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Over the years I’ve spent a lot of time researching information on IQ, and the more I read the more I realized IQ, while important, is highly overrated. Jayne Mansfield had an IQ of 165, Steven Hawking’s was alleged to have been 160.
She was an actress much lauded and remembered for her sex appeal. She was smart enough to know what she was offering had a limited time frame and she once said no matter what happens to her, her children, who adored her, would be taken care of. Practical smarts goes a long way.
He was a much lauded scientist who made grand pronouncements for which he was lauded, and then proved wrong. So, did it matter how smart he was? Most importantly he started pontificating about social issues, and while when it came to physics, I didn't have a clue what he was talking about, but when he entered my arena dealing with social issues, history and logic, I realized that was an arena where he was dumb as dirt. That's not practical intelligence.
Einstein, who was considered the smartest man in the world, once said if all the honey bees died mankind would be dead in five years. He was a brilliant physicist, but he was an idiot as an entomologist. Most of our food isn't animal pollinated, it's wind pollinated, and if every honey bee on the planet died tomorrow, it would impact no more that four to six percent of our food... and even that's a maybe prediction. So, did it matter how smart he was.
I once asked the head of the EPA's pesticide regulation division why our honey bees are called European honey bees? He didn't know, so I told him it was because European settlers brought them over from Europe. Then I asked him how did everything get pollinated before that. And he smiled realizing how foolish all these claims of disaster and honey bees really are.
Here’s the reality of selective breeding. If you have a highly intelligent population breeding in a small population you will get a lot of really intelligent children. If you continue to breed strictly within that population you will end up with a lot of negative genetic issues and a lot of sterility, the Pitcairn Islander story is one example.
If you breed a lot of really intelligent people from different genetic groups you not only get a lot of really smart people, they're healthier and stronger, it's called hybrid vigor. However, a former boss with a masters degree in genetics told me, for reasons no one really understands, and there's term in genetics for this which I can never remember, occasionally two really dumb people can produce a genius. It's still a crap shoot.
Having said that, make no mistake, gene editing is on the horizon, some of it will be beneficial, especially with dealing with autoimmune diseases, and some of it will not, since intelligence and morality have little in common.
Calvin Coolidge was the greatest President of the 20th century, and yet few know much about him, which is unfortunate, and I really recommend reading Amity Schlae's book Coolidge. He once stated:
Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent".
And you can't really breed for that because culture is king, and each generation marinates in it's own culture often abandoning their parents culture. It’s still a crap shoot.
