Interesting Links for 06-03-2012

[andrewducker]

• Replacing Trident makes no sense
  (tags: nuclearweapons politics uk )
• New mortgage scheme gets go-ahead in Scotland.
  I'm not convinced by this - the reason the banks want a large deposit is in case the prices fall. If this happens then the government will be left in debt.
  (tags: housing mortgages scotland )
• Did you ever read Goats? Would you like it to be finished? There's a Kickstarter...
  (tags: kickstarter Goats )
• The terror inherent in explaining homosexuality to children
  (tags: TheHorror children lgbt )
• The Politics of Star Wars
  (tags: politics starwars )
• Algernon's Law - can anyone spot the obvious flaw?
  (tags: evolution intelligence )
• More left-wing people need to be educated about economics
  (tags: economics )
• Why do people leave their religion?
  (tags: religion christianity )
• The UK is planning on opening up a tax loophole.
  (tags: uk tax )
• Jesus is a Rorscach blot - everyone sees what they want to.
  (tags: religion christianity jesus politics )
• The New Networked Feminism: Limbaugh's Spectacular Social Media Defeat
  (tags: feminism internet society communication )
• Teen rape tackled in Home Office advertising campaign
  (tags: uk rape advertising )
• 24bit 192kHz Music Downloads are Very Silly Indeed
  (tags: music digital sound technology )

Comments

[gwern branwen (from livejournal.com)]

> One central claim necessary before your argument is that evolution is not currently increasing our intelligence.

That's not necessary at all. The argument is simple: any increase to intelligence will have one of a few properties, or else evolution would already have increased it.

Intelligence could be increasing... as long as the increases had one of the properties.

> The Flynn effect (whatever it is) is certainly much larger than this. So before you begin your essay on "why evolution cannot increase our intelligence" you must first show it is not doing so. You really cannot -- if there were an underlying evolutionary change on an evolutionary timescale it would be so small it would be absolutely swamped by the astoundingly rapid changes in human IQ.

Already addressed Flynn. So your whole objection comes down to 'there might be some process operating now', which is just an argument from ignorance?

> Why -- what is your evidence for this? And remember, fitness here is evolutionary fitness, not fitness for being smart, not fitness for earing money, not fitness for qualifying for Harvard. Do you have any evidence whatsoever that more intelligent people have more children?

I don't. All my evidence points strongly in the other direction - exactly consistent with what I just said, about the fitness neutrality being extremely unlikely, and increases either being fit or unfit. If merely somewhat smart people *already* suffer big fitness penalties as evidenced by low fertility, then that makes it even *less* likely that being 10x smarter would be exactly fitness neutral!

Re:

[steer.livejournal.com]

If evolution is already increasing intelligence then your argument becomes, there may well be simple ways to increase intelligence with small changes and evolution is currently finding them. As the true situation is that we do not know, the only possible argument is "we cannot possibly tell from evolution if there are simple ways to increase intelligence because we do not know if evolution is currently increasing or decreasing it."

I do not think we are going to agree on the other matter of the fitness neutrality of intelligence.