Is intelligence a genetically favoured trait?

The role of genetics in determining a person's intelligence is a controversial subject. Few would deny that genes play some role, but many are uncomfortable with the idea that genes determine intelligence. For if intelligence is a genetic trait the implication is that some people are born to be smart, others are not, and education and upbringing cannot change it. The results of scores of studies and contentious debate in the scientific community have produced little consensus about the relationship between genetics and intelligence. At least part of the problem stems from the fact that "intelligence" is defined differently by different people.

Although this issue has been argued since the 1870s—when Francis Galton proposed his controversial and arguably racist notions about the heritability of intelligence—the debate was reignited during the 1990s when Richard Herrnstein (1930–94) and Charles Murray (1943–) published The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (New York: Touchstone Books, 1996). Herrnstein and Murray expressed their beliefs that between 40% and 80% of intelligence is determined by genetics and that it is intelligence levels, not environmental circumstances, poverty, or lack of education, that are at the root of many of our social problems. Critics argued that Herrnstein and Murray not only manipulated and misinterpreted data to support their contention that intelligence levels differ among ethnic groups, but also reintroduced outdated and harmful racial stereotypes. Many observers did agree with Herrnstein and Murray's premises that intellect is spread unevenly among individuals and population subgroups, that innate intelligence is distributed through the entire population on a "bell curve," with most people near to the average and fewer at the high and low ends, and even that the distribution varies by race and ethnicity. But few have been willing to accept the idea that intelligence is entirely genetically encoded, permanently fixed, and unresponsive to environmental influences.

One traditional measure of intelligence is a standardized intelligence quotient (IQ) test, which measures an individual's ability to reason and solve problems. Nearly all studies about the link between intelligence and genetics rely on results obtained from IQ tests, which generally provide an overall score along with measures of verbal ability and performance ability. Although there are several versions of IQ tests available, test takers generally perform comparably on all of them, presumably indicating that they all measure comparable aspects of cognitive ability. Critics of IQ tests as measures of intelligence contend that they do not measure all abilities in the complex realm of intelligence. They observe that the tests measure one small segment of the diverse abilities that comprise intelligence, evaluate only analytic abilities, fail to assess creative or practical abilities, and measure only a small sample of the skills that define the domain of intelligent human behavior.

Intelligent people IN GENERAL don't care about their looks and are more into making money and having normal hobbies. Lesser intelligent people go to parties, have fun, and are on shows like 16 and pregnant often. If you look at lower intelligent or less developed societies, families have 10+ kids sometimes. This is because they hope some will make it, while more developed societies learn that they can get away with having 1-3 kids because they have a higher chance of survival and success.

About Ostracising intelligent thinkings, I actually had to google what that meant. If you think about it, in school the more alpha, less intelligent males make fun of the intelligent people because they are pretty much jealous of the smart kids. They may not think they are but basic psychology says they do. When people get older, intelligent people are not ostracised as much, except for the ones that grew up without much social interaction so they don't fit in as well. But if you really think about it, the intelligent people make more money.. Theoretically. This means they are potentially better mates for women so unless they are really weird, intelligent guys normally get married.

I could explain a bit better but I am really tired

Society ostracizes intelligence mainly because they can. Highly intelligent people (IQ over 125) are a minority at less than 1 person in 20. This is the same ratio, 1 in 20, as full-on retards with IQ's under 80. Sorry, retard is not PC for this generation. We can call them mentally disabled. Since high-intelligence is uncommon, it becomes something that the average person wishes to mock - mainly because people are jealous of highly intelligent people.

Add to that the fact that before the information age began in the 1950's, high intelligence was not a very useful skill. It would not help you work in a factory, dig ditches, or do any other low-smarts manual labor. So if you were not born to a wealthy family that could put you into a position of power at a young age, having a lot of smarts didn't do you any good in those days. Today we have professional management, law, engineering and physician colleges that are now affordable to the common man - so intelligence becomes a way a person can improve their lot in life and gain a strong, fertile spouse.

High IQ also positively correlates with both survival rates and longevity. People with a high IQ are less likely to die in accidents or to crime, and live longer than people with a normal IQ. That's to 81 for men and 85 to women (that was back in 1991, IQ based studies are infrequent). It's interesting that men gain 7 years of life with a high IQ while women only gain 4. That's because death risk-factors in young men are driven by stupid decisions that get them killed, while women tend to die from childbirth.

What people don't remember about evolution is that it occurs in two forms. Darwinian evolutions focuses on small changes over time, driven by sexual selection. This is what we are most familiar with. Darwin also allows that bottle-neck evolution occurs when a species is put under strong survival stress.

73,000 years ago, humans experianced a bottleneck during the time of the Toba eruption. The theory is that a short-term global cooling event occured that wiped out most of the human species. During this mini-ice age, plants died and the wild game that humans hunted were wiped out. The "average" humans kept doing the same thing, did not adapt, probably following herds further and further inland and away from the oceans - eventually to starve to death. The "intelligent" humans tried new tricks, possibly fishing or digging up roots. It is the smart humans that survived this short, two or three generation bottleneck that wiped out the common rabble. So after the catasrophe, the "average" human was a lot smarter than before. Within a couple of thousand years, we find that homo sapiens is suddenly expanding out of Africa and into the rest of the world. Before the bottleneck, humans in total were too stupid to try anything new. Afterwards, humans are smart, adaptive and more aggressive than before. They are "fitter" for surviving.

Today, the dumb people breed like rabbits, having three, four, six or more children. Highly intelligent people don't, having on average only 2.1 children. So each generation, the "average" of all humans does get progressively dumber. Luckily, dumb people also die faster during wars and catastrophe. After all, when somebody says, "Take this gun and run at that machine gun nest, I'll give you a medal for it!" Who do you think is going to do it, the guy with an 85 IQ, or the guy with the 140 IQ? Any smart general picks out his 140 IQ guys and puts them into R&D making new weapons, not the front lines. The same occurs during disease, starvation, almost anything that kills people by the tens or hundreds of millions. The dumb one's die first, the smart one's get protected.

>Is intelligence a genetically favoured trait?

Nope. This is why only one branch of the great apes developed intelligence and not all of them. Big brains are expensive to maintain.

High achievers in intellectual or artistic fields tend to have less children than average so it would not appear to be genetically favoured.