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256 points hirundo | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.244s | source
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faeriechangling ◴[] No.35513202[source]
Could this have to so with smart people increasing pursuing hedonism over reproduction? Maybe Idiocracy was right all along.

From a strict evolutionary perspective I have doubts that a high IQ is useful anymore.

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ZeroGravitas ◴[] No.35513691[source]
The point of the original Flynn effect being a big deal was that the changes were faster than was possible with genetics alone.

A big part of "The Bell Curve" was arguing that no interventions could change IQ except genetics and so any money spent on low IQ people (African-Americans in the book, but the author followed up by attacking poor people more generally) was a pointless waste.

It turns out he wasn't just an asshole, he was also wrong.

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1. PathOfEclipse ◴[] No.35517718[source]
I've never read the "Bell Curve", and I'm not a huge fan of Charles Murray's work in general, but, from the first line in Wikpedia:

"The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life is a 1994 book by psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein and political scientist Charles Murray, in which the authors argue that human intelligence is substantially influenced by both inherited and environmental factors."

That statement completely contradicts what your claim about the book, and now I am disinclined to trust you.. Later on another statement also completely contradicts what you are saying:

"According to Herrnstein and Murray, the high heritability of IQ within races does not necessarily mean that the cause of differences between races is genetic. On the other hand, they discuss lines of evidence that have been used to support the thesis that the black-white gap is at least partly genetic, such as Spearman's hypothesis. They also discuss possible environmental explanations of the gap, such as the observed generational increases in IQ, for which they coin the term Flynn effect"