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My point was theoretical, not empirical. If you say that foragers often seem remarkably uninterested in making sacrifices for the future I'll believe you. But I'm questioning how well we understand that data, by noting that there are some aspects of their lives where they seem to make long term investments. Maybe they just don't have a consistent time preference, maybe it varies by type of behavior; for some areas like learning an art they evolved behaviors that respect future consequences, and for other areas like food storage they did not.
Yes, of course, I will give you that. You are suggesting that "time preference" is way too global and vague a concept and I can't disagree.
HCH
Is your point that they couldn't imagine investing for the future, or that they had so little slack that they couldn't afford to?
They could certainly imagine investing: they have been invaded by cattle people over the last half century and they see husbandry all around. And they certainly could have afforded to keep their animals. But they just didn't (seem to) have it in them to "delay gratification". I think that our ability to invest and save resources must be new and different in our evolution.
In response to
Q&A with Harpending and Cochran
[I waited until I could get a copy of the book and read it before making my point here.]
In the book you say that foragers had little reason to fight wars or to to be patient for long term investments. But forager wars are often about grabbing women, and they might also make long term investments in particular women or in developing skills, like singing, that can attract women.
I don't agree with you except a little bit. And there are foragers who do have some low time preference, like on the US Northwest Coast where they harvested lots of salmon that they smoked and stored. Interior Eskimo slaughtered migrating caribou herds and stored the meat by freezing.
But in general forager life has been almost literally hand to mouth. I have spent a lot of wasted time pulling my hair out about this. We have had lots of Bushman employees in the Kalahari, well compensated. We have spent hours pointing out that we would go back to America, they should invest in goats or cattle, build up a herd, so they will have something to live on after we left. Everyone agreed with us, but they minute Aunt Nellie got sick everything was slaughtered. Again and again and again. Aargghh......
Henry
In response to
Q&A with Harpending and Cochran
For both/either: What are you working on right now?
I am trying to think about the genesis and maintenance of social class and about the dimensionality of class. We know from the biometricians at the end of the nineteenth century that cognitive ability is essentially a single dimension while athletic ability, for example, is multidimensional. I want to start with a pure inductive approach to class in North America and do the same thing with class. Fat chance, I have found, since every time I get started I get sucked back into genetics.
Henry
Biologists mostly don't believe in theory: even when its predictions come true, they're not impressed.
Because theory in the field is so often wrong that they treat successes as a stopped clock being right twice a day? Or something more complex?
I think Greg's 'biologists' are a special subset of biologists. As I see it CP Snow was right about the two cultures. But within science there are also two cultures, one of whom speaks mathematics and the other that speaks organic chemistry. Speaker of organic chemistry share a view that enough lab work and enough data will answer all the questions. They don't need no silly equations.
In our field the folks who speak mathematics tend to view the lab rats as glorified techs. This is certain not right but it is there and leads to a certain amount of mutual disdain.
This kind of mutual disdain is apparently just not there in physics between the theoretical and experimental physics people. I wish evolutionary biology were more like physics.
I do not think there is much prospect for dramatic IQ elevation without producing somewhat damaged people.
Interesting. Would these people be so damaged that they would be unable to do science? Or would you be expecting super-aspergers types? (Or, to put it more rigorously, what probability would you assign to dead/severely disabled vs. super-aspergers/some other non-showstopping deleterious effect?)
I don't know but I can give you some candidates. One is torsion spasm (Idiopathic Torsion Dystonia). It will give you about a ten point IQ boost just by itself. Most of the time the only effect of the disease is vulnerability to writer's cramp, but 10% of the time it puts you in a wheelchair. So you could do science just fine.
Similarly the Ashkenazi form of Gaucher's disease is not ordinarily all that serious but it also give a hefty IQ boost. Asperger like stuff would probably also increase: many super bright people seem to be a bit not quite. Of course lots of other super-brights seem to be completely normal.
I am just babbling, I have no special insight at all...
HCH
Flynn himself thinks nutrition got better but the data are not clear about that.
I doubt Flynn thinks much of the nutrition hypothesis any more; his recent paper 'Requiem for nutrition as the cause of IQ gains' argues against nutrition as a major cause of IQ gains in developed nations. He would likely agree with you that the kinds of social changes you're thinking of had a big impact; I seem to remember him writing in his book from three years back that contemporary people make more of a habit of thinking about things abstractly, and learn more of the mental tools needed to do well on IQ tests.
When I did fieldwork in the late 1960s in backcountry Botswana I hit upon the idea of asking my sister (a dairy farmer) to send me a box of back issues of American cattle magazines. It was unbelievable: I could have made a fortune selling pictures from them, not to mention whole issues, to the local cattle people. At that time people carefully hoarded little scraps of paper to use writing messages.
In the late 1980s I brought some more such magazines with me, and no one was interested at all. The media storm had penetrated and everyone had school textbooks, magazines, radios, etc.
I think there's some evidence that the Flynn effect isn't just about IQ tests: for example, I think it's only been within the past 30 years that there are popular books about popular culture.
Can you elaborate your comment--sounds fascinating. HCH
In AD175 Marcus Aurelius brought 5,500 Sarmatian heavy cavalry warriors to northern Britain where, after twenty years service, they "settled in a permanent military colony in Lancashire" which was "still mentioned almost 250 years later." You remind us of the possibility that the colony could have influenced the legend of King Arthur, and go on to add something new: it also "could have introduced several thousand copies of that hypothetical allele into Lancashire" and that the average Englishman "might be mostly Sarmatian in a key gene or two." I'm English, and intrigued! Are you able to expand on this? (Book pp. 146-148) I hope it is something good like increased unruliness (independence streak) and aggressiveness in battle and not something naff like Sarmatian lewdness...!!
I have no further knowledge or insight about that, but Greg might. I will call this question to his attention and we may see what he knows.
HCH
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My impression is that hunter-gatherers have a huge amount of social pressure towards short-term sharing.
You mentioned "Aunt Nettie getting sick" as a reason to slaughter cattle. Was it food for her? Expensive medical care or rituals? Something else?
Food for her and to support a ritual gathering of folks for support. There is no medical care out in the bush, but if there were people would certainly chip in to help pay for it.
HCH