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From: Mad Hamish <newsunspammelaws@iinet.unspamme.net.au>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Things presented in-story as Good Ideas that seem like really Bad Ideas
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2024 13:42:56 +1000
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On Mon, 9 Sep 2024 19:51:55 +0000, quadibloc <quadibloc@gmail.com>
wrote:

>I remember a novel titled L5. I thought the author was Mack Reynolds,
>but apparently not; the author may have had a somewhat similar sounding
>name.
>The L5 colonies had a rule; no one could go there whose IQ was below a
>certain limit, set at an above-average level. *And anyone born there who
>was below that level would be sent to Earth.*
>The central plot development was that another group was planning to
>start up their own L5 colonies; it was a group of black people, with the
>intent of providing L5 space for blacks. The question was: should the
>existing L5 colonies co-operate with this project or not. It was
>resolved in favor of cooperating when it was found the other group would
>also follow the same high-IQ policy.
>Why is it a bad idea?
>Well, we know that when geniuses marry, their children experience what
>is known as "regression o the mean". Essentially, there are numerous
>different alleles which can cause genius-level intelligence, and so if
>the members of a couple are geniuses from different genetic causes,
>their higher intelligence won't breed true.
>And it costs an awful lot of money to launch people into space.
>So this space colony would basically have to import all its people from
>Earth, having almost no ability to maintain its own population by
>natural increase.
>Not a great plan from a bunch of geniuses.

a) that's your objection to the policy?
b) IQ is significantly affected by environment