Science Questions

It is not just nature you know. 3000 girls under the age of 16 years old have a baby in one year in Britain. This means that not only are these babies being born to very stupid girls and boys but also there are children being brought up by children. I think the latter has more of a bearing on the future generation as these children are more likely to fail at school. One fertility stopper for the less educated is that most people in prison can not read and a good portion have educational special needs.
OK I'm very tongue in cheek here but I guess if we protect our weak links they will breed and in some cases pass on the problems both by nature and nurture. In more severe circumstances these week links would not survive and breed.
Having said that, thank god we can protect our weak links. I love our diverse society and if we were all super intelligent life would be dull. However, the teenage Mums concern me. It shows a lack of imagination, drive and probably parental love amongst our teens.

This isn't stupidity it's exploitation: they are giving birth to hostages who will fund their lifestyle.

I have to agree with you MIL. This shows a lack of parental guidance and concern and will get worse since the new generation parents are little more than children themselves. It also concerns me that there appears to be a 'competition' culture emerging to be the oldest mother, the youngest mother, the youngest grandmother etc.

I think that to some extent the problems lye in the modern attitude to treat children as 'young adults', putting pressure on them to grow up too quickly. They should be allowed to be children and to enjoy and explore there childhood years.

I don't think that would be a reversal of Natural Selection.  All that matters is survival and reproductive success.  So if the stupid, by way of their stupid-ness, are selected by a stupid-environment more so then the un-stupid, then stupid-ness will spread across the land.

People who lack education have, for centuries, been the more prolific breeders, yet we are more intelligent (as far as discoveries and understanding self) as a race than we have ever been before.

I guess if all the top intellectuals took part in selective breeding the offspring would start to weaken. This showed up in royal families that had to marry people of their own standing. Certainly all the pedigree animals I have ever met have been think as the proverbial.

Lets just say it is true for a minute. I have the cure. Remove all warning labels. The stupid ones will kill them selves before they have a chance to breed. It would be a return to natural selection. 

Yes, but historically, those of less education had vastly higher mortality rates than the educated.

Also, the children of the rich and educated were often brought up by servants, so I'm not sure how this affects the arguement of kids being brought up by the ill-educated.

Yes, but historically, those of less education had vastly higher mortality rates than the educated.


without actually looking at figures I still hazard a guess that the higher mortality rate had little real effect on ratios of breeding between the groups.




They were cared for by others, sure, but wealthy children still had access to better education and more opportunity. Even as very young children the sorts of experiences they had (outings, visitors and toys) would have been more conducive to 'better education'.
Even today, wealthier families are able to afford education systems that allow for greater opportunities.

Of course, I am not saying that the individual is stuck within their social position, we all know people who rise through adversity and those who sink in prosperity.. just being general.

I don't think the 'stupid' will outbreed the clever.. I'm also sceptical that there are 'more stupid' people around now than (proportionally) at any time before. What I do know is that in our modern world the people that would once have continued on with their lives in relative obscurity now have youtube.

I would love to join this forum. Nice to meet you here

stealth spam from a stealthy spam merchant - now banned and blacklisted!

Nice try, I nearly missed it.

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The link that he's got is in white.

im sure with proper education and schools, the retarded ones can become as smart as the last generation of smart ones.IQ is rising among peeps.

I'm sure that's what they all say....

It's a potential problem caused by the current social and technological state. Social and technological change is much faster though than biological evolution so I don't think we have any reason to be concerned.

James Flynn pointed out a social change that might solve the alleged problem, let me point out technical ones: As much as we currently find the idea of genetically manipulating human beings revolting, let's assume people will one day find a set of genes that determines intellectual genius and possess a mechanism of safely inserting this set of genes into a fertilised egg. Do you seriously think that not a single country on earth will think of this as the quick and easy solution for most of its economical and educational problems? And how will the other countries react? Even if they all decide that their traditional values are more important, how many of their inhabitants will beg to differ and just travel to that country to conceive their children to give them what they think to be a headstart? My point just is: No matter how determined we currently are not to change the genetic makeup of humans, it will some day happen and that will shape the human genome much more than any selection for large family sizes.

If you don't believe this however, family sizes might actually correlate positively with income when medical progress increases the life span and especially the reproductive life span further.

So the bottom line is: Our society will continue to change dramatically both socially and technologically and any projection based on the current state while assuming it to persist over evolutionary time scales is probably not going to predict anything that's really going to happen. And in any case, if in a couple of centuries we're still around and the issue didn't just resolve itself, we can still then try to find a solution.

I don't feel that it is a question of stupidity. It never has been. Knowledge is there. It is, however, a case of laziness. Are we becoming more lazy? Sure we are. Will the Lazy outbreed the productive. I hope not.

Just a thought.

A whole lot of assumptions are being made in this thread. For a start, natural selection is about survival of the species and one assumption being made is that high IQ is going to be better for this. I think Douglas Adams made amusing comments about this in the "hitchhikers guide to the galaxy" when all the "useless people" were banished to another planet with a disasterous outcome. IQ tests are a measure of our ability to do IQ tests. As has been shown, and acknowledged in some comments above, IQ is not wholly governed (as was once believed by eminent psycholgists) by genetics but can be changed by quite a large extent by environment and education.

There has been much work on how to correlate simple tests (like IQ tests) with success in life, but I wonder to what extent we weight these tests with what we perceive as important today. I can think quite a few people who excel in their field of interest but are quite hopeless outside it and, in contrast, I can think of quite a few others who are generally very sensible and reliable but who do not have any outstanding talent. Both groups undoubtedly have a fairly wide IQ distribution and both groups are valuable and necessary in a working society.

It may be interesting to think how a society's demographics may be affected by a higher birthrate by sections of a community, but in discussing such issues it is worthwhile to try to step back and see these discussions from an "outside" perspective. Here are a bunch of reasonably high-IQ people discussing how their view of the future will change for the worse if nothing is done to give them a breeding advantage over the "lesser beings". How similar is this to the ideas of the late 19th and early 20th centuries which led to the ideas of eugenics and the resulting genocidal consequences?

As mudd1 says, we are probably approaching an era where we will be able to manipulate the genetic make-up of our offspring and that it will likely be yet another Pandora's box full of enabling, scientific advancement but without any ethical guidelines to go with it. I would not be confident that this will be of general advancement to the human race, at least not without setbacks, but I would agree it is likely to happen. It may be a measure of the quality of our society in how well such advances are handled. If such capability is limited and distibuted fairly we may have some chance of allowing more social interchange and reducing the problems resulting from class differentials. If it is something restricted in availability to those who can afford it, we are in danger of exacerbating problems and creating a more divergent social structure.

I think the original poster is correct to be concerned about the reversal of natural selection. It's real and it's a problem. But - as the above posters have mentioned, it has little or nothing to do with IQ. That was a red herring. There is no evidence to suggest that the special as a whole would be worse off if less educated people breed more. Perhaps the species would be better off - after all it's the smart ones who go on to invent things like nuclear weapons! The real issue here - and it certainly worries me as an evolution "hobbyist" - is that people with diseases that should be fatal are in fact being treated and are able to breed. Now don't get me wrong here - I'm not suggesting that people with diseases shouldn't be allowed to breed. I'm just observing the simple and scientific fact that as little as 50 years ago people with diseases like diabetes, hemophilia, certain genetic cancers, heart diseases etc, were statistically less likely to live long enough to have children. Less likely than a person who didn't have those genes. Natural selection would, by definition, favor the healthy people having children. This tends to reduce diseases in the population as a whole. My big concern is that because people with genetic conditions can get medical treatment and have children, these diseases will become more and more common. Is it any wonder that diabetes, asthma and other diseases are increasingly common (in Australia the growth rates are huge). It's not really a shock - it's to do with the reversal - or rather the dismantlement - of natural selection. People who would never normally get to breed in the "wild" (read "olden days") are having babies. Fast forward 200 years and I can see a situation where a huge percentage of the world has medical problems that were once very rare. This is what I research in my job. And it scares me. Simon

I have a solution for this: The Naked Science Dating program.
I can also volunteer as a breeder, for the sake of humanity of course 

Several posts in this thread reveal a lack of understanding onatural selection.

First and foremost natural selection does not have a consistent direction, therefore it cannot be reversed.

That leads, naturally, to the second point: the direction of natural selection is to select organisms that are more fit for their current, specific environment. If the environment changes then the characteristics that will make the organsism fit also change.

Which leads to the third point. Natural selection is very much alive and well in humanity. We now have an environment in which it is not a major disadvantage (in terms of reproductive success) to have a genetically based disease. Consequently natural selection will tend not to select against such.

I have worn glasses since the age of eight. If I had lived in an environment in which corrective lenses were not available there would have been an inreased risk that I would not have lived long enugh to father children. As it is I have passed my genes on the the next generation and the one after that. Is my grandaughter an example of the reversal of natural selection. Obviously not.

Similarly is the fact that people who are unable to reproduce are given the opportunity, through science. Woman who can only birth via cesarean section for example. Doctors here in Oz are pushing all woman to elect to deliver via cesarean section whether they require it or not.

This should be a great concern to us all.

IQ is only as good as the person who devised the test.

I personally think that being a teenage parent doesn't make you stupid. some woman's life ambition is to be a mum. Some just make a simple mistake. I would imagine in the days prior to contraception woman used to reproduce at the earliest age.

In Australian prisons it has been recorded that the majority of white collar crimes are done by genius. There are more genius in our gaols using their talents for evil than for good.

So I suppose a high IQ doesn't make you a good person or a good parent.

I doubt that our fate will be determined by breeding. Even the most uneducated humans are extremely clever.

It's all about society and education. So called "uncivilized" cultures tend to have great societies. The "civilized" cultures tend to have the greatest problems with antisocial behaviour (unless they are completely repressed.)

If we cannot reconcile society with civilization and recognize that we are only one society, we will extinguish ourselves.

IQ tests apply to different aspects of the concept we call intelligence. People can excel at particular IQ tests and be bad at others. Ophiolite, your comments are misleading. For the sake of simplicity: Artificial = man made Natural = that which has evolved over billions of years Reverse of natural selection = survival of the weakest (I'd say possible, but not for very long) Natural selection = Selection in a natural environment (Humanity are more and more outside this scope and please don't say what we've created is natural, humanity has only been around for a fraction of natural history) What Simon from Oz says is a serious matter if one is concerned about the future of humanity, and it is a matter of fact. Now some of my own thoughts. It is entirely possibly to create an environment that causes a reduction in intelligence. It is plausible that it is currently happening, linked in with a legacy of disease (and hence suffering) to future generations. Given the rather selfish age we live in, ie the self being given higher importance than the community or future, the only recourse I can see is genetics as stated above - but this has potentially disastrous consequences. Further to that, we live more and more in an environment of toxic man-made chemicals that our bodies have no means of defence. Thus there are other problems genetics cannot solve. We have a gift in our ability to survive in relative comfort with the natural environment, gained since time immemorial. Making genetic changes, most which have unforeseeable consequences, has the capacity of ruining this ability.

"and by that we mean that people with lesser education are having more children than people with more education" With respect, education is not the same as intelligence. Second, The Bell Curve makes it clear that the welfare state actually increases this problem by giving poor people more money for children. So "making society more equal" is not a cure. Personally though I'm more concerned with personality traits. ADD and other disorders are probably caused by letting people who are so emotional/impulsive that they forget to use a condom outbreed the responsible. If we let people who can not focus past their orgasm outbreed us, we should not be surprised when we have a group of children that can't focus for more than 5 minutes...

Well, one could argue that if we lose a few IQ points, it might be worth it if the rich, greedy resource hogging SOBs at the top become extinct. Just sayin'.

The greedy resource hungry top fraction that invented the electric light; developed modern medicine; wrote heart-rending poetry; composed magnificent opera; thought of the wheel, fire, tool-use, and the digital watch; visited the moon, eradicated small-pox ...  terrible drain on society we can live without em!  sooner we get back to living in dark caves the better, damn it perhaps moving out of the oceans was a bad idea in the first place


h/t to the wonderful d.a.

The greedy resource hungry top fraction that invented the electric light; developed modern medicine; wrote heart-rending poetry; composed magnificent opera; thought of the wheel, fire, tool-use, and the digital watch; visited the moon, eradicated small-pox ...  terrible drain on society we can live without em!  sooner we get back to living in dark caves the better, damn it perhaps moving out of the oceans was a bad idea in the first place


h/t to the wonderful d.a.
u 4got yachts,private jets,NASCAR & toys in general + the progress involves $ which favors the rich & results in preempting evolution?

Well, for every Bill Gates, there's probably a lot more Paris Hiltons, so I'm sure it will balance out IQ wise in the end.

Having a high level of intelligence does not make a person a superior person for breeding. I have lived with university students doing their masters degree and lack in fundamental life skill: student number one. I watch this student for two weeks trying to ride a pushbike in the backyard with half flat tyres and going in 3 meters circles and falling off repeatedly. Student also doing masters cannot use a screw driver at all he passed it to me and said “can you do”. Student 3 doing masters in Information technology needed help with knowledge on virus protection and how to reinstall windows operating system.  OMG how did these people get in to uni

I have lived with drug users and alcoholics that had kept the house cleaner then these people. Just because people are at university does not make a person educated it just means they have meet the basis requirement to get into university. Just because a student has completed their university degree does not make them qualified, it only mean they have complete the basis requirement to complete the course.

I have been told all my life that I have to be smart to get in to uni. Now I am in my second year of uni.  5 year ago I could hardly read or write. So be kind on my grammar skill, I’m slowly getting there .

Well, in the Gaussian curve, we can see that there are a little number of smart people, a lot of average people, and a little number of not so clever people.  Since smart people  plan very well for their kids and their future, they tend to produce a small number of kids compared to the not so clever who do not think of their children's future. There is a possibility that the stupid will outbreed the clever.

I just cant believe that human intelligence is such a simple and consistant trait in groups or families that it can be selected for so easily in a few generations. How many successful businessmen did not come from especially privileged backgrounds? How many kids with rich, smart parents end up doing absolutely nothing with their lives or self destructing? How many US presidents have had a derelict, idiot brother? How do you do explain Billy Carter? Have you ever seen Clinton's mom on TV?

In a way this is educated BS. We've existed on this planet for quite a bit, and we've come far in the last centuries. It had nothing to do with 'selective breeding', and after the second world war this kind of unfresh 'educated speculation' was gone. But people apparently have a inbreed need to make themselves better than the next one, and so this comes back, again and again.

How about checking up ones own ancestors, I will guarantee you all to have had some really stupid people in your family tree. Would you have liked us to stop them from breeding? Then you might not be here at all, and neither would your 'education' be. Give me a break, to name some hypothesis with a nice Greek/latin name to make it sound all scientific, like phrenology, doesn't make it true. Genetics seems to become the new buzzword here, and to be honest, reading some views makes me wonder where we are and what the he* education stands for.

We just can't stop deciding other peoples life's, can we?

........"ADD and other disorders are probably caused by ....." thats an intelligent
objective observation totally based on fact...NOT! your whole post is dripping with prejudicial, slanted statements driven by snobbery and anger. Some educated people are really dumb, some are very intelligent as are poor people you spoke so nice of .

Now to voice my 2 cents-We are living on the forefront of an amazing time-the computer has brought forth a technological renaissance so to speak-with medicine and science gaining leaps and bounds in advancement. But we as human beings, in most peoples minds ,advanced,but animals none the less-have managed to populate, pollute the earth to the point of beginning to kill off ocean inhabitants,ruin the environment to the point of global warming, speeding up the ice age coming-maybe too fast for most life to adapt they say..i could go on and on but as Mark Twain once said-we believe we are a higher life form than all other animals  but we arent-we're inferior.and as we continue to eat up every last natural resource and over populate the earth and still refuse to see the end we just prove it once again.

So as far as natural selection theory goes-is the accumulation of knowlege and our own 'top 1% percent of population labeled intelligent' the real problem?  By some criteria you would have to say yes. There are tribes in Africa secluded from the outside world without modern conveniences and they have no problem with food supply, hunger,they aren't polluting the earth etc. Doesn't this fall right in line with the theory? natural selection at its best? is intelligence and knowledge necessarily superior and a desired selection  in evolution?