Nyborg's eugenics

[arcticpenguin]

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,7416881%5E1702,00.html

A DANISH academic has sparked an uproar by calling for state measures to encourage childbearing among intelligent people but to dissuade those with low intellectual ability, to create what he called a better Danish society.

Helmuth Nyborg, a well-known psychology professor at the University of Aarhus who specialises in intelligence research, said it was time to "abandon the politically correct" and to practice selection in order to "improve the coming generations and avoid degenerates in the population", in comments this weekend that have been widely reported on national television and the country's main newspapers.
...
Nyborg suggested that highly educated women could have their workloads reduced while less intelligent parents could be paid to not have children.
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Nyborg claimed intelligence was hereditary, and said it was "unfortunate and worrying if parents of lower intelligence bring more children into the world, as is the case today in Denmark, than highly intelligent parents".

How is this going over with our Danish posters? At least he's not talking about forced sterilization.

 

[CFLarsen]

He's getting plenty of flack from everyone, e.g. from one of Skeptica's members who also is the chairman of the Ethics Committee, Ole Hartling.

Nyborg tries to argue that intelligence can be used as a parameter without actually having to define what intelligence is. "Just like gravity", as he says.

Anyone want to point out the fallacy of that argument?

 

[NoZed Avenger]

How is this going over with our Danish posters? At least he's not talking about forced sterilization.

. . . yet.

 

[arcticpenguin]

He's getting plenty of flack from everyone, e.g. from one of Skeptica's members who also is the chairman of the Ethics Committee, Ole Hartling.

Nyborg tries to argue that intelligence can be used as a parameter without actually having to define what intelligence is. "Just like gravity", as he says.

Anyone want to point out the fallacy of that argument?

OK, I'll take "easy shots" for 10 points. Gravity can be measured consistently.

 

[Prospero]

Problem with Eugenics

See, this is what happens when you let neuroscientists (I use that term very broadly in this case, simply because he studies intelligence which technically falls under this category) play at being geneticists. His idea could pretend to sound like it has merit, but Silicon Valley represents the best example imaginable of why smart people should not interbreed.

Wired magazine did an article about a year ago on the alarmingly dramatic increase of the number of children born with Asperger's Syndrome in Silicon Valley. The suspected reason is this: Silicon Valley represents the intellectual hub of the computer hardware manufacturing world. So, all those computer manufacturing companies brought all these really intelligent people together into one place where they all interbred for about a decade.

However, as the intellectuals settled down and had children, a startling number had Asperger's which is best described as a mild form of Autism. Psychologists did an investigation and came to the conclusion that intelligence, which is certainly genetic in part, happens to also be unstable as far as genetics go. In other words, there is a very fine line between brilliance and madness as history loves to demonstrate in prodigies of all kinds. The sudden pooling of the unstable genes resulting in more becoming off-balance than would be possible in a population where there is wide genetic variability.

This is why eugenics, which on the surface appears to possibly have merits, in actuality tends come back to bite you in the bum. It would definitely be a bad idea to condemn a country to an entire generation born with mental disorders, in my humble opinion.

 

[Chaos]

He's getting plenty of flack from everyone, e.g. from one of Skeptica's members who also is the chairman of the Ethics Committee, Ole Hartling.

Nyborg tries to argue that intelligence can be used as a parameter without actually having to define what intelligence is. "Just like gravity", as he says.

Anyone want to point out the fallacy of that argument?

I guess that to use intelligence as a parameter, i.e. measure peoples´ IQ, you first have to design tests for that. In designing tests, you have to define what to test, i.e. what intelligence is.