untimely meditation - attack on M :) (what bruce think?)

[brad]

ok

1) recessive genes are so named because over time they 'recede' from the poplulation. in time there will be no more instances of the recessive. (eg, in a 'while, there will be no more instances of naturally blond hair)

2) the genetic link to intelligence is such that since intelligent people hook up more and produce few offspring than the rest, over a short period of time (1 or 2 or 3 generations) stupid people will greatly increase. (note environmental factors play no part.)

i just want to know if anyone here besides M can defend these views, especially brucez.

/images/graemlins/smile.gif

[Wake up CALL]

1) Recessive genes are not genes that are receding from the population. Rather they are genes which are submissive compared to other genes with a similiar purpose. Therefore blonde hair is less likely simply because the gene for black hair is dominant over the gene for blonde hair.


2) Both (http://www.indiana.edu/~edpsych/p540/assign/intel1.html)

[MMMMMM]

1. brad, apparently either you misunderstood what I wrote or I didn't make myself clear. I never said blond hair or blue eyes would eventually disappear, but they are becoming less prevalent. You initiated that part of the discussion with the perhaps ill-chosen phrase 'being bred out.' I took that to mean becoming less prevalent. I'm no expert on genetics (obviously) but if you have two conditions, 1) a recessive trait, and 2) people with a dominant trait breeding more the world over than people with the recessive trait (on average), then you will expect to see a decreasing incidence of the recessive trait. More dark-haired people around the world are having more kids than are light-haired people. So, what would you expect from this?

I think perhaps you are caught up on your own phrase, 'being bred out,' which I may have misinterpreted: a declining incidence does not necessarily imply eventual extinction, but a declining incidence very definitely is a declining incidence and there are reasons why it is happening. So if it helps clarify, No, I don't think blond hair and blue eyes are likely to totally disappear, and Yes, I do think they are declining in incidence.

2. As for the intelligence issue, again I think we aren't communicating fully here. My position is that over the last few generations the poorer, less successful--and on average, stupider people have been significantly outbreeding the more intelligent people, at least in this country. Intelligence is due to both environmental and hereditary factors. Two people with IQs under 80 are somewhat less likely to produce an intelligent offspring as two people with IQs over 120. Cyrus argues this correlation is so minimal as to be totally worthless. I'm not so sure about that. I suspect that even a fairly slight correlation will have impact on the population especially if the stupider people breed at a rate of, say, double that of the more intelligent people. Of course there is some crossover too: not everyone marries or breeds at or near their own level, but again, we're talking averages over a huge population, so on average, people tend to marry and breed not too far from their own levels.

Now the above, regarding intelligence, is just a theory I came up with, but it would perhaps serve to explain in part why you run into so many more dummies today than you did 20-25 years ago. I'm talking about people who wait to back out of a parking space in the middle of the supermarket parking lot because there is a car behind them, but there is nobody in front of them and they could just as well go forward! People who know that $65.00 - $64.25 gives 75 cents change, but who don't realize that $65.25 - $64.25 gives a dollar change. People who work in poker rooms and have absolutely no idea what they are doing (thankfully not too many;-)) and who gaze vacantly like the Fish-Footman in Alice And Wonderland. Heaven forbid you should ask them to do what they are actually being paid to do! Please, then, how am I to get in? asked Alice. "I shall sit here...'til tomorrow--or the next day, maybe..." the Footman continued in the same tone, as if nothing had happened...

It didn't used to be that there was such a large gap between the average number of offspring of well-off and poorer folks. Big families used to be pretty common at all income levels. In the most recent generations, however, the gap has widened and the least successful members of society have been outbreeding everybody else at a greater clip.

It's hard to believe that there wouldn't be at least some effect or correlation found in the population at large. The less intelligent people are on average rapidly outbreeding the more intelligent people (again, on average[. One can only hope and pray that Cyrus is right, that the effect is essentially nil, but I am not nearly so optimistic. And there really do seem to be a much larger number of nitwits roaming around than there were say 25 years ago.

As for other factors...e.g. fluoride in the water...I'm not discounting other possibilities, nor am I discounting the possibility that it is only my impression that there are more nitwits around today. I'm just stating how it looks to me, and suggesting one possible explanation, that stupid people are outbreeding the smarter people at a historically unprecedented pace.