Author Topic: EP127: Results  (Read 37558 times)

Monty Grue

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Reply #50 on: October 17, 2007, 03:56:01 PM
One new question I came up with while thinking about this story: 20 years after this story who is going to be doing all the non-skilled labor?

H.G. Wells thought in terms of Class Struggle, however, perhaps the genetically unmodified, over a long long time, will turn into Morlock like beings and eat the modified. 



Chodon

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Reply #51 on: October 17, 2007, 04:35:55 PM
H.G. Wells thought in terms of Class Struggle, however, perhaps the genetically unmodified, over a long long time, will turn into Morlock like beings and eat the modified. 
That would be an awesome sequel to this story...

But what were the visible defects? Big ears, pimples, eyes not quite straight -- those wouldn't have beeen featured in any sideshow.
I suppose that's one take on it, but it seemed to me there was something more.  Something that was preventing couples from having "normal" kids like we know it today.  Maybe I'm just trying to make something out of nothing, or read more into the story than there is, but it really seemed like there was some fear that a couple would have children that had serious defects, and these issues kids had were symptoms of that.  There was nothing explicitly said to this effect, but it sure felt that way.  Maybe that was the point; the things we wouldn't consider defects today became hideous deformities when parents (with enough money or planning) could prevent them.

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DeGem

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Reply #52 on: October 17, 2007, 05:30:43 PM


It seems to me that you are conflating social, economic and biological pressures all together in your examples, using evolutionary theory to justify the effects of economic hardship in times when people weren't expecting that 'all men are created equal'.

It appears that my intent was not clear.  My intent was that people here in the forum were expressing that they can't believe that people would do this kind of screening and maybe even manipulation. 

What I was trying to demonstrate was that they are very simple and small steps over time to get to the point that this story was attempting to show. 

As for the Darwin reference, yes I understand it's over time and not of individuals.  I was only intended to show the social evolution not the human evolution.  Throwing Darwin's name in, was an attempt to use a short cut, too allow people to grasp that people values change over time.  In a poor attempt I even tried to get people look at the social changes from a 100 or 200 years ago compared to today.  The thought of selling your child into indentured service is inconceivable here in the western world today, but not back then.

you took my examples to the extreme no where near my intent.  I was stating how small and easy these tests are.  You would be willing to do them, for the betterment of your child's life.  Most would not encourage their child to cheat and steel.  but over time moral standards change.  The greater the time the greater the change.

on a side note.  Technology is an accelerator of social change.  This story could happen within the next 20 or 30 years.



darusha

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Reply #53 on: October 17, 2007, 08:24:31 PM
Thanks to Biscuit & Loz for saying what I wanted to say on the politics of this piece.

On another note, I got the impression that most people in this world did have kids the "normal way", which is why her parents were disappointed in her taking the tests.  It seemed to me that the tests were a sophisticated New York thing to do, rather than the overall norm.



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Reply #54 on: October 17, 2007, 08:27:55 PM
People look at me like I have stuff growing out of my ears when I say that we have no intention of getting a new car. 

You should see the looks I get when I tell them I don't have a car at all.



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Reply #55 on: October 17, 2007, 09:40:52 PM
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You know I get that look too when I say that buying a new car is a waste of money. I always say, why buy a new one, the one I have works fine?  I use to be a serial car buyer, but now I have dreams of driving my current car until the wheels fall of twice or more.


My goal is to get one AU out of my car.  I am currently at 1.3 lightseconds.

I thought the story was very simple, but asked very complex questions.  The reading seemed very right for the story.  Another good week on EP.



Loz

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Reply #56 on: October 18, 2007, 05:57:23 AM
You should see the looks I get when I tell them I don't have a car at all.

I love in London, five minutes walk away from buses or the Underground. Having a car would actually make my life more difficult.



wherethewild

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Reply #57 on: October 18, 2007, 02:25:08 PM
I only glanced quickly at some previous comments, forgive me if I repeat or go off tangent.

I liked this story, probably because I´m at the point in my life (like so many others here it seems) where kids are a short term future probabilty, or very recent past acquisition ;)

I´m stuck between the "oh, that´s terrible" and the "but wouldn´t I want the best for my child?" views. My mother-in-law is a genetic counselor...really no different to the stories "testing"... and thats a tough place to be actually. On one side, you´re trying to help families have healthy children, on the other you have the families of "imperfect" children abuse and threaten you for wanting to "wipe them out".

Ok, I used way to many quotation marks in the last paragraph. I apologise.

I´m sure I will be pre-natally testing for diseases in my children. If they do turn out to have Down´s or CF or anything else... well that´s a decision we´ll have to make when we get there. One thing I am sure of is that the decision to terminate or not terminate a pregnancy because the child would be terribly ill is one which will suffer heavy criticism regardless. You are either cruel for keeping it or cruel for not keeping it, and everyone will tell you their opinion.

Okay, so I´ve gone a bit away from the story now...

The story was no new idea... "positive eugenics" has been around for over 150 years, and various societies have gone through periods of education encouraging it. However I did like the way it was handled and enjoyed the story. No more indepth critique except that I found the narrator to be too monotone and difficult to listen to.

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Reply #58 on: October 18, 2007, 04:24:27 PM
I really liked this story.  It really nailed the inner turmoil and the interpersonal conflicts, both between the couple and between the woman and her parents.  The biggest question it raised for me was, how much of the couples concern over the test results was actually concern for their child's welfare, and how much of it was just the shame of having unextraordinary genes?

Obviously genes are important in this society, so much so that an average member of the society (the narrator) feels compelled to size up childrens' genetic makeup, and pass judgment on their value to society.  In a society like that, the woman's fears of genetic mediocrity do reflect real concern for the sort of life her child will be able to lead.  But clearly there are some ego issues as well, especially from the narrator's companion.  Rather than really accepting the test results, he put all the blame on her, and broke up with her so he could go find someone whose genetic awesomeness would show his own in the best light.  Mediocre, balding git.

I thought the story raised a lot of big questions in a deeply personal way.  In that it succeeds brilliantly.

There were some flaws I'd like to see fixed, or at least clarified.  I thought that the story suffered from a case of "one thing changes."  That is to say, the author seems to be trying to set the story 100 years in the future, but aside from the introduction of the genetic compatibility tests, it seems to be set in modern New York City.  Cars still clutter the streets and spew exhaust, mass transit seems basically unchanged, lower Manhattan isn't underwater, the work culture seems to be unchanged, people appear to be free to procreate when and how they will, and not a single fusion-powered killbot is in evidence.  Maybe too many changes would have weakened the story by distracting from the central point and making it harder for readers to relate to the world.  After all, the story is sort of a "What would you do?" tale, an making the world too alien would be risky.  But while it didn't detract much from the story, I found this static world rather implausible.

Like other listeners, I would have liked to know whether the 120 IQ meant "extraordinary" or "the new average".  I would also like to know whether the merely ordinary faced actual persecution in their lives, or whether they were merely an affront to the sensibilities of big city fashion.  Maybe leaving those questions open allows more questions to be raised, but I think it's more likely that the reader will make the least favorable assumption.

Good story.  Bring us more! 



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Reply #59 on: October 18, 2007, 06:18:14 PM
There were some flaws I'd like to see fixed, or at least clarified.  I thought that the story suffered from a case of "one thing changes."  That is to say, the author seems to be trying to set the story 100 years in the future, but aside from the introduction of the genetic compatibility tests, it seems to be set in modern New York City.  Cars still clutter the streets and spew exhaust, mass transit seems basically unchanged, lower Manhattan isn't underwater, the work culture seems to be unchanged, people appear to be free to procreate when and how they will, and not a single fusion-powered killbot is in evidence.  Maybe too many changes would have weakened the story by distracting from the central point and making it harder for readers to relate to the world.  After all, the story is sort of a "What would you do?" tale, an making the world too alien would be risky.  But while it didn't detract much from the story, I found this static world rather implausible.

I think the whole point was that not much had changed.  As has been pointed out this testing isn't far off.  By not changing much the author tells us this is twenty minutes in the future. 

You could ever call it an alternate history piece.  It's 2007 (or whenever this was written) and we've had this testing for twenty years.  How would things be different now?

If you had a flying car, this would be another Far In The Future piece.  Just not the same impact.



The Other Guy

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Reply #60 on: October 18, 2007, 07:59:56 PM
I liked this story too, even though the guy was a little one dimensional.  This is all from the woman's perspective, so it makes sense that she doesn't give all that much depth to the man.  After all, the sexes not understanding each other is something pretty common.

The IQ thing really didn't bother me too much.  What bothered me was setting the threshold so high of a single test, which you could argue favors one strength over another.  It would have made more sense if the intelligence was described in ways the child would most likely excel in, and the ways the child would be most likely deficient.  I would think most parents would not want to have someone who was either super artistic or super analytical, (not that these are inherently opposed), but a nice round mixture of the two.

As for the scene being present day NYC except for one change, this may be a subtle jab at the whole notion of being able to genetically alter embryos.  The resulting society could be one that stays stagnant in 100 years, and without people taking genetic "rolls of the dice", then no true human progress can be achieved, just more of the same.  Remember, Emily Dickinson probably suffered from bipolar disorder and even Einstein may have had a genetic marker for some sort of mental condition.  The poor kids in the park, would probably not be the "burden to society" the narrator predicts, but the savior from genetic stagnation.



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Reply #61 on: October 19, 2007, 01:49:27 AM
One new question I came up with while thinking about this story: 20 years after this story who is going to be doing all the non-skilled labor?

H.G. Wells thought in terms of Class Struggle, however, perhaps the genetically unmodified, over a long long time, will turn into Morlock like beings and eat the modified. 
Now that you mention the class issues, it brings to mind Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, with its Alpha, Beta, Gamma, etc. castes. They were engineered humans born in labs, while at the same time there were the largely-forgotten peoples of the "Savage Reservation", who reproduced and lived naturally.

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FNH

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Reply #62 on: October 19, 2007, 07:51:35 AM
I had mixed feelings about the story.  It did seem a bit drawn out, but I was so drawn into the subject that I couldn't stop listening.  So that means it was a good story.  It was more of what I refer to as Speculative than SciFi.

I loved that music at the end!  Who was it, what was it?


darth_schmoo

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Reply #63 on: October 20, 2007, 03:08:15 PM
One new question I came up with while thinking about this story: 20 years after this story who is going to be doing all the non-skilled labor?  All the super-children that have grown up and fought their way through college aren't going to be satisfied with a job on the assembly line or mopping floors.  Are there going to be enough "burden on society" children to maintain the society as a whole?  Society doesn't work without a full spectrum of individuals.  That's one of the reasons humanity has been so successful in taking over the planet.

I don't think this world is going to run out of average people.  It sounded like there were plenty of genetically unmodified children being born.  The society found them less "desirable", but not enough so to forbid their existence.

But in a situation like you describe, where the people forced to do the grunt work are just as capable of performing the "valued" jobs as those who actually hold them, I don't believe societal collapse would ensue.  There are other options.  The first is to automate and eliminate the worst of the drudgery (a process I believe we should be doing in any case, and one which would be further along if it weren't for globalization and our access to dirt-cheap labor).  Turn some tasks over to robots, eliminate others by designing the artifacts in our lives to be more low-maintenance.

That wouldn't eliminate such jobs completely.  The remaining grunt work would have to be spread more evenly.  I don't think society would collapse if CEOs sometimes had to clean the executive washroom themselves.

In the end, I don't think "low-skilled jobs" (and after reading Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickeled and Dimed, I really hesitate to call them that) have to be degrading.  The fact that such labor commands such low wages doesn't reflect how little we value the work being done (who wants to sit on a dirty toilet seat?) but how little we value the people doing the labor.  I think it's possible to make these jobs desirable enough that people would see them as a viable alternative to four or eight years of college.  Given the number of students I've seen who are just gritting their teeth through the whole experience, that probably wouldn't be so bad.



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Reply #64 on: October 20, 2007, 03:23:31 PM
The fact that such labor commands such low wages doesn't reflect how little we value the work being done (who wants to sit on a dirty toilet seat?) but how little we value the people doing the labor.  I think it's possible to make these jobs desirable enough that people would see them as a viable alternative to four or eight years of college.  Given the number of students I've seen who are just gritting their teeth through the whole experience, that probably wouldn't be so bad.

How much a job pays is determined in exactly the same way as the final price of an item is determined.  Maids jobs don't pay well mostly because there are more people that will do the job than there are positions.  Garbage collectors pay extremely well, because there aren't enough people who want to lift heavy stink all day.  If half of the trashmen (and women) in a city left their jobs today, it would take well over a year to replace them.  Garbage would pile up everywhere.  I think any hotel could replace half of their house cleaning staff in a week.



cathoderay

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Reply #65 on: October 21, 2007, 02:13:03 AM
Worst. Escape. Pod. Ever.

There I said it.

Was that a story or a polemic?

Generally I like characters and plot in stories. Not a dissertation or rant.

Do better please.

cathode



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Reply #66 on: October 23, 2007, 02:13:00 PM
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And poor and middle income parents would mortgage themsleves into abject poverty just so their offspring can be the next Nobel Laurete.
   


This is the point of the story: people who cannot afford to pay for "perfect children" will simply modify their own behavior to fit the social expectations...! I never considered this "unintended consequence" of genetic knowledge. It is the same behavior we see through time: the general population emulates the wealthy. It was documented in "Freakanomics", and can be observed in all aspects of our lives, from lawns in suburbia (mimicking Old English and French gardens) to expensive weddings. Great story.

Those of you who need to analyze the numbers - get over it, it is a story first, so appreciate the idea, not the analytics. The numbers hold up anyway: An IQ of 120 is still considered high, until the test is recalibrated or the population curve moves to the right. Until then, 120 is still better than 100.
« Last Edit: October 23, 2007, 05:17:34 PM by Russell Nash »



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Reply #67 on: October 23, 2007, 05:20:47 PM
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And poor and middle income parents would mortgage themsleves into abject poverty just so their offspring can be the next Nobel Laurete.
   

Those of you who need to analyze the numbers - get over it, it is a story first, so appreciate the idea, not the analytics. The numbers hold up anyway: An IQ of 120 is still considered high, until the test is recalibrated or the population curve moves to the right. Until then, 120 is still better than 100.


I think the point is that no matter how the numbers have been recalibrated they were testing to see if there kid would be more than 20 above average, which would be the current average.  It could be the equivalent of todays 140.  They just wanted to be significantly above "average".



DKT

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Reply #68 on: October 23, 2007, 09:20:54 PM
This story just about killed me.

When my daughter was born, there was something very wrong with one of her eyes, something that the ultrasound and all the other tests failed to pick-up.  We had no idea about it until after she was born.  Now, two years later, she's a fine, healthy, little girl but she will have to deal with this for the rest of her life now.

If I'd known that ahead of time, before my wife was pregnant, what would my reaction have been?  Would I have made a different decision?  God, I hope not.  She's brought so much joy into our lives it makes me teary thinking about what they'd be like if she didn't exist.  We've been to see a geneticist once since, thinking about having other kids.  They really haven't been able to help out too much but if they told us that another child would have the same issues, I don't think it would stop us.  Life is more than statistics. 

Great story, very well-written.  Thanks for running it.


Simon

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Reply #69 on: November 27, 2007, 08:34:03 PM
I'm not sure if this is a criticism of the reading, or of the story composition... But there were numerous situation in this piece where an overly-evocative descriptor just completely kicked me out of the story.

"Clickety-Clack" to describe rail-roads, and "Twinkle" for a child's eye are only the two most obvious examples...  I would be listening along thinking about the story and then wham  "Clickety, bloody Clack???".  These twee descriptors hit me in the face like adverbs in dialogue attribution, giving me a real Strunk & White - type moment.

Maybe I've just been reading too much Cormac McCarthy lately.

(Story itself - Big Meh)



DarkKnightJRK

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Reply #70 on: November 28, 2007, 03:25:08 AM
It wasn't that bad. I will say, though, that Gattaca was WAY better with the themes in this story.



Windup

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Reply #71 on: January 10, 2008, 08:54:50 PM
It wasn't that bad. I will say, though, that Gattaca was WAY better with the themes in this story.

While Gattaca was a fuller treatment -- after all, it was much longer -- I thought this story added the dimension of potential parents at the decision point. That was dealt with very briefly in Gattaca.

Like many other posters, I think this is a future that is coming, whether we like it or not.  In the end, I suspect that genetic pre-marital screening will be no more optional for most people in the developed world than cars are optional for most Americans.  Once genetic screening becomes accurate enough to provide a reasonably reliable degree of insight and cheap enough for most of the middle class to afford it, the same social forces that have given us American pre-K football teams, private voice lessons for elementary-age children, and Japanese "cram  schools" will take hold, and the process will become ubiquitus, at least in the 'burbs (or their future equivalents).  Like the automobile, so much of the social infrastructure will be built around the idea that everyone is using the technology that it will become very, very difficult not to.  How can you expect the schools to properly "track" your child if you won't even give them a usable Flescher Standard Ability Rating  for heaven's sake?  What do you think they are, magicians?

Like some other posters, I think the distinction between "curing disabilities" and "designer babies" is blurry at best, and will shift over time in the direction of a higher and higher degree of intervention becoming "acceptable."  Is my total inability to carry a tune a "disability?"  I wouldn't call it that, but I suspect a more musically-inclined parent probably would.

If there's anything that will prevent all this, it's the incompleteness of genetic information.  In the end, genes only explain so much -- there's a large element of environmental influence in intelligence, athletic ability, and so on.  But, genetic information is the shiny new toy, so we ascribe it much more predictive power than it may actually have -- some of those "superbabies" may turn out to be not so super after all. Gattaca touched on that, too, as I recall. Still, I think people will use the tool, and at least intially, probably over-use it.
« Last Edit: April 01, 2008, 12:23:00 AM by Windup »

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Chivalrybean

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Reply #72 on: March 30, 2008, 06:03:52 AM
I've been listen to Pseudopod and Escape Pod a lot lately... this story scares me more than anything on Pseudopod has to date.

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Reply #73 on: March 05, 2010, 06:28:25 PM
I hated this one.  It was less of a story and more of an ethics rant with cardboard characters pinned to it so that it could be classified as a story.  It would've made a great blog post to get a great ethics argument going, but as a story it left something to be desired.  I listened to the end in the hopes that it would redeem itself, but it never did.

The big climax of the story was centered around the breakup, but I never really cared about either character, so their breakup didn't really hit home.  They apparently only see each other as breeding stock, so why do I care if they break up? 

There's a fuzzy boundary between what's ethical and what's not with this sort of screening.  The story would've been much better if it had chosen a grayer area of child traits to use, an area closer to the boundary.  Instead of artistic talent and IQ, if it had tested for some painful and debilitating disorder, then maybe I could see the other side of it, even both sides of it.  In that case, if you chose not to have the kid then some would call it murder, and if you did have the kid could some would call it torture.

But deciding not to have kids because they might not have blue eyes, or might not be above average intelligence?  That's far beyond the fuzzy boundary, and is bordering on the Nazi ideal of "the perfect race", a scary thought.  And I shudder to think what some parents would do with this power--the sort of parents who force their kids into grueling training, be it for athletics or beauty pagents, when they're only a couple years old.  The kids hate it hate it it, but mommy or daddy says they have to go.  I can just see those parents now "God damn it, Carly, we paid good money to make you pretty, so get out there and smile!  You're just lucky I didn't pay extra for the five year guarantee or you'd be on a bus to GenetixxCorps, so help me!"

And I firmly believe that genetics has very little to do with creative ability and intelligence.  Of course if there's a mental disability, that's one thing.  But if you take a "creative" person at random from the general population and take a "non-creative" person at random, I don't think there's going to be any markers that differentiate one from the other in terms of intelligence.    Genetics may somewhat affect your ability to learn, but not how you apply that ability.  Intelligence and creativity are much more influenced by your environment.  If your parents went to college, there's a pretty good chance you'll go to college.  If your parents were creative, then you're more likely to be creative.  And I think it has much more to do with environmental factors, what you see happening around you as a child then any inherent genetic trait. 

Not only that, but the definition of intelligence and of creative ability are so subjective!  Who is doing the judging?  For instance, I rarely love abstract art.  I tend to want art to look like something, even if it's a distorted view of that something.  One can throw a bucket of paint at a canvas and call it art, and some would agree and some would disagree.  The same goes for intelligence.  intelligence seems to often be measured by what you know, but that's not a genetic thing.  You still have to choose to learn.  If a child has a high intelligence rating, but isn't interested in learning, then it's not making much difference.



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Reply #74 on: March 05, 2010, 06:32:18 PM
I hated this one.  It was less of a story and more of an ethics rant with cardboard characters pinned to it so that it could be classified as a story.  It would've made a great blog post to get a great ethics argument going, but as a story it left something to be desired.  I listened to the end in the hopes that it would redeem itself, but it never did.

The big climax of the story was centered around the breakup, but I never really cared about either character, so their breakup didn't really hit home.  They apparently only see each other as breeding stock, so why do I care if they break up? 

There's a fuzzy boundary between what's ethical and what's not with this sort of screening.  The story would've been much better if it had chosen a grayer area of child traits to use, an area closer to the boundary.  Instead of artistic talent and IQ, if it had tested for some painful and debilitating disorder, then maybe I could see the other side of it, even both sides of it.  In that case, if you chose not to have the kid then some would call it murder, and if you did have the kid could some would call it torture.

But deciding not to have kids because they might not have blue eyes, or might not be above average intelligence?  That's far beyond the fuzzy boundary, and is bordering on the Nazi ideal of "the perfect race", a scary thought.  And I shudder to think what some parents would do with this power--the sort of parents who force their kids into grueling training, be it for athletics or beauty pagents, when they're only a couple years old.  The kids hate it hate it it, but mommy or daddy says they have to go.  I can just see those parents now "God damn it, Carly, we paid good money to make you pretty, so get out there and smile!  You're just lucky I didn't pay extra for the five year guarantee or you'd be on a bus to GenetixxCorps, so help me!"

And I firmly believe that genetics has very little to do with creative ability and intelligence.  Of course if there's a mental disability, that's one thing.  But if you take a "creative" person at random from the general population and take a "non-creative" person at random, I don't think there's going to be any markers that differentiate one from the other in terms of intelligence.    Genetics may somewhat affect your ability to learn, but not how you apply that ability.  Intelligence and creativity are much more influenced by your environment.  If your parents went to college, there's a pretty good chance you'll go to college.  If your parents were creative, then you're more likely to be creative.  And I think it has much more to do with environmental factors, what you see happening around you as a child then any inherent genetic trait. 

Not only that, but the definition of intelligence and of creative ability are so subjective!  Who is doing the judging?  For instance, I rarely love abstract art.  I tend to want art to look like something, even if it's a distorted view of that something.  One can throw a bucket of paint at a canvas and call it art, and some would agree and some would disagree.  The same goes for intelligence.  intelligence seems to often be measured by what you know, but that's not a genetic thing.  You still have to choose to learn.  If a child has a high intelligence rating, but isn't interested in learning, then it's not making much difference.


But did you hate the story, or hate the characters? Because deciding not to have kids for shallow reasons like mentioned seems like something people would actually do if they had the option, particularly if brought up in a society where this was the norm. Yes its ethically icky, but not, I felt, unrealistic.