*
Francis Crick (1916-2004) was not picked-out as a genius in early life; although his co-discovery of the structure of DNA, his intellectual domination of molecular biology in its golden age, and his role in understanding the genetic code make him a candidate for the single most influential scientist of the late 20th century.
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Crick was clearly well above-average in ability, quick witted and had a flair for problem solving; but he was (and remained) an intensely-annoying person with an arrogant manner, a loud voice, and an irritating laugh.
His exceptionally abrasive personality was certainly a factor in holding him back as a young man - but later it became a crucial asset in his major scientific work.
Crick had an intellectually privileged childhood and went to a premier academic school, but failed to gain entrance to his first choice universities, and graduated with a second class degree; and then started but failed to complete two PhDs, despite changing from physics to biology
So that by the time he met James Watson in 1951 he was in his mid-thirties, on the third attempt at completing a PhD and with poor career prospects (having been told by the Director that he was not wanted at the laboratory after the PhD was completed).
He was a failure, who had squandered multiple chances; and people did not like having him around.
*
In other words, Crick was a very late-maturing genius - both by absolute and career standards, and for his early life (and what are usually the peak years of achievement) he was just drifting and he was going nowhere in particular.
Then he met Jim Watson, was persuaded that the gene was made of DNA, and that the structure of DNA was solveable - and he was off and unstoppable!
This illustrates how vital it is for a genius to find his problem.
Francis Crick was not visibly a genius until he found DNA - yet of course he was the same man, with the same abilities (the same intelligence, the same personality): but until he met Watson and discovered DNA he was unmotivated - or rather his motivation was too fickle, and too compromised.
*
It is presumably of some relevance that Crick was psychologically very 'normal' by genius standards; in that he was very sociable and gregarious, had a high sex drive; and, in general, wanted the kind of things that normal men want - alongside being very highly motivated to work at his scientific problems.
The relevance is probably that Crick was for many years too easily distracted from his intellectual destiny by 'worldly' matters, and was less aware of his inner compulsions than are most geniuses.
Perhaps this is a pattern for late-developing genius?
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This matter of finding your problem is vital; and not only for genius level scientists but for us below that level who are yet very driven and motivated by intellectual matters: to be working in the right area, to have found one's destiny, is something that makes all the difference.
*
My own experience has some parallels with Crick - in the sense that I did not 'find my problem' until my mid-thirties when I seized upon evolutionary psychology/ evolutionary theory; up until then I drifted from subject to subject through early adult life.
By 35 years old I had been employed at medical school, medical 'internship', psychiatry training, neuroendocrinology research, English literature scholarship, and lectureships in physiology, anatomy, epidemiology and public health...
In my case, this sudden clarity about what I should be doing damaged rather than enhanced my career (as so often happens in modern science), but there was and is no doubt that 'here was my destiny', at last.
So I was far more successful than Crick up to age 35, having done well at everything except the internship - but, obviously, the reverse afterwards; and I am not in line for a Nobel!
But - like Crick - I know what it is to have found your problem, and what it is not to have found your problem.
*
In later life, aged about 60, Crick left molecular biology and went into neuroscience to work on consciousness which continued until his death; but for whatever reason made no decisive contributions and was just a 'mainstream' member of the field.
Crick's intellectual deficiencies, in particular his rather crude 'shallowness' as a person and his strident atheism, indeed made him especially un-suited to working in the field of consciousness; where he never really even grasped the scope and nature problem (leave aside solving it).
Also, by the time Crick went into neuroscience, science was becoming very corrupt - and neuroscience was one of the most corrupt parts (because it was so lavishly funded) - so most of the papers Crick will have read (and he read far too much!) were dishonest and/or incompetent - so the data he was working with was unsuitable for theoretical purposes.
*
Altogether, the life and work of Francis Crick makes a very interesting and relevant study - as perhaps the last British genius to be famous outside of science professionals.
*
Note: There is a stylish, concise and scientifically-informed biography: Francis Crick by Matt Ridley - 2006. Also, here is what I wrote after Crick's death:
http://www.hedweb.com/bgcharlton/francis-crick.html
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Saturday, 29 November 2014
Thursday, 27 November 2014
The nature of creativity - purposive inner thought
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Creativity is about a mode of thought relatively cut-off from the environment: it is about inner thought.
Thus creativity implies a disengagement from sensory input (e.g. detached from visual and auditory stimuli), and from engagement with the immediate surrounding environment, including the social environment.
But, to be inner-directed is not sufficient to define creativity; for example, sleep, psychosis and delirium are all states in which attention is directed to inner stimuli - yet these are not creative.
When there is no control over the direction of thought - as in dreams, or in hallucinatory and thought-disordered states - there is no purposive control. Thought is being passively-driven-by the inner world.
Creativity entails that the direction, the subject matter, of thought be voluntarily directed; directed towards something like understanding a circumstance, solving a problem, or making a thing.
Creative inspiration is therefore IN-spiration - comes from inner reflection; but to be truly creative inspiration is sought, it is strategic, it is a product of motivation.
So, there is a type of inner-directed thought which is deranged, and may be pathological (for example induced by drugs).
But, the inner-directed thought of a creative person is a result of the way he is made - the inward-attending-bias of creativity is 'hard-wired', innate, present from young childhood.
The creative person is made so that his attention and interest tends to be relatively cut off from the environment, relatively uninterested in the social world (which - in most people - commands most of their interest) .
And indeed, because he is made with an inward bias - if or when a creative person suffers some mental impairment, he is more-than-usually-likely to become psychotic.
But it is not the psychosis which gives the creativity; rather the creativity and the prone-ness to psychosis have the same basis - presumably the same nature of inner-directed hard-wiring.
*
Creativity is about a mode of thought relatively cut-off from the environment: it is about inner thought.
Thus creativity implies a disengagement from sensory input (e.g. detached from visual and auditory stimuli), and from engagement with the immediate surrounding environment, including the social environment.
But, to be inner-directed is not sufficient to define creativity; for example, sleep, psychosis and delirium are all states in which attention is directed to inner stimuli - yet these are not creative.
When there is no control over the direction of thought - as in dreams, or in hallucinatory and thought-disordered states - there is no purposive control. Thought is being passively-driven-by the inner world.
Creativity entails that the direction, the subject matter, of thought be voluntarily directed; directed towards something like understanding a circumstance, solving a problem, or making a thing.
Creative inspiration is therefore IN-spiration - comes from inner reflection; but to be truly creative inspiration is sought, it is strategic, it is a product of motivation.
So, there is a type of inner-directed thought which is deranged, and may be pathological (for example induced by drugs).
But, the inner-directed thought of a creative person is a result of the way he is made - the inward-attending-bias of creativity is 'hard-wired', innate, present from young childhood.
The creative person is made so that his attention and interest tends to be relatively cut off from the environment, relatively uninterested in the social world (which - in most people - commands most of their interest) .
And indeed, because he is made with an inward bias - if or when a creative person suffers some mental impairment, he is more-than-usually-likely to become psychotic.
But it is not the psychosis which gives the creativity; rather the creativity and the prone-ness to psychosis have the same basis - presumably the same nature of inner-directed hard-wiring.
*
The acorn theory of genius
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It seems likely that (as a rule) genius is inborn - and the way this works could be described in terms of an acorn which grows into an oak.
The pre-requisites of genius are intelligence, which we know is mostly inherited; and creativity, which is much less well understood, but which is also substantially in-built.
(Intelligence cannot be taught, although IQ tests can - neither can real creativity be taught.)
So a mature, adult genius is a product of the growth and development of a child in whom the ingredients and their balance can be traced right back to early childhood; much as the oak tree grows from the acorn.
So, there is destiny to genius - and the primary qualities are either absent, or present (to varying degrees) from the very start - and (unless thwarted) these qualities will tend to unfold by their own inner logic.
And as with an oak tree, the exact, specific result depends on the environment - if the tree is growing in thin soil on the top of a windy mountain, the tree will be stunted and bent; if alone in the middle of a landscaped park it may grow to symmetrical magnificence.
But, whatever the final result - even if the oak is eaten as a sapling by a rabbit - its basic potentiality and distinctive nature was in the acorn from the beginning.
*
Note: The acorn metaphor (although not my proposed psychological mechanism) comes from The Soul's Code by James Hillman (1997), who also collected a wide range of examples.
It seems likely that (as a rule) genius is inborn - and the way this works could be described in terms of an acorn which grows into an oak.
The pre-requisites of genius are intelligence, which we know is mostly inherited; and creativity, which is much less well understood, but which is also substantially in-built.
(Intelligence cannot be taught, although IQ tests can - neither can real creativity be taught.)
So a mature, adult genius is a product of the growth and development of a child in whom the ingredients and their balance can be traced right back to early childhood; much as the oak tree grows from the acorn.
So, there is destiny to genius - and the primary qualities are either absent, or present (to varying degrees) from the very start - and (unless thwarted) these qualities will tend to unfold by their own inner logic.
And as with an oak tree, the exact, specific result depends on the environment - if the tree is growing in thin soil on the top of a windy mountain, the tree will be stunted and bent; if alone in the middle of a landscaped park it may grow to symmetrical magnificence.
But, whatever the final result - even if the oak is eaten as a sapling by a rabbit - its basic potentiality and distinctive nature was in the acorn from the beginning.
*
Note: The acorn metaphor (although not my proposed psychological mechanism) comes from The Soul's Code by James Hillman (1997), who also collected a wide range of examples.
Tuesday, 25 November 2014
How are highly intelligent people sometimes born to unintelligent parents (and ancestors)?
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This (assuming the phenomenon is real) seems hard to explain in the way that intelligence is normally considered - in terms of intelligence being a consequence of very large numbers (thousands?) of genes-for-intelligence. With intelligence genes conceptualized as additive in effect, and in such large numbers, it is hard to understand how a very highly intelligent child could emerge by chance from low intelligence parents.
But if person's level of intelligence is also determined by the number of deleterious mutations they inherit from their parents, and these mutations are numbered in tens - then it is imaginable that, by chance, a child may be born with very few deleterious mutations, despite his parents having a relatively heavy mutation load.
This notion is perhaps testable, on the basis that a low mutation load should be associated with generally higher fitness - so the high intelligence child of low intelligence parents would be expected to be (on average) taller, healthier, more symmetrical, more long-lived than his low intelligence parents.
*
This (assuming the phenomenon is real) seems hard to explain in the way that intelligence is normally considered - in terms of intelligence being a consequence of very large numbers (thousands?) of genes-for-intelligence. With intelligence genes conceptualized as additive in effect, and in such large numbers, it is hard to understand how a very highly intelligent child could emerge by chance from low intelligence parents.
But if person's level of intelligence is also determined by the number of deleterious mutations they inherit from their parents, and these mutations are numbered in tens - then it is imaginable that, by chance, a child may be born with very few deleterious mutations, despite his parents having a relatively heavy mutation load.
This notion is perhaps testable, on the basis that a low mutation load should be associated with generally higher fitness - so the high intelligence child of low intelligence parents would be expected to be (on average) taller, healthier, more symmetrical, more long-lived than his low intelligence parents.
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Monday, 24 November 2014
Geniuses are "vulnerable and fragile" and "need to be looked after"
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Quoted from an article in The Daily Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/11232300/Why-do-geniuses-lack-common-sense.html
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Michael Woodley makes an important point here. Far from being high in reproductive fitness, in biological terms many geniuses or vulnerable and fragile, and benefit the group rather than themselves; and therefore they often need to be looked after.
The corollary is that when geniuses are not looked after, they do not fulfil their potential, and everybody loses.
If you look at the geniuses throughout history, which obviously only detects successful geniuses, and not those who were thwarted or crushed - there are a very large number who had some kind of 'minder' - typically a specific person who looked after them; whether an influential colleague, a sympathetic employer, a patron, or a monarch - or else their family or a group of close friends.
*
So, the reclusive poet Emily Dickinson was 'managed' by Colonel TW Higginson; and Jane Austen flourished in the obscurity of her family. Thomas Aquinas was looked after by his brother Friars; and Mendel in his monastery. Pascal by his family. Plus many a genius was sustained by a capable wife.
When there is a close-knit and idealistic community, this may also do it - for example, the community of mathematicians looked after Paul Erdos, who never had a home and camped out at in the house of one mathematics Professor after another for decades, while collaborating on research papers. The Indian genius mathematician Ramanujan was discovered and protected by the Cambridge Professors Hardy and Littlewood.
But poor William Sidis was exploited rather than protected by his parents, and was a sensitive man who had to survive in a hostile and mocking world; so his achievements were limited, and indeed largely unknown and unappreciated.
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Modern society is dominated by 'bureaucracy', that is by voting committees and formal procedures - rather than individual humans making personal judgments.
And committees do not look after geniuses - rather they ignore them, or persecute them.
It is no coincidence that English genius very suddenly all-but disappeared in the era (from about 1955-1980) in which bureaucracy waxed dominant in national life - and nowadays geniuses are absent, invisible, or fighting for survival against the forces of mass media, committees, peer reviewers and other faceless officials.
This is sad for the geniuses; fatal for our society.
*
Quoted from an article in The Daily Telegraph
Dr Michael Woodley of Menie, from the Free University of Brussels, believes that individuals who can be classified as geniuses have brains that are wired differently and are programmed to be unable to deal with small details. “They’re incapable of managing normal day to day affairs,” says Dr Woodley.
“History is littered with anecdotes of geniuses who fail at the most spectacularly mundane tasks. Einstein got lost on one of his sojourns in Princeton, New Jersey. He went into a shop and said, ‘Hi, I’m Einstein, can you take me home please?’ He couldn’t drive and the small things that most people take for granted were totally beyond his capabilities.”
Dr Woodley believes geniuses are “literally not hardwired to be able to learn those kind of tasks. Every time they attempt to allocate the effort into dealing with the mundanities in life they’re constitutionally resisted; their brains are not capable of processing things at that low level.”
Genius, Dr Woodley says, can be found in people with modestly high levels of psychoticism [often typified by interpersonal hostility] and very high intelligence, with IQs scores of more than 140 or 150. Furthermore they are, he says, often asexual as their brains use the space allocated to urges such as sexual desire for additional cognitive ability.
"You have a trade off between what Freud would have referred to as libido and on the other hand pure abstraction: a Platonistic world of ideas,” he said. The evolutionary reason for this may lie with the theory that geniuses have insights that advance the general population. “It’s paradoxical because you think the idea of evolution is procreation, and that might be true in a lot of cases,” he explains. “But what if the way you increase your genes is by benefitting the entire group, by giving them an innovation that allows them to grow and expand and colonise new countries?”
The lack of common sense is in keeping with the idea that a genius exists as an asset to other people, and so: “They need to be looked after,” he says. “They are vulnerable and fragile.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/11232300/Why-do-geniuses-lack-common-sense.html
*
Michael Woodley makes an important point here. Far from being high in reproductive fitness, in biological terms many geniuses or vulnerable and fragile, and benefit the group rather than themselves; and therefore they often need to be looked after.
The corollary is that when geniuses are not looked after, they do not fulfil their potential, and everybody loses.
If you look at the geniuses throughout history, which obviously only detects successful geniuses, and not those who were thwarted or crushed - there are a very large number who had some kind of 'minder' - typically a specific person who looked after them; whether an influential colleague, a sympathetic employer, a patron, or a monarch - or else their family or a group of close friends.
*
So, the reclusive poet Emily Dickinson was 'managed' by Colonel TW Higginson; and Jane Austen flourished in the obscurity of her family. Thomas Aquinas was looked after by his brother Friars; and Mendel in his monastery. Pascal by his family. Plus many a genius was sustained by a capable wife.
When there is a close-knit and idealistic community, this may also do it - for example, the community of mathematicians looked after Paul Erdos, who never had a home and camped out at in the house of one mathematics Professor after another for decades, while collaborating on research papers. The Indian genius mathematician Ramanujan was discovered and protected by the Cambridge Professors Hardy and Littlewood.
But poor William Sidis was exploited rather than protected by his parents, and was a sensitive man who had to survive in a hostile and mocking world; so his achievements were limited, and indeed largely unknown and unappreciated.
*
Modern society is dominated by 'bureaucracy', that is by voting committees and formal procedures - rather than individual humans making personal judgments.
And committees do not look after geniuses - rather they ignore them, or persecute them.
It is no coincidence that English genius very suddenly all-but disappeared in the era (from about 1955-1980) in which bureaucracy waxed dominant in national life - and nowadays geniuses are absent, invisible, or fighting for survival against the forces of mass media, committees, peer reviewers and other faceless officials.
This is sad for the geniuses; fatal for our society.
*
Tuesday, 18 November 2014
The Creative Triad: Need for a new concept to replace Eysenck's Psychoticism in relation to creativity?
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I am beginning to believe that - important though it was in understanding creativity - it may be necessary to replace Eysenck's personality trait of Psychoticism to distinguish between adaptive and pathological causes.
The sub-traits which constitute Psychoticism have been summarised here:
http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/eysencks-personality-trait-of.html
In brief they are
High Psychoticism is in bold font; Low Psychoticism is normal font.
1. Cold - versus warm, charming
2. Aggressive - versus submissive
3. Egocentric - versus follows groups expectations
4. Unempathic - versus sympathetic, feels the emotions of others
5. Tough-minded (i.e. impervious to events) - versus tender-minded, strongly affected by experience
6. Antisocial - versus gregarious, needs other people
7. Impersonal - versus life consists of intense, direct relationships
8. Impulsive (behaviour dominated by current emotions) - versus behaviour dominated by predictions or weaker emotions.
9. Creative - versus applies peer-approved, learned rules and traditions
I believe that there may be two distinct reasons why a person is rated as high in Psychoticism:
1. One cause is pathological, i.e. functional brain damage from various causes - innate/ genetic, traumatic, drugs or toxins, and psychotic diseases. These increase the susceptibility to altered states of consciousness, and damage evolved psychological adaptations for social living.
*
2. The other cause is adaptive - the evolution (probably by some kind of group-selected mechanism, associated with an extreme K of slow Life History) whereby some minority of individuals are developmentally specialised for socially valuable roles in creativity; by means of a variety of lop-sided maturational trajectories that lead to some highly developed cognitive motivations and intuitive abilities at the cost of others.
For example, among the most extreme creative - creative geniuses - there are 'always' some deficits indicative of an imbalance away from 'normal' abilities and motivations - for example a reduced interest in sex and reproduction, reduced interest (and often aptitude) in social affairs (including indifference to the opinions of others), reduced motivation to achieve power, status, wealth and other socially-valued 'goods'.
And highly creative people often use states of day-dreaming, trance, sleep and other altered states as the primary mode of their creative thinking - but not because these states are imposed on them by disease and deficit; rather as a deliberate strategy, because these states are when creativity is facilitated.
These altered states are usually only deployed in solitude - and switched-off when full alertness is needed (driving a car, operating dangerous machinery etc.), or in social interactions.
So high creativity is a package of positive abilities and emotions, and also a relative indifference to aspects of life which would tend to interfere with creative autonomy and self motivation.
*
However, pathology might mimic evolved creativity, when there is focal damage to social/ sexual psychological adaptations - leading someone to pour all their interest into a specific and idiosyncratic interest. But such pathologically focused individuals would lack the positive aspects of creativity - the type of mind capable of make wide and unusual associations and jumps of logic. Pathological individuals would perhaps be obsessed with a subject - but only in learning about it and not in making original contributions to it.
*
So, what could be a term for the trait displayed by those High Psychoticism individuals who are creative?
Perhaps Creativity is indeed the proper and best term?
So, the category of Psychoticism could be broken down into sub-categories of 1. Pathological Psychoticism, and 2. Adaptive Creativity - and the list of sub-traits modified accordingly.
*
I suggest the following Creative Triad as characteristic of those who display adaptive (and presumably evolved) high level creativity - Creative Genius:
1. A characteristic mode of thought - primarily intuitive, associative and generative; rather than logical and rational and factual. This mode of thought is attained in some kind of altered state of consciousness, usually attained in solitude - rather than full alertness and social interaction.
(Logic, reason and facts are of course necessary to creation - but come after the creative process; as a test applied to the products of creativity.)
2. High ability of a specific kind - different in different creative people: mathematical, inventive, artistic, philosophical etc.
3. Internal, self-motivation to channel one's major energies into the subject of that High Ability.
(High specific ability is of little value unless it is fed with sufficient time and energy to develop that ability, and to apply the outcomes of that ability.)
*
I am beginning to believe that - important though it was in understanding creativity - it may be necessary to replace Eysenck's personality trait of Psychoticism to distinguish between adaptive and pathological causes.
The sub-traits which constitute Psychoticism have been summarised here:
http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/eysencks-personality-trait-of.html
In brief they are
High Psychoticism is in bold font; Low Psychoticism is normal font.
1. Cold - versus warm, charming
2. Aggressive - versus submissive
3. Egocentric - versus follows groups expectations
4. Unempathic - versus sympathetic, feels the emotions of others
5. Tough-minded (i.e. impervious to events) - versus tender-minded, strongly affected by experience
6. Antisocial - versus gregarious, needs other people
7. Impersonal - versus life consists of intense, direct relationships
8. Impulsive (behaviour dominated by current emotions) - versus behaviour dominated by predictions or weaker emotions.
9. Creative - versus applies peer-approved, learned rules and traditions
I believe that there may be two distinct reasons why a person is rated as high in Psychoticism:
1. One cause is pathological, i.e. functional brain damage from various causes - innate/ genetic, traumatic, drugs or toxins, and psychotic diseases. These increase the susceptibility to altered states of consciousness, and damage evolved psychological adaptations for social living.
*
2. The other cause is adaptive - the evolution (probably by some kind of group-selected mechanism, associated with an extreme K of slow Life History) whereby some minority of individuals are developmentally specialised for socially valuable roles in creativity; by means of a variety of lop-sided maturational trajectories that lead to some highly developed cognitive motivations and intuitive abilities at the cost of others.
For example, among the most extreme creative - creative geniuses - there are 'always' some deficits indicative of an imbalance away from 'normal' abilities and motivations - for example a reduced interest in sex and reproduction, reduced interest (and often aptitude) in social affairs (including indifference to the opinions of others), reduced motivation to achieve power, status, wealth and other socially-valued 'goods'.
And highly creative people often use states of day-dreaming, trance, sleep and other altered states as the primary mode of their creative thinking - but not because these states are imposed on them by disease and deficit; rather as a deliberate strategy, because these states are when creativity is facilitated.
These altered states are usually only deployed in solitude - and switched-off when full alertness is needed (driving a car, operating dangerous machinery etc.), or in social interactions.
So high creativity is a package of positive abilities and emotions, and also a relative indifference to aspects of life which would tend to interfere with creative autonomy and self motivation.
*
However, pathology might mimic evolved creativity, when there is focal damage to social/ sexual psychological adaptations - leading someone to pour all their interest into a specific and idiosyncratic interest. But such pathologically focused individuals would lack the positive aspects of creativity - the type of mind capable of make wide and unusual associations and jumps of logic. Pathological individuals would perhaps be obsessed with a subject - but only in learning about it and not in making original contributions to it.
*
So, what could be a term for the trait displayed by those High Psychoticism individuals who are creative?
Perhaps Creativity is indeed the proper and best term?
So, the category of Psychoticism could be broken down into sub-categories of 1. Pathological Psychoticism, and 2. Adaptive Creativity - and the list of sub-traits modified accordingly.
*
I suggest the following Creative Triad as characteristic of those who display adaptive (and presumably evolved) high level creativity - Creative Genius:
1. A characteristic mode of thought - primarily intuitive, associative and generative; rather than logical and rational and factual. This mode of thought is attained in some kind of altered state of consciousness, usually attained in solitude - rather than full alertness and social interaction.
(Logic, reason and facts are of course necessary to creation - but come after the creative process; as a test applied to the products of creativity.)
2. High ability of a specific kind - different in different creative people: mathematical, inventive, artistic, philosophical etc.
3. Internal, self-motivation to channel one's major energies into the subject of that High Ability.
(High specific ability is of little value unless it is fed with sufficient time and energy to develop that ability, and to apply the outcomes of that ability.)
*
Wednesday, 5 November 2014
Intelligence probably declines by considerably more than a standard deviation from age 16 to 63
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IJ Deary, G Der. Reaction Time, Age, and Cognitive Ability: Longitudinal Findings from Age 16 to 63 Years in Representative Population Samples. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition 2005; 12: 187-215.
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Deary and Der's paper referenced above seems to be the best available estimate of the effects of ageing on simple reaction times (sRTs).
Simple reaction time correlates with general intelligence (g) and there is, I believe, a lot of reason to believe that group-averaged sRTs are the best, most valid measure of long-term changes in intelligence.
At the individual level, the modest correlation of sRT with IQ makes the sRT a relatively poor predictor of cognitive; but this is dealt with be averages the sRT measure in a large group, and of course the sRT is a real, physiological measure on a ratio scale - while IQ is only a measure of relative performance in tests, and is merely an ordinal scale with has no fixed interval measure or zero.
*
It is well known that general intelligence declines from late teens/ early twenties and into old age - for example as measured by fluid intelligence. In other words, raw scores of fluid intelligence in IQ tests will decline.
But the real magnitude of this decline cannot be obtained from IQ testing - and only a ratio scale, physiological functional measure such as sRT can measure the real magnitude of decline.
Deary and Der 2005 make possible this measure. They measure Men and Women in three cohorts: aged 16 retested at 24; age 36 retested at 44; aged 56 retested at 63. So, there are six data points for men, and another six for women.
*
Simple visual Reaction Times in milliseconds (rounded to nearest integer)
- Mean (Standard Deviation)
MEN
16- 293 (72)
24- 294 (78)
36- 304 (75)
44- 316 (90)
56- 348 (109)
63- 373 (124)
Total decline 16-63 - 373 minus 293 = 80 milliseconds.
Using age 16 average as a baseline value with its standard deviation of 72 - this 80 ms decline represents an intelligence decline of slightly more than one standard deviation - i.e. slightly more than 15 IQ points.
So, an average man of average IQ would decline from 50th centile age 16 to somewhat below the 16th centile aged 63.
*
WOMEN
16- 295 (57)
24- 306 (73)
36- 314 (79)
44- 333 (95)
56- 346 (101)
63- 375 (126)
Total decline 16-63 - 375 minus 295 = 80 milliseconds.
So, using age 16 as a baseline value with its standard deviation of 57 - this 80ms decline represents an intelligence decline of significantly more than one standard deviation - i.e. significantly more than 15 IQ points.
So, an average woman of average IQ would decline from 50th centile to significantly below the 16th centile aged 63.
*
A decline of more than one standard deviation - or 15 IQ points, represents the minimum average decline in general intelligence from 16 to 63 - in women the real value is likely to be even larger, because the three cohorts of 16-24, 36-44 and 56-63 very probably had different starting levels for intelligence - with the oldest age group having had a starting (age 16) sRT of about 36ms faster than the measured value for the 16-24 group. See:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3-9JKn2PJz3cTNFWHhUbHFXdDg/edit
This may be taken imply that among women the true decline of sRT from 16-63 is more like 113 ms instead of 80 ms - and 113 ms decline would be two standard deviations.
However, 2SDs is likely to be an overestimate, because the distribution of sRT is not really a normal distribution, but positively skewed such that there is a longer tail of higher values - so the standard deviation breaks down as a valid description after about one standard deviation.
*
Nonetheless the data presented in Dear and Der 2005 seems to be measuring a very significant degree of decline in real, underlying, physiological general intelligence/ fluid intelligence between ages 16 and 63; suggesting a significant decline in those cognitive aptitudes underpinned by g.
In practice, this decline in general intelligence may well be obscured by increased specific or 'crystallised' intelligence, due to accumulated specific knowledge, skills and expertise. But the decline in g would be apparent in reduced cognitive flexibility, e.g. slowing of the learning of new knowledge and skills, reduced capacity at solving novel problems and so on.
This data set also suggests that the effect of declining intelligence with age may also be obscured, in this group of women, by declining average intelligence over time, with older generations having a had a higher starting point of for intelligence.
But however the data is adjusted or corrected, the basic finding seems to be that average intelligence declines by more than one standard deviation from age 16 to 63.
*
Ref: see also
http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/further-evidence-of-significant-slowing.html
IJ Deary, G Der. Reaction Time, Age, and Cognitive Ability: Longitudinal Findings from Age 16 to 63 Years in Representative Population Samples. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition 2005; 12: 187-215.
*
Deary and Der's paper referenced above seems to be the best available estimate of the effects of ageing on simple reaction times (sRTs).
Simple reaction time correlates with general intelligence (g) and there is, I believe, a lot of reason to believe that group-averaged sRTs are the best, most valid measure of long-term changes in intelligence.
At the individual level, the modest correlation of sRT with IQ makes the sRT a relatively poor predictor of cognitive; but this is dealt with be averages the sRT measure in a large group, and of course the sRT is a real, physiological measure on a ratio scale - while IQ is only a measure of relative performance in tests, and is merely an ordinal scale with has no fixed interval measure or zero.
*
It is well known that general intelligence declines from late teens/ early twenties and into old age - for example as measured by fluid intelligence. In other words, raw scores of fluid intelligence in IQ tests will decline.
But the real magnitude of this decline cannot be obtained from IQ testing - and only a ratio scale, physiological functional measure such as sRT can measure the real magnitude of decline.
Deary and Der 2005 make possible this measure. They measure Men and Women in three cohorts: aged 16 retested at 24; age 36 retested at 44; aged 56 retested at 63. So, there are six data points for men, and another six for women.
*
Simple visual Reaction Times in milliseconds (rounded to nearest integer)
- Mean (Standard Deviation)
MEN
16- 293 (72)
24- 294 (78)
36- 304 (75)
44- 316 (90)
56- 348 (109)
63- 373 (124)
Total decline 16-63 - 373 minus 293 = 80 milliseconds.
Using age 16 average as a baseline value with its standard deviation of 72 - this 80 ms decline represents an intelligence decline of slightly more than one standard deviation - i.e. slightly more than 15 IQ points.
So, an average man of average IQ would decline from 50th centile age 16 to somewhat below the 16th centile aged 63.
*
WOMEN
16- 295 (57)
24- 306 (73)
36- 314 (79)
44- 333 (95)
56- 346 (101)
63- 375 (126)
Total decline 16-63 - 375 minus 295 = 80 milliseconds.
So, using age 16 as a baseline value with its standard deviation of 57 - this 80ms decline represents an intelligence decline of significantly more than one standard deviation - i.e. significantly more than 15 IQ points.
So, an average woman of average IQ would decline from 50th centile to significantly below the 16th centile aged 63.
*
A decline of more than one standard deviation - or 15 IQ points, represents the minimum average decline in general intelligence from 16 to 63 - in women the real value is likely to be even larger, because the three cohorts of 16-24, 36-44 and 56-63 very probably had different starting levels for intelligence - with the oldest age group having had a starting (age 16) sRT of about 36ms faster than the measured value for the 16-24 group. See:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3-9JKn2PJz3cTNFWHhUbHFXdDg/edit
This may be taken imply that among women the true decline of sRT from 16-63 is more like 113 ms instead of 80 ms - and 113 ms decline would be two standard deviations.
However, 2SDs is likely to be an overestimate, because the distribution of sRT is not really a normal distribution, but positively skewed such that there is a longer tail of higher values - so the standard deviation breaks down as a valid description after about one standard deviation.
*
Nonetheless the data presented in Dear and Der 2005 seems to be measuring a very significant degree of decline in real, underlying, physiological general intelligence/ fluid intelligence between ages 16 and 63; suggesting a significant decline in those cognitive aptitudes underpinned by g.
In practice, this decline in general intelligence may well be obscured by increased specific or 'crystallised' intelligence, due to accumulated specific knowledge, skills and expertise. But the decline in g would be apparent in reduced cognitive flexibility, e.g. slowing of the learning of new knowledge and skills, reduced capacity at solving novel problems and so on.
This data set also suggests that the effect of declining intelligence with age may also be obscured, in this group of women, by declining average intelligence over time, with older generations having a had a higher starting point of for intelligence.
But however the data is adjusted or corrected, the basic finding seems to be that average intelligence declines by more than one standard deviation from age 16 to 63.
*
Ref: see also
http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/further-evidence-of-significant-slowing.html
Monday, 3 November 2014
Broadly inverse correlation between average intelligence and per capita standard of living in pre-modern societies (before the industrial revolution)
*
One neglected inference from Gregory Clark's master work A Farewell to Alms: a brief economic history of the world - is that before the industrial revolution the effect of average societal intelligence was broadly the opposite of what it is today - the higher the average intelligence, the lower the per capita standard of living.
In the modern world, after the industrial revolution, it has been exhaustively shown by Richard Lynn and co-workers, and multiply confirmed, that there is a positive correlation between average intelligence and economic measures such as GDP and per capita income.
(More exactly that high average IQ - or perhaps a high IQ of the ruling elite - is nearly always necessary for economic success in the modern world - however, this tendency can be blocked by adverse economic ideologies, such as Marxism/ Maoism, which kept China poor for several decades.)
*
But, before they underwent the industrial revolution, China and Japan probably had the lowest standard of living per capita in the world - the average Chinese was perhaps the poorest in the world; with the mass of the population almost exclusively on rice, and a very small amount per day - despite that the population laboured almost every waking hour. (See also Ron Unz reference below)
By contrast, in Africa at about the same time, it is probable that the amount of food per person was among the highest in the world, and most African people had far more leisure than people in China or Japan.
Western European societies seem to have been somewhere in between - higher standard of living than China/ Japan but less than Africa; more hours of work than Africa but less than China/ Japan.
*
If it is assumed that the rank ordering of average general intelligence, as measured by performance in IQ tests, was then as it is now - with China/ Japan highest; Western Europe intermediate, Africa lower - then this represents an inverse correlation between intelligence and per capital standard of living.
Clark explains the reasons why this would be the case - which is that higher intelligence and a more conscientious personality were selected-for in complex agrarian societies (because higher intelligence and the ability to work had for long hours both improved reproductive success); and these selection pressures and the higher average intelligence led to things like increased productivity of food, improved hygiene^, and reduced violence; which combined to increase the population density until the population was constrained by starvation (China/ Japan) and starvation mixed with infectious disease (Western Europe).
(^High standards of hygiene - as was normal in medieval Japan - therefore reduces the mortality rate from infectious disease, which drives down standard of living by increasing population density.)
*
This is the 'Malthusian Trap' which affected all pre-modern societies in the long term, population could only increase at the cost of reduced standard of living - although average material conditions could be improved over the short term of a few generations after a drastic population cull, or qualitative jump in productivity - before population density increased, and the Trap resumed. This happened in England after the Black Death halved the population - a couple of hundred years of improved average prosperity resulted.
But Africa had extremely high mortality mainly due to diseases, and to a lesser extent violence; which meant that for the survivors of endemic infectious disease and violence there was enough land, enough to eat, and little need for long hours of intensive hunting, gathering or agricultural work.
*
So, broadly speaking, comparing between societies in the pre-modern world, high average intelligence led to lower average standard of living: intelligence was negatively correlated with standard of living;
Despite that within pre-modern societies, and looking at individuals, higher intelligence was positively-correlated with a higher standard of living (and higher average reproductive success from reduced child mortality).
**
(Many of these correlations now go the opposite direction in modern societies: between societies, higher intelligence is now associated with higher wealth, as I have just described; within societies higher intelligence is still associated with higher wealth - which is the same as for pre-modern societies; but, both between and within societies, higher intelligence is now associated with lower reproductive success, via lower fertility.)
*
References
http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/a_farewell_to_alms.html
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/how-social-darwinism-made-modern-china-248/
One neglected inference from Gregory Clark's master work A Farewell to Alms: a brief economic history of the world - is that before the industrial revolution the effect of average societal intelligence was broadly the opposite of what it is today - the higher the average intelligence, the lower the per capita standard of living.
In the modern world, after the industrial revolution, it has been exhaustively shown by Richard Lynn and co-workers, and multiply confirmed, that there is a positive correlation between average intelligence and economic measures such as GDP and per capita income.
(More exactly that high average IQ - or perhaps a high IQ of the ruling elite - is nearly always necessary for economic success in the modern world - however, this tendency can be blocked by adverse economic ideologies, such as Marxism/ Maoism, which kept China poor for several decades.)
*
But, before they underwent the industrial revolution, China and Japan probably had the lowest standard of living per capita in the world - the average Chinese was perhaps the poorest in the world; with the mass of the population almost exclusively on rice, and a very small amount per day - despite that the population laboured almost every waking hour. (See also Ron Unz reference below)
By contrast, in Africa at about the same time, it is probable that the amount of food per person was among the highest in the world, and most African people had far more leisure than people in China or Japan.
Western European societies seem to have been somewhere in between - higher standard of living than China/ Japan but less than Africa; more hours of work than Africa but less than China/ Japan.
*
If it is assumed that the rank ordering of average general intelligence, as measured by performance in IQ tests, was then as it is now - with China/ Japan highest; Western Europe intermediate, Africa lower - then this represents an inverse correlation between intelligence and per capital standard of living.
Clark explains the reasons why this would be the case - which is that higher intelligence and a more conscientious personality were selected-for in complex agrarian societies (because higher intelligence and the ability to work had for long hours both improved reproductive success); and these selection pressures and the higher average intelligence led to things like increased productivity of food, improved hygiene^, and reduced violence; which combined to increase the population density until the population was constrained by starvation (China/ Japan) and starvation mixed with infectious disease (Western Europe).
(^High standards of hygiene - as was normal in medieval Japan - therefore reduces the mortality rate from infectious disease, which drives down standard of living by increasing population density.)
*
This is the 'Malthusian Trap' which affected all pre-modern societies in the long term, population could only increase at the cost of reduced standard of living - although average material conditions could be improved over the short term of a few generations after a drastic population cull, or qualitative jump in productivity - before population density increased, and the Trap resumed. This happened in England after the Black Death halved the population - a couple of hundred years of improved average prosperity resulted.
But Africa had extremely high mortality mainly due to diseases, and to a lesser extent violence; which meant that for the survivors of endemic infectious disease and violence there was enough land, enough to eat, and little need for long hours of intensive hunting, gathering or agricultural work.
*
So, broadly speaking, comparing between societies in the pre-modern world, high average intelligence led to lower average standard of living: intelligence was negatively correlated with standard of living;
Despite that within pre-modern societies, and looking at individuals, higher intelligence was positively-correlated with a higher standard of living (and higher average reproductive success from reduced child mortality).
**
(Many of these correlations now go the opposite direction in modern societies: between societies, higher intelligence is now associated with higher wealth, as I have just described; within societies higher intelligence is still associated with higher wealth - which is the same as for pre-modern societies; but, both between and within societies, higher intelligence is now associated with lower reproductive success, via lower fertility.)
*
References
http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/a_farewell_to_alms.html
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/how-social-darwinism-made-modern-china-248/
I am co-author on a new paper published on decline of intelligence, measured by slowing of simple visual reaction times
*
Possible dysgenic trends in simple visual reaction time performance in the Scottish Twenty-07 cohort: a reanalysis of Deary and Der (2005).
Michael A Woodley, Guy Madison, Bruce G Charlton.
The Mankind Quarterly 2014; 55: 110-124
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3-9JKn2PJz3cTNFWHhUbHFXdDg/edit
*
This is based on the same data as:
http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/further-evidence-of-significant-slowing.html
*
Possible dysgenic trends in simple visual reaction time performance in the Scottish Twenty-07 cohort: a reanalysis of Deary and Der (2005).
Michael A Woodley, Guy Madison, Bruce G Charlton.
The Mankind Quarterly 2014; 55: 110-124
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3-9JKn2PJz3cTNFWHhUbHFXdDg/edit
*
This is based on the same data as:
http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/further-evidence-of-significant-slowing.html
*
Friday, 31 October 2014
Chance, form and natural selection in the origins of life
*
Biology is the science of living things, therefore the definition of life is a matter outside biology.
Indeed, the definition of life is, properly speaking, outside of science; despite that the mainstream current definition is derived from chemistry - based on the replication of molecules with the possibility for variation and selection. But that this really constitutes 'life', does not come from science but is a non-scientific assertion or assumption.
The other mainstream definition of life refers 'metabolism' - but the 'real' nature of life is just a matter of choosing a definition - there is no right answer; and furthermore replication and metabolism may have evolved separately and using different molecular types.
(For example, Freeman Dyson has argued that metabolic life may have evolved firstly among proteins, and this metabolism was parasitised by replicating RNA molecules - and later protein and nucleic acids co-evolved to join in that symbiosis we observe as 'the cell'.)
*
Natural selection must have something to work on - and that something must be sufficiently stable to allow for some reasonably large number of generations to do the work of natural selection.
(In a deeper, metaphysical sense; natural selection presupposes an understanding and identification of 'form'; because form dictates what it is that evolves, and when that form stays the same or when it changes to another and different form. Unless form, its constancy and change are already known, in a definition originating outwith biology, then the workings of natural selection could never be observed.)
Therefore, life must have been initiated by chance; then this spontaneous life must have 'fallen-into' some natural form, pre-existent order, stereotypical pattern, auto-catalytic system, or 'strange attractor' which kept it going for a while - because only then could natural selection do its work.
*
Even with natural forms - when it comes to life: what chance has given, chance also can take away. And any form of life will have a tendency towards extinction from what has been termed 'error catastrophe' (unless it has evolved methods for preventing this).
Error catastrophe is what happens in a metabolising or replicating system due to the spontaneous occurrence of errors to processes and copying. Such errors will naturally accumulate over time, unless there is some means to prevent them accumulating.
(Mutation accumulation is a special type of error catastrophe:
http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=mutation+accumulation )
And the vast majority of errors will damage functionality (because only a tiny proportion of undirected changes will improve functionality), and each new accumulating error will tend further to damage functioning - tending towards a catastrophic loss of function with death of the individual and/or extinction of the lineage.
*
But however life is defined, the principles apply that life must form and have some degree of stability by some combination of chance and natural forms; and then the first job of natural selection is to stabilise life.
Put it another way - life may form spontaneously - but it will not last without the help of natural selection.
Natural selection must primarily be about sustaining life, because only when life is being sustained, is there a possibility of the of life being improved.
Because it is statistically improbable for an error to be an improvement; and therefore it typically requires considerable time (in terms of generations), and or a considerable population (because numbers amplify the number of generations) before the undirected ('random') occurrence of a beneficial error.
*
So, life happens by chance but life is also is doomed by chance to be short-lasting; therefore the first 'job' of natural selection is to keep life going just as it is - just as it has arisen by chance.
And only after life has evolved such as to have been kept going just as it is by chance, is there any possibility of natural selection to produce adaptation of organisms.
Natural selection and the origins of life: First sustaining, then later (perhaps) improvement.
*
Biology is the science of living things, therefore the definition of life is a matter outside biology.
Indeed, the definition of life is, properly speaking, outside of science; despite that the mainstream current definition is derived from chemistry - based on the replication of molecules with the possibility for variation and selection. But that this really constitutes 'life', does not come from science but is a non-scientific assertion or assumption.
The other mainstream definition of life refers 'metabolism' - but the 'real' nature of life is just a matter of choosing a definition - there is no right answer; and furthermore replication and metabolism may have evolved separately and using different molecular types.
(For example, Freeman Dyson has argued that metabolic life may have evolved firstly among proteins, and this metabolism was parasitised by replicating RNA molecules - and later protein and nucleic acids co-evolved to join in that symbiosis we observe as 'the cell'.)
*
Natural selection must have something to work on - and that something must be sufficiently stable to allow for some reasonably large number of generations to do the work of natural selection.
(In a deeper, metaphysical sense; natural selection presupposes an understanding and identification of 'form'; because form dictates what it is that evolves, and when that form stays the same or when it changes to another and different form. Unless form, its constancy and change are already known, in a definition originating outwith biology, then the workings of natural selection could never be observed.)
Therefore, life must have been initiated by chance; then this spontaneous life must have 'fallen-into' some natural form, pre-existent order, stereotypical pattern, auto-catalytic system, or 'strange attractor' which kept it going for a while - because only then could natural selection do its work.
*
Even with natural forms - when it comes to life: what chance has given, chance also can take away. And any form of life will have a tendency towards extinction from what has been termed 'error catastrophe' (unless it has evolved methods for preventing this).
Error catastrophe is what happens in a metabolising or replicating system due to the spontaneous occurrence of errors to processes and copying. Such errors will naturally accumulate over time, unless there is some means to prevent them accumulating.
(Mutation accumulation is a special type of error catastrophe:
http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=mutation+accumulation )
And the vast majority of errors will damage functionality (because only a tiny proportion of undirected changes will improve functionality), and each new accumulating error will tend further to damage functioning - tending towards a catastrophic loss of function with death of the individual and/or extinction of the lineage.
*
But however life is defined, the principles apply that life must form and have some degree of stability by some combination of chance and natural forms; and then the first job of natural selection is to stabilise life.
Put it another way - life may form spontaneously - but it will not last without the help of natural selection.
Natural selection must primarily be about sustaining life, because only when life is being sustained, is there a possibility of the of life being improved.
Because it is statistically improbable for an error to be an improvement; and therefore it typically requires considerable time (in terms of generations), and or a considerable population (because numbers amplify the number of generations) before the undirected ('random') occurrence of a beneficial error.
*
So, life happens by chance but life is also is doomed by chance to be short-lasting; therefore the first 'job' of natural selection is to keep life going just as it is - just as it has arisen by chance.
And only after life has evolved such as to have been kept going just as it is by chance, is there any possibility of natural selection to produce adaptation of organisms.
Natural selection and the origins of life: First sustaining, then later (perhaps) improvement.
*
Saturday, 11 October 2014
A common misunderstanding of r/K selection - if you LOSE K adaptations, that does NOT make you r-selected
*
The idea of r/K selection theory applied to humans is that a population could be r-selected for fast Life History - such as rapid sexual maturation and high fertility, with relatively low levels of parental investment into each offspring;
or else K-selected, for a slower and more long-termist Life History - fewer offspring with more gradual and delayed development, and investing more resources per child (with the aim of generating more cognitively specialized adults).
*
(In a nutshell, and approximately - r selection is for quantity, K selection is for quality. In some environments only 'high quality' offspring - making which requires longer development and more resources - are able to compete successfully with other members by aiming for narrow niches requiring particular qualities.)
*
But r and K are not opposites. Nor are they reciprocal: to reduce one does NOT mean to increase the other.
Because 'selected-for' means 'specialized-for'.
And specialization implies adaptation.
*
Therefore to be r-selected is to be specialized-for r - this means that an r-selected population has evolved a suite of adaptations which together enable it to become better at rapid and fecund reproduction.
And to be K-selected is to be specialized in producing offspring who have a better chance of themselves reproducing in a context of more long-termist Life History.
And to lose long-termist adaptations of K-selection is NOT thereby to gain short-termist adaptations; and to lose short-termist adaptations is NOT thereby to gain long termist adaptations.
So, in the modern world, the selective regime in the West has resulted in sub-replacement fertility for K-selected populations, and this will indeed destroy-K selected adaptations; but the resulting population will NOT thereby have r-selected adaptations by default - the population will just lose adaptiveness!
*
(Loss of adaptiveness is - more or less - disease. Mutation accumulation is disease. On average, disease does not benefit adaptation in any way.)
*
And a selective regime (such as the modern world) which reduces child mortality from approximately 60 percent to about 1 percent, allows mutation accumulation in r-selected populations.
Mutation accumulation will NOT increase r-selected abilities, it will NOT improve short-termist adaptations - but the opposite: these r-selected populations will lose their Fast Life History adaptations, as these specialized attributes enabling a fast Life History will be damaged by accumulating deleterious mutations.
*
So the modern world is NOT becoming more r-selected - it is become less K-selected AND less r-selected: the modern world is becoming less adapted all round.
This is concealed (temporarily) by the expansion in numbers of the previously r-selected populations- which is enabled by the massive reduction in child mortality rates and an increase in longevity - and an illusion of r-adaptedness - but in fact these populations are LESS r-adapted now than they were before their populations began to expand.
*
If r-selection is summarized as specializing for quantity and K-selection as specializing for quality - then both high quantity and high quality are adaptive products of evolution. And, destroying quantity does not improve quality - also destroying quality does not improve quantity.
So modernity does NOT increase r at the expense of K - instead, modernity destroys BOTH r and K adaptations by means of mutation accumulation.
What results is that humans as a whole have lost adaptations, both short-term adaptations and long-term adaptations: the human genome has been damaged.
**
Note: The above idea comes from Michael A Woodley - to whom credit should be attributed; but any errors or inaccuracies in expression are my responsibility.
http://psycnet.apa.org/?&fa=main.doiLanding&doi=10.1037/a0024348
*
The idea of r/K selection theory applied to humans is that a population could be r-selected for fast Life History - such as rapid sexual maturation and high fertility, with relatively low levels of parental investment into each offspring;
or else K-selected, for a slower and more long-termist Life History - fewer offspring with more gradual and delayed development, and investing more resources per child (with the aim of generating more cognitively specialized adults).
*
(In a nutshell, and approximately - r selection is for quantity, K selection is for quality. In some environments only 'high quality' offspring - making which requires longer development and more resources - are able to compete successfully with other members by aiming for narrow niches requiring particular qualities.)
*
But r and K are not opposites. Nor are they reciprocal: to reduce one does NOT mean to increase the other.
Because 'selected-for' means 'specialized-for'.
And specialization implies adaptation.
*
Therefore to be r-selected is to be specialized-for r - this means that an r-selected population has evolved a suite of adaptations which together enable it to become better at rapid and fecund reproduction.
And to be K-selected is to be specialized in producing offspring who have a better chance of themselves reproducing in a context of more long-termist Life History.
And to lose long-termist adaptations of K-selection is NOT thereby to gain short-termist adaptations; and to lose short-termist adaptations is NOT thereby to gain long termist adaptations.
So, in the modern world, the selective regime in the West has resulted in sub-replacement fertility for K-selected populations, and this will indeed destroy-K selected adaptations; but the resulting population will NOT thereby have r-selected adaptations by default - the population will just lose adaptiveness!
*
(Loss of adaptiveness is - more or less - disease. Mutation accumulation is disease. On average, disease does not benefit adaptation in any way.)
*
And a selective regime (such as the modern world) which reduces child mortality from approximately 60 percent to about 1 percent, allows mutation accumulation in r-selected populations.
Mutation accumulation will NOT increase r-selected abilities, it will NOT improve short-termist adaptations - but the opposite: these r-selected populations will lose their Fast Life History adaptations, as these specialized attributes enabling a fast Life History will be damaged by accumulating deleterious mutations.
*
So the modern world is NOT becoming more r-selected - it is become less K-selected AND less r-selected: the modern world is becoming less adapted all round.
This is concealed (temporarily) by the expansion in numbers of the previously r-selected populations- which is enabled by the massive reduction in child mortality rates and an increase in longevity - and an illusion of r-adaptedness - but in fact these populations are LESS r-adapted now than they were before their populations began to expand.
*
If r-selection is summarized as specializing for quantity and K-selection as specializing for quality - then both high quantity and high quality are adaptive products of evolution. And, destroying quantity does not improve quality - also destroying quality does not improve quantity.
So modernity does NOT increase r at the expense of K - instead, modernity destroys BOTH r and K adaptations by means of mutation accumulation.
What results is that humans as a whole have lost adaptations, both short-term adaptations and long-term adaptations: the human genome has been damaged.
**
Note: The above idea comes from Michael A Woodley - to whom credit should be attributed; but any errors or inaccuracies in expression are my responsibility.
http://psycnet.apa.org/?&fa=main.doiLanding&doi=10.1037/a0024348
*
Monday, 6 October 2014
An objective and biologically-valid definition of dysgenics - mutation accumulation is the real dysgenics
*
It has been pointed out that in its common usage the term 'dysgenics' lacks biological validity.
For example, the decline of average intelligence in a population is often described as a dysgenic change, on the basis that a decline in intelligence is (it can be argued) a bad thing on the whole for human society.
However, it could be argued that insofar as a decline in intelligence was due to a differential selection against higher intelligence people (for example, by a chosen reduction in fertility) and in favour of lower intelligence people (who perhaps cannot or will not use contraception) - then this is just 'natural selection as usual' - and indeed the fitness of the population is being enhanced under conditions where fertility rates are either very low, sometimes at sub-replacement/ long-term extinction levels.
Insofar as this is what is happening with the decline of intelligence then it is indeed just natural -selection-as-usual in that genetic mutations leading to adaptations are being handed-on from parents to their offspring.
Better adapted parents - i.e. those parents resistant to the fertility-suppressing effects of modernity - are producing a higher proportion of offspring (in the next generation) than are parents who are susceptible to fertility suppression.
Fitter parents (fitter in terms of the actual environment) have fitter children.
*
But insofar as the decline in intelligence is due to an accumulation of deleterious mutations (and the vast majority of new mutations will be more-or-less deleterious), then this is real dysgenics: objectively measurable, and biologically distinct from natural-selection-as-usual.
This is because with mutation accumulation, the parent is not transmitting adaptations to the offspring, but newly-occurred genetic damage. The parent does not share the mutational damage which is suffered by the offspring - since that genetic damage has occurred during the process of reproduction.
Since the new genetic mutations have not been inherited from a parent, and parents are not handing-on adaptations - then mutation accumulation is not a consequence of natural selection.
*
So in principle mutation accumulation is a biologically-objective dysgenic process (while differential selection of heritable traits is not) - and mutation accumulation could be measured phenotypically in terms of damage to adaptations, or genetically in terms of mutational damage to those suites of genes which underlie phenotypic adaptations.
For example, objectively and biologically dysgenic change from mutation accumulation, would include new (not inherited) mutations which led to infertility, or blindness, or fatal genetic diseases of childhood - since these phenotypic changes are objective; or else (if known) detectable as the genetic changes which underlie adaptations such as sexual attraction mate selection, fertility, child care, vision, or the functionality of any major essential organ system such as blood, cardiovascular or respiratory.
8
With mutation accumulation children are less fit than parents.
Or, offspring are less fit than parents with reference to the parental environment.
(It is necessary to add this rider, because in modern conditions the less fit offspring have experienced a different, and more favourable, environment than their parents. So, the functional impairment of several generations of offspring has been concealed by a 'softer' and more supportive environment, as society became richer per capita, and mortality rates fell. )
*
In conclusion, dysgenics can be used in a non-biological and subjective way - to refer to any disapproved-of genetic change in a population; or in a rigorous, objective and biologically-valid way - to describe a non-hereditary generational reduction in fitness in a population: the incremental loss of functional adaptations in a population.
*
Reference: The essence of this idea came from, and should be attributed to, Michael A Woodley.
It has been pointed out that in its common usage the term 'dysgenics' lacks biological validity.
For example, the decline of average intelligence in a population is often described as a dysgenic change, on the basis that a decline in intelligence is (it can be argued) a bad thing on the whole for human society.
However, it could be argued that insofar as a decline in intelligence was due to a differential selection against higher intelligence people (for example, by a chosen reduction in fertility) and in favour of lower intelligence people (who perhaps cannot or will not use contraception) - then this is just 'natural selection as usual' - and indeed the fitness of the population is being enhanced under conditions where fertility rates are either very low, sometimes at sub-replacement/ long-term extinction levels.
Insofar as this is what is happening with the decline of intelligence then it is indeed just natural -selection-as-usual in that genetic mutations leading to adaptations are being handed-on from parents to their offspring.
Better adapted parents - i.e. those parents resistant to the fertility-suppressing effects of modernity - are producing a higher proportion of offspring (in the next generation) than are parents who are susceptible to fertility suppression.
Fitter parents (fitter in terms of the actual environment) have fitter children.
*
But insofar as the decline in intelligence is due to an accumulation of deleterious mutations (and the vast majority of new mutations will be more-or-less deleterious), then this is real dysgenics: objectively measurable, and biologically distinct from natural-selection-as-usual.
This is because with mutation accumulation, the parent is not transmitting adaptations to the offspring, but newly-occurred genetic damage. The parent does not share the mutational damage which is suffered by the offspring - since that genetic damage has occurred during the process of reproduction.
Since the new genetic mutations have not been inherited from a parent, and parents are not handing-on adaptations - then mutation accumulation is not a consequence of natural selection.
*
So in principle mutation accumulation is a biologically-objective dysgenic process (while differential selection of heritable traits is not) - and mutation accumulation could be measured phenotypically in terms of damage to adaptations, or genetically in terms of mutational damage to those suites of genes which underlie phenotypic adaptations.
For example, objectively and biologically dysgenic change from mutation accumulation, would include new (not inherited) mutations which led to infertility, or blindness, or fatal genetic diseases of childhood - since these phenotypic changes are objective; or else (if known) detectable as the genetic changes which underlie adaptations such as sexual attraction mate selection, fertility, child care, vision, or the functionality of any major essential organ system such as blood, cardiovascular or respiratory.
8
With mutation accumulation children are less fit than parents.
Or, offspring are less fit than parents with reference to the parental environment.
(It is necessary to add this rider, because in modern conditions the less fit offspring have experienced a different, and more favourable, environment than their parents. So, the functional impairment of several generations of offspring has been concealed by a 'softer' and more supportive environment, as society became richer per capita, and mortality rates fell. )
*
In conclusion, dysgenics can be used in a non-biological and subjective way - to refer to any disapproved-of genetic change in a population; or in a rigorous, objective and biologically-valid way - to describe a non-hereditary generational reduction in fitness in a population: the incremental loss of functional adaptations in a population.
*
Reference: The essence of this idea came from, and should be attributed to, Michael A Woodley.
Monday, 22 September 2014
Friday, 19 September 2014
Further evidence and argument concerning mutation accumulation as a mechanism for causing a large proportion of the decline in general intelligence over the past 150 plus years
*
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/reconceptualizing-natural-selection-as.html
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/the-origins-of-life-problem.html
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/how-assortative-mating-of-surplus.html
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/the-danger-of-mutational-meltdown-in.html
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/wd-hamilton-on-inevitability-of.html
Added:
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/why-do-so-many-modern-women-chose-not.html
*
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/reconceptualizing-natural-selection-as.html
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/the-origins-of-life-problem.html
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/how-assortative-mating-of-surplus.html
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/the-danger-of-mutational-meltdown-in.html
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/wd-hamilton-on-inevitability-of.html
Added:
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/why-do-so-many-modern-women-chose-not.html
*
Thursday, 4 September 2014
Low Motivation - Another reason why high trait Conscientiousness (low trait Psychoticism) is positively selected by modern higher education
*
I have written before about how selection for high Conscientiousness has come to dominate modern formal education - and especially colleges and universities:
http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=conscientiousness
One reason for this is likely to be the low motivation of most students at most higher education institutions.
This is an indirect consequence of massive government subsidies of higher education, which has grossly (and I mean grossly) distorted the provision of college and university education compared with its natural/ spontaneous market level of provision of just a few percent of the population.
(Ref: British Universities Past and Present by Robert Anderson, 2006)
Thus, most students at modern universities are merely there to get an educational certificate which signifies merely that they have been signed-on at some kind of institution and passed a certain number of evaluations.
In particular, for the vast majority of students in the vast majority of institutions there is no vocational, knowledge-and-skill-based or professional reason for the course of study; and (obviously!) a near-zero proportion of students are interested in the subject 'for its own sake'.
The result is students who are fundamentally unmotivated with respect to the ostensible subject being studied; and therefore a steady downward-pressure on educational standards and steadily-inflationary pressure on the value of qualifications - that is; the minimum of work, knowledge and skill for the highest graded qualification (and no failure) - as a by-product leading to inexorable lengthening of the educational process required to get any actually-useful education.
Conscientiousness can be seen as the ability to work hard and steadily despite lack of motivation - therefore, in the modern higher educational system where almost nobody is motivated - the ones who do best are those who can complete educational programs and evaluations despite an almost complete lack of motivation.
In contrast was my own undergraduate experience as a medical student, where the general level of motivation was high - people wanted to learn the stuff because they were going to be doctors.
This made a very large difference. Most lectures were mostly-full; and students would ask for extra teaching and training - including vacation, in the evenings and at weekends; form unofficial study groups - and, in general, push for more and better education.
On non-vocational courses, where the knowledge and skills have no direct ink with an anticipated job, none of this happens; but instead nothing is done that is not examined, and the general trend is to aim to do the least work for the best marks.
But the mass of people in the mass of institutions are fundamentally un-interested in what they are doing - uninterested in the sense that the subject has no intrinsic interest and also that they lack any personal bias or involvement in being good at the subject (ie.extra knowledge and skill does not bring any personal benefits, such as a safer or more successful career).
And when people are uninterested, then only the most Conscientious are able to make themselves work.
*
I have written before about how selection for high Conscientiousness has come to dominate modern formal education - and especially colleges and universities:
http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=conscientiousness
One reason for this is likely to be the low motivation of most students at most higher education institutions.
This is an indirect consequence of massive government subsidies of higher education, which has grossly (and I mean grossly) distorted the provision of college and university education compared with its natural/ spontaneous market level of provision of just a few percent of the population.
(Ref: British Universities Past and Present by Robert Anderson, 2006)
Thus, most students at modern universities are merely there to get an educational certificate which signifies merely that they have been signed-on at some kind of institution and passed a certain number of evaluations.
In particular, for the vast majority of students in the vast majority of institutions there is no vocational, knowledge-and-skill-based or professional reason for the course of study; and (obviously!) a near-zero proportion of students are interested in the subject 'for its own sake'.
The result is students who are fundamentally unmotivated with respect to the ostensible subject being studied; and therefore a steady downward-pressure on educational standards and steadily-inflationary pressure on the value of qualifications - that is; the minimum of work, knowledge and skill for the highest graded qualification (and no failure) - as a by-product leading to inexorable lengthening of the educational process required to get any actually-useful education.
Conscientiousness can be seen as the ability to work hard and steadily despite lack of motivation - therefore, in the modern higher educational system where almost nobody is motivated - the ones who do best are those who can complete educational programs and evaluations despite an almost complete lack of motivation.
In contrast was my own undergraduate experience as a medical student, where the general level of motivation was high - people wanted to learn the stuff because they were going to be doctors.
This made a very large difference. Most lectures were mostly-full; and students would ask for extra teaching and training - including vacation, in the evenings and at weekends; form unofficial study groups - and, in general, push for more and better education.
On non-vocational courses, where the knowledge and skills have no direct ink with an anticipated job, none of this happens; but instead nothing is done that is not examined, and the general trend is to aim to do the least work for the best marks.
But the mass of people in the mass of institutions are fundamentally un-interested in what they are doing - uninterested in the sense that the subject has no intrinsic interest and also that they lack any personal bias or involvement in being good at the subject (ie.extra knowledge and skill does not bring any personal benefits, such as a safer or more successful career).
And when people are uninterested, then only the most Conscientious are able to make themselves work.
*
Wednesday, 6 August 2014
Tuesday, 29 July 2014
Through the ages... the difference between real understanding, and examinations or tests
*
Real understanding: to have mastered and be able to use the relevant knowledge and concepts.
Four generations ago: to be able to use recalled facts and phrases to construct a rationally coherent and relevant extended essay.
Two generations ago: to be able to recall relevant facts and phrases.
Currently: to be able to recognize the correct fact or phrase from among a list of distractors.
*
Real understanding: to have mastered and be able to use the relevant knowledge and concepts.
Four generations ago: to be able to use recalled facts and phrases to construct a rationally coherent and relevant extended essay.
Two generations ago: to be able to recall relevant facts and phrases.
Currently: to be able to recognize the correct fact or phrase from among a list of distractors.
*
Wednesday, 23 July 2014
What signs should we look for in monitoring mutation accumulation? Signs of de-differentiation/ loss of adaptations - especially in social and sexual functioning
*
I have been thinking about the expected effect of mutation accumulation - and I think there would be de-differentiation/ loss of specialized adaptations.
I have been thinking about the expected effect of mutation accumulation - and I think there would be de-differentiation/ loss of specialized adaptations.
These would affect general intelligence 'g' (because g is a fitness measure), and adaptive social functions (because these are subtle/ advanced adaptations which are damaged by even slight illness, intoxication or any functional brain impairment).
I think evidence consistent with both lowered intelligence and also impaired adaptive social functioning can be observed in the report of Mouse Utopia.
The reduced fertility in Mouse Utopia is perhaps also related to impaired drive/ motivation - as well as ineffective drive/ motivation (due to loss of functional adaptations).
*
I general, I think loss of adaptive functionality is what should be looked-for with mutation accumulation (i.e. adaptive behaviours knocked-out or damaged or distorted), rather than weird new behaviours - and particularly loss of functionality in:
1. The social domain - first subtle, then gross impairments of adaptive social interactions
2. The sexual domain - first subtle, then gross impairments of adaptive sexual interactions
...bearing in mind that 'adaptive' means tending to enhance reproductive success.
I suggest social and sexual functioning, since these are the areas which I think are the most sensitive to brain impairments; at least that seems to be the situation in neurological and psychiatric disease.
My observation has been that when there is almost any significant degree of neurological or psychiatric disease, even the slightest; social and sexual domain functioning can usually be detected as having been impaired, by those who best knew the patient before he suffered illness.
*
Modern England as Mouse Utopia?
*
If we look at the Mouse Utopia experiment and try to fit the history of modern England into it
There could be an inflection point in 1921 when English population growth suddenly slowed - somewhat like the transition from phase B to C in the mouse utopia graph at the top of page 83
*
Then the plateau phase D - where births just replace deaths - was reached in the 1970s
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Kingdom#Vital_statistics_1960_.E2.80.93_2013
Which perhaps (?) means the next phase would be the terminal death phase (among the native population - disregarding immigrants) with fewer births than deaths dwindling to zero live births and escalating median age until eventually all women are aged beyond the menopause.
*
Well, this isn't really comparing like with like! - and the whole picture is muddied by increasing medical capability and cossetting, which has radically reduced deaths from infectious disease (the main cause of mortality); and keeps infants and the elderly alive in circumstances which would previously have been fatal - but maybe gives us clues of what to look-out-for; assuming that the demise of Mouse Utopia was indeed substantially due to mutation accumulation ...
*
Tuesday, 22 July 2014
Friday, 18 July 2014
The demise of 'Mouse Utopia' reinterpreted as mutation accumulation by Michael A Woodley
*
The so-called Mouse Utopia experiment was conducted from 1968 by John B Calhoun
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Calhoun
The idea was that four breeding pairs of mice were allowed to reproduce freely in a 'utopian' environment with ample food and water; no predators; no disease; comfortable temperature, conditions and space. What happened is described by the author:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1644264/pdf/procrsmed00338-0007.pdf
Phase A - 104 days - establishment of the mice in their new environment, then the first litters were born.
Phase B - up to day 315 - exponential population growth doubling every 55 days.
Phase C - from day 315-560 population growth abruptly slowed to a doubling time of 145 days.
Phase D - days 560-920; population stagnant with births just matching deaths. Emergence of many pathological behaviours.
Terminal Phase - population declining to zero. The last conception was about day 920, after which there were no more births, all females were menopausal, the colony aged and all of them died.
*
The Mouse Utopia experiment is usually interpreted in terms of social stresses related to 'over-population' crowding - generating pathological behaviours and a loss of the will to live.
But Michael A Woodley suggests that what might be going on is mutation accumulation, and deleterious genes generating a wide range of maladaptive pathologies, incrementally accumulating with each generation; and rapidly overwhelming and destroying the population before any beneficial mutations could emerge to 'save; the colony from extinction.
So the bizarre behaviours seen especially in Phase D - such as the male 'beautiful ones' who appeared to be healthy and spent all their time self grooming, but were actually inert, unresponsive, unintelligent, uninterested in reproduction - are not adaptations to crowding, but maladaptive outcomes of a population sinking under the weight of mutations.
*
The reason why mouse utopia might produce so rapid and extreme a mutation accumulation is that wild mice naturally suffer very high mortality rates from predation.
Therefore, because wild mice are so short-lived, mice are not 'built to last' and have the reputation of being unusually-prone to produce new deleterious mutations (and are therefore extremely prone to cancer, and susceptible to carcinogens - which is why mice are used to test for carcinogens).
Thus mutation selection balance is in operation among wild mice, with very high mortality rates continually weeding-out the new mutations (especially among males) - with typically only a small and relatively mutation-free proportion of the (large numbers of) offspring surviving to reproduce; and a minority of the most active and healthy (mutation free) males siring the bulk of each generation.
However, in Mouse Utopia, there is no predation and all the other causes of mortality are reduced to a minimum - so the frequent mutations just accumulate, generation upon generation - randomly producing all sorts of pathological (maladaptive) behaviours.
*
To test whether mutation accumulation is the real explanation for the demise of Mouse Utopia, the original experiment should be repeated but with genetic controls. Woodley is hoping to do this himself.
Also, a variant experiment could perhaps be conducted, which maintained utopian conditions but without allowing overcrowding (e.g. by continually splitting-up the growing community, and creating more and more small colonies - or (see comment below) by random culling).
In other words, the social conditions of Utopian mice would be held constant, while mortality rates would be kept low for multiple generations.
My prediction would be that the Mouse Utopians would go through phases A, B, C, D and terminal to become extinct even without increased population density/ overcrowding, and due purely to cumulative genetic damage.
*
The so-called Mouse Utopia experiment was conducted from 1968 by John B Calhoun
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Calhoun
The idea was that four breeding pairs of mice were allowed to reproduce freely in a 'utopian' environment with ample food and water; no predators; no disease; comfortable temperature, conditions and space. What happened is described by the author:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1644264/pdf/procrsmed00338-0007.pdf
Phase A - 104 days - establishment of the mice in their new environment, then the first litters were born.
Phase B - up to day 315 - exponential population growth doubling every 55 days.
Phase C - from day 315-560 population growth abruptly slowed to a doubling time of 145 days.
Phase D - days 560-920; population stagnant with births just matching deaths. Emergence of many pathological behaviours.
Terminal Phase - population declining to zero. The last conception was about day 920, after which there were no more births, all females were menopausal, the colony aged and all of them died.
*
The Mouse Utopia experiment is usually interpreted in terms of social stresses related to 'over-population' crowding - generating pathological behaviours and a loss of the will to live.
But Michael A Woodley suggests that what might be going on is mutation accumulation, and deleterious genes generating a wide range of maladaptive pathologies, incrementally accumulating with each generation; and rapidly overwhelming and destroying the population before any beneficial mutations could emerge to 'save; the colony from extinction.
So the bizarre behaviours seen especially in Phase D - such as the male 'beautiful ones' who appeared to be healthy and spent all their time self grooming, but were actually inert, unresponsive, unintelligent, uninterested in reproduction - are not adaptations to crowding, but maladaptive outcomes of a population sinking under the weight of mutations.
*
The reason why mouse utopia might produce so rapid and extreme a mutation accumulation is that wild mice naturally suffer very high mortality rates from predation.
Therefore, because wild mice are so short-lived, mice are not 'built to last' and have the reputation of being unusually-prone to produce new deleterious mutations (and are therefore extremely prone to cancer, and susceptible to carcinogens - which is why mice are used to test for carcinogens).
Thus mutation selection balance is in operation among wild mice, with very high mortality rates continually weeding-out the new mutations (especially among males) - with typically only a small and relatively mutation-free proportion of the (large numbers of) offspring surviving to reproduce; and a minority of the most active and healthy (mutation free) males siring the bulk of each generation.
However, in Mouse Utopia, there is no predation and all the other causes of mortality are reduced to a minimum - so the frequent mutations just accumulate, generation upon generation - randomly producing all sorts of pathological (maladaptive) behaviours.
*
To test whether mutation accumulation is the real explanation for the demise of Mouse Utopia, the original experiment should be repeated but with genetic controls. Woodley is hoping to do this himself.
Also, a variant experiment could perhaps be conducted, which maintained utopian conditions but without allowing overcrowding (e.g. by continually splitting-up the growing community, and creating more and more small colonies - or (see comment below) by random culling).
In other words, the social conditions of Utopian mice would be held constant, while mortality rates would be kept low for multiple generations.
My prediction would be that the Mouse Utopians would go through phases A, B, C, D and terminal to become extinct even without increased population density/ overcrowding, and due purely to cumulative genetic damage.
*
Thursday, 17 July 2014
Convergent evidence on child mortality rates in hunter gatherer and historical societies - consistent with mutation accumulation being a mechanism of the decline in intelligence since the industrial revolution
*
I previously estimated that something like 2/3 to 3/4 of offspring failed to survive in historical times - and that this was the principal mechanism for elimination of deleterious mutations.
http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/what-proportion-of-offspring-survived.html
Modern child mortality rates are, by contrast, so low that it is inevitable that mutations will accumulate - and reducing intelligence is an inevitable consequence (since 'g' is a proxy measure of fitness).
Evidence for this comes from various sources including A Farewell to Alms: a brief economic history of the world, by Gregory Clark. Princeton University Press, 2007.
Also theoretical considerations:
http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/mutation-accumulation-as-major-cause-of.html
And, further evidence on this matter is available from a pair of review/ meta-analysis papers:
A Volk and J Atkinson. Is child death the crucible of human evolution. Journal of Social, Evolutionary and Cultural Psychology. 2008; 2: 247-260.
A Volk, J Atkinson. Infant and child death in the human environment of evolutionary adaptation. Evolution and Human Behaviour. 2013; 34: 182-192.
In the 2013 paper, a review of hunter gatherer mortality found an average 48.8% child mortality rate - noting that child mortality rates are an underestimate, as not all deaths are recorded.
Historical data showed an average of 46.2% with a minimum of 35%, until modern times in developed countries, when it drops to 1% .
(However, among individuals, some will have a probability of lower, and others of higher mortality rates among their offspring, according to their health, status, child rearing abilities etc.)
http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/why-are-women-so-intelligent.html
*
So about a half of children are known to have died before adult maturity in most times and most places, and the real percentage must have been higher.
In the 2008 paper, the authors note that most women who reach adulthood will have children, but about 5% may be infertile; by contrast about 10% of men fail to find a mate and about 5% are infertile. To this can be added the fertility-reducing effect of later marriage among low status men - often to older women with less reproductive potential.
This fits the idea that selection against deleterious mutations is stronger among men than women - with the variance of reproductive success larger among men; a smallish proportion of the fittest men differentially producing most of the viable offspring selection.
This also fits the anatomical picture of sexual dimorphism, with men as considerably more massive and strong than women, as consistent with some significant degree of de facto polygyny.
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/sexual-dimorphism-between-men-and-women.html
*
So, among men at least 65% or two thirds will fail to reproduce according to direct measures from anthropological and historical data.
Rates of failure to reproduce will differ between the sexes, with mortality differentially concentrated among men (and indeed male fetuses, babies and children - who suffer greater mortality than females - http://www.huli.group.shef.ac.uk/lummaaproceeding2001.pdf)
Given that 45-50 % directly-measured child mortality rates represents a minimum level; this evidence is reasonably consistent with my previous estimate; and emphasizes the massive change in selection pressure, and presumably mutation elimination, represented by a fifty-fold decline in child mortality rates from historical to modern times.
*
Note: I should add that it is the number of surviving (and reproductively viable) children which is the key factor; not the proportion of children that survive. i.e. Reproductive success is about both fertility and mortality.
I previously estimated that something like 2/3 to 3/4 of offspring failed to survive in historical times - and that this was the principal mechanism for elimination of deleterious mutations.
http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/what-proportion-of-offspring-survived.html
Modern child mortality rates are, by contrast, so low that it is inevitable that mutations will accumulate - and reducing intelligence is an inevitable consequence (since 'g' is a proxy measure of fitness).
Evidence for this comes from various sources including A Farewell to Alms: a brief economic history of the world, by Gregory Clark. Princeton University Press, 2007.
Also theoretical considerations:
http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/mutation-accumulation-as-major-cause-of.html
And, further evidence on this matter is available from a pair of review/ meta-analysis papers:
A Volk and J Atkinson. Is child death the crucible of human evolution. Journal of Social, Evolutionary and Cultural Psychology. 2008; 2: 247-260.
A Volk, J Atkinson. Infant and child death in the human environment of evolutionary adaptation. Evolution and Human Behaviour. 2013; 34: 182-192.
In the 2013 paper, a review of hunter gatherer mortality found an average 48.8% child mortality rate - noting that child mortality rates are an underestimate, as not all deaths are recorded.
Historical data showed an average of 46.2% with a minimum of 35%, until modern times in developed countries, when it drops to 1% .
(However, among individuals, some will have a probability of lower, and others of higher mortality rates among their offspring, according to their health, status, child rearing abilities etc.)
http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/why-are-women-so-intelligent.html
*
So about a half of children are known to have died before adult maturity in most times and most places, and the real percentage must have been higher.
In the 2008 paper, the authors note that most women who reach adulthood will have children, but about 5% may be infertile; by contrast about 10% of men fail to find a mate and about 5% are infertile. To this can be added the fertility-reducing effect of later marriage among low status men - often to older women with less reproductive potential.
This fits the idea that selection against deleterious mutations is stronger among men than women - with the variance of reproductive success larger among men; a smallish proportion of the fittest men differentially producing most of the viable offspring selection.
This also fits the anatomical picture of sexual dimorphism, with men as considerably more massive and strong than women, as consistent with some significant degree of de facto polygyny.
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/sexual-dimorphism-between-men-and-women.html
*
So, among men at least 65% or two thirds will fail to reproduce according to direct measures from anthropological and historical data.
Rates of failure to reproduce will differ between the sexes, with mortality differentially concentrated among men (and indeed male fetuses, babies and children - who suffer greater mortality than females - http://www.huli.group.shef.ac.uk/lummaaproceeding2001.pdf)
Given that 45-50 % directly-measured child mortality rates represents a minimum level; this evidence is reasonably consistent with my previous estimate; and emphasizes the massive change in selection pressure, and presumably mutation elimination, represented by a fifty-fold decline in child mortality rates from historical to modern times.
*
Note: I should add that it is the number of surviving (and reproductively viable) children which is the key factor; not the proportion of children that survive. i.e. Reproductive success is about both fertility and mortality.
Tuesday, 15 July 2014
The lop-sided genius summarized
*
The typical genius is of:
1. Very high intelligence, and
2. This very high intelligence is channelled into a specific ability, and
3. Motivation is also channelled into that specific ability.
*
Genius is rare because this situation is unusual. These three things must occur together.
High ability - but not all-round ability but instead that ability channelled narrowly, and motivation also channelled into that ability - rather than being spread across a range of activities.
In particular, most humans' interests for most of the time are social and reproductive - but this is not the case for geniuses
*
Most humans - in ancestral conditions - aim to be esteemed by other humans; to have status and power; in other words to optimise their reproductive potential - typically this is achieved indirectly and implicitly via sexual instincts, and so on.
But geniuses generally do not behave in ways that optimise their reproductive potential, and they do not want to. Geniuses want to do what they excel-at-doing even when this is low status and leads to problems. In fact, geniuses will do what they excel at doing, unless they are actively prevented.
Consequently the average reproductive success of a genius is very low.
In other words, considered at the level of the specific person: genius is pathological, an illness, an impairment.
*
More exactly, what makes geniuses work so hard and for so long at that thing in which they excel is that they have relatively impaired social and reproductive motivations.
The channelling of abilities and motivations away from reproduction and into a specific ability is a result of genetic impairment caused by mutations which weaken or close-off the usual social and reproductive lines of development.
Because genius is reliant upon mutations, there is no specific pattern to genius - it is extremely varied what a specific genius is good-at and interested-in. Rather the specificity comes from what the genius is not good-at, and not interested-in.
*
So, genius is a pathology which occurs occurs in a person of very high intelligence. (Anything which damages average reproductive success is a pathology.)
Yet the occurrence of geniuses seems non-random in the sense that the rate of occurrence of geniuses varies widely between places and at different times.
Furthermore, although genius is a pathology at the level of the individual; geniuses are sometimes massively adaptive in terms of enhancing the reproductive of their group.
Even a single genius can change the world. For example, a genius who invents a new tool or weapon may allow his 'tribe' of relatives to expand greatly. If that tool or weapon spreads widely, it can change the world. This probably happened many times in history - although usually the inventor's name is forgotten as with the stone axe, the spade, the wheel, the arch, the stirrup, and many other breakthrough innovations.
*
Therefore, it is possible that some populations may be selected (by their specific circumstances) to facilitate genius by allowing the kind of genetic pathology which leads to an increased frequency of geniuses.
(Mutations will happen spontaneously, this is merely a matter of passively allowing them to happen - it is a matter of mutations removing or impairing some of the mechanisms that regulate and repair certain genes or types of genes.)
Of course, most individuals who experience mutations in the genes which support abilities or motivations in the social and reproductive domains will not be geniuses; they will just be pathological, ill, impaired. These will die or leave behind no offspring.
(Most historical human populations were under very strong selection against mutations by extremely high child mortality rates - so the wrong kind of pathology or pathologies of excessive severity would be filtered out by this mechanism.)
Only among some of the most highly intelligent individuals will the pathology have the desired effect of channelling developmental resources into useful but non-reproductive abilities and motivations.
*
The typical genius is of:
1. Very high intelligence, and
2. This very high intelligence is channelled into a specific ability, and
3. Motivation is also channelled into that specific ability.
*
Genius is rare because this situation is unusual. These three things must occur together.
High ability - but not all-round ability but instead that ability channelled narrowly, and motivation also channelled into that ability - rather than being spread across a range of activities.
In particular, most humans' interests for most of the time are social and reproductive - but this is not the case for geniuses
*
Most humans - in ancestral conditions - aim to be esteemed by other humans; to have status and power; in other words to optimise their reproductive potential - typically this is achieved indirectly and implicitly via sexual instincts, and so on.
But geniuses generally do not behave in ways that optimise their reproductive potential, and they do not want to. Geniuses want to do what they excel-at-doing even when this is low status and leads to problems. In fact, geniuses will do what they excel at doing, unless they are actively prevented.
Consequently the average reproductive success of a genius is very low.
In other words, considered at the level of the specific person: genius is pathological, an illness, an impairment.
*
More exactly, what makes geniuses work so hard and for so long at that thing in which they excel is that they have relatively impaired social and reproductive motivations.
The channelling of abilities and motivations away from reproduction and into a specific ability is a result of genetic impairment caused by mutations which weaken or close-off the usual social and reproductive lines of development.
Because genius is reliant upon mutations, there is no specific pattern to genius - it is extremely varied what a specific genius is good-at and interested-in. Rather the specificity comes from what the genius is not good-at, and not interested-in.
*
So, genius is a pathology which occurs occurs in a person of very high intelligence. (Anything which damages average reproductive success is a pathology.)
Yet the occurrence of geniuses seems non-random in the sense that the rate of occurrence of geniuses varies widely between places and at different times.
Furthermore, although genius is a pathology at the level of the individual; geniuses are sometimes massively adaptive in terms of enhancing the reproductive of their group.
Even a single genius can change the world. For example, a genius who invents a new tool or weapon may allow his 'tribe' of relatives to expand greatly. If that tool or weapon spreads widely, it can change the world. This probably happened many times in history - although usually the inventor's name is forgotten as with the stone axe, the spade, the wheel, the arch, the stirrup, and many other breakthrough innovations.
*
Therefore, it is possible that some populations may be selected (by their specific circumstances) to facilitate genius by allowing the kind of genetic pathology which leads to an increased frequency of geniuses.
(Mutations will happen spontaneously, this is merely a matter of passively allowing them to happen - it is a matter of mutations removing or impairing some of the mechanisms that regulate and repair certain genes or types of genes.)
Of course, most individuals who experience mutations in the genes which support abilities or motivations in the social and reproductive domains will not be geniuses; they will just be pathological, ill, impaired. These will die or leave behind no offspring.
(Most historical human populations were under very strong selection against mutations by extremely high child mortality rates - so the wrong kind of pathology or pathologies of excessive severity would be filtered out by this mechanism.)
Only among some of the most highly intelligent individuals will the pathology have the desired effect of channelling developmental resources into useful but non-reproductive abilities and motivations.
*
How intelligent does a genius need to be? Relatively and absolutely
*
The main point is that - in order to make the creative breakthroughs which define genius - a genius needs to be much more relatively intelligent than the average for his population.
Early geniuses will have done things like invented the spear, the spear thrower, or later the bow and arrow.
It is important to recognize what a huge step it was to go from a sharpened stick, to a stick with something like bone or stone to make a harder point. The inventor would not need to have a particularly high absolute intelligence, in terms of - say - the intelligence of the UK or US population of today. But the inventor would surely have had a much higher relative intelligence than was average for his population.
The invention of a spear thrower required a higher absolute intelligence than inventing a spear - because it requires more prior knowledge, is more abstract and technologically complex; and inventing the bow and arrow was a step higher in absolute intelligence.
But probably the inventor of the spear, spear thrower and bow and arrow were all approximately similar in terms of being relatively considerably above the population average - and therefore the technological advance from inventing spear to bow and arrow required a rise in the average intelligence of populations.
However, once these had been invented, once some person had made the creative breakthrough - the discoveries were all very easy to understand, copy and use - and could all be adopted by almost any human society of whatever intelligence.
That is why geniuses are so significant in human history.
*
The main point is that - in order to make the creative breakthroughs which define genius - a genius needs to be much more relatively intelligent than the average for his population.
Early geniuses will have done things like invented the spear, the spear thrower, or later the bow and arrow.
It is important to recognize what a huge step it was to go from a sharpened stick, to a stick with something like bone or stone to make a harder point. The inventor would not need to have a particularly high absolute intelligence, in terms of - say - the intelligence of the UK or US population of today. But the inventor would surely have had a much higher relative intelligence than was average for his population.
The invention of a spear thrower required a higher absolute intelligence than inventing a spear - because it requires more prior knowledge, is more abstract and technologically complex; and inventing the bow and arrow was a step higher in absolute intelligence.
But probably the inventor of the spear, spear thrower and bow and arrow were all approximately similar in terms of being relatively considerably above the population average - and therefore the technological advance from inventing spear to bow and arrow required a rise in the average intelligence of populations.
However, once these had been invented, once some person had made the creative breakthrough - the discoveries were all very easy to understand, copy and use - and could all be adopted by almost any human society of whatever intelligence.
That is why geniuses are so significant in human history.
*
Monday, 14 July 2014
The highly intelligent Normans?
*
Like JRR Tolkien I have a kind of prejudice against the Normans for their near complete obliteration of high Anglo Saxon culture, in particular the Old English mythology and folklore.
However, I am forced to acknowledge that, over a period of roughly 900-1300; the Normans were a very small but stunningly successful people from Normandy in France; astonishingly effective in military and political terms.
*
The Normans probably comprised some mixture of ex-Scandinavian 'Vikings' with French natives - and despite tiny numbers they conquered (and nearly conquered) lands as wide spread as the British Isles, Southern Italy, Cyprus, and challenged the great capital of Constantinople.
For example, maybe ten thousand or so Normans utterly subdued an English population of maybe one or more than two million! And imposed themselves on the natives as a ruling elite which was almost-wholly unassimilated for about ten or dozen generation.
*
How did they do this? My impression is that the method seems to have been by superior organization supported by superior technology - especially technology in relation to what might be termed engineering or architecture.
It seems, as a rule, a small minority can only successfully dominate a majority by superior technology; and superior technology implies superior intelligence.
*
My understanding is that once the Normans had defeated the Anglo-Saxons natives in one locality, they would force the natives to build a castle; from which the minority of Normans could then dominate the surrounding population from a position of safety; then the military force would move on to subdue the next region, and force these new natives to build the castles which would then become the instruments of their own suppression.
Thereby, local and piecemeal superiority was swiftly converted to national and overall superiority. Once a network of castles were dotted over the whole of England, then the Normans could not be defeated.
*
In a nutshell, it looks to me as if the Normans were simply more intelligent than the Anglo Saxons - and not a little, but a lot more intelligent.
Presumably at least one standard deviation more intelligent than the Native English (i.e. if the native IQ was called 100, the Normans must have had an IQ of 115 or more).
(One SD seems to be the usual (minimum) difference which allows one group to rule another - whether the difference is between classes, castes or races.)
*
And I am not sure, but I think that Norman cultural achievements are also at least consistent with higher intelligence than the native Anglo-Saxons.
A comparison of literacy rates might be enlightening - however, the extreme differential in social conditions (and the treatment of Anglo Saxons as an inferior and excluded caste) make such measures difficult to interpret.
Probably a 'matched' comparison of the pre-Norman English ruling class (in terms of literacy, technology etc) with the post Norman ruling class, might be the most enlightening line of enquiry.
*
Why would Normans have had a higher intelligence (assuming that they did)? Perhaps because of the Scandinavian roots - since the harsh conditions and long winters of Scandinavia seem to select for higher intelligence, presumably because low intelligence people cannot survive.
This higher Norse intelligence was not revealed under the harsh Scandinavian conditions (except in terms of sheer survival); but was immediately evident when new and more temperate colonies are founded (as happened in the Northern parts of England - the 'Danelaw', as well as in Normandy); and under more favourable conditions forms of higher cultural expressions begin to develop very rapidly.
Once these intelligent Vikings had conquered a portion of France, they apparently married local women and recruited local men. If we assume that the marriages were 'assortative matings', in which IQs were (somewhat) matched; and if recruitment was of the smarter men (and/ or excluded the least intelligent) - then the high original and Viking-derived intelligence might have been sustained or even amplified as The Normans were formed by a fusion of conquerors and locals.
*
Maybe, as genetic technologies advance and g may become measurable in terms of comparing large numbers of g-related genes, and if there is availability of suitable DNA from both Norman and Anglo Saxon skeletons; this theory of Normans having very high intelligence relative to Anglo Saxons may become directly testable.
*
(Note: Some of these ideas were developed in discussion over a prolonged lunch with my friend Peter Andras, now of Keele University - http://www.keele.ac.uk/scm/staff/professors/peterandras/.)
Like JRR Tolkien I have a kind of prejudice against the Normans for their near complete obliteration of high Anglo Saxon culture, in particular the Old English mythology and folklore.
However, I am forced to acknowledge that, over a period of roughly 900-1300; the Normans were a very small but stunningly successful people from Normandy in France; astonishingly effective in military and political terms.
*
The Normans probably comprised some mixture of ex-Scandinavian 'Vikings' with French natives - and despite tiny numbers they conquered (and nearly conquered) lands as wide spread as the British Isles, Southern Italy, Cyprus, and challenged the great capital of Constantinople.
For example, maybe ten thousand or so Normans utterly subdued an English population of maybe one or more than two million! And imposed themselves on the natives as a ruling elite which was almost-wholly unassimilated for about ten or dozen generation.
*
How did they do this? My impression is that the method seems to have been by superior organization supported by superior technology - especially technology in relation to what might be termed engineering or architecture.
It seems, as a rule, a small minority can only successfully dominate a majority by superior technology; and superior technology implies superior intelligence.
*
My understanding is that once the Normans had defeated the Anglo-Saxons natives in one locality, they would force the natives to build a castle; from which the minority of Normans could then dominate the surrounding population from a position of safety; then the military force would move on to subdue the next region, and force these new natives to build the castles which would then become the instruments of their own suppression.
Thereby, local and piecemeal superiority was swiftly converted to national and overall superiority. Once a network of castles were dotted over the whole of England, then the Normans could not be defeated.
*
In a nutshell, it looks to me as if the Normans were simply more intelligent than the Anglo Saxons - and not a little, but a lot more intelligent.
Presumably at least one standard deviation more intelligent than the Native English (i.e. if the native IQ was called 100, the Normans must have had an IQ of 115 or more).
(One SD seems to be the usual (minimum) difference which allows one group to rule another - whether the difference is between classes, castes or races.)
*
And I am not sure, but I think that Norman cultural achievements are also at least consistent with higher intelligence than the native Anglo-Saxons.
A comparison of literacy rates might be enlightening - however, the extreme differential in social conditions (and the treatment of Anglo Saxons as an inferior and excluded caste) make such measures difficult to interpret.
Probably a 'matched' comparison of the pre-Norman English ruling class (in terms of literacy, technology etc) with the post Norman ruling class, might be the most enlightening line of enquiry.
*
Why would Normans have had a higher intelligence (assuming that they did)? Perhaps because of the Scandinavian roots - since the harsh conditions and long winters of Scandinavia seem to select for higher intelligence, presumably because low intelligence people cannot survive.
This higher Norse intelligence was not revealed under the harsh Scandinavian conditions (except in terms of sheer survival); but was immediately evident when new and more temperate colonies are founded (as happened in the Northern parts of England - the 'Danelaw', as well as in Normandy); and under more favourable conditions forms of higher cultural expressions begin to develop very rapidly.
Once these intelligent Vikings had conquered a portion of France, they apparently married local women and recruited local men. If we assume that the marriages were 'assortative matings', in which IQs were (somewhat) matched; and if recruitment was of the smarter men (and/ or excluded the least intelligent) - then the high original and Viking-derived intelligence might have been sustained or even amplified as The Normans were formed by a fusion of conquerors and locals.
*
Maybe, as genetic technologies advance and g may become measurable in terms of comparing large numbers of g-related genes, and if there is availability of suitable DNA from both Norman and Anglo Saxon skeletons; this theory of Normans having very high intelligence relative to Anglo Saxons may become directly testable.
*
(Note: Some of these ideas were developed in discussion over a prolonged lunch with my friend Peter Andras, now of Keele University - http://www.keele.ac.uk/scm/staff/professors/peterandras/.)
Thursday, 3 July 2014
Conceptual notes on brain size and intelligence
*
1. There is a broad correlation between brain size and intelligence - as a brain must be of a certain size to have a certain complexity.
But the correlation is crude. Some big animals need big brains to control their bodies - some relatively small animals seem relatively very intelligent - I am thinking of some parrots.
This is because the brain is a multi-functional organ - most of it is concerned with non-'g' matters; and intelligence differences are probably only underpinned by a part, probably a small part, of this organ.
2. My understanding is that intelligence is mostly about efficiency - and efficiency specifically, flexible and multi-functional efficiency) requires complexity; and complexity of the brain is constrained by size and also developmental speed - on the whole a more efficient brain will tend to be larger and take longer to develop (construct) than a less efficient brain.
(I do not think it would be biologically possible for an organism to develop and mature an extra intelligent (therefore more complex) brain and also to do it more rapidly than usual - therefore high intelligence pretty much requires a longer, and either slower or not-faster, period of brain development and maturation during childhood. Therefore, measuring brain size during childhood is not likely to be a good guide to intelligence - a small and simpler brain may develop and mature quicker than what will eventually turn-out to be a larger and more complex and more efficient brain.)
However, part of making a more efficient brain is probably developing a denser connectivity of brain circuits, rather than simply larger numbers of circuits. The 'g' advantage of men over women is (I would guess) probably related to greater density of connectivity, more than to a physically (and proportionately) larger brain.
3. Brains can be made smaller, and intelligence reduced, by a range of pathologies - illnesses, genetic and chromosomal problems. This is trivially true. But it means that in correlation studies there will be some small brained people with low IQ simply due to damage and destruction of various types (and there is an unconstrainedly large number of causes of brain and intelligence damage).
4. What about larger than average brains? Well, brain size might also be increased by some pathologies - but there may be other, non-g causes for brains to evolve or develop extra--large specialized circuits, to serve specialized functions - perhaps in vision or memory (eg. the suggestion that some specific brain regions are expanded in Australian Aborigines to enhance specific visual memory functions).
But IF (and it is a big IF) these specialized regions could be controlled for and excluded from the analysis - and analysis focused only on 'g' relevant brain regions (currently unknown); and if the brain substance was as densely connected as normal - then increased intelligence would be constrained by brain size: in other words, I think the only plausible way that intelligence could be increased by evolutionary pressures would be to increase the complexity of connectivity, which would probably entail an increase in the size of the (currently unknown) relevant parts of the brain.
5. I have been talking about brain size - head size is only loosely correlated to brain size, and subject to further pathologies. And hat size is only loosely correlated with head size - the shape of the head can make a difference here (so big headed people may only fit a small hat!). I don't think that measures of head or hat size can contribute much or at all to unravelling the difficult aspects of intelligence - except in a negative way:
Shrinking heads (and hats) over time (declining adult head circumference) would probably be strong evidence of declining intelligence - but the opposite would not be true for the reasons outlined above.
*
1. There is a broad correlation between brain size and intelligence - as a brain must be of a certain size to have a certain complexity.
But the correlation is crude. Some big animals need big brains to control their bodies - some relatively small animals seem relatively very intelligent - I am thinking of some parrots.
This is because the brain is a multi-functional organ - most of it is concerned with non-'g' matters; and intelligence differences are probably only underpinned by a part, probably a small part, of this organ.
2. My understanding is that intelligence is mostly about efficiency - and efficiency specifically, flexible and multi-functional efficiency) requires complexity; and complexity of the brain is constrained by size and also developmental speed - on the whole a more efficient brain will tend to be larger and take longer to develop (construct) than a less efficient brain.
(I do not think it would be biologically possible for an organism to develop and mature an extra intelligent (therefore more complex) brain and also to do it more rapidly than usual - therefore high intelligence pretty much requires a longer, and either slower or not-faster, period of brain development and maturation during childhood. Therefore, measuring brain size during childhood is not likely to be a good guide to intelligence - a small and simpler brain may develop and mature quicker than what will eventually turn-out to be a larger and more complex and more efficient brain.)
However, part of making a more efficient brain is probably developing a denser connectivity of brain circuits, rather than simply larger numbers of circuits. The 'g' advantage of men over women is (I would guess) probably related to greater density of connectivity, more than to a physically (and proportionately) larger brain.
3. Brains can be made smaller, and intelligence reduced, by a range of pathologies - illnesses, genetic and chromosomal problems. This is trivially true. But it means that in correlation studies there will be some small brained people with low IQ simply due to damage and destruction of various types (and there is an unconstrainedly large number of causes of brain and intelligence damage).
4. What about larger than average brains? Well, brain size might also be increased by some pathologies - but there may be other, non-g causes for brains to evolve or develop extra--large specialized circuits, to serve specialized functions - perhaps in vision or memory (eg. the suggestion that some specific brain regions are expanded in Australian Aborigines to enhance specific visual memory functions).
But IF (and it is a big IF) these specialized regions could be controlled for and excluded from the analysis - and analysis focused only on 'g' relevant brain regions (currently unknown); and if the brain substance was as densely connected as normal - then increased intelligence would be constrained by brain size: in other words, I think the only plausible way that intelligence could be increased by evolutionary pressures would be to increase the complexity of connectivity, which would probably entail an increase in the size of the (currently unknown) relevant parts of the brain.
5. I have been talking about brain size - head size is only loosely correlated to brain size, and subject to further pathologies. And hat size is only loosely correlated with head size - the shape of the head can make a difference here (so big headed people may only fit a small hat!). I don't think that measures of head or hat size can contribute much or at all to unravelling the difficult aspects of intelligence - except in a negative way:
Shrinking heads (and hats) over time (declining adult head circumference) would probably be strong evidence of declining intelligence - but the opposite would not be true for the reasons outlined above.
*
Tuesday, 1 July 2014
The relationship between Intelligence (IQ) and Personality traits: Intelligence is Primary - Personality is Secondary
*
Historically, Intelligence was the first and most powerfully predictive variable of individual differences.
Personality came later - and was formalized by the work of H.J Eysenck as a separate explanatory variable which can be seen after Intelligence is controlled-for.
*
Personality evaluations are not 'tests' in the way that IQ is measured by tests. Usually Personality is evaluated from self-rating questionnaires - sometimes from ratings by other people (e.g. teachers or parents). Sometimes Personality is measured indirectly in terms of behaviours - for example Conscientiousness might be measured by how many hours a person spends studying, or by their record of employment attendance.
*
What is the formal relationship between Intelligence and Personality?
The answer is that Intelligence is hierarchically superior to Personality.
Because intelligence very obviously affects personality - but personality does not affect intelligence.
Intelligence is primary as an explanation of behaviour - primary both historically, and formally, analytically.
*
Thus, Personality is Secondary to Intelligence.
How can this be understood? Intelligence is a measure of brain efficiency - something like speed of cognitive processing. therefore it affects pretty much all cognitive attributes in a quantitative manner.
Personality is disposition, related to the set-up and balance of attributes. Personality could be conceptualized as a different kind (or balance) of cognitive processing (not a different speed).
So that when exposed to the same stimulus - different Personalities (of the same Intelligence) will process the stimulus differently, to lead to different behavours.
But to establish a difference in Personality, the Intelligence must be controlled - because the same personalities exposed to the same stimuli will generate different behaviours if they have different intelligences - because differences in processing speed will suffice to produce different behaviours.
*
This has not been well understood - indeed I did not properly understand it until a few hours ago! Until then I thought of Intelligence and Personality as independent ways of predicting human behaviour. But I now see this is wrong - Intelligence is Primary and hierarchically above Personality - and only after Intelligence has been sufficiently controlled-for should Personality be evaluated.
*
In other words, as a matter of routine - when measuring Personality, one should also do an IQ test.
And before looking at the effect of personality on behaviour, one ought to remove the effect of intelligence (by stratified analysis, preferably - i.e. creating narrow strata of IQ and only looking a personality effects within these strata - or else by some kind of regression).
*
To put it differently, it is legitimate to measure IQ without Personality - but not legitimate to measure Personality without IQ.
*
What this means is that:
1. Two people (or groups) with the same IQ but different measured-Personalities traits (as evaluated using self-rating scales, or whatever), nonetheless have the same IQ.
2. Two people (or groups) with the same measured-Personality traits but different IQs, in reality have different Personalities.
*
However, in practice, much personality research is done on an already-intelligence-stratified sample - such as Psychology Students at Mudsville State University - in these situations the researcher can usually get-away-with missing out IQ testing and just evaluating Personality.
*
(However, this does not apply to the Big Five pseudo-trait of Openness - which is often so sensitive to IQ differences that it varies even within strata such as the same class of the same college. If Intelligence is controlled-for, then the effect of Openness disappears - because Openness is merely 'the personality type of intelligent people in Western-type societies' - but rather badly conceptualized.)
*
The best conceptualized Personality traits, which derive essentially from HJ Eysenck, are Introversion versus Extraversion and Neuroticism versus Emotional Stability - and these are relatively robust to IQ differences (especially in college populations which provide most of the subjects).
(However, it seems likely that high levels of trait Neuroticism are contaminated by pathology; and likewise extremes of both Extraversion and Introversion. in other words, some personality differences are the result of diseases in specific people.)
The other major Eysenck trait is Psychoticism - which the Big Five splits into the inverse of Conscientiousness, and Agreeableness (which is the same entity as Simon Baron Cohen's Empathizing) - to which could be added Schizotypy to capture the 'psychotic' element of Psychoticism.
Ultimately, Personality needs to be related to some underlying biological, and adaptive, mechanism - and the most likely of these underlying explanatory models seems to be Life History; which is another topic for another time.
*
Historically, Intelligence was the first and most powerfully predictive variable of individual differences.
Personality came later - and was formalized by the work of H.J Eysenck as a separate explanatory variable which can be seen after Intelligence is controlled-for.
*
Personality evaluations are not 'tests' in the way that IQ is measured by tests. Usually Personality is evaluated from self-rating questionnaires - sometimes from ratings by other people (e.g. teachers or parents). Sometimes Personality is measured indirectly in terms of behaviours - for example Conscientiousness might be measured by how many hours a person spends studying, or by their record of employment attendance.
*
What is the formal relationship between Intelligence and Personality?
The answer is that Intelligence is hierarchically superior to Personality.
Because intelligence very obviously affects personality - but personality does not affect intelligence.
Intelligence is primary as an explanation of behaviour - primary both historically, and formally, analytically.
*
Thus, Personality is Secondary to Intelligence.
How can this be understood? Intelligence is a measure of brain efficiency - something like speed of cognitive processing. therefore it affects pretty much all cognitive attributes in a quantitative manner.
Personality is disposition, related to the set-up and balance of attributes. Personality could be conceptualized as a different kind (or balance) of cognitive processing (not a different speed).
So that when exposed to the same stimulus - different Personalities (of the same Intelligence) will process the stimulus differently, to lead to different behavours.
But to establish a difference in Personality, the Intelligence must be controlled - because the same personalities exposed to the same stimuli will generate different behaviours if they have different intelligences - because differences in processing speed will suffice to produce different behaviours.
*
This has not been well understood - indeed I did not properly understand it until a few hours ago! Until then I thought of Intelligence and Personality as independent ways of predicting human behaviour. But I now see this is wrong - Intelligence is Primary and hierarchically above Personality - and only after Intelligence has been sufficiently controlled-for should Personality be evaluated.
*
In other words, as a matter of routine - when measuring Personality, one should also do an IQ test.
And before looking at the effect of personality on behaviour, one ought to remove the effect of intelligence (by stratified analysis, preferably - i.e. creating narrow strata of IQ and only looking a personality effects within these strata - or else by some kind of regression).
*
To put it differently, it is legitimate to measure IQ without Personality - but not legitimate to measure Personality without IQ.
*
What this means is that:
1. Two people (or groups) with the same IQ but different measured-Personalities traits (as evaluated using self-rating scales, or whatever), nonetheless have the same IQ.
2. Two people (or groups) with the same measured-Personality traits but different IQs, in reality have different Personalities.
*
However, in practice, much personality research is done on an already-intelligence-stratified sample - such as Psychology Students at Mudsville State University - in these situations the researcher can usually get-away-with missing out IQ testing and just evaluating Personality.
*
(However, this does not apply to the Big Five pseudo-trait of Openness - which is often so sensitive to IQ differences that it varies even within strata such as the same class of the same college. If Intelligence is controlled-for, then the effect of Openness disappears - because Openness is merely 'the personality type of intelligent people in Western-type societies' - but rather badly conceptualized.)
*
The best conceptualized Personality traits, which derive essentially from HJ Eysenck, are Introversion versus Extraversion and Neuroticism versus Emotional Stability - and these are relatively robust to IQ differences (especially in college populations which provide most of the subjects).
(However, it seems likely that high levels of trait Neuroticism are contaminated by pathology; and likewise extremes of both Extraversion and Introversion. in other words, some personality differences are the result of diseases in specific people.)
The other major Eysenck trait is Psychoticism - which the Big Five splits into the inverse of Conscientiousness, and Agreeableness (which is the same entity as Simon Baron Cohen's Empathizing) - to which could be added Schizotypy to capture the 'psychotic' element of Psychoticism.
Ultimately, Personality needs to be related to some underlying biological, and adaptive, mechanism - and the most likely of these underlying explanatory models seems to be Life History; which is another topic for another time.
*
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