Idiocracy: a glimmer of hope

From Mike Judge’s film "Idiocracy" (2006):

 “Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized and more intelligent. But as time went on things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction. The years passed and mankind became stupider at a frightening rate. Some had high hopes that genetic engineering would correct this trend in evolution. But sadly, the greatest minds and resources were focused on conquering hair loss and prolonging erections.”

'Idiocracy' portrayed a society where the left-hand side of the bell curve (those with IQ less than 100, lack of conscientiousness, lack of impulse control, .etc, etc) had reproduced uncontrollably while those folk with the smarts hadn't bothered. In the quantitative genetics literature, this would be called truncation selection, in this case breeding for stupidity.

The results were that nothing worked. The complex infrastructure of logistics, power, water, sanitation - even keeping the streets clean - had broken down. People lived in decaying hovels and lived on scraps. The other, less obvious, feature of 'Idiocracy' was that innovation was now impossible: the extremely bright people who drive innovation either didn't exist, or lacked an infrastructure to do anything with their ideas.

The mean IQ of "Idiocracy" society was pretty low, I would guess well south of 90, but there are societies around today which are not dissimilar. Turn on the News.

Well-meaning people - which is most of us - typically have three main responses to these continuing human tragedies:

• Hope for some unspecified 'development' which will fix things - a sadly illusory prospect.
• Rely on a discredited neo-colonialism from outside to fix/run things (Ebola care is the latest manifestation of this).
• Hope for future genetic engineering to increase the cognitive capabilities of these populations (as in the quote above). Good luck with that.

Yes, it looks hopeless.

You're may think I'm referring to the societies of sub-Saharan Africa but even in advanced western countries we have our areas of 'Idiocracy' - our bleak, welfare-ridden estates.

So what would an answer look like?

The low-IQ societies of today and of the past were (and in some cases, still are) equatorial hunter-gatherers, operating in a relatively non-seasonal environment, in smallish groups and mostly in the here-and-now*. In that environment they didn't experience any 'cognitive limitations' - they were adapted. We can't go back to that situation, which was hardly ideal in terms of lifestyle difficulty anyway. Besides which, the numbers are now too great and we've largely lost the ecological environment which made that lifestyle possible.

No, we have to create a simulated environment which pushes similar ecological buttons, but which operates at much higher population densities. It may sound ridiculous, but the model which comes to mind is that of a very-robust, highly-automated and free theme park.

• The activities there would permit a variety of inter-personal relationship types including, for example, status-contests for the males (e.g. sports competitions).
• Basic human requirements such as food, shelter, entertainment and medical care would be provided free-of-charge.
• The mil-spec automated systems would fulfill a social role of 'slaves' - something we couldn't do with real, technically-competent people.**

I would guess we're less than a hundred years from being able to create such an effective and affordable infrastructure***. In that time we're not going to lose the many very smart people we need to create and maintain it. Let's get on with it.

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* Sub-Saharan agricultural and pastoralism is fairly recent (cf the Bantu) in evolutionary terms.

** As last seen with the Romans and their Hellenic slaves.

*** You may be thinking 'zoo' but this would not be for the benefit of spectators: such a competent social environment would be pretty utopian for all of us.

The intelligence sweet spot

In an otherwise NA-specific article Steve Sailer makes the following observation about advertisers, that they prefer those:

"who have been to college, because they have more money, but who are not all that bright because (cf. The Bell Curve) there aren’t many people out at the right edge of the bell curve. The spending sweetspot is a little to the right of the median IQ."

This has the ring of truth about it, also accounting for the general dumbness of much TV and the broader media. And Mr Sailer has more: there is a class of irritating intellectual emanating from this part of the distribution which Sailer amusingly labels the Lumpenintelligentsia, characterised by 'self-absorption ,..., wounded amour propre, dimwittedness, and general cluelessness'. You will have heard their opinions in the broadcast media (Radio 4 in the UK is a particular offender) and TV news and current affairs programmes; also in the opinion pages of way too many newspapers.

Further on the subject of the immediate right-hand side of the IQ bell curve, Steve Hsu notes the results of an impressive Swedish Study.

"Match Made at Birth? What Traits of a Million Swedes Tell Us about CEOs

"Abstract: This paper analyzes the role three personal traits — cognitive and non-cognitive ability, and height — play in the market for CEOs. We merge data on the traits of more than one million Swedish males, measured at age 18 in a mandatory military enlistment test, with comprehensive data on their income, education, profession, and service as a CEO of any Swedish company."

Since the standard deviation of the IQ distribution is set at 15 points, the study tells us that the CEOs of large (Swedish) companies have IQs averaging around 115. This is not that high by academic standards. How puzzled should we be?

Steve Hsu observes: (bold = my emphasis)

"Performance beyond a certain level in the vast majority of fields (and business is certainly one of them) is principally a function of having no cognitive and personal qualities which fall below a (high, but not insanely high) hygene threshold -- and then multiplied by determination, of course.

"Conscientiousness, in fact, is the best single stable predictor of job success for complex jobs (well established in personality psychometrics).

"Very high intelligence actually negatively correlates with career success (Kotter), probably because smart people enjoy solving problems, rather than making money selling things -- which outside of quant trading, show business and sport is really the only way of being really successful.

"There are some extremely intelligent people in business (by which I mean high IQ, not just wise or experienced), but you tend to find them in the corners of the business landscape with the richest intellectual pastures: some areas of law, venture capital, some cutting edge technology fields."

Yep, seen this in telecoms. The toilers at the base of the organisation think the senior execs must be incredibly smart. Those I've seen mostly not so much.