I was just reading me some Skepchick, and this article struck me as interesting. It’s an examination of the idea that stupid people are breeding intelligence out of the human animal. It’s the subject of the painful/ridiculous movie Idiocracy, and¬† the topic of more than a few conversations with my parents, who admonish my sister for only having one kid.

There are far too many factors in what makes a person intelligent to assume anything about the future. I believe there is a certain degree of genetic predisposition towards intelligence (though I have no actual data to back this up), but it seems obvious to me that there are a lot more factors at play. The simple fact is, sometimes smart kids come from stupid parents and sometimes stupid kids come from smart parents.

Without any real understanding of what causes intelligence, a program of eugenics makes absolutely no sense. And the people who talk about the necessity of controlling intelligence by controlling breeding make about as much sense in their arguments as this guy.

Also, let’s face facts. There are loads of jobs out there that smart people tend to not want to do. That doesn’t mean the people who do those jobs are dumb, it just means that society needs a variety of types of people. And we are not smart enough to know what a proper balance would look like. Remember Brave New World? We don’t have a society made up only of A’s because A’s don’t like to sweep the streets.

Jim