The Deadly Innovation Hypothesis

Today Steve Sailer links http://isteve.blogspot.com/2005/10/linda-gottfredson-devastates.html to an interesting article by Linda Gottfredson. Gottfredson advances the “deadly innovation hypothesis” as the driver for dramatic increases in human intelligence over a relatively short period of time. In a nutshell, the hypothesis is that less intelligent humans are significantly more prone to accidental death and that innovations in technology and culture increase complexity and the risk of accidents. Each innovation introduces a new level of complexity and more opportunities for people to kill themselves accidentally. Even a small disadvantage for humans of lower intelligence would result over time in a significant culling of such individuals and their genes from the population.

You can’t get killed in a car accident if there are no cars, and you aren’t as likely to get trampled by a mammoth if your band hasn’t developed mammoth hunting as a provisioning technique.

This idea contrasts with some of the prevailing hypotheses that attribute rapid gains in intelligence to social factors such as sexual selection or the need for increased “social intelligence”. I have always been skeptical of these other hypotheses, although these factors undoubtedly played a role, because of my personal experiences with my conspecifics. Female humans are not necessarily attracted to the most intelligent males, many of whom have a high “geek coefficient”. Also, “social intelligence” does not in my experience correlate strongly with general intelligence.

One of the aspects of social intelligence that I have observed most is empathy, or the ability to put oneself imaginatively in the circumstances of another. This is one of the most important skills in negotiation and permits the negotiator to anticipate opposing positions, to understand the needs underlying positions, and to develop a successful negotiating strategy. Many of the most intelligent people I have ever known are severely retarded when it comes to empathy, and far too many lawyers, who tend to be of above average intelligence, are wanting in negotiating skills as a result of low social intelligence. These non-empaths, as I have decided to call them for no particular reason, are limited to purely competitive negotiating strategies and almost inevitably reach early impasse or other suboptimal outcomes. They anticipate their opponent’s positions solely through projection whereby they attribute their own motives and tendencies to others, and they are incapable of imagining that another human being might think differently. It is unsatisfying to negotiate with non-empaths, even though it is relatively easier to manipulate them. It is intolerable to have a non-empath on your negotiating team because he will inevitably sabotage the process.

Some of the most empathic people I have ever known have been on the left side or the middle of the Bell Curve when it comes to general intelligence. I have known people who were borderline retarded who were quite charming and thoughtful and well able to empathize with the feelings and needs of others.

My interest in conflict management and dispute resolution coupled with my interest in evolutionary psychology has caused me to be on the lookout for correlations between intelligence and skills needed to deal with conflict/disputes. So far, although I have made no formal study of this, I am initially inclined to believe that such a correlation would be weak and possibly spurious. I have only begun to consider what a formal research design might look like.

Of course, my own experience may not be representative since my exposure to humans of low intelligence has in my adult life been relatively infrequent and skewed toward people in some kind of trouble (I was generally prosecuting them or defending them or dealing with them in the wake of some tragedy or misfortune). I cannot say whether less clever people are more apt to resort to violence to deal with conflict or whether, if this is so, this is due to existential factors rather than social intelligence.

That said, I am intrigued by the deadly innovation hypothesis. The posited selective mechanisms would be at work in the modern world even more than in the EEA. Every innovation, and these are coming at an ever increasing rate, may put a large part of the population at increasing risk and disadvantage at the same time that it contributes to prosperity for the more well endowed.