IQ grew over the entire 20th century (Flynn effect). Even if it’s declining now, it is credulous to take a trend over a few decades and extrapolate it to millennia from today. Especially when that trend of a few decades is itself a reversal of an even longer trend.
Compare this to other trends that we extrapolate out for millennia – increases in life expectancy and income. These are much more robust. Income has been steadily increasing since the Industrial Revolution and life expectancy possibly for even longer than that. That doesn’t make extrapolation watertight by any means, but it’s a way stronger foundation.
Also, I don’t know much about the social context for this article that you say is controversial, but it strikes me as really weird to say “here’s an empirical fact that might have moral implications, but EAs won’t acknowledge it because its taboo and they’re not truthseeking enough”. That’s putting the cart a few miles before the horse.
IQ grew over the entire 20th century (Flynn effect). Even if it’s declining now, it is credulous to take a trend over a few decades and extrapolate it to millennia from today. Especially when that trend of a few decades is itself a reversal of an even longer trend.
Compare this to other trends that we extrapolate out for millennia – increases in life expectancy and income. These are much more robust. Income has been steadily increasing since the Industrial Revolution and life expectancy possibly for even longer than that. That doesn’t make extrapolation watertight by any means, but it’s a way stronger foundation.
Also, I don’t know much about the social context for this article that you say is controversial, but it strikes me as really weird to say “here’s an empirical fact that might have moral implications, but EAs won’t acknowledge it because its taboo and they’re not truthseeking enough”. That’s putting the cart a few miles before the horse.