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> When talking about working in the bay area with technology people from the bay area I really get the impression that nobody there ever has children and every
by defen 8y ago
> When talking about working in the bay area with technology people from the bay area I really get the impression that nobody there ever has children and everybody is sterilized.
This is the great slow-motion tragedy of cities, especially in the modern era. The phrase I've heard is "IQ Shredder". It's probably not great for society in the long run to concentrate your smartest, hardest working, most conscientious people into a few large metros where an unwinnable rat-race leads to them having zero or 1 kids, since parental IQ has a large influence children's IQ.
- MRD85 8y agoBut that is getting dangerously close to implying that different humans have different potential intelligence, and that's a very politically dangerous path to go down. The racial history of the US seems to make it a specially sensitive country to this issue.
- pc86 8y agoI would hope on HN of all places people wouldn't devolve into political flame wars and race baiting just because a completely factually accurate statement offends their sensibilities.
- pc86 8y agoI see that I'm wrong.
- MRD85 8y agoI wasn't attempting to race bait. I was mentioning that this is a hard issue to discuss in a lot of circles due to historical reasons. A lot of people hear race when you say "there are differences in intelligence and some part of that is genetic", a statement which doesn't mention race at all! I'm actually quite concerned personally about the effects of high IQ couples not having children and low IQ couples having a lot but it's not an easy discussion to have since, as I mentioned, people see it as a racist argument when I don't mention race at all.
- defen 8y ago> different humans have different potential intelligence Different individual humans do have different potential intelligence. Cities everywhere attract intelligent people of all races and genders, this has nothing to do with the racial history of the US.
- pc86 8y agoThere are plenty of well educated, hard working, intelligent people outside of major metropolitan areas. And there are plenty of lazy idiots in cities. And let's not forget that California is near the bottom of the list for average IQ[0] (which is a ridiculous measure, anyway). [0] https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/we-compared-average-iq-score-in-all-50-states-results-are-eye-opening.html https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/we-compared-average-iq-sc...
- defen 8y ago> There are plenty of well educated, hard working, intelligent people outside of major metropolitan areas. And there are plenty of lazy idiots in cities. I never said there weren't; the question is which what is the net internal migration? Do more smart people move out of cities and have more kids, or do they move into cities and have fewer? > let's not forget that California is near the bottom of the list for average IQ My point was about cities, not states. California has 3 large major cities, some minor ones, and a very large rural area. > which is a ridiculous measure, anyway IQ is not everything, but it's strongly correlated with a host of positive outcomes (longevity, educational attainment, income, cooperative behavior, etc).
- souprock 8y agoBack when San Francisco had open space and people could actually build things, my grandparents got a 4-bedroom house there for $9000. They produced 8 kids. Kids were everywhere. The neighborhood was filled with kids. Kids played outside all day long, running up and down the street. Now the place is silent. There is a bit of hope outside the big cities. Farmers tend to be smart. Not every software developer has been lured to the big city.