Evolution Goes into Reverse

In the West, up until the 19th century, rich, powerful men had a lot of children. The top guys probably had good qualities, so when they had a lot of children, the population was improved.

This began to change in the 1870s. Western countries set up welfare programs so that poor people could have children and not starve.

When people with above average traits have fewer children than people with below average traits, evolution goes into reverse.

And it’s definitely happening. This recent paper from Britain is called “Human Capital Mediates Natural Selection in Contemporary Humans.” That’s a fancy way of saying evolution is affected by the traits of people who have children.

The paper used a sample of 400,000+ white people in Britain, and compared the number of children they had to the traits they had — good and bad — as shown by their polygenic scores.

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The next generation will have more of the traits to the right of the dotted line, and fewer of those to the left.

The traits most rapidly spreading in the next generation are ADHD, smoking, extraversion, high BMI, and large waist circumference.

To the left are the traits that are being bred out, and at the bottom, being bred out most rapidly, are three measures of intelligence.

The authors of the study are blunt: Consistently over time, polygenic scores associated with lower earnings, education, and health are selected for, and higher earnings, education and better health are selected against.

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If this keeps up, Westerners will degenerate to the point that society collapses, there is no more welfare, and evolution will resume its normal direction. Ordinary folks know that the children of most people on welfare are going to be a drag on society. If they had a chance, I bet a lot would vote to give all welfare recipients implantable contraceptives.