new start

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, Ryan Z wrote:
> --- victoriatangoman wrote:
> > Looking back, it used to be the case that doctors
> > would marry nurses
> > much more frequently than they do now. Now
> > Doctor-Doctor pairings
> > are very frequent. So too Lawyer-Lawyer,
> > Professor-Professor, and
> > all sorts of permutations. You get my point.
> I'm with Al on this point, I just don't think there is
> any evidence to support this claim.

I'm happy to comply. The technical term is assortive mating and it
means finding a mate of similar qualities.

But first consider this as illustrative:

Think of your twelve closest friends. If you had chosen them
randomly from the American population, the odds that half of your
twelve closest friends would be college graduates would be six in a
thousand. The odds that half of the twelve would have advanced
degrees would be less than one in a million. Have any of your twelve
closest friends graduated from Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Princeton,
Caltech, MIT, Duke, Dartmouth, Cornell, Columbia, Chicago, or Brown?
If you chose your friends randomly from the American population, the
odds against your having four or more friends from those schools
would be more than a billion to one.
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2003/09/brooks.htm

Here's my quick Google search:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
srv/national/longterm/twins/twins2.htm

http://www.uic.edu/classes/bms/bms655/lesson13.html
- - - Look at the conclusion they reach about assortive mating. - - -

http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/faculty/lswenson/learning511/L16EVPSY.html
http://www.pbs.org/peoplelikeus/resources/essays3.html
http://www.librarystuff.net/new_archives/000527.html
http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/2003_08.html

http://www.imperial.ac.uk/P2688.htm

Just a quick aside while I did the Google searches above.
To address the Orion concerns about Jewish intellectual achievement,
see:
http://www.jinfo.org/
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/dialogue.htm

> >
> > With environmental and genetic influences going hand
> > in hand, and
> > combined with socio-economic stratification, and
> > then the genetic
> > parsing factored in and I don't see a way off of the
> > treadmill,
> > because it makes sense on the personal behavioral
> > level, and the
> > ramifications flow upwards to the societal.
> Look at what is happening in India. For centuries, a
> rigid caste system was maintained. Recently it has
> been crumbling
> http://gbgm-umc.org/nwo/99ja/india.html

As well it should. I quote from the link you provided:
"The fact that the 3500-year-old caste system should survive in
India today almost defies comprehension."

Now consider the assortive mating factor, analyze the test results
from to see how widely dispersed your friends are in socio-economic
status. Look about you and see how closely correlated the educations
of your married friends are to each other, etc. These are working
towards stratification for reasons that all have to do with people's
personal behavior and choices. The Indian caste system is breaking
apart from personal choices. The caste system is a top-down system
of order, whereas the issues we've been discussing are all pretty
much bottom-up driven.

>
> > I wholeheartedly agree. Eugenics (parental choice)
> > is a social
> > construct where what is important to the parents is
> > what is
> > emphasized. Policies that seek to direct procreation
> > qualities are
> > also social constructs and have nothing to do with
> > survival of the
> > fittest. The latter concept is devoid of value
> > judgement. Those that
> > have the most children are achieving an evolutionary
> > goal. The
> > counterpoint is how well are the children adapting
> > to the
> > environment? Who knows? If the children can continue
> > to procreate
> > then despite their intelligence, morality,
> > socio-economic status or
> > any other social construct you impose on the
> > analysis, they are
> > still outperforming in the game of evolution.
>
> This brings up an interesting line of thought.
> Generally speaking (and we all know how we love to
> talk generalities), the richer people become, the less
> they reproduce. So if intelligence is related to
> wealth, then as the intelligent become wealthier,
> their numbers will dimish and gradually be overtaken
> by the dumber masses.
>
> Ryan Z

What you've just written is internally consistent. Yet, you need not
extend the analysis to rich people. Educated people are an adequate
starting point because this actually is happening.

What you're describing is called dsygenics. The statistics
concerning this phenomena abound. What are the implications for the
future?

TangoMan