
Has humanity reached ‘peak intelligence’? - SQL2219
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190709-has-humanity-reached-peak-intelligence
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aaron695
There are a billion people who's childrens IQ are being permanently reduced
from lack of infant nutrients.

You have many billions of people alive who have had this happened to them.

Then toss in the other things that reduce IQ post infancy.

Lot of scope for worldwide improvement.

Looking at the top countries is a different important. But understanding the
Flynn effect would be step one which isn't happening. There don't even seem to
be any theories. When you can't even find crackpots YouTube talking about it,
there's an issue.

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Bostonian
A recent paper finds that The Flynn effect for fluid IQ may not generalize to
all ages or ability levels: A population-based study of 10,000 US adolescents
[https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/2019-platt.pdf](https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/2019-platt.pdf)
. "IQs decreased 4.9 points for those with IQ ≤ 70 (95% CI = −4.9, −4.8), but
increased 3.5 points among those with IQ ≥ 130 (95% CI = 3.4, 3.6)."

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maestrokuro
I feel like there's quite a lot scope for engineering the levels of
intelligence within a given population. To my knowledge, most languages spoken
throughout the world reached their current forms naturally, without any kind
of deliberate influence by their speakers. What if, however, a language was
actively designed to be as information dense as possible? What effect would it
have on the average intelligence of a population in which said language was
gradually introduced to the point where children were raised speaking it?

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mood_lines
The population would likely speak it slower to compensate. Information density
and speech rate are inversely correlated, with an average information rate
around 39 bits/second.
[https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/9/eaaw2594](https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/9/eaaw2594)

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perl4ever
I suspect we're in the process of exponentially increasing the selection
pressure on intelligence, because of the pervasive use of computers/AI/ML to
exploit consumers.

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JohnBooty
The sophistication of consumer exploitation is increasing, no doubt!

However, I can't fathom this having an evolutionary impact. It is awfully
difficult to fail so hard at being a consumer that you don't make it to your
reproductive years, right?

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perl4ever
Sometimes people think of evolution as a binary thing - you reproduce or you
don't. But a few generations on, some people leave huge numbers of descendants
and some don't. There isn't a huge variance in the number of children people
have, but that gets multiplied for grandchildren, and again for great-
grandchildren...so the scale is not 0 to 1 (or 2 or 3), but 0 to <big number>.
I wouldn't make any sweeping statements a priori about how economic inequality
affects that, but if some people have all their resources vacuumed up and some
don't, it's going to affect their lives on average somehow.

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boyadjian
That is an interesting question. I think that intelligence of human being is
limited by sexual behavior. Our instinct of reproduction has the consequence
that people willing the most to reproduce themselves become a majority, but
these are not necessary the most intelligent. Yes, I think that peak
intelligence have been reached. We see that the way countries are led : Often,
decisions made to be popular, but not very effective on the long term.

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notjtrig
This study says the Flynn effect has been reversing for starting in the birth
year 1975.

[https://www.pnas.org/content/115/26/6674](https://www.pnas.org/content/115/26/6674)

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AlecSchueler
From the 70s-2000 there was considerably more led in the atmosphere than
before/after which I've seen linked to increased rates of e.g. violent crimes
globally during that period. I suspect that the reversal of the Flynn effect
during that time is also related and we will see the reverse of the reverse
from kids born since the 00

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perl4ever
Huh? The late 70s was when lead was banned in a lot of stuff. And you can see
the higher violent crime in countries that used lead longer, like say
Venezuela.

So, yeah, everybody knows about the linkage, but it should make you stop and
consider that it would make you expect the opposite of the claim above.

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rowanG077
Not likely. We aren't even trying to reach 'Peak intelligence'.

~~~
JohnBooty
I believe "peak" in this context means "the highest point we will ever reach,"
not "the highest point this species might theoretically be capable of."

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derp_dee_derp
Yes, we've removed most evolutionary pressures so we are kinda just drifting
aimlessly.

