Thursday, May 03, 2007
Ours is the first generation born after the rise of feminism. We're the first generation of Americans where it's accepted and even expected for women to be as educated as men, and to pursue professional careers of their own. That has two significant effects: one, men value intelligence more than they used to, and two, men and women tend to meet in college or at work a lot more. I'm guessing that means that men and women in couples that form nowadays are much more likely to be intellectual matches than they were 50 years ago. It's well-established that intelligence has a strong hereditary component, so I predict that the intelligence bell curve is going to flatten. There are going to be fewer people around the middle, and more people at the extremes (all else being equal). The smartest will be smarter, and there will be more of them.