@alyx @j the way i understand a lot of modern arguments is more or less survivor bias.

extremely hostile environments demand competence or the organisms die. less hostile ones allow increasingly dumb organisms to survive. (this is talked about in cybernetics some as an organism has to be at least complex enough to understand its environment to survive.)

if you were to raise people in an environment with only temperate weather, the ones who don't have the aptitude to survive frozen wastelands aren't killed by nature. thus a population can be comparatively 'dumber', because another one lived in a more hostile territory.

taleb references it some. in the context of people thinking gulags made russians strong vs. the gulags just killed all the weak ones