by Brett Stevens on April 20, 2017

Bryan Caplan finds himself confused by the link between recognizing the importance of IQ and wanting most of humanity dead. He argues for acceptance of fact without rancor, but seems perplexed by the vitriol expressed (h/t Outside In):

My fellow IQ realists are, on average, a scary bunch. People who vocally defend the power of IQ are vastly more likely than normal people to advocate extreme human rights violations. I’ve heard IQ realists advocate a One-Child Policy for people with low IQs. I’ve heard IQ realists advocate a No-Child Policy for people with low IQs. I’ve heard IQ realists advocate forced sterilization for people with low IQs. I’ve heard IQ realists advocate forcible exile of people with low IQs – fellow citizens, not just immigrants. I’ve heard IQ realists advocate murdering people with low IQs. …If someone says, “I’m more intelligent than other people, so it’s acceptable for me to murder them,” the sensible response isn’t, “Intelligence is a myth.” The sensible response is, “Are you mad? That doesn’t justify murder.” Advocating brutality in the name of your superior intellect is the mark of a super-villain, not a logician.

Generally, his point is agreeable, but that is mostly because human groups require a span of IQs to cover all of the roles in society. Every general needs soldiers, and every soldier needs a cascade of leaders in order to give him guidance so that he is not left alone and confused to make decisions he has no hope of getting correct.

However, as one of the misanthropes he describes — or as we might call it, a “human quality control advocate” — I can attest to the power of wanting to purge the weak. This comes more from the conditions of our time than an innate will to do harm based on this realization.

Let us look at the factors involved:

Overpopulation. There are too many of us, and too few good ones, especially in power. The urge to purge the excess and pare away the useless is great because daily, we see many people whose absence would make life better. Idiocracy. The herd rules us. When we look at the products available and the decisions made by our leaders, it is clear that mass opinion sways the day, and like a demonic compass it always points toward full retard. Stupidity. Our time is stupid. The cities are ugly, the jobs moronic, the culture idiotic. We want a war on stupidity and bad decision-making, and associate it with the stupid people we see among us.

We also live in a time of lies. IQ is denied, as well as most other natural and intelligent things. When people “wake up” from the stupor of egalitarianism, they react as does any consumer who has been defrauded: with injured rage.

The temptation is to make a continental mass grave to remind future humans not to go down this path because it ends badly. This arises as much from the perception that all decency and truth are lost on this world, and that all is futile, which produces a suffocating rage.

A more sensible view is that we could divide the useful from the useless. A janitor who does his job in a conscientious way and does not live like a degenerate is necessary just as a rocket scientist is, but people of any intelligence level who are given to evil merely thwart the realization of the good.

This would be done informally, in a natural method, if applied intelligently. A hierarchy of natural leaders would be set up; they would decide who to retain, and send the others away. Those who could not find a place would have to relocate to easier places to live, like the third world.

Tags: average IQ, idiocracy, IQ, misanthropy, overpopulation, stupidity

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