2 Comments
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Realist's avatar

"If true, this would imply an asymmetric evolutionary response: environmental deterioration imposes selection pressures that environmental improvement does not automatically undo."

Once you have it, you don't lose it.

I imagine any long-term adverse event tends to increase a subsequent rise in intelligence. The degree depends on how long and how adverse.

Ricardo Martins's avatar

The problem is whether modern EA polygenic scores can be projected back in time. They might not be timeless and universal measures of “educational ability.” They are built from associations between genetic variants and years of schooling in modern populations with particular social institutions. In other words, If the GWAS is mostly modern populations, then applying the score to ancient populations from very different times, environments, and ancestry backgrounds may produce a signal that is not really about educational attainment.