This is blasphemous! The rich are genetically superior to the poor...

The idea that behaviours run in families is not unreasonable, but I don't see why the author looks to genetics for that mechanism.

http://paulgraham.com/say.html perhaps?

Are you implying that my reaction to genetic determinism is just a result of my uncritical acceptance of liberal, academic mores?

Personally, I think racism is more socially acceptable than most of us would like to admit. I've met people who left research in biotech because the ubermensch mentality was so pervasive there.

There is little evidence that social behaviours are transmitted genetically -- but you need only examine the history of Buddhist monasticism to realize that social behaviours can be transmitted, with extreme uniformity, in the absence of consanguinity. Why do people fall back on genetic determinism? It has a lot to do, I think, with logical positivism -- something that is very attractive to academics of every persuasion, except those close enough to its roots (physicists) to understand its limitations.

I am strongly in favor of genetically engineering myself and my children. Improving ourselves using biology is inevitable. Is this the ubermensch mentality you're referring to?

No, that's not the ubermensch mentality -- I'm talking about folks who think they've found the ubermensch. (Usually, the ubermensch is white.)

What happened to the footnotes?

Edit: Oh, they've managed to make it into a completely different URL. I guess that's slightly more usable than the previous system, if I open that URL before I start reading, but it would really be nice if there were links from the content. We'll see what GreaseMonkey has to say about it.

I'm not sure whether I agree with all of the author's conclusions either. Still, it's interesting that rich people were having more children during this time period.

It's also interesting that the same pattern did not show up in Japan or China. Why? Were the rich there not genetically superior enough?

In today's world, the rich have fewer children than the poor. Perhaps the Japanese and Chinese were ahead of their times, or maybe the rich there had some understanding of birth control.