# Should humans with low IQ be..... **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 26, 2016, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-humans-with-low-iq-be/747204 "2016-02-26T15:25:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![casdave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c6cbf5/32.png) [@casdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/casdave)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2016, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-humans-with-low-iq-be/747204/81 "2016-02-28T18:51:20Z")
I would like to assure the OP that we have no such intention, and that you need not worry about a possible execution, I promise, we won’t let them get you. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2016, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-humans-with-low-iq-be/747204/82 "2016-02-28T19:11:37Z")
> [@dougie\_monty](#): > > When I took a psychology course at El Camino College, in Torrance, California, in Fall 1970, we used a 1974 edition of a textbook written mostly by a psychologist named George W. Crane, who had a Ph. D. and an M. D., and two others, apparently his sons, who had doctor degrees of their own. Here is a commentary from his book on this thread’s issue: > > **The Social Frankenstein Producing the Socialism Trend.** In our civilized nations we are now witnessing a reversal of the age-old rule about the survival of the fit. Instead, the unfit are beginning to overpopulate us. A century ago _[Crane meant this to be about 1850],_ the good stock produced large families, as the feeble-minded still do. Suppose your great-great-grandfather had eight children, like the feeble-minded Kallikak family in the same neighborhood. Bothe families may have suffered typhoid and diphtheria, scarlet fever and the other children’s diseases. But because the intelligent family was a bit more provident and better fed, let’s assume that only three of its eight children died before adulthood, while four of the Kallikaks succumbed. In this situation, your great-great-grandfather thus saw five of his offspring mature against four for the Kallikaks. The survival of the fit was still in evidence. > > But limitation of the size of the families has become more apparent in the civilized nations nowadays, especially among the better-educated and more intelligent stock. This has reached such an extreme state that our college population today often doesn’t even reproduce itself, although the sub normal continue to breed like guinea pigs. Because we now vaccinate and inoculate the feeble-minded children, furnish them free food and shelter as relief wards of the state, and even screen them out by psychological tests so they can’t go to war, they actually lead a coddled, sheltered existence unheard of in all previous history. They can’t die from epidemics or starvation or battle injuries! So the subnormals are becoming a unique social Frankenstein, supported by the normal stock whose taxes keep increasing meanwhile until the size of the normal family is further reduced. > > Politically, too, this is becoming a grave condition, for the subnormals can vote, even if they can only make an “X” on a ballot and are unable to sign their own names. Suppose we start out with two American couples and carry them through 100 years. One is of sound intelligent stock whom we’ll call “Normal.” The other is “Subnormnal.” We’ll allow a breeding cycle of 25 years, although the feeble-minded actually start mating in the teens, with or without benefit of marriage. Even incest is no great deterrent to them. Our juvenile homes are full of such pregnant girls, many of whom are bearing offspring to their own brothers or fathers. We’ll be ultraconsetrvative, too, and limit the family of the “Subnormal” to four children. The “Normal” will have two children per generation. Assume, too, that all offspring live to adulthood and reproduce their own kind. Now examine the data and see how the “Subnormal” offspring will be outvoting your “Normal” stock. The two couple marry in 1975\* [dates changed to accommodate this edition]\* when they offset each other’s votes in a ratio of 1:1. > 1975: Subnormal couple 2; Normal couple 2; Voting ratio 1:1. > 2000: Subnormal couple 4; Normal couple 2; Voting ratio 2:1. > 2025: Subnormal couple 16; Normal couple 4; Voting ratio 4:1. > 2050: Subnormal couple 64; Normal couple 8; Voting ratio 8:1. > 2075: Subnormal couple 256; Normal couple 16; Voting ratio 16:1. > > In one generation of 25 years, therefore, the children of the 3,500,000 college students of the U.S.A. are snowed under at the polls in a 2:1 ratio by the offspring of an equal group of 3,500,000 abnormals who have far outbred them! No wonder demagogues can win elections with beautiful promises of giving impossible pensions and more free medicine, or even a free automobile to every poor couple! The subnormals forget readily, so even if these pre-election promises are not fully kept, their votes can be won the next time simply by varying the nature of the promised rewards. Subnormals naturally want something for nothing. They will even sell out the future heritage of their children, even as the Indians traded Manhattan for a few dime-store beads (anachronism) and some firewater. For even the top level of the feeble-minded (moron group) has only eleven-year-old mental ability. It lives for today and seldom thinks ahead of the next meal. > > When Benjamin Franklin was eagerly asked what kind of government we were to have, he replied, “You have a republic, if you can keep it.” He recognized the precarious nature of this remarkable political system, for he understood how easily mobs can be seduced against their own ultimate good. Hitler and Mussolini and other European dictators subconsciously sensed this same dangerous trend and resorted to fascism to control the masses without letting them have a free vote. In [the Soviet Union], the Communist party is also really an oligarchy for it restricts voting to its few million members out of the total population of approximately 250,000,000 [Soviet citizens]. The Roman Republic rotted internally because of the degeneration of intelligence and morality, for the populace began to sell its votes for wheat and thus lazily waited for the highest bidder. Politicians have lately begun to express bewilderment at their inability to predict the outcome of elections. They need to recognize the Frankenstein that has doubled in size in the last [few generations]. The churches, too, must realize that ethics depend on high intelligence, as to trigonometry and other refined cerebral functions, so the zooming percentages of subnormals will be a serious religious threat. For stupid mobs not only can be incited to lynch a man, but they can also be agitated against the churches and especially the tax-free nature of church property. Everybody is thus in danger when demagogues can appeal to subnormals to win elections. Socialism came as a surprise to Britain, too, for the rapidly mountain subnormal voting population can turn on any benevolent economic system that has nurtured it, and then actually destroy its benefactor as Frankenstein killed his highly intelligent creator. > > From _Psychology Applied,_ by George W. Crane, Ph. D., M.D.; Daniel B. Crane, D.D.S.; David G. Crane, J. D., M. D. This edition © 1974 by George W. Crane. pp. 678-680. (Bolding in original. Bracketing mine.) How do they define “subnormals”? Traditionally that has often meant “colored people”, “immigrants” “homosexuals”, “Jews”, “Irish”, “low income” or “people with certain shaped head”, but did they provide a more scientific definition? The theme of dysgenic pressure creating a future dystopian society of morons and incompetents has been explored in various works such as Idiocracy, Wall-E, the Time Machine, and the 2016 United States Presidential Election. But is there any scientific basis to “stupids” eventually outbreeding the intelligent and overwhelming society. Because from what I’ve read, education and intelligence levels have largely been increasing. ---
**Author:** ![nicky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/f0a364/32.png) [@nicky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nicky)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2016, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-humans-with-low-iq-be/747204/83 "2016-02-28T21:56:46Z")
And regression to the mean. And voting has fuck all to do with intelligence. Its ideology and self interest. ---
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2016, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-humans-with-low-iq-be/747204/84 "2016-02-28T23:40:06Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > How do they define “subnormals”? Traditionally that has often meant “colored people”, “immigrants” “homosexuals”, “Jews”, “Irish”, “low income” or “people with certain shaped head”, but did they provide a more scientific definition? > > The theme of dysgenic pressure creating a future dystopian society of morons and incompetents has been explored in various works such as Idiocracy, Wall-E, the Time Machine, and the 2016 United States Presidential Election. But is there any scientific basis to “stupids” eventually outbreeding the intelligent and overwhelming society. Because from what I’ve read, education and intelligence levels have largely been increasing. Dr. Crane was not referring to any of the groups you mentioned as being “subnormal.” You’ll noticed he mentioned the name “Kallikak.” This name, like “Jukes,” was a fictional name for a family that included what we would now call “dysfunctional” people…of _any_ race, color, gender, sexual orientation, or whatever. They are mentioned in Wikipedia, which gives full documentation for the existence of the family, and adds a new wrinkle: That the defective nature of the family originated because of fetal alcohol syndrome, shortly before World War I. The dangers of alcohol to expectant mothers had been suspected ages before that, but not formally defined until about 1973. In the Wikipedia entry under “Kallikak” in the References heading are several sources for this data. Whatever the origin, the ramifications of the Social Frankenstein that Dr. Crane described come off as very real. As far as voting is concerned, such people would be easy prey for a politician or demagogue with ulterior motives who seeks to sway a voter base of large numbers but questionable intelligence. (On a lesser scale, it was claimed that in the 1920 Presidential election, the first one after the Women’s Suffrage Amendment went into effect, the handsome Warren G. Harding defeated James M. Cox, a balding man who wore glasses. And we remember how Harding turned out as a president. I don’t agree with this myself, but my eighth-grade teacher–a woman–told us so.) ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [February 29, 2016, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-humans-with-low-iq-be/747204/85 "2016-02-29T02:43:16Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > This has already been happening for millions of years, and will continue to happen regardless of what we do. How do you think we got to be so smart in the first place? The mechanism is that stupid people do stupid things that get themselves killed. Which they make up for with breeding prowess. Intelligence is not necessary for evolutionary success. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [February 29, 2016, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-humans-with-low-iq-be/747204/86 "2016-02-29T15:36:47Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > **Moderator Action** > > Definitely not a factual question. Let’s give this a shot in GD. > > Moving thread from General Questions to Great Debates. You should probably skip the middleman and go straight to the pit. ---
**Author:** ![lance\_strongarm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/87869e/32.png) [@lance\_strongarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lance_strongarm)\ **Post date:** [February 29, 2016, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-humans-with-low-iq-be/747204/87 "2016-02-29T15:44:40Z")
> [@Nansbread1](#): > > Slowly erased from the Earth? > > If a biological mechanism for eradicating humans with low intelligence becomes available in the future and it is painless and (works bypreventing such humans from having children) then is there any valid reason why it should not be implemented to > > A) reduce the worlds population and conserve natural resources > B) allow a more intelligent human race to flourish on earth No. Intelligence is not the only virtue. I know plenty of low-IQ people who are better people, and contribute more to humanity, than some smart people. Let’s find a genetic test for being an asshole instead, then we can talk. ---
**Author:** ![lance\_strongarm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/87869e/32.png) [@lance\_strongarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lance_strongarm)\ **Post date:** [February 29, 2016, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-humans-with-low-iq-be/747204/88 "2016-02-29T15:47:08Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > Wait what? Who decided the world’s population was going to peek between 2050 and 2075? You misspelled “peak!” No breeding for you! ---
**Author:** ![lance\_strongarm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/87869e/32.png) [@lance\_strongarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lance_strongarm)\ **Post date:** [February 29, 2016, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-humans-with-low-iq-be/747204/89 "2016-02-29T15:49:03Z")
> [@boffking](#): > > Do you know who _else_ tried to do something like this? Yes. The United States tried it. We had forced sterilization polices in many states. We gave the idea to some guy named Hitler later. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [February 29, 2016, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-humans-with-low-iq-be/747204/90 "2016-02-29T15:55:33Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > Pshew. Made the cut. > > Let them eat cake. > > What is wrong with not smart people? or are you talking about mentally retarded people? People who are mentally retarded, when they do have children, which is not usually, don’t tend to have retarded children, because most forms of retardation are not genetic. Hypoxia at birth, prematurity, and the use of alcohol during pregnancy cause WAY more cases of retardation than genetic causes, and that includes chromosomal causes, like Down Syndrome, which is a fairly common cause. > > I worked with disabled people for years, and I knew many, many retarded people. Not one had parents who were also retarded. A few had parents who weren’t very bright. Some had parents who had Ph.Ds. Parents of retarded people pretty much fell along the bell curve, just like you’d expect. > > So, if we aren’t targeting retarded people, just people with low IQs, what are we talking about? > > We’re talking about normal, healthy people. No one has ever shown that in normal, healthy people, IQ is an inborn, immalleable characteristic. It’s much better to target at-risk children for nutrition, head start-type programs, mentoring, and after-school activities that are stimulating. You can “get rid” of low IQ people by raising IQs. Now, you will still have ow IQ people, because IQ is based on a percentile ranking: if everybody goes up by 5%, everyone’s score remains the same, even though everyone is 5% smarter. > > FWIW, a “stupid” person probably has better general knowledge than an erudite person from say, the year 1250, and I’m not even talking about knowing thing like the sun is the center of the solar system. I mean a person with an 8th grade education, who is a C student, probably knows more math than Chaucer did, can read a local map (even if he doesn’t know where Iraq is, or what the capital of Poland is), and can read well enough to text while driving. > > Keeping low IQ people from reproducing won’t do anything. There will always be an underclass of undernourished, undereducated people, who probably could be accomplishing more had they been born in different circumstances, and may not test well, and might get targeted for the next 10%, or whatever, who don’t get to reproduce, but people don’t get smarter on average, if that’s the goal, and why is that a goal, anyway? there is already a competition for resources, why make resources even more scarce by creating even more competition? I think I agree with everything here. How do you feel about selecting for clearly genetic things? ---
**Author:** ![lance\_strongarm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/87869e/32.png) [@lance\_strongarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lance_strongarm)\ **Post date:** [February 29, 2016, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-humans-with-low-iq-be/747204/91 "2016-02-29T15:58:34Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > Those of below average intelligence have a roll in our society. I’ll leave examples to the readers imagination, but _somebody_ has to do this kind of work … and the dumber the better. You misspelled “role.” No breeding for you! ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [February 29, 2016, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-humans-with-low-iq-be/747204/92 "2016-02-29T16:03:05Z")
> [@somepumpkin](#): > > So, in the utopian world that you (OP) suggest, who collects your garbage? Who works your slaughterhouses? Who does all that crappy stuff that you don’t have to think about? Of course. We should maintain a population of gammas and deltas to do the tedious stuff that would drive a smarter person insane. > [@](#): > > I’m not saying that everyone in these industries is low IQ. My point is that society requires that some of us are the NOT the highest achievers or brightest bulbs. I don’t think it does. With enough smart people you can invent ways to collect garbage and work slaughterhouses without an army of people doing dangerous mundane work. > [@](#): > > I get where you’re coming from, though and I think you’ve a valid question. I, too, would like for humans to be a little smarter than we are. But it’s a complex issue. I am getting confused about the scope of this proposal. Are we saying we should sterilize anyone with an IQ below 80? or are we saying we should sterlize people who have Down’s syndrome? ---
**Author:** ![lance\_strongarm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/87869e/32.png) [@lance\_strongarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lance_strongarm)\ **Post date:** [February 29, 2016, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-humans-with-low-iq-be/747204/93 "2016-02-29T16:03:08Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > What is wrong with not smart people? or are you talking about mentally retarded people? People who are mentally retarded, when they do have children, which is not usually, don’t tend to have retarded children, because most forms of retardation are not genetic. Hypoxia at birth, prematurity, and the use of alcohol during pregnancy cause WAY more cases of retardation than genetic causes, and that includes chromosomal causes, like Down Syndrome, which is a fairly common cause. And don’t forget that part of the problem has been that we simply didn’t know how to educate people with intellectual disabilities, and therefore underestimated their ability to learn (and didn’t try, making it a self-fulfilling prophecy). Today, there are people with Down syndrome, for instance, who go to college, own their own businesses, play multiple musical instruments, have acting and modeling careers, swim the English Channel, and do things many of us normal IQ types fail to do. So we can’t even know what intelligence is and who has it and what it’s worth. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [February 29, 2016, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-humans-with-low-iq-be/747204/94 "2016-02-29T16:28:04Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > I don’t think it’s an interesting idea. Take the time to consider people you know personnally, and I’m pretty sure that, like me, you’ll think of a significant number of not very bright people who are an asset and bring positive things into this world, and a significant number of smart people we would be better off without. > We have way more worrying issues to solve and more urgent tasks than improving the population’s average IQ. Martin Shkreli by all accounts is a very smart guy. So there are obviously smart people the world would be better off without. The cost to society of a person with Down’s syndrome is about $250,000 over their lifetime. I don’t think there is actually a problem with people with Down’s syndrome procreating too much. The cost to society of a person with some kinds of genetic predispositions to heart disease is significantly higher. So high that it easily exceeds the net cost to society of someone with down syndrome. If we are trying to hit people with normal genes but low IQ, I think youa re going to run into all sorts of problems. Take a look back and see which groups had low IQ during the height of eugenics. There was a significant racist/nativist element to it all. Asians and Jews are particularly good examples of groups that had low IQ at the time. ---
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [February 29, 2016, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-humans-with-low-iq-be/747204/95 "2016-02-29T16:40:49Z")
> [@lance\_strongarm](#): > > You misspelled “peak!” No breeding for you! I will not get into this. I misspelled a few words in Dr. Crane’s article–which I reproduced by hand–so I have no room to talk. :o ---
**Author:** ![lance\_strongarm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/87869e/32.png) [@lance\_strongarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lance_strongarm)\ **Post date:** [February 29, 2016, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-humans-with-low-iq-be/747204/96 "2016-02-29T16:42:48Z")
> [@dougie\_monty](#): > > I will not get into this. I misspelled a few words in Dr. Crane’s article–which I reproduced by hand–so I have no room to talk. :o Okay, never mind, you can reproduce. ---
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [February 29, 2016, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-humans-with-low-iq-be/747204/97 "2016-02-29T16:56:14Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > So how hard to you have to look? > > POW! BANG! ZOOM! 😃 Pretty bad! In order for me to be competitive, I’ll need everyone else to have an IQ in the low to mid double digits 😃 ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [February 29, 2016, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-humans-with-low-iq-be/747204/98 "2016-02-29T16:57:11Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > Wait what? Who decided the world’s population was going to peek between 2050 and 2075? It’s based on current trends. You can basically Google ‘when will the worlds population peak (or I suppose you could ask it when it will peek instead :p)’ and get a ton of articles on the subject such as [this](http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=98371): > [@](#): > > Despite a growth burst that more than doubled the global human population over the past 50 years, a study released today predicts it will peak at 9 billion by the year 2070 and then begin to decline. > > “People thought for many years that we would breed ourselves out of existence,” says Warren Sanderson, a professor of economics and history at State University of New York at Stonybrook and co-author of the study appearing in this week’s Nature. "They thought we’d produce so many children, there would be no standing room left on the planet. But now it seems our population will peak. > > “And that’s an optimistic message.” > > The study is the first to pinpoint an end to the burgeoning population. The scientists estimate there is an 85 percent chance the species will taper to about 8.4 billion by the year 2100. The current world population is counted at 6.1 billion. But there are tons of different estimates on when it will peak, how many people that will mean and what effect it will have. I just gave what seems to be the most accepted, or at least most used figures there. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [February 29, 2016, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-humans-with-low-iq-be/747204/99 "2016-02-29T17:06:58Z")
> [@dougie\_monty](#): > > In one generation of 25 years, therefore, the children of the 3,500,000 college students of the U.S.A. are snowed under at the polls in a 2:1 ratio by the offspring of an equal group of 3,500,000 abnormals who have far outbred them!.. Well, your beloved Dr. Crane wrote this almost two “Breeding cycles” ago. Please provide evidence the average IQ in the Western world has declined. ---
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [February 29, 2016, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-humans-with-low-iq-be/747204/100 "2016-02-29T17:11:50Z")
Well, I confess I wouldn’t know how to do that…do you? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-humans-with-low-iq-be/747204.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-humans-with-low-iq-be/747204.md?page=6)