Reply to post: Re: ...but does it really "matter" given the state of Humanity?

After 30 years of searching, astroboffins finally detect the universe's 'missing matter' – using fast radio bursts

Anonymous Coward
Boffin

Re: ...but does it really "matter" given the state of Humanity?

This is demonstrably false.

First of all I have no idea what 'an intellectual' is: is an astroboffin an intellectual, or are only people who read literae humaniores intellectuals? But let's put that aside.

Then in order for it to make sense you need to assume that 'being an intellectual' (whatever it means) is genetic: intellectuals tend to have children who are also intellectuals.

Finally you need to assume that intellectuals have less children than average.

Well, an immediate consequence of those two assumptions is that the proportion of intellectuals in a population declines over time. And in fact it declines as exp(-kt) where k (k > 0) is some parameter you need to work out based on the relative breeding success.

Well, humans have been breeding for thousands of years, and we still have significant numbers of intellectuals, and the proportion is, I'm sure, roughly constant over time. So either intellectuals just arise in the general population (ie from non-intellectual parents) at some rate, or intellectuals have, on average, as many children as non-intellectuals. Almost certainly the former is true: probably the latter is not true, although it may be.

We're not heading for catastrophe because we're breeding out smart people, in other words, whatever Cummings & other people who think they are cleverer than they are think.

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