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Could this have to so with smart people increasing pursuing hedonism over reproduction? Maybe Idiocracy was right all along. From a strict evolutionary perspe

Could this have to so with smart people increasing pursuing hedonism over reproduction? Maybe Idiocracy was right all along. From a strict evolutionary perspective I have doubts that a high IQ is useful anymore.

giraffe_lady 4y ago
From a strict evolutionary perspective it probably hasn't been for a long time and likely never was as significant on an individual level as people like to believe. The only things being selected for in modern humans, if anything, are going to be things like disease resistance, maybe tolerance to some chemical contaminants in food & water, air pollution. And even then only in some parts of the world.
- armatav 4y ago
  Nope - sexual selection still takes place regardless of environmental survival factors. And sexual selection takes place faster and can lead populations to scenarios that induce natural selection.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
The point of the original Flynn effect being a big deal was that the changes were faster than was possible with genetics alone. A big part of "The Bell Curve" was arguing that no interventions could change IQ except genetics and so any money spent on low IQ people (African-Americans in the book, but the author followed up by attacking poor people more generally) was a pointless waste. It turns out he wasn't just an asshole, he was also wrong.
- faeriechangling 4y ago
  I agree it probably isn’t genetics alone, notably the increase in visual spatial skills I would suspect to have more to do with video games than genetics. I have yet to read “the bell curve” said, but did they really use an argument that flew in the face of the abundant evidence of IQ increases unlinked to genetics as a result of better nutrition and education? Hell America gained a few IQ points nationwide from banning leaded gasoline alone so we also knew of environmental means to affect IQ levels. This was all known about and very well established at the time of authorship. Is there an excerpt?
  - runarberg 4y ago
    > did they really use an argument that flew in the face of the abundant evidence of IQ increases unlinked to genetics as a result of better nutrition and education? Yes they did, and they did a lot worse than that. And that is the reason why the scientific community was very fast to discredit this book. The science in it were bad, to say the least. It wasn’t even peer reviewed. I think the decline in IQ research is in large part thanks to the pushback this book rightfully got. It is actually nice that this books is raised here, because the journal this study was published in Intelligence has its ties to true believers of The Bell Curve. Richard J. Haier is the editor in chief signed an editorial defending this book back in 1994. And the board included disgraced eugenicist Richard Lynn (whos discredited pseudo-scientific work cited throughout the book) was on the editorial board until 2018.
    - PathOfEclipse 4y ago
      > Yes they did, and they did a lot worse than that See above reply. Wikepedia completely contradicts what you are saying. I also know what you're saying about AEI is mostly garbage, too.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    You are being overly charitable. He worked at the American Enterprise Institute, so if you just imagine their attitude to the scientific facts of climate change, transposed onto genetics, you'll have a good idea of what they were saying. So it's not so much as not being aware of the science, but of not liking the obvious policy conclusions it leads to and so having to work really hard to counter it. https://www.desmog.com/american-enterprise-institute/ https://www.desmog.com/american-enterprise-institute/
  - Izkata 4y ago
    I haven't read it either, but even just a quick look at Wikipedia shows the other responders don't know what they're talking about: > According to Herrnstein and Murray, the high heritability of IQ within races does not necessarily mean that the cause of differences between races is genetic. On the other hand, they discuss lines of evidence that have been used to support the thesis that the black-white gap is at least partly genetic, such as Spearman's hypothesis. They also discuss possible environmental explanations of the gap, such as the observed generational increases in IQ, for which they coin the term Flynn effect. At the close of this discussion, they write: > > If the reader is now convinced that either the genetic or environmental explanation has won out to the exclusion of the other, we have not done a sufficiently good job of presenting one side or the other. It seems highly likely to us that both genes and environment have something to do with racial differences. What might the mix be? We are resolutely agnostic on that issue; as far as we can determine, the evidence does not yet justify an estimate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve#Part_III._The_National_Context https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve#Part_III._The_N... The part I find especially amusing is how often the Flynn effect is used to refute The Bell Curve, even though the term "Flynn effect" comes from The Bell Curve.
- PathOfEclipse 4y ago
  I've never read the "Bell Curve", and I'm not a huge fan of Charles Murray's work in general, but, from the first line in Wikpedia: "The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life is a 1994 book by psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein and political scientist Charles Murray, in which the authors argue that human intelligence is substantially influenced by both inherited and environmental factors." That statement completely contradicts what your claim about the book, and now I am disinclined to trust you.. Later on another statement also completely contradicts what you are saying: "According to Herrnstein and Murray, the high heritability of IQ within races does not necessarily mean that the cause of differences between races is genetic. On the other hand, they discuss lines of evidence that have been used to support the thesis that the black-white gap is at least partly genetic, such as Spearman's hypothesis. They also discuss possible environmental explanations of the gap, such as the observed generational increases in IQ, for which they coin the term Flynn effect"
- HDThoreaun 4y ago
  Absolutely not what Murray said in the bell curve. It's not a very hard book to attack, so I'm not sure why people always go for strawmen. Please post anything from the book that comes anywhere close to saying IQ is 100% genetic.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    I didnt say they said it was 100% genetic. I said: > A big part of "The Bell Curve" was arguing that no interventions could change IQ except genetics So its like a "climate change denier" who says "oh I dont deny climate change, its just that I oppose every commonly accepted way to combat it and therefore am in complete policy alignment with actual climate change demiers (who all love my work despite a literal reading being that I’m saying they are wrong)."
    - HDThoreaun 4y ago
      "no interventions could change IQ except genetics" and "IQ is 100% genetic" are the same statement.
      - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
        And yet here we are discussing The Bell Curve, a book that simultaneously claims that "it is agnostic" as to whether racial IQ gaps are environmental or genetic, but thinks that there's no point in any interventions to reduce or eliminate low IQs. I think they're liars that at the very least want you to believe the gap is mostly genetic. But they've carefully avoided ever directly stating that, because of the Nazi eugenics vibe that would give off. So to try to avoid being accused of misrepresenting these disingenuous liars, I stated not that they believe it's 100% genetic, but rather that they believe no interventions would help. It's their logical inconsistency, not mine.
- moonchrome 4y ago
  > A big part of "The Bell Curve" was arguing that no interventions could change IQ except genetics and so any money spent on low IQ people (African-Americans in the book, but the author followed up by attacking poor people more generally) was a pointless waste. It should be self-evident that you can lower IQ through environment (injury, developmental issues, malnourishment, etc.). So even if you believe there's a genetic ceiling to IQ, Flynn effect (and reverse) don't contradict that.
- runarberg 4y ago
  What is going on with Bell Curve apologists all of a sudden replying to this post. I thought the debate was slowly fading out and than I count 5 different account replying within an hour.
  - throwawayacc5 4y ago
    "Early twin studies of adult individuals have found a heritability of IQ between 57% and 73%,[6] with some recent studies showing heritability for IQ as high as 80%.[7] IQ goes from being weakly correlated with genetics for children, to being strongly correlated with genetics for late teens and adults. The heritability of IQ increases with the child's age and reaches a plateau at 18–20 years old, continuing at that level well into adulthood." [0] You're denying settled science. Trying to tie it to the Bell Curve to assassinate the basic character of the science isn't tricking anyone. Pronouns in your profile only make this bad faith move easier to identify. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ
    - techno_tsar 4y ago
      Really? Using the fact that someone put pronouns in their profile is a bad faith move? Your account is literally a throwaway. Calling these twin studies as settled science is the most bad faith move here, since the chief problem of this section of The Bell Curve is that it confuses heritability with genetic determination, a mistake that informed scientists wouldn’t make. Unsurprisingly, that is why there is widespread scientific backlash against it. Believe it or not, twin black babies separated at birth and raised with white parents are still treated as black by society.
      - throwawayacc5 4y ago
        >Really? Yes really. >Using the fact that someone put pronouns in their profile is a bad faith move? No, putting pronouns in your profile is a red flag for bad faith moves. >Your account is literally a throwaway. Which means you can expect unadulterated facts. >Calling these twin studies as settled science is the most bad faith move here No it's not, stop denying the science. >since the chief problem of this section of The Bell Curve is that it confuses heritability with genetic determination The Bell Curve makes no confusion between heritability and genetic determination. >mistake that informed scientists wouldn’t make Good thing the Bell Curve didn't make that mistake! >Unsurprisingly, that is why there is widespread scientific backlash against it. There wasn't much scientific backlash to it because it's fairly bulletproof. The backlash was because of contained heretical topics, and may have pointed to blasphemous conclusions. >Believe it or not, twin black babies separated at birth and raised with white parents are still treated as black by society. "Believe it or not, twin Asian babies separated at birth and raised with white parents are still treated as Asian by society." You're almost there /r/selfawarewolves.
- jackmott 4y ago
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polski-g 4y ago
IQ hasn't been beneficial to evolution for over 100 years. Once means-tested welfare came into existence, being low-IQ became more advantageous. The reason Europe was able to take over the world is that they taxed the poor (low-IQ) more than the rich in the dark ages and the rich out-bred the poor for at least 2 generations.
- deleted 4y ago
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- notch898b 4y ago
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- faeriechangling 4y ago
  Very arguably social welfare resulted in the biggest increase in IQ levels in history as general health, nutrition, and education improved. Also social welfare improved social mobility which should cause IQ to have more of an impact rather than less of one. I am not rejecting this point but I have a hard time accepting it Carte Blanche. If anything if IQ is lowering for generic reasons I would suspect birth control as a cause especially since it’s a more recent phenomenon than means tested welfare.
  - laverya 4y ago
    Social welfare could do BOTH things - dramatically increase IQ for the next generation (that grows up with proper nutrition etc) while also remove the selective pressure that increased IQ over the course of centuries.
    - SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
      Social welfare hasn’t been centuries. Many social welfare programs have barely been 1 generation. The big ones (social security, food stamps) aren’t even 1 century old!
- majormajor 4y ago
  One of the first European world powers after the dark ages, Portugal, was not more advanced than many of the areas it attacked except for in weaponry since Europe had been infighting while other math and science was being pursued in eastern parts of the world. Regardless of what percentage of motivation you ascribe to "we want their shit" vs "we want them to take our religion," I don't think you can say it was an advantage or motivation driven by intelligence. ("The rich outbred the poor" also seems very dubious, labor was still very manual, so you gotta have someone to do it.)
yucky 4y ago
[flagged]
- localplume 4y ago
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- triggerwarn 4y ago
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- readthenotes1 4y ago
  Funny, because I believe the argument of the alt-right is that the elitists are also brainwashed and controlled to be puppets of the socialist secret Nanny deep state
  - yucky 4y ago
    Why would the government care if you're left or right, as long as you are a faithful consumer.
1letterunixname 4y ago
If George Carlin was a philosopher, perhaps Mike Judge is also more than a physicist, musician, and director. Giving Brian May a run for his money. When the collective hive mind of a society is organized around anti-intellectualism (the core ethos of America), then it will subsidize a combination of stupid (less talent) and mental laziness (lack of productive application of talent). This is how a society enters the dustbin of history and emerges as a brutal and backwards people.
- faeriechangling 4y ago
  America in 2023 is more intellectual than any society that existed in or before the 20th century. How extreme does intellectualism have to get before America is no longer considered anti-intellectual? Does manual labour need to be banned and does 75% of the population need post-secondary degrees? America and western society is so taken with intellectualism that they spend their prime years for having children doing precocious amounts of studying while their brains are in a state of peak plasticity. Americans right now are like modern day Irish elk who need increasingly large antlers (degrees) to win the reproductive game but are so encumbered by this that it becomes difficult to reproduce at all. So fertility is sub-replacement and Americans have reacted by bringing in immigrants so they can spend more time working on their degrees. What sort of immigrants do they bring in? University graduates!
- emmelaich 4y ago
  I like your comment because it could be expressed by someone on the far right as much as the far left. As an aside, I think Idiocracy is the weakest of Mike Judge's works.
- astrange 4y ago
  > anti-intellectualism (the core ethos of America) https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BARTERICMP25UPZSUSA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BARTERICMP25UPZSUSA > lack of productive application of talent https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12027662 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12027662 ?
Herval_freire 4y ago
It's useful. You have to think on the macro scale. The evolution of the entire population rather then individuals. On the individual level stupider people reproduce more so evolutionary speaking it's more efficient to be stupid. However if a small portion of the population has high IQ they can move society forward via say the discovery of electricity, mathematics, etc, etc. This propels every individual forward as a whole at the detriment of a few individuals who are to nerdy or geeky to get laid that often. Thus from a high level perspective, there is selection pressure that works on the population of people that makes it so that our genes have the mechanisms in place to produce an occasional genius via specific combinations of traits or via simple on/off switch mutations that easily occur. For reference this is a short and informative video on the aforementioned topic: https://youtu.be/sP2tUW0HDHA https://youtu.be/sP2tUW0HDHA

giraffe_lady 4y ago

From a strict evolutionary perspective it probably hasn't been for a long time and likely never was as significant on an individual level as people like to believe. The only things being selected for in modern humans, if anything, are going to be things like disease resistance, maybe tolerance to some chemical contaminants in food & water, air pollution. And even then only in some parts of the world.

armatav 4y ago
Nope - sexual selection still takes place regardless of environmental survival factors. And sexual selection takes place faster and can lead populations to scenarios that induce natural selection.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

The point of the original Flynn effect being a big deal was that the changes were faster than was possible with genetics alone. A big part of "The Bell Curve" was arguing that no interventions could change IQ except genetics and so any money spent on low IQ people (African-Americans in the book, but the author followed up by attacking poor people more generally) was a pointless waste. It turns out he wasn't just an asshole, he was also wrong.

faeriechangling 4y ago
I agree it probably isn’t genetics alone, notably the increase in visual spatial skills I would suspect to have more to do with video games than genetics. I have yet to read “the bell curve” said, but did they really use an argument that flew in the face of the abundant evidence of IQ increases unlinked to genetics as a result of better nutrition and education? Hell America gained a few IQ points nationwide from banning leaded gasoline alone so we also knew of environmental means to affect IQ levels. This was all known about and very well established at the time of authorship. Is there an excerpt?
- runarberg 4y ago
  > did they really use an argument that flew in the face of the abundant evidence of IQ increases unlinked to genetics as a result of better nutrition and education? Yes they did, and they did a lot worse than that. And that is the reason why the scientific community was very fast to discredit this book. The science in it were bad, to say the least. It wasn’t even peer reviewed. I think the decline in IQ research is in large part thanks to the pushback this book rightfully got. It is actually nice that this books is raised here, because the journal this study was published in Intelligence has its ties to true believers of The Bell Curve. Richard J. Haier is the editor in chief signed an editorial defending this book back in 1994. And the board included disgraced eugenicist Richard Lynn (whos discredited pseudo-scientific work cited throughout the book) was on the editorial board until 2018.
  - PathOfEclipse 4y ago
    > Yes they did, and they did a lot worse than that See above reply. Wikepedia completely contradicts what you are saying. I also know what you're saying about AEI is mostly garbage, too.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  You are being overly charitable. He worked at the American Enterprise Institute, so if you just imagine their attitude to the scientific facts of climate change, transposed onto genetics, you'll have a good idea of what they were saying. So it's not so much as not being aware of the science, but of not liking the obvious policy conclusions it leads to and so having to work really hard to counter it. https://www.desmog.com/american-enterprise-institute/ https://www.desmog.com/american-enterprise-institute/
- Izkata 4y ago
  I haven't read it either, but even just a quick look at Wikipedia shows the other responders don't know what they're talking about: > According to Herrnstein and Murray, the high heritability of IQ within races does not necessarily mean that the cause of differences between races is genetic. On the other hand, they discuss lines of evidence that have been used to support the thesis that the black-white gap is at least partly genetic, such as Spearman's hypothesis. They also discuss possible environmental explanations of the gap, such as the observed generational increases in IQ, for which they coin the term Flynn effect. At the close of this discussion, they write: > > If the reader is now convinced that either the genetic or environmental explanation has won out to the exclusion of the other, we have not done a sufficiently good job of presenting one side or the other. It seems highly likely to us that both genes and environment have something to do with racial differences. What might the mix be? We are resolutely agnostic on that issue; as far as we can determine, the evidence does not yet justify an estimate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve#Part_III._The_National_Context https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve#Part_III._The_N... The part I find especially amusing is how often the Flynn effect is used to refute The Bell Curve, even though the term "Flynn effect" comes from The Bell Curve.
PathOfEclipse 4y ago
I've never read the "Bell Curve", and I'm not a huge fan of Charles Murray's work in general, but, from the first line in Wikpedia: "The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life is a 1994 book by psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein and political scientist Charles Murray, in which the authors argue that human intelligence is substantially influenced by both inherited and environmental factors." That statement completely contradicts what your claim about the book, and now I am disinclined to trust you.. Later on another statement also completely contradicts what you are saying: "According to Herrnstein and Murray, the high heritability of IQ within races does not necessarily mean that the cause of differences between races is genetic. On the other hand, they discuss lines of evidence that have been used to support the thesis that the black-white gap is at least partly genetic, such as Spearman's hypothesis. They also discuss possible environmental explanations of the gap, such as the observed generational increases in IQ, for which they coin the term Flynn effect"
HDThoreaun 4y ago
Absolutely not what Murray said in the bell curve. It's not a very hard book to attack, so I'm not sure why people always go for strawmen. Please post anything from the book that comes anywhere close to saying IQ is 100% genetic.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  I didnt say they said it was 100% genetic. I said: > A big part of "The Bell Curve" was arguing that no interventions could change IQ except genetics So its like a "climate change denier" who says "oh I dont deny climate change, its just that I oppose every commonly accepted way to combat it and therefore am in complete policy alignment with actual climate change demiers (who all love my work despite a literal reading being that I’m saying they are wrong)."
  - HDThoreaun 4y ago
    "no interventions could change IQ except genetics" and "IQ is 100% genetic" are the same statement.
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      And yet here we are discussing The Bell Curve, a book that simultaneously claims that "it is agnostic" as to whether racial IQ gaps are environmental or genetic, but thinks that there's no point in any interventions to reduce or eliminate low IQs. I think they're liars that at the very least want you to believe the gap is mostly genetic. But they've carefully avoided ever directly stating that, because of the Nazi eugenics vibe that would give off. So to try to avoid being accused of misrepresenting these disingenuous liars, I stated not that they believe it's 100% genetic, but rather that they believe no interventions would help. It's their logical inconsistency, not mine.
moonchrome 4y ago
> A big part of "The Bell Curve" was arguing that no interventions could change IQ except genetics and so any money spent on low IQ people (African-Americans in the book, but the author followed up by attacking poor people more generally) was a pointless waste. It should be self-evident that you can lower IQ through environment (injury, developmental issues, malnourishment, etc.). So even if you believe there's a genetic ceiling to IQ, Flynn effect (and reverse) don't contradict that.
runarberg 4y ago
What is going on with Bell Curve apologists all of a sudden replying to this post. I thought the debate was slowly fading out and than I count 5 different account replying within an hour.
- throwawayacc5 4y ago
  "Early twin studies of adult individuals have found a heritability of IQ between 57% and 73%,[6] with some recent studies showing heritability for IQ as high as 80%.[7] IQ goes from being weakly correlated with genetics for children, to being strongly correlated with genetics for late teens and adults. The heritability of IQ increases with the child's age and reaches a plateau at 18–20 years old, continuing at that level well into adulthood." [0] You're denying settled science. Trying to tie it to the Bell Curve to assassinate the basic character of the science isn't tricking anyone. Pronouns in your profile only make this bad faith move easier to identify. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ
  - techno_tsar 4y ago
    Really? Using the fact that someone put pronouns in their profile is a bad faith move? Your account is literally a throwaway. Calling these twin studies as settled science is the most bad faith move here, since the chief problem of this section of The Bell Curve is that it confuses heritability with genetic determination, a mistake that informed scientists wouldn’t make. Unsurprisingly, that is why there is widespread scientific backlash against it. Believe it or not, twin black babies separated at birth and raised with white parents are still treated as black by society.
    - throwawayacc5 4y ago
      >Really? Yes really. >Using the fact that someone put pronouns in their profile is a bad faith move? No, putting pronouns in your profile is a red flag for bad faith moves. >Your account is literally a throwaway. Which means you can expect unadulterated facts. >Calling these twin studies as settled science is the most bad faith move here No it's not, stop denying the science. >since the chief problem of this section of The Bell Curve is that it confuses heritability with genetic determination The Bell Curve makes no confusion between heritability and genetic determination. >mistake that informed scientists wouldn’t make Good thing the Bell Curve didn't make that mistake! >Unsurprisingly, that is why there is widespread scientific backlash against it. There wasn't much scientific backlash to it because it's fairly bulletproof. The backlash was because of contained heretical topics, and may have pointed to blasphemous conclusions. >Believe it or not, twin black babies separated at birth and raised with white parents are still treated as black by society. "Believe it or not, twin Asian babies separated at birth and raised with white parents are still treated as Asian by society." You're almost there /r/selfawarewolves.
jackmott 4y ago
[dead]

polski-g 4y ago

IQ hasn't been beneficial to evolution for over 100 years. Once means-tested welfare came into existence, being low-IQ became more advantageous. The reason Europe was able to take over the world is that they taxed the poor (low-IQ) more than the rich in the dark ages and the rich out-bred the poor for at least 2 generations.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
notch898b 4y ago
[flagged]
faeriechangling 4y ago
Very arguably social welfare resulted in the biggest increase in IQ levels in history as general health, nutrition, and education improved. Also social welfare improved social mobility which should cause IQ to have more of an impact rather than less of one. I am not rejecting this point but I have a hard time accepting it Carte Blanche. If anything if IQ is lowering for generic reasons I would suspect birth control as a cause especially since it’s a more recent phenomenon than means tested welfare.
- laverya 4y ago
  Social welfare could do BOTH things - dramatically increase IQ for the next generation (that grows up with proper nutrition etc) while also remove the selective pressure that increased IQ over the course of centuries.
  - SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
    Social welfare hasn’t been centuries. Many social welfare programs have barely been 1 generation. The big ones (social security, food stamps) aren’t even 1 century old!
majormajor 4y ago
One of the first European world powers after the dark ages, Portugal, was not more advanced than many of the areas it attacked except for in weaponry since Europe had been infighting while other math and science was being pursued in eastern parts of the world. Regardless of what percentage of motivation you ascribe to "we want their shit" vs "we want them to take our religion," I don't think you can say it was an advantage or motivation driven by intelligence. ("The rich outbred the poor" also seems very dubious, labor was still very manual, so you gotta have someone to do it.)

yucky 4y ago

[flagged]

localplume 4y ago
[dead]
triggerwarn 4y ago
[dead]
readthenotes1 4y ago
Funny, because I believe the argument of the alt-right is that the elitists are also brainwashed and controlled to be puppets of the socialist secret Nanny deep state
- yucky 4y ago
  Why would the government care if you're left or right, as long as you are a faithful consumer.

1letterunixname 4y ago

If George Carlin was a philosopher, perhaps Mike Judge is also more than a physicist, musician, and director. Giving Brian May a run for his money. When the collective hive mind of a society is organized around anti-intellectualism (the core ethos of America), then it will subsidize a combination of stupid (less talent) and mental laziness (lack of productive application of talent). This is how a society enters the dustbin of history and emerges as a brutal and backwards people.

faeriechangling 4y ago
America in 2023 is more intellectual than any society that existed in or before the 20th century. How extreme does intellectualism have to get before America is no longer considered anti-intellectual? Does manual labour need to be banned and does 75% of the population need post-secondary degrees? America and western society is so taken with intellectualism that they spend their prime years for having children doing precocious amounts of studying while their brains are in a state of peak plasticity. Americans right now are like modern day Irish elk who need increasingly large antlers (degrees) to win the reproductive game but are so encumbered by this that it becomes difficult to reproduce at all. So fertility is sub-replacement and Americans have reacted by bringing in immigrants so they can spend more time working on their degrees. What sort of immigrants do they bring in? University graduates!
emmelaich 4y ago
I like your comment because it could be expressed by someone on the far right as much as the far left. As an aside, I think Idiocracy is the weakest of Mike Judge's works.
astrange 4y ago
> anti-intellectualism (the core ethos of America) https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BARTERICMP25UPZSUSA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BARTERICMP25UPZSUSA > lack of productive application of talent https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12027662 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12027662 ?

Herval_freire 4y ago

It's useful. You have to think on the macro scale. The evolution of the entire population rather then individuals. On the individual level stupider people reproduce more so evolutionary speaking it's more efficient to be stupid. However if a small portion of the population has high IQ they can move society forward via say the discovery of electricity, mathematics, etc, etc. This propels every individual forward as a whole at the detriment of a few individuals who are to nerdy or geeky to get laid that often. Thus from a high level perspective, there is selection pressure that works on the population of people that makes it so that our genes have the mechanisms in place to produce an occasional genius via specific combinations of traits or via simple on/off switch mutations that easily occur. For reference this is a short and informative video on the aforementioned topic: https://youtu.be/sP2tUW0HDHA https://youtu.be/sP2tUW0HDHA