Abortion is dysgenic: The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health asked girls who had gotten pregnant what the outcome was. Here are the percentages who aborted by grades in their most recent class:
Percent aborting (N = 87)
A or B in Math 40.5
C or worse in Math 37.8
A or B in Science 41.7
C or worse in Science 23.1
The chance of getting an abortion was not much different between good and bad math students, but the gap is large in science. The smarties are killing off their smarty kids.
Are gun owners mentally ill?
Some anti-gun people think owning a gun is a sign of some kind of mental abnormality. According to General Social Survey data, gun owners ...
Probably because they want to, y'know, have an opportunity to use some of those smarts. Go to college, start a career. Kind of hard to do when you already have a child to care for. And while having a kid early in life is often mutually exclusive with those pursuits, those pursuits are not exclusive with having kids somewhat later, so you needn't fear the loss of intelligent genes.
ReplyDeleteAnd even if it were, some generation is actually going to have to devote itself to curing cancer, not just contenting itself with having the kids who will one day cure cancer. (Or more likely, simply defer it like their parents did.) I'd prefer if it was the generation right after mine. Lowers my odds of dying of cancer.
Selfish, I know, but saving is only good if you end up spending it eventually. Doesn't really matter what you're saving. Intelligence, virginity, dollar bills rotting under the mattress... There's no virtue in saving for the sake of saving.
What are you cranking out intelligent kids for, if all they're going to be used for is breeding the next generation of intelligent kids? It's like a piece of art you never take out of the safe deposit box. It could be brilliant, but if nobody sees it, is it even art?
Jason said...
ReplyDeleteProbably because they want to, y'know, have an opportunity to use some of those smarts. Go to college, start a career. Kind of hard to do when you already have a child to care for. And while having a kid early in life is often mutually exclusive with those pursuits, those pursuits are not exclusive with having kids somewhat later, so you needn't fear the loss of intelligent genes.
And even if it were, some generation is actually going to have to devote itself to curing cancer, not just contenting itself with having the kids who will one day cure cancer. (Or more likely, simply defer it like their parents did.) I'd prefer if it was the generation right after mine. Lowers my odds of dying of cancer.
Selfish, I know, but saving is only good if you end up spending it eventually. Doesn't really matter what you're saving. Intelligence, virginity, dollar bills rotting under the mattress... There's no virtue in saving for the sake of saving.
What are you cranking out intelligent kids for, if all they're going to be used for is breeding the next generation of intelligent kids? It's like a piece of art you never take out of the safe deposit box. It could be brilliant, but if nobody sees it, is it even art?
How about the intelligent women stay home to breed intelligent kids, while the intelligent men support their family by working to cure cancer?
As far as the dysgenic nature of abortion goes, I suspect it has a lot to do with the social attitudes of the unintelligent. If the unintelligent were as pro-abortion as the educated elite, maybe the consequences would be different.
B.B.
"How about the intelligent women stay home to breed intelligent kids, while the intelligent men support their family by working to cure cancer?"
ReplyDeleteOh, that was tried before. It worked. That's why guys like Jason had to get rid of it.
Of course the more intelligent adolescent girls are probably less likely to get pregnant in the first place.
ReplyDeletePeter
Many intelligent women are motivated to pursue an education & use their talents in the public sphere, which conflicts with childbearing in their teens and early 20s. What is your suggestion for keeping them from doing so?
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteHow about the intelligent women stay home to breed intelligent kids, while the intelligent men support their family by working to cure cancer?
If you're willing to give up the productive capacity of half your available brains, that sounds like a great idea.
It certainly explains why Islamic countries are such technological and economic powerhouses. Think of all the money they save not educating women above their station as walking incubators!
Societies evolve even faster than species. While women do spend comparatively more time and energy on reproduction than men, they still have a lot of spare mental capacity. If we don't efficiently utilize that mental capacity, we'll be displaced by a society that does.
So you dropped out of school and had 12 kids and advanced the average IQ of your nation by a few millionths of a point. Meanwhile, your rival got an abortion, went to school, became a biologist, found the genetic roots of intelligence, and figured out how to engineer geniuses on demand.
It certainly explains why Islamic countries are such technological and economic powerhouses.
ReplyDeleteMy sense about Islamic countries is that they basically have dysgenic reproduction patterns, much like certain parts of Western societies do but for different reasons. Who marries most of the most fertile women in Islamic societies? I'll wager it's not the ascetic hardworking ambitious types. Probably the same Big Men that dominate all non-monogamous societies, men who don't really care about too much other than status and harem-building.
Inductivist is focusing on female IQs rather than male. This is an inevitable weakness of the topic; we don't really know what sort of males are impregnating smarter teenagers vis a vis those that impregnate smarter adults. I couldn't really guess.
The smarter girls at my school seem to be attracted to the same boys everyone else is - unkempt (but often moderately clean) perforated types who wear legible clothing and the same disconnected smirk everywhere they go. Whether those kids are as stupid as they act, I don't know. If I had to do high school over again, I may well act stupid the whole time, just to reduce the pressure (constant disappointment) from adults, as well as to avoid the anti-intellectual violence of my peers.
I still wouldn't get any pregnant though.
Yes, very topical, on this, the occasion of Darwin’s 200th birthday. It’s not for lack of data that we suspect that creationists (who by definition, don’t do too well in science) are making and keeping illegitimate children by the boatload.
ReplyDeleteYou overlook the fact that smart girls are far less likely to get pregnant in the first place.
ReplyDeleteSmart girls also don't desire life as a single mother collecting welfare.