Post: #151

(04-05-2019 03:16 PM)Kaligula Wrote:  High IQ correlates with lower agreeableness. However, low agreeableness correlates with low IQ, too.
Since agreeableness is social grease, the relative lack of it also effectively limits social influence of both low and high IQ.
Human society is essentially a society of mediocrity. Nowadays maybe more than ever.
So much for Plato's dreams.

Not necesserily - European countries with Finland have tested now at 108 (only locals) in new generations. When averages rise, then who knows whether a 120 IQ avg. society will not look different. The 170 IQ guy will just be the new 140. I remember reading this comedy SF novel where they selected the best of humanity for some spaceship program and the cleaning crew were in the 145 IQ level on that ship.

Crime by the way in the West is correlated with IQ - most of violence being done by the 80-90 crowd.

Social behaviors are a different ballgame and on top of that - some lack of agreeableness is not automatically a sign of anti-social behavior. You may just be a loner, but one who has more self-control, doesn't rape, rob a bonk or even litter the streets.

Post: #152

(04-05-2019 03:41 PM)Simeon_Strangelight Wrote:  

(04-05-2019 03:16 PM)Kaligula Wrote:  High IQ correlates with lower agreeableness. However, low agreeableness correlates with low IQ, too.
Since agreeableness is social grease, the relative lack of it also effectively limits social influence of both low and high IQ.
Human society is essentially a society of mediocrity. Nowadays maybe more than ever.
So much for Plato's dreams.

Not necesserily - European countries with Finland have tested now at 108 (only locals) in new generations. When averages rise, then who knows whether a 120 IQ avg. society will not look different. The 170 IQ guy will just be the new 140. I remember reading this comedy SF novel where they selected the best of humanity for some spaceship program and the cleaning crew were in the 145 IQ level on that ship.

Crime by the way in the West is correlated with IQ - most of violence being done by the 80-90 crowd.

Social behaviors are a different ballgame and on top of that - some lack of agreeableness is not automatically a sign of anti-social behavior. You may just be a loner, but one who has more self-control, doesn't rape, rob a bonk or even litter the streets.

Do you have a link to this Finnish study?
Also, I have read that IQ tests are now weighed up, to lift outcomes a bit. I mean, they are not calibrated like the old ones.
So the people claiming the decline in IQ base the thesis also on declining (actually: rising) reaction times, which are now slower than in the past.
Reaction times are correlated with IQ.
And that even putting aside immigration, so some dysgenic effect is probably in play.

And you may be a loner without criminal record, but also with not much less - even academia is not anymore a refugee for social outcasts, really. The peer review culture and 'points' for everything actually cemented a grip of establishment over science.

Post: #153

The interesting question about IQ and civilization: why the Meditarrean (Greeks, Romans, Egyptians) with lower IQ created civilization earlier than the Nord (Germans) with higher IQ?
Or everything was upside down 2000 years ago? Did something shift IQ from the South to the Nord?

Post: #154

(04-05-2019 04:11 PM)Kaligula Wrote:  The interesting question about IQ and civilization: why the Meditarrean (Greeks, Romans, Egyptians) with lower IQ created civilization earlier than the Nord (Germans) with higher IQ?
Or everything was upside down 2000 years ago? Did something shift IQ from the South to the Nord?

Who told you that the Romans had a lower IQ?

Besides - medieval societes can be erected by averages of 80-90, our system just requires 96+ according to estimates.

Egypt is a special case and the height of the empire was created clearly by Caucasians of a fairer skin color. The last pharaos were black and Egypt became subsequently darker.

Later the Muslims also turned darker as they imported plenty of African slaves. They castrated the men, but freely procreated with the female slaves - it explains why so many Saudis for example look like mixed Africans.

The same for Persia - a race of white-skinned blue-eyed dark-haired people - more likely descendants of the original Aryans who settled also in India.

The Germans could not create cultures berore the ones in the warmer climates - something that is very well understood even in mainstream history. When you expend huge amounts of energy just for survival in the cold, then you don't have time to build palaces and universities. You have to have some leisure for at least certain parts of your people to focus on other tasks. You also need mere numbers - tough conditions limit population.

That is why nations with easy agricultural opportunities could embark on civilization building before others. Whether the averages were 95 vs 100 was irrelevant to the middle ages - even 106. Just in our system it is poison as people below 95 have trouble operating McDonald's cash registries.

You also cannot equate avg IQ and then extrapolate from there - it's more a matter of necessary threshold and averages. The Japanese were certainly smarter than all White nations, but Whites created a higher civilization as they adopted certain aspects sooner. But Asians simply copied some aspects and caught up fast surpassing us on many levels while Africans struggle to copy most basic precepts. This also is consistent with IQ data. Averages and thresholds matter just as my example of average homeless level of 80 vs average self-made millionaire level of 112. The exceptions or extreme ends of things don't matter as much.

Post: #155

(04-05-2019 04:11 PM)Kaligula Wrote:  The interesting question about IQ and civilization: why the Meditarrean (Greeks, Romans, Egyptians) with lower IQ created civilization earlier than the Nord (Germans) with higher IQ?
Or everything was upside down 2000 years ago? Did something shift IQ from the South to the Nord?

That would be my guess.

Movies like Idiocracy are a good metaphor of what can happen to high IQ societies. Basically low IQ peeps breed out the higher IQ peeps (with especially the high IQ women focusing on careers over children).

It seems to be the rule, not so much the exception, that where you have a high civilization, much later you have some low-IQ populations. Civilizations in general seem to eliminate the Darwinian effects the real world has on stupidity.

Again, Idiocracy makes for such a good metaphor.

The reverse (going from low to high IQ) is also very much possible, considering our absolute oldest ancestors (micro-organisms?) effectively had an IQ of 0. Over billions of years, we went from that to what we are today. It's not inconceivable that with the application of the right forces and pressures, a low IQ society could rapidly transform into a much higher IQ society.

(04-05-2019 03:16 PM)Kaligula Wrote:  High IQ correlates with lower agreeableness. However, low agreeableness correlates with low IQ, too.
Since agreeableness is social grease, the relative lack of it also effectively limits social influence of both low and high IQ.
Human society is essentially a society of mediocrity. Nowadays maybe more than ever. IQ is declining in the West, which means the the acceptable mediocrity treshold declines too, but with that, also the scope of influence (roughly, acceptability) of remaining high IQs goes down as well.
So much for Plato's dreams.

Contrary to its own myth of omnipotence (aka 'Star Trek'), humanity seems to be a self-limiting species, after all.

Yeah, I feel it's worth its own thread, but I've had my own theories about why we've never detected signs of extraterrestrial life -in a nutshell: any lifetime as intelligent as us or quite possibly even more intelligent would be so due to similar forces (sexual and natural selection). And since the same forces apply, the same drawbacks apply to and they would see a similar decline in average intelligence and decay of their civilizations.

It's worth considering that somewhere out there in the universe, a million years ago, on some planet, there were aliens who were experiencing their own form of Western civilization collapse and with it all of their dreams of space travel.

Post: #156

(04-05-2019 04:28 PM)Simeon_Strangelight Wrote:  

(04-05-2019 04:11 PM)Kaligula Wrote:  The interesting question about IQ and civilization: why the Meditarrean (Greeks, Romans, Egyptians) with lower IQ created civilization earlier than the Nord (Germans) with higher IQ?
Or everything was upside down 2000 years ago? Did something shift IQ from the South to the Nord?

Who told you that the Romans had a lower IQ?

Besides - medieval societes can be erected by averages of 80-90, our system just requires 96+ according to estimates.

Egypt is a special case and the height of the empire was created clearly by Caucasians of a fairer skin color. The last pharaos were black and Egypt became subsequently darker.

Later the Muslims also turned darker as they imported plenty of African slaves. They castrated the men, but freely procreated with the female slaves - it explains why so many Saudis for example look like mixed Africans.

The same for Persia - a race of white-skinned blue-eyed dark-haired people - more likely descendants of the original Aryans who settled also in India.

The Germans could not create cultures berore the ones in the warmer climates - something that is very well understood even in mainstream history. When you expend huge amounts of energy just for survival in the cold, then you don't have time to build palaces and universities. You have to have some leisure for at least certain parts of your people to focus on other tasks. You also need mere numbers - tough conditions limit population.

That is why nations with easy agricultural opportunities could embark on civilization building before others. Whether the averages were 95 vs 100 was irrelevant to the middle ages - even 106. Just in our system it is poison as people below 95 have trouble operating McDonald's cash registries.

You also cannot equate avg IQ and then extrapolate from there - it's more a matter of necessary threshold and averages. The Japanese were certainly smarter than all White nations, but Whites created a higher civilization as they adopted certain aspects sooner. But Asians simply copied some aspects and caught up fast surpassing us on many levels while Africans struggle to copy most basic precepts. This also is consistent with IQ data. Averages and thresholds matter just as my example of average homeless level of 80 vs average self-made millionaire level of 112. The exceptions or extreme ends of things don't matter as much.

A lot of these statements don't hold water.

Quote:The Germans could not create cultures berore the ones in the warmer climates - something that is very well understood even in mainstream history. When you expend huge amounts of energy just for survival in the cold, then you don't have time to build palaces and universities.

Winters in Beijing are harsher than in Berlin or Munich. Lots of palaces in China, many, many millennia ago.

Quote:Egypt is a special case and the height of the empire was created clearly by Caucasians of a fairer skin color. The last pharaos were black and Egypt became subsequently darker.

...Later the Muslims also turned darker as they imported plenty of African slaves. They castrated the men, but freely procreated with the female slaves - it explains why so many Saudis for example look like mixed Africans.

This take on Egypt kind of sounds like a reverse we wuz kangs. In any case, the people from the Fertile Crescent, cradle of civilization, who were credited with inventions like mathematics, the wheel, the chariot, sailboats, metallurgy, the plow, agriculture, the alphabet to name a few, those people were most likely not much different from current day Iraqis and Syrians.

If anything, the ancient Mesopotamians might have actually been darker in antiquity, because later on the Crusades, and then the Ottomans who imported slaves and mercenaries from the Balkans and EE injected a lot of white blood in the region. Those imports made up the ruling class in Renaissance-era Egypt under the Mamluks , that country was probably more African prior to that, and prior to Greco-Roman times, when Alexandria was more European in character. Ancient Egypt was a more insular and more African culture, bonded by the Nile, with Upper Egypt being integrated with the darker Nubia (present day Sudan).

As well slavery in Arabia predates islam.

Post: #157

(03-28-2019 08:47 AM)Genghis Khan Wrote:  

(03-26-2019 03:31 PM)Akwesi Wrote:  An IQ of 120-125 is probably the sweet spot. You are smart enough to learn from the really high IQ people while at the same time able to communicate meaningfully with the average man. From what I've seen that creates a lot of opportunities for leadership and success. If you have a very high IQ you are just not around enough people like yourself growing up, and your chance of being a little weird as an adult is correspondingly high. High IQ is a mixed blessing.

You're 100% right.

I like using height as an analogy for IQ (something I mentioned in that 200 IQ+ guy's thread).

Being 6ft tall is great.

Being 8ft tall is just weird as fuck and your best bet is that you end up in a very niche career like professional basketball player.

There are trade-offs to everything, IQ being no different.

I think even Buffett quipped he would have to lose about 20 IQ points before he could successfully manage any of the companies Berkshire Hathaway owns.

That's not a good analogy, a better one would be wealth. Someone with a net worth of half a billion or more is not worse off than a mere millionaire. Most of the time, more is better.

This thing about too high an IQ being an impediment discredits the whole IQ dogma that many espouse on here. Because if someone with an IQ of 150 or higher is apparently too dumb to figure out the intellectual limitations that render him unable to achieve the same professional success as his dumber 120 IQ counterparts, well then maybe that guy is not really that smart... Do you guys see the irony here?

What this really shows is that people who typically score very high on the IQ test lack flexibility and self-awareness, or perhaps a certain kind of emotional/social maturity. Those are important components of overall intelligence that the IQ test doesn't measure. Putting together big picture concepts is at least as intellectually demanding as figuring out little puzzles with triangles and circles. I think this is what Taleb might be pointing at.

Post: #158

(04-05-2019 04:11 PM)Kaligula Wrote:  The interesting question about IQ and civilization: why the Meditarrean (Greeks, Romans, Egyptians) with lower IQ created civilization earlier than the Nord (Germans) with higher IQ?
Or everything was upside down 2000 years ago? Did something shift IQ from the South to the Nord?

I suspect that excess domestication and the easy life influences the decline. At some point, schooling or not, the kids don't meaningfully exercise their brains during important growth years with similar consequences to not exercising their bodies. Consider the example of Italy cities where people have been doing the Urban living thing complete with multi-family apartment buildings for two millenia, the underclass really got cemented as the underclass.

Post: #159

(04-05-2019 10:35 PM)911 Wrote:  A lot of these statements don't hold water.

Quote:The Germans could not create cultures berore the ones in the warmer climates - something that is very well understood even in mainstream history. When you expend huge amounts of energy just for survival in the cold, then you don't have time to build palaces and universities.

Winters in Beijing are harsher than in Berlin or Munich. Lots of palaces in China, many, many millennia ago.

Quote:Egypt is a special case and the height of the empire was created clearly by Caucasians of a fairer skin color. The last pharaos were black and Egypt became subsequently darker.

...Later the Muslims also turned darker as they imported plenty of African slaves. They castrated the men, but freely procreated with the female slaves - it explains why so many Saudis for example look like mixed Africans.

This take on Egypt kind of sounds like a reverse we wuz kangs. In any case, the people from the Fertile Crescent, cradle of civilization, who were credited with inventions like mathematics, the wheel, the chariot, sailboats, metallurgy, the plow, agriculture, the alphabet to name a few, those people were most likely not much different from current day Iraqis and Syrians.

If anything, the ancient Mesopotamians might have actually been darker in antiquity, because later on the Crusades, and then the Ottomans who imported slaves and mercenaries from the Balkans and EE injected a lot of white blood in the region. Those imports made up the ruling class in Renaissance-era Egypt under the Mamluks , that country was probably more African prior to that, and prior to Greco-Roman times, when Alexandria was more European in character. Ancient Egypt was a more insular and more African culture, bonded by the Nile, with Upper Egypt being integrated with the darker Nubia (present day Sudan).

As well slavery in Arabia predates islam.

Please - Chinese vs Northern Europeans comparison fails even on the basis of mere population numbers.

I mentioned that you need a basic massive population to uphold and create huge infrastructure and palaces - if that metric is applied then India preceded China significantly.



Note that China had population levels of 60-80 mio. even 1500 to 1000 years ago.

In contrast look at the numbers of Europe in 1330:



We are lucky that the emperor who sailed some invasion forces even to Africa then later changed his mind. They could have overrun most of Europe easily by sheer numbers and superior technology 1000 years ago.

As for Egypt - it's not a reverse kangz crap. I have no beef in anything. There was far more going on with Egypt. The millions of White slaves in the Middle East are known, but also other aspects with Arab clans. And they left a greater mark in other North-African territories around Syria or Turkey - more than Saudi Arabia, but whatever. Let it be Kangz - advanced genetic testing will someday prove anything - in our current climate you cannot even get decent propaganda-free testing on fucking cavemen - they were all black you see.



There are many aspects that go into long-term civilization rise and fall and there are frankly many theories.

Though usually they omit certain ones - like the destructive end-stage effects of usury and recently something I heard was depletion of the soil and the erosion of nutrient density with subsequent deterioration of a core population if they relied heavily on agricultural production.

Also why some societies develop to a certain degree and then ossify like with the Japanese - that is also known since aristocratic feudalism with a serf-class has too much of a vested interest to keep it that way. It took competition from other competing nations in Europe to shake off that yoke. Japan was too far removed from it and China was already unified. And both Asian societies had plenty of IQ-increasing positive eugenics going on.

Post: #160

I'm not sure what your point about the population in early China was SS, the fact is that their civilization was established nearly 5000 years ago along the Yellow River, where the winters are harsher than in central Europe, and it was among the most advanced civilizations of its time.

For the racial makeup of early Egypt, one good clue are Coptic Egyptians, who didn't mix much with the Arabs (though there was mixing with other Med. Christians in places like Alexandria), they're usually a bit darker than your average eastern mediterranean folk.

Post: #161

(04-05-2019 04:11 PM)Kaligula Wrote:  The interesting question about IQ and civilization: why the Meditarrean (Greeks, Romans, Egyptians) with lower IQ created civilization earlier than the Nord (Germans) with higher IQ?

Did you read tacitus' germania ?

(04-05-2019 10:50 PM)911 Wrote:  This thing about too high an IQ being an impediment discredits the whole IQ dogma that many espouse on here. Because if someone with an IQ of 150 or higher is apparently too dumb to figure out the intellectual limitations that render him unable to achieve the same professional success as his dumber 120 IQ counterparts, well then maybe that guy is not really that smart... Do you guys see the irony here?

Well, let's just say that when you are a being of pure logic it can take you quite the time to figure out why the whole world seems to be behaving randomly

Post: #162

Walked into a bookstore/cafe yesterday for a browse and ended up buying 'Skin in the Game' in paperback after glancing through it and being hooked halfway down the first page.

I'm not new to Taleb, but found this to be one of his more accessible books. I actually got myself a coffee and sat down and read through nearly a quarter of the book right there and then, that's how readable it was. As I always carry a pen with me (as I like to draw) I began making notes and underlining bits that resonated the most (or that I just liked). To give you an indication of how pertinent and engrossing the book is, let me tell you that there is now barely a single page that hasn't been touched by my pen! Book-lovers will think this vandalism, but I already know I'll be buying a pristine version of the book in hardback at a later date. Besides, cheaply bought books with notes in are fascinating.

Taleb has to be among the most quotable authors around;

“Those who talk should do and only those who do should talk.”

“Don’t tell me what you think, tell me what you have in your portfolio.”

I'm a long way from internalizing the book in the way I would want, but his message about 'doing' and 'learning through action' rather than theory is something I hope to retain. Great book. Even as I'm reading the book, I'm looking forward to reading it again.

Post: #163

I agree, and I liked his book the black swan too.
Hes hard to listen to but the books are fantastic.