Does the gene pool really improve if stupid people die?

[petrus61]

I think the assumption that our ancestors were dumber than us is not a given. Were Da Vinci, Aristotle, Pythagarus, Mozart and so many others dumb? Over time we have learned more but that’s not necessarily smarter. Don’t confuse education with intelligence. They are not the same thing.
I also would suggest that values are more important in some ways than intelligence. There are plenty of smart people in power right now that I think we could all do without.
I also discovered when my wife did her teaching degree years ago, that there are at least 7 defined types of intelligence (maybe more indentified by now). It’s a bunch of different characteristics we all have in lesser or greater quantities such as spacial, linguistic, numerical or mathematical, athletic, emotional, musical and mechanical. Some of us are blessed with a good balance, some not so blessed. Look at the orange man, cunning as a rat with the emotional responses of a 4 year old. Intelligence is not a single all encompassing quality.

All we have to do is look to the great pyramids left behind, and to other places that are still being unearthed today for evidence modern man really isn’t any more intelligent than it was then. More educated? Perhaps. Evolved intelligence? I’m not so sure.

 

[Bob_Ross]

You are still confusing knowledge with intelligence.

Intelligence and knowledge are two separate things.

For the sake of staying on topic, I will redact my assertion that humans weren't as smart 5,000 years ago. But I stand by my original premise: Once humans had evolved to the point where they were capable of transmitting fitness-enhancing ideas to one another and to future generations via non-genetic means (e.g., language), there was no longer any selection pressure to evolve biologically/genetically upwards -- or downwards -- towards any level of "smartness" (regardless of whether that "smartness" is referred to as Knowledge or Intelligence).

 

[retslock]

For the sake of staying on topic, I will redact my assertion that humans weren't as smart 5,000 years ago. But I stand by my original premise: Once humans had evolved to the point where they were capable of transmitting fitness-enhancing ideas to one another and to future generations via non-genetic means (e.g., language), there was no longer any selection pressure to evolve biologically/genetically upwards -- or downwards -- towards any level of "smartness" (regardless of whether that "smartness" is referred to as Knowledge or Intelligence).

Agreed. We are in the process of developing AI to evolve on our behalf and we’re likely to be in it’s thrall before too long. Anyway, this thread has meandered away from the levity of the op somewhat but thanks for the discourse. Take care.

 

[hrodbert696]

I think the student misreading the passage has more to do with someone wanting to finish quick and still get a passing grade vs really taking the time to understand the subject

Sure. But it's a strategy that backfires, which suggests other skills are lacking. The bigger point is that the display of intelligence or lack thereof has nothing to do with their genes, it has to do with their thinking skills and the social contexts that produce them or fail to do so.

 

[retslock]

until it occurs to someone that I'm talking about bacteria.

Yes, I’ve had a similar conversation with a young man about being at “the top of the food chain” which is the widely accepted premise. I suggested we aren’t and he looked puzzled until I mentioned bacteria. I see the food chain as a cycle rather than a column and we are just a part of it. We humans are like toddlers who still haven’t learned yet that they aren’t the centre of the universe.

 

[BassAndReeds]

I know I'm asking for it here, especially with that title, so call this an "entertainment posting".

No matter how small the percentage it could be .000000000000000000001 does the gene pool actually improve if dumb people die? I hear this all the time that when somebody dies who is doing something stupid and they claim that the gene pool has been improved.

I was just talking with a person of intellect IMO and he claimed the same thing after we we're just talking about people dying from taking selfies with bears, rattlesnakes and monkeys at the zoo.

Begs the question “Would anyone be left?”.

 

[JRA]

No.

 

[Member8675309]

The simple answer is yes. If, hypothetically, people of a lower IQ (say sub 95), were to be prevented from breeding, the average IQ would likely move upwards due to low IQs eventually being discarded from the average. But, just because two people with higher IQs breed (say 110ers) doesn’t mean their offspring is guaranteed a high IQ. They could still see a IQ90 child.

I don’t think the world would be a better place, however. Most, if not all, high ranking Nazi members were extremely intelligent. Their IQs averaged in the 120-125 territory with some of those monsters reaching 143. Some say intelligence breeds logic, and logic will find it easier to get rid of what you deem unnecessary. Which reminds me of something.....

There is a doomsday thought that if AI is charged with protecting us, then the ultimate way to protect man is to get rid of its greatest threat....man.

 

[Member8675309]

Intelligence and knowledge are two separate things. Plato didn't know the Earth orbits the sun; every modern knuckle-dragger does. That doesn't make the knuckledragger SMARTER than Plato; it just means that he's been told a fact that no one was around to tell Plato.

When talking about witchcraft, I will sometimes ask my students if they believe in the existence of invisible beings that can take possession of their bodies, inflict diseases on them and maybe even kill them unless they take measures to cleanse and purify themselves of these dangerous beings' influence. Most give me dull stares, which should say something to the intelligence question right there; most of those who DO respond, say that of course they don't believe in such superstitious nonsense - until it occurs to someone that I'm talking about bacteria. Now, the existence of bacteria rests on much sounder evidence than the existence of witchcraft, of course - but most of us do not OURSELVES have mastery of that evidence. We believe in germs rather than witches not because we figured it out ourselves but because authorities we trust - scientists, doctors, teachers, parents - TOLD us so and we accept their say-so. Recognizing that should make us much humbler about how "smart" modern people really are.

Some aspects of what we call intelligence, perhaps most, are skills, not genetic givens. People often fail to understand something not because they're genetically inferior (whatever that means) but because they haven't cultivated the skill. Finals are coming up, and they usually demonstrate this.

I'm going to get heaps of undergraduate papers. I'll read a paper that says, "According to Jane Doe, 'feudalism was the central institution of medieval society,'" with (hopefully) a footnote to a reading that was assigned.

That will strike me as odd because I'm quite sure that was not Prof. Doe's view. Looking up the reference in Doe's book, I then find the following sentence, at the end of a long discussion of medieval life: "These considerations should make us cautious to embrace the view that feudalism was the central institution of medieval society."

These are college students, the theoretically more intelligent (at least more educated) sector of society, failing at very basic reading; getting the opposite of an author's meaning from a sentence because they're baffled by a subordinate clause, or by nuance and complexity in general. They have trained themselves, by their practices, to scan for keywords rather than read for meaning. That's not genetic capability, that's skill development. Their incapacity isn't going to prevent them getting jobs and mates and having kids, it isn't going to win them any Darwin awards. But it doesn't support any notion of people getting smarter over the ages.

At a young age, students are taught to find evidence that supports their claim (argumentative writing). They don’t think much more on it than that. It sometimes doesn’t matter to the student what the author is saying, what matters is that the particular quote from the author supports the student’s claim. It begins early......the problems.

 

[hrodbert696]

Yes, I’ve had a similar conversation with a young man about being at “the top of the food chain” which is the widely accepted premise. I suggested we aren’t and he looked puzzled until I mentioned bacteria. I see the food chain as a cycle rather than a column and we are just a part of it. We humans are like toddlers who still haven’t learned yet that they aren’t the centre of the universe.

And related, another concern I've had with the premise of the Darwin Award notion, that evolution means improvement, or decline, or anything directional at all. It means change, is all.

 

[petrus61]

And related, another concern I've had with the premise of the Darwin Award notion, that evolution means improvement, or decline, or anything directional at all. It means change, is all.

Or more fundamentally, adaptation.

 

[Old Garage-Bander]

I don't get this thread at all, if all the stupid people die how will that improve things?

It won't.
But it will re-shuffle the deck as to how close you are to one end or the other on the sliding scale of Smart to Stupid.

 

[D M C]

The simple answer is yes. If, hypothetically, people of a lower IQ (say sub 95), were to be prevented from breeding, the average IQ would likely move upwards due to low IQs eventually being discarded from the average. But, just because two people with higher IQs breed (say 110ers) doesn’t mean their offspring is guaranteed a high IQ. They could still see a IQ90 child.

I don’t think the world would be a better place, however. Most, if not all, high ranking Nazi members were extremely intelligent. Their IQs averaged in the 120-125 territory with some of those monsters reaching 143. Some say intelligence breeds logic, and logic will find it easier to get rid of what you deem unnecessary. Which reminds me of something.....

There is a doomsday thought that if AI is charged with protecting us, then the ultimate way to protect man is to get rid of its greatest threat....man.

This presupposes that a low intelligence quotient is predicated on genetic material. I am given to understand that there are many factors that may influence IQ, only one of which is genes, and possibly not the most important one.

 

[Member8675309]

This presupposes that a low intelligence quotient is predicated on genetic material. I am given to understand that there are many factors that may influence IQ, only one of which is genes, and possibly not the most important one.

It proposes that genetics does play a part, but I in no way said they were the sole factor.

Given both factors, highly intelligent parents are more likely to have a child of higher intelligence, but, like I said, they may also have a child of low intelligence.

It is nature v. nuture. And, given the roughly even spread of influence, parents of a higher intelligence are more likely to nurture the intellectual development of their child therefore adding to the argument that parents of higher intelligence will be more likely to have children of higher intelligence.

Genetics is an undeniable factor. I suppose it’s very relatable to personality. You are born with a capacity, whether that capacity is nurtured one way or another is the mystery that shapes all the variables that make up our own individual self.

 

[hbarcat]

Having just finished reading one in-depth treatise on evolution and now halfway through another -- both by the same author, Daniel C. Dennett: Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995) and Bacteria To Bach And Back (2017) -- I'm fairly convinced that the type of "fitness landscape improvements" that (might) result from stupid people dying off at a disproportionate rate to less-stupid people is not reflected in the gene pool.

Cultural transmissions -- of which education and/or metrics for intelligence are just one small subset -- evolve too quickly to have a dramatic impact on biology. The stupid [sic] people dying off today are substantially smarter than their ancestors (who by definition didn't die off, at least not before creating descendants) were 5,000 years ago, and yet they are biologically/genetically indistinguishable.

The fact that culture and language and memes (in the original sense, not in the Cute Internet Pictures With Captions sense) can so dramatically change human behavior in less-than-geologic time suggests that actual genetic evolution for Homo Sapiens may have reached its terminus. There's just no selection pressure forcing us to evolve biologically any more.

Excellent book.

It's important to note that intelligence isn't necessarily a survival trait. Brainpower is costly in terms of energy and the complexity of the brain itself is difficult to maintain over multiple generations.

Our ancestors developed large, complex brains because it was useful in an African environment that changed dramatically about a hundred thousand years ago when the last ice age hit. It has been theorized that those who were better at communication through increasingly complex language skills and also creating and using tools were better able to score food when it became more scarce in a much drier and less fertile territory.

It's difficult to predict our own evolutionary future because we have taken control of our own environment by inventing "civilization". It's no longer necessary for survival to be smart. In fact, we protect our children so well from maladaptive traits that natural selection doesn't really operate on us as a species any more. We sort of practice an unintentional form of artificial selection on ourselves.

 

[Downunderwonder]

Excellent book.

It's important to note that intelligence isn't necessarily a survival trait. Brainpower is costly in terms of energy and the complexity of the brain itself is difficult to maintain over multiple generations.

Our ancestors developed large, complex brains because it was useful in an African environment that changed dramatically about a hundred thousand years ago when the last ice age hit. It has been theorized that those who were better at communication through increasingly complex language skills and also creating and using tools were better able to score food when it became more scarce in a much drier and less fertile territory.

It's difficult to predict our own evolutionary future because we have taken control of our own environment by inventing "civilization". It's no longer necessary for survival to be smart. In fact, we protect our children so well from maladaptive traits that natural selection doesn't really operate on us as a species any more. We sort of practice an unintentional form of artificial selection on ourselves.

None of which takes away from the premise that death from dumbarserery removes dumbarse genes from the pool.

 

[Member8675309]

There’s no selection pressure? Tell that to a guy who is short, bald, dumb, obese, etc. Add poor in there as well.

 

[hbarcat]

None of which takes away from the premise that death from dumbarserery removes dumbarse genes from the pool.

That wasn't the question. The question was "Does the gene pool improve if stupid people die?" The answer to that depends, in part, on how you define "improve". Evolution doesn't necessarily favor intelligence as an improvement. Evolution only favors traits that are better adapted to a particular environment at a particular time.

But let's assume, for the sake of argument, that intelligence is, indeed, an improvement. We are left with the task of calculating whether or not stupid people die without reproducing at a faster rate than they did in the past. It's only by comparing the rate change over time that allows you to determine the relative stupidity of the average person in the gene pool.

 

[Member8675309]

Would the gene pool “improve” if stupid people die off? Wow, I totally ignored the main title question.

In short, eh. Intelligent men prefer, from what I’ve read, certain attributes in their female partner. So, if you like that certain attribute, sure, the gene pool would improve. Now, if you like what Sir Mix has to say, no, you’re f’d.

 

[D M C]

None of which takes away from the premise that death from dumbarserery removes dumbarse genes from the pool.

Not true.