Does this make you happy or sad?

BowdonUK said:
I haven't. I just looked up the information on imdb. What is the point you're making?
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We're breeding a nation of cretins. The bottom feeders, who in any normal species would diminish due to natural selection.

Watch the film, considering when it's made I think they actually got the timeline out by a lot after looking at the past 10 years or so. It's a silly Mike Judge comedy, but scarily accurate now.
 
Threepwood said:
'They' say that genes are only half the story when it comes to intelligence, the other half being enviromental.
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Heritability is one of the most widely misunderstood concepts in genetics. When 'they' say that intelligence (for which you may read IQ in almost all cases) is 50% heritable, it means that 50% of the observed variation can be explained by the variation in the intelligence of the parents, after various methods are used to account for shared environment. Note that this does not mean that intelligence is "half environment and half genes". In fact, like almost all traits its both 100% genetic and 100% environmental. Don't believe me? Try teaching arithmetic to a slug, or seeing how smart you are after having the oxygen to your brain cut off for ten minutes. It's also really important to understand that the variation being measured is still a very small part of the whole, the amount smarter the smartest person is than the dumbest person (excluding actual brain damage) is almost certainly a smaller difference than the difference between the dumbest person and the smartest chimpanzee.

The whole thing is an interaction; there is no "genetic part" and no "environmental part".
 
413x said:
You must have zero time to yourself. Even people at work with 2 kids seem to only talk about kids.

Sounds like torture

World population needs to go down. 10 kids is excessive in todays Western world
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From what I can tell, even couples with only 1 kid spend a fair bit of time deciding who can go out with friends, and who has to babysit :p

Admittedly I'm far, far too selfish to even want to invest time in a child; torture does sound an apt word to use.

Perhaps some parents also felt that way until they had kids. Or at least try to feel differently after having them :p
 
Another way to think of it. A penguin gets on just fine, until you put it in a desert.

Same with genetic intelligence, if you put it in an environment where it will thrive, it will. If you don't, it won't. If someone who is incredibly intelligent ends up being mowgli in the jungle book they probably won't crack the Riemann hypothesis. Likewise if you put someone who's less intelligent, pay for them to go to the best schools and have the best tutors and go to university. Admittedly they'd probably do better than if they didn't have those things, but they wouldn't be able to do solve the Riemann hypothesis either.

I think the idea that some people are born smarter than others is politically inconvenient to the equality brigade, because being smart has a definite advantage in the society we live in today. There are some people who truly believe if they were swapped as a baby with Einstein, they would end up being as monumental as he was because all of his intelligence is due to his upbringing and environment. It's laughable.
 
Its a selfish thing to have so many. At the moment they can just about get away with it but in a few years when half of them are between 14 and 19 years old they going to be happy sharing two bedrooms between them?

The resources will not be there in future for this family to appropriately support so many kids.

He is old so could be dead in the next 10 years.
 
Mr Jack said:
Heritability is one of the most widely misunderstood concepts in genetics. When 'they' say that intelligence (for which you may read IQ in almost all cases) is 50% heritable, it means that 50% of the observed variation can be explained by the variation in the intelligence of the parents, after various methods are used to account for shared environment.
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Yes, of course, but that 50% (or 100% as you eloquently put) can still be way out of line when compared to the parents! There is no gaurantee that x2 'smart' parents will produce a smart offspring nor that x2 'dumb' parents will produce a dumb one, it might be more common than not but there is too many linked in genetic variables, and most probably, if you went about trying to get them all to line up for one way or the other there would be problems elsewhere.
 
Smokey Deza said:
Well, each to their own I guess. I'd pass thanks by a very wide margin.

"I just love having babies"

Lmao, it's not a hobby. Clearly doolally.
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The loving having babies is a scary one.
Like an addiction.
What's going to happen to this person's mental state when she can't?

And at some point the state is going to pick up a big bill for all these kids.

But what can you do? Not much really


I would be interested in some affluence:number of kids demographics
I suspect middle earners are where birth rates are lowest.
Ie, have more ambitions than to have kids, but also not enough money / time/ family support to have a family and a career/hobbies etc
 
FoxEye said:
*IF* we are to accept that as true, then why do you think it is so?

Are we lacking motivation or are we not giving people opportunities?
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Imagine a farm

Imagine a herd comprising strong healthy animals and weak runty ones.

Imagine taking food and other resources away from the strong healthy animals and generally discourageing them from breeding

Imagine giving extra resources to the weak runty ones.

What is your herd likely to look like a dozen generations or so down the line??
 
For all the talk of 'how clever we are' we are just animals, and our basic instinct is to reproduce so I would argue that it is more abnormal not to want children...
 
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