# Will intelligence be selected against? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 13, 2011, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-intelligence-be-selected-against/596177 "2011-09-13T17:47:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-intelligence-be-selected-against/596177/21 "2011-09-13T20:02:23Z")
> [@ModernPrimate](#): > > I hope intelligence IS selected against. Intelligence is what caused/is continuing to cause the destruction of the world. > > Intelligence doesn’t mean what you think/do is right or more valid or is the best coarse of action, it just means you have more brain cells. Too much intelligence in one species is a plague on the earth, and I would be happy if all humans got wiped from the earth and allowed our relatives the other great apes and other life like ours to continue on in peace. Beware the beast Man, for he is the Devil’s pawn. Alone among God’s primates, he kills for sport or lust or greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother’s land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him; drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of death. ---
**Author:** ![bldysabba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecccb3/32.png) [@bldysabba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bldysabba)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-intelligence-be-selected-against/596177/22 "2011-09-13T20:04:09Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Fewer than whom? Are you comparing birthrates **within** individual societies or between them? > > Sure, there are lots of poor people in third-world countries having lots of children. But I doubt that the intelligence/wealth correlation is exactly the same in third-world countries as in developed countries. You can’t just make the assumption “lower wealth correlates with lower intelligence” across the board worldwide, even if it may be true for certain local populations. Comparing within societies. This relationship holds true pretty much for any society too. Increasing education and wealth , particularly for women, leads to lower fertility rates. This has, since the 1990’s, been the major thrust of most development programs worldwide. And lower intelligence does correlate with lower wealth across the board. This isn’t an assumption at all. Even studies that try to refute the connection point only to a lack of a causal connection. That’s not very important here. > [@Kimstu](#): > > I also wonder how we can draw any definite conclusions about the heritability of intelligence if we don’t understand its specific genetic factors. Sure, on average smarter parents tend to have smarter children and dumber parents tend to have dumber children, but how uncommon is it to find a smart kid from a dumb family or a dumb kid from a smart family? If individual variation frequently exceeds average differences between groups, isn’t that basically all it takes to keep the gene pools a-mixin’? You seem to consider that there is no mobility between groups. A smart child born to dumb parents would, on average, become relatively richer and better educated and have fewer kids. > [@Kimstu](#): > > And finally, if such selective pressures do have a noticeable effect on populations, then I wonder why they don’t seem to have made humans more beautiful on average over time. Sure, we have modern medical advances that have given modern humans better nutrition and better dental care and various medical treatments, but those are all improvements in nurture, not genes. Genetically speaking, the average crowd of people that you see in the street today doesn’t seem significantly, intrinsically more endowed with physical beauty than the average crowd you see in a painting from four hundred years ago. But since we know that human sexual selection favors physical beauty, why haven’t we as a species become fundamentally much better-looking? I would say that on an evolutionary time scale, we probably are more beautiful today than we used to be. The most handsome caveperson of yester-year would be less appealing to us than the least comely of our contemporary humans. The tentative answers seem to be more or less the same for beauty as for intelligence: > [@Kimstu](#): > > Speculation 1) Other factors play enough of a role in reproduction that [beauty/intelligence] isn’t decisive when it comes to selecting mates. College graduates overwhelmingly marry college grads. Within this population many other factors would no doubt influence who marries whom, but by and large the variation would be low. ---
**Author:** ![bldysabba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecccb3/32.png) [@bldysabba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bldysabba)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-intelligence-be-selected-against/596177/23 "2011-09-13T20:05:36Z")
> [@JoelUpchurch](#): > > we will probably be the last generation that will be stuck with genes that chance happens to give us. Pretty good point ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-intelligence-be-selected-against/596177/24 "2011-09-13T20:07:15Z")
> [@bldysabba](#): > > Pretty good point It’s absurd. Even in the richest country in the world, that isn’t true. ---
**Author:** ![JoelUpchurch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f05b48/32.png) [@JoelUpchurch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoelUpchurch)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-intelligence-be-selected-against/596177/25 "2011-09-13T20:27:41Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > It’s absurd. Even in the richest country in the world, that isn’t true. Is it your contention that the technology won’t exist by 2040? I didn’t claim the technology exists now. I said that it will be available in one generation. ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-intelligence-be-selected-against/596177/26 "2011-09-13T20:29:57Z")
> [@JoelUpchurch](#): > > I used to worry about such things, then I decided that we will probably be the last generation that will be stuck with genes that chance happens to give us. A more interesting question will be what happens if genetic selection is restricted to the wealthy and well-to-done. Imagine if they can stack the deck so that all their children are the genetic equivalent of a straight flush. Not mutants, but optimal children. > > Not really hard to imagine, when cheap ultrasounds are limiting the production of girl babies in some countries. Yeah, but a straight flush only helps in poker, and we don’t know what game we’ll be playing in the future. Suppose you gave australopithecus the ability to manipulate genes. Would they have selected for brains, or would we have ended up with thicker fur, sharper teeth, and a better sense of smell? ---
**Author:** ![BlinkingDuck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eada6e/32.png) [@BlinkingDuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlinkingDuck)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-intelligence-be-selected-against/596177/27 "2011-09-13T20:33:42Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Talk’s cheap. What have you done as an individual to reduce the number of humans on the planet? I’m always amazed at some people that consider people to be terrible for the planet and should be wiped out…but for some reason the person having this opinion is still walking around.😕 ---
**Author:** ![bldysabba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecccb3/32.png) [@bldysabba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bldysabba)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-intelligence-be-selected-against/596177/28 "2011-09-13T20:38:46Z")
Assuming the poster will accept my apology, I’d like to address some of the points made before I hit the sack. > [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](#): > > Considering in the fifty-odd years of history that the posters above have outlined (in fact, the idea — if we can privilege the thought “Look at all these dopes making babies”\* with the name “idea” — is much older than a mere fifty years) have also witnessed some of the most remarkable progress in science and technology in human history, what do you suppose the answer is? This isn’t pertinent unfortunately. Survival has only recently been guaranteed to people, even in developed countries. Even if we were to grant it a 100 or 200 years, you would not expect changes to show up. I was always referring to evolutionary timescales (Although I’m not entirely sure what this implies, but they’re definitely way more than 50 years. I believe fruit flies show significant evolutionary change in about 20 generations). This allows me to introduce another caveat - Will intelligence be selected against if current trends hold. > [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](#): > > - Although you ape clinical terminology by talking about correlations, you make no effort at all to eliminate any confounding variables. Your premises of a general co-occurrence of intelligence, education, and wealth and a general co-occurence of low-wealth, low-education, and fecundity do not at all establish any relation between intelligence and fecundity.Nor does it even attempt to incorporate the role of cultural norms for family size. I was actually only using a very basic statistical term. I’m not sure how clinical terminology enters into it at all. Neither do confounding variables since I make no attempt at establishing causality. And actually, the correlations that I’ve mentioned _do_ in fact establish a correlation between intelligence and fertility. As far as my knowledge of statistics goes, if A and B are correlated and B and C are correlated, A and C will be correlated. And the correlations here aren’t trivial either. Many researchers use education as a proxy for IQ. I actually looked it up since and realised that I didn’t even need to frame it as such. There is a direct inverse correlation between intelligence and fertility. (Apologies for the wiki link, but as it quotes specific research studies, I thought it’d be alright) > **[Fertility and intelligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence)** > > The relationship between fertility and intelligence has been investigated in many demographic studies. There is evidence that, on a population level, measures of intelligence such as educational attainment and literacy are negatively correlated with fertility rate in some contexts. > The negative correlation between fertility and intelligence (as measured by IQ) has been argued to be persistent and systematic in many parts of the modern West in particular. Early studies, however, are sometimes cl... > [@](#): > > In a 1988 study, Retherford and Sewell examined the association between the measured intelligence and fertility of over 9,000 high school graduates in Wisconsin in 1957, and confirmed the inverse relationship between IQ and fertility for both sexes, but much more so for females. > Meisenberg (2010) found that intelligence in the US was negatively related to the number of children, with age-controlled correlations of −.156, −.069, −.235 and −.028 for White females, White males, Black females and Black males. This effect was related mainly to the general intelligence factor and was caused in part by education and income ---
**Author:** ![Mosier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ea924/32.png) [@Mosier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mosier)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-intelligence-be-selected-against/596177/29 "2011-09-13T20:40:56Z")
I contest the assertion that wealthy or powerful people are more likely to be extraordinarily intelligent. Sorry, but cite? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-intelligence-be-selected-against/596177/30 "2011-09-13T20:47:49Z")
> [@bldysabba](#): > > You seem to consider that there is no mobility between groups. A smart child born to dumb parents would, on average, become relatively richer and better educated and have fewer kids. Actually, one of my points is precisely that there **is** such mobility between groups. In other words, the upwardly-mobile “smart child” would be mixing the genes of his/her “dumb” kin in with the genes of his/her adopted social class. When one of his/her kids takes after Uncle Derpy in being a few sandwiches short of a picnic, then the intelligence gene pool has been stirred up afresh with Nature’s big fuckstick, thus preventing genetic isolation of the different groups. > [@bldysabba](#): > > Comparing within societies. This relationship holds true pretty much for any society too. Increasing education and wealth , particularly for women, leads to lower fertility rates. But increasing education and wealth **for a society as a whole** isn’t the same as genetically increasing intelligence of a sub-population **within** a society. So right there you’ve got a huge confounding factor in attempting to correlate intelligence with fertility rates. > [@bldysabba](#): > > I would say that on an evolutionary time scale, we probably are more beautiful today than we used to be. The most handsome caveperson of yester-year would be less appealing to us than the least comely of our contemporary humans. Well, gee whillikers, if you’re going back tens or hundreds of thousands of years to Paleolithic hominids who weren’t even the same subspecies as us, naturally you’re going to find some aesthetic differences. I thought you were trying to put forth an argument for natural selection changing our average species characteristics over a much shorter timescale. I don’t doubt that hundreds of thousands of years from now our human descendants will be quite different from us in many ways. But I seriously doubt that anyone will be able to pick out, in the huge mass of environmental and genetic factors causing those differences, the specific effects of particular late-20th-century social and cultural patterns in fertility choices. > [@bldysabba](#): > > College graduates overwhelmingly marry college grads. But college graduates display huge variations in intelligence, so that information by itself doesn’t tell us whether a genetically isolated subpopulation of superior intelligence is developing. And again, as with your remark about increasing education and wealth across the board in poor countries, college attendance rates can be changed by many factors other than innate intelligence. For example, a few decades ago only about 5% of US adults were college graduates, and now it’s about 25%. Are you suggesting that intelligence levels have increased that drastically in the US over just the past 60 years? :dubious: I don’t think you are. If human sexual selection on average favors intelligence (as you seem to agree that it does), and if current fertility patterns are not producing **reproductively isolated** subpopulations with different intelligence levels, then ISTM that average intelligence levels are not likely to decline. You seem to be trying to argue that the more numerous dumbos will just genetically overwhelm the less numerous smartasses. But if the dumbo/smartass populations are not reproductively isolated—and you’ve shown no convincing evidence that they are—and if there are selection pressures in favor of smartasses, then those smartass genes are just going to keep spreading through the species as a whole. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-intelligence-be-selected-against/596177/31 "2011-09-13T21:09:29Z")
> [@JoelUpchurch](#): > > Is it your contention that the technology won’t exist by 2040? I didn’t claim the technology exists now. I said that it will be available in one generation. It will be\* available for a few genetic diseases, but not all or even most. And it won’t be available for non-medical purposes to anyone but the relatively wealthy in even the richest of countries. So, yes, I stand by my original comment. \*Actually, it is available now for some. ---
**Author:** ![JoelUpchurch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f05b48/32.png) [@JoelUpchurch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoelUpchurch)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-intelligence-be-selected-against/596177/32 "2011-09-13T21:49:03Z")
> [@Bill\_Door](#): > > Yeah, but a straight flush only helps in poker, and we don’t know what game we’ll be playing in the future. Suppose you gave australopithecus the ability to manipulate genes. Would they have selected for brains, or would we have ended up with thicker fur, sharper teeth, and a better sense of smell? Apparently you aren’t familiar with the concept of an analogy. I am not taking about a literal straight flush and I’m not talking about what genetic characteristics we might need in 100,000 years. We are looking for characteristics they will need to compete in a couple of decades. We are going to look for characteristics that will push them to right end of the normal distribution curve. We want smart healthy children, not X-men. You end up with a population where the stupid people start at an IQ of 120 and the normal people are 140 and the smart people from 160 up. Leave out the genes for hemophilia and schizophrenia and breast cancer. ---
**Author:** ![EdwardLost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/bbe5ce/32.png) [@EdwardLost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EdwardLost)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-intelligence-be-selected-against/596177/33 "2011-09-13T22:36:51Z")
Regardless of how old or politically incorrect this issue may be, I think it’s a valid and interesting question. But “intelligence” is ambiguous. Better would be to talk about “brain traits”: symbolic thinking, language, social skills, personality… and more specific skill like mathematics, music, spacial thinking, empathy, mechanical ability, maternal/paternal instincts, charm, patience, charisma, hutzpa, … And to argue the question you have to assume that these traits have a genetic basis and are thus “evolvable”. Many people would deny that they are. That’s fine, but personally I think that viewpoint is akin to religion. Consistent, complex skills and behaviors can’t just emerge from brains of a sufficient size; they have to be designed - either by natural selection or by some higher intelligence. If human behavior and intelligence-skills are not the product of evolution and are not subject to continuing selection pressures then the future of humanity is in the hands of the gods. I believe that the skills we usually think of as belonging to “intelligent” people are not being selected for in modern society because people with these skills do not enhance reproduction. Other skills _are_ still do enhance reproduction: maternal instincts, charisma, religious fervor, etc. Think Octo-mom, Warren Jeffs, and the guy who knocks up half the girls on his block. Traditional intelligence will not be lost overnight. Those genes are still in the gene pool and they will continue to kick around for many generations. But there is nothing preventing them from being lost and, through entropy, they will continuously decline in frequency. Egghead geniuses will become rarer. Future societies will not have our veneer of high technology and scholarly pursuits. But intelligence levels will not fall below that needed to sustain agriculture and to build weapons of war. Genetic engineering could be the “out” from this scenario. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-intelligence-be-selected-against/596177/34 "2011-09-13T22:45:48Z")
> [@EdwardLost](#): > > I believe that the skills we usually think of as belonging to “intelligent” people are not being selected for in modern society because people with these skills do not enhance reproduction. 😕 What do you mean? Are you claiming that traits we associate with intelligence do not appeal to potential mates? > [@EdwardLost](#): > > Traditional intelligence will not be lost overnight. Those genes are still in the gene pool and they will continue to kick around for many generations. But there is nothing preventing them from being lost and, through entropy, they will continuously decline in frequency. Egghead geniuses will become rarer. AFAICT, you haven’t presented any evidence or any convincing argument that any of these predictions about the eventual decline of human intelligence are true. And it’s not clear what you think “entropy” has to do with it. Human reproduction is not an isolated thermodynamic system, which AFAIK is the only context in which assumptions about inevitably increasing entropy make any sense. ---
**Author:** ![dracoi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-intelligence-be-selected-against/596177/35 "2011-09-13T22:49:02Z")
> [@bldysabba](#): > > The correlation between intelligence and wealth - genetic? Are you saying an intelligent family may become poor and thus their children revert to a higher fertility rate? That is a possibility. Just not sure if it would affect the average. > Your second point could be valid as well, especially given research that college graduates overwhelmingly tend to marry other college grads. Wouldn’t this smarter population dwindle though, especially if the fertility rates are below the replacement rate at 2.1 (which they are for many rich and highly educated countries)? Yeah, what I said was kind of awkwardly phrased. Basically what I meant is that wealthy people are more intelligent because they are wealthy. Wealth provides better health, diet, education, etc. Because wealth is inherited, intelligence is also inherited, but not in a genetic or evolutionary sense. Thus, there may be no genetic difference between rich and poor populations. A poor child elevated to wealth will be intelligent and a wealthy child reduced to poverty will be stupid. Wealth only changes the expression of the trait. (Think of it just like the height example others have provided. I’m not taller than my great grandparents because I have “taller genes”. I’m taller because I grew up with a better diet.) ---
**Author:** ![EdwardLost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/bbe5ce/32.png) [@EdwardLost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EdwardLost)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2011, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-intelligence-be-selected-against/596177/36 "2011-09-14T00:59:56Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Are you claiming that traits we associate with intelligence do not appeal to potential mates? As far as I can tell traditional intelligence is not an especially powerful mate attractor. Some people may make it a priority in selecting a mate, but overall I don’t think it rates very high. Non-intelligent people seem to me to have no trouble finding mates. Besides, as someone mentioned above, mate-appeal is not the same thing as reproductive success. I’ve never heard of any evidence linking high-IQ with reproductive success, and I don’t believe there is a link. It’s my humble opinion that studies WOULD find reproductive success linked with other, non-IQ forms of “intelligence” such as charm, charisma, a dominant personality, a risk-taking personality, etc. > [@Kimstu](#): > > AFAICT, you haven’t presented any evidence or any convincing argument that any of these predictions about the eventual decline of human intelligence are true. > > And it’s not clear what you think “entropy” has to do with it. Human reproduction is not an isolated thermodynamic system, which AFAIK is the only context in which assumptions about inevitably increasing entropy make any sense. True, I don’t have any evidence: I’m just extrapolating. The genome is a complex, finely tuned state machine. If it codes for a complex survival trait, the probability is near zero that that trait arose by chance; we can assume is was derived over generations through natural select. Conversely, if the selection pressure is removed, the processes of entropy will eventually cause the trait to be lost. That is, mutations will accumulate in the relevant genes and the percentage of functional combinations will drop lower and lower. I’m assuming here that such traits are under genetic control and are the products of evolution. If that is not true, then it’s up to the gods. ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2011, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-intelligence-be-selected-against/596177/37 "2011-09-14T01:48:53Z")
> [@](#): > > If more intelligent people are having fewer kids, and less intelligent people are having more, and both sets are equally likely to survive and reproduce (this last is an assumption of course, but not wholly unrealistic I think?) will we see humankind on average become less intelligent, or at least a reduction in the rate of growth of intelligence? I think that for predicting future demographics of humanity, you first need to divide humanity into two groups: (1) people who think it’s a great idea to have lots of children and to teach their children that it’s a great idea to have a lot of children; and (2) everyone else. Currently, the first group is a tiny percentage of the population, perhaps 1%. But if you do the math, you will see that they are on track to go from 1% to 90% over the next couple hundred years. So if you want to extrapolate outwards, you need to focus on Group 1. Within that group, are more intelligent people reproducing relatively more? It’s quite possible although I doubt anyone has studied carefully. I would guess it’s more likely than not, given what’s involved in having and raising 8 or 9 children. Finally, like other people point out, it’s likely that game-changing technologies will come on line over the next 50 to 100 years. So it’s probably pretty foolish to just extrapolate. Still, Idiocracy seems rather less likely than blackhatocracy. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2011, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-intelligence-be-selected-against/596177/38 "2011-09-14T02:46:56Z")
Please provide a cite that intelligence is negatively correlated with reproductive success. ---
**Author:** ![Naxos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/50afbb/32.png) [@Naxos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Naxos)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2011, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-intelligence-be-selected-against/596177/39 "2011-09-14T03:11:50Z")
> [@bldysabba](#): > > … > Please note: This contention is value neutral, I’m not implying that intelligent = good, not intelligent = bad “Good” or “Bad” are irrelevant words. You _are_ implying that whatever you mean by the term “intelligence” is important and preferable and an indicator of a special quality some humans possess. Intelligence may, or more likely is not important to the universe. From all we know already, it is not - but that may change in the future. Cosmological Reality does not depend on the behavior of molecules. Such behavior, or "intelligence’ if you prefer that term, is a result, not a causal factor of the existence of the universe. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2011, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-intelligence-be-selected-against/596177/40 "2011-09-14T03:48:51Z")
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