I really enjoyed scrolling through more than half the article before finding the answer.
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Part of it seems to be the lifestyle choices that smarter people tend to make: namely, that they smoke at much lower rates. Similarly, smarter people are more likely to follow other healthy practices, have a better handle on their health care, and be less likely to work in a job that puts them at physical risk.
Socioeconomic status could play a role as well, perhaps allowing people to access better education and care
Phrased in a more useful way: It seems likely that the type of person who tends to act in long term interest including getting an education, following basic health advice and so on, also tends to score higher on IQ tests.
It is important to distinguish between the kind of intelligence that IQ tests test (primarily quick thinking, pattern recognition, short term memory ability, etc.) from smart in the more general sense which may include being knowledgeable.
My guess is the pattern recognition section is the real boost here.
If you are good at pattern recognition, then you may subconsciously realize that people who do X get result Y.
If you want result Y for yourself, then you may attempt to do X at a greater likelihood than your specific cultural or ethnic background would otherwise suggest.
Living longer, being richer, happier, healthier, etc. are all things that typically come to fruition for a person based on their activities and the choices they make.
It's an allergy to equating a higher IQ score with being smarter.
Being smarter can result in a higher score, but so can practicing multiple choice tests, and being more familiar with the language used by the test. I won't get the same results for a test in English as one in French.
> Now that Republicans are voluntarily culling themselves in vastly higher numbers (at 2.73 times and higher death rates in "red" versus "blue" counties) by believing and repeating and acting on Trump's anti-vax anti-mask anti-science anti-education anti-health-care misinformation, there are also strong political factors. But I strongly suspect it's also correlated with lower intelligence, too.
You need to emphasize more with your fellow citizens instead of just insulting them. Some of them will think that you're a state puppet, that just parrots Fauci's propaganda, a good useful idiot, without any ability whatsoever to think by yourself, do you think it would be a kind interpretation of your position?
We can have close zero COVID deaths, we just need a ten year lockdown and ride this out. This is not done because there are tradeoffs, do you think maybe the red states were looking for different tradeoffs? Have you attempted to quantify this tradeoffs, it's extremely hard, see [0]. Were you aware that the death rate is not the single relevant datum? Maybe you should stop shouting science and inform yourself better on this topic.
I see you're very upset at republicans, when was the last time you talked to one?
> But actually it's not that the left wants them to die, it's simply that the left wants them to stop killing innocent people, because we still have empathy on all the intelligent, elderly, immune compromised, heath care workers, and simply unlucky people they're taking down with them as they voluntarily cull themselves.
You should stop broadcasting your lack of understanding of the situation. Respond to the parts of my previous comment that address this instead of repeating yourself please.
Partly due to better choices. Partly because iq -> better job -> more money -> better options. Partly due to social circles. And partly biological - I don't know if high iq is positively associated with good genes overall, but both bad genes and bad childhood are definitely a cause for both lower iq and shorter life span. Which makes low iq and shorter life span correlated.
Anecdatum: I cannot complain about my IQ, have never had any success in our society, have been poor most time of my life, never had many options, have very few friends, and still choose a healthy lifestyle.
Statistics and correlations never apply to individuals. The illustration my stats professor used was: ”We all agree that generally women are shorter than men, but Petey is 5’2” and Claire is 6’
Try to live a different life? Yes, and I found out that my values are utterly incompatible with society's. I have often put honesty (not in a rude way, but in an intellectual way) and the well-being of other people before my own needs, only to find out that this is a loser's strategy.
>squash any trace of "but than I won't be the authentic me" excuse.
This is super important. We, for lack of a better phrase, live in a society. And that means getting along with others in that society even though you might have to put on a false front from time to time. Other people will construct their own image of you that you will find to be inaccurate anyways, no matter how honest you may be.
The key I learned (for I used to be like you) was to just talk less. Not everything must be said. Preserves my honesty (I didn’t lie, I merely kept quiet). Preserves the peace. And so on.
I is indeed very interesting that (at least) two readers conflate "honest" with "rude" even when I noted that this is not what I meant. FWIW, I am a very silent and very careful and empathetic person. The reason I do not fit in is that I these seem to be rare traits. Appreciated, sure, reciprocated, barely.
I think a lot of people make this conflation because they live honest lives and haven't experienced your outcome. It is hard to understand why you received such a poor reaction to your honesty. Perhaps luck of the draw and it worked out poorly.
I think I am pretty damn honest and my experience is that the more honest I am, the better my life becomes.
This holds true in my work, my relationships, and most importantly with myself
It's kinda impolite of me to give advice when I know so little but... oh well. It's Saturday and I'm too sleep deprived to do anything but haunt forums.
My particular solution to your dilemma was to find a better circle of friends. An anime club, of all things, some 20 years ago. The specific hobby doesn't matter, but having compatible people around helped a lot. I'm almost equally uncomfortable in the classic "party" scenario as I was at 18, but in my current lifestyle that happens maybe once a decade. The rest is filled with socializing, my way.
As for putting honesty and other people before yourself... hehe. That's classic lack of social skills and reading cues. Did that - god, that used to do a number on my dating experiences. Sometimes you have to NOT say the first thing that comes to your head. That's the first skill to learn. Second you'll find a small voice inside your head that'll start telling you when you're about to say the wrong thing - start cultivating it. But first of all you need the commitment to actually listen to it, and squash any trace of "but than I won't be the authentic me" excuse.
Well, thanks for your advice, but I am afraid that you have completely misunderstood my posting. I stressed that I meant "honest in a non-rude way". Most people experience me as a very agreeable person with excellent social skills. You can be honest without hurting people's feelings. I mean honest in the sense that I own my mistakes and do not attempt to look good in the face of failure. Listening is probably the most developed skill I have and I do not care about "authenticity". I am not writing this to prove you wrong, just to show you how far off your assumptions can be after reading a few lines about a person on the Internet.
If you're smart enough to realize honesty is getting in your way, but are unwilling to sacrifice it to attain your goal, you're not really "trying". In the sense that you're not actually using your intelligence to achieve your goal.
Always putting the well-being of other people before your own is indeed a bad strategy. It ignores self care and leaves you open to be taken advantage of.
You can do a lot more good if you are mentally and physically healthy and not being continually scammed.
As a trite example, I like to pick up mentally unstable hitchhikers (literally). I don't do it on my way to a job interview, and I don't do it if they seem especially dangerous.
I'm still processing this truth. I basically put my life, university and career on stop to help my sister. I oscillate between thinking "I'm a good person" to "I just wish I were a selfish bastard".
It's not a looser strategy, it is just a choice and compromise. You can't do or have everything. Sometimes you have to give things up to get other things you want.
You prioritized one are over another and there is nothing wrong with that.
I went in expecting almost all that last one and a negligible effect from anything else, but it seems there really is something there. Interesting, I'll have to look more into it.
Don't underestimate poor choices. Just diabetes management alone probably covers a few percentage points of the difference. It's not executive function either, it's plain complicated.
Seemingly more plausible explanation: some form of underlying "individual biological healthiness" predicts both IQ and longevity.
Otherwise, you need to make the argument that IQ enables people to make better choices, but until recently in history human biology was a mystery to even the most educated. The famous "food pyramid", for example, promoted a high-carb diet and did not favour health or longevity.
Such underlying factors could be caused by random conditions; illnesses, environment, sleep habits, or very early in life - even in womb?
It would be interesting to measure IQ in childhood and 20 or 30 years later to see how many people have a significantly lower IQ as adults because of poor health choices.
Or there is no direct causation: people who make choices which are long-life-ish tend to be those with higher-IQ. Why? Because, jointly with IQ, also correlates wealth (etc.).
It's odd they flag suicide. The statistics there seem to correlate very well with average population density. So, they might have just accidentally measured the fact that smart people tend to move into cities if they didn't already live there.
Outside of that, and outside of COVID, the third leading cause of death for many years was "Accidental Self-Inflicted Injury." Just below Cancer and Heart Disease. The presumed correlations between higher intelligence and avoiding becoming a part of these categories seems like another accidental measure here.
I absolutely hate these fake science blog spam with a clickbait title, especially when the "conclusion" basically refutes the entire premise of the article. There is something very American with these articles. "why eating lentils makes people 80% richer", you could generate these with a markov chain...
First it suggests wealth = iq… maybe thats what you mean? Not sure what you mean but my following points are related to this
Second it also means produced viable offspring with healthy people, which really means wealthy people *nutted in healthy people. There is an extremely high correlation to wealth and which sex is choosing based on “health” (as opposed to equal or greater wealth)
Third, they probably nutted in unhealthy people too. Just might as well acknowledge the human flexibility in reproductive activity.
Fourth, it suggests the healthy person needed the wealth to maintain the healthy lifestyle or spread it to the wealthy person or subsequent offspring, here I have the most doubts
But if I misunderstood what you were getting at, let me know. Married may be less crass but its probably inaccurate
To generalize, I am saying all positive traits are correlated genetically even when the cause isn't the same genetic factor. Attractive people tend to marry other attractive people.
Being wealthy is a proxy for intelligence that rhymes with the word healthy.
A poor healthy person in a polluted area will need money to move out or they will steadily lose their health. Wealth lets you choose where to live, and avoid unhealthy places
>have found that there are genetic underpinnings to the connection between intelligence and lifespan. ... When researchers controlled for smoking, for example, they found that the associations between IQ and deaths related to smoking persisted, suggesting that something innate was also influencing longevity.
Genetic factors that affect intelligence may affect the whole nervous system. We already know that IQ is correlates strongly with reaction speed. It would not be surprising if there is correlation with immune system (immune and nervous systems communicate) for example.
pre- and postnatal health is big factor in decreasing intelligence. Parasite load and intelligence correlate in country by country comparisons.
let me guess without reading article, they are more aware of importance of prevention
same reason why married men live longer - less dangerous activities combined with wives who wanna keep their husbands alive so nag them about their health and prevention, for instance reason why my inlaw had to stop smoking
edit: also I will save you a click
"The slight benefit to longevity from higher intelligence seems to increase all the way up the intelligence scale, so that very smart people live longer than smart people, who live longer than averagely intelligent people, and so on."
"Part of it seems to be the lifestyle choices that smarter people tend to make: namely, that they smoke at much lower rates. Similarly, smarter people are more likely to follow other healthy practices, have a better handle on their health care, and be less likely to work in a job that puts them at physical risk."
Obviously if your work is less dangerous you are less likely to die, you could just get better work than improving your IQ. Same with prevention, you can have pretty low IQ if you just follow list of precautions, so only thing making the difference with IQ is those things you should be aware and it has nothing to do really in the end IQ. I'd like to see low IQ group vs high IQ group with same guidance, nagging about dangers of smoking, nagging about preventive checks etc, then we would most likely see there is hardly any difference. Maybe good test groups would be rich vs poor families taking care of kids requiring attention into late age like down syndrome or similar, them you work compare their health condition at same age, though obviously rich (read higher IQ usually) can provide better health, food and other options.
>>> less likely to work in a job that puts them at physical risk.
During lockdown panic I was 'critical infrastructure' fixing heavy equipment. Nothing slowed down for me, risks were same working on broken machines (or greater depending on your view of virus risk) and the laptop crowd got to 'stay safe' at home while others got pandemic pay to sit at home.
Many dangerous jobs get little acknowledgment. These people literally keep the gears of society turning, and are often derided as being dumb with dirty fingernails.
I just spent time driving through the gulf coast and came to a similar conclusion. Have you all seen Mobile, for example? Oil rigs as far as the eyes can see. Stopped by the gas station to see these poor, filthy men counting change to buy tea and cigarettes.
It made me really think...these people work way, way harder than me on something way more important to society (right now). Why are they so mistreated? Why do whole cities , usually poor, have to deal with the eyesore and potential health issues of oil and gas? And why do oil companies, who are unmistakably the richest in the world, pay less than tech companies who lose money each year?
It just feels like some weird, giant imbalance. If you asked me today whether I'd rather go without Twitter, FB, and Netflix...or gas and plastics, sorry, you lose Silicon Valley.
I don't have any answers or even suggestions, just thoughts and questions for now.
> these people work way, way harder than me on something way more important to society (right now). Why are they so mistreated?
Just an aside, but oil & gas jobs are generally quite well paid, including the filthy ones. But maybe not all. The reason why very important jobs can be very low paid is no great mystery: it’s because the labor market is based on supply and demand, not importance.
How hard people work has never and should never affect how much they are paid. That isn't a factor in supply and demand except to the extent that people will be more hesitant to take hard jobs.
Successful wolves gain control over quite a lot of territory and rule it ruthlessly. Since land has value to all living things, and wolves control land, they are actually quite wealthy.
I've done everything from digging ditches, to being a mechanic, to corpse/biohazard cleanup, along with literally around 70 other manual labor jobs. Before finally after getting my back hurt and laid up for a year I spent that time learning Linux and system administration and on to programming eventually becoming systems administrator and as the job continued to change and evolve (though really the main difference is it's not a hair ball of PERL anymore) senior devops engineer, ended up as a team lead leading a team of devops engineers, moved on to owning my own succesful consulting agency providing devops ci-cd pipeline design implementation and maintenance. So you could say I'm part of the "laptop crowd".
My dad was a heavy equipment mechnanic in El-Paso repairing the hydraulics on earth movers and everything else any of the big equipment needed.
I appreciate that hard work as only someone who has done it can do, but the angst over supposed derision reminds me of the rhetoric that comes from that think tank owned, walking, talking piece of propaganda Mike Rowe (such a shame I liked his show). No one is deriding anyone. If you want the truth, most coders, and system admins love anyone who can work with their hands and spend a bunch of time on projects of their own, getting grease under their fingernails, or wood shaving in their beard, or welding sparks in their hair. Most of them day dream of a job where they make things they can hold in their hands. I still restore and build period correct choppers and hot rods, my friends in the industry weld, or blow glass, or work with wood. Working with our hands is a way to get away from computer work.
The truth is people in tech just don't think about these jobs because they haven't come in contact with the people working them.
With that said, the dumb and dirty finger nailed trope didn't leap into existence out of thin air, you may not like to hear this but, a hell of a lot of people working those jobs ARE dumb as hell and would work any other kind of job if they could learn how to do so. I worked with them, and many could not do anything else. Being able to hang parts, or being clever about aspects of their trade does not mean someone is smart, or knowledgeable it means they are good at what they do for 40 to 60 hours a week. Racism, addiction to stupid vices like dip, violence at home to their wife or children, DUIs, were common at practically every place I worked, and I would get shit for reading during my lunch breaks. If I had known I could use my ability to research, remember, and learn complex ideas to get out of doing manual labor sooner I would have, and I would probably still have functioning l3, and l4, discs.
Conversely there are plenty of smart and driven men who just can't stomach being cooped up inside all day, in my experience they ended up running their own work crews as a general contractor, or becoming a foreman, or like yourself drifting to the technical end of things, working on complex equipment that requires problem solving skills rather than just hanging parts. Either way I guess the point of my reply was to try to let you know you probably have the wrong idea about the laptop crowd in exactly the same way some of them have it wrong about people who work with their hands.
Apologies for any grammar or spelling mistakes, while I can do anything computer related, I started working at 15 as a roofer and never returned to formal schooling, so writing well is a weakness of mine.
Thanks. I was born in a completely blue collar family (first to go to university) and my father was the first one to congratulate me on not having to do what he does for exactly the same reason you wrote.
Perfectly well written, and more importantly to me, insightful and interesting. Seems obvious once you said it, but I think we forget not everybody is like us sometimes.
"Obviously if your work is less dangerous you are less likely to die"
That is not completely obvious, some kinds of highly qualified work will wear you down with stress. In my country, female doctors and even veterinarians have significantly higher rates of suicide. Some other professionals "compensate" for their stress with booze and drugs. Being a singer or an actor isn't dangerous per se, but the levels of substance abuse among them are concerning. One of the most talented pop voices here died choking in his sleep when he was both drunk and high on cocaine. He was 40 something.
Notably, this is impossible to prevent with just better and safer work equipment. Work in mines etc. is still pretty dangerous, but thanks to better equipment and methods, the death rate is going downwards.
The article is more interesting than that. It points out that “very smart people tend to live longer than ordinarily smart people”, and so on down the curve.
I see IQ tests like the NFL combine. A battery of tests to demonstrate ability, but at the end of the day it doesn’t mean a whole lot beyond one’s ability to excel at specific tasks. Sure, someone who runs a 4.4 40 yard dash is fast, but sometimes they end up not having the same “game speed.” Likewise if someone is a genius IQ, but can’t turn that high test score into productivity then what does it matter?
The tests, like the IQ, can flag potential problems that have gone over looked, but beyond that it doesn’t matter if someone runs a 4.3, 4.4, or 4.5 40.
Exactly. And if you look at the candidates that run a 4.3 and those that take 20 seconds, you'll probably notice some really big difference in physicality
That doesn't make IQ a good proxy. There are a dozen proxy values just as good as or better than IQ.
IQ is unscientific nonsense from the 60s that that been overstudied for cultural reasons.
Any time you read it in an article you can substitute it for "socioeconomic reasons". Which is just as unclear but at least it is less of a smokescreen to cast doubt on causality.
That page lists a number of studies that correlates IQ with a number of other lifestyle factors, and a few that postulates things like "well established in the psychological community". I haven't taken the time to read them thoroughly, but from a glance at the summary not a single one touches on the subject.
No one disputes that IQ works, that is not the claim, just as the even more nebulous term "socioeconomic factors" works across wide field s of study. But it is not the best predictor we have.
Not sure what types of propaganda you see in this, or who stands to gain from it. If any, it should be those heavily invested in questionable theories, perhaps even making money from peddling books and courses.
If you really want to argue that IQ is a scientific measurement, start by explaining the scientific process that arrived at the particular method that is broadly used to measure it. Then, if you really want to convince someone, explain what the feedback process looks like that guides the continuing work to improve the measurement process. Because surely there is one, unless you want to argue that IQ is a perfect predictor that could never be improved?
Many things from 60s psychology were quite extraordinary, and as the saying goes extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Efforts to reproduce these studies have had limited success, to say the least.
Seems like most of the disagreement is about what IQ is a good predictor for and is not. There hasn't been much discussion about defining what people think it is and isn't in this thread. You say it's a bad predictor. A bad predictor of what exactly, in concrete terms? I would argue that it is a good predictor of the things that measures: spatial Imaging, logic, and language skills. Someone could argue that is a poor measure and predictor of empathy and interpersonal skills. They would probably be right. IQ has a definition and domain where it works well, and others where it doesn't. That doesn't mean it is useless.
Are you claiming that social economic status is a better predictor of spatial Imaging and logic than a direct test of an individual in question?
> Pick almost any measures that you think Define general intelligence and you will see stark differences between a group at 80 iq and 120
I am very curious to see those mappings. Can you point to some? I am especially unsure about what said «measures» can be, and if/which theories about them are developed.
Personnel selection research provides much evidence that intelligence (g) is an important predictor of performance in training and on the job, especially in higher level work. This article provides evidence that g has pervasive utility in work settings because it is essen- tially the ability to deal with cognitive complexity, in particular, with complex information processing. The more complex a work task, the greater the advantages that higher g confers in performing it well. Everyday tasks, like job duties, also differ in their level of complexity. The importance of intelligence therefore differs systematically across differ- ent arenas of social life as well as economic endeavor. Data from the National Adult Literacy Survey are used to show how higher levels of cognitive ability systematically improve individuals’ odds of dealing successfully with the ordinary demands of modem life (such as banking, using maps and transportation schedules, reading and understanding forms, interpreting news articles). These and other data are summarized to illustrate how the advantages of higher g, even when they are small, cumulate to affect the overall life chances of individuals at different ranges of the IQ bell curve. The article concludes by suggesting ways to reduce the risks for low-IQ individuals of being left behind by an increasingly complex postindustrial economy.
A little bit more extreme but IQ of 70 to 79 is considered borderline retarded.
These people Have difficulty with everyday demands like using a phone or address book. May not be able to learn to read bus or train schedules, bank, fill out forms, or use household appliances like a video recorder, microwave oven, or computer. They therefore require assistance from relatives or social workers in the management of their affairs. They can be employed in simple tasks but require supervision.
This is not a matter of effort or exposure. Even with training these people may not be able to acquire these skills over decades.
People with higher IQs simply do not have these challenges to the same degree.
The point is not the specific measure and it's theoretical soundness, but that empirically you will see staggering differences in performance from people with different IQ for most measures you may care to use.
In other words, most measures you might come up with are likely to be strongly correlated with IQ.
While IQ is a predictor of socioeconomic status, it's also actually a really good predictor of intelligence and almost everything else that we care about behaviorally, under pretty much every alternative measure that anyone has ever proposed.
A lot of people are very anti-IQ, but frankly they're usually just mediocre humanities mucklers who don't realize or accept that true intelligence requires the ability to do math, even if it's not your specialty or interest (the math geniuses amongst us are almost without exception 95+% in verbal ability).
How do you distinguish cause and effect there? Assume intelligence is correlated with income and that intelligence is a heritable trait. On average, higher IQ people would achieve higher socioeconomic status and pass those traits onto their children.
IQ does a far better job of measuring intelligence than it does social status or economic status. Or this obscurantist concept of "socioeconomic" status.
If you're going to just make stuff up, at least be realistic.
Define “intelligence”. The main reason IQ can tell you which of two animals is a human and a gorilla is that you can only explain to one of them how to take the test, but the number you get out of it doesn’t seem to have much to do with it.
That’s not a measure of real world success. If you max “thinking about stuff” and not the other traits they’re actually talking about but haven’t specified (and I can’t either), you’ll daydream all day instead of doing anything productive.
Or even if you try thinking about a real problem, you won’t get the right answer because the way to do that is experiments, not thinking about it a lot.
It's not enough to say that a multidimensional scale might be a good idea. You have to decide how many dimensions there are, how to measure them, and gain consensus for the new way of doing it.
Until there's a new standard, or they see a need to do something different, scientists interested in intelligence are going to stick to measuring IQ.
I read your contribution as "it's good because that's what we have", which I think is a fallacy.
What we have can and should be discussed and challenged. Not having a complete, new and better solution, doesn't prevent us from pointing at flaws. All the while working on the new thing.
Researchers have been looking for a multi-factor theory of intelligence for a long time. People are extremely highly motivated both on a careerist basis and an ideological one to find a better model for intelligence than g/IQ. It’s been tried. The two most famous are Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences and Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory.
The main fault of Gardner’s theory is that it has no empirical backing of any kind[1], which effects its popularity with Ed schools not at all.
Sternberg’s theory at least actually works. It’s just that it is extra work and complexity for no increase in predictive validity. There’s no way to distinguish it from straight g.
[1]According to a 2006 study, many of Gardner's "intelligences" correlate with the g factor, supporting the idea of a single dominant type of intelligence. According to the study, each of the domains proposed by Gardner involved a blend of g, of cognitive abilities other than g, and, in some cases, of non-cognitive abilities or of personality characteristics.
"Emotional intelligence" is not a form of intelligence. It was basically invented out of nowhere by some pop sci person, and since then it seems like its main function is for people whose IQs are not very high to say "well, I have emotional intelligence, ergo I am smart"
Funnily enough, all of this shit was made up at some point. IQ is hardly something that is without flaws. It’s all drawing lines in the sand. Intelligence is mainly just learning speed/capacity and pattern recognition/perception. Why is it so strange that this could also apply to the realm of the interpersonal as well as the classical?
Recently there was Norway Mensa test article on the frontpage. I went through 2/3 of it and got bored, short of 2 points to be a proud member. But if you give me a room with a crime and suggest to deduct it, I will fail, because my deduction sucks. If you give me 7x7 hard mathdoku, I will also fail, because permutations of 6 is my max capacity. If you give me your primitive 120iq business, it will fail, because I’m a silly perfectionist removed from reality. But I guess most top mensa members will also fail on something as simple as e.g. leetcode 85.
I don’t know if any hypothesis in itt/tfa are true or false, but regarding IQ tests I’d like to see much more diversity than stupid boolean ops and rotation over and over.
Really? Thermometers have existed since way before the introduction of the concept of temperature, as rigorously defined in Physics. You can measure "something" and notice that that X is correlated to Y and investigate what that X is.
No, the concept of heat and temperature has been along for many millennia before any thermometers were available, along with completely workable theories of heat transfer.
The thermometer as we know it didn't exist until the 17th century! Although the Chinese seems to have measured temperature with clay pots since at least the 6th century.
The concept of an innate ability to be smart, however, is something else entirely. It is at best a question "I know it when I see it", but where two observers seldom agree.
Compare the concept of "love". It is also an age old idea, a word that exists in all languages and used in conversation every day, but the vain of trying to get observers to agree on it has rightly been a trope for millennia.
The similarities doesn't end there, with books and courses being peddled on the subject of quantifying and scoring it. Very few of these have any scientific ambitions to speak of however, even among the most grandiose of claims.
The article seems to be looking for the decisions people make to lead to better or worse health outcomes, but perhaps it is the opposite—good physical health leads to higher IQ scores (on average).
In the Netherlands (where I live) 80% of the people above the age of 100 live in the part called Zeeland.
This part is next to the sea with good air quality.
Japan and Italy are the countries with the oldest people. Both countries are surrounded by sea.
Maybe my IQ is not that high but this study of 1000 people looks off to me.
I don't know about Zeeland, but Italy and Japan (along with Greece) have been demonstrated to have the most balanced dietary habits (read: best) to remain healthy.
Maybe it's the sea, maybe it's the food. Why not both?
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Part of it seems to be the lifestyle choices that smarter people tend to make: namely, that they smoke at much lower rates. Similarly, smarter people are more likely to follow other healthy practices, have a better handle on their health care, and be less likely to work in a job that puts them at physical risk.
Socioeconomic status could play a role as well, perhaps allowing people to access better education and care
...
There are also genetic factors.
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