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Quality of a man’s sperm depends on how intelligent he is, and vice versa (2008)

economist.com

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Re: Quality of a man’s sperm depends on how intelligent he is, and vice versa (2008)

#11

Post by luxpir »

mkesper wrote: post #2

If this would be true, we'd already live here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy

Doesn't the standard IQ (I know, I know) bell-curve indicate that the majority of humans are less intelligent than the most intelligent? [1]

I suppose the question is how much less intelligent does the majority have to be for the world to look like Idiocracy? How likely is that to happen, given the communication tech and education options that are emerging?

EDIT: [1] Fair point, riffraff. Actually quite tough for me to rephrase without spending significant time on it (I'm clearly not in the minority...), how about: "the most intelligent humans (by IQ) are naturally in the minority, as with any natural distribution/bell-curve, meaning the 'less intelligent' majority already dominate, as in Idiocracy, and by definition they must always continue to do so". That's a mouthful, but I hope the point is clear enough.

Re: Quality of a man’s sperm depends on how intelligent he is, and vice versa (2008)

#12

Post by davej »

ivank wrote: post #5
dtech wrote: post #4

To get behind the paywall, simply Google the title. I still don't get how Google doesn't nuke the websites that do this into oblivion...

Google's users don't see the paywall, so why would Google care?

Because google claims to care about the wider web not just its search product. This breaks the web.

Re: Quality of a man’s sperm depends on how intelligent he is, and vice versa (2008)

#13

Post by riffraff »

luxpir wrote: post #11
mkesper wrote: post #2

If this would be true, we'd already live here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy

Doesn't the standard IQ (I know, I know) bell-curve indicate that the majority of humans are less intelligent than the most intelligent? [1] I suppose the question is how much less intelligent does the majority have to be for the world to look like Idiocracy? How likely is that to happen, given the communication tech and education options that are emerging? EDIT: [1] Fair point, riffraff. Actually quite tough for me…

I think you should rephrase your first line, as it would seem to me the majority of anything is always less anything than the top. (i.e. half of the people are of below average intelligence)

Re: Quality of a man’s sperm depends on how intelligent he is, and vice versa (2008)

#14

Post by riffraff »

T-A wrote: post #10
diggan wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The movie gives the view that dumber people get more kids compared to smart people. So the world will, after a point, contain more dumb people than smart people because they simply breed more.

Unless there are other compensating factors, like dumb people having higher mortality rates?

the movie posits the dumb people reproduce faster because they start sooner (i.e. football guy gets cheerleader pregnant when 16, smart girl waits to have a career before getting pregnant) and since getting to reproductive maturity doesn't need special skills it still works out in favor of dumb people (i.e. by the time smart couple has 1 kid dumb couple has >=1 and their descendents have >=1).

Re: Quality of a man’s sperm depends on how intelligent he is, and vice versa (2008)

#15

Post by JoeAltmaier »

riffraff wrote: post #14
T-A wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless there are other compensating factors, like dumb people having higher mortality rates?

the movie posits the dumb people reproduce faster because they start sooner (i.e. football guy gets cheerleader pregnant when 16, smart girl waits to have a career before getting pregnant) and since getting to reproductive maturity doesn't need special skills it still works out in favor of dumb people (i.e. by the time smart couple has 1 kid dumb couple has >=1 and their descendents have >=1).

Age of reproduction unrelated to smarts. More like hormones.

Re: Quality of a man’s sperm depends on how intelligent he is, and vice versa (2008)

#16

Post by nbouscal »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #15
riffraff wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the movie posits the dumb people reproduce faster because they start sooner (i.e. football guy gets cheerleader pregnant when 16, smart girl waits to have a career before getting pregnant) and since getting to reproductive maturity doesn't need special skills it still works out in favor of dumb people (i.e. by the time smart couple has 1 kid dumb couple has >=1 and their descendents have >=1).

Age of reproduction unrelated to smarts. More like hormones.

More like socioeconomic status.

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/FB-Unintended-Pregnancy-US.ht...

Re: Quality of a man’s sperm depends on how intelligent he is, and vice versa (2008)

#17

Post by cm2012 »

"They may, for example, be less likely to smoke, more likely to eat healthy foods or to exercise, and so on." I would chalk up the small correlation documented to this. Higher IQ people tend to be higher on the social scale and be healthier in a large variety of ways.

Re: Quality of a man’s sperm depends on how intelligent he is, and vice versa (2008)

#19

Post by [deleted] »

mkl wrote: post #3

The correlation is quite small, but interesting nevertheless. I tried looking for replication studies, but couldn't find any. Here is the publication in question: http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/2009semen.pdf Here is an addendum trying to explain why it might be the case: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2775227/

[deleted]

Re: Quality of a man’s sperm depends on how intelligent he is, and vice versa (2008)

#20

Post by a8da6b0c91d »

cm2012 wrote: post #17

"They may, for example, be less likely to smoke, more likely to eat healthy foods or to exercise, and so on." I would chalk up the small correlation documented to this. Higher IQ people tend to be higher on the social scale and be healthier in a large variety of ways.

Why would you make that assumption? IQ and sperm quality are probably both impacted by deleterious mutations. I would assume quality in both is measuring mutational load way before I made suppositions about SES.
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