Hacker News Reader

Comment by vbezhenar | Hacker News Reader

It could work if smart people from lower casts were moved to higher casts and stupid people from higher casts were moved to lower casts. Ideally children would have to be cast-less and then at some age (before reproductive age) were promoted to one of the casts according to some intellectual test. And breeding would be allowed only between species of the same cast.

If I'm not mistaken, Indian casts do not work this way, so I don't think that it's possible to select anything.

I'm not even sure that intellect is affected by genes.

Of course this is all eugenics and considered inappropriate even to discuss in west.

View on HN

It might work if intelligence wasn't important for members of lower castes but was for higher castes, perhaps due to the nature of their culture or work. Then low castes wouldn't select for intelligence but high castes would. Not saying that's what actually happened but it shows that selective pressure could still exist without inter-caste mobility.

Stop this nonsense about topics being inappropriate to discuss unless you're a nun. Nobody has a cultural taboo about discussing dog breeding or evolution of other traits. Just race and intelligence is taboo because people have been indoctrinated to believe that low intelligence marks you as an inescapably undeserving or a "bad" person. If you broaden your mind and stop treating intelligence as such an important aspect of life, then it won't be so taboo.

>t might work if intelligence wasn't important for members of lower castes but was for higher castes, perhaps due to the nature of their culture or work. Then low castes wouldn't select for intelligence but high castes would. Not saying that's what actually happened but it shows that selective pressure could still exist without inter-caste mobility.

This makes absolutely no sense, unless the "not so smart" were not considered for reproduction or were eliminated. How are you selecting for IQ if the only thing you need to get married is to be in that cast? Arranged marriages don't help with natural selection; you just need to exist in the right family.

It really depends how things work over there. Castes are associated with jobs and I have seen some articles that some 'teacher' cast has higher intelligence, just like eg ashkenazi jews. It could be that being pretty unsuccesful at your caste-assigned job would have left you unemployed and thus not being able to support a family, thus not being able to marry. thats obviously speculation, of course.

It does not make any sense, no matter how you look at it.

Sure, you can see those "articles", but don't forget that those are going to be based on IQ tests, and those are correlated with intelligence and... wait for it... education.

If I was of the superior caste that's what I would try to make people believe: "we are superior, and we are here because we are smarter than you. Best of luck in your next life".

Someone with a high iq will be more capable of following a certain education path. So education and iq being correlated usually means the iq measure is working as intended. If however going to a great school improves your iq that proves the specific iq measure used is flawed (as its supposed to measure innate intelligence, not education). As for the other part, I agree my line of reasoning is rather unsympathetic.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com