malthrin comments on Parenting and Happiness - Less Wrong

20 Post author: jkaufman 03 October 2012 01:43PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (40)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: nykos 04 October 2012 11:50:20AM *  3 points [-]

Intelligent people are more likely to think on the consequences when deciding to have a child. But there is a prisoner's dilemma type of situation here:

One reason smart people forego reproduction is because they might feel children make them more unhappy overall for at least the first few years (a not unreasonable assumption). Or simply because they are not religious (smart religious people do still have lots of children) As a consequence, in 20 years, the average IQ of that society will fall (bar some policy reversals encouraging eugenic breeding, or advances in genetic engineering), as only the less intelligent breed. Since, all other things equal, smarter people perform better on their jobs, the average quality of services provided in that society (both public and private) goes down. So in the end everyone becomes more unhappy (even though unhappiness of a childless smart person resulting from societal dysgenics may not outweigh the temporary unhappiness from having a child)

Comment author: malthrin 18 October 2012 07:15:27PM 0 points [-]

IQ reverts to the mean across generations.

Comment author: wedrifid 19 October 2012 10:48:11AM 1 point [-]

Regresses, reversion would be overstating it.