[dkural]

The article is factually incorrect: Our brains were as modern 50K years ago as they are now.

A major reason is, people are not actually as intelligent or creative as one assumes. We are bad at unsupervised learning. A lot of our learning, when you look more closely, is supervised learning.

[racer-v]

People’s brains were actually biologically less functional fifty thousand years ago.

This is correct; there's been a huge amount of brain evolution in the past 50K years. See for example "The 10,000 Year Explosion" (Cochran).

[dkural]

Cochran's popular science book has no scientific backing or support from working scientists and peer reviewed articles. In particular, human genomics can easily refute the idea of brain functional changes in the last 10K years. Our ancestral populations that colonized EurAsia, Africa, and the Americas diverged before the 10,000 mark, and there are no discernible cognitive differences between any of these groups.

Furthermore, this is why Cochran is considered a racist; correctly so.

[racer-v]

Could you provide a reference as to how "human genomics can easily refute the idea of brain functional changes in the last 10K years"?

Furthermore, this is why Cochran is considered a racist; correctly so.

I'd caution that this isn't actually an argument, but merely invective: http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html