This article argues against the fall of the roman empire being caused by severe lead poisoning.
I would argue that it was more likely caused by widespread minor lead poisoning. If everyone is more forgetful and learns slower, then that isn't something that will be written in history books - the people themselves will just consider that 'normal'.
Yet an empire of forgetful and slow-learning people won't be efficient. Every task will take more man-hours to achieve. Productivity will be lower. Accidents will happen more frequently. Crime will be higher. Strategic mistakes will be made by rulers, but will also be made by local rulers and individual families. "Should we plant corn or wheat this year?" - someone with intellect may read a book to discover the best crop or do a small scale trial, while someone with lead poisoning may just do the same as he did last year because it takes less mental effort.
This is not true, you can check https://acoup.blog. He has a series on it. In very real terms Rome fell and the caloric intake and bone length of the Romans and their livestock took a massive nosedive.
I think the distinction that the parent is making is that Rome fell in the West, but the Eastern Roman Empire lived on for quite a long time afterwards.
Bret agrees, and notes this repeatedly in that series.
Where I think he would disagree with the parent is that they seem to be implying that the fall in the West was therefore not a particularly significant event that might deserve explanation, whereas Bret would point out that cities shrank, cows shrank, mail links got bigger (more vulnerable, less material, less effort) while fewer people were armored, and on and on... Things changed for the worse for a huge number of people. That things didn't change the same for another group of people (who, in some contexts, are quite reasonably treated as part of the same larger group of people) is interesting! But it doesn't make the changes in the West unimportant or uninteresting.
> Strategic mistakes will be made by rulers, but will also be made by local rulers and individual families. "Should we plant corn or wheat this year?" - someone with intellect may read a book to discover the best crop or do a small scale trial, while someone with lead poisoning may just do the same as he did last year because it takes less mental effort.
That seems to be transplanting modern education and growth norms onto a historic situation. Roman literacy was exceptionally high by the standards of ancient civilisation, which meant that one in ten people (probably not farmers) could read a book and doing the same as last year or as their ancestors was the rule rather than some sort of anomaly. People smart enough to make substantial changes would tend to be stopped far more by social structures than any minor slowdown to their cognitive abilities. In that sense, if lead poisoning had effects on modern information and intellect driven civilisations so small it took some pretty thorough statistical analysis against a backdrop of rapid growth to convince us there was anything to the theory at all, it seems unlikely it could have made so much more difference to daily life in Ancient Rome. A cognitively impaired Emperor could do a lot of damage, but the inherent flaw in the system was that sort of power also flowed to natural born idiots and every civilisation has those.
The sad thing is that this point of view is just not accepted to be discussed e.g. in case of (covid) vaccines or other large scale innovations. I'm not a fan of intelligence measuring the potential of a society but just to give an idea of the non-linearities that can be in play here: A reduction of just 3 IQ points on average leads to a 10 fold decrease in people of IQs around 140.
Many vaccines have some of the side effects of infection.
One such side effect (of both vaccine and disease) is minor neurological impairment. ie. you might not be able to remember where you parked your car last tuesday afterwards.
The side effects are typically so minor and/or rare that the risk-benefit analysis strongly favours taking the vaccine over risking getting the infection.
It's a controversial topic because humans are bad at judging small risks, and therefore there are groups of people 'scared' of the side effects of the vaccine and unconvinced by experts saying the risk-benefit is worth it. Some experts believe it is better to say "it is safe" rather than try to explain that there are in fact risks, but they're risks worth taking.
Note: The above isn't covid specific - the same could be said of nearly any disease and vaccine.
I would argue that it was more likely caused by widespread minor lead poisoning. If everyone is more forgetful and learns slower, then that isn't something that will be written in history books - the people themselves will just consider that 'normal'.
Yet an empire of forgetful and slow-learning people won't be efficient. Every task will take more man-hours to achieve. Productivity will be lower. Accidents will happen more frequently. Crime will be higher. Strategic mistakes will be made by rulers, but will also be made by local rulers and individual families. "Should we plant corn or wheat this year?" - someone with intellect may read a book to discover the best crop or do a small scale trial, while someone with lead poisoning may just do the same as he did last year because it takes less mental effort.