I live in America, and we have plenty of kooks in political office here, too. Blaming DNA is just the excuse du jour. Not a lot different than blaming skin color. We used to blame the water, or “something they ate”. It’s really not relevant, and in fact misleading, to seek such correlations. It’s easy enough to determine that somone is a kook without having to resort to such superficial or materialistic deceptions. There is no pedigree, certificate, or prize that can exempt one from being discovered a kook — something Watson has been forced to realize.

http://www.angelfire.com/apes2/rpm/archive/

@roland: I agree. Watson is “high IQ but not too smart”. He just got fired from all of his posts, and is hedging worse than Imus and Locke.

Regarding IQ increase; what I meant to say is that overall “intelligence” as measured by an IQ test is increasing globally, and the increase may be accelerating. They re-normalize what “100″ is every decade or so. A 100 IQ today would score higher than 100 on the tests from 50 years ago. It’s fascinating to me that this increase is coupled by an increase in ability to analyze Shakespeare but a decrease in ability to understand or *feel* Shakespeare. You can find more about rising IQs at:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.05/flynn.html

Google for “monkey contemplating a human skull”

But the post was interesting.

However this one sentence I don’t really get:
“I don’t dispute that average IQs are increasing”

Compared to?
The IQ as far as I know is not an absolute, but a relative value, with 100 being the exact average.
The only way it could increase is by somehow comparing the IQ100 of today to the IQ100 of say 1967.

But that’s just a thought, maybe I misunderstood you, plus I don’t really see the point of IQ knowing a lot of “High IQ” but actually not too smart people.

Regarding performers, I deliberately stayed away from the more generic topic of “art” or performance.

Philosophy and poetry are wholly dependent on language communicated symbolically; and are generally created/composed separately from the performance. Thus I think it’s appropriate to compare these types of “genius” directly with mathematics, rhetoric, and this type of pure “intelligence” measured by standard IQ tests. This gets exactly to the heart of Watson/Dawkins/Kurzweil/Shockley’s philosophy — they think that world peace will be achieved through eugenically breeding autistic number-crunchers. Staying strictly within their domain (”intelligence” in creating linguistic compositions that are “true”), it’s possible to cast serious doubts on this theory.

Having said that, I think I see a similar pattern in music. Find the musicians who Watson would consider most “highly evolved” — the ones with big IQs, white skin, and massive analytical capability. Aphex Twin, DJ Spooky are examples that come to mind — but I could name many others. This music is far more “impressive” and “powerful” than “beautiful”. It is internally looped, angry compressed and buzzing. A dieselboy rendition is the musical equivalent of a tight and angry mathematical proof or a Joshua Michael Marshall screed. I happen to enjoy this kind of music, but “music of the spheres” it is not.

But I agree — music may be the place where the “furious analysts” haven’t yet taken over, so it’s the last refuge of people who are more intelligent in the old-fashioned sense.

Improv and performance are yet another thing. Both types of intelligence come together in realtime, and it’s sometimes difficult to tell which one is on top. For example, “working a crowd” can be very willful, manipulative, and active. Virtuosity can be the result of intense effort over time. So I don’t think that all “great performers” are necessarily genetically endowed as the ancients, and many could well be benefiting from Watson’s new type of “passionate intensity”.

@chris: true, and darned good. I guess watson would argue that they aren’t genetically advanced enough to be “intelligent” enough to write brittney spears lyrics yet.