The Flynn Effect is real

The Flynn Effect — the observation that average IQ test scores are rising, and have been doing so, in many industrialised countries throughout the 20th century — has been known about for some time, and it’s been debated whether this is because people are actually getting more intelligent (whatever that means), or whether it’s just an artifact of how IQ tests are measured (e.g. in a society where people have more contact with IQ-test-like puzzles, you might expect their test scores to rise, without any corresponding rise in other cognitive abilities).

Matt McIntosh at Gene Expression notes that here has been physiological changes in the population over this time period which suggests the Flynn Effect corresponds to real increases in intelligence:

To my mind, the most compelling evidence in favor of Flynn Effect gains being real is physiological: it’s well known that there have been increases in height concurrent with increases in intelligence in all the countries where the FE has been operative. What’s less well known is that there have also been recorded increases in cranial capacity [...] and in brain size.

Given an increase in brain size and the correlation between IQ and brain size (0.4), it’d be pretty remarkable if there wasn’t any corresponding increase in intelligence. Also, in support of Lynn’s nutrition hypothesis, there have been correlations found in developed countries between IQ and presence of certain micronutrients.

Also, there have been a few studies showing that FE gains tend to be disproportionately located at the left half of the curve rather than the right, which is the nutrition theory would predict given that the less bright people tend to be poorer and thus benefit more than the wealthier (who tend to be smarter) from nutritive improvements.

So there you have it — we really are cleverer than our ancestors.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown on faith and atheism

In the Independent, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown talks about faith and atheism:

Radio 4’s John Humphrys has taken on the fanatic atheists in a new book about faith and the human urge to believe. Some aspects of our nature are not susceptible to scientific enquiry, cannot be dissected, categorised and validated in terms that would satisfy the “rational” disbelievers, whose intellect is colossal but imagination puny.

I disagree; all observable phenomena can, in principle, be studied and understood by the methods of science. Of course, there are plenty of things we still don’t understand, but the amount of scientific understanding is vastly greater than it was in the time of our grandparents, and is growing exponentially.

There are no experiments and tests to explain love, empathy, longing, the agony and ecstasy of the heart, the wild and wonderful creativity of the brain, that thing that happens to you when a full moon appears above the sea and is reflected in it. Sorry, but knowing the science of why the moon shines is irrelevant to the experience. Faith is the light of the moon above and that light in the sea, reality and spirituality, both making you tremblingly conscious of forces vast and beyond words. Impertinent scientists cannot know what they speak of.

Emotions such as love, empathy can be, and have been explained in terms of game theory and evolutionary psychology. AI research and cognitive science are beginning to understand what is going on in the brain — though we are still at the very earliest stages of understanding it. Faith might make one conscious of “forces vast”, but it is science that is mapping out the true size and age of the universe, and it is scientific knowledge that — at least for me — makes the experiences of seeing a sunset, or a flower, or watching a kitten exploring its world, so much more immense and enjoyable and moving.

(Link from Normblog)

King of Saudi Arabia was an alcoholic

Razib at Gene Expression points out something I didn’t know — a former king of Saudi Arabia was an alcoholic:

I recall that the Mughal ruler Jehangir was an alcoholic, as was Saud bin Abdul Aziz, the king of Saudi Arabia in the 1950s and early 1960s (his problems with alcohol were one of the reasons that he was forced to abdicate by his brothers).

Given Islam’s prohibition of alcohol, this is obviously hypocritical. This sort of behaviour is not uncommon:

One of the main reasons that I have generally turned a skeptical eye toward explanations of religious constraint upon behavior are these sorts of examples. From an atheist perspective I had always tended to view religions as clear and distinct sets of axioms; but operationally the practice seems far more subject to social consensus and individual rationalization. This isn’t only an issue with religions, I have known of environmentalists who drive SUVs, self-proclaimed social conservatives who are heavy users of drugs and indulge in non-standard sexual practices, and so on. I’m sure most people can repeat such examples. Years ago when I found out that George H.W. Bush had switched from being pro-choice to pro-life, as had Ronald Reagan to some extent (Reagan’s pro-choice period was more that he simply signed laws decriminalizing abortion in California as governor), I assumed this was conscious political opportunism. The same for Al Gore or Jesse Jackson, who made the inverted transition.

But maybe not consciously hypocritical:

And surely some aspect of political calculation was at work here on the ultimate level, but what about the proximate cognitive processes? Humans are good at rationalization, and I’m not sure anymore that the elder Bush or Reagan were insincere in their rather fortuitous conversions. Or, at least part of their minds were pretty convinced that their change in opinion had more to do with reflective shifts in the underlying assumptions and values and not an exogenous push due to circumstance.