We are doomed

[Ben Kenobi]

You will of course be happy to note that very very conservative religious people tend not to show this dysgenic patter as much as the rest of us (talking about frummy Jews and Amish).

They also tend to be outside the normal educational channels. I'd wager anyone attached to public education would exhibit the same trends and patterns.

Also don't underestimate the vicious dating market that exists in our hedonistic society and tolls of careerism. The perfect storm of contraception being a veritable test working against intelligence is another factor.

The numbers are brutal. Wait until you are 30 to marry, and you won't be likely to have more than a kid or two. Every year after that it gets far, far harder.

Personally, I think we've got things backwards. Why don't we get married in our 20's and educated later? Because of the way the job market works. This is why I think they should radically revamp the education system, so that we get folks with college degrees by the time they are 18, and then they can enter their profession. Historically, that has been the case. It's only in recent years, since after the war that this has changed.

[Ben Kenobi]

There is no fundamental reason why increased education would prohibit pregnancy.

Sure, it's called fertility. Cut out the highest fertile years, you are going to have a drastic decrease in fertility, negatively correlated with advanced education.

This, unfortunately, isn't being taught. People are being taught that they can have it all, when that's the biggest lie ever.

As for the rest, I agree completely. Even if you had someone who wasn't a feminist, they would still exhibit lower fertility simply because their most fertile years are spent in education.

[VetLegion]

So how many years would it take for them to become as retarded as Slovenians or Croatians? Looks like the best part of a century to me.

Croatians invented the necktie ----> Croatians smart.

[Solomwi]

Goddamn Croatians.

[epmd]

[Ecofarm]

Guessing by the lack of response... but we are disregarding this study on the basis that developed world retards DO NOT average 2 children?

I, for one, am.

[Kitschum]

You know, with language barriers slowly disappearing from next generations because of English hegemony, there really aren't that many reasons for YUPs to stay in their home countries. We could see a slow redistribution of young human capital based on taxation levels of different countries during the next 40 years. You can already see this with Sweden and Finland; both countries have been suffering from brain drain for 30 years or so, but it's worse in Sweden than it is in Finland. Thus, somehow the Finnish GDP per capita actually surpassed Swedish GDP per capita a few years ago, something which would've been absurd and unthinkable in the early 80s.

That's an eccentric view of recent economic history.

Finland closed most of the gap with Sweden during the long crisis starting in 1975, which was caused by unprofitability in the traditional industries ("the Shipyard crisis" etc). Still, Finland's PPP GDP per capita is not higher than Sweden's (as I just confirmed on Eurostat). More recently, Sweden appears to have whethered the global crisis slightly better than Finland.

Skilled emigration from Sweden shot up in the 90s as a result of the banking crisis of 1991 and the explosion of unemployment, and then it rose further after the EU accession in 1995. However I don't believe any brain drain that might be going on now is excessively high. As for taxes, somebody who thinks they're being taxed too much in Sweden is likely to find the same thing true of Finland.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Croatians invented the necktie ----> Croatians smart.

Exactly. Other nations gave the world electricity, nuclear fission, semiconductors, lasers and quantum theory. Croatians gave us the strip of cloth.

[Drake Tungsten]

Other nations gave the world electricity, nuclear fission, semiconductors, lasers and quantum theory.

So "other nations" equals "America"? At least list the steam engine so your homeland can get some love...

[KrazyHorse]

electricity and quantum theory weren't invented in the US

[Drake Tungsten]

electricity and quantum theory weren't invented in the US

I choose to give credit to Ben Franklin and John von Neumann, for nationalistic bragging purposes.

[KrazyHorse]

You can choose to do whatever you want, but credit for the first is properly shared between a number of European countries (principally England, France, Germany, Denmark and Italy) and credit for the second rests mainly with Germany.

[KrazyHorse]

The strongest US contender for inventing "quantum theory" (as poorly defined as that is) is Feynman. The strongest British contender is Dirac...

[Drake Tungsten]

credit for the second rests mainly with Germany.

Really? I obviously have no informed opinion about this, but Schrödinger and Heisenberg's work doesn't seem any more important than that of Dirac, Bohr, or von Neumann.

The strongest US contender for inventing "quantum theory" (as poorly defined as that is) is Feynman.

I chose to define it as the first "complete mathematical formulation", in order to claim the credit for America.

The first complete mathematical formulation of this approach is generally credited to John von Neumann's 1932 book Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, although Hermann Weyl had already referred to Hilbert spaces (which he called unitary spaces) in his 1927 classic book. It was developed in parallel with a new approach to the mathematical spectral theory based on linear operators rather than the quadratic forms that were David Hilbert's approach a generation earlier.

Though theories of quantum mechanics continue to evolve to this day, there is a basic framework for the mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics which underlies most approaches and can be traced back to the mathematical work of John von Neumann. In other words, discussions about interpretation of the theory, and extensions to it, are now mostly conducted on the basis of shared assumptions about the mathematical foundations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_formulation_of_quantum_mechanics

[KrazyHorse]

Schrödinger and Heisenberg's work doesn't seem any more important than that of Dirac, Bohr, or von Neumann

a) You are wrong
b) von Neumann is on the third tier among those names...