Ray's Advice To Have Intelligent, Prodigy Babies

[jaguar43]

It's the ratio of brain mass to body mass that matters, not simply head size. However, in the absense of non-lethal or invasive ways to measure brain mass, head surface area to body surface area is not a bad surrogate.

I was specifically talking about newborn babies. But you are right, though it is also important to include birth weight. Ray Peat talks about problems associating with low-birth weight babies like cerebral palsy and infant mortality.

But that wasn't really my point, if intelligence is going be determined, then it first has to be defined. You have Ray Peat referring to spiders as possibly being more intelligent than neurobiologist, therefore it can't be all about brain size (or according to this example, even having a brain). I don't deny the important of evolution or possibly having a future generation with large brains for better development and health. But according to the quote I posted, there has to be more than just larger brains. I have another quote.


A professor, at Oxford I think, was doing MRI studies of brains, and his grad students participated. He remarked that the lab's chess champion had such enlarged ventricles that his brain formed a layer inside his skull no thicker than the meat of a coconut. When I read that I remembered hearing that someone had commented to Stalin that "Molotov has a lot of brains," and Stalin said "yes, but they're stupid brains." The intellectual capacity of an ant or bee shows what a milligram or two of brain cells can do when they are well organized. Kurt Goldstein's view of organismic meaning, developed by working with brain-injured people, was applied to language by Merleau-Ponty; from a different tradition, Natalia Bekhtereva developed a very similar approach to self-actualizing therapies. The idea is that a larger meaning-pattern can elicit the necessary functions from living material."

-Ray Peat

 

[Hugh Johnson]

I was specifically talking about newborn babies. But you are right, though it is also important to include birth weight. Ray Peat talks about problems associating with low-birth weight babies like cerebral palsy and infant mortality.

But that wasn't really my point, if intelligence is going be determined, then it first has to be defined. You have Ray Peat referring to spiders as possibly being more intelligent than neurobiologist, therefore it can't be all about brain size (or according to this example, even having a brain). I don't deny the important of evolution or possibly having a future generation with large brains for better development and health. But according to the quote I posted, there has to be more than just larger brains. I have another quote.


A professor, at Oxford I think, was doing MRI studies of brains, and his grad students participated. He remarked that the lab's chess champion had such enlarged ventricles that his brain formed a layer inside his skull no thicker than the meat of a coconut. When I read that I remembered hearing that someone had commented to Stalin that "Molotov has a lot of brains," and Stalin said "yes, but they're stupid brains." The intellectual capacity of an ant or bee shows what a milligram or two of brain cells can do when they are well organized. Kurt Goldstein's view of organismic meaning, developed by working with brain-injured people, was applied to language by Merleau-Ponty; from a different tradition, Natalia Bekhtereva developed a very similar approach to self-actualizing therapies. The idea is that a larger meaning-pattern can elicit the necessary functions from living material."

-Ray Peat

On average women have smaller brains, but on average they work better.

 

[jaa]

True, but even with my IQ of 230 I am largely cogent of my existence and never entertain my rampant suicidal tendencies.... I am too intelligent for it. If everyone strives to have smarter babies it would equate to widespread progress and the embrace of modern ideals.

FYI you have the second highest recorded IQ in history.

The 10 Highest IQs in History

 

[jaa]

It's the ratio of brain mass to body mass that matters, not simply head size. However, in the absense of non-lethal or invasive ways to measure brain mass, head surface area to body surface area is not a bad surrogate.

Coincidentally, I listened to the latest Rationally Speaking podcast this morning that covers this very topic.

Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes

The brain mass to body mass ratio is a good rule of thumb, but it doesn't work in all cases. Birds such as ravens and parrots do well on intelligence tests, but have a lower brain mass to body mass ratio than species we rate as having similar intelligence level as birds.

A better indicator seems to be total neurons to body mass ratio. Total neurons are correlated with brain size, but do deviate in cases like birds (birds having a higher neuron count to brain mass ratio than species with a similar intelligence). And an even better indicator seems to be to total neurons in the cerebral cortex.

Primates are unique in that they have the ability to increase the number of neurons without increasing brain size because neurons in other animals grow as they increase in number. Humans are a unique subset of primates because we actually use this capacity whereas the other primates have a typical number of neurons per brain size. This is likely because humans have the ability to fuel those extra neurons whereas other primates don't.

 

[Tarmander]

On average women have smaller brains, but on average they work better.

Freaken Hugh dropping bombs in this thread

 

[burtlancast]

So, where's the female Ray Peat then ?
Can someone introduce me ?

 

[Hugh Johnson]

So, where's the female Ray Peat then ?
Can someone introduce me ?

The people who say women's brains work better on average also tend to say that when men's brains do work well, they work really well. I've seen quite a few researchers argue that males are a lot more vulnerable than females in humans. Especially with kids, boys are born "more premature" so to speak and develop later, so are more vulnerable. In adults, if men were to grow up right, who knows, but currently adult males tend to die younger, have more behavioural issues, drug use, criminality etc.

There is also the issue of patriarchy, which has severly limited women's opportunities, especially in the past when Ray grew up. Had he faced the obstacles women did in the time maybe he'd been a depressed housewife.

 

[Parsifal]

I thought that Ray said that IQ was not a good indicator of intelligence and a tool created for eugenistic purposes?

 

[Parsifal]

FYI you have the second highest recorded IQ in history.

The 10 Highest IQs in History

Not all tests go beyond 160 IQ classification - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia IIRC someone told me that tests that go higher than 160 are bull****. In my opinion all tests are bull****.

 

[jaguar43]

I thought that Ray said that IQ was not a good indicator of intelligence and a tool created for eugenistic purposes?

Yes, you are right.

 

[milk_lover]

Women can be fragile like glass, they can get hurt and broken easily, hence they cry more. We should really care after them and provide them with the best life even if feminists have a different opinion. You western people have put too much expectations on your young girls, let them eat whatever, anorexia is a disease of fitting, let them act with femininity and stop pushing them to be like men, tough and independent and stuff. Nothing sexy about that. Women are smart and intelligent in their own ways and men are smart and intelligent in their own ways. Opposites attract and solidify.

 

[dfspcc20]

Can you explain that ?

I didn't see if anyone responded to this directly, but in my limited experience, women who are pregnant or are planning to become pregnant are often given horrible advice from their doctors, namely:
- avoid vitamin A-rich foods (namely liver)
- avoid sugar. If they fail the rigged glucose tolerance test, make them feel bad about it and put them on an even more carbohydrate-restricted diet.
- Eat a low-sodium diet.
- Supplement with DHA and other PUFAs

There is little, if any, research that really backs up any of those recommendations.

 

[Such_Saturation]

Women can be fragile like glass, they can get hurt and broken easily, hence they cry more.

So they need special covering from the sun?

 

[Tarmander]

On one hand, you could say, at least in America, women are doing better then they ever have. They do better in school, are taking top positions in companies and politics, and starting to really gain a hand in the decisions of power where they were denied that before. On the other hand, I don't think many of them are happy in this position.

 

[lvysaur]

Not all tests go beyond 160 IQ classification - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia IIRC someone told me that tests that go higher than 160 are bull****. In my opinion all tests are bull****.

Same opinion here. They're good at determining a particular type of intelligence (learnable analytical skills), but not much beyond that.

 

[sladerunner69]

On average women have smaller brains, but on average they work better.

It is also true that, on average, women have higher IQ's. The size of one's brain does not directly translate to the size of your intelligence, did you really believe it was that simple? I wear an 8 inch hat snugly, and might have one of the largest skulls on the planet but in truth I have an IQ around 150, meaning there are plenty of men or women with statistically "larger" intelligence than me.

Since I was ordained with such a oddly large skull, I've read deep into the considerations. What I have come to understand is that the brain is largely responsible, not for thinking or cognition, but for motor function. In fact, around 70-80% of brain matter is essentially necessary as a "circuit board" to control various body parts and body functions like walking, breathing, heart beat etc. So the larger the organism is, the larger the head should be, because it is in control of more nerve endings. When you factor in the density of neurons in grey matter (something that researchers believe is highly correlated with intelligence) the size of one's skull has nothing but a small correlation with overall intelligence. I think the highest IQ in the world right now, for instance, is a short woman with a smallish head size.

 

[snowboard111]

But what being "intelligent' or a "prodigy" mean?

 

[Hugh Johnson]

On one hand, you could say, at least in America, women are doing better then they ever have. They do better in school, are taking top positions in companies and politics, and starting to really gain a hand in the decisions of power where they were denied that before. On the other hand, I don't think many of them are happy in this position.

Women are doing pretty badly. THey are unhealthy and unhappy, living living lives on borrowed time, built on the destruction of the world that sustains them and the enslavement of billions people in the global south. They are just doing better than men.

 

[xiaohua]

Here's an interesting-looking book on the difference between male and female brains. I haven't read it, but it seems to be credible, so I'm going to.
The Essential Difference: Men, Women and the Extreme Male Brain: Amazon.co.uk: Simon Baron-Cohen: 9780241961353: Books

 

[Tarmander]

Everything you write seems to be a gross, fantastical, exaggeration. Women unhealthy and less intelligent, everyone south of the hemisphere is enslaved, the dunning-kruger effect. Being a pessimist doesn't make you correct, invoking truth makes you correct.

I didn't want to say anything but I felt the same way. At least his stuff makes for good conversation.