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Comment by ausbah | Hacker News Reader

That sounds exactly like the plot of "Idiocracy" - people who aren't 'smart' are having more children then those who are 'smart' so society is ruined. How about trying to make education and other opportunities more accessible to the less educated instead of bashing them for having a couple more kids?

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Because educating people doesn't change their genetics. If as a society you care about basketball playing ability. And you find tall people are having less kids than short people no amount of basketball camps are going to make the next generation taller.

Also what we care about is societal contribution which primarily happens through work and we're terrible at making people better at their jobs through the education system.

Success is hardly a heritable genetic trait. Most of the education differences you see among families is environmental, and can be compensated for by improving public education.

Intelligence and conscientousness are both very heritable and highly correlated with success.

And there are no educational interventions that come close to the effect size of intelligence or conscientousness.

What do you mean by intelligence and conscientiousness? If you are referring to IQ scores, yes it seems there’s a factor that’s inherited. For intelligence, I would like to know your definition and the research you are basing it on.

Even for IQ scores it‘s not so clear, as our measure of IQ is variable and there are no longitudinal studies to my knowledge showing what you claim.

There are a bunch of longitudinal iq studies which show a large erfect.

And by conscientiousness I meant the big 5 psychology measure which also has large longitudinal studies.

IQ is not intelligence. For the longitudinal iq studies, check how they measured IQ (spoiler: it changes ;) ).

Are you arguing that iq isn't correlated with success?

Studies also show that height and IQ are correlated. The question is what does it mean ;)

Lmfao, it may not be genetic, but it's obviously inheritable.

Yes, so change the public education system that more people get a better education? Look at Sweden/Norway etc., or do you argue that their genes are different ;) I mean education in the US sucks ... you need to be rich to give your kids a good one (comparable to what’s free in Europe)

My mother, a poor immigrant, managed to provide me with education just fine in the US. Nothing to do with the funding or programs or systems - its just willpower.

The alleged "socialist" success stories tend to have strong labor laws, but also much less business regulation and be much more free market than the typical American has been led to believe.

Sweden for example has no minimum wage and fully voucher-ized education which are anathema to the US left.

So I'd disagree there aren't things holding students in the US back, they just hold the entire DNC captive.

Sweden also has a flat tax. They depend on high income tax across the board unlike the US, but also have higher institutional trust/social cohesion (easier with a low pop) and frankly better governance overall.

Culture matters. It's why southern Europe is not like northern.

There's no quick fix that can be cherry picked to make the US like Nordic nations.

I’m just arguing that affordable and more education is good.

students in the us often have to take on a tremendous amount of debt to get one.

You seem not to like the word “Socialist.” I think it’s obvious that we as humans should help each other if one of us is doing not well due to misfortune.

For me a country should be evaluated on how much it cares about the ones that don’t have power (homeless, immigrants, elderly etc.)

My uncle chain smoked and lived till 90, but I wont argue that smoking extends life. One example does not prove a case.

There are a hundred variables. Sometimes poor people get lucky. Some are pretty and have doors opened to them. Some truly are exceptional. And many are unlucky.

Education doesn't improve genetics, but it still improves a person's intelligence and overall abilities (reading, writing, arithmetic, critical thinking). There is value in providing education to everyone, regardless of their intelligence (however you wish to define that).

Calling the evidence that education(post high school) improves intelligence scant would be generous.

> How about trying to make education and other opportunities more accessible to the less educated instead of bashing them for having a couple more kids?

defen is (correctly) bashing the more educated for not having enough kids, exactly the opposite of the attitude you're imputing to him.

I attribute the view of "bashing the less educated for having more kids" because of what he says below:

>If we assume educational attainment is correlated with intelligence, and children's intelligence is correlated to parental intelligence, this doesn't bode well for future generations.

I interpret what he was saying, taking in some of what he said earlier, as something along the lines of "less educated people are having more kids, so there are more and more less intelligent children around, so the future is screwed.

Whether or not what he was saying is correct isn't what I'm commenting on here, just clarifying my view.

More educated women having more children is not mutually exclusive to less educated women having more children.

How about educating everybody more ... instead making the breeding argument.

Educating people does not make them smart.. thats not the point here.

So what’s the point? And what makes people smart?

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