"We found that the small relationship between intelligence and life span was almost all genetic," said study researcher Rosalind Arden, a research associate at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
...
Arden and her colleagues analyzed data from three long-running twin studies that all looked at sets of twins in which at least one twin had already died. One study looked at 377 pairs of male World War II-veteran twins from the United States. Another was a study of 246 pairs of twins from Sweden, and the third looked at 784 pairs of Danish twins.In general, the researchers found, the more intelligent twin of each pair lived longer, whether the twins were fraternal or identical. But there was a much larger difference in longevity between fraternal twins, pointing to genes as the major driver of the life-span differences.
Statistically, the researchers found, lifestyle choices could explain only 5 percent of the link between intelligence and life span. The rest was genetic.
Another interesting inference to draw from the identical twins in their study is that intelligence is not purely a question of genes. If one half of the pair can be more intelligent than the other, despite sharing identical genes, then that must come down to lifestyle choices, work, and will.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @03:18PM
All the know-it-alls around here ought to live to 150.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @03:22PM
"touch wood"
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @03:34PM
Our superior intelligent lifespans are downmodded by cheetos lung
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday August 14 2015, @04:56PM
It seems that all the people investing in research to directly target aging itself (rather than prolonging life through health) are funded by vain assholes who believe that they deserve to live forever just because they got rich being in the right place at the right time. May Satan strike them all dead as punishment for their vain-glory.
But even putting all that aside, that rule doesn't apply to the literary world, where people are too smart for their own good and know too much to justify that life is worth living. Ask Ernest Hemingway, Hunter S. Thompson, Jack London(disputed), and a few others*.
* David Foster Wallace was left out because his writing sucks. Some dipshits actually think twits like Wallace and David Sedaris are funny. Funny as a kick in the pants.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @10:34PM
May Satan strike them all dead as punishment
Another (better?) curse:
May each of the obnoxious rich develop an ailment that is always fatal within 2 years because it currently has no cure.
All of the rich dude's wealth is immediately channeled into researching a cure.
If a cure is found before he dies, that's a win and his life will have counted for something.
If not and he dies first, that's a win too.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday August 16 2015, @12:48AM
All of "aging" = diseases. You don't die of old age, you die of organ failure, cancer, etc. Arthritis, loss of muscle mass, and age wrinkling are diseases/disorders. People age at different rates and are being bombarded by solar radiation at various rates (other factors include smoking and drinking). Think progeria [wikipedia.org] is natural? Because if you don't have progeria you have the "slow progeria".
The idea that aging is a good death and mortality is necessary is a social construct. Another set of elites would like to keep death in play and science at bay: religious elites. The Catholic Church et al. would wecome gay people into heaven any day rather than deal with biological immortality.
If humanity can't solve overpopulation, resource consumption, inequality, and environmental problems before or after curing aging, then tough shit, humanity "deserves" to destroy itself. If anti-aging therapies work, attempts to regulate them back into Pandora's box will be resisted by the vain-glory rich. They will just go to the Bahamas, China, or wherever to get their treatments. If rich celebrities become forever youthful with anti-aging cocktails and don't make them accessible to the commoner, that's when you break out the Molotov cocktails.
If you are skeptical that significant lifespan extension can be achieved by biological means, then the rich are funding a non-threat and doing good by voluntarily giving up their money and supporting the life sciences and "healthspan extension".
Finally, if you have concluded that life is not worth living, there are numerous cures available. Just ask Ernest Hemingway, Hunter S. Thompson, Jack London, and many others.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by doublerot13 on Friday August 14 2015, @03:34PM
Dumb people have more kids. Any other bombshells to drop on us?
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Friday August 14 2015, @08:42PM
They have to, to make sure at least some of them survive their 'darwin award' attempts.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Runaway1956 on Friday August 14 2015, @03:43PM
So - the twins grow up, do their things, age (gracefully or not) and one of them dies. The one who is left is going to tell you that he is the smarter twin. Who's to argue? The other potential candidate is occupying a hole in the ground. The other candidate's mother? She's probably occupying another hole. WTF?
"Hyuck, hyuck, hyuck - yep, my Momma always told me that I was the smarter brother!"
Do I need to tell you again, Virginia? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhjNm20XbXw [youtube.com]
“Take me to the Brig. I want to see the “real Marines”. – Major General Chesty Puller, USMC
(Score: 3, Informative) by tibman on Friday August 14 2015, @03:54PM
You should have peeked at the article before posting : )
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday August 14 2015, @04:11PM
Aren't there rules against that?
Actually, I did peek. I don't really believe their spin on the story. Some of the most intelligent people in the world are risk takers. Risk takers often die young(er), but that doesn't detract from their intelligence. Call them stupid, but they are often very intelligent. Note that TFA itself says that the relationship is pretty small, with genetics being a much larger driving force than intelligence.
“Take me to the Brig. I want to see the “real Marines”. – Major General Chesty Puller, USMC
(Score: 3, Informative) by tibman on Friday August 14 2015, @04:38PM
I have no argument with intelligence and risk taking. But the article does say that the twins had intelligence tests with the caveat that sometimes the test was performed later in life. Both of the twins took the IQ test and the more intelligent of the two lived longer. It wasn't some arbitrary thing where they asked the surviving twin if they were the smarter of the two.
It does make you wonder though. If the two are linked then that could be the evolutionary advantage for intelligence.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by MrGuy on Friday August 14 2015, @04:10PM
http://www.darwinawards.com/ [darwinawards.com]
(Score: 2) by AnonymousCowardNoMore on Friday August 14 2015, @04:49PM
That's probably part of it. More importantly, brain development and maintenance is metabolically expensive and therefore highly dependant on good health. For example there's the recent study which showed that hospitalisation due to infection precedes a permanent decrease in IQ. (I'm sure it was covered here but I can't seem to master soylent's search function.)
(Score: 3, Informative) by mcgrew on Friday August 14 2015, @07:18PM
Those Darwin Awards are as stupid as the people they "honor". The stupid people are all procreating like rabbits, while you're in your basement figuring out how the universe works.
Guess what? The idiots with twelve kids (who usually drink themselves to death when they're much younger than I am now) win the Darwin game, but since neither of my daughters has had kids yet, I'm a Darwin game loser so far.
What the study boils down to is that if you have good genes, you're going to be both smart and healthy -- that is, unless your mother was an alcoholic when she was pregnant, in which case your good genes aren't going to do you much good. There were a few such kids in my neighborhood when I was growing up, it was pretty pathetic.
What did you expect when you voted for a convicted felon, peace and rainbows?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ikanreed on Friday August 14 2015, @04:22PM
The headline says "here's why"
The article uses twin studies to say "it's genetic." But that's a poor answer. In what way do we know that the relationship there directly ties to genes. Give someone the sociology-economic benefits of higher intelligence(and I have a loooooooooooong diatribe about how twin studies to determine the genetic component of intelligence are maybe being undermined by actual genetic research), and the number of feedbacks from that into health are too numerous to list.
We already knew that intelligence corresponded with lifespan. We also already knew that that relationship was statistically moderated by socio-economics. Using twin studies to narrow in on genes blows past the obvious problem: your family dramatically influences your lifetime socio-economics. Most twin studies can't operate on separately adopted twins.
There's a lot to be suspicious of here, given the certainty of the claimed conclusion.
(Score: 2) by SubiculumHammer on Friday August 14 2015, @06:39PM
"certainty of the claimed conclusion."
Certainty of the conclusion claimed by the journalist, more than likely.
(Score: 2) by http on Friday August 14 2015, @04:24PM
Oh, come on now, LaminatorX . Please don't select submissions with built-in flamebait and objectivist tripe. The commenters will feel redundant!
I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Friday August 14 2015, @11:48PM
I don't mind ridiculous viewpoints of the submitter being injected into the summary, but I thought this line came off as too descriptive. It's immediately following a science piece, and the dim-witted among us could confuse it for a legitimate statement of fact. If we're trying to make factual statements, 'lifestyle choices, work, and will' don't seem to encompass all non-genetic factors of intelligence. Early environmental differences like lead exposure would be a simple counter example.
'Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.'
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Friday August 14 2015, @04:27PM
The problem with twin studies is that they are not physically identical. Their genomes are, but their personal cellular development profiles. They might be very close, but they are not identical. If you ever meet twins you can (usually) immediately tell which is older than the other. Biological processes are stochastic, and therefore 2 organisms growing with competing resources (i.e. 2 foetuses , one womb) are going to have different growth profiles.
There is a not-very-subtle dogma surrounding the genetics of intelligence that is uncomfortably close to the eugenics dogma in the early 20th century. There are a few of these articles kicking around.
Biology is very complex and even with the best genetics, where, when and to whom you are born makes a massive difference.
Clearly intelligence has a genetic component, because nearly all humans can speak where the nearest genetically proximal primate cannot . But beyond that there are far too many environmental factors to say much beyond that, and a the probabilities of your personal space-time potential...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @04:52PM
There's that pseudoscientific nonsense again.
(Score: 2) by SubiculumHammer on Friday August 14 2015, @06:51PM
IQ is a PREDICTIVE measure of intelligence. The problem is not IQ. The problem is that "intelligence" is a psychometric construct with poor validity...too narrowly defined to capture the true range of intellectual ability based on the assumption that variances and covariances in all mental abilities are identical (i.e. someone good at fine motor skills will also be good at fine perceptual distinctions, etc..but this is only loosely true.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @07:18PM
IQ is a PREDICTIVE measure of intelligence.
We have no rigorous, objective understanding of intelligence that matches our observations (the things people are capable of, like Einstein) and explains them to begin with. Apparently there are correlations between IQ and things such as academic and economic success, but there is no reason to assume that those things indicate how intelligent someone is. That's what the general public's perception seemingly is, though; they've been duped into thinking that IQ = intelligence.
(Score: 1) by jcm on Friday August 14 2015, @08:36PM
IQ is just a measure of your ability to perform in logic tests.
Since I like logic tests, I perform well in these tests, so I've have a large IQ, but I'm no way "intelligent".
In fact, there is an interesting theory about 8 types of intelligences:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligences [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @07:13PM
Hey at least they aren't talking about "emotional intelligence". IQ testing has some relation to reality.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @07:21PM
Maybe slightly more, but not much. If we don't truly understand intelligence, then I think it is foolish to try to claim that we can measure it using simplistic tests.
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Friday August 14 2015, @06:47PM
Dumb people smoke tobacco.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday August 14 2015, @07:24PM
Explain my great uncle, who started smoking at age 12, quit at age 82 and died at age 92. I'd say it was the results of that study -- Barney had great genes.
What did you expect when you voted for a convicted felon, peace and rainbows?
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Monday August 17 2015, @05:32PM
Outliers do not disprove statistics.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday August 20 2015, @12:18PM
That is indeed true, but outliers are always there. If no one in your family has ever had heart disease, there's little chance you will despite statistics on the general population.
What did you expect when you voted for a convicted felon, peace and rainbows?
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Friday August 14 2015, @06:57PM
The idiots live long enough to breed.
/ can we strengthen Darwin's law?
// Like tobacco turns your swimmers into pathetic little floaters?
/// or drug use makes your stiffie a whiffie?
Every time a Christian defends Trump an angel loses it's lunch.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday August 14 2015, @07:26PM
That means I'm going to be stuck on this godforsaken rock for another thirty years!
What did you expect when you voted for a convicted felon, peace and rainbows?
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Saturday August 15 2015, @12:09AM
Hey man, nobody's keeping you. You're free to go anytime!
(Score: 2) by Balderdash on Saturday August 15 2015, @01:11AM
Ain't nobody ever got old by being a fool, but a lot of smart young motherfuckers is dead as a motherfucker.
I browse at -1. Free and open discourse requires consideration and review of all attempts at participation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2015, @03:18AM
Albert Einstein never wrote an article with "Here's why" in the title: He was smart, and he respected his audience.
(Score: 1) by Viadd on Saturday August 15 2015, @04:50AM
If he's so smart, then why is he dead?
When they administered the IQ test to both the living and dead twin, did they adjust by current age or age at the time of death?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2015, @07:54AM
the article says genetics.
OP infers lifestyle.
difference of opinion?
or OP missed the point?>