A way to answer this question would be to see if our Stone Age ancestors would be classified as AGIs under a reasonable definition
How do you propose this should be done? Put sequenced Stone Age genomes in human ova until a statistically significant number survives long enough for cognitive testing? To get the approximate impact of genes we share with Stone Agers or chimps but not both?
I’m convinced the builders of Stonehenge or the Pyramids were so much less “intelligent” than us that if we met them, we’d think of them as intellectually disabled. But I don’t think the knowledge whether that’s due to genes or culture is worth that kind of experiment.
For your question about the impact of the cultural environment on “intelligence”, twin studies make a lot more sense than what I think you’re suggesting.
I’m convinced the builders of Stonehenge or the Pyramids were so much less “intelligent” than us that if we met them, we’d think of them as intellectually disabled. But I don’t think the knowledge whether that’s due to genes or culture is worth that kind of experiment.
Really? I don’t think the average or the moderately above average modern person could design a pyramid, never having heard of one. They might think a big pointy monument would be cool, but that’s not the same thing as getting the angles right, building stable interior tunnels, or organizing the work.
I don’t think the vast majority of modern people could invent writing, either.
It’s not like a someone woke up one day in ancient Egypt and decided to build a pyramid. Someone built a raised platform, someone else realized that if you built a raised platform on top of another raised platform, you could get a higher raised platform, eventually people started making ziggurats (Google Chrome says that’s not a correctly spelled word. Hmmm) . Then someone decided that a pyramid was prettier than a ziggurat. And so on and so forth. There was no one person who designed a pyramid from scratch. They were designed over thousands over years, with huge amounts of resources being consumed. I don’t think most people could build a bird nest, but that doesn’t mean that humans aren’t smarter than birds.
The original quote mentions the builders of Stonehenge and the Pyramids, and I assume what’s intended includes the designers and administrators, not just the people doing the hauling.
Does it seem likely that the middle of the bell curve for preliterate people was a lot lower, even though the outliers were about as high?
Well yes; if nothing else early agricultural societies were probably rather malnourished outside the elite. But chopping twenty points off an average person’s IQ does not make him “intellectually disabled”, just excruciatingly slow. As opposed to merely painfully slow.
But chopping twenty points off an average person’s IQ does not make him “intellectually disabled”, just excruciatingly slow.
The usual boundary for “mentally disabled” is IQ 70. There are a LOT of IQ 90 people walking around, chopping off twenty points won’t work well for them.
And a warning—as was pointed to me recently IQ points are really ranks. There is no implication that a one point difference (or a twenty point difference) means the same thing in the 70 − 90 context as in the, say, 120 − 140 context.
How do you propose this should be done? Put sequenced Stone Age genomes in human ova until a statistically significant number survives long enough for cognitive testing? To get the approximate impact of genes we share with Stone Agers or chimps but not both?
I’m convinced the builders of Stonehenge or the Pyramids were so much less “intelligent” than us that if we met them, we’d think of them as intellectually disabled. But I don’t think the knowledge whether that’s due to genes or culture is worth that kind of experiment.
For your question about the impact of the cultural environment on “intelligence”, twin studies make a lot more sense than what I think you’re suggesting.
Really? I don’t think the average or the moderately above average modern person could design a pyramid, never having heard of one. They might think a big pointy monument would be cool, but that’s not the same thing as getting the angles right, building stable interior tunnels, or organizing the work.
I don’t think the vast majority of modern people could invent writing, either.
It’s not like a someone woke up one day in ancient Egypt and decided to build a pyramid. Someone built a raised platform, someone else realized that if you built a raised platform on top of another raised platform, you could get a higher raised platform, eventually people started making ziggurats (Google Chrome says that’s not a correctly spelled word. Hmmm) . Then someone decided that a pyramid was prettier than a ziggurat. And so on and so forth. There was no one person who designed a pyramid from scratch. They were designed over thousands over years, with huge amounts of resources being consumed. I don’t think most people could build a bird nest, but that doesn’t mean that humans aren’t smarter than birds.
The “vast majority” of preliterate people didn’t invent writing either. Outliers demonstrate very little.
The original quote mentions the builders of Stonehenge and the Pyramids, and I assume what’s intended includes the designers and administrators, not just the people doing the hauling.
Does it seem likely that the middle of the bell curve for preliterate people was a lot lower, even though the outliers were about as high?
Well yes; if nothing else early agricultural societies were probably rather malnourished outside the elite. But chopping twenty points off an average person’s IQ does not make him “intellectually disabled”, just excruciatingly slow. As opposed to merely painfully slow.
The usual boundary for “mentally disabled” is IQ 70. There are a LOT of IQ 90 people walking around, chopping off twenty points won’t work well for them.
And a warning—as was pointed to me recently IQ points are really ranks. There is no implication that a one point difference (or a twenty point difference) means the same thing in the 70 − 90 context as in the, say, 120 − 140 context.