How Average IQ can explain the global future

abcdavid01 · Post by **abcdavid01** » January 13th, 2013, 10:21 pm

So here I am listening to Pet Sounds and I get to thinking about the pinnacle of pop music. Brian Wilson is of course good, but I got to thinking of Rivers Cuomo. That guy is a genius. He wrote Pinkerton while studying at Harvard. Around the same time he created an "Encyclopedia of Pop." It deconstructs every song by Nirvana, Oasis, and Green Day mathematically, so he could copy the structure and have an endless supply of songs. Still, Weezer never did any better than Pinkerton, but how many bands do?

Huh. Looking at this more it seems that Asians are better at visuospatial than verbal tests, while Jews are the opposite (like Rock said). So if I had to guess, maybe I have a good balance of the two. I'm not terrifically interested in taking an IQ test now though.

Ghost · Post by **Ghost** » January 13th, 2013, 11:34 pm

abcdavid01 · Post by **abcdavid01** » January 13th, 2013, 11:38 pm

No it isn't. That's just the current intellectual class. We've not reached the end of history. I fully believe that the intellectual class in the coming decades will reject the nihilism of current intellectuals.

Ghost · Post by **Ghost** » January 13th, 2013, 11:44 pm

S_Parc · Post by **S_Parc** » January 14th, 2013, 4:41 am

abcdavid01 wrote:No it isn't. That's just the current intellectual class. We've not reached the end of history. I fully believe that the intellectual class in the coming decades will reject the nihilism of current intellectuals.

Here's the thing, Func ( reject nihilism, delta t ) =X=> Golden Age

It's more like Func ( reject nihilism, delta t ) => Bifurcated Epoc
then Bifurcated Epoc + Func ( reject Bifurcation, delta t ) => Golden Age

I haven't taken formal proofs in a while but you get the picture. All and all, it's a long road, and there's some non-linearity involved.

lone_yakuza · Post by **lone_yakuza** » January 14th, 2013, 5:21 am

Contrarian Expatriate · January 14th, 2013, 5:22 am

Back in high school mine was in the 125 range, but I'm sure that has fluctuated since 1984.

Bottom line is that IQ means little if you can't apply it to anything constructive. There are brilliant losers and wealthy idiots out there in droves, so what that tells me is that how you play the deck of cards you are dealt means far more than IQ.

S_Parc · Post by **S_Parc** » January 14th, 2013, 5:38 am

lone_yakuza wrote:Also, society does not always evolve linearly. We could very well see a return of facism in most first world countries (US seems headed in that direction), and perhaps if wars get bad enough and lack of resources as well, re-emergence of older styles of societal organization, perhaps even back to "kingdoms" or forms of serfdom and whatnot, especially if much of humanity is eliminated somehow, either through conventional world wars, a supervirus, or nuclear war.

There's no division in the second theorem, it's two steps, with the 2nd leg implying non-linearity.

1) Func ( reject nihilism, delta t ) => Bifurcated Epoc
2) Bifurcated Epoc + Func ( reject Bifurcation, delta t ) => Golden Age

The first was basically a summary of Dave's ideal with a conclusion that it doesn't work.

Func ( reject nihilism, delta t ) =X=> Golden Age

In 2), when one rejects a state of bifurcation, it can take ages, and have a lot of conflict. Case in point... Yugoslavia post-Tito, rejected a forced political unity, multicultural nation-state. Thus, a bifurcation was rejected in place of fascism, sectarian violence, and eventual dissolution. And a better epoch for the Balkans, is still in the future somewhere. The soreness of the 90s violence is still in the air.

publicduende · Post by **publicduende** » January 14th, 2013, 5:39 am

fschmidt wrote:The article doesn't mention monogamy which is absolutely critical for the evolution of intelligence. And this was the key difference between Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews, that the Ashkenazi were strictly monogamous and the Sephardi weren't.

Ouch that's a hard one: I can't even beging to fathom the link between being monogamous and being intelligent. Is it because monogamous men will have, on average, taken a greater amount of effort to choose the single female partner that best matches them?

Post by **fschmidt** » January 14th, 2013, 8:44 am

publicduende wrote:Ouch that's a hard one: I can't even beging to fathom the link between being monogamous and being intelligent. Is it because monogamous men will have, on average, taken a greater amount of effort to choose the single female partner that best matches them?

No, it's because in a monogamous culture (in Malthusian conditions), evolutionary success is determined by reducing the mortality of ones children. This relates to being responsible and intelligent. But in a non-monogamous culture, evolutionary success is determined by appealing to women which is not related to intelligence (except in feminist societies where there is actually a negative correlation).

abcdavid01 · Post by **abcdavid01** » January 14th, 2013, 9:55 am

Well listen, the nihilists won out some time in the sixties. I think we're entering the Bifurcated Epoch now. Plus with autocatalysis it won't necessarily even take 50 years for the next step. I'm not implying the end is some sort of golden age either. There are surely unforeseen problems. It's just that I think the current problems will be rectified.