techstepgenr8tion wrote:
Yeah, he's been talking a lot about reverse Flynn Effect.
From what I'm aware Ed is on the spectrum himself which has peaked his interest in understanding the ways in which rationality can divorce people from instinct and cause them to be evolutionary / adaptive failures for not being as engaged with Darwinian processes as they otherwise should be. One of his questions in particular, which he gave as a response to a reporter asking him what he'd love to know the answer to above all else (or effectively what would you give a kidney to know) - it was the question of whether intelligent people have fewer children because intelligent people stay hyperplastic neurologically for longer, adapt to environment more than others do, and hence end up being less instinctual - which ends up being a net loss when those who stay instinctual as a much larger cohort than those who lose primal instinct craft the world to themselves and exile those who are less violent, less grabby, etc..
The optic trouble for him though is that he does cozy up to the alt-right / new-right. I'm more interested in the question of whether what he's saying is actually true (both him and Jason Reza Jorjani I'd continue to listen to precisely because I think they're making good points regardless of their politics) but I also understand that I'm probably an obsolete model in the new world of group identity that we're finding ourselves in now and that what's far more important than whether or not a thing is true is how it aligns politically, where a person saying it aligns politically, etc.. Sadly.... that too at least seems to suggest declining intelligence although it can be hard to tell how much of this is that vs. hyperconnectivity of people who never had public voices all of a sudden being able to play Puritans online (and Jonathan Haidt's comments about the last decade being 'uniquely stupid) - has to be a bit of both although I'm sure the later would expedite / speed up the former.
He brings up topics never talked about and maybe he is on the spectrum himself?, he does mention autism quite a lot.
Even if you dont agree with many of his political views he still a good communicator of ideas.
Not sure i agree with the falling IQ thing, improving chip design & tech progress is a good argument against this theory
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"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends upon the unreasonable man."
- George Bernie Shaw
15 Sep 2023, 11:13 am
