Swedes seem to be doing just fine in both departments!
I think this was discussed in Dr. Stranglove
I can’t say there is a single fact in that entire post. Perhaps a kernel in item #2, but the rest is nonsense.
Another thing to keep in mind is that standards would have to be applied consistently for many generations in order for them to begin to have any kind of effect. Beauty, in particular, is a very fluid notion. What characteristics are judged “beautiful” seem to change very rapidly. Odds are that our great-great-grandchildren will have a very different idea of what is beautiful than we do. In evolutionary terms, the environment is changing so fast that selective pressure is insufficient to significantly alter allele frequency in the population.
just assortative mating is not enough. If you want results the single most important task would be to increase the number of babies per woman above the very low birth rate for the modern high IQ cohort. Good luck with that nowadays, what with frequent divorce and child support being awarded proportional to the father’s “imputed income”.
Well, that explains a few things…
IIRC, beauty is judged as much as anything by symettry - and it’s not just birth trauma - nutrition, sickness, etc. can impact development, especially if an infection strikes one spot (ear canal, eye area) during developmental years.
The other problem is that unlessyou are setting up a park somewhere with a fence and you are raising humans as poodles or thoroughbreds in the park, you have to reduce the number of those breeding outside your pool. You have to persuade/force women to breed with the people you choose, and this regimen has to last centuries and stay focussed. If you have an organization which has access to a pool of women unable to object to being bred, it probably won’t take more than a few years before it strays from its primary mission to end up providing free entertaintment for the bosses of the organization, regardless of their suitability for the mission prime…
Another problems is that humans (especially males) may not be selective for the characteristics you think are best. I think it was Helen Gurley Brown who famously pointed out that men have limited discrimination on the appearance of their partner “Men will schtupp mud…”
You’re probably not going to get a lot of people to sign up for this breeding program. People in today’s world aren’t generally willing to turn over the decision of who they will have sex with to someone else, given that they have the option of making those decisions on their own. This is going to be a problem in a few centuries, when most people in your breeding population are related to each other. You’re likely to end up with higher incidences of recessive genetic diseases due to founder effect.
People who are both intelligent and attractive tend to do just fine finding people to have sex with on their own. What’s the advantage to them of signing up for a project like this? Most of them aren’t going to be willing to severely limit their choice of potential sex partners for something as nebulous as the good of the species. We tried that in the US with laws against miscegenation. There were still mixed-race people born when those laws were in effect.
Having and raising kids costs money. That’s one of the reasons why intelligent people tend to have fewer kids. Who’s going to pay all the costs of the additional kids?
And just like having a pool of women available fro the taking, having a pool of money for someone if you “qualify” for the project based on intellect or looks(subjective!!) is a recipe for corruption and derailing the project.
heh
I LIVED in Wyoming for 5 years. I am struggling to remember an attractive woman. 
Most of these (Miss Wyoming) look fine to me.
Maybe you just weren’t hanging around the attractive women.
Or they were avoiding you! 
I posted more in joke but there is some truth behind it
It was a curious thing about Wyoming that I noticed while living there. There seemed to be NO attractive women. I even had people visit me and I didn’t bring it up but then they would observe this.
The teeny bopper high school kids had their fair share of attractive girls…but they seemed to disappear after reaching adulthood.
After I left Wyoming I looked up the demographics of where I lived. 72% Male/28% female. That’s almost 3-1! I think what happened is that all the remotely good looking girls got the hell out of there young and all the boys stuck around. The girls that stayed had no incentive to keep up appearances since they had plenty of guys around.
That’s my theory and I’m stickin to it
So that’s why all them Brokeback cowboys in Wyoming turned gay!
I think the best qualified person to manage this project would be an immortal who can’t be corrupted by money or sex. Um… good luck with that.
Good looking people who only breed with other good-looking people don’t necessarily produce even better looking people. (Cite: Jamie Lee Curtis.)
This is a response to whoever suggested that nice-looking people meet up in LA and produce even nicer-looking people, i.e., Suri Cruise. But not always.
Strictly in the interests of science, I hereby offer my smart good-looking self for research purposes. Now somebody go find me a smart, good-looking female research assistant or three…
SS
I’m afraid that study would be impossible. You’d have to also copulate with said smart, hot research assistants which would of course we couldn’t ask you to do, even for the noble purposes of research.
I think my example of Rumer Willis is a better one; she looks freaky and I wouldn’t screw her with a rented dick. Both of her parents are widely considered attractive though.
Jamie Lee Curtis is attractive, and was more so when younger; she may not be the sum of the attractiveness of Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, but she’s not materially uglier than they were either.
Exactly how do nose bobs, boob enhancements, bleached hair, various body tucks and nips enter the gene pool?
And Intelligence /= smart. I’ve known and worked with dozens of intelligent people who have difficulty navigating daily tasks, making decisions, and interacting with other people. The old cartoon of the geek wearing the [insert college to be mocked here] T-shirt pushing on the door marked “PULL” is not just a trope.