redandblack wrote:Psyber wrote:When I was 13 I came to the conclusion that the solution to overpopulation and welfare dependency was to screen everyone at 11 or 12 and sterilise the stupid.
I agree it sounds draconian, and would not be an easily acceptable solution. But is there a better one?
It was prompted by studies right back then, showing those with lower than the average IQ were already rapidly out-breeding the rest of the population in many countries, while other studies suggested one needed a higher than average IQ to function in a modern technological or administrative environment, rather than a tribal society.
It may explain the popularity of tribal activities like following football, idolising mediocre mass music entertainers, and getting drunk at every opportunity.
I think someone tried to put that principle into effect in the early 40's, Psyber.
Personally, I think ít was stupid of you to think that when you were 13. Perhaps you should have been sterilised.
On a mathematical note, if you sterilise the low IQ people, then the average IQ of those remaining becomes higher, which means there are just as many below the higher average IQ. Therefore you then have to sterilise those 'stupid' people. The average IQ then becomes higher again, therefore.......
In the end, you have to sterilise almost everyone except the highest IQ person in the world
Psyber's theory to end the world
Actually the sources I read were published in the 1950s, but social Darwinism had a vogue as early as the 1930s.
It was embraced by many political groups at the time, including to some extent, distorted and reshaped, by Germany's National Socialist Workers' Party.
Even at 13 I was not supporting that..
I was concerned about the information I had read about population growth curves, the idea that those with IQs below the median of 100 were out-breeding those above according to statistics, and the proposition that a minimum IQ of about 115 was necessary to be able to do the work that held a modern society together. And, yes, I am aware
now that IQ testing was and is narrow and fallible tool, although entirely non-verbal ones like the Raven's Progressive Matrices, at least have some independence of education. I read the manual of the old OTIS scale my high school used to screen and stream us in 1957, when I helped out in the school office later in 1957.
The median I had referred to was the median arbitrarily in existence then - there was no case for moving up to the new median.
You seem to have created that as an artificial objection for you to throw in to your, otherwise, without much substance, and semi-abusive, challenge.
While I am still not advocating the adoption as a policy of the idea I considered at 13, I think we do have a serious problem about over-population.
We need to think about what to do about people who can't cope in our new type of society, and the problem of dwindling resources spread increasingly thinly over our growing population.
I would like to see us putting money into getting off planet to seek more resources, not contracting ourselves, but that is another un-PC position.
I have worked with people in the "low-normal" group who really can't cope in society and have long been neglected and excluded from support services.
Using IQ as a rough guide this group is the 70 to 85 range - for those who don't know 85 to 115 being "normal range", and below 70 being officially "intellectually disabled" and entitled to formal support.
