Are we currently experiencing "reverse evolution" in our country?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Realizer on August 7, 2009 at 10:39pm

In my humble opinion, you are NOT wrong, I have felt for several years that the more intelligent couples are having less offspring than their welfare drawing, church going neighbors. However being religious can't be blamed for all of it, some nonchurch goers are producing offspring as rapidly as the gestation cycle will allow!

Permalink Reply by Loren ɟɟןoʍ on August 8, 2009 at 9:23am

I know for a fact that religious Jews will have as many kids as they can regardless of how intelligent they may or may not be but it often makes me doubt their overall intelligence at the same time. Religion tells them it is what God wants and each child is a blessing! Religion therefore overrides/overshadows/brainwashes any potential for an intelligent, freethinking mind IMO.

Permalink Reply by Johnny on August 7, 2009 at 10:49pm

I have thought about this too - agree with your assertion about the masses reproducing at faster rate (hence "masses" :-)). But how is what you describe not naturally selective (hence "reverse" evolution)? The human species seems to be surviving and succeeding quite well from an evolutionary standpoint.

I believe everything in the physical universe is reduceable, and as humans, we should not be egotistical to think we are somehow superior and exempt. Our "intelligence" and "morality" are just fancy forms of pattern-matching, well-suited to our evolved brains. And as a species, I would argue that as time progresses, we are not on average becoming more intelligent (or more moral, for that matter).

Permalink Reply by Janet Holmes on August 8, 2009 at 2:41am

The evolutionary consequences of the modern lifestyle are a fascinating question. I think it is far too simplistic to talk merely about the more or less intelligent. Think of health care, huge numbers of people who would once not have made it to reproductive age now do so. People who would once have had many offspring now choose not to, women with a strong sex drive but little maternal drive no longer need have children where previously they would have had many.

I also feel I should point out that people have been agonizing about the lower classes' undesirably rapid rate of increase for a long time now without any obvious outcome. In fact the percentage of the population in the working classes has been steadily declining for over 200 years.

One thing is for sure however, it is NOT reverse evolution, there is no such thing. It is just evolution. Evolution comes with no guarantee of progress or improvement as these are generally understood, all that happens is that organisms become better adapted to their environment, in this case the 21st Century West. If being stupid is an advantage then it will be selected for and spread.

However the average IQ in the western world has been rising pretty steadily over the last 50 years so it would seem from empirical evidence that the changes you fear are not happening just yet.

Permalink Reply by Scott on August 8, 2009 at 10:07am

yes, I agree that it should not be technically called "reverse evolution". I use this more as a descriptor to help people understand the trend that I am proposing.

Permalink Reply by Jemand on August 10, 2009 at 8:29pm

you made the point I was going to. The idea of "reverse evolution" is absolutely ridiculous, there is only evolution in an altered environment, and we happen to be altering our own environment. So there is something of a feedback loop.

Permalink Reply by George B. on August 8, 2009 at 3:08am

In biological terms, there is no such thing as reverse evolution, evolution must go forward even if that forward is downhill. There is a huge example of downhill evolution (reverse evolution would be where the people who have less and weaker offspring have more of the gene pool which would make no sense) and it is especially obvious in poorer countries where families need more children to help feed the family. Here in Egypt it is not uncommon for a person to have 7-8 children while being unable to properly feed half of them. The problem is that people have no sense of scale, in rural areas (where the poorer people generally live) people are sparse, so there is no feeling of urgency about overpopulation. That is why families in rural areas have more children than people in cities where population is crammed and you can feel that the world has 6.5 billion people. In evolutionary terms, fitness is the proportion of the next generation that is contributed to the gene pool, so if the next generation has 1 billion members and you contribute 3, your fitness is .000000003 although there is also the issue of helping out family, one of the theories behind the evolution of homosexuality is that homosexuals would b more likely to stay home with their mother (before partnerships were socially acceptable and when moving out of the family house only happened after marriage) and help her raise their siblings so families with the potential for one homosexual every generation or two would have higher rates of childhood survival. But I digress...

Anyway, you may like to watch the movie "Idiocracy" it is a really interesting movie based on that and check out this xkcd comic

PS. please never use the term "reverse evolution", it makes me and others cringe.

Permalink Reply by Scott on August 8, 2009 at 10:08am

yes, I agree that it should not be technically called "reverse evolution". I use this more as a descriptor to help people understand the trend that I am proposing.

Permalink Reply by JayBarti on August 8, 2009 at 11:01am

Then you have the less intellegent/responsible members of our species.

How are you defining intelligence?

Under-educated is not the same as unintelligent, and I wonder about how one would measure what kind of intelligence is important.

When one speaks of intelligence it is usually in reference to I.Q. as the measure. It is not a fair representation, I feel it is skewed to an assumption of equal education that is available to all, and that all people learn the same way. Intelligence is a broad idea these days, there are many measures of it.

If there is a crisis of this kind it is more due to how education is delivered and run. There is probably not any real danger of breeding intelligence out of the system. Rationality isn't tied to any genetic reason of birth, as far as I can tell from the available information.

Properly delivered sex education, a decent welfare system and health care, go a long way to solving these problems as I see it (from my cloud in Canada anyhow). Rationality can probably be delivered through proper education, my education is certainly the foundation of my rationality. Rationality can then make understanding the responsibility of birth and beyond more accessible.

In my life I have meet very few unintelligent people, some under-educated ones but rarely stupid.

{Edit: Broke up a paragraph to clean it up and move a sentence or two}

Permalink Reply by Scott on August 8, 2009 at 10:19pm

Yes , I understand your point, but disagree with your claim of the lack of "unintellegent people".

In this example, I would define "intellegence" (I know this is my own definition) as the ability to analyze and act rationally and appropriately upon the information a person observes in their world. As with any physical/cognative characteristic of humans, this could be theoretically measured and you would end up with a bell curve representing the populations ability to process information and act in either a healthy or unhealthy way as a result of it (and yes as with all bell curves, a significant number will be on the "lower" end.). I think we all know families where siblings were raised in very similar envirnoments with very similar influences/teachings and ended up as polar opposites (one is a religious fundamentalist, the other an atheist, one is successful and the other a "loser"). This would seem to say that there are very striking differences in the ability to recognize "true" information from person to person(yes I realize that there are many other cognative variables from one person to the next that also influence this), but there is a core skill that I believe not everyone posesses to a desirable degree that allows people to make good decisions whether they are well educated or not, and this is what I think the "less intellegent" are lacking.
Have you ever spoken to a person that you soon realize you just can't go certain places in a conversation with? You know they have a limited "depth" to which they can go in a conversation before you will lose either their attention or their ability to follow you. I don't believe this is something that is taught. I think it's either something you were born with or you weren't.

Thanks for the reply.

Permalink Reply by JayBarti on August 10, 2009 at 7:51pm

Have you ever spoken to a person that you soon realize you just can't go certain places in a conversation with? You know they have a limited "depth" to which they can go in a conversation before you will lose either their attention or their ability to follow you. I don't believe this is something that is taught. I think it's either something you were born with or you weren't.

I wanted to take some time before I answered this because I wanted to think if I had ever met anyone truly stupid, the answer is I have. Yes I have met some truly stupid people but not many. Most of the time if someone cannot follow me, it is almost always because they just don't know, rather then they can not know. Rarely have I met someone who just couldn't know, I meet a lot of people who don't want to know or could care less.

I often wonder and this is a side tangent I realize, where is everyone else's curiosity? Why are people so satisfied and impressed with an easy answer, why wouldn't someone want to know more. Is curiosity something you can teach, or is it something you have.

Permalink Reply by Scott on August 11, 2009 at 11:08am

Yes, very well put. I often wonder the same thing about everyone else's "curiousity". You may have actually said what I was trying to say with the "depth" comment better than I did. I think the depth of a person's thought processes and their curiousity level are linked somehow.
Do you think that religious "brainwashing" can actually retard someone's natural curiosity, or do you think that some people are just less curious and are more susceptible to believing religious teachings that are otherwise unbelievable if they were able to step back and look at their beliefs objectively?

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