This should get the kids back into mathematics

Seen over at imgur and also at fridley.

Fibonacci numbers are the numbers in the following order:

After the 0 and 1, each number is the sum of the previous two. A Fibonacci spiral can be created by drawing arcs connecting the opposite corners of squares in a Fibonacci tiling. In the picture above, the "squares" have side-lengths 1, 1, 2, 3, and 5.

Correlation of the Week: Liberals and Atheists Are More Intelligent

Some people have thought this for a while.

A recent study, Why Liberals and Atheists Are More Intelligent, published in Social Psychology Quarterly has shown that more intelligent people are statistically significantly more likely to exhibit behaviours that have not been shaped by our evolutionary history.

Image by clintjcl. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Specifically, Satoshi Kanazawa from the London School of Economics and Political Science, postulates that liberalism (not to be confused with the Australian Liberal Party – a socially conservative political party) and atheism correlate with higher intelligence. Sexual exclusivity for men, but not women, is also a sign of higher intelligence.

According to Kanazawa’s theory, more intelligent people are more likely to adopt evolutionarily novel behaviours than less intelligent people. Evolutionarily novel values are those that humans are not biologically designed to have.

The theory is known as the Savannah-IQ Interaction Hypothesis. The Savannah Principle is the notion that the human brain was moulded through natural selection in an environment that is drastically different to the world we currently live in. This means it has difficulty comprehending and dealing with situations that did not exist in the ancestral environment – that is, on the savannah. An example of this is that our ancestors, in a time of scarce resources, craved sugary and fatty foods – those who ate more of these foods lived longer and were healthier than those who didn't. In today’s environment, where such foods are plentiful, this craving brings on health problems. The Savannah-IQ Interaction Hypothesis postulates that intelligence evolved to deal with novel problems – problems whose solutions evolution had not “hard-wired” into us. More intelligent individuals can better deal with new situations than less intelligent individuals, however both can deal equally well with evolutionarily familiar situations.

"General intelligence, the ability to think and reason, endowed our ancestors with advantages in solving evolutionarily novel problems for which they did not have innate solutions. As a result, more intelligent people are more likely to recognise and understand such novel entities and situations than less intelligent people, and some of these entities and situations are preferences, values, and lifestyles," Kanazawa said.

Kanazawa argues that humans are evolutionarily designed to be conservative and to care mostly about their family – those who have similar genes. Caring for unrelated strangers - that is, being liberal - is evolutionarily novel. This theory is backed up by the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which found that young adults who identify themselves as "very liberal" have an average IQ of 106 while those who identify themselves as "very conservative" have an average IQ of 95.

Kanazawa also argues that religion arose because of our desire to look for the cause of events and to ascribe meaning and intention to natural phenomena. Humans are innately paranoid and extremely vigilant when it comes to self-protection. This was an evolutionary benefit for human preservation on the dangerous savannah. The survey showed that young adults who identify themselves as "not at all religious" have an average IQ of 103, while those who identify themselves as "very religious" have an average IQ of 97.

"Humans are evolutionarily designed to be paranoid, and they believe in God because they are paranoid. So, more intelligent children are more likely to grow up to go against their natural evolutionary tendency to believe in God, and they become atheists," said Kanazawa.

Sex, sex, sex...

Throughout evolutionary history, it is theorised that men have been mildly polygamous in order to increase their chance of producing off-spring, whilst women have generally been monogamous, possibly due to the fact that a nine-month pregnancy period means that having multiple partners does not increase the chance of producing off-spring. Being sexually exclusive is evolutionarily novel for men but not for women. Kanazawa’s theory therefore predicts that more intelligent men are more likely to remain sexual exclusive – that is, monogamous – than less intelligent men. However, this does not hold for women. Again, the survey data supported this theory.

But he also found that intelligence does not correlate with the very oldest of evolutionary values. One finding was that more intelligent people are no more or less likely to value such evolutionarily familiar ideas as marriage, family, children, and friends.

The Postmodernisation of Rugby Union in Australia... wait, what?

Sometimes when are you are not looking, you stumble across gold. I was browsing through Google Scholar looking for an entirely work-related article today when I came across The Postmodernisation of Rugby Union in Australia published in the august journal Football Studies.

(As a side note, you can do an Honours Degree in Football Studies at Southampton Solent University. And Sydney University used to offer Cricket and the Law which was unfortunately cut before I could do it. I digress...)

Throughout my time as a rugby fan, I have given the game a great deal of thought - how the rules could be changed, whether the domestic game should expand into new states and countries, will the Waratahs ever win - but I must admit to having never thought of the effect of postmodern philosophy on rugby. I should have. This paper is a surprisingly interesting take on the evolution of the game.

Postmodernism is defined, in the paper, thus:

Postmodernism represents a realisation that there is no single truth but multiple realities, all are legitimate and all equally valid; that individuals, societies and economies are not governed solely by instrumental reason but are subject to historical and cultural processes that cannot be explained by reason alone; that the human being is not necessarily the centre of the universe; that modernism is itself and egregious male oriented conceptualisation of the world and has consistently retarded female participation in human affairs (hence the emergence postmodern feminism); that capitalism is not the only desirable form of economic order; that progress does not mean marching linearly toward a predetermined goal; that the quality of life need not be measured in economic and material terms only; and that in human affairs aesthetic judgement is just as important as economic judgement.

Eh? Essentially this comes down to the idea that there is no one preferred way of doing things or making sense of the world. What does this mean for sport? During the preindustrial era, sport was unorganised and local. Violence was tolerated and sport was closely connected to the customs of the community. There were no governing bodies and the local town or village was the focal point of a tribal passion.

However, with capitalism came a transformation of sport, with violent and disorganised sports giving way to carefully regulated sports that were adapted to the constraints of time and space of the industrial city. By the end of the 1970s, sponsorship and media rights rivalled gate receipts, and television had created an audience that was a hundred times larger than ground attendance. Spectators and viewers were attracted as much to spectacular, time compressed contests, as they were to the traditional tribal performances of the past. This is highlighted by cricket's postmodernisation with World Series Cricket. Sport became entangled in a complex web of commercial arrangements, legal constraints and marketing deals.

Rugby was slow to come to the postmodern party due to its ties to its old-school traditions (remember, Rugby is named as such because it was first invented at the exclusive 'Rugby School' in the town of Rugby - many other British public schools had their own games played by no one else.) Finally by the 1990s, rugby decided its amateur traditions were no longer appropriate or relevant to its players or its fans.

The authors conclude that postmodernism has removed the traditional metaphysical, mythical and social barriers that were thought to have divided business from sport (come on, you were just thinking that...) Rugby during the 1990s shows how traditional sporting values and practices were undermined by the postmodern forces of global consumer capitalism. Rugby's foundation of amateur values could not be sustained under the weight of global commercial forces. The rules and playing schedules had to change to meet the needs of customers and TV viewers. Simply put, the game had to managed not only as a sport, but also as a business.

Have a read the original article - it's a good read! The evolution of rugby is an interesting read for rugby fans and culture buffs alike. Sometimes it's nice to indulge some philosophy when you have your head in numbers all day!