A common belief among members of this community seems to be that long-term, humans are likely to increase in intelligence, knowledge, and general problem-solving ability. I would like to take a moment to argue for the opposite position. This is not a strongly held belief of mine, but as I don’t think I’ve seen this argument mentioned explicitly here before, it seems worthwhile to present a steel-manned version of it.

The argument for long-term increased human intelligence tends to rest on a few broad assumptions (some of these may be contingent on each other and some may not; I am not making a strong effort to further classify these assumptions):

genetic engineering for human enhancement will become available or even commonplace in the future. This, and better understanding of mental health care in general, will likely increase average intelligence.
Current and future technology will allow for better interfacing with the world’s existing body of knowledge, leading to more informed decision-making and more effective problem-solving.
Human knowledge and useful techniques tend to build on each other from generation to generation, and will continue to do so, allowing for work “on the shoulders of giants”.

All of these possibilities seem quite likely, and I don’t wish to directly argue against any of them. However, there is a massive competing factor that may shape the evolution of humanity, which I have not yet seen discussed in any depth: population growth dynamics.

The fact of the matter is, intelligent, well-educated people don’t tend to have that many children. There are countless possible factors for this, but it seems plausible to attribute this in part to belief (smarter people tend to have atheistic, more pessimistic outlooks on the future, on average), in part to effective contraceptive usage, and in part due to work culture (“having children in *this* economy? With these work hours??”). In contrast, less intelligent people tend to have far more children. Again, the exact factors are hard to know with any confidence, but it seems like this is due in large part to taking more spontaneous risks (thereby leading to reduced likelihood of using birth control), higher religiosity (many religions hold that having as many children as possible is a Divine Mandate, regardless of how hard it is on the family), and lesser concern about long-term financial iss...

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