Why Intelligent Women Stay Single Longer - Jordan Peterson
Summary
TLDRThe script discusses the variability of traits and their utility in different environments, using IQ as an example. It highlights the abstract thinking abilities of humans, which allow for complex planning and the simulation of actions without executing them. The script also touches on Carl Popper's idea that the capacity for abstraction evolved to prevent harmful actions, allowing 'bad ideas' to be eliminated without personal risk. It suggests that intelligence, particularly the ability to abstract, may be linked to survival and reproductive success, and that cognitive abilities have been evolving in a sort of arms race between the sexes.
Takeaways
- 🧠 The utility of a trait depends on the environment, so assuming any position on the normal distribution is preferable is not always accurate.
- 📈 An exception might be IQ, where higher IQs correlate with better performance, especially in complex societies.
- 🚫 With higher IQ, especially in women, there can be a paradoxical decrease in the probability of finding a mate due to dominance hierarchies in mating.
- 🤔 There are potential limitations to the utility of intelligence in reproduction that are not yet fully understood.
- 🔄 Two value structures are identified: one that capitalizes on social groups (extroverted) and another that maintains order (conscientious).
- 🌐 Cognitive ability allows for abstract modeling, a significant leap for humans compared to other animals.
- 👀 The human brain's pre-motor cortex allows for envisioning potential actions, a precursor to abstract thinking.
- 🧠 The evolution of the brain has led to the development of the ability to think about how to think about how to move, enabling abstract planning.
- 📚 Carl Popper's idea suggests that the capacity for abstraction evolved so that bad ideas could be weeded out without endangering the individual.
- 🧬 The development of intelligence might be linked to survival and reproductive success, as smarter individuals tend to fare better in life.
- 🔄 An evolutionary cognitive arms race between males and females might have driven the significant cortical expansion in humans over the past seven million years.
Q & A
What does the utility of a trait depend on according to the script?
-The utility of a trait depends on the structure of the environment that surrounds it, which leads to variability in traits.
Why should one be careful when making assumptions about the normal distribution of traits?
-One should be careful because assuming any position on the normal distribution is preferable can be misleading without considering the specific environmental context.
What is the exception mentioned in the script regarding the preference for higher positioning on the normal distribution?
-The exception is IQ, where higher IQs seem to correlate with better outcomes, but this is primarily true in complex societies.
What issue arises with IQ as it increases in women according to the script?
-As women's IQ increases, the probability that they will remain without a mate also increases due to mating preferences across or up dominance hierarchies.
How does the script suggest that human cognitive ability has evolved to allow for abstract planning?
-Human cognitive ability has evolved from the primary motor cortex to the pre-motor cortex and then to the prefrontal cortex, enabling increasingly abstract planning.
What is the significance of the prefrontal cortex in abstract thinking according to the script?
-The prefrontal cortex is significant because it allows for high-level abstractions that have effects across multiple domains and far into the future.
Who is Carl Popper and what is his contribution to the understanding of abstract thinking mentioned in the script?
-Carl Popper is a philosopher of science mentioned in the script for his idea that the capacity for abstraction allows 'stupid ideas' to die instead of the individual, which is a brilliant observation on the evolution of thought.
How does the script relate the development of the capacity to abstract to survival?
-The script suggests that the ability to abstract allowed for the simulation of actions and the elimination of harmful ones, thus increasing survival rates.
What is the evolutionary cognitive arms race mentioned in the script between human males and females?
-The evolutionary cognitive arms race refers to the ongoing process where as men become more complex, women become more complex in understanding them, and vice versa, driving cognitive development.
What is the timeframe given in the script for the significant cortical expansion in humans?
-The script mentions that humans have undergone significant cortical expansion since parting ways with our common ancestor with chimpanzees, which is roughly seven million years ago.
How does the script connect the ability to abstract with dominance hierarchy and reproductive success?
-The script suggests that smarter people, who are better at abstract thinking, are more likely to stay alive and position higher in the dominance hierarchy, which is a proxy for survival and reproductive success.
Outlines
🧠 Understanding Variability in Traits
The paragraph discusses the variability of traits and the importance of the environment in determining the utility of a trait. It cautions against assuming any position on the normal distribution is preferable. The exception mentioned is IQ, which seems to correlate with better outcomes in complex societies. However, it also points out the potential downside of higher IQ in women, which might lead to fewer mating opportunities due to the tendency to mate 'up' the dominance hierarchy. The speaker then introduces the idea of value structures within social groups, such as extroverted and conscientious strategies, and how they relate to maintaining order. The human capacity for abstract thinking and planning is highlighted as a significant evolutionary leap, with the brain's pre-motor cortex and prefrontal cortex playing key roles in envisioning actions and abstract planning.
🌟 The Evolution of Abstract Thought
This paragraph delves into the concept that the development of abstract thinking allowed for the elimination of bad ideas without endangering the individual, a notion attributed to Carl Popper. It contrasts the reproductive trial-and-error of standard animals with the mental simulation capability of humans, which is less costly and more effective. The speaker suggests that intelligence, and by extension the ability to abstract, has survival value, as it helps individuals navigate the dominance hierarchy and achieve reproductive success. The paragraph also touches on the idea of an evolutionary cognitive arms race between males and females, driving cortical expansion and intelligence over the past seven million years.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Utility
💡Variability
💡IQ
💡Dominance Hierarchies
💡Cognitive Ability
💡Abstract Representation
💡Pre-motor Cortex
💡Abstract Planning
💡Carl Popper
💡Cognitive Arms Race
💡Cortical Expansion
Highlights
Utility of traits depends on the environment's structure.
Variability in traits is due to different environments.
Caution needed when assuming normal distribution's positioning.
IQ as an exception to the rule of trait variability.
Higher IQs correlate with better performance in complex societies.
Increased IQ in women may lead to higher likelihood of remaining without a mate.
Mating patterns involve crossing or moving up dominance hierarchies.
Cognitive ability allows for abstract planning.
Animals think strategically but lack abstract representation.
Human brain's evolution allowed for abstract thinking.
Abstract thinking allows for high-level planning and problem-solving.
Carl Popper's idea that abstract thinking allows 'stupid ideas' to die instead of us.
Abstract thinking as a survival mechanism.
Intelligent people tend to have better life outcomes.
Human evolution involves a cognitive arms race between males and females.
Cortical expansion has been ongoing for approximately seven million years.
Transcripts
so the utility of the trait depends on
the structure of the environment that
surrounds it and that's why there's
variability in traits and so you have to
be careful
when you're thinking about it from a
strict scientific perspective to make
the assumption that positioning at any
place on the normal distribution is
preferable preferable to positioning
anywhere else
now one exception to that maybe might be
IQ
because one of the things that you can
see in IQ with IQ is that people with
higher IQs seem to do better but that's
also only true in complex societies and
then there's another problem that seems
to emerge with IQ and I don't know
exactly what to make of this but we know
that as women's IQ increases the
probability that they're going to be to
remain without a mate also increases
because women tend to mate across or up
dominance hierarchies and so if you're a
woman with an IQ of 130 then you've
already eliminated about 95 percent of
the men and that's only using one
criteria that's just straight
intelligence and so there also might be
limitations to the to the utility of
intelligence with regards to
reproduction that we don't really
understand very well yet so
anyway so you get the point so there's
these underlying I kind of put down two
value structures there capitalized on
social groups that would be an
extroverted value structure saying
maintain order that would be a a
conscientious strategy and conscientious
people are going to want to maintain
order because they don't want things to
shift across time because if they shift
too much across time then the things
that have been stored up for the future
start to become increasingly irrelevant
there's lots of other reasons to
maintain order as well but that's one of
them
so
all right so that your cognitive ability
allows you to do modeling now this is
where human beings have have leaped
ahead of their competition so an animal
animals can think
but
it isn't exactly obvious how they think
they think strategically I think they
think the same way that children think
in some sense when they're playing with
Legos when they're not thinking about
the Legos you know when they're when
they're just moving them around we know
like if you watch a smart Predator group
like lions go after uh you know their
target or watch chimpanzees hunt down a
monkey you can see intelligence at work
because hunting behavior is very very
complicated obviously you know
especially if you're chasing something
intelligent but there isn't that level
of abstract representation so whereas so
let's look at this so here's here's a
here's a a picture of the of the human
brain
um with someone facing this way right so
here's the here's the primary motor
cortex okay so you're using that to
voluntarily move your body okay now then
I might say to you close your eyes and
imagine doing something so just close
your eyes and imagine picking up the cup
that's in front of you and just
visualize it okay so then you might say
well what part of your brain are you
using then and the answer is use part of
this part this part because it that's
where you have your body represented but
use this part here the pre-motor cortex
to Envision potential actions now what's
happened is that this part of the brain
evolved out of this part
and that makes sense because the first
part is just how you would move but the
second part is how you would think about
how you would move and then the next
part which is this part huge in human
beings is how you would think about how
you would think about how you would move
so because that enables you to start to
do extraordinary extraordinarily
abstract planning so I I could say well
Envision how you would pick up the cup
and obviously that's something that
you've separated out as a as a potential
simulation from the actual action but we
can talk about extraordinarily high
level abstractions that have effects
across multiple specific domains way
into the future and the more abstract
that your manipulations become the more
they seem to be moved away say from the
primary motor cortex out into the
prefrontal cortex hierarchies of
abstraction and the reason for that as
this was Carl popper this is really
really worth thinking about
why think
let's say you're an animal and you act
and it doesn't go very well and then you
die well you've learned that they're
acting that way didn't work but now
you're dead so that's not that helpful
then you might think well maybe you
should represent how you're going to act
so you know here's a box with the snake
in it and your coffee cup is inside the
box with the snake in it and I say to
you imagine picking up the coffee cup
and you imagine it and you think oh I'll
pick up that coffee cup and then the
snake will bite me and I'll die and so
then you don't you decide that
implementing the strategy of picking up
the coffee cup is probably not a very
good idea and so that stupid idea has to
die and not you
and so Popper's idea was that the reason
that we developed the capacity to
abstract was so that our stupid ideas
could die instead of us and that's
really it's almost impossible to
overstate how brilliant an observation
that is because what me what it means is
that like as a standard animal you would
have to produce variants of yourself
reproductively to go out into the world
and try their hand at survival and
that's pretty costly because you have to
produce all the biological
replications of you so you could only
probably manage that maybe 13 times if
you really really worked at it and then
then the cost of their failure is
extraordinarily High because they die
well you can just sit there and produce
like 20 different versions of you
stay extending out over the next week or
the next month and you can run them
through a simulation and kill off all
the ones that you don't regard as
suitable and then only implement the
successful ones now you know you could
debate about how accurate you might be
at doing that because it would depend on
your knowledge but we do know
that intelligent people tend to do
better across the course of their life
and so it does seem that there is some
utility with regards to survival or at
least with regards to positioning in the
dominance hierarchy which is somewhat of
a proxy for survival and for
Reproductive success there's some
association between that and the ability
to abstract so we could say that part of
the reason that people got smarter was
because smarter people were more likely
to stay alive now I think it's more
complicated than that too because I
believe that human males and females are
in an evolutionary cognitive arms race
roughly speaking and so as men get
trickier women get trickier to
understand them and then as women get
trickier to understand men get trickier
to understand them and so we've been
chasing each other around this
cortical expansion Loop pretty much
since we parted ways with our common
with the ancestor that we had in common
with chimpanzees and so that's roughly
about seven million years ago we've
undergone a tremendous cortical
expansion since then and there's there's
lots of reasons that that have been
propelling that
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