Objective and direct evidence of 'dysgenic' decline in genetic 'g' (IQ)

*

Reaction time (e.g. pressing a button as fast as possible in response to a light or sound) correlates with general intelligence 'g' - faster reactions correlating with increased intelligence.

However, in principle reaction time would be expected to be less affected by socio-cultural factors than standard IQ tests.

Therefore long term trends in reaction time might be an objective and direct measure of true, underlying general intelligence compared with normal IQ tests.

*

In particular, reaction time trends might resolve the apparent paradox between

1. the long-term decline in inferred underlying general intelligence due to differentially greater fertility among those with differentially lower IQ (the 'dysgenic' argument);

2. and the long term increase in the results of normal IQ tests (the 'Flynn effect' - or more accurately 'Lynn-Flynn' effect, since the observation was first published by Richard Lynn).

*

The dysgenic argument is that g has declined over the past century and a half and the increase in IQ scores is superficial - in other words genetic intelligence has declined even while phenotypic intelligence has increased; while the Flynn effect argument is that phenotypic increase in measured IQ also reflects underlying an increase in underlying 'genetic' g.

*

In essence, dysgenics advocates agree with the Flynn-effect advocates that phentoypic IQ has increased over the twentieth century but infer that underlying, genotypic IQ has declined.

However, the dysgenics viewpoint has had no objective, directly measurable evidence that genotypic IQ has declined.

Until now.

*

Dr Michael Woodley (http://publicationslist.org/M.A.Woodley) has pointed-out to me a paper by Irwin W Silverman of Bowling Green State University from 2010 which resolves this question, and provides convincing evidence to support the dysgenics argument.

*

Silverman IW. Simple reaction time: it is not what it used to be. American Journal of Psychology. 2010; 123: 39-50.

Abstract: This article calls attention to the large amount of evidence indicating that simple visual reaction time (RT) has increased. To show that RT has increased, the RTs obtained by young adults in 14 studies published from 1941 on were compared with the RTs obtained by young adults in a study conducted by Galton in the late 1800s. With one exception, the newer studies obtained RTs longer than those obtained by Galton. The possibility that these differences in results are due to faulty timing instruments is considered but deemed unlikely. Of several possible causes for longer RTs, two are regarded as tenable: that RT has been increased by the buildup of neurotoxins in the environment and by the increasing numbers of people in less than robust health who have survived into adulthood. The importance of standardizing tests of RT in order to enable more refined analyses of secular trends in RT is emphasized.

*

In a nutshell, Prof Silverman reviews data from Francis Galton between 1884 and 1893, extracted from a study of visual reaction times in 2,522 men and 302 women. The average reaction times were 183 milliseconds (ms) for men and 187 ms in women.

Silverman notes that in reviews of reaction time studies in 1911 (but not including Galton's work), it is clear that Galton's results were typical of the era - the range being from 151-200 milliseconds - median of 192 milliseconds.

By contrast, Silverman reviews twelve modern (post 1941) studies of visual reaction time (using a comparable methodology to Galton) - and the modern reaction times are very significantly longer - the total number of subjects was 3,836 - the mean reaction time was 250 milliseconds for men (SD 47) and for women was 277 ms (SD 31).

Looked at separately, in only one study, only for men, were Galton's average values contained within the 95 % confidence interval - in other words, in 11 of 12 studies and 19 of 20 comparisons - as well as the overall meta-analysis - the difference in reaction times reaches conventional levels of statistical significance.

*

Conclusion: Victorians had faster reactions, on average, than moderns.

Implication: Victorians were more intelligent, on average, than moderns.

*

It therefore seems that average reaction times have become slower over the past 100 years.

Since reaction times correlate with IQ then the measured decline in reaction times is consistent with a significant decline in general intelligence over the past century, as argued by the 'dysgenic' theorists.

***

Note added 30 April 2012.

I thought of this way of testing the dysgenic hypothesis using historical reaction time data in 2008, as shown by the following e-mail sent to Prof Ian Deary of Edinbugh University. However, at that time I could not find anything relevant in the online scientific literature, and gave-up looking. 

*

E-mail: Monday 07.07.2008 timed at 09:51

Dear Ian,

I'm sorry to badger you when you are still catching up but I have had an idea for measuring dysgenic change by using reaction times which I am keen to follow-up.

Since reaction time correlates with IQ, and since reaction time is an old physological measurement, it is possible that there are representative data on national population reaction times over the past 100 or so years.

Because high IQ people have a fertility considerably below replacement level, my prediction would be that average reaction time in developed countries should have become longer, and that the standard deviation would have become smaller (due to selective loss of shorter reaction times).

But probably somebody has already done it (perhaps your group?)?

Or maybe reaction time correlates with 'phenotypic' (or measured) IQ (and therefore gets enhanced by the Flynn effect) rather than correlating with underlying 'genotypic' IQ? - I don't know.

If it hasn't already been done - do you know of any databases of reaction times (or somebody whom I might contact about this?

Best wishes, Yours, Bruce

*  

MA Woodley's Treadmill metaphor to explain why the decline in intelligence from dysgenic selection is so much faster than was the rise in intelligence from eugenic selection

*

In an epic telephonic conversation I had with Michael Woodley yesterday, he came up with a brilliant, clear and useful metaphor to explain why it is that although it might take (say) 24 generations to raise general intelligence by one standard deviation, it has only taken about 6 generations to reduce intelligence by the same amount.

*

'Eugenic' selection to increase intelligence is like walking at 5mph on a 4mph treadmill going in the opposite direction.

This is because eugenic selection is a mutation-selection balance mechanism, in which natural selection is working against existing levels of inteligence due to a significant level of spontaneous deleterious genetic mutations; such that most of selection is simply a process of filtering-out the continually recurring mutations.

Most of natural selection is thus a Red Queen phenomenon of running fast just to stay in the same place.

*

So, intelligence-reducing mutations are the 4mph adverse treadmill which natural selection is walking against - but positive selection for higher intelligence was so powerful during the medieval era (with near zero reproductive success for those of low intelligence) that intelligence increased at (say) 5mph - so that there was progress at a rate of 1mph.

But suppose that natural selection stopped working to increase intelligence, and indeed began to work against intelligence - what would happen?

Well, even if natural selection merely stopped, and did not reverse, supposing that nothing more happened than natural selection ceased to filter-out the spontaneously occurring deleterious mutations - then this would correspond to the person walking more and more slowly, and then standing-still on the treadmill: then the treadmill would sweep the person backwards at 4mph.

*

This merely by the stopping of natural selection to favour intelligence, there would be a rapid decline in intelligence.

But in addition, to the 4mph backwards, which would by itself rapidly undo hundreds of years of intelligence gains - the past 6-8 generations in England (and The West generally) have also seen a reversal of natural selection for intelligence - a dysgenic pattern of selection - such that the most intelligent have the lowest reproductive success, and vice versa.

*

SO - the reason that intelligence is declining so rapidly is that we are walking on a treadmill of spontaneous deleterious mutations, and the treadmill is tending to push intelligence backwards at (say) 4mph - but instead of walking forwards we have now turned around and started walking backwards - in the same direction as the treadmill.

We have added dysgenic selection to the already existing underlying tendency for intelligence to decline due to spontaneous mutations.

We have turned around on the treadmill and started walking briskly in the wrong direction - adding our (say) 3 mph walking pace to the underlying 4mph of the treadmill. 

And that is one way to understand why it is much quicker to undo intelligence gains than it was to generate them in the first place.

*


Note: This is obviously just a metaphor to get a specific point across! Don't, please, get hung-up on the fact that - presumably - this thought-experiment treadmill must be miles long... This is a ladder to be used to ascend to a higher level of understanding, then kicked-away.

An alternative metaphor could be that natural selection for intelligence is swimming upstream against the flow of deleterious mutations.

For some hundreds of years in medieval times, the speed of swimming was  upstream faster than the flow of the river downstream and the swimmer advanced relative to the river bank. But over the past couple of hundred years Western man has turned-around and begun to swim downstream - adding the speed of his swimming to the speed of the current - and the river bank is now whizzing past.

It will not take long for the  downstream swimmer to get back to the point at which he began his gradual journey upstream, and probably he will overshoot it; to find himself a lot further downstream than where he began.

Intelligence declined one SD since Victorian times - why NOT?

*

Okay - so simple reaction time data indicates that average general intelligence has declined by about one standard deviation (15 IQ points) since the late 1800s.

http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/taking-on-board-that-victorians-were.html

http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/the-over-promoted-society-bishops-and.html

http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/what-are-genetic-causes-of-dysgenic.html

http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/the-decline-in-general-intelligence.html 

What next?

Should we believe it?

*

Well, here are a few considerations:

1. Simple reaction times are the most objective evidence we have concerning trends in general intelligence.

Therefore we should:

a. believe them, or

b. come-up with something better, or

c. show how these studies of reaction times are incompetent, or

d. assume that the studies of reaction times are dishonest, or

e. assume that this data is wrong on the basis that most data is wrong (and because we are under no obligation to believe any particular bit of data - quite the contrary, there must be good reasons for believing any specific proposition)

*

2. Any other data which can be brought to bear on the matter of declining intelligence is (I think) relatively 'soft', subjective and imprecise compared with reaction times - (things like rates of major innovation, rates of geniuses etc) so - although I see much of what seems to be consistent with a significant and relatively rapid decline in general intelligence - it is unlikely to convince someone who does not want to believe in the first place.

On the other hand, even if it does not support, does any of this long terms evidence of general intelligence contradict the thesis that it has declined?

I mean, is there any decent evidence that general intelligence has actually risen? (aside from the Flynn effect of increasing pen and paper IQ test scores - which is not relevant here since it is what is being explained, and therefore inadmissible as evidence).

Has, for instance, per capita performance improved since the late 1800s in any 'g' related and quantifiable human endeavour? I know this is tricky to answer, since there are shifts in the specialized activities of intellectuals (e.g. away from study of The Classics and towards some of the sciences, or medicine) - but is there is reasonably compelling evidence of this sort of improvement?

*

3. If is is decided that we should, after all, accept the best evidence as showing a significant decline in average intelligence since the late 1800s, then there is quite a lot of further work to be done on the mechanism - because, on the whole, present understanding of 'dysgenic' mechanisms in relation to intelligence is not adequate to explain the rapidity of this decline.

(I mean, that calculations based on differential reproduction and heredity of intelligence predict a much slower rate of decline than could lead to one SD reduction in 'g' in the space of just four or five generations.)

The accumulation of deleterious mutations with the relaxation of selection due to high rates of child mortality is my first best guess at the likely 'extra' mechanism (and Michael Woodley agrees)

http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/what-are-genetic-causes-of-dysgenic.html


but really this is just a best guess, and the detailed mechanisms of how this might work are unclear.

However, it could make interesting science in trying to find-out!

*

Realistically accepting the consequences of a NON-eugenic future

*

To reiterate; I am against eugenics, and I am against mainstream anti-eugenics.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/why-eugenics-is-bad-and-anti-eugenics.html

What I favour is realism. The reality of human dysgenics - the generation upon generation decline of desirable traits, due to an accumulation of genetic damage - is real; and seems to be a much larger problem than most advocates of eugenics allow.

Indeed, dysgenics is such a big problem, that its solution by deliberate human planning and artificial selection is almost impossible to contemplate - so harsh would be the requisite regime.

However, 'Nature' has no scruples on these matters.

*

Intelligence - when measured by an objective correlate such as simple reaction time - is a useful measure of dysgenics because 'general intelligence' or 'g' is an overall measure of biological fitness (this idea from Geoffrey Miller). 

Dygenics comes from at least three sources, the third being the most significant:

1. Differential fertility - the less intelligent individuals being more fertile than the more intelligent - the most intelligent actually having negative-fertility - averaging less than two offspring per couple.

2. Demographic change with mass migration of population - the less intelligent groups and nations being more fertile than the most intelligent - and migrating to occupy the territory of the more intelligent.

3. Accumulation of deleterious genetic mutations. New mutations - nearly all of them damaging - probably occur at a rate of more than more per generation, and (since intelligence is a fitness measure) probably are higher than this among the less intelligent - which is indeed a major reason why they are less intelligent.

*

Due to the massive decline in child mortality rates since the industrial revolution, and the massive international transfers of wealth, technology and medicine from the most to least developed nations the majority of babies that are born nowadays (and for the past several generations) will live to sexual maturity - survival of newborns is near 100 percent in developed countries, but even in the places with the worst child mortality rates, the child mortality rate is still low enough to allow massive rates of population growth.

*

How important is the decline in child mortality rates? Incredibly important.

On the one hand, the reduction in child mortality must be one of the greatest of all contributions to human happiness - since the death of even one child is a terrible and devastating thing - one of the very hardest to bear; and because the causes of child death include many things horrible in themselves such as starvation, disease, accidents and violence - the decline of which also represent an increase in happiness.

It is hard to exaggerate how historically-unprecedented is this modern world, where most children are expected to survive to maturity - and how profound are the biological consequences of this situation.

It seems that the human is an animal which has evolved in a situation where almost all children who are born will die without reproducing - mostly during childhood; and where the next generation is produced by only a small minority of the present generation.

(Michael A Woodley is working on assembling this argument and documenting it in detail.)

*

When we consider Man through most of history, we should be thinking of a species which is:

1. Highly likely to generate and accumulate fitness-reducing mutations, and

2. Has dealt with this problem by reproducing only from a small minority of the fittest individuals - the majority of historical humans will have averaged zero surviving offspring.

*

This is termed mutation-selection balance

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/ma-woodleys-treadmill-metaphor-to.html

and it makes a big difference to the human condition where, quantitatively, this balance lies.

*

In a nutshell, in humans very high rates of child mortality have historically functioned to filter-out damaging mutations which otherwise will accumulate rapidly, generation upon generation, to damage fitness - and this accumulation of mutational damage can be measured in substantially slowing simple reaction times - and (it would be predicted) in other objective measures of fitness.   

*

Except for WD Hamilton, eugenicists have tended to neglect this problem of mutation accumulation - presumably because they assumed that it was a small problem.

The assumption of eugenicists seemed to be that if the bottom few percent of the population (maybe habitual criminals or the significantly handicapped or whatever) were prevented from (or at least discouraged from) breeding, then this would be sufficient to maintain the quality of the human genome.

A few percent is one thing; but what if it was three-quarters of the population, or four fifths, or five sixths of the human population who had to be prevented from reproducing?

Because that sort of proportion - a large majority of people prevented from having children (almost certainly including you and me) - seems most likely from the biological perspective of preventing mutation accumulation.

*

In other words, it seems probable that throughout most of human history, natural selection maintained human genetic quality and prevented rapid dysgenic collapse mostly by very high (near total) child mortality rates - and by, in effect, only allowing a small minority of humans to raise almost all the children.

When this stopped, mutation accumulation started: and on theoretical grounds mutation accumulations is likely to lead to very rapid decline in average (and peak) human fitness, with very significantly deleterious effects on all aspects of human functioning.     

*

This is a horrible vision of human history - but it is likely to be what happened; yet for a human society to accomplish the same by deliberate implementation of 'rational planning' is beyond-horrible - it would necessarily be a profoundly monstrous society that implemented a policy which either forbade the mass majority of people from having children, or slaughtered them. 

*

Therefore, I think that rapid, generation upon generation, dysgenic decline is probably both inevitable and also insoluble by human agency - something we should acknowledge and work around as best we can - but not something that can be, or indeed should be, prevented.

In such circumstances, the 'reasonable' prescriptions of 'sensible' eugenicists are just a joke.And the quibbles of those who deny the scale of dysgenic change will simply be swept away by waves of catastrophes.

*

This is a tragic situation; and it is a consequence of a tragic historical situation - where a majority of humans probably experienced the death of all their children before adulthood.

We have been living in an unprecedented era of very low child mortality, and this cannot continue because its continuation will be made impossible by the decline in human capability caused by reducing fitness caused by mutation accumulation - itself caused by the era of very low child mortality.

My own response to this, once the truth began to sink in; is in fact religious: to value and be thankful for my good fortune day-by-day - and to recognize that the Christian perspective of past generations was much tougher and more realistic and also more joyful than our modern mainstream secular materialist Leftist ideology can sustain even despite our vastly greater peace, prosperity, comfort, convenience, and capability.

*

I recall that the medieval poets Chaucer, Langland and the author of Gawain were living through the Black Death, yet virtually never even mention this horrific plague which killed fully a half of English people in just a couple of decades (it took the population about 300 years to recover).

The vast and genial knowledge and humour of Chaucer; the intense spirituality and all-seeing eye of Langland; the nobility and morality of the Gawain poet - all these come from a context of wholesale death from a horrible and incomprehensible disease.

Clearly their faith enabled them to deal with extremely harsh circumstances with courage and without despair - to exemplify love and hope, and to accomplish works of the highest calibre.

That is what we will need.

*

WD Hamilton and mutation accumulation as the major mechanism of dysgenic decline in intelligence over the past circa two hundred years

*

http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/what-are-genetic-causes-of-dysgenic.html
*

Dysgenics is *mostly* due to reduced childhood mortality and consequent mutation accumulation (and only secondarily - but very importantly - a result of the lower/ sub-replacement fertility of the most intelligent/ educated)

*

The idea, culminating here:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/coming-soon-giga-death-world-of-mutants.html

Is that the 'dysgenics' discourse may have been focusing on the wrong topic  - too much focus on fertility, and neglect of mortality.

*

Natural selection depends on both fertility/ birth rates and mortality/ death rates. Babies are born, but reproductive success depends on how many of these babies reach sexual maturity and live long enough to have offspring.

Those interested in dysgenics have focused on the fact that the less intelligent (and those with less socially desirable personality traits) are more fertile than the more intelligent and more conscientious, self-controlled and altruistic.

But the primary fact is, I believe, reduced mortality - the situation that since 1800, more and more of the babies that are born will live to have offspring. 

*

Every new baby is likely to have one or two new spontaneous deleterious gene mutations - some lethal, some only mildly harmful and others in between - they may also inherit mutations from their parents.

Why doesn't this genetic damage mount up, generation upon generation, to overwhelm and destroy the fitness of the species?

Essentially, under 'natural conditions' because the mutations are filtered-out by high child mortality rates.

Through most of evolutionary history, most babies and children (probably a large majority of them) especially those with the worst genetic damage - have died before reproducing. Thus mutation load is filtered by differential child mortality rates with each generation.

Those who have the least genetic damage are the healthiest and best adapted, and only they will (on average) be the parents of the next generation.  

*

If it is correct that - up to about 1800 - in almost all situations almost all babies died (and maybe only the 'fittest' 15 percent or so survived - or the fittest thirty percent... the exact number makes little difference).

But since 1800, starting in England then incrementally spreading across the whole world with no exceptions, child mortality rates have got lower, and lower; the mutation filtering effect has got less and less complete - and the mutation load has got greater with each generation.

This must have happened. The only question is how much?

*

So, the primary mechanism of dysgenic change is mutation accumulation. But this is where more usual dysgenic topic of differential fertility comes in. 

Theoretical calculations suggest that the effect of mutation accumulation under these circumstances would be quite slow - IF normal natural selection was in play and higher levels of mutation accumulation led to lower fertility.

But in the modern world, the direction of natural selection has reversed. In the modern world, higher levels of mutation accumulation lead to higher fertility (so long as the mutations are sub-lethal).

In historical times, natural selection filtered-out mutations; but in the modern world natural selection amplifies the carriers of damaging mutations!

(Up to a point, where pathology more-or-less prevents reproduction), the carriers of accumulated deleterious mutations ('mutants') - probably both between and also within populations, have the highest fitness, on average. 

Indeed, in the modern world, natural selection actually filters-out undamaged genomes - since the people with the least damaged genomes are least likely to have offspring.

The best genetic specimens have sub-replacement fertility - the (ever fewer) least damaged genomes are being actively eliminated by reproductive choices: this applies especially to women more than men. 

*

The above is why things are happening so very fast - e.g. why general intelligence is declining so rapidly (as revealed by simple reaction time slowing).

What is now needed is to gather more data to measure the long term rate of mutation accumulation.

**

Reference: http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/so-you-think-you-are-in-favour-of.html

The triad of Incompetence, Ignorance, and Not Even Trying

*

There is a Triad of deficits that are killing the West - Incompetence, Ignorance, and Not Even Trying - each of which would individually be enough to lead to incremental decline and extinction, but together they are synergistic, hence will be rapidly lethal (how rapidly will depend on the strength of competition).

*

1. Incompetence is caused by decline in intelligence, which seems to go back about 200 years and is related to factors such as the 'dysgenic' pattern of fertility by which the most intelligence groups have the fewest children; plus the fact that under modernity almost all children born will survive to reproduce, hence there is a relaxation of selection and accumulation of deleterious hereditary factors.

The effect I have termed the 'over-promoted society' - we have inherited a very complex societal system taht requires a higher intelligence than we now possess, wit the result that almost everybody is incompetent in the fullness of their their social function (even if they can, just about, do their 'job' - so long as nothing goes wrong).

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/the-over-promoted-society.html

These changes in fertility are underpinned by the decline of traditional, orthodox Christianity - since devout monotheism is the only known antidote to fertility collapse under conditions of prosperity. 

*

2. Ignorance.

On top of people being insufficiently intelligent fully to perform their social function, there is the problem that people are ignorant - that is , they lack the knowledge and experience to perform their social function (even if they were intelligent enough to do it).

This is due to the massive expansion of 'management' which is a product of bureaucracy, which is a product of Leftism, which is a product of atheism and Christian (also Jewish) apostasy.

So that modern Western societies are now controlled in all their major social function by ignorant managers working in branches of one single, vast and interlinked Leftist bureaucracy. As individuals, these people are uneducated, inexperienced and structurally incapable of understanding that which they are tasked to do.

http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/cancer-of-bureaucracy.html

*

3. Not even trying

Related to the massive Christian (and Jewish) apostasy among the ruling elites, there has been a collapse of belief in the reality of transcendental values: truth, beauty and virtue (in unity).

Consequently, careerism has almost universally replaced vocation. Over time, core, tasked social functions have become unclear, neglected then denied: so educators no longer even try to educate, scientists do not seek or speak truth, artists do not try to make beautiful things, moralists do not try to encourage virtue... and so on.

Indeed, since the mainstream stance is a nihilistic denial of the reality of reality - there has been a (demonic) inversion of the transcendental values: so that not only are people 'not even trying' to do what they ought to do; they are trying to do the opposite: scientists become advertisers of lies; artists subvert beauty and make ugly and disgusting things; church leaders engage in active propaganda for evil. 

And, lacking transcendental underpinning for their lives, the mass of people have become almost infinitely plastic in terms of what they will believe and how they will behave - wide-open to having their minds colonized by the Mass Media, which is intrinsically hostile to traditional orthodox religion and necessarily propagates the secular Leftist mindset.

http://thoughtprison-pc.blogspot.co.uk/

*

It can be seen that Incompetence, Ignorance and Not Even Trying are all, in different ways, rooted in the cumulative and several centuries long Christians Apostasy: first the weakening of traditional, orthodox Christianity; then abandoning it; then subverting, inverting and relentlessly trying to seek-out-and-destroy it.

*

Thus, the ultimate cause of the Triad of Incompetence, Ignorance and Not Even Trying is Christian apostasy.

And Incompetence, Ignorance and Not Even Trying cannot be cured (or adapted to) without Christian renewal - effective response is necessarily on the other side of a Great Awakening.

*

But any effective cure for the disasters of Incompetence, Ignorance and Not Even Trying will be long-term; and men of goodwill must therefore necessarily be patient, very patient indeed - on a generational timescale.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/living-patiently-prepared-for-old.html


*

For - although living in a time when the visible collapse of the edifice of Western civilization is only beginning, the causes of collapse are long-established and the foundations are extensively undermined.

We are engaged, therefore, neither in repair, nor in replacement; but in rebuilding: starting with new foundations.

*


NOTE: Christian apostasy is only a partial explanation of incompetence due to dysgenic fertility and/or accumulation of deleterious heritable material. It has certainly made these kind of processes more rapid, and extreme; but the explanation should include aspects of why general intelligence evolved to be high in Europe throughout the Middle Ages high in the context of an established Christian society. Furthermore, the argument here neglects the special aspects of creative Genius. It was the abundance of Genius that made modernity, Genius is about more than high intelligence, and abundant Genius is probably an unstable blip in evolutionary history - not a sustainable state of affairs.

http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/

* 

Causes of the 'dysgenic' trend in intelligence: The double-whammy IQ-reducing effect of a lower proportion of IQ-enhancing genes plus an accumulation of IQ-damaging deleterious mutations

*

It seems very probable that general intelligence (or 'genotypic IQ') has declined by more than one standard deviation since late Victorian times, and presumably even more since about 1800 when the Industrial Revolution began to become obvious and these changes probably began.

http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/the-over-promoted-society.html

But what was the cause?

*

Using reaction time data, the decline in genotypic IQ is of-the-order of 1.5 IQ points per decade - that is about 15 points in a century - or one standard deviation.

(This rough estimate of the size and rate of decline in 'g' has been replicated by a more sophisticated and completely different - as-yet unpublished - analysis of reaction time trends that I have seen.)

In other words, the average Englishman from about 1900 would be in roughly the top 15 percent of the population in 2000 - and the difference would be even larger if we went back further towards 1800.

*

These numbers are not intended to be precise - indeed real precision (in the sense of exact accuracy) is not available in IQ studies for many reasons to do with the difficulties of truly random and sufficiently large population sampling; and the fact the IQ points are not on a 'ratio scale' but are derived from putting a population sample into rank order on the basis of (usually) one-off testing.

But anyway, I think that a decline of 1.5 IQ points per decade is probably too fast to be due purely to the effect on gene frequencies of differential fertility between people of different intelligence levels.

No doubt the measured decline is substantially to do with the fact that higher intelligence is correlated with lower fertility; but within this, I think there must be at least two explanations operating at the same time.

*

Differential fertility would lead to a decline in intelligence - let's say - by a reduction in the proportion of high IQ genes in the population.

This happens mostly because since the Industrial Revolution almost-all children that are born will survive; so reproductive success becomes almost-purely a matter of fertility; and the most intelligent sectors of the population are the least fertile, and less fertile with each generation; until eventually (i.e. for the past several decades) the most intelligent people are sub-fertile, below two offspring per woman - so that the genes which make them most intelligent will decline with each generation - first declining as a proportion of the gene pool, and then declining in absolute prevalence. 

*

My suggestion is that the additional mechanism of decline in intelligence is the opposite of the above: an increase in the proportion of low IQ genes in the population.

*

There is, I suggest, a difference between high IQ and low IQ genes.

High IQ genes have (presumably) been selected for in the past because they increased intelligence, and thereby (under ancestral - especially medieval - conditions) increased reproductive success.

*

But low IQ genes are spontaneously occurring deleterious mutations. These were not 'selected for'; rather it was a matter that selection failed to eliminate them.

In technical terms, the mechanism for low IQ genes is mutation-selection balance.

*

The idea is that before the Industrial Revolution, individuals with a higher mutational load had lower-than-average reproductive success due to very high (near total) childhood mortality rates among those of lowest intelligence.

But after the Industrial Revolution got going, and mortality rates declined for the least intelligent so that even the poorest families usually raised several-to-many children, then there was a double-whammy dysgenic effect: a reduced proportion of high IQ genes with each generation (due to progressively lowering fertility among the higher IQ) and also an increasing accumulation of IQ-damaging deleterious mutations with each generation.

So that (roughly speaking) since the Industrial Revolution, individuals with the greatest mutational load (IQ-harmful genes) have been initially been above-replacement fertile (having on average more than 2 surviving children per woman, for the first time in history perhaps), and also differentially more fertile than those with the least mutational load.

*

So that compared with 150 years ago there are a lower proportion (and a lowering absolute amount) of IQ-enhancing genes in the gene pool of England, plus a higher proportion and accumulation of deleterious IQ-damaging mutations.

*

And this double-whammy effect is, I think, why the general intelligence has declined so rapidly and so much in England over the past couple of centuries. 

***


NOTE: The focus upon accumulation of deleterious genetic mutations due to relaxation of the selection effect of childhood and early adult disease and mortality (which had previously served as a sieve of strongly fitness-reducing mutations) was something I got from Narrow Roads of Gene Land: evolution of sex, Volume Two of WD Hamilton's collected papers. One aspect is that such relaxation of selection is probably unprecedented in human history - indeed, it is possible that recent post-Industrial Revolution conditions may have generated a positive selection in favour of deleterious mutations (amplifying their frequency, at least up to the point when they become fatal or induce sterility). At any rate, the quantitative effect of this process of accumulating deleterious mutations in a population is only imprecisely measurable (I believe); whereas the quantitative effect of differential fertility on differential IQ is pretty well understood, and fairly precise measurements of the effect size are possible. 

*

Why eugenics is bad, and anti-eugenics is even-worse

*

Anti-eugenics is, nowadays, much worse than eugenics; because mainstream, politically correct anti-eugenics involves the suppression and denial of descriptive knowledge and implicitly the complete take-over of child-birth and child-rearing by the State (with, no doubt, a purportedly anti-eugenic rationale).

But eugenics is itself bad. Bad specifically insofar as it involves government having a major role in controlling fertility; and bad in principle because it applies a purely this-worldly functional instrumentalism to a profound phenomenon of human existence (conceiving and giving birth to children): a phenomenon which by contrast ought to be seen in transcendental perspective.

*

How did the phenomenon of 'dysgenics' arise - that observation to which eugenics is proposed as a solution and against which anti-genetics reacts?
 
In a nutshell, dysgenics is a leftist phenomenon: a consequence of modernity; eugenics is a product of the secular Old Left (Fabian socialism and Communism); while anti-eugenics is a product of the secular New Left (political correctness). 
 
So, anti-eugenics is dominant nowadays since the New Left defeated the Old Left.

*

(And, contrary to current mainstream conceptions, the phenomenon of reversal in differential reproductive success, and the responses to it, and the suppression of this knowledge, are all essentially a matter of dispute among the atheist Left. The atheist supposed-Right, which has very recently taken an interest in eugenics since the New Left declared it taboo, does so only insofar as the secular-Right movement is actually on the left, and shares utilitarian and universalist leftist assumptions. )
 
* 
 
Time-sequence
 
First, from the advent of modernity (?17th or 18th Century) soul-denial/ atheism/ this-worldliness led to attempted and partially-successful sterility among the high IQ (in order to improve the lifestyle of parents, and reduce the risk of catastrophic outcomes).
 
Then the high-IQ geniuses (men) developed more and more methods of fertility regulation, of greater and greater combined-effectiveness (from 18th through to late 20th century), then high IQ and conscientious women used this to become on average all-but-sterile (beginning from the late 19th century to near-complete success by the 21st century).

Then, from the late 19th century, high IQ Old Left men noticed what was happening (dysgenics) and devised this-worldly and secular methods of combating the problem: i.e. eugenics - the rationale being utilitarian.

*

So, dysgenics is a consequence of secularism, and eugenics is the Old Left secular response to the problem.

Then political correctness (the New Left, dominant from about 1965) suppressed all discourse on eugenics, except for reflex condemnation, also for secular reasons.

The New Left suppressed eugenic discourse not for moral reasons, obviously, since the New Left believe the state can and should do everything;

and not because of the association with Nazism either, because this only happened from the mid-1960s and eugenics was Nazi only insofar as Nazis were socialists (National Socialists - it's a clue...);

but the left ruled-out awareness of dysgenics pretty much strategically in order to get elected in the medium term (decades ahead) - to create large and growing state-dependency = leftist votes. This electoral strategy has worked very well for the left, and now most of the population are indeed dependent on the state (for this and other reasons).

*

The (suppressed) eugenic observation was - at core - that in secular societies approximately-nobody (i.e. approximately no-women, women being the sex that matters) wanted to have enough children to replace the present population; and the way that this played out was that the high IQ and conscientious secular women were essentially sterile (fertility way below replacement levels and falling) so the only sectors of the secular population with above-replacement fertility were those too dumb, feckless or chaotic effectively to use reproductive control technologies.

Think about it, for a moment or two: a whole population committing genetic suicide...

Doesn't that fact suggest, well..., something seriously wrong with a society?

If we saw voluntary genetic suicide happening among a group of animals, we would think there was something profoundly nasty going-on, some dreadful fear.

Which is, of course, true.

*

Under 'natural' conditions, pre-industrial revolution, lacking effective methods of fertility control, all classes and types of people (except the sick and maybe certain groups of intellectuals) will produce children at above replacement levels.

Natural selection does not, therefore, operate primarily on differential birth rates/ fertility, but by means of differential death rates/ mortality.

The 'eugenic' mechanism throughout human history was therefore almost entirely via differential mortality - the children of the fit, healthy, high status, rich (etc) survived in greater numbers mainly because they didn't die so often - whereas the children of the poor, unfit, sick, enslaved etc would - on average - pretty-much all die without reproducing.

With only a few exceptions, ancient society was - over time - therefore populated by the children of the 'successful'.

(Success being attained differently in different societies, such that different societies led to different personality types and different levels of general intelligence - inter alia.)

*

Therefore the dysgenic phenomenon was primarily caused by modernity, caused - that is - by the reduction in childhood and age-adjusted mortality rates, due to increased productivity in food and other goods conducive to health and survival - and to improvements in hygiene and medicine; such that above-replacement reproduction occurred on average among all classes and types of people, clever and dumb, rich and poor, conscientious and feckless.

Then came the reduction of fertility among the high IQ and conscientious (using technology).

Then the dysgenic effects became very large and impossible to ignore (before the advent of the mass media and PC), and was documented by people such as Francis Galton.

*

Dysgenics, therefore, was not recognized as a problem until the high IQ and upper classes had actually started to reduce their fertility using technology, and the mortality rate (especially childhood mortality rate) had gone down so much that very large numbers of chidlren from the low IQ, poor, feckless and impulsive (etc) were surviving to reproduce in their turn: the phenomenon was, in other words, already far advanced by this point.

Nowadays, those groups that are characterized by lower than average IQ and more than average impulsive and chaotic lives, experience both the highest childhood mortality and highest standardised mortality and also have a higher than average level of reproductive success, driven purely by above-replacement fertility rates.

*

(When mortality rates are too-low to matter, too low to have an impact of reproductive success - so that differential mortality has almost no differential effect on reproductive success; then differential fertility becomes all-important in determining reproductive success, and demographic trends. Any group that reproduces above replacement-level will 'win' the demographic race - no matter what the cause of this higher fertility, even when that fertility is merely a result of negative factors such as incompetence or ignorance of birth control technologies or inability to see the consequences or one's actions or a psychopathic selfishness. And the bad news is that all of these are heritable traits.)

*

The above sequence of events led to a misleading (and dangerous) focus of eugenics on fertility (ignoring mortality), especially a focus on preventing the poor from reproducing.

*

Since the eugenicists were themselves high IQ there was much less (or in practice zero) emphasis on the need to increase fertility among the high IQ - to a margin comfortably above replacement levels.

The real reason for the New Left opposition to eugenics (beyond strategic electoral demographics) has nothing to do with preventing the state from imposing low fertility upon the lower orders (after all, the politically correct see no limit to the state's right to control people), and almost-everything to do with preventing the state from enforcing high fertility upon the higher orders - ie. the PC elite.

*

Politically-correct (i.e. mainstream) anti-eugenics is, in its implications, a profoundly eugenic policy (i.e. leading to state control of fertility); since it incorporates an unsustainable disjunction between the birthing of children - which is supposed to be a parental, or at least maternal - choice; and the rearing of children - which under PC becomes the states's responsibility when the consequences of having children are detached from their conception.

In effect, modern anti-eugenics tries to say that any person can birth as many or as few children as they want, by right and unconditionally; and the state will ensure, also by right and unconditionally, that these children are looked-after, fed and educated.

This will not last.
 
When education became an unconditional right, the state took-over education; when health care became an unconditional right, the state took-over health care; when prosperity became an unconditional right, the state took over welfare.
 
When the state takes-over a thing, the state decides all about that thing: decides how much and of what sort of that thing is good for you - good, that is, from the state's secular, instrumental, this-worldly perspective.
 
*
 
Unconditional rights are simply the flip-side of totalitarian state control; if you like, the excuse for totalitarian state control, since there is no guarantee that the state will actually supply that which is says is an unconditional right.
 
What will happen, however, is that the state will say that it actually does in fact supply that right (and the state has the statistics to prove it!) - whether it really does supply that or not... and of course it won't.
 
It never does.
 
*

Furthermore, a politically correct takeover of children would - no doubt (and I mean no doubt) be done with an anti-eugenic rationale; because that is what PC always does.

PC would control all aspects of conception and child care so that eugenics could not be pursued - to prevent (that is) the PC-disfavoured groups enhancing their reproductive success at the expense of the PC- favoured groups.

For instance, I don't find it at all unlikely that political correctness would take action to suppress (whether directly or indirectly) the high fertility of Christian evangelicals (such as the QuiverFull movement) or Mormons.

That is exactly the kind of thing which PC has done so far, does now, and will continue to do (until prevented).

Eugenics under the name of anti-eugenics - it is precisely analogous to inequality (affirmative action) under the name of equality...

*

So although modern political correctness may sound more humane (kinder) than the old days - when people gave birth to as many children as they wanted, but only successfully raised as many children as they could afford; children are people, hence are souls not just bodies, hence child-birth and rearing are matters of transcendental importance in the human condition; so it is wrong (I mean evil) to transfer the responsibility for children to the inhuman, bureaucratic, secular state.
 
Anything is better than that.
 
Even slavery - with a kind master - is better than that; because the state responsibility for children is totalitarian slavery of soul as well as body - a gulag for kids - and represents slavery to an indifferent master; a master who sees the slave (the child) not as another human being but as a tool.
 
*
 
In sum, dysgenics is the consequence of a soul-denying/ this worldly and secular society: and so also is eugenics; and so also (and even more so) is PC anti-eugenics.

In a devout society any phenomenon of dysgenics...

(if it happened - which is itself unlikely - at least in its modern form of sterility among the high IQ and upper classes; since devoutly religious societies value and want children, and voluntary sterility would not be 'a problem')

...ought to be open to discussion and study and description;

but the consequences of dysgenics should not be addressed using soul-denying/ this worldly, instrumental and secular 'solutions'.

Else the solution will be worse than the problem it was intended to solve.

*


Note - it is essentially women who most influence fertility, number of babies - as a generalization.


Reference: http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.com/2010/02/why-are-women-so-intelligent.html

*

Pigeon-toed gait endemic among intelligent young women: medical note

I have observed that a pigeon-toed gait is now endemic among intelligent young women (such as students).

A pigeon-toed gait means walking such that the toes of the feet are turned-inwards.

A sign of habitual pigeon-toed walking is that the inner part of a shoe heel will be worn more than the outer part - in more severe instances the outer part of the shoe sole, or even the upper of the shoe, will become worn.

*

Being pigeon-toed used to be rare among adults - more common among children, most of whom grew out of it during their teens. It is regarded as a developmental disorder, caused by an inborn distortion of the leg or foot bones which becomes apparent in childhood (but which tended in the past to be self-correcting as the bones grew).

Being pigeon-toed is (almost certainly) dysfunctional on average - because human lower limbs are evolved to work best with straight or slightly out-pointing toes.

Yet I would estimate (from casual observation) that a high proportion of intelligent young English women in their late teens or early twenties (something between a quarter to a half perhaps?) now walk with a pigeon toed gait - all the time, with obviously worn inner heels.

This certainly was not the case thirty years ago.

*

So what has happened?

At first I thought it was simply an affectation, a pose, a fashion - an attempt to look sexy in a gawky teenage kind of way. But now I am pretty sure it is developmental - starting in childhood but not self-correcting in the teens, as it used to be. 

In fact, I have no idea what is going on!

My only notions (mere guesses) are maybe we are seeing some kind of dysgenic phenomenon which applies particularly to higher intelligence people (a side effect of assortative mating for some other trait, perhaps?); or that this is a kind of neoteny - of sustained immaturity, of carrying immature traits (characteristic of sexually immature childhood) into potentially-fertile adulthood.This would, again, have to be a side-effect of some other primary process - maybe a side effect of the generally neotenous trend in behaviour in modernizing societies -

http://www.hedweb.com/bgcharlton/psychological-neoteny.html

*

But, really, I don't know. Any ideas?

The most popular posts ever on this blog

	Pageviews
Disadvantages of high IQ 23 May 2009	10453
Human capability peaked before 1975 and has since ... 22 Jun 2010	7129
Objective and direct evidence of 'dysgenic' declin... 28 Feb 2012, 31 comments	3424
This is your brain... 8 Jun 2010	3198
This is your brain. This is your brain on politica... 30 Nov 2009	2252
Creativity and Eysenck's Psychoticism trait 27 Jun 2012, 17 comments	1962
Social Class and IQ – some facts and statistics 7 Feb 2009	1516
Weight-training and Christianity 13 Dec 2012, 20 comments	1484
Six problems for modern Christian apologists - and... 29 Dec 2011, 29 comments	1087
The reality of group selection - and the not-nicen... 24 Feb 2013, 22 comments	1077

**

Conclusions? Most people (not necessarily commenters) are most interested in my opinions on IQ and evolution, not so much in the Christian Apologetics and Sociopolitical analysis. But a simple cut-and-paste visual joke is the easiest way to rack up the page views.

* 

Cognitive dissonance in the intelligence research and HBD community concerning the large 'dysgenic' decline of general intelligence over recent generations

*

The evidence from simple reaction time measurements that general intelligence (g) has declined substantially over the past century or two; and the idea that modern Western Man is significantly less intelligent than his ancestors of a few generations earlier...

http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=reaction+time

has provoked some responses that surprised both Michael A Woodley and myself.

Since we have further independent confirmatory scientific evidence in the pipeline, it seems reasonable to consider the non-scientific aspects of this matter in advance of further expected controversy. 

*

On the whole the mass media was more interested in this finding than we expected - mostly because they interpreted the 'story' as a swipe at modern education or the silliness of modern pastimes; but the evolutionary psychology community (including the on-line HBD - Human Behavioural Diversity - community) was much more hostile than we expected: indeed the response took us very much by surprise.

The nature of the response - the vehement ridicule and rejection of what was a surprising but perfectly-plausible idea (of approximately one standard deviation decline in average intelligence over a span of about 150 years) made it obvious that something-else was going-on.

*

It was not so much that the idea of such a large decline in g over such a short number of generations was wrong - because nobody has shown any evidence that it cannot be right; nor even that the size of the intelligence decline we found might be right but implied some additional but neglected causal mechanisms - specifically an accumulation of deleterious new mutations acting to reduce intelligence in addition to differential reproductive success among people of different IQ (that being what Michael and I believe is probably happening); but that this idea of rapidly reducing intelligence was outrageous, ridiculous, grossly-incompetent - something that could not be allowed to be right.

*

What I think this incident reveals is some implicit but covert assumptions in the HBD community; and that these assumptions are very important to the participants - such that a challenge to them provokes the same kind of aggressive defence as would be expected from a challenge to someone's existential basis - such as a 'religion' (bearing in mind that almost all the HBD community are agnostic/ atheist and those few [just a handful, it seems] who are not atheist/agnostics, are very reticent about their religious beliefs).

*

I have not got to the bottom of this matter as yet, but I think there are a couple of things I can say:

1. High IQ as a virtue

High intelligence is regarded as a virtue in the HBD community - therefore to suggest that intelligence is declining is equivalent to saying that people are getting morally worse.

2. Salvation through technology

The HBD community seeks salvation through technological breakthroughs, and declining intelligence suggests that this salvation will not come.

(This belief is most obvious among explicit transhumanists; but cryto-transhumanism is very common among scientists, and pretty much the background religion of atheist modernity: the major alternative to traditional religion.)

3. Belief in progress

Belief in progress is so powerful in this group, that it seems not so much false as an outrage for modern people to be forced to acknowledge that earlier generations were (on the whole) considerably superior in some attribute which modern people deeply value - such as intelligence. 

*

So I think the viscerally-hostile response to the discovery of slowing reaction times, and its implication of  declining intelligence; is an important insight into several unexamined, but probably false, assumptions widely-held among the community of intelligence researchers and commentators.

*

National character/ average personality is buffered against dysgenic change; while intelligence is a sensitive marker of population fitness decline

*
http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/personality-is-buffered-against.html

*

Eugenics and child mortality

*

My contrarian position is that I am against eugenics, and against anti-eugenics:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/02/why-eugenics-is-bad-and-anti-eugenics.html

and that child mortality differentials were the main driving force in 'recent' human evolution (from 10000 years ago until c1800):

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/05/child-death-and-demographic-change-and.html

*

From this I infer that the 'reversal' of selection pressure from c1800 in developed countries, sometimes termed 'dysgenics'

http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/~bowles/RulingClass.pdf

is a result of differential fertility in societies with ignorably low child mortality rates.

Therefore, the 'dysgenic' trend will continue unless - or rather until - child mortality rates again revert to their historically high levels.

*

It is the fact that 'all' children who are born nowadays (from whomever and from wherever and without reference to economic productivity) will very likely survive and reproduce, which has generated the reversal in selection pressure, and which has already grossly overpopulated the planet with more to come. 

The humanitarian imperative, which we all feel, to prevent children suffering and dieing, will therefore - with near certainty, although uncertain timescale, but measurable at most in decades - destroy the high productivity society which enables this humanitarian impulse to be effective.

Inter alia, and by means of which, child suffering and mortality will hit quantitative levels unprecedented in the history of the world - probably measurable in billions.

*

Ironic - or something.

*

Group selection and WD Hamilton

WD Hamilton, one of the deepest thinkers on evolutionary theory, himself believed in group selection - this comes up repeatedly throughout his Narrow Roads of Gene Land. And this is a fact which people need to recognize and take seriously.

I was trained-up in the 'group selection does not exist'/ selfish gene school of Dawkins - and the Selfish Gene was a clear explanation of some insights from GC Williams and WD Hamilton. I arrogantly regarded all group selection explanations as naive and superficial - I saw the task of modern evolutionary theory as being to find the true selfish gene mechanisms to explain all apparent instances of group selection.

It was only when I read Hamilton's Narrow Roads, that I began gradually to realize that Dawkins, and mainstream evolutionary theory, has been highly selective and indeed deceptive in its advocacy of Hamilton's work - simply taking what it liked, and rejecting what it didn't.

(This ignoring applies especially to Hamilton's lifelong deep concerns over dysgenic change under modern selective, and not-selective, conditions.)

So belatedly, and much influenced by Michael A Woodley, I came around to acknowledging the validity of group selection - even when we are unsure of its mechanism.

After all, there is a mass of prima facie evidence of group selection! For more than a century, group selection was accepted by everybody (including people much smarter than ourselves) as the obvious explanation for many phenomena.

Why should we always assume that group selection can be, must be, an illusion that should be explained-away by selfish gene mechanisms? There is no good reason.

If we accept the validity of some of Hamilton's selfish gene work, then it is reasonable to accept the validity of his other work in which he used group selection explanations.

Group selection should not be regarded as an explanation of last resort, used only when all possible selfish gene selection explanations have been eliminated - but as a mechanism which is relevant in some situations, and not in others. the proper question to ask is what is the most plausible selective explanation for a given situation under consideration - sometimes this will be a group mechanism, other times not

The task is not to deny group selection, but to discover the mechanisms by which it works - by which adaptive genetic change can result from selection of the group. This is, in microcosm, a version of one of the main problems of evolutionary theory - which is how high level cooperation is maintained in the face of lower level selection mechanisms which tend to dismantle it.

(see The major Transitions of Life by Smith and Szathmary - 1995 - for an account of the multi-level problem -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Major_Transitions_in_Evolution ):

One example is that natural selection within the body tends to produce neoplasms, such as cancers; thereby undoing the adaptations which enable the existence of multicellular organisms with specialized and cooperative cells. It is a problem to understand how multi-cellularity evolved when neoplasms were continually being produced.

That is what is lacking at present - one or more simple, comprehensible physiological and molecular mechanisms that enable group selection. There seem to be inklings of this in the literature, but the whole thing has not yet crystallized.

My hunch is that there is some kind of active/ purposive mechanism or process involved, or more than one such mechanism/ process - which is aimed-at higher organization and cooperation, and which under some circumstances can overcome the well-understood tendency to dis-integration.


This post is adapted from a comment at:

http://pumpkinperson.com/2015/08/02/w-d-hamilton-believed-in-ethnic-genetic-interests/

Explaining Jewish intellectual achievement: the temporal relationship between Ashkenazi and European dysgenic change

*

http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/differential-onset-of-dysgenesis.html
*

Why eugenics is bad

*

Commenters are often surprised that, although I fully acknowledge dysgenic changes and over-population, I am against eugenics.

The reason is quite simple: I am a Christian, and eugenics is a secular, economic doctrine.

Eugenics gives primacy to secular economic priorities such as power, prosperity and efficiency.

And, like all secular ideologies, eugenics comes-up against the problem of motivation - how can people be motivated to make difficult changes and behave in the way eugenicists want them to behave?

We know, from experience, that the only secular motivations strong enough to drive policy are inevitably negative (sinful) incentives such as pride, selfishness, hedonism and hatred.

In practice I have no doubt at all, that any actual and implemented eugenic policy would be driven by negative motivations - and would therefore be evil in effect (whatever its supposed intentions).

There is no shortcut to good policies and good government - good policies and good government lie on the other side of religious conversion - in particular, on the other side of repentance where dwell honesty, humility, love and the desire to do divine work.

Any good policy (good overall and in the long term) must be motivated by love and humility towards God's purposes - and only after that attitude is 'in place' the right and proper and best (or, more often, least-worst) actions may become clear, along with the positive motivations necessary to their accomplishment.

*

Why was the dysgenic decline in average intelligence not more obvious?

*

http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/why-is-decline-in-average-intelligence.html
*

Could Mouse Utopia explain political correctness? A matter of attitudes...

*
Mouse Utopia term is explained below ^

*
It is possible, perhaps even plausible, that the usual type of explanation for the self-hating, self-destructive insanities of New Left Political Correctness may be insufficient - and that in reality the core, permissive, necessary factor has not been socio-political but instead biological.

If the Mouse Utopia scenario is accepted, then since about 1800 in England (where the industrial revolution began), and starting with the upper classes (who were the first to benefit from lowering child mortality rates, and also the first to reduce fertility) then new and almost always deleterious mutations have been building up generation upon generation.

These mutations are 'random' and their effects fall randomly in the genome - how would they show themselves?

The answer is they would affect behavioural traits that are quantitative fitness measures (such as general intelligence, which has apparently declined rapidly and substantially over the past couple of centuries); and mutations would also have an early and rapid effect on behavioural traits that are the most sensitive and subtle, such as social and sexual adaptations.

*

In particular, I think the first affected traits would be attitudes.

I think that attitudes are extremely sensitive to even slight pathology, sickness, dysfunction of many types; and would therefore change before actual behaviours changed.

Thus, an early sign of Mouse Utopia would be changes in attitudes, especially social and sexual attitudes - and since mutations are nearly always harmful what we might see was...

Maladaptive changes in social and sexual attitudes.

*

By maladaptive I mean tending to reduce personal (and group) survival, and reduce reproduction.

Well... it fits with political correctness, like a glove.

Not proof - but the social and sexual domination of modern Leftism seems to be consistent with Mouse Utopia.


Also posted at: http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/mouse-utopia-as-explanation-for.html

**

^ The Mouse Utopia hypothesis (deriving from Michael A Woodley) is that the relaxation of the historically very harsh forces of natural selection - especially the near abolition of child mortality in recent decades - has led to a generation-by-generation, objectively-dysgenic accumulation of deleterious mutations that are incrementally destroying the adaptiveness of the human species.

This process has been accelerated by a reversal of the historical pattern of reproductive success which started from the early and mid 1800s in the West, to favour the reproductive success of the lowest in intelligence (= highest in mutation load), and on average of lower social class and status. In other words, differential fertility has favoured those who would, on average, be carrying the heaviest load of deleterious mutations - while those who would be expected to have the least mutations have declined to severely sub-replacement fertility.

http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=Mouse+Utopia
*

Further independent evidence on the slowing of simple reaction times (and therefore the decline of intelligence) over recent generations - using a new method

*

A first and preliminary sight of the data (in preparation for publication) showing a new and entirely different methodology for measuring the (probably dysgenic) decline in simple reaction times over recent generations - extrapolated to the past century. This confirms the result of the previous study.

http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/further-evidence-of-significant-slowing.html
*

Note added: I do not suppose the above independently-sourced evidence means that 'the case is closed' and the substantial decline in sRT/ Intelligence has been established beyond all reasonable doubt. All studies are flawed, none are conclusive. I do, however, believe that this confirmation means the earlier study of substantial Victorian-Modern sRT slowing cannot be dismissed - and the hypothesis of substantial RT slowing/ IQ decline must now be taken seriously by honest and competent people, and therefore ought to be followed-up by further testing and evaluation.

*