At Our Wits' End: Why We're Becoming Less Intelligent and What It Means for the Future (Societas) Paperback – November 1, 2018
by Edward Dutton (Author), Michael A Woodley of Menie (Author)
4.6 out of 5 stars 241 ratings
We are becoming less intelligent. This is the shocking yet fascinating message of At Our Wits' End. The authors take us on a journey through the growing body of evidence that we are significantly less intelligent now than we were a hundred years ago. The research proving this is, at once, profoundly thought-provoking, highly controversial, and it's currently only read by academics. But the authors are passionate that it cannot remain ensconced in the ivory tower any longer. With At Our Wits' End, they present the first ever popular scientific book on this crucially important issue. They prove that intelligence -- which is strongly genetic -- was increasing up until the breakthrough of the Industrial Revolution, because we were subject to the rigors of Darwinian Selection, meaning that lots of surviving children was the preserve of the cleverest. But since then, they show, intelligence has gone into rapid decline, because large families are increasingly the preserve of the least intelligent. The book explores how this change has occurred and, crucially, what its consequences will be for the future. Can we find a way of reversing the decline of our IQ? Or will we witness the collapse of civilization and the rise of a new Dark Age?
https://www.amazon.com/At-Our-Wits-End- ... 184540985X
I wondered if one of the measurements they are using to make these estimates is reaction time.
This replication study furthermore found, using sRTs, that the decline in g had been around 1 IQ point per decade between 1885 and the year 2004. That is about 10 points, in a century—and probably more over the past two hundred years. Dutton and Charlton have explained that, to put this in perspective, 15 points would be approximately the difference in average IQ between a low level security guard (85) and a police constable (100), or between a high school science teacher (115) and a biology professor at an elite university (130).* In other words, in terms of intelligence, the average Englishman from about 1850 would be in roughly the top 15% of the population in the year 2000—and the difference would be even larger if we extrapolated back further towards about 1800 when the Industrial Revolution began to initiate massive demographic changes in the British population.
Reference: Dutton, E. & Charlton, B. (2015) The Genius Famine, Buckingham: University of Buckingham Press, pp. 158–159
https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/my-fav ... t-our-wits
Civilisations seem to follow a fairly predictable pattern. Low g, stressful, religious societies undergo group expansion and selection for g via downward social mobility. Eventually, they blossom into civilisations. However, civilisation reduces selection for g due to medicine, improved living conditions, and lower levels of stress leading to kindly attitudes to the poor. Civilisation innovates contraception and reduces religiousness both by reducing stress and by reflecting an elevated level of g. As a consequence, the wealthiest—who also tend to have higher g —reach a level of rationalism and security where they take control of their lives. They understand that children arrive through their effort, not God’s will; their child mortality is relatively low, they want to give a high standard of living to their children so they can compete, and they are, anyway, interested in intellectual pursuits and irreligious ideas which incline them not to have children. So, they successfully use contraception to reduce their fertility. Those with lower g are less able to use contraception, insufficiently forward thinking to do so, have more stressful lives, are more religious, and are less rational. So, society’s average g starts to decline and civilisation eventually collapses back to a Dark Age. Selection for high g then strongly reasserts itself, especially when the climate becomes harsher and colder, and the process occurs all over again. ‘What has been will be again. What has been done will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun’ (Ecclesiastes, 1:9).
While the periphery breaks down rather slowly at first, the capital cities of the hegemon should collapse suddenly and violently.