New at Reason

Julian Sanchez | July 28, 2005

Kenneth Silber reviews a biography of Francis Galton, trunk of the eugenics family tree.

Comments

|7.28.05 @ 10:05AM|#

Article: "Having grown up in a time when
intellectuals operated across multiple fields,
and having done so as well, he [Galton] was
now trying to preserve a particular type of
intellectual - polymaths like himself."

The problem with eugenics is that everyone
thinks their own genes are the best genes,
and from their perspective, they're right.

From a natural-selection standpoint, the genes
of retarded/deformed/pickyourinferiority
people are superior to those of people who
produce fewer viable offspring, regardless
of the latters' ostensibly superior phenotypes.

|7.28.05 @ 11:47AM|#

CHICAGO - In a report with dire implications for the intellectual future of America, a University of Chicago study revealed Monday that the nation's uneducated are breeding twice as soon and twice as often as those with university diplomas. "The average member of the American underclass spawns at age 15, compared to age 30 for the average college-educated professional," study leader Kenneth Stalls said. "America's intellectual elite, as a result, is badly losing the genetic marathon, with two generations of dullards born for every one generation of cultured literates." Added Stalls: "At this rate, by the year 2100 there will be five smart people on Earth, swallowed whole by more than 12 billion mouth-breathers incapable of understanding the binary exponentiation that swamped the Earth with their like." High-school dropout Mandi Drucker, 16, said of the findings, "All I know is, we're in love."

--The Onion
Volume 31 Issue 18?13 May 1997

Mark Bahner|7.28.05 @ 1:04PM|#

"At this rate, by the year 2100 there will be five smart people on Earth,..."

I wouldn't worry. Personal computers are presently about a factor of 1 million more stupid than humans. But personal computers are growing smarter at the rate of about a factor of 1000 per decade.

So by the year 2025, personal computers will be about as smart as a human. And by 2100, the personal computer will be 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times smarter.

And what's more, there will be more than a trillion of them.