This is a good point, though even with one child you’d have a significantly lower per generation gains. I’d have to model this to get a clear idea of how it would function. I guess part of my theory here is that parents would still have to raise their own children, which would limit the number of offspring high-scoring individuals could have.
I did some quick maths and determined that if one were selecting strictly for a single trait and were to take the top 11% of scorers and that entire group was to have 10 children each (while the rest of the population was to have 1 child), your population would have an average trait score 2/3rds of one standard deviation above the previous population’s mean. Not a trivial difference, but not that great.
Furthermore, if this was really being done you’d end up with a highly hierarchical society where all those who were not among the top scoring fell further and further behind. In fact, this will likely be a problem even in what I would consider well designed genetic engineering schemes, though the gap in those schemes would be more generational.
This is a good point, though even with one child you’d have a significantly lower per generation gains. I’d have to model this to get a clear idea of how it would function. I guess part of my theory here is that parents would still have to raise their own children, which would limit the number of offspring high-scoring individuals could have.
I did some quick maths and determined that if one were selecting strictly for a single trait and were to take the top 11% of scorers and that entire group was to have 10 children each (while the rest of the population was to have 1 child), your population would have an average trait score 2/3rds of one standard deviation above the previous population’s mean. Not a trivial difference, but not that great.
Furthermore, if this was really being done you’d end up with a highly hierarchical society where all those who were not among the top scoring fell further and further behind. In fact, this will likely be a problem even in what I would consider well designed genetic engineering schemes, though the gap in those schemes would be more generational.