From: Rafal Smigrodzki (rms2g@virginia.edu)
Date: Tue Oct 01 2002 - 08:26:33 MDT
Damien wrote:
> At 11:01 PM 9/30/02 -0700, Spike wrote:
>> My question then is "what is the mechanism
>> that could cause low IQ in these isolated communties?"
>> I suggested one: those with brains or ambition leave
>> town, and the breeding is left to the stay-at-homes.
>
> Not so fast. Clearly these towns are not `isolated' if smart children
> can leave. What they are, presumably, is small and unattractive, with
> no local prospects for smart people. So suppose it's true that by and
> large everyone of IQ greater than 115 and certainly 140 shoots thru
> quick smart and heads for the Big Smoke. Is the implication of `the
> breeding is left to the stay-at-homes' that those having children in
> town must produce kids with genomes ever more conducive to stupidity?
> Maybe not, since with each generation the same social and economic
> effects will draw away the smarter kids. Maybe it's like the lottery:
> everyone in town has a chance of winning, and once you win you leave
> the god-forsaken hole and head for the beach. This doesn't make it
> harder for succeeding generations to win the lottery.
>
### Actually, whenever a smart person leaves town, he/she takes the smart
genes away. If you conceptualize mating with a smart person to produce smart
offspring as winning a lottery, then these genes are the winning tickets.
The not-so-smarts remaining in town are left playing a lottery with fewer
and fewer winning tickets.
Rafal
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:17:22 MST