Deterioration Of Human Genes, Getting Less Intelligent?

Recently I read a book in the library, "The human multitude " by Rosamund McDougall.

In one of the chapter, it said that in the last 200 years or so, the process of evolution for human has reversed. In the past, people who are intellectually stronger get a higher chance of survival rate than the weaker. However, in modern days, these intellectually stronger people are reproducing less. Meanwhile, the weaker people benefit from advances in technology - better medicines and more food. Their reproduction rate, however, remains high. This resulted in the deterioration of Human genes. In fact, several countries have reported in the decrease of IQ(not a good guage of intelligence) of their citizens.

Some people came up with an idea: sterilise people who have low IQ. They hope that the better genes will remain and the human race continue to evole to be more intelligent.

Pls note that what is written above is not my personal opinon. I would like to hear your views about this issue and pls give a stand on the sterilisation suggestion.

*English is not my first language so pls don't mind my grammer mistakes. You can correct on any error in the information above too.
**I am not any Nazi's supporter

Harvey Danger:
"I've been around the world and seen that only stupid people are breeding, cretins cloning and feeding, and I don't even own a TV!"

Young girls get taught not to push a pram before their age, boys likewise told not knock any girl up as you'll just get tied down. The smartest follow this advice best.

I do believe the human race is currently anti-evolutionary in thinking and the only saving grace for us in this respect is what most of us on these board think is the evil of society, capitalism. It is the only reason I personally prefer a market-based society, because overall, the survival of the human race is our only true purpose. It's why we have sex, it's why we have that natural constructive instinct to make our lives and those of our children better.

The more intelligent people are generally the richer (right-shifited normal curve, of course). And once resources dry up (be they oil, land, food, water, ...) we will see the crunch that will improve the overall intellect of the human race, the crunch that will get rid of the overpopulated fat of the species by shear limiting of available resources.

[edit on 13-4-2005 by Photonic Thumpa]

Here's an Idea.

Possibly just possibly we are being fed food that is not quite right for human consumption. It has been proven that the better the food you eat the better you feel which consiquently leads having better brain functions.

Its not that people are getting stupid, its that we are not teaching people properly and we are def. not feeding children properly.

If we keep feeding people McDonalds, Burger kings, dominos etc. etc. there WILL be abverse affects.

I can promise you that taking these stupid gimmicky foods out of the human food chain WILL have positive effects on the human race. Not to mention the non-organic foods that are currently on the market and have been for YEARS.

How hereditary is IQ?

My IQ is about 150, and my wife's clears 165, but our four parents are all middle class people of average intelligence. Financially, we are certainly not rich.

Also, I remember reading somewhere that on average high IQ individuals made for less-than-ideal parents. This idea of capitalism functioning to promote reproduction among the intelligent is loaded with problems.

I think that the high IQ = rich idea is very dangerous. Not everyone with a high IQ choses to apply their maximum toward a purely capitalistic goal. Capitalism is a powerful force than can apply for these people, but only when it is forged into a meritocratic capitalism. Success in today's capitalism is more frequently inherited than earned, so obviously not everyone that is rich is intelligent either.

I think the problem causing western society to lose the potential brian energy provided by high IQ people has its roots in education. I can speak for the US since I've spent the majority of my education there. If you are a bright student in a public American high school, your experience looks something like this: take the hardest courses, maybe even skip a grade or two, stay bored anyways. The mass education system has not capitalized on the real brain power in society. Of course as soon as you want to separate the most intelligent students and offer them more educational possibilities, public educators fuss about the weakest of students that *need* the funding / attention. There's no question that the top percent today is no where near as intensely educated as say, 350 years ago.

Other ideas would be to try to provide better career services, and to detach the stigma of a certain age with a certain level of study. If sports were relegated to communities and not schools, the social world of American high school could work quite well under these changes. Somehow this drive for success has to be valued by students--making intelligence socially desirable.

Its not about castration or reproduction. Its about education.

The Hacker Dictionary by Steele defines the term "code rot." Could the correct term for this be "gene rot?"

Adonsa

Harvey Danger is not so off base. People with high intelligence have less children, while the opposite is true of folks that are below average. Stupid people ARE breeding, while smarter people hold off and have fewer kids later in life. I'd buy that they make less-than-ideal parents - not bad and of course not every above average parent is this way but it definitely makes sense.

Is IQ hereditary? It goes back to the nature-nurture debate. Do smart parents treat their kids in a different smarter way to make smarter kids? Can slow parents retard their own children by not interacting with them in a certain way? You can raise your child's IQ by breastfeeding and doing certain things early on to foster the development in certain regions in the brain. Teach a language before 6, for example.

IQ itself is a measure up for debate. One theory suggests seven levels of intelligence: Musical, Mathematical, Interpersonal, Extrapersonal, Kinetic, Verbal, Spacial (or something like that). Can you think of someone who is amazing at spacial tasks while can hardly carry on a conversation? Brilliant authors who can't long divide their way out of a paper bag?

I also wonder how many people who claim to know their IQ have had it tested in a legitimate way. It's MUCH more than an internet test online or a paper questionairre. It's a battery of tests given by a professional who scores and times your responses. IQ is also changable - if you scored 140 in 2nd grade, you may not have the same number as an adult.

Originally posted by NotheRaGe
Recently I read a book in the library, "The human multitude " by Rosamund McDougall.

I'll echo what RedBalloon said -- it's actually that the brighter ones are getting into positions where they have good economic support, good health care, and fewer kids.

In one of the chapter, it said that in the last 200 years or so, the process of evolution for human has reversed. In the past, people who are intellectually stronger get a higher chance of survival rate than the weaker. However, in modern days, these intellectually stronger people are reproducing less. Meanwhile, the weaker people benefit from advances in technology - better medicines and more food. Their reproduction rate, however, remains high. This resulted in the deterioration of Human genes.

IQ tests have only been around for about 100 years. How do you measure the IQ of someone who's been dead for 200 years?

Exactly. You don't. You can't.

Early IQ tests were very culturally biased toward upper class White children, and those were the only kids who were tested (as a usual rule.)

In fact, several countries have reported in the decrease of IQ(not a good guage of intelligence) of their citizens.

A better measure of where a country's IQ average is going is their style of government and their wealth per capita. Very restrictive governments (theocracies, dictatorships, etc) usually have a lower amount of wealth and poorer IQs.
www.rlynn.co.uk...

But social patterns also have to do with this... in the East (China, Japan, Korea) where for thousands of years the ONLY way out of poverty was to get enough education to be a scholar or a government official, there is a huge emphasis on scholarship. They do better than most Western countries, where the emphasis is on individual achievement (particularly movie star or sports related.)

Here's a better page that you might like to look at:
www.indiana.edu...

Some people came up with an idea: sterilise people who have low IQ. They hope that the better genes will remain and the human race continue to evole to be more intelligent.

As flawed as the tests can be (if you take it on a bad day, you can score significantly lower. If you're dyslexic but brilliant, you can score fairly low) this really isn't a good idea. You get someone deciding what's "low IQ" and what isn't.

The lowest IQ people generally don't reproduce (the Downs Syndrome people, for instance) -- so that's already done. But any other restrictions should not be done.

If you want people of higher IQ, educate the parents and encourage men to marry intelligent women (one of the first attributes men select is beauty. But women will select for intelligence more often.)

Thanks for all ya response

As i said, this is from a book, not my personal opinon. And did the passage ever says that IQ tests were taken by 200yrs old people? Tests and surveys were probably conducted in the past few decades in 20th century. Let's not bring education into the topic. We are talking more about genes. In fact, I myself is against the sterilising of anyone. It violates human rights i believe.

[edit on 14-4-2005 by NotheRaGe]

[edit on 14-4-2005 by NotheRaGe]

This may or may not be pertinent to the original question, but I just saw something on, I think it was a UCTV broadcast, the amount of lead still in our water supply and the resulting impact on children's IQs.

I think the speaker was from UofW and pretty outraged at what levels they were still finding in today's water supply. The main culprit was explained to be the kind of solder used where pipes are joined. Especially at the point where a building gets it's water from the municipality - so even if all the pipes & solder in your house were replaced with new leadfree stuff you'll still get lead from the street source.

Apparently this solder slowly dissolves and builds up when the water if off.

Their suggestion (interim) was to let the water flow for a while to clear out the built up levels before using any for consumption (drinking or cooking).

They showed they were able to reduce the levels in students by simply removing the old water fountains, which apparently had a lot of that bad solder in them also.

Their figures equated ppm to reduction of IQ and a fair percentage of students tested had levels equating to an IQ reduction of 7. I don't remember if that was per year or cummulative.

I think they also attributed/correlated the increase in learning disabilities to these persistent heavy metal levels.

It would make sense that factors like this could lower an overall average.

For an interesting read on the relationship between the mean IQ of countries and tons of other variables, read "IQ and the Wealth of Nations" by Richard Lynn.

The hereditability of IQ varies a bit throughout the human lifespan. It is lower (around .40) during the first few years of life and approaches .80 in elderly adults. When hereditability of a trait = 1.0, all of the variance in that trait is accounted for through genetics.

Children's IQ scores are more sensitive to environmental influences, hence the lower hereditability of the trait at that age. However, the effects of the environment "wash out" or fade as one grows older.

For more reading on the genetic basis of mental traits, look for work by Tom Bouchard. For more reading on the stability of IQ throughout the lifespan, read "Looking Down on Intelligence" by Ian Deary.

Also, adults with lower IQ tend to reproduce at greater numbers than those of higher IQ. Whether this really changes the mean IQ of the population is unclear, and something that academia doesn't really like to talk about. (reference: Lynn, Richard; Van Court, Marian. Intelligence. Vol 32(2)2004 p.193-201 Elsevier Science, Netherlands)

phaedrus

This book you read sounds very much like something called "Eugenics", which according to dictionary.com is "The study of hereditary improvement of the human race by controlled selective breeding". There are numerous theories I have read where people are afraid that the higher birth rates of the lesser educated people in society are causing societial intellectual degradation. It's an extremely contentious issue, most particularly becuase the Nazis used a form of it during the Holocaust; they wiped out people they believed were inferior and believed in the superiority of the Aryan race (a load of crap), so pretty much anyone who is supportive of eugenics nowadays is publicly vilified.

Most eugenicists (if that is a word) believe that we should be preventing certain people from reproducing, such as the sickly, the mentally retarded, that sort of thing. I live in Alberta, Canada, and our government used to sterilize people it saw unfit to reproduce until the 1950s Many other gov'ts in the western world did the same thing, but Alberta did it longer than almost anyone else.

I think that rather than sterilize 'stupid' people, we should try to educate them better. Our school systems suck. If I posted what my honest thoughts on the school system were, I'd get sitebanned, so I won't Anyway, if you decide to research eugenics further, be careful, because there are a lot of racists and whackos that write on the subject. You have to sift through all the garbage to find the real, scientific stuff.

Originally posted by NotheRaGe
in modern days, these intellectually stronger people are reproducing less.

Education has a much bigger effect on intelligence than mere genes, short of extreme mental handicap.

Meanwhile, the weaker people benefit from advances in technology - better medicines and more food.

Evolution isn't about favouring the strong over the weak.

Their reproduction rate, however, remains high. This resulted in the deterioration of Human genes.

Nonsense. Genes don't 'deteriorate' because of high poulation numbers. And there is no evidence that suggests that human IQ of today is significantly lower than in the past. This woman's book is probably just some attempt to justify something like social darwinism (which isn't very darwinian).

In fact, several countries have reported in the decrease of IQ(not a good guage of intelligence) of their citizens.

Who?

Some people came up with an idea: sterilise people who have low IQ.

Attempted; ineffective and wasteful.

Originally posted by Photonic Thumpa
I do believe the human race is currently anti-evolutionary in thinking

That book is anti-evolutionary in its thinking.

the survival of the human race is our only true purpose.

Evolution has nothing to do with prupose. Organisms exist. Those that reproduce effectively continue to exist. This serve no prurpose.

Capitalism has nothing to do with evolution. Capitalism is merely the investment of money in capital in the expectation of returns. Evolution is the change in gene frequencies over generational time.
Expecting returns is a goal in capitalism, offspring are not a goal, they are simply something that happens.

The more intelligent people are generally the richer (right-shifited normal curve, of course). And once resources dry up (be they oil, land, food, water, ...)

we will see the crunch that will improve the overall intellect of the human race,

There is no reason to think this. Human intellect, again, is better served by education, not some rather meaningless idea of making life difficult. At the very least, the genetic control over intellect can only be influenced by creating a situation where greater intellect is increasingly vital to reproduction. A resource crash is not necessarily the key to that, there are lots of ways for a population to deal with a resource crash. Heck, having to feed and lug around a big brain that can do calculus and understand particle phsyics is a borderline detriment.

the crunch that will get rid of the overpopulated fat of the species by shear limiting of available resources.

You realise that that 'fat' are human beings no? Besides which, the fundamental assumption is unsupported and rather ridiculous; that intellect increases in hard times.

peacebewithyou
Not everyone with a high IQ choses to apply their maximum toward a purely capitalistic goal.

Conversely also, not everyone who has benefited from an economic windfall has a high IQ. Heck, all sucess in business indicates is sucess in business, not great intellectual prowess. A thug can beat someone and steal their money.

Also, consider this.
The rich are able to spend a lot of money of food, education, shelter, etc. So they have everything going for them in terms of 'propping up' their intellect (the nuture aspect). Indeed, a rich lineage can afford to have less hereditary (in terms of genes) investment in maintaining an 'expensive' naturally high intellect. IOW, they can start off pretty stupid, and get a good education, and proper nutrition and medical care, to really maximise and add to what they have. So, if anything, they are the ones likely to have the low natural intellect.

Also, the entire argument is contradictory. The idea is that in hard times, the stupid die. Well, the big reproducers in the world are the populations that happen to live in 'hard times', whereas the slight reproducers are the rich and well off. So by the original arguments own logic, the rich are twits.


It reminds me of hte Chris Rock bit. You get two job applicants, one black , one white, whoever is more qualified should get the job. But if they're equal? Screw 'em, says Rock, white people've had a two hundred year head start. Not biologically correct, but it makes the point.

[edit on 16-4-2005 by Nygdan]

I have read the book you quoted from and it does not in any way endorse what you suggest it does - it just describes some prevailing theories about evolution and the views of some geneticists which are then put up for discussion. It concludes, after a description of some of these views, that "Fortunately the idea of sterilizing selected people belongs more to the realm of science fiction than fact."