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It’s not that simple. If you are a high quality specimen with good genetics and high intelligence, you should have more children than normal replacement rate, a
by xwdv 6y ago
It’s not that simple. If you are a high quality specimen with good genetics and high intelligence, you should have more children than normal replacement rate, and with a similar mate.
If you are not a fit specimen you should consider having none, or at most one with a high quality mate with dominant genes.
- Retric 6y agoDid you ever consider what that idea meant in practice? People have actively done a great deal of selective breeding of various animals and plant species and the results aren’t a strict improvement over the original wild animals. Agriculture has become about maintaining plants and animals which can’t compete with wild plants on their own. DNA doesn’t come with an easy score card nor are children clones. Someone with a significant positive mutation should objectively score very highly on such metrics, but good luck find out about that. Further, disease resistance for unknown diseases is incredibly important making genetic diversity critical not just maximizing some specific ideal template. Pushed to the limit, a significant risk from widespread genetic engineering is extinction. PS: Even just the biological version of this based on physical attractiveness has significant downsides such as excessively large breasts.
- SamReidHughes 6y agoJust take anybody who'd qualify for military service. This isn't about some hyperspecific slice of the population.
- Retric 6y agoAt least in the US only about 25% of the population qualifies for military services. But, I doubt that’s a 1:1 match for what you’re looking for.
- SamReidHughes 6y agoNo that's pretty much the ideal selection. Non-fat people who aren't too far below average IQ. They should have more kids. With better high school phys ed we could bump up the fraction quite a bit. Really just anybody who can hold down a marriage. This won't hurt disease resistance.
- Retric 6y agoIf changing X you could bump up the fraction then your selecting for background not DNA. People with asthma, vision problems, and ADHD etc can still serve. The current criteria are mostly about effective soldiers after minimal training not some test of genetic fitness.
- SamReidHughes 6y agoThe current military criteria selects for genetic fitness very strongly when it comes to intelligence. Its other criteria keep out people with basic health problems, but I think being in decent shape is a decent filter for conscientious behavior, just not a precise one.
- xwdv 6y agoThe problem is people unfit to have kids are shooting seed at alarming rates, and if we don’t take better measures to encourage optimal reproduction we will be overrun with their kin.
- Retric 6y agoData doesn’t really support that idea. Billionaires for example have significantly more kids than average. At the reverse in poor communities healthy intelligent men statistically have more children than average. It’s a political talking point that the poor and uneducated have more children but things are never that simple and that’s not genetic fitness. Poor countries for example don’t really translate to genetic factors. Further, poor mothers don’t mean poor fathers. At the extreme end, people with severe mental or physical disorders are vastly less likely to have children.