Breeding Our Brains Out?

June 20, 2012 jack 32 comments

It can come as no surprise that intelligence is inheritable^[1], just as height, eye-color, and baldness are inheritable. Also, we know that in general, people with lesser intelligence have more children.^[2] The result is that we are literally effing ourselves stupid.^[3]

There is some correlation between IQ and survivability, which until recently kept our species intelligence on an upward track, but it is now national policy in the developed world to prevent stupidity from being fatal, to insulate people from the consequences of their stupidity.

This can be countered somewhat by better educational systems, but then more improvement would occur from those better educational systems if the average students were not becoming less capable of learning.

Perhaps we should stop subsidizing stupidity, and perhaps intelligent people should think about having more children.

Economics none

Comments

Written by Barbara Munsey about 1 year ago.

So Jack, you’ve seen Idiocracy?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBvIweCIgwk
Written by Lovisa about 1 year ago.

This just SCREAMS for more and more education about, and availability of, birthcontrol!!!
Written by jack about 1 year ago.

It is the educated who are using the birth control, Lovisa!
Written by ACTivist about 1 year ago.

Stupidity, left unto its own means, will become endangered and then extinct with time. Why most we constantly meddle with the natural evolution of things?
Written by jack about 1 year ago.

Because the liberals know better than God does!
Written by Lovisa about 1 year ago.

jack
That’s why we must go out and preach to the uneducated and uninformed.

One thing we might consider – Stop tax deduction for families with more than three kids.
They are allowed to have as many kids as they want, but we tax payers shouldn’t have
to subsidize more than three (which I’ve heard is the necessary number for keeping the population about the same). Don’t quote me on that, though!
Written by jack about 1 year ago.

Well, Lovisa, I really wouldn’t have a problem with that. It is really not the government’s business how many kids you have. However, if we want to encourage educated people to have children, perhaps the deduction could be limited to those taxpayers that are college-educated!
Written by Gaius Baltar about 1 year ago.

@ jack

Did you ever see ‘Idiocracy’? There is a scene in the beginning where there is a responsible couple with high IQs juxtaposed against an idiot who is breeding all over the place.

This problem is especially acute amongst blacks where intelligent, college educated black women are unable to find mates and often go child-less while the uneducated and not so bright women have grand children by the time they are 35. This is now starting to happen amongst whites as well.

With no natural predators to thin the herd of the not so bright, natural selection now favors the idiots. And our children’s future is not so bright.

We can not continue to move further and further away from the masses to escape…or can we?
Written by Barbara Munsey about 1 year ago.

I posted a link to the Idiocracy trailer this afternoon, but it’s either hung up in moderation because of the video, or vanished into the ether.

great movie!
Written by Barbara Munsey about 1 year ago.

p.s., the “responsible” couple are idiots of a different nature, though–”we can’t until we’ve established ourselves more effectively, we have promotions coming up”, “not now, because it wouldn’t be responsible with the stock market in this condition”, and so on, as they become prgressivley more wrinkled and grey.

His sperm turns out to be a problem when they’re finally ready, so she freezes eggs, then they start all over with finding a “suitable” donor, then she is widowed, but she still has those eggs and they DO have surrogates…

They never reproduce at all, while Buford has dozens of descendants from multiple liaisons.
Written by Wolverine about 1 year ago.

What have I run into here? The “Loudoun Snob Blog”?
Written by Wolverine about 1 year ago.

Is Margaret Sanger alive and posting here?!!!
Written by Wolverine about 1 year ago.

Give me your names and the names of your parents plus appropriate dates and places, and I can pretty much guarantee that a genealogical study will show that most of you came from the same kind of people at whom you are now looking down your noses.
Written by Barbara Munsey about 1 year ago.

Wolv, although Lloyd is the only person in the local blogosphere who identifies proudly as an Idiot, I recognized myself in many characters in Idiocracy. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a pretty funny movie.
Written by Wolverine about 1 year ago.

Reb — I see the doofus spammers have found you again.
Written by Wolverine about 1 year ago.

Thanks, but no thanks, Barb. I watch very few movies. As far as I am concerned, the American entertainment industry is the equivalent of the contents of a fully loaded septic tank; and my funds are better spent elsewhere — especially on worthy charities. For instance, there are some Indian kids on those horrible and shameful reservations getting schooling and hope for the future, using, inter alia, dollars not expended by me on the “Hollywood” pukes.
Written by Barbara Munsey about 1 year ago.

Fair enough, Wolve. I’d be happy to loan you my copy–an excellent fable on the dumbing down of America, and how a very “average” (in fact, clinically so) guy ends up saving the world. But if it is a matter of principle to not patronize in any way, including viewing, I can respect that. I know people who don’t own televisions, and they don’t miss them at all.
Written by ACTivist about 1 year ago.

No TV’s? That would mean (gasp) that they have family conversations and read books! Oh, the horror!
Written by Barbara Munsey about 1 year ago.

They are generally extremely well read and active people. Some, however, are pretty hardened internet junkies.
Written by Wolverine about 1 year ago.

If you want to see an example of the “dumbing down” of America, poke around the internet a bit until you come across a video out of Greece, New York, a burb of Rochester. Public school bus on which the teens are harassing the Hell out of the bus monitor, an elderly grandmother. Full of vile language and crass insults. We aren’t raising kids in this country anymore. More like a crop of loco weed feeders.
Written by Gaius Baltar about 1 year ago.

“Truth is better for humanity than ignorance, lies, or wishful thinking”
Written by Marjorie about 1 year ago.

Genetics people: amazing thing is that 2 people with high intelligence can produce a child with an average intelligence and no common sense yet at the same time you can have 2 average intelligent people produce a genius with no common sense.

What is common sense? Does it aid a person making right and wrong choices? Does common sense make us “smarter”?

The”dumbing down” of America is no joke. Our school system has been working this for a long time which is why our children are being allowed to graduate with little or no reading skills as well as other important skills needed for life.

My husband was in Japan for a long period of time and the Japanese keep their children in school longer than here in America and they hold higher standards for the students: perhaps we should get rid of the dept. of education and have parents and teachers decide whats best for the child so that child may learn at their level.

As parents we all know that children learn at different levels and that I believe is the key to educating our children to give them the chance to learn in a way that best suits their need and not societies.
Written by Barbara Munsey about 1 year ago.

Wolverine, I read about that linked at Ace of Spades–someone has started a vacation fund for her, and it’s already well over $100K.

Don’t know if it’s (the fund) legit, but I hope so.
Written by Eric the 1/2 Troll about 1 year ago.

If your theory is correct, jack, wouldn’t the Chinese have the least intelligent population on the plant?
Written by The Bulletproof Monk about 1 year ago.

“perhaps the deduction could be limited to those taxpayers that are college-educated!”

Huge crack in your logic, here, Jack. I know numerous college-educated idiots and I see more on the highways everyday.
Common Sense is a more accurate delineator of intelligence. It’s not so common, though.
Written by ACTivist about 1 year ago.

Common sense and intelligence are two different and distinct animals. Common sense will always get you by on its own. Intelligence is no good without a common sense vehicle. Common sense (imho) will not promote intelligence and vice-versa. Common sense can sometimes be taught but for most people it is an aptitude, and they are hard to create (aptitudes) out of river mud!
Written by ACTivist about 1 year ago.

Sorry, Triberal. Your comment got caught in the spam filter again.
Written by jack about 1 year ago.

I know, Monk. Don’t worry, it was a joke.
Written by jack about 1 year ago.

> If your theory is correct, jack, wouldn’t the Chinese have the least intelligent
> population on the plant?

No, Troll. As far as I know, the Chinese never had that pattern of births. Now, of course, with the one-child policy, the poor certainly are not having more children.
Written by jack about 1 year ago.

> Genetics people: amazing thing is that 2 people with high intelligence can produce
> a child with an average intelligence and no common sense yet at the same time
> you can have 2 average intelligent people produce a genius with no common sense.

They can, but the probability is that an intelligent couple will have intelligent children, average people will have average children, and idiots will beget idiots. Intelligence is hereditary.
Written by squiddy about 1 year ago.

Hmm, yeah, this is a bit too close to eugenics for my taste …

But there is a truth, here – those who are least capable of (or interested in) properly raising children, to feed, clothe, educate, install social values, and equip them to compete in a highly competive world, they are the ones having the most children, earlier, than those who’ll take their responsibilities as parents seriously – those that will wait until they’re emotionally and financially more capable of raising their children will, generally, have fewer children.

I’m no advocate of letting Darwinism prevail, here, but we do subsidize (and therefore de facto encourage) young, poor, uneducated, unmotivated woman to have babies, with predictable results. There are probably literally millions of women in this country that’s found a reasonable standard of living – food, clothing, housing, spending money, etc, for being nothing more than breeders, having never had a job, other than ‘mothers.’ And the kind of children they produce is entirely foreseeable. I don’t buy that these children are necessarily less-intelligent – although you need only visit a NICU to see the results of drug use during pregnancy.

These kids could, genetically, be Einsteins or Mozarts. But the environments they’re reared in crush any genetic advantage they may have been born with.

(I know, it’s a very broad generalization, and I know someone will relate the story of some kid, born in a ghetto, and raised by wolves, who went on to be a billionaire. But for every success story, there are 10,000 stories of failure)

Not that I have an answer – all I know is that the average American is becoming more “average” every generation – the Reverse-Lake-Woebegone effect.
Written by Marjorie about 1 year ago.

What about the kids who finish college at age 9. Emotionally they are still 9 years old, yet they can breeze though school, any schooling what does that do for them?

Yes they can talk subject but they still like to play with age related materials. How does being that intelligent affect them when they reach adulthood and what chances will they pass that on to their children?

Then you have the parents, communication should be interesting to say the least.