Remember Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron"? What's happening today is a natural, technology-induced, equalization creeping normalcy process...Vonnegut's story had "handicaps" added to effect equalization, but I bet Vonnegut (who made clear his anti-tech-"progress" view in "Cat's Cradle", et alia) could see how technological "progress" was having the same effect. The overall tendency of our technological "progress", beginning with the first great tech transition from H&Ger to agricultural economics-life support has been to domesticate-tame-ant-ify/borg-ify us. It continues now at an accelerating pace. Just making sure the more intelligent among us are more reproductive cannot stop this process. Technological "progress" must be stopped, and a guy like Musk is sure not onboard with that...he'll have us all hooked up to AI with brain implants as soon as he can.
Kurt Vonnegut is my favorite author, rather than Aldous Huxley or George Orwell. He was the only one (to the best of my knowledge) who foresaw the current dystopia we are living through.
Much rings true indeed. Too bad he didn't foresee much improvement in digital communications i.e. the internet. The biggest inaccuracy in Player Piano is not the punch cards, but that people go to bars, have sex, and procreate.
Humanity will merge with the machines because we already live in a machine society and merging with computers is the obvious next step of technobiological evolution.
Yes, that's certainly our trajectory in the developed world under the leadership of our elite owner-investor class and it's also where the developing world wants to be since they follow whatever the leaders are doing. Thankfully though, it's not for sure that we'll get there...social unrest as the gap between elite and sub-elite widens, the collapse of modern economics due to failure to transition to beyond-fossil energy and/or due to crucial material inputs being exhausted, a "black ball" event (Bostrom's "Vulnerable World Hypothesis" which is just Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle" translated into philosophical language.) including the possibility that machines just take over and we go extinct/are extincted entirely, maybe a natural catastrophe (the Old Testament metaphor of the Tower of Babel?). Bottom line: We are going to have to BE derailed because we aren't going to derail ourselves. Even if some should try (like Ted Kaczynski), they'd be over-powered-marginalized-to-insignificance by those who have the technological power, and also by the sub-elites who are hooked on technology like addicts who keep on shooting-up/snorting even though it;s destroying them.
I don't think it is possible to stop technological development. Technology has a will of its own as evidenced by increasing energy utilization and depletion of all exploitable resources.
I think difference in fertility is not the only factor. And perhaps, at least up until the Boomer generation, fertility difference is actually a minor factor. My hypothesis: most intelligence decline comes from a natural drift / entropy, accompanied with a growing standard deviation (distribution broadening mostly toward the stupid side), i.e. Bratsberg & Rosenberg's “within-family variation” even in monogamous families.
Side note: I would also hesitate to underestimate an environmental/lifestyle impact on our health. The field of medicine has regressed in some important ways since the 1930s.
The term "monogamous family" is just a legalism if the children have different fathers.
I'm not convinced by Ed's reasoning. The fall in infant mortality was much greater during the first half of the 20th century, yet the decline in polygenic scores is about the same, perhaps even worse during the second half if we take survivorship bias into account.
Medicine made many improvements during the 1940s and 1950s, particularly with the introduction of antibiotics. Even today, there are significant advances. The problem is that we are losing our social and cultural safety net. Mean lifespan is declining because more people are living alone without any social interaction, especially men in their 40s and up.
Environmental pollution is a big factor. Areas which have a higher concentration of synthetic chemicals in the soil and water also have a higher incidence of cancer and other debilitating diseases. Decline in IQ and cognition is consistent with a more polluted environment. Everything people eat and drink is now full of microplastics and the air in urban areas is full of rubber particles from tires which are small enough to drift on air currents and end up in human lungs.
Author thinks this has something to do with fertility but there is an obvious problem with that hypothesis. There are more people than ever and the parts of the world with the highest fertility have some of the worst problems with governance and technological development. If the fertility hypothsis was true then we'd expect the places with the highest fertility to have the smartest people but this is not the case.
It's not fertility per se that's driving the decline in mean cognitive ability. It's the class difference in fertility, particularly between the middle class and the lower class.
Actually, there is evidence that the same cognitive decline is occurring in the non-Western world, notably in Latin America, Iran, and Turkey. I can't say more because that evidence is presented in a paper currently under peer review (and it's not one of my papers).
Elon Musk knows about this. In Ashlee Vance's biography of Musk, there is a passage about Elon saying that smart people should have more kids. That's why he keeps having kids with a lot of different women.
The woman in that relationship in that video clip isn't a very good match character-wise. Its not very fun to have such a woman as wife.
The Man meanwhile could marry a younger woman in her early 20's and still reproduce that way. If he needs to delay marrying himself.
No reason that their ages must be identical or very similar. As for Elon Musk its very bizarre that they forgo the natural abilities of their bodies predominantly and resort to IVF and similar techniques to make that happen.
Very good!!! I appreciate you pointing out things about the Flynn effect such as those old school questions, over the last few years I've earned a lot about the past and oh boy could I add to that.
RE the patent increases. Its such BS, off the bat the monstrous corporatist state perversion known as the Bayh-Dole Act started having government tech patents get registered because it just began transferring tax payer funded into the exclusive control of big companies (mostly, but even when their small businesses its often time the case that its a big company, but thats too long to write here) whereas before they were just open to any citizen or businesses to use (after all, they as taxpayers paid for its production in the direct government labs and offsite indirect government labs at the research unis!) and that system grew over time which led an increasesing rate.
And thats before we get into quality and types and what even is being patented and how much is just patent troll or wannabe patent troll trap layings and on and on I could go but thats too much to write here
Thanks for the interesting and informative writing!
Yes, I agree absolutely! All forms of life have their technologies, most are body-internal-built-in-endosomatic...organs, special body structures and sensory abilities. They also exploit resources using those techs that they have in order to survive and seek to increase their power, power as energy and resource control and hroughput (Population X per capita energy and resource possession/use). That's the very essence of life...that which uses up energy and material resources, creates entropy, according to Jeremy England and Friedrich Nietzsche) Humans and a few other species have developed exosomatic tech, ability to use tools, but because of other built-in tech unique to us (esp our language and our brains' reality modeling abilities) we have become the great masters-lords of exosomatic tech that uses exosomatic energy. New exosomatic techs can evolve far faster than those that rely on genetic evolution, and we are constantly seeking new paradigms or energy and material resources to reach ever higher levels of power. Since we are living things, and therefore by necessity-definition seek to increase our power always, as long as our tech & resource paradigm's (TRP's) limits have not been reached, we will inevitably keep doing so. Today, we are in the midst of a deep crisis-challenge though: establishing the next TRP (beyond-fossil-energy and recycling of materials) before the old one is exhausted to the point that we can't even make the transition. The sower's paradox is beginning to be felt, esp in the "developing world". Socio-economic stress is on the rise as this happens.
Remember Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron"? What's happening today is a natural, technology-induced, equalization creeping normalcy process...Vonnegut's story had "handicaps" added to effect equalization, but I bet Vonnegut (who made clear his anti-tech-"progress" view in "Cat's Cradle", et alia) could see how technological "progress" was having the same effect. The overall tendency of our technological "progress", beginning with the first great tech transition from H&Ger to agricultural economics-life support has been to domesticate-tame-ant-ify/borg-ify us. It continues now at an accelerating pace. Just making sure the more intelligent among us are more reproductive cannot stop this process. Technological "progress" must be stopped, and a guy like Musk is sure not onboard with that...he'll have us all hooked up to AI with brain implants as soon as he can.
Kurt Vonnegut is my favorite author, rather than Aldous Huxley or George Orwell. He was the only one (to the best of my knowledge) who foresaw the current dystopia we are living through.
Best book of his you'd recommend?
Player Piano.
Much rings true indeed. Too bad he didn't foresee much improvement in digital communications i.e. the internet. The biggest inaccuracy in Player Piano is not the punch cards, but that people go to bars, have sex, and procreate.
Humanity will merge with the machines because we already live in a machine society and merging with computers is the obvious next step of technobiological evolution.
Yes, that's certainly our trajectory in the developed world under the leadership of our elite owner-investor class and it's also where the developing world wants to be since they follow whatever the leaders are doing. Thankfully though, it's not for sure that we'll get there...social unrest as the gap between elite and sub-elite widens, the collapse of modern economics due to failure to transition to beyond-fossil energy and/or due to crucial material inputs being exhausted, a "black ball" event (Bostrom's "Vulnerable World Hypothesis" which is just Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle" translated into philosophical language.) including the possibility that machines just take over and we go extinct/are extincted entirely, maybe a natural catastrophe (the Old Testament metaphor of the Tower of Babel?). Bottom line: We are going to have to BE derailed because we aren't going to derail ourselves. Even if some should try (like Ted Kaczynski), they'd be over-powered-marginalized-to-insignificance by those who have the technological power, and also by the sub-elites who are hooked on technology like addicts who keep on shooting-up/snorting even though it;s destroying them.
I don't think it is possible to stop technological development. Technology has a will of its own as evidenced by increasing energy utilization and depletion of all exploitable resources.
The civilization will collapse before humans merge with machines.
I think difference in fertility is not the only factor. And perhaps, at least up until the Boomer generation, fertility difference is actually a minor factor. My hypothesis: most intelligence decline comes from a natural drift / entropy, accompanied with a growing standard deviation (distribution broadening mostly toward the stupid side), i.e. Bratsberg & Rosenberg's “within-family variation” even in monogamous families.
https://odysee.com/@JollyHeretic:d/the-fall-in-iq-and-genius-will-not-be:6?lc=940b40bbb6760f36b2005328acb15bde884f9c748fbd356a4d55f823d3dcf216
Comments / refutations?
Side note: I would also hesitate to underestimate an environmental/lifestyle impact on our health. The field of medicine has regressed in some important ways since the 1930s.
The term "monogamous family" is just a legalism if the children have different fathers.
I'm not convinced by Ed's reasoning. The fall in infant mortality was much greater during the first half of the 20th century, yet the decline in polygenic scores is about the same, perhaps even worse during the second half if we take survivorship bias into account.
Medicine made many improvements during the 1940s and 1950s, particularly with the introduction of antibiotics. Even today, there are significant advances. The problem is that we are losing our social and cultural safety net. Mean lifespan is declining because more people are living alone without any social interaction, especially men in their 40s and up.
Environmental pollution is a big factor. Areas which have a higher concentration of synthetic chemicals in the soil and water also have a higher incidence of cancer and other debilitating diseases. Decline in IQ and cognition is consistent with a more polluted environment. Everything people eat and drink is now full of microplastics and the air in urban areas is full of rubber particles from tires which are small enough to drift on air currents and end up in human lungs.
Author thinks this has something to do with fertility but there is an obvious problem with that hypothesis. There are more people than ever and the parts of the world with the highest fertility have some of the worst problems with governance and technological development. If the fertility hypothsis was true then we'd expect the places with the highest fertility to have the smartest people but this is not the case.
It's not fertility per se that's driving the decline in mean cognitive ability. It's the class difference in fertility, particularly between the middle class and the lower class.
Actually, there is evidence that the same cognitive decline is occurring in the non-Western world, notably in Latin America, Iran, and Turkey. I can't say more because that evidence is presented in a paper currently under peer review (and it's not one of my papers).
The opening scene of the movie Idiocracy sums this up in a funnier and more accessible way:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP2tUW0HDHA
Elon Musk knows about this. In Ashlee Vance's biography of Musk, there is a passage about Elon saying that smart people should have more kids. That's why he keeps having kids with a lot of different women.
I envy him. He runs three companies and has done more to rein in Big Tech than any politician in Washington. Plus, he has ten kids.
The woman in that relationship in that video clip isn't a very good match character-wise. Its not very fun to have such a woman as wife.
The Man meanwhile could marry a younger woman in her early 20's and still reproduce that way. If he needs to delay marrying himself.
No reason that their ages must be identical or very similar. As for Elon Musk its very bizarre that they forgo the natural abilities of their bodies predominantly and resort to IVF and similar techniques to make that happen.
Very weirdly disconnected from their bodies.
Very good!!! I appreciate you pointing out things about the Flynn effect such as those old school questions, over the last few years I've earned a lot about the past and oh boy could I add to that.
RE the patent increases. Its such BS, off the bat the monstrous corporatist state perversion known as the Bayh-Dole Act started having government tech patents get registered because it just began transferring tax payer funded into the exclusive control of big companies (mostly, but even when their small businesses its often time the case that its a big company, but thats too long to write here) whereas before they were just open to any citizen or businesses to use (after all, they as taxpayers paid for its production in the direct government labs and offsite indirect government labs at the research unis!) and that system grew over time which led an increasesing rate.
And thats before we get into quality and types and what even is being patented and how much is just patent troll or wannabe patent troll trap layings and on and on I could go but thats too much to write here
Thanks for the interesting and informative writing!
I hope your having a nice weekend so far.
---Mike
Yes, I agree absolutely! All forms of life have their technologies, most are body-internal-built-in-endosomatic...organs, special body structures and sensory abilities. They also exploit resources using those techs that they have in order to survive and seek to increase their power, power as energy and resource control and hroughput (Population X per capita energy and resource possession/use). That's the very essence of life...that which uses up energy and material resources, creates entropy, according to Jeremy England and Friedrich Nietzsche) Humans and a few other species have developed exosomatic tech, ability to use tools, but because of other built-in tech unique to us (esp our language and our brains' reality modeling abilities) we have become the great masters-lords of exosomatic tech that uses exosomatic energy. New exosomatic techs can evolve far faster than those that rely on genetic evolution, and we are constantly seeking new paradigms or energy and material resources to reach ever higher levels of power. Since we are living things, and therefore by necessity-definition seek to increase our power always, as long as our tech & resource paradigm's (TRP's) limits have not been reached, we will inevitably keep doing so. Today, we are in the midst of a deep crisis-challenge though: establishing the next TRP (beyond-fossil-energy and recycling of materials) before the old one is exhausted to the point that we can't even make the transition. The sower's paradox is beginning to be felt, esp in the "developing world". Socio-economic stress is on the rise as this happens.