From: pete@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Peter Alexander Merel)
Subject: Re: The Marching Morons (was Re: Cindy the Disco Queen)
Organization: Sydney University Computing Service, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 01:44:49 GMT

kasprj@isaac.its.rpi.edu (Jim Kasprzak) writes:
> Kornbluth says that all the "smart" people will have fewer children, 
>the "stupid" people will have lots of children because they're too dumb
>to realize that they're contributing to overpopulation, and the result 
>is a population bomb of stupid people. 
> 
> Problems with this:
> 
> 1) Intelligence is not an inherited trait. There is enough variation 
>in the chromosomal crapshoot that a child can wind up significantly 
>above or below the intelligence level of the parents.

I don't see why intelligence should be any less subject to inheritance than
anything else. Granted that intelligence is not the result of any single 
allele, but a single allele (as in the case of Downs Syndrome) is sufficient
to reduce it. Given this I don't see why evolution won't select for
low intelligence if the least intelligent are the most successful breeders.
But ...
 
> 2) It is not the _unintelligent_ people who have more children, but 
>the _uneducated_ ones. Look at the recent Worldwatch report which shows
>that countries in which women are denied access to education have the 
>worst population problems. For that matter, look at the United States, 
>where the birth rate for the white population (the best educated group)
>has pretty well leveled off, but the minority groups are expected to 
>keep increasing at the current rate for at least several more decades.

This is certainly true, and imho intelligence does not correlate with race
or economic status, statistics to the contrary. That is, physical intelligence
does not correlate, but effective intelligence has as much or more to do with
acquisition as it does with inheritance. Acquired mental facilities are 
referred to by many different names in many different contexts, but the one 
that comes to mind in the context of evolution is "Memes".

Plainly, the most successful memes are those that select for low intelligence;
just look around you and you will see Kornbluth's morons everywhere. I won't
name faiths and cultures for fear of being hounded off the net, but I'm sure
you can fill in the blanks. If the educated do not spread their knowledge, and
plainly they do not for reasons of economic, social and military advantage, 
then the ignorant will sink us just as surely and swiftly as the unintelligent.

Every trademark, every patent, every copyright is another nail in the
coffin.  And no amount of 'operation restore hope's will fix this
problem; it will require a radical reorientation of society, a complete
restructuring.

Consider: how many years and how many thousands of dollars were spent
to get you to the point where you can understand the words I'm writing
here?  Multiply those years and dollars by a billion and you will
understand that the morons will march eventually. The only thing that
could conceivably stop them would be mass uploading, and it seems to me
that some time within the next century that uploading will become the
only way to save the race.

What can be done? Nothing while the social mechanisms that have gotten us
into this mess persist. The internet demonstrates that people can work together
to build good functioning anarchic systems; perhaps by promulgating and
maintaining your corner of it you can do some good. But a fire will come
one day.

-- 
Internet: pete@extro.su.oz.au             UUCP: {uunet,mcvax}!munnari!extro!pete
                       I am a big pond in a small fish.
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