at our wits end
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The five wits — Wit Wit, n. [AS. witt, wit; akin to OFries. wit, G. witz, OHG. wizz[=i], Icel. vit, Dan. vid, Sw. vett. [root]133. See
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wit — [[t]wɪ̱t[/t]] wits 1) N UNCOUNT Wit is the ability to use words or ideas in an amusing, clever, and imaginative way. Boulding was known for his biting wit. They love her practical attitude to life, her zest and wit. 2) N COUNT If you describe… … English dictionary
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Wit — Wit, n. [AS. witt, wit; akin to OFries. wit, G. witz, OHG. wizz[=i], Icel. vit, Dan. vid, Sw. vett. [root]133. See
wit — wit1 /wit/, n. 1. the keen perception and cleverly apt expression of those connections between ideas that awaken amusement and pleasure. 2. speech or writing showing such perception and expression. 3. a person having or noted for such perception… … Universalium
At our wits end книга о чем
Personality traits, including the GFP, have been shown to be in the region of 50% heritable, based mainly on twin studies. As with intelligence, much of the genetic underpinnings of personality traits relate to genes with individually small, additive effects, however some of the heritability—perhaps even a larger portion than is the case for intelligence—is due to the action of rare genes with big effects and epistatic gene–gene interactions (i.e. non-additive genetic effects).[16] Since the heritability of personality is less than one, some combination of chance and the environment does affect the kind of personality which you develop, but only within certain genetic limits. An unstable, dangerous childhood will tend to increase mental instability, and those who experience it will learn to see the world as a perilous place—and this may have a lasting effect on their behaviour. For instance, when childhood is unpredictable and dangerous, children will tend to ‘live for the now’, so displaying lower Conscientiousness, and they may be suspicious of other people, leading to lower Agreeableness.[17]
Another example is that girls who have grown up in sexually-unstable situations seem to adopt a short-term sexual strategy. They have children with a large variety of men and these men are chosen because they are macho, not for their ability to remain committed to the relationship and/or provide resources over the long term. To put it in slang terms, girls from unstable homes seem to exhibit a preference for ‘cads’ rather than ‘dads’.[18]
So, we have now looked at personality and the important dimensions of life that its various manifestations predict. This is vital to understanding genius, because of the unusual personality–intelligence profile involved. So, with this in mind, let us now turn to the crucial issue of the rise in levels of genius as evidence of rising intelligence up until the Industrial Revolution.
1 Dutton, E. & Charlton, B. (2015) The Genius Famine, Buckingham: University of Buckingham Press, p. 7.
2 See: Soto, C., John, O., Gosling, S. & Potter, J. (2011) Age differences in personality traits from 10 to 65: Big Five domains and facets in a large cross-sectional sample, Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 100, pp. 330–348.
3 See Nettle, D. (2007) Personality: What Makes You Who You Are, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
4 See: Costa, P.T., Jr. & McCrae, R.R. (1992) Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) Manual, Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources.
5 For a good introduction to personality, see: Nettle, D. (2007) Personality: What Makes You Who You Are, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
6 Friedman, H.S., Tucker, J., Tomlinson-Keasey, C., et al. (1993) Does childhood personality predict longevity? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, pp. 176–185.
7 See: Nettle, D. (2007) Personality: What Makes You Who You Are, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
8 Eysenck, H. (1997) Rebel With a Cause: The Autobiography of Hans Eysenck, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
9 Rushton, J.P. & Irwing, P. (2008) A General Factor of Personality from two meta-analyses of the Big Five, Personality & Individual Differences, 45, pp. 679–683.
10 Just, C. (2011) A review of literature on the general factor of personality, Personality & Individual Differences, 50, pp. 765–771.
11 See: Soto, C., John, O., Gosling, S. & Potter, J. (2011) Age differences in personality traits from 10 to 65: Big Five domains and facets in a large cross-sectional sample, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, pp. 330–348.
12 See: McNeely, D. (2010) Becoming: An Introduction to Jung’s Concept of Individuation, Carmel, CA: Fisher King Press.
13 Costa, P. & Arenberg, D. (1980) Enduring dispositions in adult males, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 38, pp. 793–800.
14 Weisberg, Y., DeYoung, C. & Hirsch, J. (2011) Gender differences in personality across the ten aspects of the Big Five, Frontiers in Psychology, 2, art. 178.
15 Indeed, this is precisely what Baron-Cohen’s model of the extreme ‘male brain’ predicts. See: Baron-Cohen, S. (2002) The extreme male brain theory of autism, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6, pp. 248–254.
16 Bouchard Jr., T. (2004) Genetic influence on human psychological traits, Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13, pp. 148–151.
17 Simonton, D. (2009) Varieties of (scientific) creativity: A hierarchical model of domain-specific disposition, development, and achievement, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4, pp. 441–452.
18 Bugental, D., Corpuz, R. & Beaulieu, D. (2014) An evolutionary approach to socialization, in Grusec, J. & Hastings, P. (eds.) Handbook of Socialization: Theory and Research, New York: Guildford Publications.
Was Genius Becoming More Prevalent Historically?
Sheldon is, in certain respects, similar to the genius. How do we define a genius? Normally, a ‘genius’—at least in the world of science—is somebody who makes an enormous breakthrough, which has huge ramifications, such as the insight of ‘natural selection’ by Darwin or the identification of the laws of optics and of gravity by Newton. In much the same way, a hugely important invention, such as the Spinning Jenny, can be considered the product of genius. This being the case, we can start to identify geniuses—people who are commonly recognised, by other scientists for example, as being geniuses. One method of discerning this is convergent bibliography, which features heavily in the research of the American psychologist Dean K. Simonton. Using this method, an individual’s eminence is really a function of how they are regarded by their peers, which can be modelled by simply measuring the prominence and prevalence of famous names across historical works—thus establishing the degree to which different authorities agree with one another (or converge) with respect to who is extremely eminent. Simonton terms this field Historiometrics.[2]
Some people argue that this method is subjective because it is based on the ratings of mere people and may be coloured by prejudice, meaning that certain potential geniuses are ignored. It can be countered that genius is a form of behaviour, just as tool use among chimpanzees is a form of behaviour. We know that tool use among chimpanzees is real only because multiple raters have observed this. Similarly, we know that a person behaves as a genius (by having a huge impact on everything around them) because multiple raters have observed this. In addition to convergent bibliography, we can assess the biographical information we have about them and draw reasonable inferences about the kind of people they were. A number of important researchers, such as Dean K. Simonton and also Hans Eysenck,
have done precisely this, although (as with many important ideas) this approach had its origins in the mind of Sir Francis Galton.[3] The generally accepted conclusion is that if you met a genius you may well superficially dismiss them as ‘mad’. They probably wouldn’t be particularly likeable or friendly, they would have unusual habits and perhaps dress or speak in an unusual way; they would be obsessive. They may have many of the signs of what is termed Asperger’s syndrome; a mild form of autism which is associated with difficulty in understanding the feelings of other people.
The Nature of Genius: Meeting Sir Isaac Newton
Returning to our discussion of personality, Edward Dutton and Dutch psychologist Dimitri Van der Linden have explored the way that, whereas the average scientist—who might build on the insight made by the genius—would combine high intelligence with high Agreeableness and high Conscientiousness,[4] the genius would have a much more complicated psychological profile. Experts on genius such as Simonton and Eysenck concur that high-intelligence is a necessary component for geniuses, but nowhere near a sufficient one; genius being an emergent property of rare combinations of environment, personality, and ability. The genius is extremely high in intelligence, but is moderately low in Conscientiousness and Agreeableness, which, when coupled with high creativity, is associated with the personality trait Psychoticism. This is crucial to genius because genius involves coming up with and presenting a ground-breaking and highly original idea. Frequently, it involves solving a very difficult problem and working to solve this—to the exclusion of most other things—for years on end. True originality will always offend vested interests. It will, at first at least, at best be met with ridicule and at worst with open hostility. True originality will also involve breaking the rules; thinking the unthinkable, contemplating something that is so ‘out there’ that it would seem ludicrous to ordinary people.
This is why geniuses require the personality profile that they have. As they are relatively low in Conscientiousness, they are happy to disregard the rules and they have the ability to think outside of them. Combined with extremely high intelligence, this means that they have the ability to think in a highly original way and, so, to solve incredibly difficult problems. Their moderately low Agreeableness will have two consequences. Firstly, it will help them to dedicate themselves to their work, as they find dealing with other people extremely difficult and tiresome. Low Agreeableness is associated with high self-esteem, so they are likely to bounce back quite well from any discouragements which they experience while trying to solve their chosen problem. Once they’ve solved it, they will have no difficulty in telling the wider world about it. This is because, moderately low in Agreeableness, they won’t care about the offence they may cause and would have trouble anticipating that their work would cause offence even if they did care.
A final dimension to the genius personality, which may seem quite surprising, is at least elements of Extraversion.[5] Geniuses are risk-takers and they are highly competitive. Often, when a problem has needed a solution, many people have been working to solve it. The recognised genius is the one who wins the race to solve the problem, so there is a degree to which he must have a strong competitive drive. The best example of this can be seen in the way that Darwin went to print with his theory of evolution (or as he termed it modification by descent) in 1859 because he was under the erroneous belief that Alfred Russell Wallace had, independently, come up with precisely the same theory. Darwin, however, had developed his own theory around 20 years earlier. Indeed, it should be remembered that though the archetypal genius combines super-high intelligence with moderately high psychoticism, there will be all kinds of variations on this theme. For example, a given genius—Darwin may be an example—might be quite high in Agreeableness, but extremely low in Conscientiousness (according to his son Francis, Charles Darwin’s working habits were extraordinarily unsystematic and his study was always in a state of chaos).[6] As long as the overall balance between the psychological factors is optimum, a genius can still be produced.
To understand what the genius is really like, we should perhaps meet just one of them. Sir Isaac Newton’s intelligence was undoubtedly enormous, so what would he have been like to know? In their book, The Genius Famine: Why We Need Geniuses, Why They’re Dying Out and Why We Must Rescue Them, Edward Dutton and Bruce Charlton discuss precisely this issue. They note that as a child and young man Newton would spend nearly all of his time alone and when in company he would be silent. He had essentially no friends, formed no relationships with women, and made very little effort to conform at all. As a boy, his relationships with other boys tended to be antagonistic. He really wasn’t a very nice person. Newton was taught Latin at school and not much else. In terms of mathematics and science, he simply taught himself. Whatever he did, he did because he wanted to do it, he became engrossed in it and he did it brilliantly. In a year or so, he went from knowing almost no mathematics to mastering the subject and being among the best in the world; and then he immediately went on to make some of the greatest ever mathematical discoveries. Newton’s own explanation for his achievement was that he solved problems ‘By thinking on it continually’. He also remarked, ‘I keep the subject constantly before me.’ Then he all-but dropped mathematics, and instead worked on one area of physics after another—making major discoveries, then moving on. Newton would think solidly for hour upon hour—sometimes standing lost in his own world half way down the stairs. For many years he hardly ever left his college. He almost never left Cambridge.[7]
But there is another aspect of Newton that was particularly interesting; something he has in common with Einstein and many other geniuses. While Newton’s academic performance was good, it was not amazing. Indeed, it was rather erratic. He excelled at some things and was mediocre at others. For example, he performed badly in his BA examination, which was a viva voce disputation; needing to go on to a second round of questions (rather than passing straight away).[8] This is true of many other geniuses, observe Dutton and Charlton. Francis Crick, who co-discovered DNA, was rejected from Cambridge and went to university in London, where he failed to get a top degree.[9] He then proceeded to drop out of a variety of PhD courses.[10]
Newton’s methods were highly intuitive. This can be contrasted with the method typical of highly intelligent and conscientious un-creative people—who read widely, learn many facts, and then try to apply other people’s solutions to problems. And this leads us to a further point. It has been shown that as people become more intelligent —as IQ goes up—the relationship between the different cognitive abilities becomes weaker. This is termed Spearman’s Law of Diminishing Returns, after Charles Spearman (whom we encountered previously), who first described this effect in 1927.[11] In other words, as people become more intelligent, they become more specialised in the nature of their intelligence. So, a person who is of roughly average intelligence will be ‘okay’ in terms of their linguistic, spatial, and mathematical scores but they will be relatively equally okay in each one. By contrast, somebody who has much higher intelligence may be better on all of these measures, but they won’t be equally better. They are likely, for example, to have much higher mathematical scores, with their linguistic scores being only moderately higher. But the mathematical scores are so much higher that, overall, the physics student, or whatever he may be, will have a much higher average IQ.[12] Spearman’s Law of Diminishing Returns does not refute the concept of g—this being present in the ability scores of even those with the highest levels of intelligence. The g factor is, however, somewhat weaker among such individuals—as specialised abilities become more autonomous, playing a bigger role in influencing cognitive performance.
Geniuses, who have extraordinarily high IQs, will therefore tend to have an even weaker relationship between their different cognitive abilities. What this means, in practice, is that though they are super-intelligent overall, they may actually be below average when it comes to certain tasks that are towards
the base of the ‘intelligence pyramid’ and, so, only weakly correlate with g. This, along with their moderately high psychoticism, would help to explain their often less than outstanding academic performance at university and, indeed, their ‘nutty professor’ behaviour patterns. Einstein once got lost close to his home in Princeton, New Jersey. He walked into a shop and said, ‘Hi, I’m Einstein, can you take me home please?’ He couldn’t drive a car, and many other tasks that most people take for granted were simply too difficult for him.[13] This is, probably, the best example of somebody of extraordinary intelligence being, really, quite stupid, albeit in a specialised sort of way. Sheldon Cooper, of course, relies on Leonard to chauffer him to and from work.
The Evolution of Genius
So, how has ‘genius’ been selected for? There is no evidence that geniuses have lots of children. Indeed, quite the opposite seems to be true. They are frequently asexual and often don’t reproduce at all.[14] Why, then, do they exist? Shouldn’t they be shunned by the prehistoric tribe—as dangerously uncooperative—and removed from the gene pool?
At our wits end книга о чем
The Decline of Intelligence
Back to the Concorde and the Moon
Different Kinds of Intelligence
Intelligence and IQ Tests
The Causes of Intelligence Differences
‘But What Do You Mean By Intelligence?’
‘Intelligence Means Different Things in Different Cultures’
‘We Don’t Know the Genes Behind Intelligence, so We’re Just Speculating’
‘There Are Different Kinds of Intelligence’
‘Intelligence is a Very Western Concept’
‘Intelligence and Ranking People by Their IQ Makes Me Feel Morally Uncomfortable. It’s Very Dangerous’
Selection for Intelligence in Animals
Early Nation States
The Christian World
Fertility in the Early Modern Era
Executing the Less Intelligent
Upward Social Mobility in the Early Modern Era
Literacy and Numeracy
Judicial Violence and Blood Sports
The Size of the Head
Democracy and Political Stability
Genetic Changes: Comparing the Bronze Age to the Present
The General Factor of Personality
How Personality Develops and Why there are Differences
The Nature of Genius: Meeting Sir Isaac Newton
The Evolution of Genius
The Growth of Genius
Scientists Who Predicted Intelligence Would Decline
What is the Association between Intelligence and Fertility Now?
Why Do Smarter People Have Fewer Children?
The Reversal of the Flynn Effect
The Impact of the Flynn Effect
Simple Reaction Times
Use of High-Difficulty Words
Backward Digit Span
Piagetian Developmental Staging
Genius Levels and Macro-innovations
Putting it All Together: The g.h Chronometric Factor
The Smoking Gun: A Decline in the Frequencies of Variants in the Genome Associated with Educational Attainment and g
What about Pollution?
Why Did the Murder Rate Continue to Decline?
Should We Be Telling You This?
Modern Social Cycle Theories
Cutting Through it All with General Intelligence
Virtue Signalling and Equality
Rome and General Intelligence
Contraception and Christianity
‘What Has Been Will Be Again’
The Seeds of Western Civilisation
The Spring of Civilisation
The Summer of Civilisation
Long-Term Knowledge Storage
The Bleak Mid-Winter
Published in the UK in 2018 by
PO Box 200, Exeter EX5 5YX
Copyright © 2018 Edward Dutton & Michael A. Woodley of Menie
The rights of Edward Dutton & Michael A. Woodley of Menie to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted. All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of brief passages for the purposes of criticism and discussion, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form either digital or physical other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any person who does so may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The views and opinions expressed herein belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Imprint Academic or Andrews UK Limited.
‘They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wits’ end.’
In producing this book the authors have benefited from fruitful discussions with a number of colleagues. They would like to acknowledge the assistance of Prof. James Flynn, Prof. Aurelio-José Figueredo, Dr Bruce Charlton, Prof. Guy Madison and Prof. Dimitri van der Linden. Figures 2 and 3 are reproduced by kind permission of Prof. Gregory Clark. All tables cited from Lynn (2011) are reproduced by kind permission of the Ulster Institute for Social Research, London.
Can You Believe We Put a Man on the Moon?
It’s incredible to think that in the year 2000 you could get from London to New York in just 3-and-a-half hours. These days, it takes longer than that to fly from London to Athens.
With the advent of Concorde in 1969, we had dealt with an extremely difficult problem—how to get from A to B much faster. We had been trying to solve this problem since 1954. That was when Arnold Hall, director of the Royal Aircraft Establishment, set up a committee to look into supersonic flight. The USA was an important country. Western Europe was almost as vital. There were crucial business connections between the two regions. These were massively complicated by the 8 hours it took to fly between America and Western Europe. It wasted time. It wasted money. How could we solve this problem?
The solution was Concorde. Concorde wasn’t a minor update to existing technology which made things slightly easier, like the introduction of active power-steering in BMW cars in 2003. This was a major breakthrough, comparable to the invention of aeroplanes themselves (‘How can we fly?’) or the Spinning Jenny (‘How can we massively speed up production?’). In the 1950s, some of the world’s most intelligent and creative people were put to work to find a solution to this enormous problem and, on 2nd March 1969, Concorde was in the sky.
It fell from the sky on 25th July 2000. Air France flight 4590 took off from Paris’s Charles de Gaulle Airport and promptly smashed into a hotel, killing all 100 passengers and 9 crew, as well as 4 people on the ground. The crash was essentially due to incompetence. A titanium ‘wear strip’ had been attached to the back of the thrust reverser of a Continental Airlines DC 10 Airliner as part of an operation to repair it. Not only was the wear strip badly produced, but it had not been made by the Airliner’s original equipment manufacturer. Accordingly, when the plane took off—just minutes before Concorde did on the same r
unway—the wear strip fell off. As Concorde accelerated over this sharp bit of metal at high speed, it punctured Concorde’s tyre, causing rubber to spin off the wheel and break open the fuel tank. This led to a fuel leak, which in turn led to a fire, resulting in one of Concorde’s engines being shut down. At the speed it was going, it was committed to take off, but Concorde couldn’t gain enough velocity or altitude to remain in the air. So Concorde crashed; all because an earlier aeroplane hadn’t been maintained properly. There had been problems with Concorde before—such as part of the rudder breaking off on a 1989 flight—but never a crash. The system had always worked. The pilots, in the heat of the moment, had always realised how to save the plane; the ground crew never made any major mistakes. Public confidence was shaken and, by 2003, Concorde was permanently grounded.[1] We were back to how it used to be. Flights between the UK and the USA were once again interminable.
1969 was also the year that we put a man on the Moon. In many ways, this may be the greatest achievement in the history of humanity to date. This was not something that developed organically and unplanned. Things naturally develop in this way if people of reasonable intelligence and conscientiousness work on them for long enough. Science fiction writers had long dreamed of going to the Moon.[2] The American government decided they wanted a manned flight to the Moon in around 1958, as they competed with the Soviets to win the Space Race. The Soviets had already beaten them in getting a satellite into space and would soon beat the USA in landing machinery on the Moon and getting a man into space. Thousands of America’s best minds were put to work to achieve this quite fantastic goal. It was accomplished on 20th July 1969, with every step in the voyage having to be ‘checked’ by eight NASA experts. With each new twist, they had to think on their feet, calculate all the possible risk scenarios, and reach the correct decision to avoid a tragedy. There were 5 further manned flights to the Moon until December 1972.[3] But we carried on dreaming of exploring the stars until the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster in 1986. The shuttle exploded just after launch because one of the rocket’s o-rings had malfunctioned due to recent cold weather. A potential problem with o-rings had been identified in 1971 but had never been addressed and it was only the severe cold combined with this failure that led to the crash. Caution would have dictated abandoning the launch due to the freezing conditions; financial considerations dictated otherwise. Confidence in manned space travel had been damaged. The space programme—in terms of serious leaps, like getting people to Mars—began to stagnate.[4]
Why? Why is it that we used to be able to fly from the USA to London in less than 4 hours but now we can’t? Why is it that we used to be able to put people on the Moon but now, it seems, we can’t? The answer is surprisingly simple. We are no longer intelligent enough to be able to do these things. We have become too stupid to keep Concorde in flight; let alone go back to the Moon.
‘Don’t be stupid!’ you might be thinking. ‘There are so many complex reasons why we haven’t been back to the Moon! The economic collapse in the 1970s, the end of the Cold War meaning there was no longer as strong an incentive to compete with the former Soviet Union, and attention turning to making life fairer for people on Earth. It’s the same with Concorde. There’s been another economic collapse since then. We just haven’t got round to doing these things, but we could. ’
Science looks for the theory that explains the most with the fewest assumptions. Named Occam’s Razor, after the English friar William of Occam (c.1287–1347), the axiom that the simplest theory is the best is accepted by all scientists. If we can plausibly explain two separate events with one theory, then that is superior to having a different theory for each event. We will show in this book that the simplest explanation, with the fewest assumptions, for our failure to get back to the Moon or to get Concorde back in the sky is that we are becoming less intelligent. Other explanations might account for one of the two events, or aspects of these, but they will not explain everything without leaving questions unanswered or assumptions hanging in the air. Our explanation does not suffer from these problems.
The Decline of Intelligence
Our argument is based on a number of foundations, each of which are ‘controversial’—at least among those who are sure they know best—but each of which we will demonstrate in the course of this book.
To understand what’s going on, we have to understand what ‘intelligence’ is and why it’s so important. ‘Intelligence’ is, basically, the ability to solve complex problems and do so quickly. The quicker you can solve a problem, the cleverer you are. The cleverer you are, the more complicated the problem has to be before you’re stumped. On adult samples intelligence is 0.8 heritable meaning that 80% of the variation among individuals is due to genetic factors (a heritability of one would indicate that 100% of the variation was genetic).[5] Socioeconomic status is strongly connected with intelligence. It ‘correlates’ strongly with it. A correlation is a measure of the degree to which the change in one variable predicts the change, either positively or negatively, in a second variable. The key measure captured by correlations is the percentage of variance which is simply the value of the correlation squared. Correlations are scaled from –1 to 1—these being perfect correlations (i.e. where 100% of the change in the second variable is predicted by the first). A correlation of 0 indicates no association between the variables. So, 0.7 is a very strong positive correlation indicating that the variables share almost 50% of the variance in common. Salary correlates with intelligence at 0.3, while intelligence correlates with education level at 0.5. And intelligence correlates with how well you do at school at 0.7.[6] We all know of people who aren’t that bright but work very hard and get top marks in their school leaving exams, but they are the minority. It’s intelligence that really counts.
We will see in this book that the process of Darwinian selection acting on intelligence did not end on the African Savannah 100,000 years ago. Rather, Darwinian selection, and social selection in particular—where Darwinian fitness stems from cooperation among or competition against other members of society—continues into the present day, with more general evolution among humans still on-going. This process led to what the British economist Gregory Clark, who we will meet later, has termed ‘The Survival of the Richest’.
Between the 1400s and the mid-19th century, in every generation, the richer 50% of the population had more surviving children than the poorer 50%.[7] As economic status and intelligence are positively correlated this led to us becoming more and more intelligent every generation. This carried on until the most intelligent people—the outlier, super-clever geniuses—were so numerous and so capable that their innovations actually allowed us to take control of our environment to an unprecedented extent. Here we had the Industrial Revolution. This led to more and more inventions, such that our standard of living—our ability to feed the population—outpaced population growth, meaning that our living standards now are higher than those of medieval kings.
However, this process led to a reversal of selection for intelligence. With huge leaps in medical technology, we went from around a third of children failing to reach adulthood to almost none failing to do so. In pre-Modern times, the children who died young were disproportionately the children of those with lower social status, and therefore by proxy, lower intelligence and, as we’ve seen, intelligence is strongly heritable. The main reason for this was that the less intelligent were poorer, lived in worse conditions, and had worse nutrition. This pattern of selection favouring higher intelligence ceased with the Industrial Revolution’s innovations in medicine and hygiene, such as widespread use of inoculations against formerly killer childhood diseases such as measles, in addition to social initiatives aimed at alleviating the effects of poverty. In fact, it didn’t just cease. It went into reverse.
With the rise of women in the workplace, we will show that the most intelligent women dedicate themselves to their careers in their twenties and even the first half of their thirties. If they have children at all (they often don’t want to or find they’ve left it too late) they will only have a small number of them. By contrast, less intelligent women, less career-focused and more impulsive, will have larger numbers of children, starting as teenagers and sometimes becoming grandparents by the time their more intelligent contemporaries begin thinking about motherhood. For these reasons, we will show that it has long been predicted that we would have become less intelligent.
