Not a premise, but a plausible hypothesis, I think.
If you select very strongly for intelligence, you’re going to tend to select for first borns, since those correlate.
But my guess is that isn’t all that’s happening, because the effect size is smaller for the Mathematicians than for LessWrongers. Rationalists are pretty smart, but these are some of the most brilliant people who have ever lived.
It seems like there might be an additional trend, amongst rationalists, towards being first born, even after accounting for high intelligence.
[edit: or maybe the first born effect isn’t mediated by intelligence at all.]
Not a premise, but a plausible hypothesis, I think.
If you select very strongly for intelligence, you’re going to tend to select for first borns, since those correlate.
But my guess is that isn’t all that’s happening, because the effect size is smaller for the Mathematicians than for LessWrongers. Rationalists are pretty smart, but these are some of the most brilliant people who have ever lived.
It seems like there might be an additional trend, amongst rationalists, towards being first born, even after accounting for high intelligence.
[edit: or maybe the first born effect isn’t mediated by intelligence at all.]