Dwarkesh

But literally, if you go back thousands of years, you mentioned, for example, that Caesar was 5'5", and that was considered tall during his period.

diseases and malnutrition, whatever it was that caused these physical health effects also mean that like the average IQ was much lower just because of like, you know, you're like when you're a kid, you're sick and that steals away nutrition from brain growth or something.

Yes.

You have this great profile in the book about like living in London in the 18th century and just like how disgusting it was.

Pretty disgusting.

But at the same – like literally at the same time in that city, you're just mentioning –

There's these scientists and people with towering intellects who are basically figuring out how the universe works and how to make all these machines and so forth.

And so, I mean, one answer is just like what you just said.

Like, look, the distribution was lower, but that's still like... Maybe Newton would have had an IQ standard deviation higher if he was born today.

But just like seeing that from the small population, you're seeing so much genius.

Yeah, I guess the question is...

How is that still...

How could you have had this much of a deleterious impact on cognitive functioning and still had enough spare geniuses to kick off the Industrial Revolution?

I don't want to say it.

Yeah, when I had Joseph Henricon, you know, one of the things he discusses is if you look at – I mean, cultural evolution has figured out some remarkable things, right?

If you look at the cuisines of different cultures, apparently the spices they use match the antimicrobial and antifungal properties you need in that particular biome.

At the same time, you're like watching – I mean, reading that part of the book, I'm like, okay, I get in some cases they just genuinely did not have the resources to invest in public health and so forth.

But, like, come on.

I don't know if I should mention some of these things as well.

But, like, you're just, like, sleeping in your own vomit and so forth.