5 ms·
Why in the world would nobles have superior genes in the first place? Since being noble is merely hereditary by "blood," there's no genetic pressure that would
by zuminator 5y ago
Why in the world would nobles have superior genes in the first place? Since being noble is merely hereditary by "blood," there's no genetic pressure that would select for intelligence. If anything due to intermarriage they'd be more likely to have birth defects leading to low intelligence, I would imagine.
- jcadam 5y ago> If anything due to intermarriage they'd be more likely to have birth defects leading to low intelligence, I would imagine. It's widely speculated that the demise of the Hapsburg empire was due to centuries of inbreeding eventually producing rather... simple monarchs.
- gumby 5y agoYes, if they selected for anything at all it would be for a willingness to carry around a long sharp knife and push it into people who don't do what the knife-wielder says.
- roywiggins 5y agoOr, to be fair, the ability to get other people with pointy sticks to do it for you. That's also an important skill for nobles.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mc32 5y agoThe implication I think is a missing a point. Before the advent of mechanization people were subject to the whims of nature. When nature ravaged them, they were forced to seek developed resources elsewhere and this’d who had those resources normally would not want to share them with others as all resources were meager and most people lived on the edge of existence where one bad summer meant winter was bare and people starved or died by disease taking advantage of weakened systems. Thus people had to fight of they’d die themselves. So it wasnt always, let’s make war so we can subjugate more; though that did happen too Vikings. Huns and Ottomans among others. Of course there were petty rivalries that also just produced unproductive wars.
- AlgorithmicTime 5y ago
- rory 5y agoIf you cast out the "inferior," you don't have to start out superior to end up so.
- bencollier49 5y agoLet's assume the opposite - that success is not correlated with fitness (intelligence amongst other things). Is that a rational position to take?
- stonogo 5y agoYes. Being second-born is not a heritable trait.
- api 5y agoEither claim would be wrong if it assumed perfect correlation or lack thereof. Correlations are floats not booleans. There is going to be some correlation, but there are lots and lots of factors like luck, network effects, heritable wealth, etc.
- actually_a_dog 5y agoRight, and it would seem to be silly to argue that all else being equal, someone more intelligent isn't more likely to be successful than someone less intelligent. It's more that in the real world, all else rarely is equal.
- femiagbabiaka 5y agoWe're talking royals here, not some entrepreneur. Unless of course what you're suggesting is that royal families gain and maintain power due to intelligence.
- woodruffw 5y agoThat's not the opposite; success can be correlated with fitness (i.e., success) in disparate social strata without necessitating the correctness of the strata themselves. The strata themselves can be the product of pressures unrelated to individual fitness, like our individual propensity for selfishness.
- actually_a_dog 5y agoPerhaps not, but the most successful individuals are generally not the most talented. Rather, they tend to be the luckiest. See, e.g. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/the-role-of-luck-in-life-success-is-far-greater-than-we-realized/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/the-rol...
- rowanG077 5y agoTo become a noble you would generally have to have done something of great note. I'd think someone of higher intelligence would have a higher likelihood to do that.
- lumost 5y agoIs there any backing to this? As I recall feudal societies in both Europe and Japan had the origin of "nobility" in land ownership/control. If you could successfully hold a piece of land as your own you were a noble. You can imagine this as a form of de facto rule.
- pbalau 5y agoHolding into a piece of land is not a given. The fact that one could hold into that could mean that individual was smarter than the individuals that did not.
- KittenInABox 5y agoIt's pretty easy to hold onto a piece of land if you're the only one who is well-fed, literate, and capable of hiring and feeding personal guards.
- rowanG077 5y agoIsn't that the point? A person with superior genes is more likely to have those qualities.
- api 5y agoYour ancestors were probably above average in either intelligence or physical ability. That doesn't mean you are after a century or two of noble inbreeding.
- rowanG077 5y agoThe point is that inbreeding while having some bad outcomes can also have the good outcome of the nobility having higher intelligence. You can't just argue when someone says: "this is A", with: "No this is B". At least put some substance behind it.
- flenserboy 5y agoQuick speculation: It could simply come down to being better fed over time. There is evidence of negative multi-generational effects on descendants from malnourishment suffered by progenitors. If nobles had better access to food (which makes sense, given power differences), that could propagate down the generations (and promote increased reproduction) not due to a stronger gene pool, but rather through improved gene expression and general health.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jimbob45 5y agoNobles were far more likely to be healthy with better diets and less disease which would certainly be correlated with better offspring outcomes. We can discard better genetics (have fun proving that lol) entirely and still be somewhat on board with this theory.
- AlgorithmicTime 5y ago