There is a huge shortage of smart people on the planet to solve the many problems that exist. The best way we know to create more smart people is to encourage smart people to have more children. Unfortunately we seem especially good as a society at identifying smart people and discouraging them from having children.
The idea that smart people are only produced by other smart people is nonsense. Genes regress to the mean, so most smart people won't have mostly smart children. And intelligence is significantly affected by nurture, not just nature.
And beyond all that, smart people aren't the end-all, be-all of humanity. They make useful things, but are of course capable of great evil (or mental illness or any other issue that limits their contribution to society).
Where did I say smart people having children is the only way to create smart people or that intelligence is only affected by genes? Please read what I actually wrote, not what you think I wrote.
Smart people are the people that have the ability to solve the hard problems we face. We have a huge number of very hard problems in the world and not enough smart people to solve them all. We need more smart people.
> "The best way we know to create more smart people is to encourage smart people to have more children"
...which is also unsupported by current intelligence research and still relevant to my counterargument.
It doesn’t matter the means (environment or genetic) as both will contribute to smart parents raising smart children (provided they have children).
1. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/under-the-influence/...
Don't be ridiculous. If dumb people have more kids than smart people, the next generation will be dumber. Intelligence wouldn't have evolved if this wasn't true.
There are already many smart people who aren’t helping to solve those problems because they haven’t received the necessary education. I’d go so far as to say we’re probably missing out on the potential contributions of most smart people now.
What we need to do is figure out a way to radically increase access to education worldwide.
Yes we are wasting the potential of many smart people in the world by not giving them the education they need, but we are pretty good at it across most of the world already and getting better all the time. A poor very smart kid no matter where she is born will likely be identified and given an education. I personally know many smart people born in total poverty in very poor countries who have reached a very high level of education.
I’m definitely not against looking for ways to make knowledge work compatible with building a larger family.
I just don’t think increasing reproduction in the college educated is our best play for increasing the number of smart people working on hard problems.
I don’t think arguing for encouraging smart people to have more children argues against improving the education of poor smart people. This is not a zero sum game.
Another major factor contributing is children are very expensive and smart children are much more expensive to raise than the average child.
Of course you are right that provided identical environments smart and average children cost the same, but since smart parents tend to earn more, smart children cost more.
Non-smart child of smart parent costs even more - on tutors and such to raise the kid.
That is not smart children costs more. That is ambitious/smart parents spend more on children. The cost of smart child here is merely function of correlation with parent.
The reason for the correlation between child raising cost and intelligence is there is a strong correlation between intelligence and income and between the intelligence of parents and their children. Smart kids tend to have smart parents who tend to have high incomes. Of course there are many exceptions, but we are talking about group averages not individuals.
In that context, my response that "The cost of smart child here is merely function of correlation with parent." is valid.
This is all tangential to my post.
The environment of humans has radically changed and we are undergoing very strong selection and adaption to this new environment. In the past the number of children you had survive to adulthood was tied to the amount of food you could bring in (as with most animals). In the new human environment the number of children you have is a consequence of how resistant you are to the cultural meme that children are undesirable.
"Smart people" have fewer children but they're more likely to be successful.