

The disadvantage of smarts - ValentineC
http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2012/06/quick-study-satoshi-kanazawa-intelligence?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/thedisadvantageofintelligence

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noonespecial
_They (intelligent people) are more likely to be homosexual, because humans
are evolutionarily designed to reproduce heterosexually._

Whaa??? That's the kind of thing you just can't assert without a mountain of
evidence. I'm actually surprised he stopped short of saying that they're more
likely to be white because the first humans evolved with darker skin tones.

This is reactor-grade crackpottery.

~~~
patricklynch
Two things:

Which of these points do you take issue with, specifically?:

    
    
        [1]. Intelligent people are more likely to be homosexual.,
        [2]. Humans are evolutionarily designed to reproduce heterosexually., or
        [3]. The causal relationship, [2] --> [1]
    

\---

Are you really expecting a "mountain of evidence" in a blog post?

His main point, that intelligent people are more likely to seek novelty and
deviate from evolutionary norms, seems plausible. And it's almost certainly
addressed in greater detail by one of the many pointers to suggested reading.

------
cypherpunks01
_My point is that the human consumption of alcohol, tobacco and psychoactive
drugs is a relatively new phenomenon._

Hard to take seriously a person who would say that.

~~~
gojomo
Do you have evidence against his claim?

I'd agree that humans (and other animals) have likely been consuming things
for psychoactive effect as far back as such substances could be found... but a
wee bit of consumption doesn't invalidate Kanazawa's point. We've gotten a
_lot_ better at collecting, cultivating, creating, and consuming
psychoactives, in evolutionarily-recent history.

Europeans had to learn about tobacco from the new world. Tobacco's been bred
to be stronger since the introduction of agriculture... just as our cultivated
fruits are far sweeter than their natural precursors.

Evidence of alcoholic fermentation goes back perhaps 10K years (skimming
Wikipedia). But even if the practice is quite a bit older, it's still
'evolutionarily recent'. Our primate ancestors might have happened across some
fermented juice occasionally... they couldn't pick up a six-pack at the Kwik-
E-Mart every night.

Finding and consuming exactly the right mushroom/cactus alkaloid for creating
visions, and not the other ones that kill you, has become a lot easier with
literate traditions. And pills made in chemistry labs.

What was a trickle of opportunities among our primate forebears – a level they
would have presumably adapted for – is now a torrent. Kanazawa's point here
seems sound in the broad-generalizing sense in which it was offered.

~~~
GiraffeNecktie
Finding and consuming exactly the right mushroom or cactus is actually not a
problem in traditional societies. They're pretty good at the gathering part of
'hunting and gathering'. The big difference with modern society is that
psychoactive substances were much more likely to be treated as sacraments for
religious ceremonies rather than something you consume at a rock concert or
while watching the Superbowl

~~~
voidrandom
And for your average American, how are the latter two activities not
sacraments?

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cristianpascu
Intelligence is not wisdom. Everyone, no matter how smart, has access to
wisdom.

Being intelligent complicates your life sometime. I suspect that you're more
likely to get a depression too.

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pathik
It's funny how everyone who reads this article tends to view himself as
intelligent. Maybe that's just the type of crowd at HN, or maybe it's Dunning-
Kruger at play.

Even if I share this link on Facebook, most people would agree with this
article, relate to a few points and think they're intelligent.

------
brunorsini
I found the interview pretty disappointing. As much as evolutionary psychology
can be fascinating, its claims have to be supported by _some_ data or at least
some seriously sharp reasoning to be worthy of anyone's time. That famous Carl
Sagan quote on extraordinary claims fits really well here.

His basic argument seems to be that intelligent people are always contrarians,
which to me seems downright false. Smart people just have a tendency to be
more skeptical, really. I guess framing things this way would not be as
inflammatory, however, and thus not sell as many books or get The Economist to
offer the dude a piece of its precious real estate.

Finally: _More intelligent boys (but not more intelligent girls) are more
likely to grow up to value sexual exclusivity._ = I would love to see what
kind of data (if any) he is using to back this up. Sounds really fishy to me.

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groth
Catchy title, but very suspicious article.

TLDR; author claims that intelligent people are paranoid freaks that prefer
evolutionarily stupid things. What things are evolutionarily stupid?
Sterility, monogamy, homosexuality, and other manifestations of social order.

Or, a scientific spin on fundamentalism.

~~~
gojomo
Actually, Kanazawa implies intelligent people are less paranoid, because
paranoia was the evolutionary norm.

~~~
groth
I think you're misreading the article.

Kanazawa makes a claim that intelligent men are more likely to prefer monogamy
because the evolutionary norm is polygamy.

The reporter/interviewer says "Really?". Because, here's the thing, Kanazawa's
argument at this point doesn't hold. Just because somebody is good at
something, does not mean they prefer it. Just because intelligent people are
good at adapting to evolutionarily novel things does not mean they prefer to
do those things.

Where does the preference come from? According to Kanazawa, because of
paranoia. Humans appear to be designed to be paranoid; they are designed to
see intentional agents behind natural phenomena.

"This is because making the mistake of thinking that a natural event has an
intentional agent behind it is less potentially costly than being oblivious
and thinking that an intentional event, like someone trying to kill you, has a
coincidental cause. The paranoid outlive the oblivious."

I believe that at this point, he's referring to humans in general. Humans in
general are paranoid. Intelligent people are extra paranoid, hence they don't
want to do the evolutionarily normal thing, they want to do the evolutionarily
novel thing.

~~~
gojomo
But Kanazawa's schtick for this piece is: 'humans are designed/evolved to do
X, so intelligent tend to be more Y in contrast'.

He mentions paranoia as a 'designed to be' trait. He directly links paranoia
as an explanation for belief in God, and says the intelligent are more likely
to be atheist. That pretty strongly suggests 'paranoia' is one of the
ancestral norms from which he thinks the intelligent are now tending to
deviate.

------
unimpressive
This article is weak. His entire argument appears to be based on the
assumption that intelligence necessarily leads to people choosing an
"evolutionarily novel" thing over a smarter or evolutionarily beneficial
thing.

Citation please?

~~~
gojomo
When the article lists a bunch of 'suggested reading' with more detail, and
the article subject is in fact a researcher in the field, if you really want a
'citation' you should just go to the recommendations or publications. Not wave
'citation please' like a cheap flag.

~~~
unimpressive
>Not wave 'citation please' like a cheap flag.

Okay. Your right. Instead I am going to talk about the conclusions the article
makes.

"Because reproductive success is the ultimate goal of all living organisms, so
intelligent women are more likely to go against such evolutionary design."

If were going to go ahead and define the most important things in life as the
most evolutionarily viable ones, then we've already ceded _way_ too much
ground. And even this argument doesn't take into account things like
overpopulation, if everyone tried to maximize baby output, we'd fill the
planet up mighty quick. So it may actually make sense to reproduce _less_ ,
but not necessarily not at all.

"My theory would also predict that intelligent men should be less likely to
become parents, but data do not confirm that. Some suggest that women prefer
to have children with more intelligent men, but the data contradict this too."

If the data already contradicts your hypothesis, then why say it?

"Men’s income or education has no effect on their likelihood of becoming
parents. Intelligence doesn’t allow us to do better what we are designed by
evolution to do."

Designed is a misnomer, natural selection works because those who survive are
the ones represented. We weren't "designed" to do anything. Were here because
the people before us had babies. It is preferable that we continue to have
babies so that people will exist in the future, but raw baby making isn't
everything. Our "Evolutionarily novel" environment was made through the use of
intelligence. On a societal level intelligence is important to create novel
inventions which keep more humans alive long enough to make babies. If
intelligent people don't reproduce, but the populations that they spawn in
stay alive longer than dumber populations, then the people who have recessive
intelligence genes that let them occasionally spawn a genius will do just
fine, leaving intelligent people in the system and making them evolutionarily
valuable.

Of course, on a individual scale this may not work out too well for the
intelligent people.

With all that in mind, in the spirit of Fermi's Paradox: _If intelligence
isn't evolutionarily valuable, and is in fact negatively correlated with
evolutionary success, then why are the smart people still here?_ (In non-
trivial numbers.)

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brntn
With all the discussion about reddit blocking certain domains early last week,
I find it interesting that this hour old post has 27 points and is surrounded
by other posts that have between 1 and 5 on the new page.

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ifewalter
wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

I am not sure what "intelligent persons" the writer researched before writing
the article, but the points are very misleading and wrong.

------
MaysonL
His first suggested reading is The Bell Curve.

He's a management professor.

Flagged as BS.

------
vhf
The advantage of smarts is that they quote Saint-Exupéry correctly, or not
quote it at all.

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koglerjs
gross.

>Because reproductive success is the ultimate goal of all living organisms

I know it's popular and often interesting to examine evolutionary motivation
for behavior, but there's a line crossed in saying it's the ultimate goal for
all life.

We have a long history of celibate lifestyles. We have a long history of
discovering motivations that supercede our biological imperatives.

This is an article with some vaguely cited statistics and some vaguely stated
opinions.

There isn't even the basic attempt to qualify the most important things in
life. It seems that this is because the submitted title is linkbait and much
different from the actual title ('The Disadvantage of Smarts,' hardly better);
the content seems to be a low-key low-detail interview.

the more I look at this the more I suspect ballot-stuffing to get this to the
front page. 13 points and it's at #4 after 48 minutes?

Well, I guess that fulfills my grumpy quota for a while.

~~~
nerdfiles
But he does not say "the ultimate goal for all life." He says,

"... the ultimate goal of all living organisms."

"Life" is vague and philosophically interesting; "living organism" is less so,
and if philosophically interesting, it's interesting for different reasons.

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Centigonal
Hahaha -- my reaction to the article was as thus:

"Intelligent people are less likely to have babies? Oh, good riddance, then!
Less children means a smaller drain on our planet's natural resources and is
an essential measure toward letting us catch up to our growth to a point where
we can adequately provide for everyone...

...Oh god -- I wouldn't be a very good evolutionary parent, would I?"

