[zem]

There are no grounds to argue that there are distinct subpopulations of people with different potentials for intelligence. Genes flow fluidly — if you sneer at the underclass and think your line is superior, I suspect you won't have to go back very many generations to find your stock comes out of that same seething mob. Do you have any Irish, or Jewish, or Italian, or Native American, or Asian, or whatever (literally—it's hard to find any ethnic origin that wasn't despised at some time) in your ancestry? Go back a hundred years or so, and your great- or great-great-grandparents were regarded as apes or subhumans or mentally deficient lackeys suitable only for menial labor.

Are you staring aghast at the latest cluster of immigrants in this country, are you fretting that they're breeding like rabbits? That generation of children will be the people your kids grow up with, go to school with, date, and marry. It may take a while, but eventually, your line will merge with theirs. Presuming you propagate at all, your genes are destined to disperse into that great living pool of humanity. Get used to it.

Furthermore, intelligence is an incredibly plastic property of the brain. You can nurture it or you can squelch it — the marching morons will birth children with as much potential as a pair of science-fiction geeks, and all that will matter is how well that mind is encouraged to grow. Even a few centuries is not enough to breed stupidity into a natural population of humans — that brain power may lay fallow and undernourished, but there isn't enough time nor enough pressure to make substantial changes in the overall genetics of the brain.

-- https://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/05/08/there-are-no-...

[rcme]

> Furthermore, intelligence is an incredibly plastic property of the brain. You can nurture it or you can squelch it

As a parent, I grapple with this often. I want to believe that I can influence my child's intelligence. But there are some studies on same-age unrelated siblings in the same household that show IQ has a very weak correlation compared to biologically related siblings in the same household: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1997-06271-015

[skinnymuch]

> Are you staring aghast at the latest cluster of immigrants in this country, are you fretting that they're breeding like rabbits? That generation of children will be the people your kids grow up with, go to school with, date, and marry. It may take a while, but eventually, your line will merge with theirs. Presuming you propagate at all, your genes are destined to disperse into that great living pool of humanity. Get used to it.

This is so bigoted.

[defrost]

Only if you're actually staring aghast.

TBH it's so mocking bigots - but laying it on so thick the mocking is easily overlooked.

The link There are no marching morons is worth a gander.

[skinnymuch]

I wasn’t clear. Yes that’s what I meant for people staring aghast. I believe the only division that matters between people is material or class division.

[midoridensha]

Interracial marriage is "bigoted"? I thought I had seen everything here, but I never thought I'd see an outright racist call someone "bigoted" for supporting interracial marriage.

[skinnymuch]

Sorry I wasn’t clear. I believe the only division that matters between people is our material differences. Class division.

[nhchris]

Early twin studies of adult individuals have found a heritability of IQ between 57% and 73%, with some recent studies showing heritability for IQ as high as 80% - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ

> Are you staring aghast at the latest cluster of immigrants in this country, are you fretting that they're breeding like rabbits? That generation of children will be the people your kids grow up with, go to school with, date, and marry. It may take a while, but eventually, your line will merge with theirs.

Please don't spread the great replacement conspiracy theory.

> There are no grounds to argue that there are distinct subpopulations of people with different potentials for intelligence. Genes flow fluidly

I don't see why we need to talk about "distinct subpopulations" at all, when individuals suffice. Besides, if you think "gene flow" means intelligence is immune to evolution, doesn't that apply to every other trait as well? What you're arguing is that evolution doesn't happen.

[midoridensha]

He's literally describing what the believers of that dumb "theory" believe; he isn't "spreading it".

Do you also accuse the Wikipedia page documenting Eugenics of supporting it?

[zem]

what? did you even read the article?

as for the twin experiment, he's not talking about heredity of iq, he's talking about heredity of perceived/expressed iq. there's an important difference that gets lost in the noise.

[nhchris]

> did you even read the article?

I did. It's using a lot of words to obfuscate its central thesis: That even if you select against a trait, that trait won't diminish. It may as well be arguing that antibiotic resistance cannot develop, or that corn can't be selectively bred to increase yield.

It's sad that even 163 years after On the Origin of Species, people are still trying to deny it.