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>>Would also like to hear opinions on the author's claim that IQ could be increased 10-15 points on average, per generation. The same could be true if we just

>>Would also like to hear opinions on the author's claim that IQ could be increased 10-15 points on average, per generation. The same could be true if we just killed low-IQ people, which would be horrific in practice and spirit. I'm also not sure I particularly care for the "smart" people I know more than the "less smart." This is even more true for the "smart" people I don't know who seem to be making this world worse for all of us. I would pick those "smart" people to be culled, if I had to choose.

zanny 12y ago
You don't have to kill them, you just stop them from reproducing. It is cheaper and easier (in the horrific brave new world sense) to just sterilize anyone below a desired IQ threshold and let them act as worker class. Because by the time you can accurately gage adult IQ you would have already invested a lot of resources into the child.
- seanmcdirmid 12y ago
  Didn't the nazis try that?
- jstclair 12y ago
  So you've just sterilized the Einsteins... The whole premise is that "like produces like", which of course is nonsense. Dumb people have brilliant kids, ugly people produce beautiful children, and so on and so forth.
  - omonra 12y ago
    1. The Einsteins were a fairly intelligent family - so it's a bad example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_family http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_family 2. You are wrong vis-a-vis heritability of intelligence. It is largely determined by genes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ 3. However - you are right in one respect. There is usually a 'pull to the mean'. That means that children of exceptional people tend to be closer to the average, thus they are not as gifted as the exceptional parent.
    - Zuider 12y ago
      Would an individual have been chosen for sterilization if: 1) He was born with a markedly pointy head, which caused much consternation to his parents and relatives. 2) Was developmentally backward. Notably, he failed to acquire language skills for a significant period during his early childhood. 3) He was educationally subnormal, showing signs of what would now be diagnosed as ADHD,and drugged into a stupor. 4) Was bone lazy. I believe that 'schweinehunde' was the informal term used at the time for this condition. 5) Was disobedient and rebellious, or one of those 'malcontents' that perennially threaten to upset the applecart of society (the term 'hooligan' enjoyed a brief vogue for describing this condition). 6) Was Jewish. The eugenics movement designated Jews for mass sterilization, along with Blacks, Poles and the 'bloody Irish' (but then again, these were the same dolts who thought that sterilizing homosexuals would somehow serve to 'keep the race pure'). Albert Einstein was a prime candidate for this preemptive culling.
      - omonra 12y ago
        I think your comment is a good example of why talking about intelligence is hard. Note that nobody here advocated forced sterilizations (or killing off ugly babies). All we said is that it's pretty much settled that intelligence is inheritable. PS I will contend one point - and that is whether Jews were marked for mass sterilization. That is false. Jews were marked by Nazis for extermination. However - people who advocated eugenics in other countries (like US or the UK) had no issues with Jews (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States). If anything, Jews (or more precisely Ashkenazi) are a poster child for eugenics - since really that's what they went through in the middle ages, which is used to explain their enormous achievement (see http://www.economist.com/node/4032638 http://www.economist.com/node/4032638)

zanny 12y ago

You don't have to kill them, you just stop them from reproducing. It is cheaper and easier (in the horrific brave new world sense) to just sterilize anyone below a desired IQ threshold and let them act as worker class. Because by the time you can accurately gage adult IQ you would have already invested a lot of resources into the child.

seanmcdirmid 12y ago
Didn't the nazis try that?
jstclair 12y ago
So you've just sterilized the Einsteins... The whole premise is that "like produces like", which of course is nonsense. Dumb people have brilliant kids, ugly people produce beautiful children, and so on and so forth.
- omonra 12y ago
  1. The Einsteins were a fairly intelligent family - so it's a bad example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_family http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_family 2. You are wrong vis-a-vis heritability of intelligence. It is largely determined by genes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ 3. However - you are right in one respect. There is usually a 'pull to the mean'. That means that children of exceptional people tend to be closer to the average, thus they are not as gifted as the exceptional parent.
  - Zuider 12y ago
    Would an individual have been chosen for sterilization if: 1) He was born with a markedly pointy head, which caused much consternation to his parents and relatives. 2) Was developmentally backward. Notably, he failed to acquire language skills for a significant period during his early childhood. 3) He was educationally subnormal, showing signs of what would now be diagnosed as ADHD,and drugged into a stupor. 4) Was bone lazy. I believe that 'schweinehunde' was the informal term used at the time for this condition. 5) Was disobedient and rebellious, or one of those 'malcontents' that perennially threaten to upset the applecart of society (the term 'hooligan' enjoyed a brief vogue for describing this condition). 6) Was Jewish. The eugenics movement designated Jews for mass sterilization, along with Blacks, Poles and the 'bloody Irish' (but then again, these were the same dolts who thought that sterilizing homosexuals would somehow serve to 'keep the race pure'). Albert Einstein was a prime candidate for this preemptive culling.
    - omonra 12y ago
      I think your comment is a good example of why talking about intelligence is hard. Note that nobody here advocated forced sterilizations (or killing off ugly babies). All we said is that it's pretty much settled that intelligence is inheritable. PS I will contend one point - and that is whether Jews were marked for mass sterilization. That is false. Jews were marked by Nazis for extermination. However - people who advocated eugenics in other countries (like US or the UK) had no issues with Jews (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States). If anything, Jews (or more precisely Ashkenazi) are a poster child for eugenics - since really that's what they went through in the middle ages, which is used to explain their enormous achievement (see http://www.economist.com/node/4032638 http://www.economist.com/node/4032638)