Re: How do you calm down the hot-heads?

From: Brett Paatsch (bpaatsch@bigpond.net.au)
Date: Thu Sep 11 2003 - 23:21:18 MDT

  • Next message: Emlyn O'regan: "RE: cancer rates (was: e: How do you calm down the hot-heads?)"

    Emlyn writes:

    > Damien B wrote:
    > > Nah. Pinker and other sources indicate that the risk of being
    > > murdered in pre-state cultures is *outrageously* high. An
    > > American male has 1 chance in 200 of being murdered (this
    > > clearly elides location and sub-culture, but still). Check out
    > > the graph in Pinker's THE BLANK SLATE, chapter 3: the
    > > Jivaro, 60% chance, the Huli a mere 20%.
    >
    > In Guns, Germs and Steel, Jarod Diamond makes an argument
    > at one point that "primitive" societies actually select better for
    > intelligence because of, among other things, the high likelihood
    > of being murdered (and so, presumably, the usefulness of
    > intelligence in avoiding murder). He posits that hunter gatherers
    > are probably more intelligent on average than sedentary 20th
    > city folk, as a result.
    >
    > I'm not sure if I buy the argument, but hey :-)

    I wonder which IQ test that would be, Stanford Binet, Weschler?

    In one of Diamond's earlier books, "Rise and Fall of the Third
    Chimpanzee", I think, but I don't have it handy, he also postulated
    that those groups of people that lived in the coldest, harshest, least
    hospitable environments also tended to be smarter.

    I guess they didn't *start out* smarter. At least in respect to habitat
    selection :-)

    Brett
     



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