Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Retirement, Bikinis, Churchill, Blake, and Luck

“As a matter of fact, you can hardly call me a fortune hunter. Because when I first proposed to Mrs. Claypool, I thought she only had seven million. But the extra millions never interfered with my feelings for her.” – A Night at the Opera

Update: I just saw David Lee Roth in a rowboat . . . .

Pop Wilder was generally a cautious man. Adopting me was an example – one of the few – of when he stared Caution straight in the eye and said, “I would like to ruin any chance of sleeping well until he’s 18.” He likewise glanced at Fortuna and said, “I really don’t need those thousands of dollars that I’ll have to spend fixing the house. And the television. And the car. And the other car. And the other car.”

Pop really was restrained in his spending. While we never wanted for anything in particular, I certainly wasn’t spoiled, especially by today’s standards. The first vehicle I got to drive around was a pickup that had a rubber mat covering steel a steel floor, vinyl bench seats, AM radio, no air conditioning, and was a decade old. It also had an “engine” that was perhaps slightly weaker than an Ebola patient after a marathon.

Pop kept his cars for a decade or more. He always bought cars with cash – and never paid interest on anything that I know of, ever, even our house. The house was built it in stages over the course of years (by a local contractor crew of farmers who built houses while the crops were growing) until it was exactly the way that he and Ma Wilder wanted it. He owned it outright.

He retired while I was still in school, not long after I got a scholarship. Those things might have been related – after I got the scholarship I think he was pleased to hang up his hat and sit on the porch, and I was the last risk he needed to manage before he could do that. Pop had been working at the same place since he was five, with the exception of a certain all-expenses-paid trip that the government provided him in Europe. He got to see places like London, Normandy, and even the Rhine.

Pop says he saw him. But I’ve never seen any pictures of Pop with Winston Churchill . . . .

Pop’s life was built on the idea of financial stability. That would make sense – he’d seen lots of people do finances poorly. He’d been a small-town farm banker, back when there were such things. Banks back then didn’t have branches, they had roots: the lessons learned from the Depression had led regulators to build resilience in the system by only allowing banks to serve a limited area. A big bank with branches all across the state or even across a county was seen as an unacceptable financial risk and a concentration of power so large that it would invite corruption. I’m glad that we have figured out how to avoid systemic financial risk and that our politicians are now beyond corruption.

Oh, wait, this isn’t the cover for the remake of Dumb and Dumber?

Thus, if you wanted to deal with a banker, you’d drive into town from your farm and go talk to Pop. Pop wouldn’t loan you money if you couldn’t repay it. When he retired, he felt that he had his risks covered. The same year I met The Mrs., Pop Wilder headed off to Europe to revisit the location where he saw a certain Mr. Churchill taking a stroll on a French beach.

I can’t speak to the financial condition of The Mrs.’ family in as much detail. But at the time I met her, her dad had to sell several head of cattle (there weren’t all that many to begin with) to cover a debt from his wife’s business. He was retired, but it was obvious that they were counting on Social Security to cover the bulk of their retirement costs, especially after my mother-in-law shut down her small business and entered semi-retirement herself.

Who does it look like would have the most trouble-free retirement?

Sure, we’d all say Pop Wilder. But in the end, my in-laws have had the better run. What happened to my in-laws was a temporary setback. Within two years, several oil and gas companies began knocking on their door of their farmhouse. Soon enough, they’d sold a lease.

The oil company drilled. Within a few years, my in-laws had their old house (it was held together, The Mrs. said, by the termites and mice holding hands very tightly so it didn’t collapse) demolished. They replaced the house with a new one, and filled in the pit where the basement of their old farm house had been.

My in-laws had been frugal all of their lives, but at this point, retired and on Medicare, they were doing beyond okay – they were thriving. Were they “buying a brand-new Ferrari®” okay? No. But there’s nothing like the peace of mind that having a producing oil well on the property creates. And, yes, production has gone down, so it’s not as much money. But it’s still been a big help.

And whatever happened to the ever-planning Pop Wilder?

No, really, voters, I have eyes only for you.

Pop Wilder spent it all. Slowly, and not at all frivolously, outside of the trip to Europe. Pop had gotten to the point where he was just a little bit under water each month. Not by much – my brother (also named John Wilder) and I could easily help him out by kicking in $200 each month. And that was a small price to pay for all of the cars I’d wrecked.

When Pop passed on, I think he was down to $100 in his account.

William Blake died in 1827, and was far from a conventional thinker. I’d spend more time studying his writing, but from experience I’ve found that when you pick up the book of an esoteric author that died 200 years ago, you miss a lot of what they’re talking about without a great deal of study. I bought a book about the Knights Templar back in 1999, and after reading about eight other books I was able to pick that first book up and follow it.

There’s a lot that they don’t teach you at school.

Anyway, back to Blake. There is one quote from Blake that’s not unconventional and you won’t have to study for three years to figure out: “Life can only be lived forward, but understood in reverse.”

I’ve always loved that quote, and the longer I live, the more that quote makes sense: most of the time as you go through life you can’t really understand the reasons for what’s happening to you. And I wonder what lessons Pop Wilder learned – was it the ability to let go and let fate guide him while he had friendly hands to help? Maybe.

That was a tough final – we had to construct our own universes – from scratch!

And for my in-laws – was the lesson that a life frugally lived can be paid off with comfort in the end? Again, maybe.

I can’t be certain. Those lessons were theirs, not mine.

The Romans had a goddess, Fortuna, who represented luck – both good and bad. This particular goddess had a long life in Rome, she showed up around 600 B.C. and was hanging around in the Medieval days when St. Augustine wrote (not approvingly) about her work as a goddess in his 5^th Century book, City of God. Perhaps the version of Fortuna that inspired Blake was from St. Boethius who reflected in his 6^th Century book the Consolation of Philosophy that (from Wikipedia) “the apparently random and often ruinous turns of Fortune’s Wheel are in fact both inevitable and providential, that even the most coincidental events are parts of God’s hidden plan which one should not resist or try to change.”

That sounds more like Blake.

Is it me, or has Fortuna been lifting?

As for me, by observing this the one thing I know is that the future is uncertain, and as I get closer (not there, yet) to retirement, I begin to understand that, while I can put together spreadsheet after spreadsheet, I certainly cannot control Fortuna. There are too many possibilities in the future that are simply beyond the ability of anyone to control.

Will:

there be inflation?
they strike oil under my house causing Granny, Jethro, The Mrs. and I to move to Beverly Hills? We thought about it, but live next door to a banker? I hear they bring down property values.
civilizational decay make it so I can’t get a decent chili dog?
I live to be 190? I hope not.
government have to change the deal as Medicare eats all of the Federal budget? Nearly certain.

And what will I do in the face of such uncertainty? In the immortal words of David Lee Roth . . . “I’ll just roll myself up in a big ball . . . and fly.”

Unless, of course, my lessons revolve around being Pugsley’s house-television-car repair service.

At Our Wits’ End Review Part II: I.Q. and the Fate of Civilization (Hint, It’s Idiocracy)

“As the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point. Natural selection, the process by which the strongest, the smartest, the fastest, reproduced in greater numbers than the rest, a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man, now began to favor different traits. 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. A dumbing down. How did this happen? Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most, and left the intelligent to become an endangered species.” – Idiocracy

The pictures from this post are mainly from Idiocracy©, which you should watch before it’s an actual documentary.

This is the second part of the review of the book At Our Wits’ End. The first part can be found here at At Our Wits’ End Review Part The First: Increasing Intelligence and Civilization. Again, I recommend the book, and the link is below. As of this writing I don’t get any compensation if you buy it here. Buy it anyway. It’s an important book.

When last we left Western Civilization, we’d reached the smartest point ever in history. Isaac Newton was an example of the genius produced at this time in history. Dutton and Woodley have data to suggest that 1750 was the peak of intelligence for Western Civilization.

Is there any evidence for this?

Certainly.

Life in 1770 was fairly comparable to life in 1470. Given three hundred years, things hadn’t changed much at all. But by 1804, life was dramatically different. The Industrial Revolution® was a product of the accumulated intellectual capital of the preceding five hundred years and it changed everything.

Prior to the Industrial Revolution©, natural selection occurred in society through the culling of the poor via disease and poverty along with the execution/prison death for about 2% of the stupider males. This led to the population getting smarter. But the Industrial Revolution© created an economic abundance in the West like never seen before. Surplus food and goods were now available in society. Medicine improved and kept the weak children of rich people alive.

Ahh, selection in progress.

Medicine also kept more of the children of poor people and poor single mothers alive. As established previously,

Poor impulse control is correlated with lower I.Q.,
Single motherhood is correlated with lower I.Q.,
Less overall wealth is correlated with lower I.Q., and
Having more children is correlated with lower I.Q.

Again, none of these predict the behavior in individuals. The friend I have with the greatest number of children has a very high I.Q. There are several very smart people I know that don’t have a lot of money. And anyone under the influence of testosterone and being 18 has really crappy impulse control. I will also remind everyone being rich doesn’t mean you’re virtuous. Neither does being smart. But in group behavior, the correlations above are well documented.

Dutton and Woodley note that they’re not the first ones to see the inherent problems with the removal of natural selection in a wealthy society. Benedict Morel, named after a mushroom, observed this problem in 1857 between surrenders in France. Francis Galton wrote in 1865 that “Civilization preserves weakly lives that would have perished in barbarous lands.” Ouch.

But it’s true. As of this week, every member of our family wears glasses as Pugsley was the last to leave the “good eyes” club. And The Mrs. developed type I diabetes when she was 12. Prior to the 1920’s this was a near immediate death sentence. However, since insulin was isolated and entered the market in the 1930’s, she’s alive and had kids, namely Pugsley and The Boy. Her genes would never have reproduced without the Industrial Revolution™.

Spoiler alert: they’re never going to be ready.

Charles Darwin wrote an entire book on the problem: The Descent of Man. It really wasn’t a light “summer at the beach” read as it described humanity getting progressively . . . worse. Smarter people use contraception more (remember, the prohibition against birth control went away as religious beliefs changed). And lower I.Q. people not only have more children, they actively desire more children.

Further factors that have developed as society absorbed the wealth of the great capitalist expansion include the development of a welfare state. That’s a problem if you want smart people around. Welfare states support and encourage single mothers (lower I.Q.) to have more children and ensures that those children survive. Dutton and Woodley also note that data suggests that welfare may encourage those who are also low in “personality factors” (agreeableness and conscientiousness) to have more children. What does that lead to? A population that is more impulsive, paranoid, apathetic and aggressive. By coincidence these traits are also associated with lower I.Q.

So, numbers increase on the lower end of the I.Q. scale. What about on the upper end? Are smart people are having lots of babies? No. Opening high value careers up to intelligent women causes them to have fewer babies. Higher I.Q. people also use birth control more frequently, and actually desire to have smaller families. So not only are lower I.Q. people having more lower I.Q. babies, smarter people are having fewer high I.Q. children.

But at least they have what plants crave!

Having a wealthy society also increases the desire for people from less wealthy countries to immigrate to the rich countries. As we shown in the previous post (I.Q. – uh- What is it good for? Absolutely Everything. Say it again.), less wealth generally correlates to lower societal I.Q. Does this translate to real-world outcomes? Yes. Dutton and Woodley cite Danish studies that show the average Dane I.Q. to be around 100. However, the I.Q. of non-Western immigrants is roughly 86 in Denmark. Immigrants certainly aren’t making Denmark smarter.

To think, you could live in a paradise like this . . . .

Since intelligence is 0.80 correlated with genetics, they and their children actually can’t make Denmark smarter. This result would indicate that wealth, quality of life, and ability to self-govern would decrease in countries facing high immigration, while crime would increase. As a completely unrelated note, the United States has more immigrants than any country on Earth, with 40% of the population (How the Constitution Dies) now being either first generation or born of a foreign mother.

But What About The Flynn Effect?

The Flynn Effect refers to a general rise in IQ scores between 1930 and 1980, noted by a guy named (drum roll) Flynn, James Flynn – he’ll take his data shaken, not stirred. For whatever reason I.Q. scores seemed to be increasing. However, Dutton and Woodley explain that the Flynn effect is most likely environmental in nature (i.e., better nutrition) and not genetic.

Apparently the I.Q. test sub-scores that show improvement tend to favor very specific areas of intelligence, namely those areas that are environmentally influenced. There is a parallel with height, they point out: in 1900, average height in Great Britain was 5’6”. In 1970 it was 5’10”. But growth has been in leg length (which is more correlated with environmental factors) versus torso length (which is more genetic). People are taller due to nutrition.

Additionally, schools train more for abstract thought than they would have in a mostly agrarian society, which would have been the norm throughout the West in 1930. Country schoolhouses didn’t need to teach logic puzzles, since they were focused on traditional subjects. Now children are drilled in the kinds of questions that are used on I.Q. tests – and if you practice, you do get better even if you’re not smarter. On some I.Q. tests administered to youth, they’re not considered to be valid if the child had the test in the past year, so practicing the kinds of questions on the test will likely improve scores.

The bad news is that evidence suggests that the Flynn effect has stopped around somewhere around the year 2000 and is now headed downward. Reaction times (a proxy for intelligence) have dropped. Reaction times aren’t as closely correlated with I.Q. as many of the other things we’ve talked about, but they are directly measurable. It may be a bad ruler, but it’s a ruler that we can use to compare across time.

Also confirming the I.Q. drop is work done by Augustine Kong, a Chinese researcher at the University of Iceland studied genetic components known to increase I.Q. They’re declining. The average Icelander born in 1990 wasn’t as smart as one born in 1910, and the genetics aren’t there to support an increasing I.Q. The opposite appears to be happening.

Dutton and Woodley conclude that based on the metrics they reviewed, the “average” Englishman of 1850 would be in the top 15% of intelligence today in England. Oops. And apparently all tests surveyed indicate declining I.Q. That’s a problem: if average intelligence is declining, and intelligence is a bell curve, there will be fewer geniuses and a smaller “smart fraction” that is able to put run and hold together a technologically advanced society. Or build a SR-71 Blackbird. Or a Saturn V rocket.

Just like a bad horror movie, it keeps getting worse. The very temperament of genius is changing – from stereotypical genius – a very driven, self and work-preoccupied Einstein to Todd from corporate: intelligent, socially skilled, agreeable, and conscientious. Thankfully the genius “Todd” will provide us really detailed policy manuals and snappy PowerPoints® instead of that useless groundbreaking physics.

Creativity is correlated with I.Q. but only up to an I.Q. of 120. As a further confirmation, creativity scores have declined, therefore . . . expect less Monty Python® on TV and more “Ow, My Balls©.”

And people say that there’s nothing good on TV.

On the bright side, the murder rate is down. Why would that be so? Murder, violence and impulsive behavior is correlated with lower I.Q. Dutton and Woodley theorize that the environment that creates violence is down – given a robust welfare system it’s less likely that financial pressures or social pressures are as high. You kid won’t be starving to death as they stuff their face full of Cheetos® while they sit on the couch playing X-Box™, and since obesity is up, killing people is such hard work, anyway.

Why do Civilizations Rise and Fall?

Like your mother-in-law, early civilizations have a low I.Q. – they’re dangerous places to be. But over time group selection pressures intensify, the people become highly religious and ethnocentric – the hill people want to kill and eat the valley people, and vice-versa, and everybody wants to kill the group whose god makes them wear purple. The nice thing about strong religion and ethnocentric behavior is it allows your group to compete well.

If your religion is good enough, and if you get enough selection for I.Q., you just might end up with a baby civilization on your hands. Once I.Q. increases, conditions get better. An elite is formed, and, since they have nothing better to do, they begin to question all of the social traditions that made civilization smart and wealthy.

The elite begins to compete on who can be more altruistic and ethnocentrism (favoring your own people) becomes badthink. All of the values and norms that created the civilization are despised and thrown out. Society begins to decline. “. . . extreme views . . . eventually become the norm.”

Resources are then taken from those that are more capable and given to those that are less capable, which is called fairness since all people are equal, right? I.Q. drops. Innovation drops.

Then? The elite is purged, and the civilization collapses. The authors anticipate the following response, that: “. . . it doesn’t work precisely with some obscure civilization or other; or demand that we respond to an infinite regress of every unlikely possible alternative explanation . . . .” Yeah, even academics get denial.

Okay, maybe it won’t take that long.

Does This Explain Past History with Other Civilizations?

Sure.

Ancient Greece.
Islamic Civilization. 64% of important Islamic scientists lived before 1250. 100% of them lived before 1750.
China. It came very close to its own industrial revolution.
The Roman Empire. Why didn’t Rome (as awesome as it was) have an industrial revolution? Contraception and abortion were approved of. Higher IQ women generally had fewer children, and this collapsed Rome prior to that great leap that would have led to Maximus™ brand Ocelot Bitez® and Roman tanks. Man, I wish we would have had Roman tanks.

What About Western Civilization?

Western Civilization has followed the same cycle, but with this important difference: Christianity had a taboo against contraception and abortion which kept higher I.Q. women having children. The Spring of Western Civilization was from 1000 to 1500. During this time, it was highly religious and highly ethnocentric, just like the model.

The Summer lasted from 1500 to the Industrial Revolution©. This period was more rational, questioning, and the Renaissance brought culture and art to the forefront.

Autumn – Industrial Revolution™ to last Tuesday. We find ourselves with the elite questioning society. The ideas and thoughts that the civilization is capable of are reaching their highest level as we harvest the fruit of hundreds of years of human advancement.

We may be in Winter or close to it. The hallmark of winter is a declining I.Q. as the less intelligent spew out children like a society-destroying genetic AR-15. Culturally, Winter is characterized by the reproduction of good ideas from the past rather than coming up with new ones. Multiculturalism and Marxism are “anti-rational” and “their adoption should show how far g (I.Q.) has fallen.” Dutton and Woodley quote Charles Murray with the phrase that describes the era – “The feeling that the story has run out.”

The authors are not certain we are there, but feel that it’s worth noting that things don’t look very good.

Thanks, guys.

Are There Solutions?

I’ll leave you to read the book for those alternatives. I’ll summarize it by noting that the solutions provided are not easy choices, and unlikely to be implemented in any democracy. I.Q. drop is caused by our society and values, and won’t be undone by a society with our values. The authors further suggest that maybe we should spend some time saving our knowledge so it’s easier for the next group through.

Dark.

I still recommend the book. I also recommend Dr. Dutton’s YouTube® work. I’ve linked to a good one down below. Next week I should have the transcription done of my interview of him, and it’ll shine a bit more light on these conclusions.

Procrastination and Learning How to Finish Thi

“He’s finishing his senior thesis. Pigman is trying to prove the Caine-Hackman theory. No matter what time it is, 24 hours a day, you can find a Michael Caine or Gene Hackman movie playing on TV.” – PCU

My solution when I hit a writer’s block on my thesis was to just do something else for three years.

The Mrs. and I both have master’s degrees, but the way that we went about getting them was different for each of us. I finished my master’s before she and I met. The Mrs. finished hers while preggers with The Boy after we’d been married a few years. When The Mrs. went to grad school, she wrote, finished, and defended her thesis (A Comparative Study in Restraint and Self-Control: How I Avoid Strangling John Wilder) before she was even finished with her coursework. I was astonished. Before we had met, I had finished my master’s degree. But mine went something like this:

Year one – do courses.
Year two – do courses. Finish courses.
Year three – get a job.
Year four – write, finish, defend thesis.

Yeah. The stupid way to do it.

But getting a master’s degree was an easy decision. Both of us had our grad school tuition and a salary paid for by being graduate assistants. The education was free, heck, being a graduate assistant paid more than most adjunct professors make today.

What, exactly does a graduate assistant do? One day my friends and I (when we were undergraduates) were drinking and watching a documentary of a scientist who was determining how fish swim. Yes, your tax dollars paid for this study. Anyway, the fish was placed in a tank with a grid, and a high speed camera was suspended over the tank. But they put the fish in the tank and it . . . didn’t swim.

Solution? They put an electrode up the fish’s butt and shocked it to make it swim on command. I swear I’m not making this up. My friends and l laughed – who, exactly had the job of inserting the electrode? Our conclusion: graduate assistants. Eventually we concocted scenarios where we would apply for funding and study the way that graduate assistants exited swimming pools filled with alligators when dropped in. The funding would include all the important aspects of science – gin, a swimming pool, and appropriate patio furniture. Oh, and graduate assistants.

The Mrs.’ degree involved no fishes, electrodes, alligators or even liquor (she was preggers) – in fact she taught freshmen undergraduates, which might be even less fun than the whole “inserting an electrode up a fish butt thing.” But in my case I got a job before finishing my thesis. As a result, I ended up having to keep registering part time for two more years until my thesis (Thermodynamic and Structural Analysis of PEZ®-Based Building Components For Use in Containing a Robotic Elvis®) was complete. My employer didn’t really care when or even if I finished my master’s, so it was all on me.

Thanks to 173dVietVet for rare historical pictures of Robot Elvis after he broke free from the PEZ® containment structure.

So I procrastinated in finishing my thesis – I had a day job, money was coming in, and nobody cared. Except me. Eventually I just started writing the thesis one late night. After finally completing it, defending it, and having my degree awarded, I ended up burning every paper, note, copy, and floppy disc associated with the thesis. It felt good. Really good. I put the pages on the fire one at a time.

But why did burning the thesis feel so good? I was done. Complete. Finished. And I had done it only for me. And it was a good way to get rid of the evidence.

I may have made some mistakes in my thesis. Minor ones.

This is the same reason it feels good to finish my taxes every year on April 14^th: I am ending my procrastination with success even though I can’t just burn it when I’m done. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who procrastinates on doing their taxes, or even on tasks that are much easier. I’m not late doing most things (like my thesis), I’m on time. Just on time.

So why do we do it? By “we” I mean the 20% of people who procrastinate. As near as I can tell, there are several answers.

One person I worked with, Willie, procrastinated at work because he was bored. He is one of the most intelligent and creative people I’ve ever known, and as such, generally lived his own life on his own terms – one time he experimented with not wearing shoes around the office.

That idea went about as well as you might expect.

While we were co-workers I’d noticed a pattern with Willie. He’d spend time at work fairly frivolously, goofing around within the limits of what was acceptable. Breaking his computer by deleting files and fixing it, that sort of thing – it looks like you’re working even when you’re just playing.

Then out of the blue, he’d work nearly nonstop at a furious pace on real, actual work.

John Wilder: “Why do you do that, Willie?”

“I guess I’m bored. I like to wait until I don’t think I’ll have enough time to get the work done before the deadline, and then I’ll do it all at once.” Willie was seeking the thrill of the deadline, and the challenge of performing the work. Wasn’t the work itself challenging? No, not for Willie.

My thesis advisor was encouraging.

Willie’s strategy has merit. I say this because I’ve done it, too. I also noticed a pattern: 80% of the work I was assigned (Pareto and the 80/20 Rule Explain Wealth) wasn’t important, and would get cancelled prior to the deadline. Willie noticed this, too. Most things our bosses wanted us to do (in a professional role) just aren’t important and if we didn’t do them, no one cares because the work wasn’t important. I’ve generally found that the higher up in the organization that the work originated, the less important the work is.

To compound the problem, most middle managers have no idea which things are important, or even why something is important. Often it’s a case where the CEO wants coffee and the middle managers begin a strategy to buy South America. Thankfully the CEO didn’t ask for Belgian waffles – they’ve been invaded enough in the last 100 years and I think the Germans already have it reserved for the next time they decide to invade France.

Procrastination in this case above produces two good things:

Time to Goof Around
Working Only on Things That Matter

My thesis clearly doesn’t fall into this case. I know that procrastination pays off now while work on my thesis pays off later, but the net goofing around in my life is the same so that doesn’t help me – it just makes life more painful for future John. And the thesis clearly matters if I want to get my master’s degree.

What else could cause the procrastination? Some people avoid doing things because they fear failure. Some avoid it because they fear success. I’m not immune to this – as this blog got some big hits one day last year after a post was featured on The Woodpile Report (it’s here), I know that I felt a slight bit of apprehension. “Crap. People are actually reading this now. That’s responsibility.” But my thesis didn’t fall into that category, either. I wasn’t going to be more or less successful. Not one of my employers has cared since I got it. Not a single employer.

It was for me.

I did get tired of people asking me about my thesis. Maybe I was a little touchy.

Other people just think too hard about the plan of action – there’s just too much data. I have been in job situations where there’s so very much work to do that I’ve felt overwhelmed. And when you feel overwhelmed, sometimes you just stare blankly at the desk while the 200 items you have to do today roam around in your mind like Germans in Belgium. What’s always helped me in those moments was to write a list and start doing something. Anything. Generally in an hour or less it’s sorted out. In rare occasions it’s 45 straight 12-hour days. But forceful action in a state of confusion, even if it’s not the right action, is better than inaction.

Sometimes there’s too much information – there are too many factors and the logic portion of the brain is overloaded and it’s hard to make a decision. The Boy is having that problem now. He’s narrowed his college choices down to two. If I were to make an analogy, it would be like having the opportunity to have a nearly free red Camry® or a nearly free blue Camry™. Yes, they’re both the same car. But to The Boy it’s the biggest decision he’s yet made. Or, the biggest decision he’s going to make this year, whenever he gets around to it – which had better be in the next two weeks.

My thesis didn’t fit in those categories, either. I knew (more or less) exactly what I needed to do.

Maybe in hindsight my thesis wasn’t that great.

But I’ve had zero negative health consequences from (not yet) doing my taxes. And none of the explanations above are why I haven’t yet done my taxes, or I procrastinated in doing my thesis. The answer is far simpler.

I’m lazy.

But I have the patience to wait for that grant money for the liquor, alligators, pool, patio furniture and graduate assistants. That would be a thesis I could be proud of!

Death, Taxes, Ancient History, and Bad Advice

“I have to do it alone. Don’t you get it? Everybody dies here. It’s just a rule. Death, taxes, more death, and I don’t pay taxes. So all I know is death.” – Ash vs. The Evil Dead

Don’t delay on filing your taxes . . . any longer than me.

If I could write a book about taxes, it would be a very short book:

“Avoid paying taxes if you can and do in such a way as to not be thrown into jail.”

That would be the title. That would also be Chapter One. There would be no Chapter Two.

“Tis impossible to be sure of any thing but Death and Taxes,” wrote Christopher Bullock in The Cobler of Preston in 1716. There is, however, biblical evidence that Bullock was only partially correct: in the New Testament, Jesus was hanging with Peter and they were talking about taxes. Jesus tells Peter to go down and catch a fish, and money would be inside the fish, and Peter could go pay taxes for both of them. Peter did, and they even have the picture to prove it since they didn’t have receipts back then:

Is that Jesus or John Lennon behind Peter?

So, even though Jesus could both return from the dead as well as make dead people live again, he still paid taxes. This therefore means that the only real certainty in life is . . . taxes. If you’re an atheist, however, it’s okay to plan for both.

The biggest tax (for me) is income tax. But the list of common taxes is mindboggling:

Federal Income Tax
State Income Tax
Sales Tax
Social Security Tax
Medicare Tax
Property Tax
Liquor Tax
Gasoline Tax
Tobacco Tax

I was going to make up some joke taxes for the list above, but throughout history, I believe that government has taxed . . . everything. New York City has a tax on food, but if the restaurant slices your bagel that means it’s prepared food, so thus you get to pay yet another tax for the privilege of living in New York. But taxes aren’t new – taxation spans recorded history – the earliest documents relating to accounting go back to at least 5,000 B.C. I suspect taxation goes back even deeper into the past – there are tally sticks that go back at least 40,000 years, and I imagine that they were counting out taxes on profits from sales of knickers made out of baboon fur even then.

Is it just me or does it look like the Egyptian accountants have huge Egyptian bongs? Talk about creative accounting . . .

As tribes wandered around in the distant past, the idea of supporting others within your tribe was probably pretty natural – these were your people, after all. But as tribes grew bigger, and connections more tenuous, taxation started. I think the idea of taxation came as soon as one man could count and see that another man had a little more than he did, was a little bit better of a hunter, a little bit better at fishing.

That man (or maybe his wife) then got other men and planted the idea of envy. “Why Oog need three bearskins? Me have only one, so Oog one percenter. He am greedy for having thing Thag want.” Thag went on to write the first tax regulation. Humanity, I guess, has evil people who are filled with hatred that show up all throughout our history – we call them the IRS® now.

Okay, sometimes I use colored pencils and also write quotations from Moby Dick.

For all of that time, governments have taken taxation seriously. Murder? Arson? Burning an elementary school? Overthrowing the government of a small (really small) country for fun and profit? All petty crimes when compared to cheating on taxes. I think the current punishment for tax evasion includes snakes and having to share a cell with a Hollywood® C- list actress-mother who bought her kid into USC®, so I certainly don’t advocate that – I mean, snakes are not so bad, but Hollywood™ mothers?

So what can you do?

First, file your taxes. TurboTax® makes it easy, sadly. I wish that taxes were difficult to pay. I wish that every person got paid weekly, in cash, and had to count off actual cash payments to an IRS© agent. Or that there was no withholding so that people HAD to write a check every year for the full amount of taxes due and didn’t live with a fictitious “I got a refund – the government paid me” mindset.

Second, max out any things you can do that lower your tax burden. 401K’s are nice for that – they allow you to invest money (often in the stock market) before taxes are taken out so you make stock gains on the pre-tax dollars. This puts your tax burden out into the future when you will need Depends® and a walker and worthless paper dollars will be used by barbarians for heat due to the new ice age due in 2028. But at least you avoided taxes now.

Actually the records are in an envelope under my camping gear in the basement in that back room. I think.

Third, set yourself up as a corporation and have your employer hire the corporation to do your job and pay yourself minimum wage. The rest of your salary can then be paid out in dividends to you, which are taxed at a lower amount and you can be just like Warren Buffet. Really, Warren does just that, and then he complains that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary, although there’s really nothing that would stop him from paying your taxes, or mine. But he won’t because he’s busy having cheeseburgers in Margaritaville. Oh. Wrong Buffet.

Fourth, don’t make up your own currency to pay your taxes. As cool as “Bi$onBuck$” sounds, unless you want three free meals a day for the next 33 to 60 months, you should probably not use ‘em to pay your taxes.

Yes, I know they’re Euros, but don’t they look like Christmas wrapping paper? Besides, all you can do with Euros is buy baguettes, bassinettes, marionettes and cigarettes in France.

Fifth, put off doing your taxes to the last minute. It lowers your risk of audit, and, if you’re like me and have to send off a check most years, you can keep your money for just a few more weeks so you can roll on your bed in it. Unfortunately the pennies stick to my butt, so be careful if I give you change.

Sixth, remember that John Wilder (me) is an Internet humorist and is not licensed to be a financial advisor or tax consultant or provide legal advice, because what would the fun be in that?

At Our Wits’ End Review Part The First: Increasing Intelligence and Civilization

“Give the likes of Baldrick the vote and we’ll be back to cavorting druids, death by stoning and dung for dinner.” – Blackadder

I love accurate historical dramas.

What happens when you find a set of ideas that might explain the world as we see it, that ties together dozens of topics you’ve written extensively about over the course of years?

You smile, even if it means civilization might be ending. Heck, if civilization ends, no more mortgage!

Let me go back to the start.

I was listening to YouTube® on my way to work. YouTube™ has some interesting algorithms that select your next video. From time to time the videos presented have been horrific, but on this particular occasion, a gentleman was interviewing Dr. Edward Dutton about his new book At Our Wits’ End. I enjoyed the interview so much I ordered the book that night, and have watched many of Dr. Dutton’s YouTube© videos as well since then – he’s named himself quite appropriately the “Jolly Heretic.”

I was not disappointed when At Our Wits’ End arrived and, in my first spoiler alert for the review, I heartily recommend the book without reservation. Dr. Dutton wrote the book along with his colleague, Dr. Michael Woodley, and together they have put together an interesting and compelling scientific narrative. I research many of my posts, and some research takes hours and has dozens of notecards of notes. In this case, I typed my notes about the book – the notes alone are sitting right now at 1725 words. We’ll see how many posts that ends up being: I’m betting it will be two, and I’m certain that not all of my notes will be used. I may end up posting the combined review when it’s complete as a separate page on the blog, along with the interview of Dr. Dutton that he was gracious enough to agree to. I’ll be posting that interview after the review is complete – I think it will form an excellent post script.

Last week’s Monday post (I.Q. – uh- What is it good for? Absolutely Everything. Say it again.) was a warm up – it dealt with how I.Q. shapes the present. In it, the relationship between I.Q. and national wealth is fairly obvious. This week’s post deals with (to me) the more crucial and compelling question – what will the future of Western Civilization and humanity be? This is the core of At Our Wits’ End.

But first, from page 108 of At Our Wits’ End:

One problem with science which many people find difficult to get their heads around, is that the aim of science is to understand the nature of the world and to present the simplest explanation, based on the evidence, for what is going on. Science is not there to be reassuring, to make people feel good, or to help bond society together . . . . Those who call for suppression are, in effect, arguing that scientific pursuit is fine until it forces them to question the worldview that they hold for emotional reasons. Once it does this it is ‘bad science’ or ‘a higher standard of proof should be demanded’ or ‘it is immoral’.

This is perhaps the quote that impacted me the most strongly from the book. We live in a world filled with truths – and the most uncomfortable questions are perhaps the most important to ask. We may not like the answers, but when dealing with reality we cannot make rational decisions without that knowledge. In my personal life, the questions that I hate to ask myself are nearly always the most important ones. Strangely, I also seem to know immediately the answers to those questions, at least when I have the courage to ask them.

The first question posed by the book is a simple one:

What is intelligence?

As discussed previously in this blog, intelligence is the ability to solve complicated problems, generally with some speed. For this review, I’ll use I.Q. and intelligence as well as ‘g’ – the general intelligence factor – interchangeably. Although these are all very different terms for a scientist studying the subject, for the purposes of this review I’ll mangle the language and call them all the same thing and use them more or less similarly. It’s like calling a zebra a horse, but hopefully it excludes centaurs and giraffes and makes for clear reading for the lay reader. Also, keep in mind that these are group numbers – we all know and can cite examples of individuals who don’t follow the group correlations we’ll discuss – the genius level smart dude who has bad body odor and lives in his parent’s basement. The sort-of dim kid who developed a business and makes $350,000 a year. They exist. But they’re the exceptions, not the rule.

Intelligence has a most interesting property: it’s inheritable – with a correlation of about 0.8, which is pretty high. 1.0 is perfect correlation, -1.0 is perfect negative correlation. Educational attainment and economic status correlate with intelligence, as does salary – at about 0.3. Other things that are correlated with intelligence include impulse control. People with higher IQ are also more trusting. On an individual level to predict a person’s performance you also have to have information about their personality, but on a group level I.Q. has significant predictive power.

It’s generally the dream of every first grade teacher that all of her students are equal. But she knows that’s a lie. Every student isn’t equal – some are much better at some tasks than others. Some are much better at every task, and people who do well on one task generally do well on other tasks – intelligent brains just seem to have more bandwidth in general – it’s like they have an overclocked nervous system. Again, this doesn’t mean that they’re more virtuous, simply that they have greater capabilities.

The average IQ also determines interests to some extent – the average IQ of someone who studies anthropology is lower than someone who studies physics.

What are the properties of IQ?

IQ test scores fall out on a bell curve.
~70% of the population has an IQ between 85 and 115.
95% between of the population is between 70 and 130.
Intelligence is “polygenic” – lots of genes are involved in making a smart kid.

But certainly, John Wilder, intelligence means different things to different cultures? In the very succinct commentary of Dutton and Woodley, “No it doesn’t.” I realize that’s not an argument, it’s a refutation – I’ll let you read the book for details. Scientifically it appears that IQ is a valid concept across cultures. It’s valid if the culture is literate. It’s valid if the culture is non-Western. IQ (or intelligence, or “g”) is potentially one of the most predictive and studied properties in social sciences, which tend to be a bit squishier and less science-y than, say, physics or chemistry, so give the social science folks a break that they found this gem.

So can a civilization get smarter?

Yes. If a trait can be passed on via sexual selection (like my butt), then it will be selected for. But in, say, the year 1400 a great butt wasn’t as important as regular food. If you look at the data as generated in the study Survival of the Richest (Gregory Clark) – as quoted by Dutton and Woodley, between 1400 A.D. and the mid-19^th century, the top 50% had more surviving children than the poor 50% – nearly twice as many. Since economic status is strongly correlated with I.Q., society became smarter each generation.

Brutal? Yes.

Concerned with sexy butts? Not at all.

Why would smarter people have more surviving children? Less intelligent means less money. That means less food, less heat. That means the poor children are all weaker when the ice weasels (extinct since 1745) came. There’s plenty of evidence for this, as Dutton and Woodley note: the average height on the ship Mary Rose was 5’7” around the time Henry VIII lived. Henry VIII was 6’3”. Henry got better food. He got better genes.

No, it was the genes, silly.

Henry wasn’t especially good at having children, but most of the nobles around that time were good at it – with or without their wives. There is evidence that as many illegitimate children of nobles survived as legitimate children. Most people have to work their whole lives to become a bastard, but like me, those lucky kids were born that way. And some of them did okay – William the Conqueror was illegitimate and managed to invent the paperclip (I made that up) and invade England at the head of the Norman Conquest (I didn’t make that up).

According to the genealogical records I’ve seen, I’m related to William the Conqueror. This would be an amazing story. Except . . . I won’t polish my claim to the crown just yet and become known as John Wilder the Usurper©, Eater of PEZ® and Defender of the Remote Control™ anytime soon: European society became one of constant trickle down – sons of nobility would have sons that were merchants who would have sons that were farmers who would have sons that worked on farms. The poor fraction was replaced by the rich fraction over time. The children of the wealthy replaced the poor in a silent way.

I don’t know the percentage, but I’ll bet a sizable chunk of England is, like me, related to William.

Genes for being wealthy, which is correlated with intelligence, spread throughout society. This still doesn’t explain my sexy, sexy butt. But there were further selection pressures in place: 2% of males were either executed or died in prison. Presumably these were the worst 2%, so society was pruning itself. But mobility worked both ways – people could move up the social strata as well based on their (generally I.Q. related) merits.

Also pruned were the children of unmarried women who didn’t have the position of mistress to someone higher up the social strata. Unmarried mothers have an average I.Q. of 92 in the United States. Childless or married women have an average I.Q. of 105. Today children live via welfare, but back in 1741 (when one study in particular was done) moms would have abandoned them. 71% of these abandoned children in 1741 were dead by the age of 15 versus 40% in the population as a whole. Presumably there would be even less child mortality in the upper incomes.

These selection pressures led to the gradual increase in intellect, culminating in what Dr. Dutton mentioned in one of his YouTube® videos as his estimated date for the smartest generation in recorded history – those born in and around 1750.

So, all is well, and humanity keeps going on an ever-smarter upward march of intelligence?

Spoiler alert!

No. And Soylent Green® is people.

We’ll discuss that (the intelligence piece) in Part II of this here: At Our Wits’ End Review Part II: I.Q. and the Fate of Civilization (Hint, It’s Idiocracy).

Meanwhile, go out and buy the book. It’s good.

Entropy, The End of The Universe, Heroes, and Struggle

“The Federation has taught you that conflict should not exist. But without struggle, you would not know who you truly are. Struggle made us strong.” – Star Trek Beyond

Some people think the Universe will last forever. Silly people. We’ll only have stars for the next 100,000,000,000,000 years or so.

The Universe is built on multiple simple principles that interact in ways that make Elvis™, PEZ®, and mayonnaise covered garden gnomes all possible. A light coating of mayo will do – we’re not crazy here at Stately Wilder Manor®. One of those simple principles is that as time passes, disorder in the Universe increases. This tendency towards disorder is called entropy, and it’s not just a good idea – it’s the law: the second law of thermodynamics. The nice thing about this law is you can’t break it, so there’s no need for Thermodynamics Police and Judge Judy can’t preside in Physics Court®.

A way to think about this inexorable drive toward disorder is to imagine that the Universe is a campfire – one that you can’t add wood to. At the beginning it’s a great blaze, because you were an idiot and used gasoline to start the fire and burned off your eyebrows. As the blaze burns, it consumes the wood. After a time there is nothing left but coals, which glow dimly for hours. The current most accepted theory (but not the only one) is that the Universe started with a sudden quantum instability, more commonly known as the Big Bang®.

In the beginning (see what I did there?) the Universe experienced the greatest amount of potential energy it will ever see. The Universe is that blazing gasoline-soaked campfire. Since that moment in time, the amount of energy available in the Universe decreases continually. Like a fire, it burns hot at the beginning. That’s where we are, it’s still hot out there. The embers will glow as the last available energy in the Universe is slowly turned into a starless thin vapor nearing absolute zero, much like Marvel® movies without Iron Man©.

Entropy – now maintenance free!

This tendency toward lower overall energy and thus overall lower order is called entropy.

It’s important to note that entropy always increases in a closed system – like when you store a decapitated human head in a Yeti® cooler – who hasn’t had that problem? The Earth, thankfully, isn’t a closed system. It has a wonderful thermonuclear reactor pumping energy down from millions of miles away, every day. To put it in perspective, the Earth only receives one billionth of the energy that the Sun puts out daily, like you only received one billionth of your mother’s love, since the rest of it was reserved for chardonnay and “Daytime Daddy.”

Why isn’t the Earth a closed system?

The Sun allows us to have surplus energy, and thus order on Earth. With the exception of nuclear reactors, all energy on Earth is solar. Wind is caused by differential heating of the atmosphere. Rain is caused by solar evaporation of water. Even oil is millions of years of trapped sunlight, helpfully stored by God in gas stations. Nuclear fuel used in our current reactors (and the core of the Earth) was forged in the heart of a star. Not Nicholas Cage®. Maybe Johnny Depp™.

This energy is responsible for other things, too. Salt deposits. Sand dunes. And life.

So disorder is increasing across the Universe every day. And not only in the galaxy, but in your house. In your carpet. In your body. In that Yeti© cooler.

But we know these things for certain. Without energy:

Your house will someday be a wreck.
Your carpet should have been replaced Reagan left office. Brown shag is . . . 1980.
Your body will die.

Until you die, you have to have standards. You have to hold the line.

You have to fight for the glorious tomorrow over the whispering of losing your will and relaxing today.

Life is hard. Life is a struggle. If you are lucky, you can struggle for mighty things, good things, virtuous things. Hopefully with a healthy body and maybe a hardwood floor.

But I’ll let you in on a little secret:

We all lose in the end. Entropy will win. Entropy always wins.

The struggle is the goal.

Regardless of where you are, this is your golden age, your moment – it’s the only one you have. When you were six you knew this. What you read, what you watched – what was thrilling, who were your heroes? People who went to work at a bank? No.

In ancient Sparta, apparently they did Cross-Fit® but didn’t talk about it. They were advanced!

Your heroes were people who struggled, who fought. Winning was preferable, but the struggle was enough. A defiant loss like the Spartans at Thermopylae or the Texans at the Alamo is, perhaps, an even stronger example of virtue.

There are plenty of things in life that are worth fighting for, worth struggling for. What are you going to do with your life?

Grandpa McWilder didn’t wear a kilt. He was an overalls kinda guy.

You have two choices.

You can waste your life. Or you can struggle. Do you have the discipline to embrace the struggle?

All the cool kids are doing it.

At least struggle with a rifle cartridge if you’re gonna fight aliens.

Thursday Meme For Captain Marvel

marbles

Teenagers, Testosterone, Cell Phones, Jurassic Park and Game of Retirement

“Yes Mr. Hill, testosterone can jump start puberty, but I don’t give radical hormone therapy to young boys who happen to be mediocre at dodge ball.” – King of the Hill

Okay, that meme came together really well. Or maybe Jack and Peewee were separated at birth?

Pugsley is currently experiencing what every teenage boy has experienced since there were boys – TOTP teenage onset testosterone poisoning. The symptoms are many: extreme idiocy. A sudden lowering of voice. Unexplained hairiness. Armpit smell. Showers longer than the Crimean War.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, I think 11-14 is the critical age for children. This is the defining age where they begin to rebel. They’ve turned from nice, sweet children into little monsters who have determined that they have feelings but have no regard for the feelings of others – in a word, all middle school age children are psychopathic.

Although irritating, it is a passing phase, as long as the parents stick to their guns. I have seen children become middle-school aged tyrants whose parents tremble as they approach. It’s not a pleasant sight, and the wreckage of their lives is equally unpleasant when they first impact a world that doesn’t care that momma always cut the crust off of their sandwiches. I’ve had occasion to see that karma train show up a in a spoiled child’s life, and I always enjoy watching the fireworks more than a virtuous person should. Sue me. I’m human, although my ex-wife might disagree.

At some point natural selection by impact with Kia® will kick in.

Recently, I’ve been sticking to my guns with Pugsley. It’s not really hard, you just don’t give in to them when you’re right. Pugsley had his most recent attack of TOTP just the other day. I sent him to his room. After composing himself (and issuing an apology) he and I ended up outside, and he was sweeping the last leaves of autumn off the patio.

He stopped. “Dad, I’d like you to give my phone back to me.” His phone had been confiscated at least two months earlier for some infraction, and Pugsley had never managed to string enough “good” days together to get it back. If truth be told, my criteria was probably a bit arbitrary, as well – I’m not particularly a fan of preteens having phones.

John Wilder: “First, keep sweeping. You can work and talk. Second, why on Earth would I do that? I had to send you to your room today. What does that tell me about your overall behavior? What’s in it for me?”

He raised his hand, as if dealing with a velociraptor that was one hamburger short of a Happy Meal®. “Hear me out. I want you to give me the phone back. So you can take it away if I misbehave.”

“Okay, you have my attention. I’m listening.” This was interesting thinking.

Then the monologue started. “Okay, listen.”

I stopped him. “Don’t start a sentence with okay.”

“Okay. I mean,” Pugsley Paused, a bit flustered, “right. So . . .”

“You don’t need to start a sentence with ‘so’ – just say it.”

I was enjoying this.

“If I have my phone, you have an effective punishment. I know what you want. You want for me to do my chores without nagging. I get it. You want for me to do them daily. You want me to stop back talking, and to stop being a jerk.”

“Go on – what about grades?” It was obvious he’d been paying attention when I talked. It was also obvious he’d been thinking.

“All at A minus or better.”

“What about quality?”

“If it doesn’t meet your standards, take the phone.”

It was well rehearsed, and was logical. If he messed up? The phone would go away. If he did well? I would pay for the phone bill.

“Okay.”

Pugsley did a fist pump. “The Art of the Deal . . . .”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

I hear he’s selling this revised edition at school.

In short, he would give me everything I wanted for the price of a phone. I even have a signed contract. It’s like reverse Satan – I give him his soul in exchange for a cell phone.

And what, exactly, did I extract?

His mastery of his testosterone-besotted self so he could maintain self-control and unleash the Pocket-Hulk® (which is what we called him when he got mad and was a tiny Pugsley).
Discipline – I wouldn’t have to nag him about the chores. He has to start his own motor.
Long term thinking – he also agreed to link a minimum grade to the phone – and keeping an A minus means planning to do your work and doing it every time it’s due.
Standards – he agreed that work would be fully done. Well done. By my standards – not “good enough.”

It may sound like I’m lazy and want him to clean the house while I type amusing anecdotes into the computer. And I am lazy. But if Pugsley can learn self-control, discipline, long term thinking, and high standards from my slothful life?

I call that a win-win, and maybe the best deal either of us will ever make. Besides, I want him to be successful so he has lots of money so he can choose a nursing home for me that’s not based on Game of Thrones.

I hear the pudding is to die for.

When the Meme Strikes Me

cemet3

I.Q. – uh- What is it good for? Absolutely Everything. Say it again.

“I can easily understand why it should puzzle you that a person of my intelligence, I.Q. 207 super genius, should devote his valuable time chasing this ridiculous road runner . . .” – Road Runner

Besides, her last test came back negative.

When I was growing up I recall reading a short story that was, to me, particularly horrifying. In the story, a group of colonists arrives at a planet light years from Earth. All is going well – the planet is habitable but not inhabited. The colonists set the ship down and begin to prepare the planet for people. And they begin making babies to inhabit the planet, but in the usual way, not using space robot wombs or anything.

But, there is something wrong with the babies. They are ugly. And stupid. And grow quickly, hitting puberty at about age four. The scientists work frantically trying to figure out what is causing the problem. Is it some alien virus? Something to do with the journey itself? They come up with no good answers, but in their searches determine that the children really look more like a human ancestor from millions of years in the past than modern humans.

Uh-oh.

Then they get the bad news. Earth sends them a message (from six years in the past) that all human babies on Earth are now being born ugly and stupid, too. Earth thinks that the colony is the last hope for smart humans, so they have to make it succeed.

Oops.

One of the colonists gets a bit philosophical, and compares humanity to locusts, who often stay in a less aggressive form for decades, and then burst out in the big, hoppy flying plague across thousands of square miles, devouring everything in their wake. Humanity’s true form, reckons the colonist, is the fuzzy stupid pre-humans, and once humans spread among the stars, it made sense to get stupid again so that we didn’t destroy ourselves. In the end, all that’s left on the new planet are the pre-humans. And the wolves. The colonists released the wolves so that the pre-humans would have something to select off the stupid pre-humans, so they could get smart again millions of years in the future.

Depressing.

The name of the story is The Locusts by Larry Niven and Stephen Barnes, and it was published in 1979 and was nominated for a Hugo® award. This story has bounced around my mind since I first read it, though I had forgotten even the author until I was assisted by some fine folks on Twitter®. It is available in Larry Niven’s anthology N-Space, which is probably where I read it for the first time.

The story got me thinking about the concept of how civilization influences intelligence. And other questions: how important is intelligence? Is it better to be intelligent or not? Would my I.Q. be higher if I did it in metric?

But maybe the most basic of all of these questions is: what is intelligence?

Intelligence is the ability to process information quickly with sufficient working capacity to create useful connections with previous information. Intelligence really is measurable by I.Q. tests, and, oddly, is predicted by reaction times – the smarter you are (in general) the quicker your reaction times. It’s as if the brain pathways move faster for smarter people. Sadly for those that like to make fun of smart people, the reality is that they’re generally healthier and have a pretty good ability to communicate if they want to. Generally.

Subliminal advertising is illegal, but what about subcranial?

The way to think of intelligence is that it’s like your height. Your DNA at the moment of birth determines what your maximum height will be, unless your environment screws it up. You can’t study yourself taller. You can’t “think and grow tall.” No matter how much you stretch every day, your maximum height is your maximum height.

Intelligence is like that, too. Studying doesn’t help your I.Q., but it does increase your capacity within that maximum intelligence. No matter how bright the puppy and how often you work to teach it to talk, it’s never going to read quote any Shakespeare except for Romeo and Juliet. Your dog is a philistine. But just as environmental factors can stunt your height, environmental factors can make you . . . not as smart, which is why Doritos® took most of the lead out of their Nacho Cheese and Lead© flavored chips. Most of it. How can you have lead-flavored chips without any lead?

It also turns out that intelligence is very, very important if you’re considering wealth. Here is a graph showing the relationship between GDP and the I.Q. of various countries. It’s based on 1998 data from Lynn and Vanhanen, but I doubt that 2019 data would be much different, except for China, which has quite a high I.Q. but a low 1998 income. I’ll let you wander around the Internet for more information if you’d like, I’m not planning on writing about it here – I have to get to sleep tonight sometime. I will admit I was as utterly shocked as anyone could be the first time I saw this data – my preconceived notion was that the average I.Q. of the world was more or less 100, which is clearly refuted by the following graph.

What’s the difference between getting into USC™ and being a wealthy nation? To be a wealthy nation you have to have a good I.Q.

So at least one question appears to be answered – although you might end up being smart and poor, you’re never going to be dumb and rich. Poor countries are poor because they’re not smart. This answers my first question – is intelligence important? Yes. Intelligence in nations has been shown to be correlated strongly with lots of good things: economic freedom, savings, self-employment, education, literacy, interpersonal trust, and long lives. Low national I.Q. has been correlated with lots of things we don’t like: corruption, murder, and big government.

I’ll throw out that high I.Q. nations also have more suicide and lower birthrates – the only two negatives that I saw in my (brief) review of the literature I could find.

The original starred Einstein® and Hawking™, but they argued after Einstein© said a radioactive cat had 18 half-lives and had to find new actors.

Next Monday I anticipate reviewing a new book on the subject of intelligence, At Our Wits’ End by Edward Dutton and Michael Woodley of Menie. Dutton and Woodley have worked on a disturbing theory . . . that you’ll have to wait until next week to hear more about. But don’t expect any hairy pre-human babies. Because nobody expects hairy pre-human babies.