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NancyLebovitz comments on Q&A with Harpending and Cochran - Less Wrong
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How are popular books about popular culture an indicator of rising IQ? You mean, e.g., a book about Michael Jackson?
Science fiction blossomed in the 1930s. Educational books became big in the 1950s, I think. Self-help books became huge 40 or 50 years ago. Parenting books became huge in the 1960s. Popular sociology books date back to before Future Shock, printed 40 years ago.
I have the impression of a big increase in IQ when I listen to old radio comedy shows, pre-World War II. The humor is so simple and repetitive and uninteresting that I get the feeling the US must have consisted of adult-sized children. Maybe it's because radio was a new medium; but a lot of it was just a restaging of vaudeville humor that had been successful for decades.
I've explained, but I was thinking about books looking at the physics or philosophy implications of particular popular shows or books.
It could just be that such books would have been popular a century ago, but no one thought to write and/or publish them.