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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31623 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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...presuming that the selection effects that gifted them with higher intelligence didn't trade off for anything else important in a less abstract environment. Old stories have many people too clever to be trustworthy, who come to bad ends. Obviously, those stories are less popular with people who are very, very smart, but one wonders if they point to a balancing mechanism in the social game. For all the frequent claims by the highly intelligent that their minds contain those of lesser mortals, it doesn't look to me like it actually works out that way in practice all that often.

Old stories have many people too clever to be trustworthy, who come to bad ends.

Beware fictional evidence.

Old stories are spread by people who wish to control the people who are clever, by reducing their status. Some of the old stories about people who were too clever and untrustworthy are clearly wrong by our standards, like all those stories about Jews cleverly cheating the Gentiles.

Some of the old stories about people who were too clever and untrustworthy are clearly wrong by our standards, like all those stories about Jews cleverly cheating the Gentiles.

I have a bridge to sell you

IIRC (from steve hsu?), GWASes have found, in the modern environment, little antagonistic pleiotropy between traits.

Can you give a specific example of how intelligence might trade off negatively? Reading about hunter gatherers has given me a general sense that intelligence was generally valuable there too. Untrustworthy people of similar equal IQ trick or harm each other all the time - intelligence changes the dynamics a bit, but I don't see it making that significant of a difference, compared to the potential benefit.

Can you give a specific example of how intelligence might trade off negatively?

It's more energy expensive to run that mostly unnecessary 4070. The ability to focus on concrete issues is another obvious problem. Dumb+dilligent has advantages over the common mix of smart+absent-minded. When dealing with necessary, repetitive, simple tasks, I've often observed that "dumber" people seem to have a better capacity to just shut up and flowstate.

When dealing with necessary, repetitive, simple tasks, I've often observed that "dumber" people seem to have a better capacity to just shut up and flowstate

I think this is a modern thing (relative to hunter-gatherers at least) - it's much easier to not 'shut up and flowstate' when it's possible to survive without doing boring repetitive tasks for many hours a day, and when there are more interesting options (books, computer, etc).

There must be some pleiotropy, because most species sit in local optima for most of the time.

You know, there isn't that a 4-million dataset is open for everyone for study. For privacy reasons, large GWAS studies are only combing linear correlations together. We know incest is bad yet those GWAS studies fail to show it. This is very crude model and you shouldn't take it too seriously.

examples

Pursuing search for eternal life instead of reproducing oneself.

Low SMV (for men), ceteris paribus.

Being a cuck.

Writing long, elaborate, texts into defence for being a cuck.

In a broad sense 'antagonistic pleiotropy' is everywhere, stuff like having a human-sized brain means you are intelligent but consume more energy, better wound healing -> cells that replicate more -> cancer, etc.

That's different from antagonistic pleiotropy among existing, common genetic variants in the current human population, which (according to steve, by my memory) is uncommon.

We know incest is bad yet those GWAS studies fail to show it

Among animals in general, this meta-analysis found that inbreeding is very common and often not avoided at all.

I don't think Hsu is that concerned antagonistic pleiotropy. I think he'd prefer increasing IQ via PGS even if it's say decreased athleticism and many other traits.

Isn't it that to getect genetic effect, we need sample size of N, but to detect pleiotropy, we need N^2?

Among animals in general, this meta-analysis found that inbreeding is very common

I don't understand your point here, avoiding it has costs also. Doesn't mean it's bad for individual.

Can you give a specific example of how intelligence might trade off negatively?

You think you're smarter than the people around you, which is true. This leads you to believe that you're smart enough to get away with grifting one of them, which is also true. This leads you to think you're smart enough to get away with making a habit of it, which turns out to be false because of complex social dynamics that you aren't smart enough to navigate flawlessly. You get a bad reputation, the tribe cuts you out and you die alone, or maybe you get your head smashed in with a rock.

Pride, arrogance, hubris, these are vices that elevated intelligence encourages. See also the monotonous failure of technocracy from the Enlightenment to the present day. Just because you're the smartest person in the room doesn't mean you're smart enough to pull off whatever crazy plan your ego talked you into.

I don't think this works, but it is hard to speculate on this stuff.

Reasons to believe otherwise include the phenomena of cults and cult leaders. They tend to be more intelligent than their followers, and they benefit massively from stringing the followers along in a massive grift. In general, the outsized benefits of such a successful grift, e.g. the 'access to women' one sees in said cult leaders (compare to polygamy where the chief has many wives), probably outweighs it failing often.

Someone might also notice the grifting repeatedly fail, and then stop doing it - this might permanently slightly reduce his reputation in the tribe, without him being kicked out or smashed with a rock.

this substack on the "The evolutionary anthropology of deception, magic, and violence.", often gets into how deception or one persongroup taking advantage of another were common in premodern societies - also making the above seem less plausible.

Plus, anecdotally from normal-IQ friends, people-of-normal-intelligence successfully scam or trick each other all the time. If it's sometimes a successful strategy for people of similar IQ, it should often be successful for those of higher Iq as well.

But as I said, hard to make accurate statements about the way intelligence evolves.

See also the monotonous failure of technocracy from the Enlightenment to the present day

I'm not exactly sure what 'technocracy' means here, but the current state of society seems like a 'success' for technocracy in the natural-selection sense of 'reproducing'.

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