If you need urgent support, call 999 or go to your nearest A&E. To contact our Crisis Messenger (open 24/7) text THEMIX to 85258.
Read the community guidelines before posting ✨
Options
Low IQs 'shouldn't procreate'
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Interesting article. I myself am in agreement with Professor Nyborg. Irrational moral prejudices must not hold back progress.
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,7416881%255E1702,00.html
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,7416881%255E1702,00.html
A DANISH academic has sparked an uproar by calling for state measures to encourage childbearing among intelligent people but to dissuade those with low intellectual ability, to create what he called a better Danish society.
Helmuth Nyborg, a well-known psychology professor at the University of Aarhus who specialises in intelligence research, said it was time to "abandon the politically correct" and to practice selection in order to "improve the coming generations and avoid degenerates in the population", in comments this weekend that have been widely reported on national television and the country's main newspapers.
"I'm aware that my proposal breaks a taboo that dates back more than half a century, since Hitler's Aryan race program, and it is very controversial," he said.
"But the debate has to be raised now because the trend is cause for concern in Denmark, where we have an increasing number of problem kids," he said.
His proposals triggered outrage among many politicians and experts, including Integration Minister Bertel Haarder, who said Nyborg's suggestions were "against all moral principles". . .
0
Comments
This too is a loaded concept. There are many well educated and intellectual degenerates around the world. Lack of intellect is no pre-requisite for moral turpitude.
I am in total agreement that IQ is not everything. Sure, I will agree there are plenty of social degenerates who are highly intelligent and consequently highly destructive, those I would consider enemies. This does not diminish the importance of intelligence in the slightest however. Will is just as important, if not more important than intelligence, in my view. There might be strong willed people with whom I totally disagree. This does not diminish the importance of this personality characteristic in success either however. Goals are also important.
It is a general rule, which personally I can see to be correct.
People with a higher intelligence/education/value system, will often raise their kids according to the same principles and values which they have, which will make their kids turn towards a specific path, in the sense of goals.
You'll often see that peeople with a lower intelligence, will emphasise different stuff from people with higher intelligence, and will more often lead an unstabile life.
There are always exceptions to the rules, and often a lot. But in the end it's all down to social heritage.
Naturally you have survival of the fittest. In this day and age it can often be seen in education and jobs.
Thing is that governments are trying to slow down a natural process by equalising, instead of helping to further. Which means that they use ressources on the wrong fields instead of advancing the people who're already on top, and helping people who're down the scale make life work for themselves.
Such a plan wouldn't be suggested if money, ressources and support was given out differently. Of course, if that should come to power you need a whole new system.
And who can make such sweeping generalisations as to suggest that the offspring of lesser intelligent people might not be geniuses themselves?
This is rightly criticised as naziistic nonsense. Claims are genetic or any other superiority belong buried with the monsters out of who's delusions such concepts sprang forth.
I am personally shocked that you of all people Jacq would lend any credence to such thinking.
These concepts are not interchangable. Have the integrated school systems not proven this over and over and over again over the past 40 something years? The general idea of the egalitarians forty something years ago was that once children were immersed in integrated school systems, since such differences were "cultural" and "environmental" because we all "human beings," such huge gaps would wither away naturally. You can look at virtually every single state in America and find the exact same pattern. The massive racial gap persists, despite BILLIONS upon BILLIONS of dollars being thrown at, despite enrichment program after enrichment program such as Head Start, despite decades of demonization of racists. There is no cultural or environmental theory that can explain such massive, broad, and persistent differences in general intelligence. There is a massive genetic component in general intelligence, that is the fact, and it varies between populations as well. There is no equality at any level, within race or between races. There is no reason to expect such "equality" in the first place.
What he says is true though. He just blames it on intelligence, I on social heritage.
And I don't support the plan. It has some major flaws. Will state them tomorrow, if needed. But I don't dismiss the general theory behind the suggestion.
LOL where did you come up with this idea? Would you say the beatniks of the 1960s inherited their value system from their parents?
>>>And who can make such sweeping generalisations as to suggest that the offspring of lesser intelligent people might not be geniuses themselves?
Massive empirical proof, see Lynn's IQ and the Wealth of Nations.
>>>This is rightly criticised as naziistic nonsense. Claims are genetic or any other superiority belong buried with the monsters out of who's delusions such concepts sprang forth.
LOL just as I expected. The objection is not based on factual, scientific, or empirical grounds, but as always, on reactionary moral and ideological prejudice, an irrational fear of the political implications of such ideas. This is the same sort of backwardness that kept Europe in ignorance for centuries. Europe only began to rise out of the gutter once the notion the progress should be subordinated to the tartuffery known as morality was discarded. Unfortunately, it would appear as we are creeping ever so slowly back into the Dark Ages out of fear of social change, only this time, political correctness has replaced medieval christianity.
>>>I am personally shocked that you of all people Jacq would lend any credence to such thinking.
Horrible! How can we ever take such HEARSAY seriously! Quick! Someone report this heretic to the Inquisition! I will bring the Holy Water! Recant!!
Lets go through the cultural theories one by one.
Miele: There are hundreds if not thousands of articles and books that say exactly the opposite. We can't examine every nongenetic or culture-only explanation for the Black-White difference in average IQ, but I'd like to present ten of the best-known, one-by-one, and have you respond with the evidence you believe disproves them.
Jensen: Go ahead.
Miele: Culture-Only Theory #1: Blacks and Whites differ significantly in their average socioeconomic status (SES), and since SES is a determinant of IQ, it explains the average Black-White IQ difference.
Jensen: Racial differences in SES cannot explain the average IQ difference. When statistical procedures are used to remove the effect of the difference in SES or when Blacks and Whites are simply matched on measures of SES, the Black-White IQ difference is reduced, but only from 15 to 12 points. And not all of that three-point reduction is due to SES, because SES differences within each racial group also have some genetic component. Therefore matching Blacks and Whites on SES to some extent also matches them genetically in terms of the g factor.
Miele: Culture-Only Theory #2: School facilities of Blacks are well below those of Whites.
Jensen: Educational inequality can't explain away the average IQ difference either. In the last 30 years or so many school systems have been racially integrated and now provide the same facilities and instructional programs for Blacks and Whites alike, yet the average differences of about one standard deviation in IQ and scholastic achievement remain.
Miele: Culture-Only Theory #3: IQ only measures knowledge of the "core culture" and therefore the tests are inherently biased against minorities.
Jensen: The claim that the Black-White IQ difference is a result of culturally biased tests has been disproved. A detailed explanation, which requires a working knowledge of psychometrics, is presented in my 1980 book Bias in Mental Testing. But you need not take my word on it. Following publication of my book, a special committee of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Research Council examined the question and reached essentially the same conclusions.
The most widely used mental tests today have the same reliability for Blacks and Whites, which means that if you give the test to a group of people and then test them again at a later date, they get about the same scores. The important point is that there is no evidence that the test scores for Blacks are unstable or erratic. Whatever the tests measure, they measure it just as reliably for Blacks as they do for Whites.
Mental tests also have the same predictive validity for Blacks as they have for Whites. This means that they predict other important real-life criteria, such as school grades and job performance, with the same accuracy for both groups. If you are trying to predict how well someone will do in college and they have an IQ of 125, it makes no difference whether they are Black or White, or anything else.
Tests also have the same factor structure in both groups. So if you factor analyze the test scores of either Blacks or Whites on a battery of mental tests, you will find the g factor at the top, followed by the group factors, and then the special factors. The g factor is indeed real and just as important for Blacks as it is for Whites, and indeed, for any group.
The item-to-item correlations are the same for both groups, and so is the rank order of item difficulties. Simply stated, the items that are easiest for whites are also the ones that are easiest for Blacks. This is important because it would not be true if some types of items were specially biased against Blacks - the way vocabulary items, for example, are biased against recent immigrants who are unfamiliar with English. Blacks and Whites even make the same types of errors and get fooled into picking the same distractor items in multiple-choice tests.
The evidence on each of these points is so overwhelming that no one in the field any longer argues the point.
Miele: Culture-Only Theory #4: African-Americans are being tested in a language other than their own.
Jensen: Insufficient familiarity with standard English and the use of "Black English" was a popular claim in the 1960s and 70s. But the Black-White IQ differences are as large or larger on a variety of non verbal tests that make no use of alphanumeric symbols as on verbal tests. And children who are born deaf and hence have had virtually no exposure to spoken language do not show any deficiet on non verbal tests.
Miele: Culture-Only Theory #5: Nutrition plays an important role in mental development, as does exposure to toxic chemicals and Blacks and Whites differ on these measures also.
Jensen: I've never claimed that the Black-White difference in average IQ is 100 genetic, only that both genetic and environmental factors are involved, just as with individual differences within each race, and probably to around the same degree. Nutritional factors do account for some part of the average racial IQ difference. Even when there is no evidence of poor nutrition, however, there is still a Black-White IQ difference.
In the Black underclass, nutrition does have a measurable effect on IQ. On a per-capita basis, prematurity and low birth weight are much more prevalant amongst Blacks than Whites. The difference between mother's milk and baby formulas also makes a significant difference in the IQs of low-birth-weight infants of either race by the time they reach school age. Unfortunately, at this point in history, a smaller percentage of African-American mothers breast feed their babies. Fortunately, that's one thing that could probably be changed at relatively little cost by making the information better known in communites, Black or White, that are at highest risk for low birth weight babies.
Miele: Culture-Only Theory #6: Blacks and Whites differ markedly in their historical experience.
Jensen: To my knowledge, no one has ever demonstrated that a group’s past history, independent of its earlier genetic history, affects their present-day average IQ. Some racial and ethnic minorities that historically have been victimized by discrimination and persecution, such as Jews in Europe, East Indians in Africa and in Britain, and Chinese and Japanese in the United States, actually have higher average IQs than the White or other majority population they live among.
Miele: Culture-Only Theory #7: The totality of these cultural, environmental, and nutritional factors interact step by step, and nutritional factors interact step by step, from conception to adolescence, to construct our entire cognitive structure.
Jensen: This hypothesis could be tested by rearing black children in middle-class or upper middle-class White families. That is what was done in the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study. The researchers compared infants with two Black parents (BB or Black in everyday parlance), infants with a White mother and a Black father (WB, or mixed race), as well as a control group of white children (WW), all adopted into two-parent White upper-middle-class homes. The adoptive parents were mostly college graduates with managerial and professional jobs.
All of the adoptees, Black (BB), mixed race (WB), and White (WW), were given IQ tests and scholastic achievement tests at age seven years and again at age 17. When tested at age 7, average IQs for the BB and WB children were several points higher than the average Black children reared in the same community, indicating a beneficial effect of the middle-class, White home environment on the IQ of these adoptees. By age 17, however, the average IQ for the Black adopted children was about 16 points below the White average. This is not significantly different from the national average IQ for Black youths. So even growing up in a White middle-class home did not produce a lasting reduction in the familiar one standard deviation Black-White difference in average IQ.
Miele: Culture-Only Theory #8: The lower average IQ of Americans of African ancestry is the result of racist America’s “self-fulfilling prophecy” of discrimination against Blacks and even supposedly “scientific theories” about “genetic inferiority” based on the color of their skin, not the level of the g factor.
Jensen: To some extent you can test hypothesis as well by a more detailed analysis of the results of the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study. The average IQ of the mixed race (WB) adoptees, when they were tested at age 7 and again at age 17, was just about halfway between the average IQs of the WW adoptees and of the BB adoptees. Yet there was no mistaking the African ancestry of the mixed-race children from their appearance. In fact, a WB child would probably be considered Black in America today, as are well known individuals of mixed ancestry such as Halle Berry or Tiger Woods. Its hard to explain the intermediate position of the WB adoptees in purely environmental terms, including the consequences of societal racism, but it is what you could predict beforehand from the Default Hypothesis. The complete results of the Transracial Adoption Study showed no evidence that, by age 17, being raised from infancy in an upper middle class White family raised the Black adoptees average IQ or their overall level of scholastic performance above that of Black children reared by their biological parents.
oh what a lovely world where all the inteligent people can sit and chat about how they themselves are so wonderful ...who's going to do the cleaning?
ROFL yes, if zee evil Nazis were actually able to "breed" and "breathe," in essence, put their ideas into practice, the rest of the filth otherwise known as "humanity" might just be left in the dust. The poor dears! Have a little "morality" for the little guys!
>>>oh what a lovely world where all the inteligent people can sit and chat about how they themselves are so wonderful ...who's going to do the cleaning?
Do slaves still pick cotton or has technology replaced such individuals?
Miele: Culture-Only Theory #9: Experimental programs of intensive early cognitive intervention such as the classic "Miracle in Milwaukee" successfully increased the IQ of Black children.
Jensen: The results of these experimental attempts to raise the IQs of Black infants at risk for Low IQ are quite consistent with the results of the Transracial Adoption Study. In the highly publicized Milwaukee Project, a trained staff gave Black children from poor homes intensive all-day environmental enrichment and training in mental skills from infancy to age six, at which time they entered regular public schools. The special training raised IQs quite markedly above those of a control group of similar children who did not receive the training. But the training did not significantly raise the scholastic achievement and other kinds of performance that are typically correlated with IQ. So the gains in the test scores were "hollow" with respect to the g factor. The most likely explanation is that the results came from "teaching the test," and not really raising the level of g.
Miele: Culture-Only Theory #10: The Milwaukee Project was an early attempt at experimental cognitive intervention and naturally had its limitations. But the more recent Abecedarian Project produced lasting gains in the IQ and school achievement of at-risk Black children. So both the claim in your 1969 "HER article that "compensatory education has been tried and apparently it has failed[/i]" and your Default Hypothesis about intelligence, race, and genetics have now been disproved.
Jensen: You're correct that the criticisms of "teaching the test" and "hollow gains" cannot be made of the more recent Abecedarian Project, which involves intensive and prolonged educational training of children at risk for low IQ. The project raised the IQ of the children who received it about five points, on average, above a control group, who did not. You're also correct that his gain still held up when the children were retested at age 14 and that it was accompanied by a comparable gain in scholastic performance. And this is all well and good. But it should also be noted that even the most intensive cognitive intervention program yet devised provided during all the children's preschool years only rduced the national Black-White difference in average IQ by about one-third (that is, 5 out of 15 points). This is the best evidence we have of the extent in which improving the cognitive environment of at-risk groups can increase their IQ. The results of this Abecedarian Project in no way disprove the Default Hypothesis of genes and environment; they are fully consistent with it.
Frank Miele, Intelligence, Race, and Genetics: Conversations with Arthur R. Jensen (Oxford, 2002), pp.127-33
the resoning was, if the maximum iq alowed was 50 then the world wouldn't be in the fucking mess it's in now.
the resoning was, if the maximum iq alowed was 50 then the world wouldn't be in the fucking mess it's in now.
LOL yes, if only humans were even more INFERIOR than the Congolese and Zimbabweans, then everything would simply be great. What can you say to fanatics who yearn for poverty and ignorance? Keep in mind that THESE are the people who call Fascists extremists. THESE are the people who so often talk about progress. Just what are these people progressing towards again? Look at the third world slums throughout the West these days they have created in the name of diversity which is supposed to be so great, in all their degredation and disgusting filth. Look at the litany of FAILED rainbow nations throughout the world, nations like South Africa, with the highest murder and rape rate in the world.
It's twisting the discussion completely around to start talking about IQs. You can't base decisions on that, as IQ can't be used as a meassurement for anything, except from logics to a certain extent. And even then, the IQ system isn't completely valid.
And yes it's only now that I actually took notice of the thread title :yeees:
Selective breeding. The Aryan race.
Hardly original thinking now, is it?
It's a crackpot idea anyways since the only way to ensure such a policy would be forced sterilisation and if that came to pass, we might as well have let Hitler's crowd get it on with it 60 years ago. :rolleyes:
This Naziism in sheeps clothing.
Indeed, IQ tests are ethnocentric even today and don't take in to account people with learning disabilities, material deprivation (thus having less resources, a poorer diet and an environment that may not be suitable for study) and people from other cultures who may not understand the questions as English is not their first language.
IQ being hereditary is an idea used by right wingers to explain racial and meterial inequality according to functionalist/new right sociologists. Personally I believe and I have stated above that IQ type intellect is almost entirely environmental and that in my opinion with the acception of children born with mental retardation, most babies have the same intellect when they're young.
Take the older tripartite education system just after WW2 for example, almost all the children who passed the 11+ were middle class. Now is this because of environmental factors? Or are middle class people genuinely born intelligent? One of the brightest people I know got an IQ of 60 on an online test, yet can build a fantastic website out of HTML in a matter of minutes.
As for intellect affecting moral values, take a look at Bandura's social learning theory. Or maybe you could question why so many people followed Hitler (who has been mentioned). Were that many people stupid? Was Hitler burdened with a low IQ?
I think not...
Prejudice can take many forms and what most people don't understand is that's it's the influence of the media and the intelligent people who run it to influence people that are likely to read newspapers such as The Sun. Racial intolerance is, in my opinion is cultural and preventing people with low IQs from procreating is being no better than preventing a black person from having a baby. Screw political correctness, right? because it's unfair to pick on somebody for there skin colour... but it's perfectly Ok to target people with a low IQ?
However, a quick google tells me that the "professor" has been involved in the race and intelligence "debate"
Anyways, Ms. Ripper, what do you make of this?
And it also brings the question of where to draw the line? When does a person become stupid, and when does it become intelligent?
If the human race were to use one of these methods, I think that it would be much better to focus on something not so unmeasurable as intelligence and rather try to eliminate hereditary gene defects and something of that sort which directly affects people's children.
And what about all the jobs the "educated" people just don't want to do? Here in Iceland we have had to hire a lot of foreign workers because our citizens that are stuck in the "high standard of living" way of thinking and just don't want to do some of the jobs available. I'm of course not saying that the Icelandic people are more intelligent than the people we are hiring from abroad.
There is no such thing as objective morality.
>>>Selective breeding. The Aryan race.
The professor said nothing about "the Aryan race."
>>>Hardly original thinking now, is it?
LOL I will take "the Aryan Race" over the impoverished third world slums that are supposedly "enriching" Europe anyday.
>>>Indeed, IQ tests are ethnocentric even today and don't take in to account people with learning disabilities, material deprivation (thus having less resources, a poorer diet and an environment that may not be suitable for study) and people from other cultures who may not understand the questions as English is not their first language.
This is a flat out lie supported by no evidence whatsoever. These tests have proven to be both VALID and RELIABILE statistically, in that whatever they are measuring they are certainly doing it accurately. Do you have the slightest clue as to what you are talking about? Do you know anything about statistics or research methods?
>>>IQ being hereditary is an idea used by right wingers to explain racial and meterial inequality according to functionalist/new right sociologists.
This is another false generalization. Jensen, who I cited above, is pretty much apolitical. He is actually, imagine this, a Gandhian! The fact that IQ has a genetic component has been established for YEARS.
>>>Personally I believe and I have stated above that IQ type intellect is almost entirely environmental and that in my opinion with the acception of children born with mental retardation, most babies have the same intellect when they're young.
Where has such a thesis ever withstood criticism? The notion that IQ is "almost entirely environmental" is preposterous. It has be discredited in COUNTLESS experiments over and over again, the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study being amongst the most famous.
>>>Take the older tripartite education system just after WW2 for example, almost all the children who passed the 11+ were middle class. Now is this because of environmental factors? Or are middle class people genuinely born intelligent? One of the brightest people I know got an IQ of 60 on an online test, yet can build a fantastic website out of HTML in a matter of minutes.
Anonymous authorities.
>>>As for intellect affecting moral values, take a look at Bandura's social learning theory.
There is no such this as objective morality.
>>>Or maybe you could question why so many people followed Hitler (who has been mentioned). Were that many people stupid? Was Hitler burdened with a low IQ?
LOL I would compare the intellectual and cultural quality of Germany under Hitler to any decaying Western democracy.
>>>Prejudice can take many forms and what most people don't understand is that's it's the influence of the media and the intelligent people who run it to influence people that are likely to read newspapers such as The Sun.
I don't read the Sun.
>>>Racial intolerance is, in my opinion is cultural and preventing people with low IQs from procreating is being no better than preventing a black person from having a baby. Screw political correctness, right? because it's unfair to pick on somebody for there skin colour... but it's perfectly Ok to target people with a low IQ?
Arbitrary and spurious unobjective notions of "morality" and "fairness" should not stand in the way of scholarship and progress anymore than Allah or Jesus Christ.
Yes, IQ tests do not produce the lie called "equality" the egalitarian religious zealots desire so why not simply demonize science?
>>>Now I have never taken one and thus not gotten a rating, but I don't believe that they can measure every aspect of a person's intelligence.
LOL yes, all humans HAVE to be EQUAL in fact, despite every single shred of evidence indicating just the opposite. If everyone is not equal, then that implies that some people are superior to others, and like OMG, Hitler!! Remember the Holocaust(TM)!
>>>And it also brings the question of where to draw the line? When does a person become stupid, and when does it become intelligent?
Have you ever heard of retardation?
>>>If the human race were to use one of these methods
There is a human species. There is however no human race. Humanity is not static either. It can, in time, hopefully be overcome.
>>> I think that it would be much better to focus on something not so unmeasurable as intelligence and rather try to eliminate hereditary gene defects and something of that sort which directly affects people's children.
LOL it would come as a suprise to psychometricians to hear the notion that general intelligence is not measureable.
>>>And what about all the jobs the "educated" people just don't want to do? Here in Iceland we have had to hire a lot of foreign workers because our citizens that are stuck in the "high standard of living" way of thinking and just don't want to do some of the jobs available. I'm of course not saying that the Icelandic people are more intelligent than the people we are hiring from abroad.
The corporations and oligarchs who yearn for cheap labour are always saying that in America as well. They say the same thing in Germany where unemployment is something like 10%.
I have no more regard for the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" than I have for the Ten Commandments.
>>>It's a crackpot idea anyways since the only way to ensure such a policy would be forced sterilisation and if that came to pass, we might as well have let Hitler's crowd get it on with it 60 years ago. This Naziism in sheeps clothing.
LOL speaking of crackpot ideas why don't you tell us more about "human rights," the notion that "rights," a political concept, arise from a construct of materialism like "humanity," instead of from power. Do I have a right to a cheeseburger because I have two hands? Humanity has never existed as a society, much less as a political entity. ROFL do cows also have the right to vote Clandestine because we are all simply mammals? Is it murder to eat fried chicken?
However, as you know all the answers and have single-handed solved the race and IQ debate, why don't you inhabit your nasty, sterile little universe and I'll hang out with the humans.
First they came for the Communists, I did nothing - because I am not a Communist.
Then they came for the Socialists, I did nothing - because I am not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Jews, I did nothing because I am not a Jew.
Then they came for me...
We are all humans and nobody has the right to take away our right to have children. Incidentally it's also against all human interest to pursue such a policy - basic GCSE Biology shows that because all humans have a different genetic code, we increase our ability to survive any future changes in our environment by reducing the number and variation in the human species we mimic the same conditions as in purely bred dogs, shorter lifespans, more diseases and less of an ability to cope with life changes.
Well, seeing as I got an A on my A level sociology exam, I think I do. Life is not black and white and I'm not basing my opinion on one idealist. Do I not know about statistics? Well sweetheart, why don't you give me a link to the source where you got your statistics from and I'll explain how a correlation does not take in to account cause or effect... and then maybe I'll post some links on how factors such as socio-economic groupings can effect IQ both in health and primary socialisation.
Actually the debate is used by right-wingers and I didn't accuse Jensen as being right - wing, otherwise I would have said he was.
Oh and I never said that IQ was 100% environmental, just like some people are born athletes... but then it helps a lot to train.
As for me mentioning Bandura, if you know about him (and anybody who has much understanding of psychology would) then you'll understand that I was using him to link to the media. I didn't accuse you of reading the Sun, but studies such as Bandura's... teamed up with Strauss point to the idea that aggression and ideas come from people seeing others do it or being brought up to act in that way.
Racial hatred is not unique to people with low IQs and as I have mentioned, Hitler is a prime example. Some people are easier influenced by others but that is because of personality, not intellect.
It is not a black and white arguement and you can't go by one or two statistics, you have to look at both sides. It sounds very elitist to me.