzzling. You argue:
"Wallace rightly believed that the pace of cultural change overtook the pace of genetic evolution in our species. But he wrongly concluded that the growing importance of culture caused genetic evolution to slow down and lose importance."
This misreads Wallace. In the relevant passages from The Origin of Races, he does not claim that genetic evolution in humans slowed down or lost importance. Instead, he argued that it shifted its focus — from physical traits to mental and behavioral ones. Here is what Wallace actually wrote:
"Again, when any slow changes of physical geography, or of climate, make it necessary for an animal to alter its food, its clothing, or its weapons, it can only do so by a corresponding change in its own bodily structure... But man, under similar circumstances, does not require longer nails or teeth, greater bodily strength or swiftness. He makes sharper spears, or a better bow... The capacities which enable him to do this are what he requires to be strengthened, and these will, therefore, be gradually modified by ‘natural selection,’ while the form and structure of his body will remain unchanged.Man, under the same circumstances, will make himself warmer clothing, and build better houses; and the necessity of doing this will react upon his mental organisation and social condition — will advance them while his natural body remains naked as before."
He continues:
"From the time, therefore, when the social and sympathetic feelings came into active operation, and the intellectual and moral faculties became fairly developed, man would cease to be influenced by ‘natural selection’ in his physical form and structure... But from the moment that his body became stationary, his mind would become subject to those very influences from which his body had escaped; every slight variation in his mental and moral nature which should enable him better to guard against adverse circumstances, and combine for mutual comfort and protection, would be preserved and accumulated; the better and higher specimens of our race would therefore increase and spread, the lower and more brutal would give way and successively die out..."
Wallace’s point is clear: in humans, natural selection continued, but it increasingly acted on mental and behavioral traits — intelligence, inventiveness, cooperation, planning, and moral qualities — rather than on purely physical traits like strength, speed, claws, or fur. Genetic evolution did not stop; its target simply changed.
Clearly, Engels borrowed this core insight from Wallace.
Hard to see how one could draw a different conclusion.
Thanks for the clarification on this.