books on iq | randombio.com

At Our Wits' End:
Why We're Becoming Less Intelligent and What It Means For the Future

by E. Dutton and M. Woodley of Menie
Imprint Academic, 2018, 210 pages
reviewed by T. Nelson

y way of introduction, the graph below is a simple calculation showing how IQ can evolve. Let's assume IQ is 100% heritable. At the start, the population has an average IQ of 100. One third of the population has an IQ of 120, high enough to write decent novels and design airplanes that don't crash. One third has an IQ of 100 and one third is 80. Now suppose the people with 80 increase by 50% in each generation, the ones with 100 increase by 20%, and the ones with an IQ of 120 remain constant.

Demographics of IQ

Within three generations, the average IQ drops to 92. After twelve generations—a little over two centuries— the average IQ is 81. Even though the number with IQs of 120 has not changed, their relative numbers have have declined by 46.5 fold. After 20 generations they have declined over 1000-fold and are virtually extinct. This is Darwinian evolution: contrary to popular opinion, no mutations are needed, only genetic diversity. Evolution is all about numbers. Darwinian fitness doesn't mean stronger or smarter. It simply means more offspring.

That is the theme of this very readable, nicely written, and refreshingly non-political book. It is something people simply do not want to hear: it is elitist, they will say, and it sounds like a justification for eugenics. And like everything else people don't like, it will be called racist. But whether we want to hear it or not, it is also true: IQ is real and measurable, and science has shown without reasonable doubt that whatever else IQ may be, it is 70–80% heritable.

The authors say this is a serious problem for our civilization: our ability to invent new technology and create inspiring culture is rapidly disappearing. Unless something changes, they say, our civilization will suffer the same fate as the Roman Empire.

There is no doubt that people with high IQ are reproducing at much lower rates. Everyone recognizes the potential consequences. But proving that the average IQ has dropped is not easy. Because IQ tests are a 20th century invention, the authors are forced to rely on proxies like interest rates, literacy rates, homicide rates, and the rise and recent fall of democratic political systems. For modern times, they point to declining rates of scientific and technological innovation, fewer per capita geniuses, and psychological signs such as declines in working memory and high-difficulty word usage. None of these really nail their case. And then there's the mysterious Flynn effect, which stopped in the 1990s, and no one knows why.

Even if it's all true, what to do about it? Imagine our government in charge of sex and reproduction: dating would be like a trip to the DMV (which, now that I think about it, would be a distinct improvement). For women, having children and having a successful career are often mutually exclusive. Telling women that delaying childbirth is leading to our inexorable extinction—not that anyone would ever suggest such a terrible, terrible thing—would start them wearing those unfashionable pink hats again. And if we told feminists to lie back and think of America, the noise would be deafening.

One doesn't need a degree in psychology to realize that the decline in standards on our campuses is being driven by a decline in collective intelligence. Discussing the topic already offends many people. If the trend continues, that will only continue.

So if it's really happening and no one wants to listen, we must conclude that it's what people want. Maybe, as I've argued before, humans really are evolving into sea slugs. If so, it would make the environmentalists and the voluntary extinction nuts happy. As H.L. Mencken would say: give 'em what they want, and give it to 'em good and hard.

When they get it, infant mortality and disease and mass slaughter will shoot up again. There will be no more Internet, no more cell phones, and no democracy. People will wander around wondering whether it was space aliens who built those blackened skyscrapers and wrote those strange indecipherable symbols and crafted the few mangled statues that remain. That is, when they're not trying to claw their way back to the top of the food chain again, and maybe failing this time.

The authors really are channeling Spengler here, but maybe all that's needed is to convince the elites that fixing it is in their best interest. Then they'll find a way to rationalize it into their ideology. It's human nature to deny the problem, attack those who warn about it, wait until it's impossible to fix, and then blame somebody else. A biologist would probably say we'll keep experiencing disasters until we expunge that trait. But at least a few are hoping we can overcome it with reason. That means Dutton and Woodley of Menie are really the optimistic ones here.

dec 24, 2020

Witches, Feminism, and the Fall of the West

by Edward Dutton
Radix, 2021, 240 pages
reviewed by T. Nelson

ost people would probably say that the Medieval persecution of witches was a way of enforcing social roles. Feminists are also trying to change those roles, so one could, I suppose, say this is something they have in common with witches. That's what I expected when I ordered this book at bn.com. (I also was curious as to whether it would be censored.)

But what Dutton actually says is that witches were “spiteful mutants.” He means this literally: witches were physically unattractive and failed to reproduce, which means they had bad genes. Defying the patriarchy by refusing to have children, he says, made their persecution almost inevitable. And, as if trying to prove the horseshoe theory of politics, he says bad genes, like sinners, are everywhere: atheists are unhealthy, left-handed people are mutants, people with big noses are smarter, liberals are mentally ill, conservatives are dumb, and depressed people only spread despair, and so it makes perfect sense that our ancestors would expurgate witches and heretics to ensure group cohesion, by which he means good genes.

Well, now he's got that off his chest, but all the feminists will be sticking pins in their Dutton effigies.

He goes on to say that religiosity is a means of enforcing cohesion and so is strongly selected by evolution when society is threatened. A patriarchal society is essential for peace because it provides confidence to males that their children are really theirs and not somebody else's.

Some of these ideas are derived—roughly—from evolutionary psychology, which has found solid evidence—or as solid as anything in psychology, which admittedly is not saying as much as one might wish—that many of our sexual customs have survival value and may be inherited. But when Dutton says Darwinian selection collapsed in the Industrial Revolution, leading to “a growth in people adopting fitness-damaging ways of thinking . . . damaging the genetic interests of the entire society,” Dutton promotes a common misunderstanding. “Fitness” in population genetics is not the same as the term we use in “fitness center” and “physical fitness.” It simply means whatever traits lead to greater numbers of offspring in a given ecological niche. This includes genes for stupidity and for couch potatoiness as well. Evolution is strictly about numbers and it is still rapidly occurring among humans today.

Dutton says the decline in infant mortality led to an increase in “mutational load.” Mutations are making people uglier and less intelligent and creating “runaway individualism,” whereby people do things like gluing themselves to the sidewalk to protest global warming and advocating childlessness and, of course, being feminists.

Hopefully it is obvious by now that this is not what evolutionary psychology teaches. Calling people one disapproves of mutants is not constructive. It might even be a new low in politics. But what he's really trying to say is that feminism is harming Westerners' fertility. This is a legitimate concern. If traits that lead to feminism decrease fertility, they will be strongly selected against. If IQ happens to be one of them, average IQ will decline in the population. Or, showing nature's sense of irony, if thanks to feminism lower IQ is selected for in women but not men, IQ could become a sex-linked trait, turning the myth that feminists railed against into a biological fact.

But describing the issue in such a politicized way merely serves to discredit the entire discussion. Should we burn feminists at the stake? Repeal the 19th amendment? Where is the evidence that witches (or for that matter feminists) have a high mutational load? Since when is individualism an inherited trait? Where is the evidence that feminists (or, indeed, witches) are exhibiting “runaway individualism” due to an increased mutational load?

So many questions, so few answers. And no doubt somebody else will use this book to impugn the reputation of evolutionary psychology. The pointless fights could go on forever.

Update Upon reflection, it seems to me that simple psychology provides a much better explanation of these two phenomena. When people can't get what they're biologically programmed to need, they invent reasons why it is not desirable. They automatically seek solutions in terms of the prevailing ideology: religion in earlier times, and political activism in our time. We don't need to invoke ‘mutations’ as the cause for either phenomenon.

oct 03 2021. updated oct 05 2021 and oct 16 2021