3 ms·

Yes, but the question is in part of why is the bell curve centered where it is today? Time was not against our side in the past, in that we had plenty of time t

Yes, but the question is in part of why is the bell curve centered where it is today? Time was not against our side in the past, in that we had plenty of time to evolve for stronger intelligence criteria. Thus there must be a counterbalance for intelligence for general populations. Today I am curious as to what the average IQ of parents, weighted per number of children the parents have, is in comparison to the average IQ of the population.

zanny 8y ago
You don't evolve for the sake of it, thats not how natural selection works. Evolution, espeically in the short order time spans it takes for things like humans to evolve from our last common ancestor with chimps, requires strong environmental pressure to see rapid change such as the development of language or our large brains. We evolved until we outcompeted our relatives (its why we are the only homo left) and until we were the apex species of our biosphere. After that the pressures were much more diffuse over the nebulous optimization space of "what makes humans have more babies". It should be completely unsurprising that our brains are functionally only as smart as they need to be to be able to handle complex language, social interaction, planning, and spatial / self awareness. With some slight bias upwards over the millennia - probably moreso from more caloric availability, in the same way we have gotten markedly taller in 300 years mostly from just being food rich and nutrition aware, than from genetic drift from natural selection. To evolve substantially larger brains past what we already had would have been evolutionarily contrary to fitness. Bigger brains require more calories, moreso endanger the mothers in child birth (and our births are already extremely dangerous due to just that), required more developmental time to mature (15-25 years is insane in terms of developmental maturity in nature) and would have had minimal or no competitive advantage (complex reasoning skills aren't really valuable when all you are born into or will ever have is a tiny tribe and the tactic of exhausting gazelle all day for dinner).
- drilldrive 8y ago
  The only problem that I have with this line of reasoning is why we ended up being capable of complex thinking processes at all, though I do suppose then that is answered by how rare such an evolutionary line is (with a 'success state' of one). Going back to the second question of mine, is it feasible to see a divergence on the genetic basis over time amongst humans, in that the top academics tend to marry amongst themselves, and we have the strongest meritocratic system available that has been ever known to man? Looking at the Nobel Sperm Bank, there is some evidence of such a divergence already in place.
Izkata 8y ago
> Yes, but the question is in part of why is the bell curve centered where it is today? Answer: it isn't [0]. It's been steadily increasing (and pretty rapidly, at a couple points per generation). [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

zanny 8y ago

You don't evolve for the sake of it, thats not how natural selection works. Evolution, espeically in the short order time spans it takes for things like humans to evolve from our last common ancestor with chimps, requires strong environmental pressure to see rapid change such as the development of language or our large brains. We evolved until we outcompeted our relatives (its why we are the only homo left) and until we were the apex species of our biosphere. After that the pressures were much more diffuse over the nebulous optimization space of "what makes humans have more babies". It should be completely unsurprising that our brains are functionally only as smart as they need to be to be able to handle complex language, social interaction, planning, and spatial / self awareness. With some slight bias upwards over the millennia - probably moreso from more caloric availability, in the same way we have gotten markedly taller in 300 years mostly from just being food rich and nutrition aware, than from genetic drift from natural selection. To evolve substantially larger brains past what we already had would have been evolutionarily contrary to fitness. Bigger brains require more calories, moreso endanger the mothers in child birth (and our births are already extremely dangerous due to just that), required more developmental time to mature (15-25 years is insane in terms of developmental maturity in nature) and would have had minimal or no competitive advantage (complex reasoning skills aren't really valuable when all you are born into or will ever have is a tiny tribe and the tactic of exhausting gazelle all day for dinner).

drilldrive 8y ago
The only problem that I have with this line of reasoning is why we ended up being capable of complex thinking processes at all, though I do suppose then that is answered by how rare such an evolutionary line is (with a 'success state' of one). Going back to the second question of mine, is it feasible to see a divergence on the genetic basis over time amongst humans, in that the top academics tend to marry amongst themselves, and we have the strongest meritocratic system available that has been ever known to man? Looking at the Nobel Sperm Bank, there is some evidence of such a divergence already in place.

Izkata 8y ago

> Yes, but the question is in part of why is the bell curve centered where it is today? Answer: it isn't [0]. It's been steadily increasing (and pretty rapidly, at a couple points per generation). [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect