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In the modern world, is there any evolutionary selection for intelligence? I can think of at least a few which are against Anecdotally, my wife is applying for

In the modern world, is there any evolutionary selection for intelligence? I can think of at least a few which are against Anecdotally, my wife is applying for surgical medical residencies, a field which generally attracts intelligent, ambitious individuals. The whole system seems downright hostile to having children. It obviously wasn't designed with women in mind, and the entire system has been intentionally ossified to prevent it from responding to the desires of residents, for the benefit of attending physicians. I imagine there are a large number of similar industries. This has definitely impacted our plans for children, and it wouldn't be an issue if she were considering a less competitive specialty. In fact, it seems that the very selectivity which ensures that the program is filled with intelligent people is used as justification for intense hours and lack of maternal support. In my opinion this is the sort of externality that would benefit from government intervention in some way. However, I don't think financial support would be very good at targeting such cases. I think the reason that tech companies have done a better job of providing child care support is that the field doesn't have the same sorts of institutional barriers to responding to employee demands that medicine does - specifically demand by employees in their prime child-rearing ages.

sandstrom 5y ago
I think most will agree that there is an evolutionary selection against intelligence (I think the term is "dysgenic mating"). For example, highly educated people (reasonable proxy for intelligence, at least it used to be) have fewer children. Agree, from a society's point of view (if you believe that intelligence is positive and at least partly hereditary, which I guess is pretty indisputable), one would want to provide incentives to correct this. Tax reductions per child (scales with income) would be one approach.
- tharne 5y ago
  Like a lot of the comments here, this seems to conflate education and intelligence, when in reality the relationship between the two is tenuous. When talking about the attributes of highly educated people, the most common trait you're likely to find is diligence, which is not at all the same as intelligence though perhaps more important. Education certainly does seem to decrease family size, particularly rates of female education.
  - sandstrom 5y ago
    This study (with more than a thousand citations) of 70,000 school children in the UK measured IQ at age 11 and compared with educational outcome (GCSE; standardized tests) at age 16. The correlation was 0.8. Deary, I., Strand, S., Smith, P., Fernandes, C. (2007). Intelligence and Educational Achievement. Intelligence https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289606000171 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602... I'd also argue that it's plain common knowledge. If you ask 100 people on the street, "Do clever kids have an easier time in school?", I think the answer would be a resounding yes. Sure, there is a lot of "junk education" out there. Schools that will accept anyone, and give everyone good grades regardless of performance. That's why I wrote "at least it used to be". But Western educational systems hasn't yet regressed to a level where it's all trash.
sanxiyn 5y ago
We know selection is against intelligence. We see it in data, for example from Iceland. Selection against variants in the genome associated with educational attainment: https://www.pnas.org/content/114/5/E727 https://www.pnas.org/content/114/5/E727
- michael1999 5y ago
  Suppose that in olden-times, only a handful of socially dominant kin networks were wealthy enough for education. And then social and education reform changed things so that a) everyone finished high-school, regardless of birth, and b) higher education resource allocation shifted to merit and motivation from social breeding. Suppose further, that the breakdown of the class system meant that idiosyncratic genetic markers of aristocratic inbreeding declined along with elite endogamy. Would the results of this study be any different?
  - rory 5y ago
    > genetic markers of aristocratic inbreeding declined along with elite endogamy I think this is the flaw in that theory. The genetic markers each come from a single parent, and so wouldn't decline if those carrying them started mating at random rather than within a specific subpopulation.
    - michael1999 5y ago
      We don't see the Habsburg jaw much these days.
      - rory 5y ago
        Not sure if this is a joke I'm not getting, but the "variants" in the linked study refer to tiny genetic sequences, not phenotypical appearance traits.
        michael1999 5y ago
        Where do you think the Habsburg jaw comes from, if not a combination genetic sequences - a POLYhj if you will?
lumost 5y ago
Not to mention that those who have children in competitive fields are not able to nurture their children due to time commitments. The same effect appears to be true for adults in most of the service industries as well albeit for different reasons. I'm not sure how the government could intervene in these situations except to make these fields less competitive such that employees have more bargaining power.
- sanxiyn 5y ago
  I don't think that matters a lot, since outcome is mostly nature not nurture. Good nurture improves your relationship with children and that's about it.
- codekansas 5y ago
  In a normally functioning system, intelligent individuals should naturally have more bargaining power, because their skills are more in-demand. However, medical residency is set up in such a way that your bargaining power is delayed until after you finish, because if you leave you are basically blacklisted from the whole field. This benefits the people who have made it out the other side, who are also the people in a position to effect change
  - fallingknife 5y ago
    There is actually a specific exemption for this system written into anti trust law, so you can be sure it's terrible.
spoonjim 5y ago
Right now in America there is a strong correlation between IQ and income and strong inverse correlation between income and fertility.
- kleiba 5y ago
  Source?
  - TrumpsHandler 5y ago
    Waiting for the dumbass with a bunch of kids...
natded 5y ago
Idea that you can select against intelligence would lead to an idea that eugenics == good and that is a taboo. It is a can of worms in the High Status Discussion to bring up the idea that intelligence can be measured and inherited by offspring. According to many even ITT, intelligence is some transcendental category which can only be divined by Nurture and Education.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  Going beyond that, is intelligence == good worth debating? To the extent that the increase of mental health issues across the population seems to be happening irrespective of IQ. Or perhaps it isn't- does high IQ correlate with certain mental disorders? And are there other, less quantified measures worth improving for the well-being of society, such as EI.
  - natded 5y ago
    Intelligence has trade-offs, costs and other limitations or we would have maxed it out hard (ie. an "intelligence explosion" would have occurred). Increased mental illness might be one, other one is the brain size being limited by the hips of mother. Brains / intelligence also has energy costs which we might not have been able to optimize for yet. As such, I would say that intelligence is a cost that you run. It allowed for reproduction and survival for humans when they moved towards colder regions for example, but there's little to no reason to maintain that intelligence if you don't need to adapt anymore. I think you need harsh material constraints (I don't know, space faring) to keep it from shaving itself off in order to optimize the human machine.
  - sanxiyn 5y ago
    High IQ seems to correlate with bipolar disorder, but that's about it. It's the only negative that correlates with intelligence I know about. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3705611/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3705611/
    - Apocryphon 5y ago
fullshark 5y ago
The sperm that is coveted by customers at sperm banks.
- codekansas 5y ago
  Huh, I hadn't thought of this. I suppose pre-natal planning and IVF would also qualify. Reminds me a bit of the Freakonomics piece about abortion and crime [0] [1] I remember it was extremely controversial when it came out [0] https://freakonomics.com/2005/05/abortion-and-crime-who-should-you-believe/ https://freakonomics.com/2005/05/abortion-and-crime-who-shou... [1] https://freakonomics.com/podcast/abortion-and-crime-revisited/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/abortion-and-crime-revisite...
ManBlanket 5y ago
Your point is totally valid, most high end careers are overtly hostile toward raising a family. I think it's a different tangentially related issue than that of this study. There's a difference between intelligent and ambitious individuals. Granted there's a certain intelligence filter in the capacity for a student to memorize and temporarily retain information, completing a medical residence is much more an act of attrition and perseverance than critical thinking. The tests administered in this study were puzzles like letter matrices and verbal analogies. I'm sure anybody can come up with plenty of anecdotes to the contrary. Under achievers who might smash these logical puzzles but bother with hardly more than what they need to tow the career line. Personally, I studied math and computer science, some of the cleverest people I know were pure math majors. Needless to say, most of which ended up on a different career path. On the other hand I known doctors and executives who, to put it nicely, lack a little spice when it comes to critical thinking. Career accolades have much more to do with a person's capacity to persevere and their priorities in life than with their intelligence. That said I totally agree with your contention that careers need to be more accommodating of human behavior. The cynic in me has little hope anything of this nature will come from capitalist entities or governments. That said the optimist knows these societal constructs are composed of human beings, and are therefore capable of learning and improving.

sandstrom 5y ago

I think most will agree that there is an evolutionary selection against intelligence (I think the term is "dysgenic mating"). For example, highly educated people (reasonable proxy for intelligence, at least it used to be) have fewer children. Agree, from a society's point of view (if you believe that intelligence is positive and at least partly hereditary, which I guess is pretty indisputable), one would want to provide incentives to correct this. Tax reductions per child (scales with income) would be one approach.

tharne 5y ago
Like a lot of the comments here, this seems to conflate education and intelligence, when in reality the relationship between the two is tenuous. When talking about the attributes of highly educated people, the most common trait you're likely to find is diligence, which is not at all the same as intelligence though perhaps more important. Education certainly does seem to decrease family size, particularly rates of female education.
- sandstrom 5y ago
  This study (with more than a thousand citations) of 70,000 school children in the UK measured IQ at age 11 and compared with educational outcome (GCSE; standardized tests) at age 16. The correlation was 0.8. Deary, I., Strand, S., Smith, P., Fernandes, C. (2007). Intelligence and Educational Achievement. Intelligence https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289606000171 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602... I'd also argue that it's plain common knowledge. If you ask 100 people on the street, "Do clever kids have an easier time in school?", I think the answer would be a resounding yes. Sure, there is a lot of "junk education" out there. Schools that will accept anyone, and give everyone good grades regardless of performance. That's why I wrote "at least it used to be". But Western educational systems hasn't yet regressed to a level where it's all trash.

sanxiyn 5y ago

We know selection is against intelligence. We see it in data, for example from Iceland. Selection against variants in the genome associated with educational attainment: https://www.pnas.org/content/114/5/E727 https://www.pnas.org/content/114/5/E727

michael1999 5y ago
Suppose that in olden-times, only a handful of socially dominant kin networks were wealthy enough for education. And then social and education reform changed things so that a) everyone finished high-school, regardless of birth, and b) higher education resource allocation shifted to merit and motivation from social breeding. Suppose further, that the breakdown of the class system meant that idiosyncratic genetic markers of aristocratic inbreeding declined along with elite endogamy. Would the results of this study be any different?
- rory 5y ago
  > genetic markers of aristocratic inbreeding declined along with elite endogamy I think this is the flaw in that theory. The genetic markers each come from a single parent, and so wouldn't decline if those carrying them started mating at random rather than within a specific subpopulation.
  - michael1999 5y ago
    We don't see the Habsburg jaw much these days.
    - rory 5y ago
      Not sure if this is a joke I'm not getting, but the "variants" in the linked study refer to tiny genetic sequences, not phenotypical appearance traits.
      - michael1999 5y ago
        Where do you think the Habsburg jaw comes from, if not a combination genetic sequences - a POLYhj if you will?

lumost 5y ago

Not to mention that those who have children in competitive fields are not able to nurture their children due to time commitments. The same effect appears to be true for adults in most of the service industries as well albeit for different reasons. I'm not sure how the government could intervene in these situations except to make these fields less competitive such that employees have more bargaining power.

sanxiyn 5y ago
I don't think that matters a lot, since outcome is mostly nature not nurture. Good nurture improves your relationship with children and that's about it.
codekansas 5y ago
In a normally functioning system, intelligent individuals should naturally have more bargaining power, because their skills are more in-demand. However, medical residency is set up in such a way that your bargaining power is delayed until after you finish, because if you leave you are basically blacklisted from the whole field. This benefits the people who have made it out the other side, who are also the people in a position to effect change
- fallingknife 5y ago
  There is actually a specific exemption for this system written into anti trust law, so you can be sure it's terrible.

spoonjim 5y ago

Right now in America there is a strong correlation between IQ and income and strong inverse correlation between income and fertility.

kleiba 5y ago
Source?
- TrumpsHandler 5y ago
  Waiting for the dumbass with a bunch of kids...

natded 5y ago

Idea that you can select against intelligence would lead to an idea that eugenics == good and that is a taboo. It is a can of worms in the High Status Discussion to bring up the idea that intelligence can be measured and inherited by offspring. According to many even ITT, intelligence is some transcendental category which can only be divined by Nurture and Education.

Apocryphon 5y ago
Going beyond that, is intelligence == good worth debating? To the extent that the increase of mental health issues across the population seems to be happening irrespective of IQ. Or perhaps it isn't- does high IQ correlate with certain mental disorders? And are there other, less quantified measures worth improving for the well-being of society, such as EI.
- natded 5y ago
  Intelligence has trade-offs, costs and other limitations or we would have maxed it out hard (ie. an "intelligence explosion" would have occurred). Increased mental illness might be one, other one is the brain size being limited by the hips of mother. Brains / intelligence also has energy costs which we might not have been able to optimize for yet. As such, I would say that intelligence is a cost that you run. It allowed for reproduction and survival for humans when they moved towards colder regions for example, but there's little to no reason to maintain that intelligence if you don't need to adapt anymore. I think you need harsh material constraints (I don't know, space faring) to keep it from shaving itself off in order to optimize the human machine.
- sanxiyn 5y ago
  High IQ seems to correlate with bipolar disorder, but that's about it. It's the only negative that correlates with intelligence I know about. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3705611/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3705611/
  - Apocryphon 5y ago

fullshark 5y ago

The sperm that is coveted by customers at sperm banks.

codekansas 5y ago
Huh, I hadn't thought of this. I suppose pre-natal planning and IVF would also qualify. Reminds me a bit of the Freakonomics piece about abortion and crime [0] [1] I remember it was extremely controversial when it came out [0] https://freakonomics.com/2005/05/abortion-and-crime-who-should-you-believe/ https://freakonomics.com/2005/05/abortion-and-crime-who-shou... [1] https://freakonomics.com/podcast/abortion-and-crime-revisited/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/abortion-and-crime-revisite...

ManBlanket 5y ago

Your point is totally valid, most high end careers are overtly hostile toward raising a family. I think it's a different tangentially related issue than that of this study. There's a difference between intelligent and ambitious individuals. Granted there's a certain intelligence filter in the capacity for a student to memorize and temporarily retain information, completing a medical residence is much more an act of attrition and perseverance than critical thinking. The tests administered in this study were puzzles like letter matrices and verbal analogies. I'm sure anybody can come up with plenty of anecdotes to the contrary. Under achievers who might smash these logical puzzles but bother with hardly more than what they need to tow the career line. Personally, I studied math and computer science, some of the cleverest people I know were pure math majors. Needless to say, most of which ended up on a different career path. On the other hand I known doctors and executives who, to put it nicely, lack a little spice when it comes to critical thinking. Career accolades have much more to do with a person's capacity to persevere and their priorities in life than with their intelligence. That said I totally agree with your contention that careers need to be more accommodating of human behavior. The cynic in me has little hope anything of this nature will come from capitalist entities or governments. That said the optimist knows these societal constructs are composed of human beings, and are therefore capable of learning and improving.