LESSWRONG
LW

All of Mike12390's Comments + Replies

Of Gender and Rationality
Mike1239000

About the literary statistics, it specifically says "These figures may be pessimistic because reading was taught before writing at school". So the figures may actually underestimate the literacy rate. I don't have the time to found other sources.

I'm not saying the increase in literacy rates was all genetic in origin. The fact that literacy increased on a societal scale probably had to do with new inventions that made it easier to publish and distribute written material (I'm not sure of the whole history to be honest so that is somewhat of a g... (read more)

Reply
Of Gender and Rationality
Mike1239000

http://books.google.com/books?id=DyMjW21HwHwC&pg=PA89&lpg=PA89&dq=reading+literacy+england+1600&source=bl&ots=SL1ct7yRfW&sig=0Hz6txLaE3_51PwzxFQTxSdEka4&hl=en&ei=4NHmSdjPF8LgtgeVvvCVBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1 30 percent of english men could read in 1600. I would say that is a considerable amount. Only 10 percent of women could read at that time. By 1700 50% of men could read.

So I would bet that the 30 percent that could read in 1600 out bred those who couldn't. It's possible that the increa... (read more)

Reply
3Jack
All those older literacy statistics, as it says in the very next sentence in your source, are based on the ability to sign one's name. Thats not exactly evidence of superior analytic reading and writing skills. There are perfectly ordinary, non-genetic reasons for the increase in literacy. For one, doesn't it seem strange to you that literacy rates increased all across Europe at roughly the same time? Shouldn't some nations have remained illiterate until they interbred with the literate ones? Instead, literacy correlates perfectly with widespread economic and cultural changes. How exactly did people start reading in Europe at all? For a long time it was only the monks who could manage it and they weren't passing their genes on. Also, from a quick google it looks like the dyslexia gene set, which is the one you previously identified as evidence for the genetic basis of reading, is autosomal, which means its spread should be equal among males and females.
Of Gender and Rationality
Mike1239020

Being able to learn and absorb written material allows a person to create more wealth. This is presumably why people go to school at all. Being able to accumulate more wealth as a result of learning allows a person to have increased reproductive fitness. So when you say "Access to better food, more sanitary living, less stress all indicate higher survival rates", these things could be the result of learning information. Like if you learned how to build something from a book that could improve your surrounding living conditions. Of course thi... (read more)

Reply
2taryneast
I think you may have your cause and effect backward here. in the 1600's wealth is the cause of people going to school - not the other way around. The vast majority of people had no access to schooling at all (unless they joined the clergy and thereby their line ended). Accessible schooling is a very modern phenomenon. You may thereby be confusing correlation with causation. Reading and wealth are correlated because the latter causes the former, rather than vice versa. Genes are correlated with reading simply because wealth is correlated with the ability to multiply and support many descendants. Therefore we should not be surprised that reading correlates with genes, any more than that there is likely a correlation between genes and wearing expensive, fashionable clothing.
2Jack
Well the second article claims that ev psych cannot explain reading ability and that this is-- wait for it!-- evidence of intelligent design. Pretty sure thats neither of our advocacies. Being able to learn and absorb written material allows a person in our economy to create more wealth. Its not clear to me at all that that has always been the case- at least in degrees high enough to exert enough selection pressure over only a handful of generations to account for a reading ability gender gap. Your average man in 17th century England doesn't learn to read because his best opportunity to increase his earning is to put in an extra hour on the farm. Or apprentice as a black smith. Or become a sailor. Those with the means might go to school and become lawyers or doctors- but they were already rich. Its not like they had academic scholarship or pell grants. Its also recalling that in this time period the literacy rate was considerably lower than it is today. And thats not because vast majorities in Europe didn't have the genes to read during the 18th-- its because they weren't taught to read. That means any selection that was happening was only happening within the small subset of the population that was given the opportunity to learn.
Of Gender and Rationality
Mike1239020

Well here's a paper about the changes in surnames in Britain between 1600 to 1851. This is recent evolutionary selection.

http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/Farewell%20to%20Alms/Clark%20-Surnames.pdf

Wealthier people quickly out bred poorer people. I think its highly probable that genes were selected for to be able to better seek out and absorb written material. Being able to learn information has a huge fitness benefit to propagating your genes. There was plenty of scientific reading material available at this time (1600-1851) that could have ... (read more)

Reply
5Jack
Its an interesting study but I don't think it proves your point. Wealthy people out bred poor people in a span of 10 generations in England. But I have no particular reason to think that the reason the rich outlived the poor was their ability to read. Access to better food, more sanitary living, less stress all indicate higher survival rates. Its not surprising the the children of the wealthy were more likely to survive into adulthood. Now maybe we think the rich were better readers to begin with and the gene spread that way. But we have no particular reason to believe this either- or rather we might have reason to believe the rich were better readers but we have no reason to believe this advantage was genetic.
Of Gender and Rationality
Mike12390-30

I'll expand on the controversial stance as to why this is. It's obviously extremely complicated and I can't really do it justice in this specific comment. However I will try to give a cursory explanation. I personally tend to think that rational thinking may in part be genetically encoded in the brain and is a trait that may be somewhat distinct from aspects of general intelligence. I think its very likely that their has been differential selection pressures on male and female brain's over the course of evolution. There has been a lot of evolutionary ... (read more)

Reply
4Jack
There is no way. I mean no way, that there was any significant selection pressure in favor of reading more and a reading more salient works. For the vast majority of human history there were no written works to seek out. Even once writing was developed it was used almost exclusively for book keeping. Then people wrote down myths. I like the legend of Gilgamesh as much as the next guy but reading it never conferred an evolutionary advantage on anyone. Were our ancestors seeking ancient hunting manuals?