The IQ story seems crazy and self-refuting. He says IQ decline leads to falling GDP then says that IQ has already fallen a lot… in a period where GDP has grown tremendously.
I don't know if it is IQ loss or not, but when I look around me I see a significant loss of common sense- a loss in the grounding in knowing what is possible and what isn't possible.
(1)This is why we get these idiotic proposals to run the modern world on windmills and solar panels to the exclusion of true baseload capable sources of energy.
(2) It is why we get proposals to lock healthy people down with sick people, and mask everyone all the time to stop a respiratory virus.
(3) It is why we get proposals to mandate experimental medical molecules for everyone with safety trials lasting only a month, and followup medicial molecules with no human safety trials at all.
(4) It is why leaders think releasing criminals with no bail is smart policy, and that having no law enforcing against petty theft of under, today, $1000, and tomorrow $10,000, etc. is a smart civilized policy.
(5) It is why we now apparently believe subsidizing vagrancy will somehow eliminate vagrancy.
(6) It is why we have no border enforcement at all across the land borders of the US.
(7) It is why we seemingly now think organically grown food can feed 7 billion people.
I could literally go on all day on the issues we seem to have lost all sense of rationality in at least half the population of the US alone. I see no good outcomes on the horizon- we are probably screwed now.
I think most of this has nothing to do with IQ and is simply the result of naked self-interest and, frankly, a desire to screw other people over. An honest answer from a lot of these folks is going to be that burning down society is a feature and not a bug.
This isn't anything new. The USSR and PRC both had policies that were essentially "negligent genocide" which pushed into "active genocide when we feel like it".
The IQ model being pushed here seems very much like the average COVID epidemiological model or Samuelson's famous graph of the Soviet Union's economic output surpassing the US. The result is baked into the assumptions, and changing the model just means selecting a new starting date to show when the < insert horrible thing > is going to occur.
Getting to this late. I spent some time looking over the empirical evidence cited to support the idea of an IQ decline, but none of it stands any scrutiny. There simply is no solid evidence of a cognitive decline over the last couple hundred years or whatever extended period you are looking at. In fact, IQ has been generally increasing over the last couple hundred years. The only argument is that based on the theory there *must be* a dysgenic cognitive decline in action. Charles Murray called the dysgenic effect a “headwind,” without which there would have been even greater growth in IQ. Until I see actual evidence, I call it un unsupported hypothesis. Collective action to fight dysgenics would be called “eugenics” - a Pandora’s box better left closed whether the theory is true or not, based on historical precedent.
The plastic bag finding appears to be overhyped. Reuse number required for cotton to beat plastic can be much lower depending on the impact category you use.
One easy to believe mechanism that could be driving a decline in IQ (if its real) would be plain old incentives. The more rewards that are given for not sharpening mental skills and reasoning, and the less punishments that are applied for that failure (no more standardized testing!) - would both seem to lead to lower IQ scores over time.
If in societies that had previously been on the high end of the global “maximizing IQ scale” - a larger than previously segment believes: I can get rewards without intellectual effort, and I’m not punished for failing to achieve something like my highest potential - then global IQ stagnates or falls, yes?
3rd graders spending 20% more time on CRT and 20% less time on math gets us there, yes?
In an earlier post linking to the risks (or lack thereof) of declines in fertilities rates, you had indicated you didn’t think declining fertility in the Western world was a problem. Are you revising your priors based on this latest link?
The dysgenic story is a really an immigration story. It matters little how many low IQ Africans there are, if they can't move to the first world and mess things up. Native rates of dysgenic aren't big enough to cause a seismic shift on any timeline short enough to bother make predictions.
So the question boils down to whether we will invent and implement artificial genetic improvement at scale before a third world immigration tidal wave destroys the first world, causing a collapse in the societies that would invent such technology.
In terms of birthrates, even if there was no dysgenic component or immigration component (as might even be the case in Asia), it just seems to me that low TFR is an indication of sickness at the personal and societal level and there is not yet evidence that it is self correcting in the modern world.
He's talking about global IQ, so it's not an immigration story. Malthusianism no longer really applies. The real issue is that the wealthier societies become, the more association between fertility and intelligence becomes negative, and the wealthiest societies tend to have the smartest people. In fact at a global level it's not clear open borders wouldn't push against the phenomenon you're complaining about: want Africans to have fewer children? Let them come to America, they'll have way fewer kids. More than white Americans, but something like 2.3 vs. 1.6 for the latter compared to 4 in sub-Saharan Africa.
If they are in Africa they can't vote in western countries and they aren't entitled to the western welfare state. As such, the damage they can do to the western growth engine is limited. However, if they move to the west, the damage they do increases exponentially.
"Hive Mind" is true only in discrete groupings. There is no global Hive Mind. For all intents and purposes, Africa might as well be on the dark side of the moon when discussing the average IQ in the west. As long as they stay there.
“to ‘time’ the booster to match plans to visit vulnerable others”
At the height of COVID and the vaccine wars, I recall there also being a rhetorical shift from vaccines were important to protect yourself to vaccines were necessary to protect against transmission to others.
Zvi’s post seems to assume this is still true, but anecdotally I thought this was questionable. Has there been any more careful studies to demonstrate vaccination does meaningfully reduce transmission?
I think Zvi has shifted his approach to questioning vaccines now. He used to be quite keen on digging into the data and questioning the official line. Now he seems tired. I think he has largely lost interest and has moved into a "look, I don't know, and I honestly don't care much anymore" but is still posting about it out of inertia.
The IQ story seems crazy and self-refuting. He says IQ decline leads to falling GDP then says that IQ has already fallen a lot… in a period where GDP has grown tremendously.
I don't know if it is IQ loss or not, but when I look around me I see a significant loss of common sense- a loss in the grounding in knowing what is possible and what isn't possible.
(1)This is why we get these idiotic proposals to run the modern world on windmills and solar panels to the exclusion of true baseload capable sources of energy.
(2) It is why we get proposals to lock healthy people down with sick people, and mask everyone all the time to stop a respiratory virus.
(3) It is why we get proposals to mandate experimental medical molecules for everyone with safety trials lasting only a month, and followup medicial molecules with no human safety trials at all.
(4) It is why leaders think releasing criminals with no bail is smart policy, and that having no law enforcing against petty theft of under, today, $1000, and tomorrow $10,000, etc. is a smart civilized policy.
(5) It is why we now apparently believe subsidizing vagrancy will somehow eliminate vagrancy.
(6) It is why we have no border enforcement at all across the land borders of the US.
(7) It is why we seemingly now think organically grown food can feed 7 billion people.
I could literally go on all day on the issues we seem to have lost all sense of rationality in at least half the population of the US alone. I see no good outcomes on the horizon- we are probably screwed now.
(5) It is why we now apparently think
Your #6 is simply not true.
Sure.......🙄
I think most of this has nothing to do with IQ and is simply the result of naked self-interest and, frankly, a desire to screw other people over. An honest answer from a lot of these folks is going to be that burning down society is a feature and not a bug.
This isn't anything new. The USSR and PRC both had policies that were essentially "negligent genocide" which pushed into "active genocide when we feel like it".
The IQ model being pushed here seems very much like the average COVID epidemiological model or Samuelson's famous graph of the Soviet Union's economic output surpassing the US. The result is baked into the assumptions, and changing the model just means selecting a new starting date to show when the < insert horrible thing > is going to occur.
Getting to this late. I spent some time looking over the empirical evidence cited to support the idea of an IQ decline, but none of it stands any scrutiny. There simply is no solid evidence of a cognitive decline over the last couple hundred years or whatever extended period you are looking at. In fact, IQ has been generally increasing over the last couple hundred years. The only argument is that based on the theory there *must be* a dysgenic cognitive decline in action. Charles Murray called the dysgenic effect a “headwind,” without which there would have been even greater growth in IQ. Until I see actual evidence, I call it un unsupported hypothesis. Collective action to fight dysgenics would be called “eugenics” - a Pandora’s box better left closed whether the theory is true or not, based on historical precedent.
The plastic bag finding appears to be overhyped. Reuse number required for cotton to beat plastic can be much lower depending on the impact category you use.
https://twitter.com/arthurhcyip/status/1115749684851683333?s=12
One easy to believe mechanism that could be driving a decline in IQ (if its real) would be plain old incentives. The more rewards that are given for not sharpening mental skills and reasoning, and the less punishments that are applied for that failure (no more standardized testing!) - would both seem to lead to lower IQ scores over time.
If in societies that had previously been on the high end of the global “maximizing IQ scale” - a larger than previously segment believes: I can get rewards without intellectual effort, and I’m not punished for failing to achieve something like my highest potential - then global IQ stagnates or falls, yes?
3rd graders spending 20% more time on CRT and 20% less time on math gets us there, yes?
Just a hypothesis…
“ Have a nice day.”
In an earlier post linking to the risks (or lack thereof) of declines in fertilities rates, you had indicated you didn’t think declining fertility in the Western world was a problem. Are you revising your priors based on this latest link?
The dysgenic story is a really an immigration story. It matters little how many low IQ Africans there are, if they can't move to the first world and mess things up. Native rates of dysgenic aren't big enough to cause a seismic shift on any timeline short enough to bother make predictions.
So the question boils down to whether we will invent and implement artificial genetic improvement at scale before a third world immigration tidal wave destroys the first world, causing a collapse in the societies that would invent such technology.
In terms of birthrates, even if there was no dysgenic component or immigration component (as might even be the case in Asia), it just seems to me that low TFR is an indication of sickness at the personal and societal level and there is not yet evidence that it is self correcting in the modern world.
He's talking about global IQ, so it's not an immigration story. Malthusianism no longer really applies. The real issue is that the wealthier societies become, the more association between fertility and intelligence becomes negative, and the wealthiest societies tend to have the smartest people. In fact at a global level it's not clear open borders wouldn't push against the phenomenon you're complaining about: want Africans to have fewer children? Let them come to America, they'll have way fewer kids. More than white Americans, but something like 2.3 vs. 1.6 for the latter compared to 4 in sub-Saharan Africa.
If they are in Africa they can't vote in western countries and they aren't entitled to the western welfare state. As such, the damage they can do to the western growth engine is limited. However, if they move to the west, the damage they do increases exponentially.
"Hive Mind" is true only in discrete groupings. There is no global Hive Mind. For all intents and purposes, Africa might as well be on the dark side of the moon when discussing the average IQ in the west. As long as they stay there.
Yup. Talking about global IQ makes about as much sense as talking about the average patient body temperature in a hospital.
“to ‘time’ the booster to match plans to visit vulnerable others”
At the height of COVID and the vaccine wars, I recall there also being a rhetorical shift from vaccines were important to protect yourself to vaccines were necessary to protect against transmission to others.
Zvi’s post seems to assume this is still true, but anecdotally I thought this was questionable. Has there been any more careful studies to demonstrate vaccination does meaningfully reduce transmission?
I think Zvi has shifted his approach to questioning vaccines now. He used to be quite keen on digging into the data and questioning the official line. Now he seems tired. I think he has largely lost interest and has moved into a "look, I don't know, and I honestly don't care much anymore" but is still posting about it out of inertia.