We really are the same people. No measurable difference in IQ (as well as that can be "measured"). Only knowledge (some gained for us; some lost, too) and context are different. The tablet is a cool reminder of this.
Note, that we're all trained today in taking IQ tests. E.g. one question asked "There are no Elephants in Germany. Munich is in Germany. How many Elephants are in Munich?" with possible answers of 0, 1, 2, 12.
Back then a layman might think "Munich is a big city; I bet there's one or two in the zoo there!" and answer 1 or 2. Because they didn't understand it was a logic question and there is an expectation when taking IQ tests that common sense is not being tested.
Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil.
Stellar everyday advice still today.
Because a lot of his concerns dealt with the human condition. That will never change.
Other things that were commonplace in roman times - graffiti and dick jokes...
https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/the-lewd-graffiti-of...
Nihil novum sub sole.
I think that as physical beings we're pretty similar to our ancient selves (though maybe a bit worse off with all the PFAS and similar pollutants in our systems and the lack of immunity tuned to the environment) but our problem solving skills are tuned to a much more complex level of problem.
Whether that level of problem solving is materially useful is a whole different topic.
Ancient Egypt did have public schools and a semi-meritocratic scribe class so formal education was a thing which makes it easier to compare in contrast to areas that revolved entirely around apprenticeship like the more nomadic contemporaries would be.
Also, we do have a much more balanced diet growing up but if we did travel back to ancient Egypt there might be dietary issues trying to maintain our extra mass - the lack of access to diverse fruits and vegetables might wreck havoc on our bodies... you can look to extreme contemporary diets for any evidence of that you'd like to see.
There is definitely IQ variation in the same society on a short timescale and between societies and the same time, during the time when we have been able to measure it; given what we know about the wide variety of environmental influences on IQ, it stands to reason that Egypt 3,200 years ago would have significantly different IQ average and distribution than a society from today, even if the genetic factors were exactly the same as in some modern society being compared. Sure, we can't directly measure that for a past society, but that doesn't mean it is roughly the same.
Maybe the metric captures something arbitrary about modernity — and a community’s conformance to it — and not much meaningful about the people in other times and places.
I was addressing a claim about the absence of differences in IQ, not a claim about whether differences in IQ are or are not important in the first place.
We may see additional gains if there are globally adopted pedagogical improvements in both childhood education and standard parenting.
Our genetics are the same, but our quality of life is radically better, and that allows us greater potential.
In particular, we recently invented this peculiar notion that one can boil intelligence down to a number :b
- IQ scores are not a standard measure. There are several different internationally recognized IQ tests, but people who talk about their IQ scores tend to pick the one they do best on and declare that "their IQ."
- IQ scores measure performance on standardized tests. However, they are frequently misinterpreted as a measure of intelligence in general.
- As a result, certain people are motivated to practice for an IQ test, which seems counterproductive.
- Depending on the particular IQ test in question, one's performance on an IQ test stems from their present state of mind, and this is unavoidable. IQ tests, by design, are not concerned with this detail (although, historically, they did account for some crude concept of "metal age" compared to physical age. Which is itself problematic: what is this supposed to measure, again?).
- It is worth noting that IQ scores were originally propped up by the eugenics movement. For example, the most widely used test in the United States was based on the work of Lewis Terman, who at some point wrote "high-grade or border-line deficiency... is very, very common among Spanish-Indian and Mexican families of the Southwest and also among negroes. Their dullness seems to be racial, or at least inherent in the family stocks from which they come." Based on that information, there is a likely answer for the question I asked a moment ago.
- Obvious conjecture, but, IQ scores are not really useful in today's society? I have a few years still to go, but so far in my life, I have not once seen an IQ score trumpeted somewhere and thought "that is a useful measure for the discussion at hand." Not in a resume. Not in a debate. Not in a biography. Not in an advertisement. Not in a legal defence.
- So what motivation could we have? People in general gravitate toward answers that make it easier to distinguish the Self from the Other. For example, it took millennia for us to collectively agree the Earth orbits around the Sun. And long before IQ was an idea, René Descartes was a pioneer in trying to explain consciousness through science. To make this work, he was desperate to prove that humans are unique in having free will and intelligence. That animals are machines, over which we have free reign; that humans are special. Because we must be special. So, one of his ideas was that humans have an animal spirit, but we have the ability to control it. That we must control it. But, it is important to note, not all humans do.
- Tests, in general, are a problematic measure of intelligence. A better measure of intelligence will always be performance in regular day to day activity, analyzed by someone with no bias and an understanding of the context. Obviously this can't be standardized, which is unfortunate, but it does not follow that the next-best thing is actually a meaningful measure. Sometimes we humans must simply accept our limitations.
Now the last point that you mentioned is a very important. Most average people who make decisions (eg employers) are average themselves so that they fall back on what they know best ( sometime it's IQ tests, in the software world it's leetcode) and what they know best is not necessarily the best. So why blame the normies? (And I'm not denying that a lot of harm comes off it.) What is the alternative for a normie? As a general concept similar methods of gauging people (by normies) on other aspects (like trust) is also flawed, but that is the best they can manage.
I can name one field that justifies all IQ research that was and will be done: education. It has immense value there and can help guide policy on the issues of education and all related concerns such as discrimination.
We're usually comparing modern populations to industrialized populations that lived nothing like ancient populations.
It seems plausible that some ancient populations might've had sufficient nutrition (particularly Egypt at various times) and lower pollutants (less lead, for example), and maybe come out net ahead in terms of average general intelligence.
Would be fun to know if anyone has come close to answering these questions, but it seems like a challenging problem.
> The tablet is a cool reminder of this.
HNer: Hey.
Alien: Our mutual research shows that we have roughly the same IQ.
HNer: My brother!