At Our Wits' End Quotes

“Why is it that we used to be able to fly from the USA to London in less than 4 hours but now we can’t? Why is it that we used to be able to put people on the Moon but now, it seems, we can’t? The answer is surprisingly simple. We are no longer intelligent enough to be able to do these things. We have become too stupid to keep Concorde in flight; let alone go back to the Moon.”
― Edward Dutton, At Our Wits' End: Why We're Becoming Less Intelligent and What it Means for the Future

“There are two processes by which a population of animals are kept healthy, and adapted to their environment. Those that have genetic traits, which help them to survive in the face of particular environmental challenges, or are simply healthier, will live longer and have more children. This will happen every generation and it is known as natural selection. As part of this, those who have genetic disorders, or poor immunity, will be—along with their genes—constantly eliminated from the population. This is because they won’t survive childhood and, if they do, they won’t have many children or indeed any at all.”
― Edward Dutton, At Our Wits' End: Why We're Becoming Less Intelligent and What it Means for the Future

“IQ test scores in childhood will predict many important things in adulthood—higher intelligence predicts higher education level, higher socio-economic status, higher salary, better health, greater civic participation,[4] lower impulsivity, and longer lifespan.[5] Lower intelligence predicts higher criminality, and shorter-term future-orientation.[6] In other words, people who are more intelligent tend to live for the future whereas people who are less intelligent tend to live for the now.”
― Edward Dutton, At Our Wits' End: Why We're Becoming Less Intelligent and What it Means for the Future

“Between the 1400s and the mid-19th century, in every generation, the richer 50% of the population had more surviving children than the poorer 50%.[7] As economic status and intelligence are positively correlated this led to us becoming more and more intelligent every generation.”
― Edward Dutton, At Our Wits' End: Why We're Becoming Less Intelligent and What it Means for the Future

“Intelligence’ is, basically, the ability to solve complex problems and do so quickly. The quicker you can solve a problem, the cleverer you are. The cleverer you are, the more complicated the problem has to be before you’re stumped.”
― Edward Dutton, At Our Wits' End: Why We're Becoming Less Intelligent and What it Means for the Future