Q&A: How Is It That the World Doesn’t Keep Getting More and More Foolish from Day to Day?
Originally published:
This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.
How Is It That the World Doesn’t Keep Getting More and More Foolish from Day to Day?
Question
I see piles of foolish people around me, and very few wise ones.
Foolish people have lots of children; wise people have few.
Seemingly, the inevitable result should be that each generation would be poorer and more foolish than the one before it, but in practice we keep advancing and developing.
How can that be?
Answer
Who told you that foolishness is getting worse? You may think those folks are relatively foolish, but they may still be smarter than people used to be in the past. Beyond that, you’re assuming that foolishness is inherited and doesn’t disappear through processes of selection. Again, that’s a problematic assumption.
There is also the principle of regression to the mean.