I just stumbled upon this article by Bouke De Vries (a professor at the University of Ghent, Belgium, where I did my PhD in moral philosophy): The disgenics objection to longtermism. De Vries claims that average IQ is declining in several countries the past few decades, and believes this trend is a huge problem from a longtermist perspective, but complains that EA longtermists do not address or discuss this alleged problem. In the final section, De Vries poses a question addressed at EA: "If I am right that cognitive dysgenics poses important challenges to all of longtermism’s foundational assumptions, then this raises a question I wish to address in this final section: Why has cognitive dysgenics and its potential moral consequences received so little attention from members of the Effective Altruism movement?" I am curious why this is the case. Some possible answers:
-Those studies are wrong: IQ is not declining
-IQ is declining, but it is no big deal
-IQ is declining and it is a big deal, but we do not address it because the topic is too controversial
-IQ is declining and it is a big deal, but it has no morally justifiable solution (i.e. zero tractability), so not worth mentioning
-Some speculations by De Vries: "Although I can only speculate here, my sense is that the failure to engage with cognitive dysgenics and its possible moral consequences is at least partially driven by the offense many individuals take at the notion that some populations are becoming less intelligent as well as at the implication that this is lowering the moral status of their members. Because of this sensitivity – which might be amplified by the fact that the most viable solution to cognitive dysgenics is a taboo-ridden intervention, namely the use of embryo selection for intelligence (cf. Veit et al., 2021) – discussion of this topic ends up being eschewed to prevent potential reputational damage to the Effective Altruist movement.15 Alternatively, or in addition, there could (simply) be widespread unfamiliarity with the findings of intelligence research, which has become one of the most supressed areas of scholarly inquiry since the 1960s (Carl and Woodley of Menie, 2019, Cofnas, 2016).
-Some other explanations?
I will not share my thoughts on De Vries' article here, nor state the things with which I (dis)agree. The only thing that I agree with and that matters here, is that EA longtermists don't discuss cognitive decline. I'm just curious what could be the explanation for this. Note that De Vries' article is considered controversial, but I do not intend to seek its controversy.
The phrasing here is a bit tricky, since Bouke De Vries seems to be stating (from my brief skim of his article and of) not that people are getting less smart, but that less smart people are reproducing faster than smart people.
Overall, this seems like the kind of social science issue where most of us haven't read the research and barely grasp the meaning, and yet people tend have opinions on it anyway. I'd take a more cautious approach and wait either A) until I've read through some of the literature to have sufficient context to actually understand it, or B) until someone with good contextual knowledge of the research can write a summary.
As an example of how our ignorance of the research can lead us astray, some of the sources Bouke De Vries cites (Egeland, 2022, Lynn and Harvey, 2008) don't seem to fully support the argument that "residents of many Western countries as well as high-income non-Western ones are becoming less intelligent." Even the book he cites (Dutton and Woodley of Menie, 2018) seems to have overly simplistic and fallacious arguments, such as claiming that the Concord no longer flies between London and New York because we are too dumb to figure out how to make it fly, rather than the decision to stop it due to high operating costs.
But maybe the facts really do support Bouke De Vries argument and my quick skim of a dense academic article is leading me astray, because I don't have the context to fully understand.