Re: The Book

A list of all posts pertaining to Unnatural Selection, the book I'm writing.
(To preserve the "flow", these posts are listed chronologically.)

First Post - Welcome!

Wednesday,  01/01/03  02:02 AM

Welcome world to Critical Section, my weblog.  I started this weblog for two reasons.  First, I think they're a great means of communication; I spend a lot of time reading other blogs (see my favorites on the right), and felt like I have things to say myself and that it was time to start saying them.  Second, I am planning to write a book.  No, I have never written a book before, and no, I don't know anything about it.  So it will be a learning experience, please come along for the ride...  I plan to post daily about computer software, medical science, business, politics, philosophy, and notes on book writing (!)

 

So about this book...

Saturday,  01/04/03  12:15 AM

Here's the plan...  and my plea for help!

 

The nonfiction publishing landscape

Monday,  01/06/03  12:44 PM

The clouds enveloping the foreign world of non-fiction publishing are breaking up a little - I'm getting glimpses of the landscape...

 

Baby Steps

Monday,  01/20/03  06:36 PM

Well, time for some baby steps toward the book...  Yeah, that book.

 

In the Elevator

Sunday,  02/16/03  02:14 PM

In which the author meets Ms. X in an elevator, and delivers the pitch for Unnatural Selection...

 

Back in the Elevator

Wednesday,  02/19/03  09:23 AM

In which the author revisits the elevator pitch, and ponders whether dumb = bad...

 

Who Are You - Survey

Sunday,  02/23/03  12:27 AM

Please see who are you for an introduction to my hypothetical readers.  And please tell me... Who are you?  The scientist.  I am well-informed, open-minded, and skeptical. The philosopher.  I have thought about this and have a point of view. The politician.  I have an agenda.  The ideas must be simple. The blogger.  I am smart, outspoken, and thoughtful.  And I'm online.  I am somebody else...

 

Who Are You?

Sunday,  02/23/03  10:47 AM

In which the author discusses Unnatural Selection with Ms. X, and describes the target audience...  (hint: it's you)

 

I am an Iterator

Saturday,  03/15/03  02:13 PM

I am an iterator.  When I make something, I don't just make it and go on.  I make it, then I remake it, then I remake it again, and iteratively improve it until I'm happy.  I annoy myself sometimes, I am so unwilling or unable to leave something as it is...

 

Unnatural Selection

Saturday,  03/15/03  11:27 PM

Here it is! - the Unnatural Selection outline, for your reading pleasure...

 

IQ and Populations

Sunday,  08/31/03  11:35 AM

Combining National IQ data from Richard Lynn's and Tatu Vanhanen's "Intelligence and the Wealth and Poverty of Nations" with world population data from the U.S. Census, we can quantify the decrease in world IQ over time.  The consequences of this overall decrease in world IQ have yet to be quantified, but they are bound to be significant...

 

SES and IQ heritability

Thursday,  09/04/03  08:35 AM

Back-to-school pop quiz:  Why do poor children, and especially black poor children, score lower on average than their middle-class and white counterparts on IQ tests and other measures of cognitive performance?  That's the lead question in a Washington Post article about a new study that appears to show that IQ heritability varies significantly with socioeconomic status. This would be a very important finding if true...

 

Religion vs IQ

Friday,  12/26/03  09:23 AM

razib and godless are bored, so they plot and graph "religion important" vs. IQ for different countries.  The bottom line: "religion and IQ are strongly negatively correlated (-.886)." Continue reading...

 

The Future of People

Sunday,  12/28/03  10:33 AM

A few weeks ago I posed a series of "order of magnitude" thought experiments about the future of people.  I didn't get much response, probably because they were thought experiments, and not multiple-choice surveys where people could just click to vote.  Also asking people to think rationally between Thanksgiving and Christmas is always a challenge :) But let's consider them together.  They all have the following schema: What if x?  Would things be better for you, or worse?  Choices for x included: What if the world had {2X, 4X, 10X} more people in it? What if everyone made {2X, 4X, 10X} more money? What if everyone was {2X, 4X} bigger? What if everyone was {10%, 20%} smarter? What's interesting about these questions is that although there were posed hypothetically, there are definite trends.  From the recent past (say 100 years) through today, the following are unequivocally true: The world has far more people in it (about 8X in the last 100 years).  The trend is that in the next 100 years, this growth will continue but at a slower pace. The world is far more productive (about 4X in the last 100 years).  The trend is that in the next 100 years, this growth will continue and perhaps even accelerate.  People are much larger (about 30% by weight and 20% by height, in the last 100 years).  The trend is that in the next 100 years, this growth will continue but at a slower pace. The last question is less clear; have people become {less intelligent, more intelligent} in the last 100 years?  An open question, I would say; the Flynn effect indicates "more intelligent", while population analysis suggests "less intelligent".  And in the next 100 years, will the trend be up, or down? You know what I think, but what do you think?  Here's today's survey: In the next 100 years, will people be more intelligent, or less intelligent? People will be more intelligent People will be less intelligent People's intelligence is irrelevant

 

Global Economic Inequality

Tuesday,  03/23/04  05:46 PM

Sometimes a picture is worth much more than 1,000 words.  The Economist ran a great story recently about global economic inequality: More or Less Equal?  The graphs which accompany the story are terrific, and thought provoking... More...

 

unintelligent design

Thursday,  12/16/04  09:20 PM

There are people who do not believe the theory of evolution is sufficient to explain the existence of the world as we know it.  They prefer to believe in creationism, the idea that there is a deity who created the world.  I have no problem with people who wish to believe this, it is their prerogative, of course, just as they may chose to believe the Sun orbits the Earth, or that the Earth is 6,000 years old. I only ask that they admit they are choosing to believe in “magic” instead of rational facts and logical reasoning.  Please click for more...

 

inclusive fitness

Wednesday,  08/03/05  10:36 PM

I found this cool presentation by Keith Goodnight: Kin Selection and Inclusive Fitness. It begins with the problem of altruism, examines group selection (and rejects it), makes the key distinction between genes and organisms (replicators and vehicles), examines the greenbeard effect, explains Hamilton's rule (conditions under which gene for altruism will be favored by selection), and finally ends up with inclusive fitness: "An individual's fitness is not based only on its own reproduction but also on all the effects it has on other individuals, weighted by their relatedness to it." If you're at all interested in these things, check it out!

 

an uncomfortable truth

Tuesday,  01/01/08  08:26 PM

On August 31, 2003, I posted IQ and Populations, which to this day remains my second most popular post.  Unlike Tyranny of Email, my most popular article, the reaction is not generally positive.  The post is popular in the sense of being widely linked, but unpopular in the sense of being widely disputed.  While Tyranny asserts opinions that nearly everyone agrees with, IQ and Populations reviews facts with which nearly everyone disagrees.  Here is a discussion... So, is this really true?  Yes.  Is this uncomfortable?  Yes.  Is this important?  Yes.

 

Unnatural Selection, six years on...

Sunday,  12/28/08  09:03 PM

In preparation for starting a new year I've changed the navbar at right to have six years' worth of "on this date" links; I began blogging on January 1, 2003.  And doing so reminds me of six years ago, December 2002, when I had decided to write a book called Unnatural Selection, and as a sort of corollary, to start this blog. At that time I was on fire to communicate and discuss the problems caused by the Earth's human population becoming less intelligent, because birth rates are higher among less intelligent people. I think one of the obstacles to working on the book was that I understood the problem better than the solutions.  Fortunately in the intervening six years I've had a potentially useful insight that could lead to some solutions. Anyway I am entering 2009 with a firm resolve to spend some time working on the book.  I don't know how much time I'll actually have free, nor how much time writing the book is going to require, but making steady progress is my goal.  Stay tuned!

 

"the pill is cool"

Friday,  01/02/09  08:43 PM

I've been thinking a lot about how to deal with Unnatural Selection.  It's happening, and it's a problem, but the solutions are tough.  To review, there are three components to the birth rate of a population, 1) choice, 2) generation length, and 3) death rate.  The solutions I've been focusing on recently involve making having children less desirable, so as to affect choice (having fewer kids) and generation length (having them later).  Peer pressure among young women is strong; if you could make having fewer kids cool, that would be good, and if you could make having kids later cooler, that would be good, too. I toyed with the idea of starting a meme that "having kids makes you less attractive".  I don't know if it is true, but it isn't obviously untrue, which makes it believable.  Still there is something distasteful about this message; I sense it might be rejected by women who are already mothers, including the mothers of young women, and that could backfire.  (A lot of social mores are propagated by older women.)  Also a lot of kids are conceived in the heat of a moment, without much prior planning; in such circumstances a  consideration like "this will make you less attractive in the future" wouldn't have much weight. The meme I like best right now is "the pill is cool".  It isn't as distasteful as "having kids makes you ugly", and might even appeal to mothers of young women, as it has the virtue that it advocates something preventative.  If a women is already on the pill, she doesn't have to be smart in the heat of a moment, or think at all; it will keep her from having kids regardless.  There is a religious / moral objection in that going on the pill reduces the deterrent effect of avoiding a possible pregnancy.  I don't know how strong that is, but I do know that if more young women went on the pill, there would be fewer unplanned pregnancies and fewer abortions (let's face it, abortions are really birth control after the fact). Anyway that's what I'm thinking about right now...  it sure makes working on the book more interesting to focus on possible solutions than to merely report a problem.

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