James_Miller comments on Thermodynamics of Intelligence and Cognitive Enhancement - Less Wrong Discussion
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The massive variation in human intelligence and the positive correlation between IQ and pretty much everything good implies that "Any simple major enhancement to human intelligence is a net evolutionary disadvantage" isn't true
Also, it's possible that humans were quickly evolving towards being more intelligent when they got interrupted by the invention of civilization and there's still more low-hanging fruit to be picked.
And the mechanism by which civilization interrupts the evolution of intelligence is?
By changing selection pressures and by not having been around for very long.
That sounds plausible. Of course it also sounds plausible as an explanation for rapidly increasing the evolution of intelligence.
This seems compatible with Stephen Hsu's models.
But then if there is the "positive correlation between IQ and pretty much everything good", you do start to wonder why there is "massive variation in human intelligence"...
Not to mention the inverse correlation between IQ and number of offspring, although humans tend to use forms of group selection, where a smarter minority whose innovations help the community as a whole appears to be more sustainable than a smarter majority.
wiki
Does it make sense to control for education and socioeconomic status when measuring the effect of intelligence?
Not in this case. This is a good example of how you can go wrong by overcontrolling (or maybe we should chalk this up as an example of how correlations!=causations?)
Suppose the causal model of Genes->Intelligence->Education->Less-Reproduction is true (and there are no other relationships). Then if we regress on Less-Reproduction and include Intelligence & Education as predictors, we discover that after controlling for Education, Intelligence adds no predictive value & explains no variance & is uncorrelated with Less-Reproduction. Sure, of course: all Intelligence is good for is predicting Education, but we already know each individual's Education. This is an interesting and valid result worth further research in our hypothetical world.
Does this mean dysgenics will be false, since the coefficient of Intelligence is estimated at ~0 by our little regression formula? Nope! We can get dysgenics easily: people with high levels of Genes will cause high levels of Intelligence, which will cause high levels of Education, which will cause high levels of Less-Reproduction, which means that their genes will be be selected against and the next generation start with lower Genes. Even though it's all Education's fault for causing Less-Reproduction, it's still going to hammer the Genes.
I don't know if this sort of problem has a widely-known name (IlyaShpitser might know one); I've seen it described in some papers but without a specific term attached, for example, "Let’s Put Garbage-Can Regressions and Garbage-Can Probits Where They Belong":
Epidemiology seems to call this "overadjustment"; for example, "Overadjustment Bias and Unnecessary Adjustment in Epidemiologic Studies":
Hi, sorry I missed this post earlier. Yes, this is sometimes called overadjustment. Their definition of overadjustment is incomplete -- they are missing the case where there is a variable associated with both exposure and outcome, is not an intermediate variable, but adjusting for it increases bias anyways. This case has a different name, M-bias, and occurs for instance in this graph:
A -> Y <- H1 -> M <- H2 -> A
Say we do not observe H1, H2, and A is our exposure (treatment), Y is our outcome. The right thing to do here is to not adjust for M. It's called "M-bias" because the part of this graph involving H variables kind of looks like an M, if you draw it using the standard convention of unobserved confounders on top.
But there is a wider problem here than this, because sometimes what you are doing is 'adjusting for confounders,' but in reality you shouldn't even be using the formula that adjusting for confounders gives you, but use another formula. This happens for example with longitudinal studies (with a non-genetic treatment that is vulnerable to confounders over time). In such studies you want to use something called the g-computation algorithm instead of adjusting for confounders.
I guess if I were to name the resulting bias, it would be "causal model misspecification bias." That is, you are adjusting for confounders in a particular way because you think the true causal model is a certain way, but you are wrong about that -- the model is actually different and the causal effect requires a different approach from what you are using.
I have a paper with Tyler Vanderweele and Jamie Robins that characterizes exactly what has to be true on the graph for adjustment to be valid for causal effects. So you will get bias from adjustment (for a particular set) if and only if the condition in the paper does not hold for your model.
Ah, I stand corrected, then. Unless intelligence correlates enough with education and socioeconomic status to make the above meaningless, but it'd be weird to control for it if such was the case.
Doesn't that inverse correlation disappear when you control for schooling?
The correlation does not predict low variation in intelligence, it merely predicts this variation should decrease over time.
IQ has been gaining a lot of importance in evolutionarily recent times, so that positive correlation (and the variation-decreasing trend it predicts) can only have been weaker than it is now.
How much, I could only guess. But intelligence is generally appreciated in potential mates, and that appreciation wouldn't be there if smartness didn't improve reproductive success, at least on average.
That depends. First, it depends on the sex (some males actually prefer dumb blondes) and second, females usually like successful males -- while intelligence is clearly correlated with success, it's just a correlate and a signal, not the terminal value itself.
Also, if the floor of survive-and-breed is lowered enough (as is the case in the developed countries), the evolutionary pressures to wash out low intelligence become much weaker.
P.S.
LOL. Here is a study the abstract of which says:
I've wondered whether successful "dumb blondes" are actually unintelligent, or pretending-- beautiful blondes aren't common, but they're still up against a fair amount of competition.
Don't think it matters much here -- the point is that there are guys who prefer not-smart women. If some women feel it necessary to pretend to be stupid, that just reinforces the point.
It might hint that men not caring about women's intelligence doesn't have a dysgenic effect.
For having kids with?
I think they would formulate it as "for bearing them kids". Boys, preferably.
You might be generalizing from one example.
See also the stereotypical jock/nerd dichotomy.
I'm not generalizing from one example. Intelligence is correlated with sense of humor, which is one of the most consistently named traits that make a potential mate attractive, especially a male. source
Everyone I've ever heard talk about the jock/nerd thing was a US nerd.
It's also correlated with success, as Lumifer mentioned elsethread. I thought we were talking about the direct effects of intelligence itself -- though, as gwern points out, that doesn't make too much sense.
IME similar things also happen in Italy (with some differences) and Ireland. I'd guess anywhere people are made to study things they never need outside school by bad teachers, they will resent that and dislike people who can learn such things effortlessly and enjoy it. (Of course I wouldn't expect that to happen as much in places like say Finland or Singapore.)
There's also the saying that "correlation does not imply causation". The brain is very complex and energy intensive; basically anything that messes much with you is going to mess with your brain. For example, a near universal symptom of genetic diseases is reduced intelligence -- and I'm going to bet that low intelligence is not the cause of the genetic problem.
Massive variation at a human scale may be microscopic on the scale of potential brains designs. Presumably if the OP is correct you would expect a massive difference of intelligence from even a minor improvement in energy usage