Idiots have more children theory

[Dannyboy1]

What do you think about the theory that smart people (higher IQ) less kids while people who aren't (lower IQ) have a bunch of kids they don't even know how to raise. The theory is, because of this, eventually the genetic gene-pool will have so many more dumb people, it will bring down the intelligence of the human race. It's just a theory I heard.

[{aspiring_to_clarity}]

Originally Posted by Dannyboy1

What do you think about the theory that smart people (higher IQ) less kids while people who aren't (lower IQ) have a bunch of kids they don't even know how to raise. The theory is, because of this, eventually the genetic gene-pool will have so many more dumb people, it will bring down the intelligence of the human race. It's just a theory I heard.

I think it's kind of ridiculous.

And that IQ isn't really an accurate guage of overall intelligence.

[Dannyboy1]

Originally Posted by {aspiring_to_clarity}

I think it's kind of ridiculous.

And that IQ isn't really an accurate guage of overall intelligence.

I'm not sure it's a scientific theory, and I'm not saying I agree with it. It could be one of those things drunk people say in a bar, but I heard it somewhere. It does seem people with who can't control their emotions and are impulsive, low income, etc. do seem to have more kids. I see very well adjusted intelligent people who would make great parents decide they don't want kids all the time. I'm like, "Why? The world needs more parents like you. You're exactly the type of person who should have kids because they'll grow up to be good and productive and caring people."

[{aspiring_to_clarity}]

Originally Posted by Dannyboy1

I'm not sure it's a scientific theory, and I'm not saying I agree with it. It could be one of those things drunk people say in a bar, but I heard it somewhere. It does seem people with who can't control their emotions and are impulsive, low income, etc. do seem to have more kids. I see very well adjusted intelligent people who would make great parents decide they don't want kids all the time. I'm like, "Why? The world needs more parents like you. You're exactly the type of person who should have kids because they'll grow up to be good and productive and caring people."

Oh, I've heard the theory before. And sure I know people just like you've described. I just think there is more to it. There are so many factors which go into people deciding to have kids or not that I don't think it can be boiled down to intelligence.

I want lots of kids...you can use that to prove or disprove this theory as you like .

[joelyle]

Those of above average intelligence/wealth: realize that fewer children means a greater ability to invest in their children's education/personal development. Coming from a family of 8 (one "planned") I can say that there was not a concentration on personal development (emphasis was on survival). Idiots? that's a strong word! More like lacking the resources to properly develop children.

[wolfgang]

You might find this interesting
Sterilization of America

By 1883, Sir Francis Galton of Great Britain (Charles Darwin’s cousin) had coined the term eugenics — literally meaning "well-born" — to apply to his groundbreaking theories on genetics and social engineering. Galton believed his "moral philosophy" could improve the human species through encouraging society’s best and brightest to have more children.

Experts fanned out to cover the lecture and exhibit circuits with the slogan: "Some Americans are born to be a burden on the rest."

In 1907, Indiana became the first state to pass a law permitting involuntary sterilizations on eugenic grounds; at least 30 states would follow suit. Many of them simply adopted a model "eugenical sterilization law," crafted by the ERO’s Harry Laughlin, which called for compulsory sterilizations of the "socially inadequate." By the mid-1920s, more than 3,000 people had been sterilized against their wills. These included the homeless, orphans, epileptics, the blind and deaf. Also sterilized were those who scored poorly on IQ tests, who were diagnosed as being "feebleminded."

[Plato]

Don't worry. I think the Hollocaust has terrified any government from embarking on eugenics programs any time time soon.

[Dannyboy1]

Originally Posted by joelyle

Those of above average intelligence/wealth: realize that fewer children means a greater ability to invest in their children's education/personal development. Coming from a family of 8 (one "planned") I can say that there was not a concentration on personal development (emphasis was on survival). Idiots? that's a strong word! More like lacking the resources to properly develop children.

The title was in jest. It's just to attract attention.

[Adrienne]

Originally Posted by wolfgang

You might find this interesting
Sterilization of America

Scary what we think we should be able to control. But on that same note (just playing devils advocate here, I don’t actually believe it) couldn’t you build a better society in the long run? Yeah yeah.. ok its cruel to not let people have kids. Isn’t it cruel that I have to pay (taxes or whatever) to help raise them? Isn’t it cruel to the children who are born with sever problems? Isn’t it cruel that we use medical research dollars to find cures or whatever for genetic problems that could possibly be eliminated instead of focusing money on factors we can’t control as well? It is right that we torture and kill animals for illnesses we could have prevented?

Originally Posted by Dannyboy1

What do you think about the theory that smart people (higher IQ) less kids while people who aren't (lower IQ) have a bunch of kids they don't even know how to raise. The theory is, because of this, eventually the genetic gene-pool will have so many more dumb people, it will bring down the intelligence of the human race. It's just a theory I heard.

This is a very interesting topic. I actually made this observation myself a couple years ago. Then I heard the song evolution by korn (you can watch the music video on youtube) and it is all about this same thing. Basically that lower income and lower intelligence are having kids at a higher pace then people with higher incomes and higher IQs.
This is an interesting article on IQs, Definition of IQ which does not touch exactly on this, but circles around the issue a bit.
There has been lots of studies that link high IQ to high income and low IQ to low income.. however there have been lots of studies that say it does not matter at all. My personal thought is that it does correlate but is not a cause and effect.
Here are a couple quotes for the article I sited above (and yes I am coming around the whole broken genetic gene pool thing)

In his book, "Straight Talk About Mental Tests", The Free Press, A Division of the Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., New York, 1981, pg. 12, Dr. Arthur Jensen cites the following four IQ thresholds:
(1) An IQ of 50 or below. This is the threshold below which most adults cannot cope outside of an institution. They can typically be taught to read at a 3rd or 4th grade level. However, they cannot normally function in the customary classroom setting, and they require special training programs.
(2) An IQ between 50 and 75. At this level of intelligence, they generally cannot complete elementary school. Most adults will need smarter help in coping with the world.
(3) An IQ between 75 and 105. Children in this IQ range are not generally able to complete a college prep course in high school.
(4) An IQ between 105 and 115. May graduate from college but generally, not with grades that would qualify them for graduate school.
(5) An IQ above 115. No restrictions.
For IQs in these ranges, the influence of IQ upon socioeconomic sttus is dramatic. 31% of those with IQs below 75 were on welfare, compared with 8% of those in the 90 to 110 IQ interval, and 0% in those with IQs above 125. 55% of mothers with IQs below 75 went on welfare after the birth of the first child, compared with 12% of those with IQs between 90 and 110, and 1% of those with IQs above 125. Income is highly dependent upon IQ up to an IQ-level of about 125.

"People with IQs between 75 and 90 are 88 times more likely to drop out of high school, seven times more likely to be jailed, and five times more likely as adults to live in poverty than people with IQs between 110 and 125. The 75-to-90 IQ woman is eight times more likely to become a chronic welfare recipient, and four times as likely to bear an illegitimate child than the 110-to-125-IQ woman."

For IQs below 120, IQ is the best predictor of socioeconomic status of any psychometric measurement. In more complex jobs, IQ is better than even education or experience at predicting job performance.

Now, I in no way can claim that I know everyone in the world or even 1 percent of the world. However, I can say from my experience, the people who I consider to be intelligent have less kids then people I know who I wonder how they manage to breath without help.
I also notice when I meet the kids of “smarter” parents, the kids tend to be smarter. I don’t really mean grades smarter, I mean the contribute more to society. They may contribute just by working 9 to 5 but at least they aren’t pulling welfare. Kids of parents that are not so “smart” tend to follow in their parents footsteps. Maybe this is learned behavior or genetic IQ.. I could not tell you (tho I do have opinions ).
There are sometimes dumb kids from smart parents and smart kids from dumb ones.. I am just talking correlation here.

I found this interesting article.. it is dated, but it references birth rates and IQ
Study

The chart shows that the higher the IQ the smaller families they have.

Also here is another good study reference and much more recent.

This is from Birth Order and Intelligence

What about family size?
This is a sticky issue: Although birth order wasn't related to IQ, family size was. For many years, social scientists have observed that there is a relationship between larger family size and lower IQ when you look at large-scale population studies. (Much of this research is reviewed in Family Size and Intelligence, a 1989 book by Judith Blake.) Of course, many people from very large families have high IQs, and there are plenty of people from smaller families who don't! It is only when scientists take a few giant steps back and look at whole populations or groups of populations that the association becomes meaningful. When it comes to your colleagues and friends, or your own family, all bets are off!

How can you explain the apparent fact that, on average, children from larger families have lower IQs? One theory, which makes some sense to me, has to do with social class. Social class and its extremes--wealth and poverty --are a hard reality in the United States and in most other places in the world. Parents from lower social class backgrounds tend to have larger families (perhaps in response to higher infant mortality; as infant mortality in a culture drops, so does the number of births.) Children growing up in poverty tend to have lower IQs (again, on average; many very brilliant people started life in poverty). So, on the population level, social class might be the link between larger family size and lower IQ. Does this mean that people who choose to have larger families are condemning their children to have lower IQs? Of course not!

I am not worried about the gene pool. Honestly, And this is probably pretty bad, but I will say it anyway.. If the gene pool does in fact go down hill.. one of two things will happen.
1) the bright what is left will rise up and try and turn society around or attempt to. The few smart will be unable to care for all the not smart and the not smart will decrease in numbers. (not smart people may be able to have children, but without brains for food etc, they wont survive)
2) We all die out of our own stupidity and then we would have earned our fate.

However, I don’t think those are likely. As many people who are being created that not as bright, there are people who are create that are bright.
I think part of our problem is not applying the survival of the fittest concept. Weather you agree with Darwin on evolution or not.. Survival of the fittest is only a small part. Basically it says, the strong, the fit, the smart, survive.. and the create children who are smart and fit and smart or else those children would die as well. I am not saying we should kill everyone stupid or anything. I just mean we have created a world where you can be a complete leach, suck humanity dry, consume a ton, and be weak and create a lot more little copies you to do the same. In days gone by, you would have died. No days, people are chastised for even thinking that people should have to carry their own weight.

What I am aiming for is that the level of consciousness rises enough that we can help pull up other people. I think highering the level of contributes of the planet would fix a lot of our problems including a lot of this one.

Ok, That was really long! If anyone made it to the bottom.. wow.
The thing is.. i could probably write a whole lot more!

Adrienne

[Dannyboy1]

Originally Posted by Adrienne

Scary what we think we should be able to control. But on that same note (just playing devils advocate here, I don’t actually believe it) couldn’t you build a better society in the long run? Yeah yeah.. ok its cruel to not let people have kids. Isn’t it cruel that I have to pay (taxes or whatever) to help raise them? Isn’t it cruel to the children who are born with sever problems? Isn’t it cruel that we use medical research dollars to find cures or whatever for genetic problems that could possibly be eliminated instead of focusing money on factors we can’t control as well? It is right that we torture and kill animals for illnesses we could have prevented?



This is a very interesting topic. I actually made this observation myself a couple years ago. Then I heard the song evolution by korn (you can watch the music video on youtube) and it is all about this same thing. Basically that lower income and lower intelligence are having kids at a higher pace then people with higher incomes and higher IQs.
This is an interesting article on IQs, Definition of IQ which does not touch exactly on this, but circles around the issue a bit.
There has been lots of studies that link high IQ to high income and low IQ to low income.. however there have been lots of studies that say it does not matter at all. My personal thought is that it does correlate but is not a cause and effect.
Here are a couple quotes for the article I sited above (and yes I am coming around the whole broken genetic gene pool thing)



Now, I in no way can claim that I know everyone in the world or even 1 percent of the world. However, I can say from my experience, the people who I consider to be intelligent have less kids then people I know who I wonder how they manage to breath without help.
I also notice when I meet the kids of “smarter” parents, the kids tend to be smarter. I don’t really mean grades smarter, I mean the contribute more to society. They may contribute just by working 9 to 5 but at least they aren’t pulling welfare. Kids of parents that are not so “smart” tend to follow in their parents footsteps. Maybe this is learned behavior or genetic IQ.. I could not tell you (tho I do have opinions ).
There are sometimes dumb kids from smart parents and smart kids from dumb ones.. I am just talking correlation here.

I found this interesting article.. it is dated, but it references birth rates and IQ
Study

The chart shows that the higher the IQ the smaller families they have.

Also here is another good study reference and much more recent.

This is from Birth Order and Intelligence

I am not worried about the gene pool. Honestly, And this is probably pretty bad, but I will say it anyway.. If the gene pool does in fact go down hill.. one of two things will happen.
1) the bright what is left will rise up and try and turn society around or attempt to. The few smart will be unable to care for all the not smart and the not smart will decrease in numbers. (not smart people may be able to have children, but without brains for food etc, they wont survive)
2) We all die out of our own stupidity and then we would have earned our fate.

However, I don’t think those are likely. As many people who are being created that not as bright, there are people who are create that are bright.
I think part of our problem is not applying the survival of the fittest concept. Weather you agree with Darwin on evolution or not.. Survival of the fittest is only a small part. Basically it says, the strong, the fit, the smart, survive.. and the create children who are smart and fit and smart or else those children would die as well. I am not saying we should kill everyone stupid or anything. I just mean we have created a world where you can be a complete leach, suck humanity dry, consume a ton, and be weak and create a lot more little copies you to do the same. In days gone by, you would have died. No days, people are chastised for even thinking that people should have to carry their own weight.

What I am aiming for is that the level of consciousness rises enough that we can help pull up other people. I think highering the level of contributes of the planet would fix a lot of our problems including a lot of this one.

Ok, That was really long! If anyone made it to the bottom.. wow.
The thing is.. i could probably write a whole lot more!

Adrienne

I'm more worried that the increasing amount of "idiot" people who litter right next to a trash can or throw cigarette butts anywhere they happen to be standing won't care about how humans are destroying the environment even on the eve of obliteration.

[Adrienne]

Originally Posted by Dannyboy1

I'm more worried that the increasing amount of "idiot" people who litter right next to a trash can or throw cigarette butts anywhere they happen to be standing won't care about how humans are destroying the environment even on the eve of obliteration.

That is true.. That stuff bothers me as well.
But i think ultimately, they will lead to their end. Maybe by then higher contentious people wont be affected by that, or maybe as part of the population becomes more smart etc, it will lift the population up and they will want more.. or it just plain wont be tolerated anymore.

Adrienne

[ogrekilleat]

I was just reading about how IQs are increasing over the generations. This is probably because the skills that are measured in IQ tests are developed more from an earlier age as out society becomes more focused on such skills, and the skills become more and more important.

This indicates to me that general life skills aren't measured by IQ; i.e., a person can be an excellent gardener and not have a high IQ. In other words, people with low IQs can survive just fine... until suddenly accounting becomes a "survival skill", as it pretty much has in our society.

I'm a reasonably intelligent person, my major survival skill is computational linguistics...

So what I'm wondering is, when intelligent people finally blow us all up, if I manage to survive the initial blast, will the people who have ACTUAL life skills like gardening and sewing help morons like me survive, or will they just laugh at me for being a computational linguist in a world where such skills are no longer needed?

[Brutha]

One to two generations and we have no problem with improving our genetic pool through engeeniering much more than it is weakend through any evolutionary process.

[Dannyboy1]

Originally Posted by Brutha

One to two generations and we have no problem with improving our genetic pool through engeeniering much more than it is weakend through any evolutionary process.

Set aside the possible insanity of people trying to create superhumans. Engineering our genetics seems like something that would only be available to the rich, who would use it to make sure their families stay superior to the masses.

[Brutha]

Engineering our genetics seems like something that would only be available to the rich,

I don't think that it will take more than ten year (probably fewer) to bring the same stuff to the poor.
Once you find a way to effectivly transfer the gens it will probably doesn't cost much more to change the gens of hundred people or the gens of ten.

[amixa]

ahahaha
i've heard that so many times! this thread is amusing. i do laugh every time someone mentions that theory. IQ does not make people smart. they can be book smart.. but they're not life smart. there are people out there that have high IQs but tend to be clueless on how to interact with humans.
i agree with the impulsive, unstable emotions of lower income society not because of their IQ but because of their life experience and their lack of healthy diet (which can easily led to unstable emotions, along with lack of excersize).
there are a lot of articles out on EQ... emotional quotent.
its more about ignorance about life.. then it is about IQ.
if people are successful from their high IQ well, they may have money but they're probably not as happy as others.

and in the end, if the people who choose to litter and do whatever to the planet kill us all... then maybe its a good thing we go extinct :P

[Dannyboy1]

Originally Posted by amixa

ahahaha
i've heard that so many times! this thread is amusing. i do laugh every time someone mentions that theory. IQ does not make people smart. they can be book smart.. but they're not life smart. there are people out there that have high IQs but tend to be clueless on how to interact with humans.
i agree with the impulsive, unstable emotions of lower income society not because of their IQ but because of their life experience and their lack of healthy diet (which can easily led to unstable emotions, along with lack of excersize).
there are a lot of articles out on EQ... emotional quotent.
its more about ignorance about life.. then it is about IQ.
if people are successful from their high IQ well, they may have money but they're probably not as happy as others.

and in the end, if the people who choose to litter and do whatever to the planet kill us all... then maybe its a good thing we go extinct :P

But, isn't that somewhat hereditary too? I don't believe that it's completely environmental. In fact, I think it's substantially hereditary. Aren't the more rational people the more successful ones? And those are the one's who are having fewer kids. You're right, about IQ not being as important, but doesn't it scare you even more that the more emotional are passing on poor emotional genes? Ultimately it's emotions that cause war and hatred and impulsivity. Also, as far as it being good that we go extinct, I disagree. I think it would be a tragedy, if not for us, then for all the other life that we'll destroy before we go. With the exception of insects, I doubt many other life forms would last longer than us if the world was dying.

[ogrekilleat]

this thread is amusing. i do laugh every time someone mentions that theory.

Amixa, I mostly agree with your post, except...I actually find this thread kind of scary, because, if people are talking about this "problem", they must think there is a "solution", and I can only think of scary solutions.

On a side note, I'm wondering if elitism is hereditary, and if it is, what kind of solution can we come up with to THAT problem?