The very short version of my thesis on sci/tech change is that we have exponential increases in resources devoted to science and technology as a civilization, linear returns on many scales such as life expectancy, mean IQ, log GDP (which is still of mildly diminishing utility), etc.
Low hanging fruit depletion, the standard explanation for this, is very insufficient to produce the observed effect. Many other plausible effects have been proposed that could contribute to reduced scientific progress, including but not limited to excessive time in grant-writing and existentialism, various factors increasing conformity and selection for conformity locally and globally, and increased (until recently) environmental toxicity. Dysgenics may be a minor factor, decreased variance of all sorts is almost certainly more important, as is degradation in educational standards and institutions. I suspect that economic effects that I don’t have time to discuss may be more important.
“degradation in educational standards”
And yet people are successfully learning calculus and the like at younger and younger ages, and getting higher and higher absolute scores on international math and logic tests/IQ subtests. I’d like to see you square this with Flynn.
But the relative value of knowledge is falling. If I knew calculus a thousand years ago, I’d have been the most brilliant mathematician alive. A hundred years ago, it’d have been more than I’d need to know for almost any profession. Today, calculus is the beginning of serious math. I need significantly more specialized math education to really be functioning at the top (even in fields that aren’t pure math).
I’m not sure our education system is getting worse in absolute terms, though it may be (math and science seem to have lost a lot of gravitas). But, in that it’s not getting better, it’s getting worse, because demand for highly educated workers is much higher. As compared with a “better” education system, the demand for grad school (especially in math and science) is much lower than it otherwise would be, lowering student quality and student volume in some combination, and probably increasing the average cost of training, as it fails to take advantage of returns to scale that might otherwise be present.
Not to mention public policy is generally constrained by the ignorance of the masses. If your average voter had a college (or postgrad!) level of understanding of economics, do you think policy would look like it does?
Surely the relevant educational standards of those of grad school, not high school. Scientists can use calculus, but maybe they’re spending too much time mastering the same tools (“conformity”).
Flynn is a good retort to environmental toxicity and dysgenics. (maybe there’s increased environmental toxicity 1910-1960, and Flynn is measuring that going away)
The Flynn effect isn’t caused by the fact that IQ tests are getting easier. There’s an upwards drift (linear in time) in average score for a given fixed test. In order for the average score to be 100 (as it is supposed to be by definition), the IQ testers have to adjust the scoring normalization periodically. The Flynn effect changes are most apparent in the lower part of the distribution -- the lowest scoring people in the current generation score much higher than those of past generations; the highest scoring people are comparable across generations.
IQ tests are getting harder and other tests (SAT, maybe GCSE) are getting easier. Flynn is stronger in fluid intelligence than crystalline. But there is supposed to be a small crystalline Flynn effect. SAT sounds like pure crystalline intelligence, yet it has the reverse effect.
This is really weird. But the Flynn effect is pretty weird on its own.
Vassar makes the argument that science funding is increasing exponentially, so mean intelligence scores should be increasing exponentially as well. Personally I’m not sure that science funding is increasing exponentially.
The very short version of my thesis on sci/tech change is that we have exponential increases in resources devoted to science and technology as a civilization, linear returns on many scales such as life expectancy, mean IQ, log GDP (which is still of mildly diminishing utility), etc.
In other words, one way Michael Vassar measures the success of science is by observing the ratio of change in average intelligence per year to the number of dollars spent on science per year. Even if intelligence is going up, that ratio could be going down. And if it is, our science spending is getting less efficient (according to one measure).
Got that? It’s not too hard.
Edit: Why am I being downmodded? Is it because my interpretation of Michael Vassar’s argument is incorrect, or because I am being overly hard on people who can’t understand it, or something else? You guys are pissing me off.
http://www.blog.sethroberts.net/2009/05/25/the-naysayers/ is pretty relevant to my claim.
The point about lithium in particular. It’s implausible that part of the first few percent of the search space explored in all sorts of applications, from treating bipolar disorder to killing insects to making stockings should turn out to be best.
Lithium is being used because it’s practically the only thing that works.
Seriously, everything else that’s been tried has been useless. And lithium is a terrible, terrible treatment—the blood serum levels associated with gross toxicity is only about twice the effective levels. The old sleeping pills were banned for being too dangerous, and they have a much, much greater safety margin. A twofold serum increase can occur just from dehydration. Furthermore, a significant percentage of people who go through lithium overdoses show clear signs of brain damage afterwards—presumably there’re subtler forms of impairment.
Lithium treatment is thus almost certainly exploiting the very early stages of metal poisoning, rather than being a truly beneficial effect. The reason it’s still used despite those disadvantages is that manic depression is so extraordinarily destructive—the mania more than the depression, even. Manic-depressives can ruin their entire lives in a few days if they go through a severe bout. And nothing else works.
The only thing research has really done for mental illnesses is rule out some of the more obvious hypotheses. We know what they aren’t—we really have no more idea of what they are than we ever did. There are a few exceptions, and they belong to neurology rather than psychology.
Lithium is being used because it’s practically the only thing that works.
FFT (Family-focused Therapy), IPSRT (Interpersonal Social Rhythm Therapy), and CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) have all shown some promise in this area, actually. (Interestingly IPSRT has some crossover with Seth Roberts’ “morning faces” hypotheses; part of IPSRT is regularizing social rhythms—i.e., what faces you see when and for how long.)
I am strongly in favor of non-pharmacological treatments—assuming they work, of course.
I have heard of those strategies before, but frankly if I had manic depression I’d be pursuing them only as adjucts and supplements to lithium. And I think the stuff is literally poison.
The very short version of my thesis on sci/tech change is that we have exponential increases in resources devoted to science and technology as a civilization, linear returns on many scales such as life expectancy, mean IQ, log GDP (which is still of mildly diminishing utility), etc.
Low hanging fruit depletion, the standard explanation for this, is very insufficient to produce the observed effect. Many other plausible effects have been proposed that could contribute to reduced scientific progress, including but not limited to excessive time in grant-writing and existentialism, various factors increasing conformity and selection for conformity locally and globally, and increased (until recently) environmental toxicity. Dysgenics may be a minor factor, decreased variance of all sorts is almost certainly more important, as is degradation in educational standards and institutions. I suspect that economic effects that I don’t have time to discuss may be more important.
“degradation in educational standards” And yet people are successfully learning calculus and the like at younger and younger ages, and getting higher and higher absolute scores on international math and logic tests/IQ subtests. I’d like to see you square this with Flynn.
But the relative value of knowledge is falling. If I knew calculus a thousand years ago, I’d have been the most brilliant mathematician alive. A hundred years ago, it’d have been more than I’d need to know for almost any profession. Today, calculus is the beginning of serious math. I need significantly more specialized math education to really be functioning at the top (even in fields that aren’t pure math).
I’m not sure our education system is getting worse in absolute terms, though it may be (math and science seem to have lost a lot of gravitas). But, in that it’s not getting better, it’s getting worse, because demand for highly educated workers is much higher. As compared with a “better” education system, the demand for grad school (especially in math and science) is much lower than it otherwise would be, lowering student quality and student volume in some combination, and probably increasing the average cost of training, as it fails to take advantage of returns to scale that might otherwise be present.
Not to mention public policy is generally constrained by the ignorance of the masses. If your average voter had a college (or postgrad!) level of understanding of economics, do you think policy would look like it does?
Surely the relevant educational standards of those of grad school, not high school. Scientists can use calculus, but maybe they’re spending too much time mastering the same tools (“conformity”).
Flynn is a good retort to environmental toxicity and dysgenics. (maybe there’s increased environmental toxicity 1910-1960, and Flynn is measuring that going away)
The Flynn effect (higher IQs across time) is entirely compatible with the observation that educational standards are falling, which does appear to be the case, at least in some countries for some subjects. For example http://cabalamat.wordpress.com/2009/03/30/do-you-see-with-you-eyes-ears-nose-or-mouth/ or http://cabalamat.wordpress.com/2007/08/31/gcses-are-dumbed-down-and-getting-worse/
The Flynn effect isn’t caused by the fact that IQ tests are getting easier. There’s an upwards drift (linear in time) in average score for a given fixed test. In order for the average score to be 100 (as it is supposed to be by definition), the IQ testers have to adjust the scoring normalization periodically. The Flynn effect changes are most apparent in the lower part of the distribution -- the lowest scoring people in the current generation score much higher than those of past generations; the highest scoring people are comparable across generations.
IQ tests are getting harder and other tests (SAT, maybe GCSE) are getting easier. Flynn is stronger in fluid intelligence than crystalline. But there is supposed to be a small crystalline Flynn effect. SAT sounds like pure crystalline intelligence, yet it has the reverse effect.
This is really weird. But the Flynn effect is pretty weird on its own.
Vassar makes the argument that science funding is increasing exponentially, so mean intelligence scores should be increasing exponentially as well. Personally I’m not sure that science funding is increasing exponentially.
How does it follow that science funding and intelligence scores should be so strongly correlated?
Oh geez. Here is exactly what he wrote.
In other words, one way Michael Vassar measures the success of science is by observing the ratio of change in average intelligence per year to the number of dollars spent on science per year. Even if intelligence is going up, that ratio could be going down. And if it is, our science spending is getting less efficient (according to one measure).
Got that? It’s not too hard.
Edit: Why am I being downmodded? Is it because my interpretation of Michael Vassar’s argument is incorrect, or because I am being overly hard on people who can’t understand it, or something else? You guys are pissing me off.
How come?
http://www.blog.sethroberts.net/2009/05/25/the-naysayers/ is pretty relevant to my claim. The point about lithium in particular.
It’s implausible that part of the first few percent of the search space explored in all sorts of applications, from treating bipolar disorder to killing insects to making stockings should turn out to be best.
Lithium is being used because it’s practically the only thing that works.
Seriously, everything else that’s been tried has been useless. And lithium is a terrible, terrible treatment—the blood serum levels associated with gross toxicity is only about twice the effective levels. The old sleeping pills were banned for being too dangerous, and they have a much, much greater safety margin. A twofold serum increase can occur just from dehydration. Furthermore, a significant percentage of people who go through lithium overdoses show clear signs of brain damage afterwards—presumably there’re subtler forms of impairment.
Lithium treatment is thus almost certainly exploiting the very early stages of metal poisoning, rather than being a truly beneficial effect. The reason it’s still used despite those disadvantages is that manic depression is so extraordinarily destructive—the mania more than the depression, even. Manic-depressives can ruin their entire lives in a few days if they go through a severe bout. And nothing else works.
The only thing research has really done for mental illnesses is rule out some of the more obvious hypotheses. We know what they aren’t—we really have no more idea of what they are than we ever did. There are a few exceptions, and they belong to neurology rather than psychology.
FFT (Family-focused Therapy), IPSRT (Interpersonal Social Rhythm Therapy), and CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) have all shown some promise in this area, actually. (Interestingly IPSRT has some crossover with Seth Roberts’ “morning faces” hypotheses; part of IPSRT is regularizing social rhythms—i.e., what faces you see when and for how long.)
I am strongly in favor of non-pharmacological treatments—assuming they work, of course.
I have heard of those strategies before, but frankly if I had manic depression I’d be pursuing them only as adjucts and supplements to lithium. And I think the stuff is literally poison.