Welcome to the second edition of My Favourite Parts From. This week we’re looking at Ed Dutton and Michael Woodley of Menie’s At Our Wits' End. As many of the books I read are replete with academic references, my personal style guide is to cite the source given but use the text from the book. Where necessary, I add a brief subtitle for clarity. I label the quotes in case you would like to discuss them in the comments.
From what I can understand, the evidence for declining intelligence is not very good.
Decline in reaction time: Many reasons could be behind this: We get less sleep now than we used to. We weigh more. We take more medication. We have less testosterone. We are longer.
Polygenic scores are higher on ancient DNA: Using PGS on another people then it is trained on is not reliable. For example, since some groups have more Neanderthal DNA than others, these alleles migh increase the score. But, scoring neanderthals is probably not a good idea.
I agree about reaction time, although I think you'd have to scrutinise the analysis in Woodley et.al (link below). However, I've not seen any good arguments against dysgenic impacts on IQ.
I'm not well versed enough on PGS to answer that, but your point seems legit. Will ask a few specialists.
How many of these purported cycles have various cultures through history gone through and what are the markers of such (i.e., how to tell g-caused declines vs other causes)?
Good question. Absent plagues and tsunamis, perhaps this is the standard path? The symptoms of g decline are fairly obvious but obviously at certain moments in history could be caused by other things. For example, low innovation in one century might be due to the Spanish Flu, but consistent decline is more likely to be g related. That would be my thought.
Good summary of the book, thank you.
From what I can understand, the evidence for declining intelligence is not very good.
Decline in reaction time: Many reasons could be behind this: We get less sleep now than we used to. We weigh more. We take more medication. We have less testosterone. We are longer.
Polygenic scores are higher on ancient DNA: Using PGS on another people then it is trained on is not reliable. For example, since some groups have more Neanderthal DNA than others, these alleles migh increase the score. But, scoring neanderthals is probably not a good idea.
I agree about reaction time, although I think you'd have to scrutinise the analysis in Woodley et.al (link below). However, I've not seen any good arguments against dysgenic impacts on IQ.
I'm not well versed enough on PGS to answer that, but your point seems legit. Will ask a few specialists.
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.1080.5946&rep=rep1&type=pdf
How many of these purported cycles have various cultures through history gone through and what are the markers of such (i.e., how to tell g-caused declines vs other causes)?
Good question. Absent plagues and tsunamis, perhaps this is the standard path? The symptoms of g decline are fairly obvious but obviously at certain moments in history could be caused by other things. For example, low innovation in one century might be due to the Spanish Flu, but consistent decline is more likely to be g related. That would be my thought.