I am fascinated for no good reason with the notion of general intelligence, or g, its heritability and distribution. Assuming the existence of g and its heritability, what is it about relatively high intelligence that keeps it from becoming dominant in the population? That is, why doesn't the average IQ increase through evolutionary pressures to 130 since such an IQ doesn't seem to require bigger heads? Obviously, the higher IQ did not confer a reproductive advantage to our foraging ancestors, but why would this be so?
One explanation might be that the blessing of high intelligence comes with a curse or complex of curses such that there is a stable polymorphism at work. There may be a connection between high IQ and myopia, for example, or other instances of what I call the Geek Factor. Maybe, really smart foragers weren't all that good at foraging or were too busy pondering the existential meaningless of the foraging life to get ahead. Maybe they weren't all that attractive, since the benefits of a really high IQ probably don't kick in until industrialization (and then the demographic transition kicks you in the testes). It's as if the whole foraging period was analagous to high school in which all the dumb jocks got all the girls, only there was no college and white collar careers where the bright ones would get their chance to excel. (How many openings for Shaman were there?) Maybe the bright guys went for the dumber girls. Maybe there were no meaningful and consistent bases for assortative mating.
I bet my imaginary readers have some views on this topic.
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1 comment:
You may have hit the nail on the proverbial head, crazy bull.
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