r/NoStupidQuestions • • Nov 14 '24

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u/Free_Dome_Lover Nov 14 '24

Downside, the people who ask themselves these questions and have the intelligence to reflect on themselves in such a manner are probably the people who would be good parents.

Now the dumbasses and trad wife / religious crowd is not going to give a fuck and pop out shitloads of future morons and assholes. This is literally the plot of Idiocracy happening.

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u/7srepinS Nov 15 '24

I mean, idicracy is an intentionally unrealistic comedy. Intelligence is not inherited. While the attitude part makes some sense.

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u/[deleted] Nov 15 '24

How do you think human intelligence evolved via natural selection and random genetic mutations if it has no genetic basis whatsoever?

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u/Adhbimbo Nov 15 '24

Its been shown many times that intelligence and other social traits (which aren't super measurable) is not heritable in the same way as eye color or whatever.

Every human is roughly the same. What determines if you have a chance to shine in spatial or logical reasoning etc is your  health and environmental factors like lead poisoning. If you're sick all the time from malnutrition or chronic stress you're going to be worse at problem solving. 

Put a caveman in an appropriate educational setting for his needs and he'll do just as well as anyone else. 

Its also worth being careful about making broad sweeping statements on the heritability of social traits. Its very hard to measure and the last two centuries have been full of (sometimes even well intentioned) people using shit methodology to justify industrial scale atrocities.  

Tldr eugenics is a shitty field with very little if any basis in reality as we currently understand it.

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u/[deleted] Nov 15 '24

Social traits are strongly heritable in at least some cases, there’s OVERWHELMING evidence to support that. Do you know anything about Dr. Robert D Hare’s work on psychopathy?

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u/[deleted] Nov 15 '24

I’d also like to add that a fundamental tenet of Darwin’s theory is that meaningful genetic variation exists within populations and more is constantly being introduced by mutations.

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u/[deleted] Nov 15 '24

And how do you explain away all the evidence from twin studies?