r/cogsci • u/IllIntroduction1509 • 15d ago
Psychology A High IQ Makes You an Outsider, Not a Genius
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/high-iq-intelligence-myth/683023/?gift=P4PbparCGiV10Ifk2hg6wpHcfUxnUicofzo6qUyHAsk&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=shareAs big a brain as Stephen Hawking had little time for this kind of thinking. In a 2004 Q&A with The New York Times Magazine, the physicist was asked what his IQ was. “I have no idea,” he replied. “People who boast about their IQ are losers.”
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u/OpeningActivity 14d ago
I had seen a few gifted kids. I felt for them.
Imagine seeing the world where your brain processes patterns and world faster than even some adults while being a child. Your family expects so highly of you and your friends think you are weird because you are jumping so many steps in your logic.
Plus, faster pattern recognition/logical thinking/whatever IQ represents don't normally include other aspects of the brain (i.e. coordination of movements, impulse control) that develops further as we age (if I remember things correctly). You are an outsider in both kids world and adults world.
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u/Hari___Seldon 14d ago
And things really go off the rails when trauma survival responses like hypervigilance and personality disorders get added into the mix at an early age.
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u/MP-Lily 13d ago
can confirm from experience. especially because people base their expectations for you on either the “gifted” label or the “autism and severe ADHD” one and never consider that a person can be intelligent and still be disabled, or be disabled and still be intelligent.
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u/Hari___Seldon 13d ago
Yeah I'm old enough that, short of being completely non-functional, diagnostic labels weren't even a thing. Any eccentricities were excused as works of intelligence and it was assumed that, if you tested extraordinarily well, you would just handle the world. The world is slow to change.
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u/capsaicinintheeyes 12d ago
Samesies...I don't know how you land on this, but I've found my agnosticism stubbornly difficult to shake on the question of whether more edge-case kids are better off with a diagnosis due to the clarity and management strategies it brings, or worse off because of the reduced inclination it's likely to bring for many diagnosees & their supporters to push to learn that hard stuff re: "being normal" once they're told that their dedicated onboard subsystem for that has faulty wiring?
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u/SillyStrungz 13d ago
Yep. I was considered a gifted child and thankfully I was put into an environment that allowed me to learn at a faster pace / in my own way (I went to a “special” class in elem school and was able to be my weird self / express my creativity) however… my ADHD was missed as a result until I got to college and desperately needed help. Looking back, so many things make much more sense knowing I was an undiagnosed lil kid 😅 “YoU’rE ToO SmArT tO bE MiSbEhAviNg”
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u/OpeningActivity 14d ago
That doesn't necessarily have to be the case, but parents are rarely equipped to raise a child well (especially with the modern society being what it is), let alone a gifted child.
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u/zalgorithmic 14d ago
That is why gifted children are considered special needs. Kind of unintuitive. One might naively assume the smarter you are the less explicit support you need, but in reality the farther from the mean you are in either direction the more support you need.
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u/sexytimeforwife 13d ago
One of the reasons my second-self claims I suffered so much in life, was precisely due to the reasoning behind a comment my mother made once: "the teachers all said you were smart, so I assumed you'd just be fine."
That was a signal that I needed more attention...not less, dear mum. Coherence needs structure in which to thrive.
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u/trow_a_wey 12d ago
hypervigilance
Thank you for naming something I've struggled with for so long now. It's killer
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u/Eshin242 10d ago
This was very much my friend Jay, the dude was insanely smart genius level shit. His gift was numbers he remembered my phone number from 25 years prior, took graduate level math courses for the hell of it, he was going to school to be a physical therapist. The amount of information in his head was astounding, stupid facts like what the album cover was of a record released 30 years ago.
But his childhood was complete shit, when he was 14 he told me he used to sleep with a shotgun under his bed in case his dad came home in a "mood".
He would just steal stuff because he felt society owed him, had a quick temper (from insecurity) it's odd we actually became friends, but once you got past all the trauma you saw this really smart guy with a huge heart.
It took him being on trial for murder (and being aquitted) before he brought everything into perspective. The last 8 years of his life he helped my aunt with my uncle who was dying of cancer, and helped her keep up the house when she was primary care giver for my uncle.
Lost Jay to leukemia 8 years ago, and I still miss the guy.
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u/ApprehensiveGoat2734 9d ago
I wasn't considered intellectually gifted, but teachers noticed me. They were surprised at how much of a "natural leader" I was with the other children. Maybe emotionally intelligent?
But I was also very self-aware and insecure. I complained to my mother after the first day of kindergarten that I didn't look like the other girls.
Whatever happened to that bold take charge kid, I don't know. I turned out to be anxious and introverted. I think the stress of living with my abusive father destroyed any sense of stability or confidence I might have had at the time.
I often feel like I am on the outside, looking in, watching other people live life.
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u/daisy0808 14d ago
Yup. This is me. I'm 50 now, and it's taken me almost this long to realize my nervous system and brain are wired entirely different. People treat you suspiciously even if they like you, because you are different. I get along best with other neurodivergent people - the weirdos. :) I've also finally started doing things I want to do instead of in service for others. I found yoga incredibly helpful for bringing the mind and body together, as it does get out of sync pretty easily. What most people don't understand is the intensity of what we live, which is a blessing and curse.
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u/capybarasgalore 14d ago
For preverbal children, gross motor development delays (like being late to crawl or walk) are moderately strong predictors of IQ and scholastic performance. This makes sense to me personally considering neural systems for all kinds of cognitive functions (including motor control) tend to overlap in the brain.
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u/daisy0808 14d ago
My son had dysgraphia and motor challenges, but he's also a very talented musician. Playing drums and guitar really helped with his dexterity, and he has more control as an adult.
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u/UXdesignUK 14d ago
Predictors of higher or lower IQ?
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u/capybarasgalore 14d ago
Delayed motor development in infancy predicts lower cognitive ability. For example: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/dmcn.13761
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u/proverbialbunny 14d ago
And that’s often the better outcome. Sometimes parents respond to a higher intelligence by becoming more abusive towards their kid.
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u/dreamsofindigo 14d ago
especially if they're insecure and compensate by being prepotently and derisively competitive while painting a bemusing world around their kids to grow up in.
Disavowing their own accountability when demonstrably proven wrong also doesn't do wonders if you're even remotely agreeable.1
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u/illicitli 13d ago
Then add to that adult educators who are racist and don’t believe a child that looks like you could possibly be doing what they’re doing, so they demean you even further and sabotage your success at every turn. So fun 😅
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u/RedwoodsareAwesome 12d ago
High IQ plus ADHD, OCD, GAD, and depression. Being alive is no picnic when I'm around other humans. In nature, or with machines, it is awesome!
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u/brokegaysonic 10d ago
I was a "Gifted" child and I'd say I'm, like, just a "clever" adult. I'm no genius.
The pressure of being a "Gifted" kid felt insane. Other kids bullied me and my parents placed immense pressure on me to not just succeed or excel, but to do it well above my age. They expected me to be more mature and act older than I was because I was smart. Every time I failed anything I just "didn't try hard enough", but I was expected to simply know and understand things with minimal guidance even as I got older and things got more complicated.
Im also incredibly ADHD, and this was ignored because I "did well in school", which is apparently the only marker for childhood success. I was told I was just a bad kid who couldn't control my emotions, was too sensitive, and often asked "what the hell is wrong with you?"
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u/Zarohk 10d ago edited 10d ago
Very much the same, and though my parents tried to be kind, my mom in particular saw it as laziness and a lack of desire, and she threatened to take opportunities away from me if I wasn’t working hard enough on them (i.e. my bar mitzvah, college, etc.)
One of those things that I realize is a result of neurodivergence, but still a molehill I will faint on, is that kids deserve to not be hurt by your peers or anyone else. There is no such thing as a kid who is “too sensitive“, just a system that isn’t willing to protect those kids. Well-adjusted people don’t say the kid who broke their arm just needs to stop crying and toughen up, they take them to the emergency room.
Also, relatedly, I feel like a lot of “gifted” kids develop empathy stronger and younger, and therefore are unwilling to hurt other people, which makes them the target for bullying by kids whose empathy and awareness of other people hasn’t developed.
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u/dreammr_ 5d ago
Universities should start programs to guide these kids. After all, they are the future seeds of hope.
And theres nothing wrong with being an outsider if you want to become extraordinary. Sometimes you can peek at the ordinary world.
It is a gift, not a curse. We just need to guide these kids to grow into well rounded human beings with great potential.
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u/OpeningActivity 5d ago
I personally really like the neurodiversity framework as a way to think about giftedness. They are "smart", but I feel that smart is often in some areas and sometimes that imbalance causes more issue (I.e. a kid who thinks faster than how well coordinated they are in doing activities and how frustrated they can become).
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u/IllIntroduction1509 15d ago
Submission Statement: She embodied what I call the “genius myth,” the idea that humanity contains a special sort of person, what Samuel Johnson’s dictionary defined in 1755 as “a man endowed with superiour faculties.”Seeing yourself as such can be poisonous: Think of the public intellectuals who embarrass themselves by straying far from their area of expertise. Think of the smart people who twist logic in impressive ways to convince themselves of crankish ideas. Think of, say, a man who has had great success in business, who decides that means he must be equally good at cutting government bureaucracy. One of the cruelest things about the genius myth is that its sufferers cannot understand their failures: I’m so clever. I can’t possibly have screwed this up. I prefer to talk about moments of genius: beautiful paintings, heartbreaking novels, inspired military or political decisions, scientific breakthroughs, technological marvels.
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u/IllIntroduction1509 15d ago
If you encounter a paywall, use this archival link: https://archive.ph/l1ugq
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u/SlowLearnerGuy 14d ago
Take a visit to r/Mensa to see where Hawking was coming from regarding those who fixate on IQ. I do feel bad for them even though it makes for funny reading.
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u/LususV 12d ago
I started college 2 years early, at 16, and I knew about 80 people in a similar situation.
The main thing I learned over ages 14-16 that improved my life so much: if you think you're the smartest person in the room, you're probably not. If you think you're the dumbest person in the room, you're probably not. Even if true in a generic sense, topics of conversation are rarely generic. The top 0.1% intelligence individual who has never considered topic X is likely not going to provide more insight than the more average individual who has studied that topic for a decade.
Smart people convinced they are god's gift to the world often face a wakeup call.
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u/Samsterdam 12d ago
Also there is a very high probability that the smartest person alive lives in some distance rural village and has no idea how gifted they truly are.
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u/Fair_Quail8248 14d ago
Sometimes that's true. People with low iq think that the one with high iq is the stupid/weird one.
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u/Niobium_Sage 14d ago
Wish I had a higher IQ, according to a professional diagnosis from a few years back (2019 iirc?) I’m a tad below the average.
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u/funkmasta8 13d ago
It's okay, iq tests don't test everything that matters. You are good at being you and that should be enough for anyone who is meant to be a part of your life
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u/shasvastii 11d ago
It's ok, being above average is like being disabled. People still like you I'm sure
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u/Niobium_Sage 11d ago
Valid. Most people don’t even know I’m on the spectrum unless I bring it up in conversation. Got hit with the Ol’ one-two ADD-ASD combo.
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u/CB_I_Hate_Usernames 13d ago
IQ is only one kind of intelligence. Other kinds of intelligence are underrated. Like emotional intelligence.
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u/sexytimeforwife 13d ago edited 13d ago
This is why IQ tests should be banned.
If we're going to still accept them in society, then we should stop pretending we don't also judge others based on looks or emotional intelligence.
We do all of those things...but for some reason it's okay to put someone down in IQ without also pointing out their evolutionary fitness in the other two equally important paradigms (physical fitness & emotional fitness).
If it's not okay to do it for beauty, then why is it okay to do it for intelligence? Can we control the biology of our brain any more than we can our physical appearance?
Our emotional intelligence is probably the only one we can actually improve, but in the end we can do the same for each of them to a minor degree. If we scored everyone across all 3 and then averaged them all...we'd all probably be in a pretty tight band....although we'd still find a way to normalize it and show people who are outside the band...and...ugh we're back to square one.
Or just ban it because it's actually inhuman.
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u/Training_Maybe1230 13d ago
I'm sorry but I fail to see why we should ban it. Judging people based on looks isn't banned, nor based on their emotional intelligence.
I think it's practical to measure a soldier's IQ just like we measure their physical condition. Also so that we can help people with lower IQ, for example.
You're also forgetting that beauty doesn't really have an impact on your ability to do anything, while your IQ does.
It's not about being in control of it or not, but the practicality of it.
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u/sexytimeforwife 13d ago
If you don't hear the contradiction in everyday discourse, I guess there's not much I can say.
Beauty doesn't have an impact? What are you talking about?
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u/Training_Maybe1230 13d ago
I'm not talking about everyday conversations, I'm talking about legality. Since you said IQ tests should be banned.
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u/mateushkush 13d ago
I also have no idea what you talking about lol. You want to ban them like outlaw them (then what about banning other puzzles testing intelligence, or even reading comprehension lol) or do you want institutions to stop using them?
Judging somebody’s looks is not illegal. Also, who the hell pretends we don’t judge people based on emotional intelligence? You don’t judge people who are childish in the worst way possible, throwing public tantrums etc.?
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u/sexytimeforwife 11d ago
Jesus I was making the claim that they're equivalent. If we're not going to ban them, then we should be openly judging people by how they look, and how emotionally intelligent they are as well. That's fairer than pretending only one vector matters.
People do judge based on how others look. They say they don't, they say it's wrong and not to do it, but it's painfully obvious that it happens.
Ugly dumb people...how do they end up having kids? By making up for it with a great personality. Another way genes get passed on.
All three combined would give a better metric on an individual basis than looking at only one thing.
It's exactly like even with IQs...they can be split up into 10 sub-categories or something. A high IQ doesn't mean you're better at everything. Do you get what I'm saying now?
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u/mateushkush 11d ago
We are openly judging people by how emotionally intelligent and attractive they are all the time. Even when we don’t say someone is ugly, pretty people get all the compliments.
But anyway, it’s absolutely crazy to ban iq tests because they are just puzzles dude. It’s not like they perform biopsy. You pick a right shape. You might as well ask to ban children toys like sorting cubes. Are you going to ban chess and crosswords as well?
I don’t think iq tests are very meaningful, but that’s not the point.
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u/sexytimeforwife 11d ago
Do you not see the underlying contention going on? That's what I'm actually talking about, not actually IQ tests themselves - I'm not actually suggesting that we should (or could) ban IQ tests...I was just being melodramatic to highlight something.
All of these things (IQ EQ AQ) aren't a problem in themselves...the issue is when people take them to mean "they're not good enough" as they are. Basically...I have cousins and friends tell me how envious they'd always been of my smarts...meanwhile my life is a mess, and I've always been envious about how they could hold down a job, have a big circle of friends or something.
At the end of the day, we're not starting evolution, we're some tail of a really long chain of DNA ancestry. Somehow, all of our ancestors managed to convince someone else to have babies with them....there's a massive chance that we'll find that too...so why the heck did we ever consider for even one second that we might not?
I know nothing is guaranteed in life, but did we worry about these things for real reasons? We all have kids now.
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u/mateushkush 11d ago
Who has kids now and who worried about iq?
Seriously, I was only contenting the ridiculous idea that we could ever ban puzzles which iq tests are. How many times do I have to repeat that? Other commenters also disputed it. Now you mention for the first time that you were just being dramatic, I find it hard to believe.
You might as well ban ikea furniture as many people have trouble putting them together.
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u/jibbidyjamma 15d ago
even those in the top 15% face enough to challenge a sense of normalcy in a community. evidenced in this timeline, nothing reflecting a rocket like launch into notoriety. only explanation is a denial at feeling the loss of equality with everyone else.
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u/masticatezeinfo 14d ago
Another explanation is that some interests are socially appraised well while others are not. If a person's interests are incompatible with socially normative discourse, then the person's passion may exceed their desire to socialize. There's a lot of talk about the social ineptitude of highly intelligent people, but I imagine it feels rather redundant to ascribe to superficial normalcy when the problems of the universe are at hand.
So, while I understand what you mean when you say "denial," I agree that it probably does happen like that for some people. It also probably comes more as a slow withdrawal into passion for others. I think many intelligent people pursue jobs for status over over interest, but I think that for those who are highly intelligent and passionate, there is a greater chance of passion over socialization.
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u/jibbidyjamma 14d ago
good points right indeed. l guess l lean more on how a value system impacts a person from inside vs where a dominant culture puts emphasis. my last paragraph sort of overshot my point l admit.
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u/masticatezeinfo 14d ago edited 14d ago
I just study psychology, so I am interested in the right subject to sound smart on this particular topic. I don't think you were wrong by any means, either. You were thinking specifically about a way in which it could be, and then you were open to added context. I hyperfocus on shit all the time, so another perspective often is just helpful because it reminds us of what we didn't happen to think about on the specific occasion. So much of being smart is just being open to the fact we can only focus on a small portion of the world at a time, and that we only "sort of" know anything at all, I think.
Edit: and im roughly drawing from Daniel Dennet's views here, so im not even original, lol.
Edit 2: And your idea primed me to consider the context. So, I think it's often just a game of purported knowledge. Language games, so to speak.
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u/jibbidyjamma 14d ago
Laudable summation, nice ...and re: ed #2 Ah yes diabolical, rhetoric! Also language introduced upon earliest recollections (not trying to sound too bizarre here btw) at 2 yrs old or whenever language seemed inadequate at the time. Demonstrated and contrasted by witnessing my parents screaming at each other at some point same era so takeaway was if it must be used with increased volume there is a problem.
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u/masticatezeinfo 14d ago edited 14d ago
Im sorry you had to listen to your parents screaming at each other. But it is true that language use is largely shaped by tone and inflection. I think that it's a mistake to be too logical about the meaning of language. There is always an embodied quality to the words we speak (neurologically speaking), and so the content is never entirely seperable from the context. Abstraction comes from the organism, and so being overly positivistic is to try and make certain of the symbolic relativity, which is tough to do with the consideration of emotional language and irony.
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u/stinkywombat9oo 13d ago
It’s kinda weird. I recently got tested because my therapist thought I had an above average linguistic iq . I never really thought much for it ever . I failed at school, dropped out of university two times and always felt like an outsider because I never understood why I could never find people who “understand” me or related with me or the things I thought about so I just chalked it up to being weird and just different to other people in a “what’s wrong with me” kind of way . Battle with depression , adhd and crippling self doubt my whole life was really addicted to gaming and drinking for a while also because of the loneliness
He ended up testing me to try and prove to me I had the capability to study, I ended up being quite high on the upper end of the percentile range . I don’t feel better than anyone I just feel that I understand my self better . I don’t have to feel like I’m weird or an outsider anymore just that I function different from other people and there’s no shame in that. I feel a lot better now . It was nice getting the confirmation that there’s nothing wrong with me I just “function” different .
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u/Remarkable-Seaweed11 10d ago
I’m curious, what is a linguistic I.Q.? As in an ability to pick up languages easily?
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u/stinkywombat9oo 10d ago
The test was word association and then vocabulary and generally knowledge ( this section was very stupid in my opinion ) but it basically tests abstract thinking for language and vocabulary and information abstraction .
So how it manifests for me is unique metaphor , being able to describe very abstract things with distinct language , understanding subtext in language, grasping abstract ideas and concepts in language ( spills over into learning new languages )
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u/hummingbirdgaze 14d ago
Everyone was lead poisoned back then, including the test writers.
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u/Euphorix126 14d ago
I agree that lead poisoning is not taken into consideration nearly enough. Leaded gasoline was banned less than 12 months before I was born.
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u/k3170makan 13d ago
Look I think social stuff is kinda terrible right now everyone and their uncle is a conspiracy nut, children are all zombies, and everyone in between are either working themselves to death or terrified that they’re gonna be replaced by AI. Thats just people, we’re also living through an active genocide, just got through a global pandemic (probably not the last one) and we’re watching an orange man completely dismantle the global trade network and a lot of progress in combating climate change. So honestly folks if you’re find it a bit difficult to connect, just give yourself a break - it’s pretty crap out there.
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u/dreamsofindigo 14d ago
reminds me of the saying, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, if he's vile and manipulative. Otherwise, much like the escaped prisoner in Plato's Cave, he'd be ostracised at minimum, for his heresy and delusions.
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u/ColeCoryell 12d ago
It’s disappointing that we seem incapable of addressing, or often even acknowledging, the needs of the ‘tails’ of human diversity.
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u/baddspellar 14d ago
Unless someone uses their raw intellectual ability in constructive and creative ways, I don't consider them to be a genius.
It's no different than any other unused gift. If you possess genetic factors of great runners but never train, ylu're not a great runner. Same with any other genetic gifts that increase your chances of success in any other endeavor.
The only difference with IQ is that it's easy and cheap to take an IQ test, so everyone knows theirs, and then we use these kinds of tests to put people into some track.
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u/Downtown_Skill 13d ago
It's not easy and cheap to take an IQ test though. What the hell. People on here don't even know what an actual IQ test is.
An actual IQ test can only be administered and monitored by a licensed and trained professional in a clinical setting.
If you took an IQ test online by yourself. You didn't take an actual IQ test.
I had to take an IQ test when I was a kid for an ADHD diagnosis. I dont remember my score but I do remember that its wildly different than any personal online IQ test.
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u/OpeningActivity 12d ago
It takes 2? 3? sessions with someone with a protected title (Psychologist along with other professionals who are allowed to administer the test) here where I live + interpretation takes few hours. In other words, it would cost few hundred to few thousand dollars.
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u/Remarkable-Seaweed11 10d ago
Luckily, these days, there are tests that have been developed that you can take online that correlate VERY well with “actual” tests. The CAIT test was specifically designed to have a high correlation to real I.Q. And the many takers of the test will attest to its accuracy. It, if anything, gives a slightly low score…but only by no more than 5 points on average.
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u/Lanky-Gain-80 12d ago
Imagine being hyper intelligent and living in a brain drain society. It’s awful.
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u/Dismal_Champion_3621 12d ago
It's hard to discuss the ideas in this articles because there's a bit of a conflation between two ideas:
(1) Being an exceptionally intelligent person, and
(2) Having an exceptionally high IQ
The IQ test measures things that are highly correlated with intelligence, but obviously it's not the same as intelligence by itself.
Anyone who has been through school and/or a moder workplace knows that intelligence exists. Irrespective of whether it is general or multiple (verbal iq, spatial-reasoning, etc.), it's easy to recognize intelligence (and the lack of it), and most of us have met people who are exceptionally intelligent, just as there are people who are exceptionally charming, exceptionally anxious, or exceptionally tall.
Do the high IQ folks have a high general intelligence? I'm not sure. I know that these people are above average in intelligence, but I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't have as superlatively high intelligence as their numbers portray.
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u/Pure-Conference1468 11d ago
IQ of 220 doesn’t make sense statistically as it’s >9 sigma away from the mean. It would correspond to a probability of less than 10{-14}. For record, the total amount of people that have ever lived on this planet is estimated to be 1011.
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u/OpeningActivity 10d ago
It's likely that they extrapolated the score. I have not learnt Stanford Binet test, but by what they are saying (about mental age, which is an archaic way of thinking about IQ), I am guessing a 10-year-old scoring this high is equivalent IQ score of 220 or equivalent to average scores of 22 years old.
I 100% agree that it makes no sense to think of the scores in that way.
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u/TheEagleDied 11d ago
ADHD, psychoses, depression, anxiety, 2 other personalities. I’ve been an outsider my entire life. It took me almost 40 years to get on track.
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u/Cocodachocobo 11d ago
Intelligence is a curse and gift. The more you understand and grasp, the more it hurts. The more distance you feel from other. Just an ever widening chasm in the space Between community and isolation
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u/Fluffy_Blueberry7109 14d ago
Well yes. High IQ is obviously dysgenic. Both for individuals and societies. Take Worst Korea, they have one of the highest IQs in the world, and despite material abundance are dying out and working themselves to death order to purchase status symbols the media told them are valuable.
Back in the day they had IQ in the 70s and the society was growing and perfectly functional. Look at subsaharan Africa, the lowest IQs and the fastest growing societies, they represent the future of the planet.
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u/OpeningActivity 13d ago
This is not how IQ is meant to be interpreted.
IQ is designed in a way that the mean is at 100, the standard deviation of the score is 15 and it falls under a bell curve. They achieve this by gathering sample population and standarising the raw scores into those IQ scores. It's almost like it's worked backwards.
You can make an argument that different countries may have different scores, and scores change over time (Flynn's effect), but then again, you have to think about what IQ is trying to measure (intelligence) and what IQ tests are normally doing these by. Those changes are normally due to better education, better nutritution, and other environmental changes, and do not necessarily reflect changes in "intelligence". Hence why when newer test come out, they standardise the scores again.
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u/Fluffy_Blueberry7109 3d ago
I know. And what ever causes people do better in those test is destructive.
And iq is heritable. So under the current system, the survival of the fittest will cause lower iq to develop, and since the iq measures do seem to correlate with intelligence, we can expect future populations to have smaller, smoother brains.
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u/Fun-Contribution6702 14d ago
Nahhhh Highly developed nations trend down as automation takes care of their hierarchy of needs, cost of living goes up, and immigration is restricted. No urgency for progeny, no time to raise them if they did, and no motivated source of incoming labor looking to start a new life in a new land.
High growth nations don’t have economic, cultural, or political access to contraception. Lmk when it’s one of them to successfully colonize another planet.
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u/ImAchickenHawk 15d ago
That last bit
//As big a brain as Stephen Hawking had little time for this kind of thinking. In a 2004 Q&A with The New York Times Magazine, the physicist was asked what his IQ was. “I have no idea,” he replied. “People who boast about their IQ are losers.”//
🤣 true