[danieltillett]

No it is natural selection in action. Those that have children are of the future, those that don't are of the past.

There is a huge shortage of smart people on the planet to solve the many problems that exist. The best way we know to create more smart people is to encourage smart people to have more children. Unfortunately we seem especially good as a society at identifying smart people and discouraging them from having children.

[smt88]

Children per couple goes down as quality of life goes up. All developed countries see birthrates decrease. No one is actively discouraging smart people from reproducing -- they're just better off and don't need children as a safety net for retirement, and they can access good birth control.

The idea that smart people are only produced by other smart people is nonsense. Genes regress to the mean, so most smart people won't have mostly smart children. And intelligence is significantly affected by nurture, not just nature.

And beyond all that, smart people aren't the end-all, be-all of humanity. They make useful things, but are of course capable of great evil (or mental illness or any other issue that limits their contribution to society).

[danieltillett]

Yes nobody is activily discouraging smart people directly from having children (this is why it natural and not artificial selection), but it is still selection.

Where did I say smart people having children is the only way to create smart people or that intelligence is only affected by genes? Please read what I actually wrote, not what you think I wrote.

Smart people are the people that have the ability to solve the hard problems we face. We have a huge number of very hard problems in the world and not enough smart people to solve them all. We need more smart people.

[smt88]

You didn't say it was the only way. You said:

> "The best way we know to create more smart people is to encourage smart people to have more children"

...which is also unsupported by current intelligence research and still relevant to my counterargument.

[danieltillett]

Actually we know that intelligence is mostly genetic (especially at the high end), but even if it isn’t, the family environment provided by (most) intelligent parents is very conducive to raising intelligent children.

It doesn’t matter the means (environment or genetic) as both will contribute to smart parents raising smart children (provided they have children).

[smt88]

Socioeconomic status is far, far more important than genes[1]. If you want more smart people, give people more money.

1. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/under-the-influence/...

[danieltillett]

That is not what the article says, nor what the science on this topic says either [0]. Read the section on Heritability and socioeconomic status.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ

[fjsolwmv]

Of you give dumb people more money, they will get swindled by smart people.

[tcbawo]

I don't know if we need more smart parents or rather caring/nurturing families. You don't have to be smart, but children of dysfunctional families are at a disadvantage for breaking the cycle.

[danieltillett]

Well we certainly need fewer dysfunctional families, but if we want more smart people we need to encourage more smart people to become parents.

[SamReidHughes]

> The idea that smart people are only produced by other smart people is nonsense.

Don't be ridiculous. If dumb people have more kids than smart people, the next generation will be dumber. Intelligence wouldn't have evolved if this wasn't true.

[dabbledash]

I’m not sure that is the best way we know.

There are already many smart people who aren’t helping to solve those problems because they haven’t received the necessary education. I’d go so far as to say we’re probably missing out on the potential contributions of most smart people now.

What we need to do is figure out a way to radically increase access to education worldwide.

[danieltillett]

Do you know of a better way to create more smart people because I don't. It is not simply education or else the rich would never have dumb children.

Yes we are wasting the potential of many smart people in the world by not giving them the education they need, but we are pretty good at it across most of the world already and getting better all the time. A poor very smart kid no matter where she is born will likely be identified and given an education. I personally know many smart people born in total poverty in very poor countries who have reached a very high level of education.

[dabbledash]

I think the fact that you know many educated, smart people from very poor countries doesn’t mean that most or all smart people in very poor countries get good educations. I was under the impression that there were many places still where large numbers of children, particularly girls, don’t complete a secondary education. (Open to being wrong about that though).

I’m definitely not against looking for ways to make knowledge work compatible with building a larger family.

I just don’t think increasing reproduction in the college educated is our best play for increasing the number of smart people working on hard problems.

[danieltillett]

Most people in rich countries don’t get a very good education, but most very smart people (even girls) born anywhere do get a chance. I do agree we could do better, but things are overall improving.

I don’t think arguing for encouraging smart people to have more children argues against improving the education of poor smart people. This is not a zero sum game.

[wool_gather]

It's not very clear what the connection is between your two paragraphs. In fact, they seem contradictory; why does natural selection lead to fewer smart people having children?

[danieltillett]

It is just a consequence of the human environment changing. Birth control and the modern education system disproportionally effect the number of children smart people have. The end result is the smarter you are the less children you will have all other factors being equal.

Another major factor contributing is children are very expensive and smart children are much more expensive to raise than the average child.

[watwut]

Smart children are not more expensive then average child. Competitive, ambitious parents and parents who want their children to be smart have additional expenses.

[danieltillett]

Yes they are (on average anyway). Their parents sacrifice greater income to have them and even their education is more expensive in that living in areas with good schools cost more.

Of course you are right that provided identical environments smart and average children cost the same, but since smart parents tend to earn more, smart children cost more.

[watwut]

Parents who choose good schools choose them regardless of whether kids are smart. High income parents don't want the children in bad schools even if kids are not smart (whether it means stupid or just normal).

Non-smart child of smart parent costs even more - on tutors and such to raise the kid.

That is not smart children costs more. That is ambitious/smart parents spend more on children. The cost of smart child here is merely function of correlation with parent.

[danieltillett]

You are assuming that smart kids are randomly distributed through the population. High income parents have disproportionally more smart kids than average income parents and disproportionally live in above average cost locations.

The reason for the correlation between child raising cost and intelligence is there is a strong correlation between intelligence and income and between the intelligence of parents and their children. Smart kids tend to have smart parents who tend to have high incomes. Of course there are many exceptions, but we are talking about group averages not individuals.

[greglindahl]

You should check out the history of eugenics, it sounds like you'd be interested in those concepts. Do keep in mind that almost everyone is offended by them, however.

[danieltillett]

Eugenics has two strands (negative and positive). Many people are offended by the negative (stopping the "undesirable" from having children), but I haven't met too many people who are offended by the "desirable" choosing to have more children.

This is all tangential to my post.

[greglindahl]

It's not tangential to me, and yes, I'm totally offended by both strands. I used to date the author of the "Darwin Awards" website and books, and I've spent a lot of time interacting with the general public about these concepts.

[danieltillett]

Why are you offended by people choosing to have children? Seems rather strange to me, but I guess the world is a big place.

[greglindahl]

I am not. I’m offended by eugenics, no matter how you phrase it. Having children is not eugenics.

[danieltillett]

You said you were offended by both positive and negative eugenics? Mind explaining how?

[handbanana]

Can you explain/expand on why you think it’s natural selection?

[danieltillett]

The number of children you have is selection (in an evolutionary sense) and because it is not a trait being selected for directly by anyone (we are not trying to breed people that want or don't children), the selection is being done by nature.

The environment of humans has radically changed and we are undergoing very strong selection and adaption to this new environment. In the past the number of children you had survive to adulthood was tied to the amount of food you could bring in (as with most animals). In the new human environment the number of children you have is a consequence of how resistant you are to the cultural meme that children are undesirable.

[phamilton]

I think he meant more that natural selection is essentially summarized as how many children various groups have. And for some weird reason, natural selection is biasing away from "smart people".

[dabbledash]

I don’t think it’s too hard to figure out. Natural selection disfavors a strategy that requires significant investment in non-reproductive activity (education, career ladder-climbing) during prime reproductive years.

[greglindahl]

Natural selection works on genes, not individuals. How do my career choices affect my brother's and sister's children?

[danieltillett]

The selection part works on individuals, what changes from selection is the frequency of alleles in the population. By not having children the alleles you carry will become rarer in the population of the next generation (all things being equal).

[tcbawo]

Also, having children later in life reduces the role that grandparents play in a childs life, reducing an important safety net.

[Scarblac]

Not just how many children the groups have, but also how many of those make it to healthy adulthood to reproduce themselves, etc.

"Smart people" have fewer children but they're more likely to be successful.

[Fnoord]

How about we educate those who are not smart to become smarter?