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Forget “Peak Oil” and “Peak Credit” … Are We On the Downslope of “Peak Intelligence”?
Scientists say that we have much smaller brains than our ancestors had 20,000 years ago … and we might have gotten stupider since agriculture became widespread.
Huffington Post reports that we've probably gotten dumber than even our Victorian ancestors:
A provocative new study suggests human intelligence is on the decline. In fact, it indicates that Westerners have lost 14 I.Q. points on average since the Victorian Era.
******
As for Dr. te Nijenhuis and colleagues, they analyzed the results of 14 intelligence studies conducted between 1884 to 2004, including one by Sir Francis Galton, an English anthropologist and a cousin of Charles Darwin. Each study gauged participants' so-called visual reaction times -- how long it took them to press a button in response to seeing a stimulus. Reaction time reflects a person's mental processing speed, and so is considered an indication of general intelligence.
***
In the late 19th Century, visual reaction times averaged around 194 milliseconds, the analysis showed. In 2004 that time had grown to 275 milliseconds. Even though the machine gauging reaction time in the late 19th Century was less sophisticated than that used in recent years, Dr. te Nijenhuis told The Huffington Post that the old data is directly comparable to modern data.
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This new research was published in the April 13 issue of Intelligence.
The Daily Mail notes that we've gotten dumber since the 1950s:
Richard Lynn, a psychologist at the University of Ulster, calculated the decline in humans’ genetic potential.
He used data on average IQs around the world in 1950 and 2000 to discover that our collective intelligence has dropped by one IQ point.
Dr Lynn predicts that if this trend continues, we could lose another 1.3 IQ points by 2050.
What's Making Us Dumber?
There are several theories for why we are getting dumber, including the following:
(1) Toxic chemicals in the environment can reduce intelligence.
Modern man is surrounded by toxic chemicals which have been shown to reduce intelligence. Examples include flame retardant, lead (found in many lipsticks), certain pesticides (and see this and this), fluoride (more).
Radiation can also reduce intelligence. For example, radiation can reduce brain size.
Brian Moench, MD notes:
Many epidemiologic studies show that extremely low doses of radiation increase the incidence of ... diminished intelligence.
And a very well-established resource for doctors (the Merck Manuals) state:
The fetus is sensitive to damage from radiation because fetal cells are dividing very quickly and also differentiating from immature into mature cells. In the fetus, exposure in excess of 300 mGy during 8 to 25 weeks after conception may cause reduced intelligence and poor school performance.
(2) Humans evolved to eat a lot of Omega 3s:
Wild game animals have much higher levels of essential Omega 3 fatty acids than domesticated animals. Indeed, leading nutritionists say that humans evolved to consume a lot of Omega 3 fatty acids in the wild game and fish which they ate (more), and that a low Omega 3 diet is a very new trend within the last 100 years or so.
In other words, while omega 3s have just now been discovered by modern science, we evolved to get a lot of omega 3s … and if we just eat a modern, fast food diet without getting enough omega 3s, it can cause all sorts of health problems.
So something just discovered by science can be a central fuel which our bodies evolved to use.
Omega 3s - in turn - boost intelligence and help prevent cognitive decline.
(3) Similarly, Science Daily notes:
Exposure to specific bacteria in the environment, already believed to have antidepressant qualities, could increase learning behavior, according to research presented at the 110th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in San Diego.
"Mycobacterium vaccae is a natural soil bacterium which people likely ingest or breath in when they spend time in nature," says Dorothy Matthews of The Sage Colleges in Troy, New York, who conducted the research with her colleague Susan Jenks.
***
"We found that mice that were fed live M. vaccae navigated the maze twice as fast and with less demonstrated anxiety behaviors as control mice," says Matthews.
In a second experiment the bacteria were removed from the diet of the experimental mice and they were retested. While the mice ran the maze slower than they did when they were ingesting the bacteria, on average they were still faster than the controls.
Obviously, we don't get in as much soil as our ancestors did.
(In addition, some bacteria in our gut greatly influence brain function. Most native cultures ate fermented foods containing healthy bacteria.)
(4) Exercise boosts intelligence ... and our ancestors got a lot more exercise than we do!
"Even our most highly trained athletes pale in comparison to" farmers 7,000 years ago.
(5) In addition, high levels of cortisol – the chemical released when one is under continuous, unrelenting stress – and poverty can physically impair the brain and people’s ability to learn.
Hunter-gatherers had more leisure time - and a more playful attitude - than we do today.
(6) [For this and the next theory, we quote from HuffPost.] Dr. Jan te Nijenhuis points to the fact that women of high intelligence tend to have fewer children than do women of lower intelligence. This negative association between I.Q. and fertility has been demonstrated time and again in research over the last century.
(7) "The reduction in human intelligence ... would have begun at the time that genetic selection became more relaxed," Dr. Gerald Crabtree, professor of pathology and developmental biology at Stanford University, told The Huffington Post in an email. "I projected this occurred as our ancestors began to live in more supportive high density societies (cities) and had access to a steady supply of food. Both of these might have resulted from the invention of agriculture, which occurred about 5,000 to 12,000 years ago."
Postscript: Relaxing activities like meditation and prayer have been shown to increase brain mass and connectivity in certain areas of the brain. And sex makes you smarter and causes brain growth.
- advertisements -
......."Evolution does the rest"?
That would be "devolution"?
Are we not men?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JdS-sSKsBc
but ignorance is bliss.
Short answer:
Yes, since the introduction of Social Security first by Bismarck - no reason to raise intelligent offspring anymore.
I think if people quit pulling stupid stunts they'd be smarter.
I Know all those scottish on the rocks didn't help
The Japaense propose dealing with this problem by building an ice wall...
There is other research that the brain area contained in skulls has declined by 25%.
It should come as no surprise. 100,000 years ago it was important to outwit saber-tooth tigers and mastadons.
Since the coming of an agriculture economy, our breeding priorities are similar to oxen - big muscles, lots of sex, abiity to withstand lots of disease (population pressures) and famines.
Oh yes, and subservience.
......And the added burden of having to feed and support the Ebonic Plague infestation.
It all started with radio and continued to TV allowing people to stop reading.
Now they watch a youtube video to form an opinion.
You better have a Youtube link to support that opinion. . .
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Americans+are+NOT+stupid+-+...
public school system has been a success, for gov that is
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=americans+get+fluoridated
Moral of the story captured in the last sentence: have more sex:)
http://olduvai.ca
" Moral of the story captured in the last sentence: have more sex:) "
Does masturbation count ?
I want an IQ of 300 .... lot of work, I guess.
i am praying for sex tonight. Tomorrow i will be the smartest guy on the planet
Yes ... I purposely put the "actionable intelligence" and "take home message" right at the end.
Fine exercise indeed.
I also find the the hunting and restraining of females advances mental acuity skills that have become dormant in most modern men.
Gaming reactive escape stratagems also sharpen the mind.
Sex is fine, just careful not to conceive any more stupid people.
Thanks for an interesting article & links, as usual.
It does, however, look like one of your links is broken. Specifically the one in this paragraph:
"Even our most highly trained athletes pale in comparison to" farmers 7,000 years ago.
Thanks! I'll fix...
Sex is the original meditation.
" Sex is the original meditation. "
And here we have a tantrist ... let's send him to Vatican.
Waall, dis heer iz jist a hole bunj a krap!!! I be smrt!! I iz a collage greduat!
Get plenty of electrolytes and you'll be fine.
Brawndo
Don't forget changing selective pressures: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icmRCixQrx8
Didn't know this, amazing.
George Washington
Have you heard of Greg Morse and his fight as Whistleblower on Mortgage Fraud, REMICs, IRS Rules for REMICs, Destruction of Deed of Trusts, and DTCC control of FED, Cede & Company, and 110 Central banks & Countries and how DTCC holds the stock certificates for all US Stocks?
Anyway there is a long Video/Audio out there from a week ago where he lays out a lot.
- To the Point: Maybe Mind Control in the Legal System & Financial System is the cause of perceived lower Intelligence. (Buying Street Name Stock not getting real Equity or Certificate of Stock, Derivative, 142 minutes into Video... Fiat also considered Derivative (Maybe covered in 1933 Emergency Banking Act))
- Putting your Municipal Bond or IPO in the Stock Market subjects you to A-Cementric Warfare, and you will be owned and told what to do... just like US Congress is owned and told what to do.
- Greg Morse states we are all subject to Mind Control in this A-Cemetric Warfare as we don't educate, correct mis-truth, and Fight Evil... Like our whole world is not what it seems like if the Strongest member of the FED, CTCC, really controls everything, breaks mortgage Trusts, and owns everything.
- He says the Corporation, The United States Government, is broke & and has been broke since 1933 (I don't like his numbers about total Federal Government Debt, but his voice seems needed)
Caravan To Midnight - Episode 110 Capital Kinetics with Greg Morse
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmJKrhWucC0
Jurat Affidavit Of Gregory C. Morse In Support Of IRS Form 211 & SEC Form TCR Filings
4. The Securities Fraud, Tax Fraud and Tax Evasion perpetrated by the majority, if not all, of the banking, financial, ratings and legal entities, agencies and firms involved in the illegal securitization and trading of fraudulent RMBS (and illegally taking advantage of the REMIC tax exempt feature of Federal Law and the IRS Code), and simultaneously committing financially motivated RICO fraud activities, has resulted in the outright and direct theft of hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of tax dollars from the United States Treasury and has resulted in the well -documented amassing of $700-800 trillion dollars of worthless long term RMBS debt resulting from the multiple trading of these illegal and worthless securities.
DESTROYED AND SHREDDED DEEDS OF TRUST, MORTGAGE TRUSTS,
Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduit (REMIC)
Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) is a US post-trade financial services company providing clearing and settlement services
www.saveourfamilyandhome.com
Thanks for this reference. Very cool theorizing IMHO.
I saw a a red Nissan Z parked at my workplace today with a Mensa license plate holder. It made me think, you can't be that smart and continue to work here.
You should know by now how many organizations like Mensa work. I'll tell you all day how smart you are for a fee.
Same goes for the Better Business Bureau (BBB).
A person's IQ and reaction time both decrease gradually with age. If the studies aren't adjusted for this in some manner then they are useless. Are all the studies carried out on the same age range?
Likewise, reaction time tests need to take into account that people are taller now. Longer limbes = slower reaction times.
But we're sexier and on average we're higher in other intelligences like dancing and slam dunking.
University of Chicago researchers find human brain still evolving
Human evolution, University of Chicago researchers report, is still under way, in what has become our most important organ: the brain.
In two related papers published in the Sept. 9, 2005, issue of Science, they show that two genes linked to brain size are rapidly evolving in humans.
"Our studies indicate that the trend that is the defining characteristic of human evolution – the growth of brain size and complexity – is likely still going on," said lead researcher for both papers Bruce Lahn, PhD, assistant professor of human genetics at the University of Chicago and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. "Meanwhile, our environment and the skills we need to survive in it are changing faster then we ever imagined. I would expect the human brain, which has done well by us so far, will continue to adapt to those changes."
Evolution, Lahn said, doesn't occur at the species level. Rather, some individuals first acquire a specific genetic mutation, and, because that variant confers on those who bear it a greater likelihood of survival, it then spreads in the population.
"We're seeing two examples of such a spread in progress," he said. "In each case, it's a spread of a new genetic variant in a gene that controls brain size. This variant is clearly favored by natural selection."
Lahn previously showed that there was accelerated evolution in humans among numerous genes, including microcephalin and abnormal spindle-like microcephaly-associated (ASPM). Both of these genes regulate brain size and therefore "were good candidates to look for signatures of selection. We indeed found such signatures when we compared humans to other species," he said. "As a natural extension of that, we asked, could it be that selection on these genes is still ongoing in humans?"
In the two Science papers, the researchers looked at variations of microcephalin and ASPM within modern humans. They found evidence that the two genes have continued to evolve. For each gene, one class of variants has arisen recently and has been spreading rapidly because it is favored by selection.
For microcephalin, the new variant class emerged about 37,000 years ago and now shows up in about 70 percent of present-day humans. For ASPM, the new variant class arose about 5,800 years ago and now shows up in approximately 30 percent of today's humans.
These time windows are extraordinarily short in evolutionary terms, indicating that the new variants were subject to very intense selection pressure that drove up their frequencies in a very brief period of time – both well after the emergence of modern humans about 200,000 years ago. Each variant emerged around the same time as the advent of "cultural" behaviors. The microcephalin variant appears along with the emergence of such traits as art and music, religious practices and sophisticated tool-making techniques, which date back to about 50,000 years ago. The ASPM variant coincides with the oldest-known civilization, Mesopotamia, which dates back to 7000 BC.
"Microcephalin," the authors wrote in one of the papers, "has continued its trend of adaptive evolution beyond the emergence of anatomically modern humans. If selection indeed acted on a brain-related phenotype, there could be several possibilities, including brain size, cognition, personality, motor control or susceptibility to neurological/psychiatric diseases."
"The next step is to find out what biological difference imparted by this genetic difference causes selection to favor that variation over the others," Lahn said.
Both microcephalin and ASPM have numerous genetic variations. The authors show that certain variants are subject to very strong positive selection over others.
To determine the variation frequency of the two genes, the researchers surveyed more than 1,000 individuals representing 59 ethnic populations worldwide.
For each gene, the scientists identified a large number of haplotypes, or variant copies. They found that one class of haplotypes, called haplogroup D, shows two distinct characteristics. First, they are very young. Because not enough evolutionary time has passed since the first copy of these variants appeared for them to diversify, all the haplogroup D variants are nearly identical. Second, despite recent emergence they have spread rapidly.
"In a very short period of time, this class of variants arose from a single copy to many copies. That implies that this must have happened because of positive selection," Lahn said, pointing out that it's statistically unlikely for a haplogroup this young to have such high frequency due merely to random genetic drift.
The team also observed geographic differences. For haplogroup D of ASPM, they found that it occurs more frequently in Europeans and surrounding populations including, North Africans, Middle Easterners and South Asians, and at a lower incidence in East Asians, New World Indians and sub-Saharan Africans. For microcephalin, the researchers found that haplogroup D is more abundant in populations outside of sub-Saharan Africa.
The biochemical functions of these two genes are not fully understood. There is, however, some information as to what they do. Mutations that render either gene completely nonfunctional in humans cause microcephaly, a medical condition in which the brain is much smaller than normal. In many cases there are often no other abnormalities, which indicates that these two genes play an important role in brain size.
A series of studies suggest that there is some correlation between brain size and intelligence, but with some exceptions. Although, on average, a man's brain is 3 to 4 percent larger than a woman's, both sexes score similarly on IQ tests.
Lahn also points out that "brain size is very heritable. Bad nutrition is typically not a factor; the brain is very privileged within the body."
The researchers emphasize that very little is known about the impact of these variants. They may not have anything to do with cognition or intelligence.
"Just because these genes are still evolving, doesn't necessarily mean they make you any smarter," Lahn said. "We've evolved genes for selfishness, violence, cruelty – all of which are in place because they may make survival easier. But in today's society, they're certainly not condoned."
Lahn and colleagues stress these studies only examine two genes, and that the genetic variations within a population are often almost as great as the differences between groups.
"If we look at multiple genes, the ethnic variations such as the ones we found are likely to be counterbalanced by other differences," Lahn said. "It just happens that we looked at two genes for which the variants favored by selection have a higher frequency in some populations such as Europeans. It might be that for the next two brain size genes we find, the variants favored by selection will have a higher frequency in Asians or Africans."
Scientists know of about a half dozen other genes that are primarily linked to brain size and several others that may also play a role in regulating brain size. According to Lahn, these are all primary candidates for learning more about human evolution.
HHMI funded both of these studies. First author for the ASPM paper is Nitzan Mekel-Bobrov, and first author for the microcephalin paper is Patrick Evans, both of whom are graduate students in Lahn's lab.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-09/uocm-uoc090205.php
.......and far more expert at mass murders than we have ever been.
Devolution.
DEVO, "What We Do": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bp2tQ75pTD0
"Feedin' and breedin' and pumpin' gas,
Cheesburger, cheeseburger, do it again."
Gotta love some DEVO.
My particular fav: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56u6g0POvo0
Thought about peak bullshit earlier this week.
You still can register some websites with this name
too long; didn't read
well .. too many words; didn't read
well .. too many *big* words
"Exposure to specific bacteria in the environment, already believed to have antidepressant qualities, could increase learning behavior, ...."
Interesting
Most likely explination, unless it was controlled for, is increased immigration from countries not yet subjected to the Flynn Effect. Assuming the US and the rest of the West remains industrialized/reindustrializes, their children's IQ's will increase just as those of our grandparents did when sanitation, education, and increased availability of nutrition came about.
Similar to number 7, but slightly different is that this is a direct result of our "success". The combination of modern medicine and modern agriculture have meant that the portion of the population that would have faced the greatest threats to their mortality (those without the intelligence to succeed in society) now survive. The more our society protects all its members, the more of those members survive. The members who would not have otherwise survived skew the numbers downward. This does not seem a surprising result at all.