Dysgenics: Evidence, Debate & Opinion

[Spathi]

Dysgenics is the negative selection, decrease in prevalence of good genes with populations. Wikipedia says that dysgenics is not real:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysgenics

Despite these concerns, genetic studies have shown no evidence for dysgenic effects in human populations.[6][7][8][9]

At the same time, I know some articles which state vice versa. For example, a paper in Biological sciences:

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1612113114

Epidemiological studies suggest that educational attainment is affected by genetic variants. Results from recent genetic studies allow us to construct a score from a person’s genotypes that captures a portion of this genetic component. Using data from Iceland that include a substantial fraction of the population we show that individuals with high scores tend to have fewer children, mainly because they have children later in life. Consequently, the average score has been decreasing over time in the population.

Epidemiological studies have estimated that the genetic component of educational attainment can account for as much as 40% of the trait variance (1).

A negative correlation between educational attainment and number of children has been observed in many populations (4–7). A recent study of ∼20,000 genotyped Americans born between 1931 and 1953 provided direct evidence that the genetic propensity for educational attainment is associated with reduced fertility (8, 9)…

What is your opinion on this?

 

[Hornbein]

This is the theme of the movie Idiocracy.

Reading books from the past such as the Dialogues of Plato I get the impression people were a lot smarter back then.

Evolutionary success has nothing to do with intelligence. As long as your society doesn't utterly crash, all that matters is that quantities of grandchildren be produced.

 

[Spathi]

Reading books from the past such as the Dialogues of Plato I get the impression people were a lot smarter back then.

In the sources I have read, it is usually mentioned that currently the level of education is still being increased, and this trend overcompensated the genetic trend (see Flynn effect). But in long-term the genetic trend will dominate.

 

[Hornbein]

In the sources I have read, it is usually mentioned that currently the level of education is still being increased, and this trend overcompensated the genetic trend (see Flynn effect). But in long-term the genetic trend will dominate.

Oh I don't know about that. Primary school texts from the 19th century are much more challenging than what we have now. McGruffy readers and stuff like that. Though I am told that the USA lags far behind most of the first world, so it matter where you are.

 

[jim mcnamara]

A nice popular science description of a reasonably long standing observation in Anthropology:
"Based on measurements of skulls, the average brain volume of Homo sapiens has reportedly decreased by roughly 10 percent in the past 40,000 years. This reduction is a reversal of the trend of cranial expansion, which had been occurring in human evolution for millions of years prior"

-- https://www.discovermagazine.com/pl...-has-been-getting-smaller-since-the-stone-age

So, human males and females have slightly different endocranial volume loss over time.

NB: humans were not in graduate school back then.

I do not want to get into eugenics (dysgenics is a form of this) simply because PF does not do debunking.
More speculation will get the thread locked.

 

[Vanadium 50]

@Spathi , you're not going to be happy until every single one of your threads is locked, will you?

The paper you cite discussed correlation, not causality.

Furthermore, over the last few generations there has been a substantial phenotypical shift in educational attainment. The fraction of Americans of African descent with college degrees has been going up by between 3 and 3-1/2 percent a year for 50+ years, while the general population the number is more like 2 to 2-1/2 percent. Of course this has genotypical impacts as well.

This trend has nothing to do with genetics, nothing to do with "dysgenics" and everything to do with history, sociology and economics.

I predict this thread will be closed shortly.

 

[hutchphd]

It is important to maintain the lunatic fringe in a forum where their idiocy is subject to rational derision. Beyond that lies chaos

 

[berkeman]

Thread closed for Moderation...

Update -- After a Mentor discussion, this thread will remain closed.