A test to predict Alzheimer's?

This finding is not terribly surprising. Verbal ability is the biggest single component of IQ and mechanical ability is quite highly 'g' loaded too.  And we have long known that high IQ people have better health across the board.  So finding that people who are bad with words are more likely to develop Alzheimer's fits with that.  It's another part of the syndrome in which IQ is an index of general biological fitness

A test given to hundreds of thousands of students, including rock stars Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison, nearly 60 years ago could hold the answers to whether a person will develop dementia.

Researchers at the Washington-based American Institutes for Research, which administered the test to some 440,000 high school students across the US in 1960, have been studying the teen's answers and believe they have found a link to student's who scored low on the test and Alzheimer's disease.

According to the Washington Post, researchers compared results for more than 85,000 testers with their 2012/2013 Medicare claims and expenditures and found that warning signs of memory loss may present itself as early as adolescence.

The study found specifically that those who scored low on mechanical reasoning and memory for words had a higher risk of dementia later in life. Researchers found that low-scoring men were 17 per cent more likely to get dementia, while low-scoring women were 16 per cent more likely.

The test, called Project Talent, was administered to high school kids from 1,353 public and parochial schools across the country. It was funded by the US government.

SOURCE 

That "leptokurtic" really is important

Grumble, grumble.  In my attempts yesterday to explain why the distribution of female IQ is narrower than for males, I approached it from the wrong angle.  I followed Ted Hill's approach and tried to explain the male distribution rather than the female distribution.  That was crazy and I want to point out why.

The normal or Gaussian distribution is a mathematical construct which shows most instances of anything as being clustered around the mean (average).  A remarkable thing about it, however, is that most natural phenomena tend to scatter in that pattern.  The normal distribution really is normal!

A normal distribution is however rather "fat".  It covers a fair range.  There is a pic of one below



And male IQ follows that pattern fairly closely.  The female IQ does not quite follow that pattern, however.  It is leptokurtic, meaning narrower.  It is not so spread out. See the example below:



So we don't have to explain the male distribution.  It is normal.  What we have to explain is why the female distribution is narrower. And that seems fairly easy to me.  No algebra is required! As I said yesterday, men are very uniform in what they like in a woman.  A lot of it is physical: Long legs, a slim figure, some bosom, long hair etc. If a lady with those characteristics is kind to a man he will be in love! And high IQ in a woman is not a big priority for men. It may even be a negative for some.

So women have evolved to maximize the fairly narrow range of things that men like, with other characteristics falling by the wayside -- including IQ.  Men have made women less varied.  Won't the feminists like to hear that!

So how does male selectivity explain the low frequency of really dumb women?  That is pretty straightforward.  Men require some minimal level of IQ in order to find a woman attractive.  So women below that level will not mate and not reproduce.  Men have also set the lower bound of female intelligence

So how do we account for the fact that dumb men seem to proliferate without restriction?  Should not the general female preference for high IQ cause such men to die out? I dealt with that yesterday but I think I should repeat my remarks here for the sake of convenience. 

The fact that low IQ women are often FAT comes into it a lot in our society but the handicaps that low IQ women have will of course vary from society to society.

In summary, I think we have to conclude that quite dumb men can still be of some use to some women. How?  In all mate selection, what you will overlook as well as what you get is important. And some women will apparently overlook low IQ.  I suspect that it is a simple case of similarities attracting.  Low IQ women will be attracted to low IQ men even if the IQ levels are not exactly the same.  Low IQ women take what they can get in order to reproduce and low IQ men get some acceptance that way.  The very strong female urge to have babies drowns out other considerations. And that is in fact one thing we do clearly know about low IQ women:  They do have lots of babies.  And it is their babies that pump up the low IQ male population

So we have to look not only at what men and women like but also what they will do without.   I remember a related phenomenon well.  I have done a lot of things in my life and I once ran a large boarding house in a poor area.  It was very instructive in a number of ways, not all of them bad. 

And one thing I remember is the partnerships I observed among my clientele and their friends.  In particular, I observed that even pumpkin-shaped women had partners.  Fat is a huge social handicap so how did they manage that?  By being very tolerant, by overlooking a lot.  Their partner might be a boozy, smoky, scrawny loser but he was a male -- and the pair did seem to be reasonably supportive of one-another most of the time.  Both were aware of their low level of attractiveness and felt glad to have someone, anyone, in their lives of the opposite sex.

UPDATE: 

A reader offers another explanation:  "I believe the simple explanation for the narrower range of females in general is to do with the XX chromosomes they have. There are relatively less genes on the male Y chromosome than the X.  In many cases this means men have nothing to balance any bad genes on the X Chromosome they get from their mother. Basically this means men get to throw one die whereas women get to throw two.  The distribution reflects this"

The leptokurtic distribution of IQ in women is due to sexual selection

OK.  I will translate that into plain English.  The academic article below has become immensely controversial because of foolish feminist attempts to suppress it (They have in fact assured it of widespread attention) -- so I will just try to translate the controversial part.

For a start, I disagree with the article.  I think it assumes what it has to prove.  It starts with what may be a true premise: That women in general are fussy maters.  They are much more fussy than men about who they will partner with long term. That's the "sexual selection" part.

And the "leptokurtic" part refers to the fact that female IQ scores tend to be bunched around the average, with few very dumb women and few very bright women when compared to men.  That's the bit that fires feminists up with rage. That there are fewer women than men at the top of the IQ range is totally against their ideology.  They are, however, barking at the moon in their rage -- because the leptokurtic distribution of IQ among females has been found repeatedly for around 100 years.  It is as firm a finding as any in science.  It is a fact and no objecting to it will make it go away.  So they are wasting their breath in condemning it.

But, given the finding, where do we go from there?  The theory below is heavily mathematical and I cheerfully admit that I am a mathematical dunce.  I get by but only barely. So, maybe I have got the theory below all wrong, but what I get from it is that women will only accept the upper end of male desirability.  Low desirability males will never find a reproductive partner.  The theory then goes on to assume that desirable men come from a more varied distribution and that mating with them will reinforce that varied distribution.

That seems nuts to me.  As far as I can see, the only effect of women discriminating heavily in favour of desirable men should be to raise the average level of desirability.

The authors below set out their basic premise as follows:

"In a species with two sexes A and B, both of which are needed for reproduction, suppose that sex A is relatively selective, i.e., will mate only with a top tier (less than half ) of B candidates. Then from one generation to the next, among subpopulations of B with comparable average attributes, those with greater variability will tend to prevail over those with lesser variability. Conversely, if A is relatively non-selective, accepting all but a bottom fraction (less than half ) of the opposite sex, then subpopulations of B with lesser variability will tend to prevail over those with comparable means and greater variability"

So I think their very starting point is wrong.  Where they say: "those with greater variability will tend to prevail over those with lesser variability", I would say that "variability will gradually decline".  I would be delighted if someone could explain where I am wrong.

So let me set out my own theory. It also has its difficulties, as we will see, but I think it explains more.  It seems to me that although some women are very picky -- to the point of not finding a mate until they are past childbirth -- they are very diverse in what they are picky about -- which is something of a Godsend for us men.  It gives hope to us all.

Although there are some things that are generally popular among women -- tall, well-built men with smooth skin tend to have an easy ride -- there is a variety of views in women about what is important.  Some women, for instance rather despise the "Jock" stereotype and go for more "sensitive" men. And a really big factor in mate selection is getting similar levels of IQ. Few women can tolerate a man who is dumber than them, for instance.  They mostly want one who is as bright or brighter. They may be unaware that they are looking for intelligence but the things they do consciously look for are often correlated with higher intelligence -- higher income, better education, better health  etc.  And lots of "defects" will be tolerated by a high IQ woman if that is the only way she can get a high IQ man.  That is my theory about how I managed to get married four times!

A man, on the other hand, is much more uniform in what he likes in a woman.  A lot of it is physical:  long legs, a slim figure, some bosom, long hair etc. If a lady with those characteristics is kind to him he will be in love.

So, in sum, my simple theory is that men are more diverse than women because women are more diverse than men in what they will accept in a mate. And a lot of women like a higher IQ in a man, whereas high IQ in a woman is not a big priority for men. It may even be a negative for some.

My theory would even account for men being taller.  If you have ever got to know short men to any extent you will be aware of how irate they are that most women look right over their heads.  That makes them determined that their sons will not be so "handicapped".  And the only way they can have tall sons is to get a tall woman as a mate.  So they go all-out for that, regardless of most other criteria.

It ends up that you often see a dapper short man with a rather odd looking lady -- but one with long legs.  If a woman is tall she will always be able to get a mate -- even if he is a bit short.  So there is heavy sexual selection for tallness in men.  Female long-leg genes get attached to whatever genes short men have.  Short men tend not to have short sons

But now we come to the difficulty I alluded to at the outset.  How do we account for the fact that DUMB men also proliferate?  Should not the female preference for high IQ cause such men to die out?

I think we have to conclude that dumb men are of some use to some women. How?  In all mate selection, what you will overlook as well as what you get is important. And some women will apparently overlook low IQ.  I suspect that it is a simple case of similarities attracting.  Low IQ women will be attracted to low IQ men even if the IQ levels are not exactly the same.  Low IQ women take what they can get in order to reproduce and low IQ men get some acceptance that way.  The very strong female urge to have babies drowns out other considerations. And that is in fact one thing we do clearly know about low IQ women:  They do have lots of babies.  And it is their babies that pump up the low IQ male population

So we have to look not only at what men and women like but also what they will do without.   I remember a related phenomenon well.  I have done a lot of things in my life and I once ran a large boarding house in a poor area.  It was very instructive in a number of ways, not all of them bad. 

And one thing I remember is the partnerships I observed among my clientele and their friends.  In particular, I observed that even pumpkin-shaped women had partners.  Fat is a huge social handicap so how did they manage that?  By being very tolerant, by overlooking a lot.  Their partner might be a boozy, smoky, scrawny loser but he was a male -- and the pair did seem to be reasonably supportive of one-another most of the time.  Both were aware of their low level of attractiveness and felt glad to have someone, anyone, in their lives of the opposite sex.

And in case what I have just said sounds too derogatory, I must also note that they were all fairly pleasant people, at least while sober.  They had a relaxed attitude to life that many smarter people could well learn from.

There is however a remaining difficulty in my theory. What I have so far proposed would seem to imply that the male offspring of low IQ women will take after their father while the female offspring of low IQ women will take after the slightly higher IQ of the mother.  But it doesn't work like that.  Children can take after either parent.  So am I back to square 1 in explaining the lesser variance in female IQ?  It looks like it.  My theory accounts for a lot but something more is needed.

Abstract only below.  Full article at the link


An Evolutionary Theory for the Variability Hypothesis

Theodore P. Hill

Abstract

An elementary mathematical theory based on “selectivity” is proposed to address a question raised by Charles Darwin, namely, how one gender of a sexually dimorphic species might tend to evolve with greater variability than the other gender. Briefly, the theory says that if one sex is relatively selective then from one generation to the next, more variable subpopulations of the opposite sex will tend to prevail over those with lesser variability; and conversely, if a sex is relatively non-selective, then less variable subpopulations of the opposite sex will tend to prevail over those with greater variability. This theory makes no assumptions about differences in means between the sexes, nor does it presume that one sex is selective and the other non-selective. Two mathematical models are presented: a discrete-time one-step statistical model using normally distributed fitness values; and a continuous-time deterministic model using exponentially distributed fitness levels.

SOURCE

Only dummies use drugs

Forgive the over-simplified heading above.  I have clearly been reading too much journalism. What the article below shows is that illegal drug use is greatest in people who did poorly at school. Sadly, the authors are better at using complicated statistics than they are at thinking.  The BIG determinant of academic achievement is IQ, and yet they do not even mention IQ, let alone control for it.  They have wasted their efforts by that omission.  Low IQ would have caused both the low academic achievement and drug abuse.  The study tells us NOTHING new and skips over what was actually going on.  Sad and pathetic

Academic Achievement and Drug Abuse Risk Assessed Using Instrumental Variable Analysis and Co-relative Designs

Kenneth S. Kendler et al.

Abstract

Importance:  Low academic achievement (AA) in childhood and adolescence is associated with increased substance use. Empirical evidence, using longitudinal epidemiologic data, may provide support for interventions to improve AA as a means to reduce risk of drug abuse (DA).

Objective:  To clarify the nature of the association between adolescent AA and risk of DA by using instrumental variable and co-relative analysis designs.

Design, Setting, and Participants:  This study, assessing nationwide data from individuals born in Sweden between 1971 and 1982, used instrumental variable and co-relative analyses of the association between AA and DA. The instrument was month of birth. Co-relative analyses were conducted in pairs of cousins (263 222 pairs), full siblings (154 295), and monozygotic twins (1623) discordant for AA, with raw results fitted to a genetic model. The AA-DA association was modeled using Cox regression. Data analysis was conducted from October 2017 to January 2018.

Exposures:  Academic achievement assessed at 16 years of age (for instrumental variable analyses), and estimated discordance in AA in pairs of monozygotic twins (for co-relative analyses).

Main Outcomes and Measures:  Drug abuse registration in national medical, criminal, or pharmacy registries.

Results:  This instrumental variable analysis included 934 462 participants (478 341 males and 456 121 females) with a mean (SD) age of 34.7 (4.3) years at a mean follow-up of 19 years. Earlier month of birth was associated with a linear effect on AA, with the regression coefficient per month equaling −0.0225 SDs (95% CI, −0.0231 to −0.0219). Controlling for AA, month of birth had no association with risk of DA (hazard ratio [HR], 1.000; 95% CI, 0.997-1.004). Lower AA had a significant association with risk of subsequent DA registration (HR per SD, 2.33; 95% CI, 2.30-2.35). Instrumental variable analysis produced a substantial but modestly attenuated association (HR, 2.04; 95% CI, 1.75-2.33). Controlling for modest associations between month of birth and parental educational status and DA risk reduced the association to a HR of 1.92 (95% CI, 1.67-2.22). The genetic model applied to the results of co-relative analyses fitted the observed data well and estimated the AA-DA association in monozygotic twins discordant for AA to equal a HR of 1.79 (95% CI, 1.64-1.92).

Conclusions and Relevance:  Two different methodological approaches with divergent assumptions both produced results consistent with the hypothesis that the significant association observed between AA at 16 years of age and risk of DA into middle adulthood may be causal. These results provide empirical support for efforts to improve AA as a means to reduce risk of DA.

SOURCE  

High-flying career women are refusing to 'marry down' despite struggling to find a Mr Right with similar earning power and intelligence

Ho hum! This story again.  We have heard it from Britain and now we hear it from the USA.  Its basic premise is faulty.  There is no shortage of bright men.  To the contrary, the distribution  of female IQ is leptokurtic so there are many more men in the top range than women.  So the problem is with the women not with the men.  The "stranded" women are just too snooty I expect.  Let them test themselves and their female friends by answering what "leptokurtic" means.  I think they will be deflated by finding that far more men can answer that, despite women generally being good with words 




Career-focused women are struggling to meet men with a similar level of education and financial income - but refuse to ‘marry down’.

A generation of high-flying women cannot find eligible men that they would consider marrying, and this is down to their lack of degrees and high incomes, a US academic study claims.

For women marriage often involves ‘marrying up’ but as personal fortunes have increased, expectations have failed to adjust.

The study said: ‘Unmarried women, on average, are looking for a man who has an income that is about 66% higher and a likelihood of having a college degree that is about 49% higher than what is available.’

The lead author Daniel Lichter, professor of sociology at Cornell University, and co-author Joseph Price of Brigham University, think they’ve created a formula for working out what unmarried women desire in a potential partner.

Analysing data from 10.5million households surveyed for three years from 2010 by the US Census Bureau, they established the traits of married couples aged between 25 and 45-years-old.

In their working paper, Mismatches in the Marriage Market, they assume that unmarried women are searching for men similar to those already married.

Price said the findings were relevant to Britain due to the similar trends, the Times reported.

Lord Willetts, chairmen of the Resolution Foundation think tank, added: ‘This American research is telling us that the days of the conventional male breadwinner are disappearing and this changes relationships between the sexes.’

Fifty-five per cent of women enter higher education by the age of 30 compared to 43 per cent of men and the amount of couples where only one adult works has nearly halved in the past 40 years, according to the Institute of Fiscal Studies.

Susanna Abse, a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, said both sexes are to blame and that people should be more satisfied with ‘ordinary’ partners and not hold onto a fantasy idea.

The academics said this could lead to many career-focused women deciding to stay single or if they do marry, it will be poorly matched economically.

Harry Benson, research director at the Marriage Foundation, said: ‘The marriage market may be further skewed against high-flying women because potential male partners are still predisposed to "marrying down".’

But he added that what makes a marriage work isn’t usually anything to do with income or education but instead commitment and interests along with friendship and kindness.

SOURCE

New Scientist "gets" IQ

"New" is an old Leftist code-word for "Leftist" but is rarely used that way these days. But some names originating in the first half of C20 carry on into the present:  "New Statesman","New School", "New Theatre" etc.  And "New Scientist" magazine is part of that.  And it still does have a Leftist slant. They are apostles of global warming, for instance.  So it is a surprise that they seem now to have largely thrown off the Leftist phobia about IQ. Some excerpts below from their current issue which are entirely reasonable

Far from being an indefinable concept, a single measure of intelligence underpins our problem-solving, musicality and even creativity and emotional skills

When researchers talk about intelligence, they are referring to a specific set of skills that includes the abilities to reason, learn, plan and solve problems. The interesting thing is that people who are good at one of them tend to be good at all of them. These skills seem to reflect a broad mental capability, which has been dubbed general intelligence or g.

That’s not to say people don’t specialise in different areas. Some will be particularly good at solving mathematical problems, others will have particularly strong verbal or spatial abilities, and so on. When it comes to intelligence tests, although these specific skills account for about half of the variation between people’s performance, the other half is down to g. “If you took a sample of 1000 people and gave them all IQ tests, the people who do better on the vocabulary test will also do better, on average, on the reaction speed test, and so on,” says Stuart Ritchie, an intelligence researcher at the University of Edinburgh, UK.

This seems to fly in the face of old ideas. In the early 1980s, Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner argued for the existence of multiple intelligences, including “bodily-kinaesthetic”, “logical-mathematical” and “musical”. However, most researchers now believe these categories reflect different blends of abilities, skills and personality traits, not all of which are related to cognitive ability.

SOURCE 

Smart women need to marry down to become mothers because there aren't enough smart men to go around, researchers warn

Miz Inhorn again.  A singularly unfortuate surname for a feminist, one would think.  It is however her Ashkenazi father's surname. As the originating paper is unpublished, I cannot check what she actually said this time but if it is like the report below she is under a strange misapprehension. Education is NOT IQ. There is about a 50% of shared variance between them but that is a long way from identity.

So there is NO shortage of high IQ men.  The average male IQ is in fact slightly higher than for females and the distribution is leptokurtic, meaning that at the highest levels of IQ there are a LOT more men than women. So if the women cannot find them they are looking in the wrong place.

So what is it that Miz Inhorn has missed?  She has missed the fact that women have been slower to wake up to the education racket than men have. For a lot of people a degree confers NO economic advantage -- the graduate burger flippers in McDonalds, for instance.  And for others the advantage is only slight -- often too slight to make up for the years of missed employment. The history of an advantage to education is a history of a shrinking quantum.  It is not inconceivable that it will go into reverse as all the overeducated women search desperately for jobs

As ever, it is in business and the trades where the big money lies these days -- and many men go there in various ways rather than wasting time seeking the dubious honor of a degree. So females who aspire to marry a high earner would be wise to get to know some tradesmen and business types.  If she does that she is unlikely to find a less intelligent man -- just a more realistic man.

She may of course find him "uncultured" -- in which case she will get the just reward for her snobbery.  Perhaps some Christian values might be helpful to such a woman.

It is relationships that matter not your hobbies -- intellectual or otherwise.  Concentrate on people before all else and you will do well.  You might even find that "dumb" electrician to be a nice guy who will keep you in style.  And you can have your specialized conversations with your friends.

That's roughly what I do.  As a much published Ph.D. academic and as someone who ran Sydney Mensa for a number of years, I am betting that I have even greater difficulty than the ladies below in finding similarly qualified women to relate to. I never have.  So I don't try to.  I seek and find women with a good heart and have my specialized "cultural" conversations mostly with my son.

What I have just said runs hard against what women are mostly told these days but it is also traditional wisdom. And what has worked for thousands of years may have something to be said for it.


Intelligent women should consider marrying less clever men if they want to start a family, according to researchers.

There are simply not enough brainy men to go round – so women may need to widen their search, warned the author of a report that found a growing number of professional women were freezing their eggs because they couldn’t find ‘Mr Right’.

‘There are fewer educated men in the world for educated women to partner with,’ said Marcia Inhorn, professor of anthropology at Yale University.

‘So if women want to find a partner with whom they can have children, they need a more expansive notion of who is Mr Right.

‘A good partner might not be exactly someone of similar educational background and socio-economic circumstances but there can still be really wonderful relationships with men who are interested in marriage and parenthood.’

According to the World Bank, 70 countries have more women educated to university level than men. In Britain, the proportion of female students rose from 45 per cent in 1985 to 54 per cent in 2000.

Those who graduated in 2000 are now in their mid to late 30s and, according to Prof Inhorn, many are turning to egg freezing because they are unable to find partners of similar intelligence and educational background.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority said 1,173 British women had eggs frozen in 2016, a ten per cent rise on the previous year.

Professor Inhorn’s study, presented at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology’s meeting in Barcelona, involved questioning 150 American and Israeli women with high levels of education who had chosen to freeze their eggs.

She found that 85 per cent of them were single and the majority had opted for egg freezing due to a ‘lack of a stable partner’.

But women may be slow to follow Professor Inhorn’s advice as her own research also shows that hypogamy or ‘marrying down’ is unpopular with women.

‘They didn’t want to marry or partner with someone less educated and of lower socio-economic status,’ she said. ‘They wanted equality in their relationship.’ In fact, another study co-authored by Professor Inhorn found women often desired men from a higher socio-economic level.

‘Traditionally, women in societies around the world have tried to achieve hypergamy, or "marrying up" in an attempt to secure a better future for themselves and their children,’ the study said, although it acknowledged that with more women in education, ‘these trends may be reversing’.

SOURCE