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Post a Comment On: Steve Sailer: iSteve

"Brains: Bigger Is Better, Sort Of"

17 Comments -

1 – 17 of 17
Anonymous Barry said...

Does this mean people in colder climes can have bigger brains? Or those from warmer climes have better cooling systems for their brains?

Oh, and those huge-headed aliens. They are not aliens. They are from the future. How else would you explain their anthropomorphic body structure? Not from other planets, but from our evolutionary future.

8/13/08, 4:48 AM

Anonymous Barry said...

Googling results in the info that Inuits have same brain size as East Asians (slightly bigger than Euros), but Inuits only have an IQ of 91. Without wanting to sound disparaging, there is perhaps less intellectual and cultural in Thule than in Beijing, which might explain the difference.

8/13/08, 4:55 AM

Blogger Brett said...

On the bright side, evolution is a hill climbing algorithm, and as such we may reasonable hope that we're stuck on a local maximum, and will suitable application of intelligent engineering, find our way to higher ground.

8/13/08, 6:17 AM

Blogger Gatt said...

> A bigger brain would have a harder
> time shedding heat, simply because
> there is more brain to generate heat
> and there's more distance from the
> center of the brain to the outside.

You lizard-people have it rough.

8/13/08, 6:55 AM

Blogger AG said...

Well, rich blood circulation is more important for heat control which is like radiator of car. So size-heat issue is more important for insect.

8/13/08, 8:36 AM

Anonymous Alexander Moszkowski said...

In one of my kids' elementary drawing books, among techniques to make faces look young, fat, etc... it is explained that to make a person look smarter, draw the facial features further down the face, thus giving them a high brow - by shifting the same features higher up the face you can make them look "tough or dumb".

I like the bit in the original post about Einstein. Everyone knows he was the quintessential genius!

8/13/08, 8:39 AM

Anonymous dearieme said...

I know that there's a modest positive correlation between height and IQ: does brain size also correlate with height? Enough to explain the height/IQ correlation?

8/13/08, 11:22 AM

Anonymous Blode said...

"So, I guess Stephen Jay Gould didn't know what he was talking about. Imagine that!"

I think I utter that phrase verbatim every time I read anything written on the subject of biological anthropology, written in the last twenty years.

Oh hey, did you hear? Psychometrics doesn't work because a guy who measures bones for a living once noted that psychometrics was preceded by people measuring skulls.

8/13/08, 1:13 PM

Blogger Vache Folle said...

You think your head gets hot when you think too hard? Didn't the article suggest that smarter brains were more efficient than the brains of dolts, in which case a hot head would be nothing to brag about.

8/13/08, 2:21 PM

Anonymous Patrick said...

I've seen an interview with Christopher Langan, who has been described in Esquire and on 20/20 as having the highest IQ in America - somewhere around 195. Make of that what you will, but there's no denying this guy has an enormous frickin' noggin. I wonder if there's a stronger correlation once you get past, say, four standard deviations in IQ.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Michael_Langan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ak5Lr3qkW0

8/13/08, 2:39 PM

Blogger Steve Sailer said...

"in which case a hot head would be nothing to brag about."

That was my point. When I get stumped by something I'm not smart enough to figure out, I can feel my brain overheating.

8/13/08, 3:38 PM

Blogger Truth said...

The smartest guy in America is a bouncer, great, he spent his Friday nights alternatively working on string theory and asking other guys, "hey, what the fuck are youze lookin' at?"

8/13/08, 5:51 PM

Anonymous Scott said...

Hey Steve, somewhat off-topic but as you may know Charles Murray has been reading your blog. He wrote this great article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121858688764535107.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

8/13/08, 6:19 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Scott (off thread)
Murray had me until he cited the CPA exam as a model certification exam. As a practicing accountant, who has passed the CPA exam, I can tell you that there are thousands of perfectly competent practicing accountants who have never taken the CPA exam and never will. Although the AICPA has modified the exam, there is still quite a bit of rote memorization that must be done to achieve a passing score. A person's score on the test is much less a reflection of their ability to handle "fuzzy" problems (i.e. their analytical ability) than either their score on the SAT or GRE. Trust me - I know several high IQ individuals, who hate the idea of memorizing rote facts, who have struggled to pass the exam.

8/13/08, 8:27 PM

Anonymous Michael T said...

Another reason humans don't have to look like super-intelligent aliens from outer space to possess superhuman intelligence is that we've found a way to increase our thinking power ("brain power") with the use of thinking-machines, ie, computers.

8/13/08, 10:53 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Baas...Dont think so much. It make you go KA-BOOM!

8/14/08, 12:16 AM

Anonymous barry said...

michael t: "we've found a way to increase our thinking power (brain power) with the use of thinking-machines"
no we haven't. calculators have taken our calculating skills. the internet has taken our memory and our attention spans. tvs have made us stupid. spell checkers have wrecked our spelling. domesticated chickens have smaller brains than wild ones. we are self-domesticated.

8/14/08, 2:12 PM

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