h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Why the number of stupid people on Earth is increasing. - A3041191
Author: EvilTwin - U721364

Apparently i stuck it in the wrong section, so i'm trying again here....

this is my first peice, so i'd be interested in any constructive critisism on it, as to how it could be improved.....

I liked it and thought it was well written. You kept it the right side of good taste, because if you take the idea right to its logical extreme you end up with eugenics, which isn't very funny...

Some people might say that stupid people also have more children, further skewing the stupidity factor, but lets not go there.

sprout

Yeah, it's good. And it is well written. A few minor typos and the odd tortuous sentence, but a neat structure and a clever message.

Like sprout says, you avoided the low punches, which is wise.

So here's a low punch of mine. If your theory is true, then the historic weeding-out process would only have worked on the population group that was facing skill-susceptible environmental risks, eg hunting/fighting/heavy work etc. Risks that aren't skill-susceptible, like disease or death in childbirth, would take smart people out of the gene pool just as readily as stupid ones.

That would mean that there should now be far more stupid women than men around, doesn't it?

Let me just go and count...

Thanks for the advice. I've given the whole peice a re-write, in an attempt to tame those tortuous sentances.

If anyone sees anything else i can ammend to improve it, or you just want to comment etc. then please let me know.

(please be blunt in your comments, i have dreams about talking crabs, but none about being an aspiring writer)

This makes sense to me. A few things came to mind when reading it:

Humans are not especially good at anything much (e.g. running, fighting, swimming, flying) so their sole survival advantage over many other organsisms is their intelligence. Thus being stupid is a particular disadvantage for humans, and so logically human evolution is probably a direct result of the weeding-out process.

It may be worth mentioning that the reasons the stupid are surviving are almost entirely down to the efforts of the clever (e.g. better medicine, as you say), and that this dissemination of knowledge and wisdom is made possible by language (which is probably also down to clever people).

Sprout makes a good point - I realise it is highly politically incorrect and a huge generalisation, but stupid people do tend to have more children and at an earlier age (don't go on to further education, careers etc). So not only are they reproducing faster than clever people, they are also evolving faster. No offence meant to anyone who has bred prolifically or at a young age . I also agree that inclusion of this fact would be a low punch and spoil the tone of the entry. (There's always someone who'd take it seriously).

Lastly, our new litigious society not only rewards stupid people, it is actually shaping the world in their favour. Every successful compensation case seems to spawn a new batch of safety standards, the aim of which is to ensure that even the most determined idiot cannot possibly come to any harm. As the world is gradually encapsulated in cotton wool, there is less and less opportunity for the stupid to be weeded out. There are exceptions to this though; cars and guns spring to mind.

Anyway, I'll stop now. Good article.

Oddly enough I was having just this conversation on MSN last night with a friend, and a very similar one the night before with another one.

Well done!

B

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Got your socks off yet Pin ?

The Neanderthalettes who didn't work out how to get the Neanderthaldudes to do all the dangerous stuff died out pretty quick.

Different skills.

Subtler skills. That would mean...

The growing stupidity on the roads is maybe proof of the theory. I get overtaken on blind bends, over double white lines and on brows of hills on a quite a regular basis these days. And I don't dawdle.

Some people seem to need risk to feel they're living. Surviving it is a kind of affirmation of their skill, of their being someone.
Waz