I am nervous about the long-term future of the human race

[Heraclitus]

Postulates/observations:

1) The returns to human capital (education and intelligence) have been increasing and will continue to increase over time

2) The returns to physical capital are decreasing over time

3) Sexual equality will continue to increase

4) The more human capital one possesses the greater is the marginal value of human capital in a spouse. i.e. an intelligent and educated man places more value on acquiring an intelligent and educated spouse than does an unintelligent and uneducated man. This effect is increasing over time.

5) At least part of the human capital of parents is inheritable by children

What does the world I've just described come to look like eventually? Do any of you want to live in that world? Think about it for a bit.

You are assuming that choosing a spouse is a rational process. In my experience women use their human capital to rationalize their choice of spouses rather than make decisions. I suspect men are the same.


If anything looking at today's world I see strong dysgenic trends.

[Heraclitus]

Wellsian at first glance, at least in terms of societal stratification

That's what I'm thinking too.

Given the other factors, a meritocracy does not necessarily lead to high inter-generational social mobility. Sexual equality plays a large role in the stratification. If women were still valued mainly for looks and the ability to breed (and we assume these factors are uncorrelated with intelligence) then at least half the genetic lottery gets played every generation. When men and women start self-segregating in similarly-intelligent (intelligence being used as a euphemism for inheritable human capital) pairings then this reshuffling does not happen every generation. There is of course still a great deal of luck in the outcome, but much, much less than previously.

But don't people with high human capital breed less than those with lower human capital? I don't feel comfortable speaking without numbers to back up my assumption but I have a feeling that very intelligent very educated people probably have sub-replacement fertility.


If you fear a cast society... genetic engineering is probably a much quicker (and likely) road to the world you imagine. The transition to a world where the rich can buy intelligence and ambition for their kids like they today already can buy beauty and health will probably not be opposed by the masses in any effective way.

[Heraclitus]

Good question, though one difference from what the Time Traveler saw may be that there's no significant barrier to social mobility outside of an individual's inherent abilities. Overall, mobility could be expected to decrease, since unintelligent pairs would tend to produce unintelligent offspring (and the same for intelligent pairs), but there would still be nothing stopping the occasional (or rare) intelligent child of unintelligent parents from moving up in the world. Going back to your original postulates, the key question they don't answer seems to lie in #5: how faithfully/completely intelligence is passed from one generation to the next.

The lower that measurement is, the more society should resemble a capped bottle of water. There are distinct liquid and gas phases, but at the interface, plenty of individual molecules moving between the two. Of course, that assumes that the society remains meritocratic, rather than treating descent from intelligent parents as prima facie evidence of intelligence.

The real question is whether wealth is strongly related to intelligence.


I remember reading a study that completely shocked me (it showed rich people where not statistically significantly smarter than middle income people and even low income people in developed countries).

[Heraclitus]

Also you talk about societal stratification like its a bad thing, if on average everyone in such a society is better off than in a society with no or less meritocratic tendencies is there really anything ethically wrong with it?

There is the interesting effect of society fragmenting even more into several different cultures. We could see radical differences in values and outlook between the middle and upper and lower classes if there little personal interaction between the groups (personal as in friendship, romance or even being classmates).

Again a real problem with such an arrangement is long term as such a society once it masters GE will experience very strong genetic stratification which will lead to casts and eventually to several species of human. Also a few centuries down the road technology makes the lesser species uneconomical to sustain, what happens then to these sentient but dumb animals? A final solution?

[Kuciwalker]

The real question is whether wealth is strongly related to intelligence.

He's using intelligence as a stand-in for the inherent traits that are strongly correlated with wealth.

[Heraclitus]

The real question is whether wealth is strongly related to intelligence.

He's using intelligence as a stand-in for the inherent traits that are strongly correlated with wealth.

Are they?

Paris Hilton

[Kuciwalker]

Are they?

Paris Hilton

Are you actually getting a science degree?

[Heraclitus]

Are you actually getting a science degree?

Are you actually taking an internet debate seriously and expecting intellectual integrity?

[Kuciwalker]

I'm assuming you don't actually want to convince people you're an idiot.

[Ben Kenobi]

But don't people with high human capital breed less than those with lower human capital? I don't feel comfortable speaking without numbers to back up my assumption but I have a feeling that very intelligent very educated people probably have sub-replacement fertility.

The numbers are pretty stark. Pretty much everyone in Europe unless you are Muslim experience sub-replacement fertility.

KH, my fear is more towards the collapse of the welfare and social security system. There just aren't enough of us to support our parents and grandparents when they retire. The system as a whole is going to be completely dismantled.

As for the overall outcome, I don't really have much hope for secular western society. Education will survive just fine, and will probably take leaps and bounds again once we move away from secularism. Education reform will happen as people revert to the older model of homeschooling. Distributed knowledge is really the wave of the future, it is going to become far less expensive to obtain a solid education, and they current education establishment isn't sustainable. Spending 2000 hours in a classroom from age 5 to age 18? Is that really the best use of time?

[Jon Miller]

The real question is whether wealth is strongly related to intelligence.

He's using intelligence as a stand-in for the inherent traits that are strongly correlated with wealth.

Not just inherent traits, but also those that come from being raised by wealthy parents/etc.

Which does make it a lot more complicated, because it isn't just genetic factors then, and there is a large selection of people who don't have as high of 'intelligence' due to not being raised by the right parents, but due have a lot of genetic intelligience and will thus (if it is possible) have some chance of social mobility in a meritocraty.

We aren't at anything like domestication among animals. And there are many cases of well educated women (and men) going for poorly educated/etc mates.

I think that things are still far to complicated to say that we will see such division within 4 generations. Among other things, it is still true that a large percentage of the intelligent people I know (people who are using their genetic abilities to be physicists/engineers/etc) come from non-wealthy families.

JM

[Jon Miller]

By the way, as a personal example.

Many people on my mom's side of the family are known to have high IQs (140+). I know that IQ doesn't tell everything, and I don't think it is the best measure, just using it as a measurement. I can't think of anyone really wealthy on that side, lots of middle class though.

Just as a side note, my great uncle on my mom's side (IQ of 165 I think) only chose to work ~3 months a year (he was an accountant) so that he could spend the rest of his time climbing mountains and doing other things that he loved.

While intelligent people decide to do the things they love, even if it leaves them as not wealthy, then the obviously stratefication will be retarded.

JM
(My dad's side also has a number of above average intelligent people, no one really wealthy (that I know of) on that side either.)

(while I have met a lot of my extended family, I don't even know my first cousins very well, so there might be someone really wealthy.)

[Lul Thyme]

You are assuming that choosing a spouse is a rational process.

As far as I understand, he's making no such assumption, only that the behavior exhibits certain correlations.

A lot of people are making intent-based objections, but this is irrelevant to KH's point.

[Jon Miller]

What has been presented are reasons why the correlation won't be as high as he might expect, and so won't give such a great shift that the stratefication will be largely in place in <4 generations.

JM

[Heraclitus]

I'm assuming you don't actually want to convince people you're an idiot.

I post on the internet for entertainment, what I consider entertaining varies with time.


Yes Paris Hilton was a non-sequitor but a fun one.




But if you think about it Paris Hilton is "successful". And so are a variety of different people all with very different talents to assume these talents aren't at least partially mutually exclusive and that what it takes to be successful doesn't change from generation to generation is a shaky line of reasoning.


Also KH is assuming that a meritocratic order is self-maintaining or that at the very least that in the grand scheme of things there has been a constant trend in human societies towards meritocracy. I say not only does the presence of meritocratic aspects in social orders unpredictable I am also saying that what exactly is "merit" is also more open to debate and cultural considerations that one might believe, I am also saying there are there are many postions in the upper class of the meritocratic society that need very different talents and abilities. Are certain types of upbringing and environmental factors capable of encouraging all of these? Will not a clash of two high value but very different "builds" of meritocrats produce less capable offspring. To say nothing of how murky the waters of genetics are on the issue.