[ExI] extropy-chat Digest, Vol 195, Issue 5

[Will Steinberg]

On Sat, Dec 14, 2019, 16:39 Keith Henson via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Sat, Dec 14, 2019 at 11:05 AM Will Steinberg
> <steinberg.will at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> snip
>
> > @Rafal:
> >
> > Fecundity is not a good measure of contribution to society.
> >
> > The least successful, biggest idiots reproduce the most.  Smart, wealthy,
> > successful people have fewer children.
>
> That was not how we got here.
>
> According to Gregory Clark, from at least 1250 to 1800, the well off
> were about twice as successful as the poor in reproducing.  The
> selection of human psychological traits was as intense as that applied
> to the tame Russian foxes.
>
> If you wonder where the drive for business and industry from western
> Europeans came from, that it.
>
> Keith
>

What I meant is that fecundity is not a good measure of contribution to
society, because of the present counterexample.  Not to say success is
absolutely uncorrelated with birth rate now and forever (as you say, that
is how we and the animals before us got here,) but that fecundity may no
longer be representative of "good for the species".

>
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