Astral Codex Ten

Ivies

4 min read

Ivies

Article

Ivies is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between November 09, 2021 and December 09, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as “his screening mechanism was as successful as the Ivies or Oxbridge when they screen for bright people”; “The meritocratic phase of the Ivies lasted only a few years”. It most often appears alongside Ivy League, Oxbridge, 417th Marquess of Cornwallshireshire.

Metadata

  • Category: Organizations
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: November 09, 2021
  • Last seen: December 09, 2022

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Secrets Of The Great Families
November 09, 2021 · Original source
We can formalize this objection using IQ, which is nice and quantifiable. Suppose Erasmus Darwin had a genius-level IQ of 150. And suppose that he tried very hard to marry a bright woman, and his screening mechanism was as successful as the Ivies or Oxbridge when they screen for bright people - in that case his wife would have the same IQ as an average Ivy Leaguer, maybe 130ish. We would predict their average child to have an IQ of 124. Why is the average lower than either parent? Regression to the mean - IQ is probably a combination of genes and random factors, and if your IQ is very high it means you probably have a combination of good genes and good random dice rolls, and even though you can pass on the good genes your kids will probably only get average dice rolls.
But 124 isn’t even as high as the average Ivy Leaguer. If that IQ 124 kid marries another IQ 130 spouse, things deteriorate less quickly - I think the regression process has selected for his 24 IQ point advantage over average being entirely genetic, so it’s not going to regress further. But his spouse’s IQ can still regress further, so they’ll probably end up with a kid who has an IQ somewhere in the high 110s or low 120s - for comparison, not much higher than the average Ashkenazi Jew. Maintaining a super-high-IQ family over several generations is really hard!
Inline links: the average Ashkenazi Jew
Not only do politicians have higher IQs than the general population, but the higher you go in politics (from nominated, to city council, to mayor, to member of Parliament), the higher your IQ! Members of Parliament average 6.7 on this test, which I think equals IQ 115 - not as high as Ivy Leaguers, but still well above average. So the same intellectual skills that made Henri a great mathematician could have helped Raymond become Prime Minister.
Highlights From The Comments On Bobos In Paradise
December 09, 2022 · Original source
1. Comments Doubting The Book’s Thesis 2. Comments From People Who Seem To Know A Lot About Ivy League Admissions 3. Comments About Whether A Hereditary Aristocracy Might In Fact Be Good 4. Other Interesting Comments 5. Tangents That I Find Tedious, But Other People Apparently Really Want To Debate
Inline links: Comments Doubting The Book’s Thesis, Comments From People Who Seem To Know A Lot About Ivy League Admissions, Comments About Whether A Hereditary Aristocracy Might In Fact Be Good, Other Interesting Comments, Tangents That I Find Tedious, But Other People Apparently Really Want To Debate
SuperbOwl has an even more extensive gripe about the “monocausal explanation” aspect. 2. Comments From People Who Seem To Know A Lot About Ivy League Admissions Erusian writes:
Inline links: an even more extensive gripe about the “monocausal explanation” aspect, writes
Legacy admissions are roughly a third of Harvard students. Any story that starts with meritocratic dominance in the 1950-60s has to grapple with the fact that legacies remained a huge presence in the Ivy League. This is nearly fatal to this entire section's thesis.