Apologies for the thread title. The phenomenon I ask about is a decline in intellectual tendencies across a generation for no obvious reason. This excludes situations where a particularly exceptionally brilliant parent or a mentally handicapped child naturally results in a major difference along with simple natural variations in IQ (ie regression to the mean). Nor do I merely mean a decline in educational level-someone whose parent had a doctorate may very well have a “decline” in educational level just because they went into another career field after their undergraduate education. What I refer to instead is the phenomenon of the children of parents who were intellectually inclined in the sense of having read widely and engaging in critical and original thinking failing to follow up on those traits. Have you known any good examples of this either personally or otherwise? What causes this sort of degeneration-is it the failure of the parents and others to instill these traits or simply the natural tendency of the children?
This is the IMHO forum, not Great Debates, so I’m not going to use the C-word (ite). IMO, this “degeneracy” is something you your own, lone self are giving your attention to, self-biasedly selecting out of the vast and encompassing bombardment of information that assault each of us daily. I personally do not see it, despite popular culture’s apparently unending default design function of convincing us all that your perception is accurate.
So let me ask you : How many representatives of this “decline in intellectual tendencies across a generation” do you personally know ?
I never said (nor do I think) that this is some sort of wide societal trend or otherwise some insidious threat to civilization. The fact that this is a fairly rare phenomenon (I know of very few people who fit this bill) is part of the reason why I ask.
So what you are asking is why do some smart people have stupid kids?
So, if it is not a general trend, examples of it are just examples of the sort of random variance you would expect. People are different from one another. Children have a different mixture of genes from either of their parents, and also have different life experiences that give them different attitudes and set them on a different path through life. Sometimes this will lead them to be less “intellectual” than their parents, sometimes more so. Sometimes they may be semi-deliberately “rebelling” against the intellectualism (or lack of intellectualism) of their parents (or some other aspect of their personalities), especially if they perceive the parents as failures, or unhappy, in some way. Others might admire their parents and try to follow their path, but some of these might feel inadequate to do so, and give up. But all this could apply to any traits the parents might have. Children generally resemble their parents in some ways but not in others. There is no mystery here.
On first reading the OP, I wanted to jump on it like the others have, but I see now the OP is not trying to make any point about “kids these days” or whatever, just speculating on how a child of intellectual parents may not turn out that way themselves.
I don’t know many clear-cut examples, but I know one or two people who have parents who were highly-renowned engineers or doctors and they themselves are doing relatively low-level jobs such as entry-level market researcher (but not stacking shelves or that kind of extreme…).
From the sound of things, such parents made studying seem like a chore that would never go away, and a one frustrating at that, as their parents could find fault in whatever they did.
Well, one hypothesis is that highly intellectual parents who make a big deal of their intellectualism such that they stand out in a negative way unintentionally drive their children away from intellectualism. You see this with religion.
But I’d say “regression of the mean” is the most likely hypothesis. Even if both your parents are uber geniuses, you have a higher chance of being merely above average than being an uber genius, simply because a lot of things (genes, environmental exposures, etc.) have to line up perfectly for their exact intelligence to be passed down to you. All it takes is one break in the chain (you inherit one of the “dumb” grandmother’s chromosomes, you receive a methylated “intelligence” gene from your stressed-out father, you experience one prenatal viral infection, you fall down the stairs one too many times in toddlerhood) for your cognitive ability to shift “down”.
This is just an example of regression toward the mean:
If there is some random variation in the occurrence of anything, a high value of it will usually be followed by a value closer to the average (and similarly for a low value). If you give a test to a class and then a second test, the top scorers will tend to do a little worse on the next test and the bottom scorers will tend to do a little better on the next test. If you look at the teams who do best in one week in a sport, the top ones will do a little worse the next week and the bottom ones will tend to do a little better the next week. And now I see that monstro has already mentioned regression toward the mean. Really, Qin Shi Huangdi, all you’re talking about is just random variation.
Hey I knew a few kids at school who fit this profile. High achieving parents producing underachieving kids were actually quite common in my high school. But you’d expect as much since high school age is prime time to rebell against all that your parents are.
I came to see it was more than that for some. Their over achieving parents (highly intellectual) spent a LOT of time pursuing, advancing, or staying current with demanding careers. Often leaving little time for meaningful emotional time with the family. It was not uncommon for the parents to justify this/ alleviate their guilt by providing every material thing. New cars, the latest expensive toys, great holidays, summer homes, expensive special interest camps, etc.
The child somewhat understandably, grows up valuing personal connection, and family as far, far, more important than a high status job. Often the parents remind their sneering teens, their work has provided all this luxury! Whereas kids scream at parents, but you’ve been divorced twice, one kid won’t talk to you, you cheat on your wife, drink too much, and don’t seem very happy, so what has wealth and status really brought you?
Kids raised in poverty are often driven to secure financial futures so they’ll never be poor again. These kids instead left their homes driven to never put family, love, relationship behind wealth or career. Kind of understandable really.
High or low achievement are not necessarily indicators of intellect. Unless the OP has measured the intellect of the generations, there is no basis to make such a generalization.
Though I fully believe many aspects of being intellectual likely have genetic components, I don’t believe genetics is the whole thing
Motivation is a factor
Inclination is a factor
Certain illnesses and exposure to certain television shows, perhaps entire networks undermines motivation, inclination.
Some people are very intellectually inclined to spite serious learning disabilities, but definitely a learning disability could sour one’s willingness to be into intellectual pursuits.
These are just stabs at your question. Each case you wonder about probable involves hundreds of issues.
Kids aren’t clones of their parents. Plain and simple.
First off, it’s only been in the past 75 years or so that most people even had an opportunity to engage in jobs that allowed much if any “intellectual” activity, either on or off the job, so any examples will only be, at best, two generations old.
Secondly, I know highly educated people in careers that require a lot of brain power, who have little or no intellectual curiosity. I knew an engineer who literally did not own a single book that wasn’t engineering-related. Did his mad engineering skills make him an “intellectual” or did his lack of interest outside his field mean he wasn’t intellectual?
And what about people who choose to spend their leisure time by doing something that doesn’t require intellectual skill – whether it’s running marathons or volunteering at a soup kitchen? Does that represent a degeneration?
If this didn’t happen, then the only possible alternative is for every individual in every generation to be smarter than his or her parents, which would lead to a runaway explosion of intellectual greatness. Other than myself, I don’t see any evidence of this happening.
Aw, honey, you’re fine just the way you are.
Thanks for mentioning the educational level exception. One of the most obvious cases where the exception would apply would be a parent with a professional doctorate such as an MD, JD, or DDS having a child who chooses a profession for which the typical practitioner’s degree is classified as a master’s, such as librarian (Master of Library Science) or social worker (Master of Social Work). A librarian isn’t stupider than a physician - they have chosen a different field involving a different intellectual journey, one for which the powers that be have decided not to inflate degrees as much.
But I must ask - how do you assess “intellectually inclined in the sense of having read widely and engaging in critical and original thinking” outside of a formal degree program? Sure, you can make a wild qualitative estimate, but how do you do a halfway rigorous quantitative assessment over whether Billy’s passion for reading, translating, and role-playing fairly obscure medieval French literature is or is not higher than Jim’s intense interest in developing and testing more efficient drone planes and scripting them to do more complex acrobatics?
Intellectualism in general is in decline. Or so my parents told me.
my (paternal) grandfather was a coal miner. my father was an auto mechanic. I’m an engineer who has read Orwell, Kant, Austen, Achebe, etc.
what were you saying again?
Flynn effect. An IQ of 100 today is roughly equal to an IQ of 125 in the 1920s.