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Correlation does not allow you to draw conclusions about causation. And there are other plausible explanations. Intelligence is highly heritable and negatively
by toasterlovin 7y ago
Correlation does not allow you to draw conclusions about causation.
And there are other plausible explanations. Intelligence is highly heritable and negatively correlated with fertility. Also, there has been an overall increase in measured intelligence since IQ tests were first invented. Nobody really knows why. But this could be a reversal of that trend. And, importantly, people have been getting more sedentary during the entire extent of the increase. So it would be hard to square that with the hypothesis that this recent decrease being caused by less activity.
- swsieber 7y agoI dont thin the top parent actually drew a conclusion. I read it as "These two things are highly correlated. Given that one went down, should we be surprised that the other wnet down?" Given that there was no concerted effort to move either of them, my answer is "of course not! They are correlated"
- michaelmcmillan 7y agoNot sure if I agree. This is how I parsed it: humans have become less active → our intelligence has suffered as well
- shados 7y agoNot a direct correlation, but its pretty easy to see how it can happen, or at least partially. Eg: Less active = more weight gain = higher likelyhood of GERD and sleep apnea = less sleep = lower attention span and memory. Boom, lower IQ because of lower fitness.
- michaelmcmillan 7y agoI never said I couldn't see how... Just pointing out that we need more data to know cause and effect.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago> Intelligence is highly heritable and negatively correlated with fertility. More accurately, intelligence is negatively correlated with fertility in women in the Western world. The correlation is still positive for men. Generally it's believed that the negative effect on fertility is due to intelligent women getting more education, rather being a direct negative effect of intelligence.