Why your IQ is higher than your parents, Where's knowledge from, Stop writing books

Weekly I/O #99: Flynn Effect, Deutsch and Popper on Knowledge, Tyler on Stop Writing Book, Six Components of Game, Ready is not Feeling

If you're new to Weekly I/O, I share five things I've learned each week to help you and myself better understand the world and live more fulfilling lives.

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Hi friends,

Recently, I've been rereading The Beginning of Infinity, which I wrote about first in Weekly I/O #11. And wow, that's four years ago 🤯

It's funny that I wrote about game design exactly that week, and I'm writing about it again this week :)

Happy learning!

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Here's a list of what I learned this week.

1. Flynn effect: Average IQ scores increase each decade for most of the twentieth century. Intelligence tests capture not just the innate cognitive ability but also the environmental changes, including societal changes that allow and reward abstract thinking.

Article: On the Flynn Effect and Merit in Medicine

If you take the same IQ test your grandfather once faced, there's a high chance that you will outscore him without extra study.

James R. Flynn first discovered this phenomenon: both fluid and crystallized intelligence test scores that were measured substantially and sustainedly increased over the 20th century. He saw average scores steadily climbing about three points every ten years from the 1930s to the 1970s. And this rise showed up almost everywhere: in the United States, the United Kingdom, and many other industrial nations.

From Mohamed Nagdy - https://web.archive.org/web/20220306071619/https://ourworldindata.org/intelligence

Why? Although the exact causes of the Flynn effect remain uncertain, several environmental factors are possible candidates: Education became more accessible, nutrition improved, and everyday life got more complex.

Nowadays, daily life is filled with puzzles, screens, and symbols, which naturally exercise people's abilities in abstract thinking and problem-solving. All those forces boosted fluid reasoning and stored knowledge, the very skills IQ tests measure. Therefore, rising IQ scores are not just adaptive to life in the modern world, but are also enabled by it.

Modern society also affords the "luxury" of being able to think about the world in abstract terms in the first place. Its economy further rewards individuals who can reason more in abstract terms.

Therefore, Flynn himself questioned whether the rise in IQ scores really meant that people were getting more intelligent. Perhaps, we are not "smarter" but are more privileged. This privilege comes from living in a society that allows and rewards abstract thinking.

2. Knowledge doesn't originate from sensory experiences. Instead, it's from the guesses we invented as theories and the "conjecture and criticism" process. Observation helps us choose between existing theories but doesn't generate new ones.

Book: The Beginning of Infinity

Have you ever wondered how we actually gain knowledge? Traditional empiricism says we derive all our knowledge from sensory experience (observation). However, philosopher Karl Popper and physicist David Deutsch argue exactly the opposite: knowledge starts with guessing.

Imagine a child trying to understand why the sky changes color. They do not wait to collect perfect data. They blurt out a story, guessing that the sky changes color because it has mood swings. Scientists are grown-up children who do the same, just with better tools.

Karl Popper called this creativity phase "conjecture". He thinks all our observations are never theory-free. For instance, before you can say, "I see a table," you need prior theories about space, solidity, language, etc. As Popper put it, "All observation is theory-laden".

David Deutsch pushes it further and says the mind is a "guessing engine". We creatively rearrange, combine, alter, and invent theories to solve problems long before we gather data.

Once a guess exists, we try to break it. We look for contradictions. Observation's fundamental role is to show that some theories are false so we can provoke better ones. We compare it with rival guesses. If two solid conjectures make opposite predictions, we run experiments that force nature to choose. Observation enters as judge, not author. In other words, the role of observation is to choose between existing theories, not to be the source of new ones.

Popper calls this process "conjecture and criticism". First, we guess (conjecture) how things might work. Then, through observation and logical examination (criticism), we find out which guesses don't hold up. This cycle repeats, refining our understanding each time.

Consider theories like heliocentrism, relativity, and quantum mechanics. These ideas were proposed long before any definitive experiments existed. Scientists didn't derive these concepts from sensory experience. They guessed. Experiments later only served as crucial tests to see which theories hold.

Why does this matter? It reminds us that knowledge is inherently uncertain and fallible. Any finite set of observations supports infinitely many incompatible rules, so you cannot logically climb from raw data to a unique law. Therefore, rather than seeking absolute certainty from our senses, we should embrace open criticism and continuous examination.

3. Stop writing traditional books because AI will answer questions faster than a book can reach readers. Focus on high-frequency writing or "Truly Human" books.

Podcast: The Most Practical Conversation About Writing With AI – Tyler Cowen