<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto">I think high-IQ women actually are actually choosing to not have children, rather than lack of appropriate mates. They believe (correctly in most cases) that children will limit their ability to do the kind of work they enjoy doing. Without nannies, there won’t really be anyone to take care of the kids, as she likely selected a high-IQ mate.<div><br></div><div>However, lots of people who are high-IQ show some traits that might belong to the “Asperger” family, and their children are likely to have more of these traits than either individual parent. This would limit the ability of such children to produce offspring.</div><div><br></div><div>In the past, a high-IQ male or female likely ended up producing offspring with a median-IQ individual, while lower IQ individuals tended to live and die in poverty, or of their own stupidity. </div><div><br></div><div>I believe this slow increase in intelligence might be more productive, by retaining diversity of genes and reducing the expression of negative traits in offspring, ensuring continued fitness of gene-line.<br><div><br><div dir="ltr">SR Ballard</div><div dir="ltr"><br>On Mar 23, 2020, at 10:21 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Mar 23, 2020 at 7:51 PM Keith Henson via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org" target="_blank">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<br>
Our psychological traits such as introversion have also been<br>
<a href="http://selected.by" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">selected.by</a> evolution. Intelligence too. Statistically, people far<br>
from the center of the intelligence distribution don't reproduce as<br>
well as those nearer the center. It's fairly clear that people are<br>
not likely to reproduce who are too low on the scale, but it is also<br>
true that really smart people don't reproduce very well either.</blockquote><div><br></div><div>### You say that current IQ levels are optimized for maximum fitness around average IQ, similar to height. I disagree.</div><div><br></div><div>IQ is under natural conditions adaptive throughout the whole range of variability. The reason why very high IQ is maladaptive in women (but not in men) *today* is because of new and old cultural factors - the combination of contraception, hypergamy and gender equality, perhaps other factors as well. High IQ does not force a trade-off on general health, sex drive, ambition or other important traits. In fact, high IQ persons are likely to be overall healthier, stronger, faster, more robust than lower IQ persons, over the whole range of the trait. </div><div><br></div><div>In comparison, height does force significant trade-offs in important characteristics, such as energy use. While being taller makes it easier to win fights, it also makes it much more difficult to find enough food to thrive. At some level of height above average this increased energy cost creates negative selection for height. This is why we are not all giants. Further, height is a biologically "simple" characteristic - just more or less bone growth at the right time that can be effectively regulated by just a few genes - e.g. by variations in growth hormone receptors.</div><div><br></div><div>IQ is different from height. Under almost all natural environmental conditions and in all social positions a more intelligent person will be fitter than a less intelligent one. This means that there is some positive selection for IQ at all levels. However, IQ depends on a large number of genes working perfectly together to create a very complex and finely tuned structure - and the more genes there are, the more likely that some of them will have more or less deleterious mutations. The fewer damaged genes you have, the higher IQ you can achieve. We are all afflicted by literally thousands of rare variants that collectively limit our intelligence and it takes very harsh selection and endogamy to significantly reduce such polygenic afflictions. This is why we are not all geniuses - the historical selection pressure in favor of high IQ wasn't strong enough to overcome error accumulation, except in a few small groups subjected to harsh selection with endogamy, such as the Ashkenazim or the Parsees. </div><div><br></div><div>As you mentioned, mismatch between the EEA and today's world often exists. Today's conditions are clearly dysgenic with respect to IQ. But the world needs more intelligence! If the current situation continued, in a couple of hundred years we could expect the "Idiocracy" to end our civilization as we know it. Luckily, AI and uploading will soon make biological human IQ a moot issue.</div><div><br></div><div>It's still interesting to think about IQ levels that will be established after the AI or uploading singularity. I would expect that there will be niches available for minds with different levels of IQ, based on energy/IQ trade-offs, similar to what Robin mentioned in his Age of Em, except that I think the differences will be much larger than what Robin expects.</div><div><br></div><div>Rafal</div></div></div>
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