Intelligent people are more likely to think on the consequences when deciding to have a child. But there is a prisoner’s dilemma type of situation here:
One reason smart people forego reproduction is because they might feel children make them more unhappy overall for at least the first few years (a not unreasonable assumption). Or simply because they are not religious (smart religious people do still have lots of children) As a consequence, in 20 years, the average IQ of that society will fall (bar some policy reversals encouraging eugenic breeding, or advances in genetic engineering), as only the less intelligent breed. Since, all other things equal, smarter people perform better on their jobs, the average quality of services provided in that society (both public and private) goes down. So in the end everyone becomes more unhappy (even though unhappiness of a childless smart person resulting from societal dysgenics may not outweigh the temporary unhappiness from having a child)
The Flynn effect contradicts this, and not just superficially in that IQ scores have been rising for the last 20 years and the next 20 years aren’t going to be that different, but that it points to a strong non-genetic component of IQ. The cultures who become wealthy and have fewer children have pretty much the same code as cultures that are a little behind, same within countries. Lastly, 20 years is barely a single generation. You’d have to pretty much wipe out large sections of the population to see a 1 generation change.
It doesnt follow that it has to go down. It could also stay stable. After all—all the bright people that do not reproduce have parents somewhere. So there are people produced by parents who are not in the mental cluster that prevents them from reproduction.
Intelligent people are more likely to think on the consequences when deciding to have a child. But there is a prisoner’s dilemma type of situation here:
One reason smart people forego reproduction is because they might feel children make them more unhappy overall for at least the first few years (a not unreasonable assumption). Or simply because they are not religious (smart religious people do still have lots of children) As a consequence, in 20 years, the average IQ of that society will fall (bar some policy reversals encouraging eugenic breeding, or advances in genetic engineering), as only the less intelligent breed. Since, all other things equal, smarter people perform better on their jobs, the average quality of services provided in that society (both public and private) goes down. So in the end everyone becomes more unhappy (even though unhappiness of a childless smart person resulting from societal dysgenics may not outweigh the temporary unhappiness from having a child)
The Flynn effect contradicts this, and not just superficially in that IQ scores have been rising for the last 20 years and the next 20 years aren’t going to be that different, but that it points to a strong non-genetic component of IQ. The cultures who become wealthy and have fewer children have pretty much the same code as cultures that are a little behind, same within countries. Lastly, 20 years is barely a single generation. You’d have to pretty much wipe out large sections of the population to see a 1 generation change.
IQ reverts to the mean across generations.
Regresses, reversion would be overstating it.
It doesnt follow that it has to go down. It could also stay stable. After all—all the bright people that do not reproduce have parents somewhere. So there are people produced by parents who are not in the mental cluster that prevents them from reproduction.