[ExI] worth reading

[Keith Henson]

On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 3:23 PM,  Dave Sill <sparge at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 10:22 PM, Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727692.100-die-young-live-fast-the-evolution-of-an-underclass.html?full=true
>
> A quote:
>
> "There is no reason to view the poor as stupid or in any way different from
> anyone else, says Daniel Nettle of the University of Newcastle in the UK.
> All of us are simply human beings, making the best of the hand life has
> dealt us."
>
> Does anyone really believe that some people aren't more successful because
> they're simply more clever? Sure, there are people who are poor/rich because
> they had the bad/good luck to be born into it, but just as surely there are
> people who are poor because they suck at being successful and people who
> have risen from poverty through hard work and good decision making.

Smartness as measured by IQ is less correlated to success as measured
by lifetime earnings than you might think, especially in the higher IQ
standard deviations.

Dr. Clark has a list of personality traits that are almost certainly
genetic.  Those were under heavy selection for more generations than
it took to make tame foxes out of wild ones.

> I'm not sure what that quote has to do with the point of the article,
> though.

It's pure and simple someone trying to put a politically correct
whitewash on the subject.

Keith