This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Building off the embryo selection discussion below:
What do you think IQ is exactly?
I’ve always thought about a general factor of intelligence as very similar to a general factor of athleticism. In this context, IQ is a measure of the former much like a triathlon time can be a measure of the latter.
In every sport, triathlon time is going to be positively correlated with ability across the whole population. However, the absolute best performers on specific tasks will not be the ones that do the best in triathlon, because each task has room for optimization that has negative tradeoffs for triathlon performance ("no free lunch"). If you single-mindedly select for triathlon performance, you’ll get a generally more athletic population. On the other hand, you’ll funnel away from getting a Bolt, a Phelps, a Messi, a Jordan, a Federer, etc. Contributions to athleticism aren’t necessarily linear. Individually sub-optimal parameters can align just right to produce optimal results.
There are potential unforeseen consequences of restricting available gene-space by widespread adoption of IQ optimization. Traits are notoriously polygenic (each trait is affected by many genes), and virtually every gene is pleiotropic (each gene affects many traits). Our understanding of both intelligence and genetics is rife with unknown unknowns. Would we still get von Neumann, Einstein, etc.? Supposing the technology became widely available and affordable, is that a fence you’d be willing to tear down?
Edit: It seems I didn't communicate my main concern particularly well. There are two issues with a myopic optimization on IQ: one is negative health effects due to pleiotropy of the associated genes. The other, which I am more concerned with here, is the potential for "lost opportunities". This is what I was trying to illustrate with the triathlon analogy. You can get a narrowing of the variations in intelligence types and a potential restriction on the very upper end of ability. We don't know if Newton, Gauss, Einstein, von Neumann, Ramanujan, and Tao all had a similar combination of traits that led to their exceptional abilities, or if they all had different pieces that fit together in unique ways to produce a unique form of genius (what I meant by "not summing linearly"). Analogous to the way that Phelps, Bolt, and Messi have very different body compositions that produce their unique athletic excellence. A population of excellent triathletes would be more athletic, much like a population of people with 115 IQ would be more intelligent, but that kind of optimization may come at the expense of the variation needed to produce those truly exceptional at related but slightly orthogonal tasks.
So far, the only one tradeoff we know for sure for IQ is 'doesn't want children'. Suppose we made genetic score for triathlon. What makes you think sports celebrities you listed wouldn't be above average in these scores? What if we don't get Einstein but get 10x more geniuses that are better than Einstein?
Isn't intelligence correlated with mental illness?
That seems like a big tradeoff.
The opposite. Higher IQ = better mental health.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5014225/
I mean, it makes sense right. Higher IQ leads to better life outcomes which leads to better mental health.
Perhaps you could "correct" for life outcomes and get a neutral result, but that wouldn't make a lot of sense as high IQ causes good life outcomes.
Yep, an entire class of low intelligence alcoholics & criminals aren't considered mentally ill because their affliction is socially acceptable.
Instead of manic genius, you get alcoholic loser.
More options
Context Copy link
Hmm. It seems this is an area of at least some some contention, with some research (e.g. a Mensa survey, which obviously is based on a self-selected sample) suggesting a higher correlation, but most research suggesting IQ is protective.
There's also some evidence suggesting a genetic correlation between autism and high intelligence.
My guess is that (to the degree that IQ is genetic) is that it's probably possible to "overselect" for it to the detriment of other good things (although IIRC we also know that e.g. autism is probably at a minimum correlated with other factors, such as older parents and maternal fever during pregnancy).
In my personal experience I have observed that the connection between high IQ, good life outcomes, and mental health is not strictly linear. But that's anecdotal and a very small sample size.
I think Mensa selects for people whose IQ test score itself is their highest "achievement", i.e. the lowest performers at any given tier of IQ. So it's very possible that Mensa members could have on average unusually poor mental health.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
They looked at phenotypes. Imagine looking at two nearly identical twins, both with genetic predisposition to schizophrenia but one was lucky to avoid it, and the other got it along with IQ drop that goes with it. This would inflate positive correlation between IQ and mental health. There should be looked something like Scott wrote about: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/non-cognitive-skills-for-educational
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link