This series portrays a bleak picture of societal decline—attributed to (1) declining general intelligence (from fertility changes and high mutational load), (2) bureaucracy, (3) feminism (e.g. The Pill), and (4) cultural changes (e.g. anti-Christianity, anti-patriarchy, anti-excellence). These factors converged around the 1960s and have since strengthened through joint causation and feedback.^[1]

Research suggests that humans—a social species—are losing general intelligence and increasing mutational load. The Mouse Utopia experiment suggests that—in a social species—critical increases in mutational load can doom a population. By utilizing social contagions, a relatively small percentage of mutants are sufficient.^[2][3a][4] There are many examples contrary to historical adaptive norms. The effect is notable in homosexual and transgender activism, as well as the refusal to reproduce—seen in both mice and men (e.g. Japan and China).

What, if anything, can be done about these things?

Eugenics

The genetic factors behind societal problems naturally suggest potential eugenic solutions. This leads to obvious objections:

You’re arguing nature over nurture here [..] Evolution in every form teaches survival of the fittest, culling the weak so the strong can succeed. There’s no way to reconcile that with Christian notions of justice and mercy.

Christianity thrived specifically because we’re kind to those who aren’t winners, genetic or otherwise. As Christ put it, “it’s the sick that need a doctor, not the healthy”^[5]

These objections can be given simply as follows:

“Claims of races having different intelligence were used to justify colonialism, slavery, racism, social Darwinism, and racial eugenics.”^[6]

This is, pardon the pun, the genetic fallacy. Population group IQ differences are real.

By using fallacious reasoning and denying reality, we risk the very thing we abhor:

“But it is a dangerous mistake to premise the moral equality of human beings on biological similarity because dissimilarity, once revealed, then becomes an argument for moral inequality.”^[7]

Eugenics (“good breeding”) and dysgenics (“bad breeding”) are morally neutral descriptive terms.^[3b] What matters is how we use the information they represent.^[8] Society mandated blank-slatism (environmental ‘eugenics’) is just as dangerous as innatism (‘behavior determinism’). Both multiculturalism and feminism argue for moral inequality, enforcing it with the lethal force of law.

The level to which the ‘social contagions’ are genetic—rather than environmental—is secondary to their effectiveness and growing influence. The social changes are too intertwined with genetic influences to be viewed separately.^[4] Therefore, we must consider—without shame—the moral context^[9] alongside the genetic (eugenic and dysgenic) and environmental factors. When we do so, we find that there are no acceptable workable solutions to be found in eugenics….

 “The only way, if we follow Galton, to reverse dysgenics would be (at minimum) the monstrous policy of allowing to die, to sterilize, or (most effectively) inflict death upon, about half of the children born in each generation.”^[10]

…yet ‘eugenic’ policies are already here and growing: abortion and infanticide (e.g. sex and disability deselection), euthanasia, assisted and coerced suicide, socialized medicine (e.g. rationing), whole population gene sequencing, genetic modifications (e.g. CRISPR), and executions.

Nations will increasingly utilize these as means of population control. The bureaucrats utilizing these policies are not interested in solving the problems raised in this series. Bureaucracy, being inherently evil, will inevitably cause such policies to further damage, not repair, society.

Christianity

There are two groups that still breed: the religious and those with low intelligence.

“Even under modern conditions, traditional patriarchal religions often have above replacement fertility – sometimes very high rates of fertility – so religion can be an antidote to subfertility, but it is one which that is seldom used by the most intelligent.”^[10b]

Combined with a cultural restoration of traditional Christian sexual ethics and a rejection of feminism, the religious could peacefully outbreed the competition.^[12]

Consider the historical rise of Roman Catholicism during an extended period of relatively low individualism and intelligence. In the presence of low-individualism, you need a strong cultural identity. The Roman Catholic Church served society well in this role for a millennium. Then—with increased individualism and intelligence—the Protestant Reformation (and eventually the Industrial Revolution) came.

You would think that the recent secular decline in individualism and intelligence would make the RCC more attractive again. But it isn’t. Why? Bureaucracy. The RCC, like every other major Western institution, is converged.

Genius and Innovation

By examining the rates of innovation using lists of historical events in science and technology as well as the U.S. patent history, the estimate of peak of innovation was in 1873.^[15] We are currently at around 1650-1700 levels of per capita innovation rates. Following the trend line, we’ll have declined to 1400s levels by the start of the next century.^[3e] Further, we will hit 95% of the economic limit of technology by 2038 (we are about 90% now).^[15]

The financial benefit of new technology is suffering from both diminishing returns and falling innovation rates. If the worldwide demographic crisis hits fully when we nearly max out the ability to harness economic returns from technology, there is going to be a serious economic crisis in a few decades from which we may not recover for a long time. That’s the risk.

If society could learn to value and harness the rare geniuses, it could increase innovations that support societal and economic progress.^[10] This should be done in combination with the restoration of Christianity, as most geniuses are religiously motivated and aligned with objective truth.^[3c] Again, this would require dismantling the bureaucratic system that makes the formation of geniuses nearly impossible.^[11]

Moving Forward

A popular sentiment in the manosphere is that society will—or should—collapse and that a new society will be built by patriarchal men (like them). This view considers it unlikely that (1) society recovers (e.g. Christian patriarchy reasserts dominance), (2) societal problems continue indefinitely, or (3) patriarchal men fail to take over.

If recovery or stagnation do not occur, as society declines^[13] and economic momentum wanes over the next century, a collapse of society and mass death—war, starvation, genocide, criminalization and execution, and disease and epidemic—become more likely. Darwinian selection will return and most people will die.^[14][3d][3e]

Individual societies have a number of group interaction strategies they can choose from. If we mix all four combinations of cooperation vs non-cooperation with in-group and out-group, we land on the following strategies:

Of these, the most successful are the ethnocentric approaches, while the least successful are the ones that are non-cooperative within a group.^[16] If ethnocentric populations will eventually win out, the question will be which one? It may be patriarchal men, but not necessarily Christian ones.^[17]

Having covered the potential social solutions and found them largely wanting, the next part will discuss possible individual responses along with other conclusions and observations.

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^[1] No single causal factor could be identified, nor could any factor be identified as a primary cause of any other factor. Trying to piece together a clearer causal picture among these factors would require a deep historical examination.

^[2] Woodley, M. et al. (2017). “Social Epistasis Amplifies the Fitness Costs of Deleterious Mutations, Engendering Rapid Fitness Decline Among Modernized Populations.” Evolutionary Psychological Science. doi:10.1007/s40806-017-0084-x.

^[3] YouTube Videos

^[a] Woodley, Michael A. (2019) “The social epistasis amplification model in mice and men”
^[b] Woodley, Michael A. (2019) “The co-occurence nexus: A general theory of secular trends”
^[c] Woodley, Michael A. (2019) “The Need for View Point Diversity in Academia”
^[d] YouTube censored this source.
^[e] Dutton, Ed. (2019) “The Middle Class and the Decline of Civilization“

^[4] Adding mutant mice to a population of wild mice caused measurable changes to the brains of the non-mutant mice. The impact of mutant mice on non-mutant mice was not merely behavioral, but resulted in physiological changes in normal mice.

^[5] Gunner Q. (2019) “The Evolutionist Snake In The Church.”

^[6] “Race and intelligence“, 2019. Wikipedia.

^[7] Edwards, A. W. F. (2003). “Human genetic diversity: Lewontin’s fallacy“. BioEssays. 25 (8): 798–801. doi:10.1002/bies.10315.

^[8] Biological determinism can be used both to reject personal responsibility for behavior (“born that way”) and to prejudge people on the basis of their genetics. Sometimes this is valid (e.g. “insanity defense”) and sometimes it is not.

^[9] It is Christianity upon which the inherent moral worth of a person is based. Morally relative systems (e.g. atheistic materialism) must be rejected.

^[10] Dutton E, Charlton B (2016) “The Genius Famine“

^[a] Chapter 15: “What to do”
^[b] Chapter 12: “The Rise and Fall of Genius”. Section “Decline of intelligence due to the most intelligent having the fewest children”

^[11] Bureaucratic thinking has infected mathematics. It is no longer important that you get the correct answer, rather it is the process you used to arrive at your answer that matters.

^[12] Split by political leaning, those on the far right dramatically outbreed those on the left and center. The right will outbreed the left, but on its current trend it will also lose intelligence in the process.

^[13] We are already at a ~1600s level of general intelligence and it is declining.

^[14] Christians may wonder if these are the end days. Historians may wonder if this is the end of a cycle of civilization and the beginning of a new one.

^[15] Huebner, Jonathan. (2005). “A Possible Declining Trend for Worldwide Innovation. Technological Forecasting and Social Change” – TECHNOL FORECAST SOC CHANGE. 72. 10.1016/j.techfore.2005.01.003.

^[16] Hartshorn, M., Katnatcheev, A. & Shultz, T. (2013). “The evolutionary dominance of ethnocentric cooperation.” Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 16: 7.

^[17] Trends in Europe suggest that Islam will prevail, but it’s very hard to predict.

Intelligence and Dysgenics showed that a secular decline in general intelligence g (“Nature”) started with the Industrial Revolution.^[1] For a time, increasing IQ from environmental changes (“Nurture”) prevented many negative effects from the decline in g. Then in the 1960s, feminism gave us the Sexual Revolution which unleashed sudden key and detrimental social changes (“Nurture”)—anti-Christianity, anti-patriarchy, rejection of excellence, and the dominance of bureaucracy.^[2][3a]

To establish sexual liberation, feminism had to throw off Christianity’s moral dominance over sexuality. Prior to the sexual revolution, Christianity had a huge moderating effect on group behavior. Research done on the 70s and 80s shows that advanced paternal age^[4] is inversely correlated with religiosity. Advanced paternal age is opposed to religiosity because it is directly correlated with higher levels of de novo mutations and inversely correlated with higher g.^[1a] However, no correlation was found in the 30s and 40s when cultural and societal pressures forced most to embrace Christianity—whether true believers or cultural Christians.^[3b][3c] Christianity had been holding back the floodgate on effects from declining g and mutation accumulation.

Unfettered from Christianity, feminism was free to cause social chaos using the now-familiar tools: fornication and adultery, divorce, the child support model, abortion, contraception, anti-patriarchy, and women pursuing anti-maternal, career-focused lives.

The goal of this series has been to examine the potential causal role that feminism plays in society’s fundamental problems. Consider Boxer’s claim:

“Feminism as a social movement is not coherent, until it’s appreciated as a consequence of late-stage capitalism, where most of the people in such an unfortunate society are hopelessly atomized, living as cogs in a giant machine they neither like nor understand. In context, feminism is a symptom, rather than a cause, of fundamental problems”

The series so far has largely been concerned with the genetic g decline (“Nature”), but the sexual revolution’s changes were highly social and environmental (“Nurture”). The rise of feminism was certainly influenced by declining g, but it seems implausible to treat feminism as merely a symptom. It is one principle cause. The combination of declining general intelligence and the rise in feminism are inextricably linked to fundamental problems.^[4] The ‘cogs in a giant machine’ society—and failing capitalism—is a consequence of bureaucracy brought on by these factors.

The sexual revolution’s feminist goal was to destroy patriarchal systems, which it has done quite effectively. Feminist economist Victoria Bateman credits the destruction of patriarchy for modern economic prosperity.^[5] By contrast, Gunner Q notes:

“The level of patriarchy/matriarchy used in a society is the most controlling factor in its overall success–reproductive, financial and otherwise. Systems that come close to God’s ideal, even if they do not acknowledge God, still get the patriarchal benefit.”

Both cannot be true.

Over thousands of years, patriarchal systems have utilized ‘mate guarding’—controls of female reproduction—to prevent cuckoldry.^[6] One such example is the set of Christian sexual ethics and norms thrown off by the sexual revolution.

When men are confident that their wives are faithful, this creates male-to-male trust. In high trust societies, men spend less time guarding their mate, so more time can be spent on group cooperative activities—lowering conflict and violence and increasing economic output.^[3d][6] Society—including Christian churches—is still in the process of noticing that we no longer have this high trust. MGTOW is one consequence of this.

High trust societies are also conducive to producing geniuses and innovations.^[3d] By suppressing patriarchy, feminism has ensured—in the face of declining g—that these become even rarer. Research has found that religion and Victorian-like cultural sexual taboos promote greater creativity and accomplishments.^[7][8] By rejecting Christianity and endorsing sexual excesses, feminism further decreases creative output.

Studying the fall of civilizations, societal collapse follows sexual excesses. High civilization leads to low stress, followed by rejection of religion, liberalized sexuality (including contraception), decreasing intelligence, and inevitable decline.^[3e][8][9]

In asserting that the unequal are equal, feminism is fundamentally logically incoherent. Attempts to enforce equality of unequal things must necessarily involve the rejection of that which makes those things special. Excellent things like healthy marriages or boys getting top grades are threats to feminists. The ‘everyone gets a trophy’ mentality is the logical consequence.

At the same time, the growth of bureaucracy replaces truth and excellence with rules and procedures. When a bureaucratic drone is faced with a contradiction between their rules and procedures and some opposing but truthful fact, they will deny the truth and promote its opposite. Eventually society becomes unable to pursue truth, as expedient lies dominate.^[10]

As a result of the sexual revolution, the incoherence of feminism, the growth of bureaucracy, and the rejection of Christianity combined with the decline in g, lead to the rejection of excellence and the promotion of mediocrity (or worse).

One example of this is the corruption of peer review. What should be a process that improves the quality of scientific research and conclusions does the opposite.^[11][12][13] Rather than focus filtering out poor research, peer review is now used to filter out politically disfavored conclusions.^[3f][14] The result is the loss of faith in scientific research.

Another example is the school system. For many years programs have been designed to give minorities (mostly blacks) additional supports. These were based on the notion that everyone is a blank slate and will have equal outcomes if given equal opportunities. Given that there are actually group differences (e.g. blacks on average have 15 IQ points less than whites) and that blank-slatism is pseudoscience, this was doomed to failure. Rather than accept reality, the only remaining options were to apply standards unevenly and to lower the standards. Harvard applied standards unevenly by discriminating against high-IQ ‘white-adjacent’ Asians. The University of California is supporting dropping the SAT and ACT from admission requirements, effectively lowering admission standards.

A society that crushes excellence is a society that will be mediocre. As this series has shown, it is also a society that will experience inevitable decline.

In examining the sexual revolution, we’ve seen how sexual excesses and socially maladaptive behaviors (e.g. rejection of patriarchy; rejection of excellence) combined with declining general intelligence and increased bureaucracy. In the next part of the series, we’ll examine how it all ties together and see where to go from here.

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^[1] Woodley, Michael A. (2014) “How fragile is our intellect? Estimating losses in general intelligence due to both selection and mutation accumulation.” Personality and Individual Differences vol 75 80-84. Oct. 2014, doi:10.1016/j.paid.2014.10.047

^[a] The age of parents (along with selection changes) account for a .84 points per decade loss in g.

^[2] The relationship between the rise in feminism—including women’s suffrage—in the 1800s and early 1900s and the decline in g is unclear, but the 1960’s cultural changes were too fast to be purely genetic.

^[3] YouTube Videos

^[a] Charlton, B., Dutton, E. (2019) “Genius Famine and Albion Awakes”
^[b] Dutton, E. Woodley, M. (2019), “The Rise of the Mutants”
^[c] Dutton, E. (2019) “Why’s it so Difficult for Liberals and Conservatives to be Friends?”
^[d] Dutton, E. (2019) “Why Civilizations Need Patriarchy and Feminism Destroys Them”
^[e] Dutton, E. (2019) “Why Having Less Sex Might Save Civilization”
^[f] Pierre de Tiremont interview of Michael A. Woodley of Menie (link).

^[4] Feminism can be understood to be both symptom and cause. There is likely a synergistic effect between different causes, such that no cause is truly independent.

^[5] Bateman, V. (2019). The Sex Factor. Polity Press.

^[6] Mate Guarding: Grant, R. & Montrose, V.T. (2018). “It’s a Man’s World: Mate Guarding and the Evolution of Patriarchy” Mankind Quarterly, 58: 384-418.

^[7] Kim, E. et al. (2013). “Sublimation, Culture and Creativity.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

^[8] Unwin, J.D. (1934). Sex and Culture. https://archive.org/details/b20442580

^[9] Cattell, R. (1938). “Some Changes in Social life in a Community With Fall Intelligence Quotient”

^[10] Charles Murray (2003) “Human Accomplishment”

^[11] Charlton, B. (2010) “The cancer of bureaucracy: How it will destroy science, medicine, education; and eventually everything else” Med Hypotheses, 74(6):961-5. doi:10.1016/j.mehy.2009.11.038

^[12] Charlton, B. (2013) “Not even trying: the corruption of real science”

^[13] Anonymous (2018) “Against Peer Review” Free Northerner.

^[14] Cofnas, N., Carl, N. & Woodley of Menie, “Does Activism in Social Science Explain Conservatives’ Distrust of Scientists?” M.A. Am Soc (2018) 49: 135.

Intelligence and Dysgenics showed that average IQs have made huge gains while general intelligence (g) has declined. Why worry about falling g? Physical and mental mutations are usually co-morbid.^[1][2a] 84% of the human genome involves the brain^[3], so a decrease in g means higher physical mutations (e.g. fewer alpha traits). Therefore, g predicts mutational load—something to worry about.

Lowering ability (g) while improving environments and raising specialized skills (IQ) leaves a population less intelligent, but more ‘capable’^[4][8a]. It does so at a significant cost: the rise of bureaucracy.

“In every day terms; the academics of the year 2000 were the school teachers of 1900, the school teachers of the year 2000 would have been the factory workers (the average people) of 1900, the office workers and policemen of 2000 were the farm labourers of 1900, while the low level security guards and shop assistants of 2000 were probably in the workhouse, on the streets or dead in 1900.”^[5a]

Bureaucracy is leadership by command hierarchy, rule following, and functional specialization. This is workable—even rational—when it utilizes individual decision making by qualified decision makers.^[9] This is not practical with g decline—with most workers less intelligent than factory workers or farm laborers of 1900—due to the huge demand for, and decreased supply of, qualified decision makers. In its place is mindless red tape, blind adherence to rules, and automation (e.g. computerization) that explicitly rejects individualism. Decisions are made by compromise, agreement, group think, and uniformity, especially by utilizing committees.^[6]

Like the Parable of the Lifesaving Station, failure begins when the mission is lost. The parasitic propensity to expand defines modern bureaucracy, incorporating ever more of an organization’s structure into bureaucratic procedures. It becomes self-maintaining, disconnected from reality.

“Modern bureaucracies have simultaneously grown and spread in a positive feedback cycle; such that interlinking bureaucracies now constitute the major environmental feature of human society which affects organizational survival and reproduction. Individual bureaucracies must become useless parasites which ignore the ‘real-world’ in order to adapt to rapidly-changing ‘bureaucratic reality’.”^[6]

What started as a way to efficiently organize decision making becomes a mechanism for producing enforced conformity and busywork. At its best, bureaucracy makes life difficult for those few who do the real work. More likely, bureaucracy cripples an organization and becomes a force for evil.

Bureaucracy is a first-order evil. It is the mechanism behind most societal evils. Everything—including feminism and rejection of religion—is facilitated by bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is inherently evil, yet most people are so desensitized to bureaucracy and its evil that it must be explained:

“Why are there so many bad systems, organisation, and processes in the modern world? Why are governments so incompetent, inefficient, and often corrupt? Why are big companies and institutions so poor at innovation, so good at creating huge bureaucracies, and so bad at balancing factors such as profit and social responsibility?

We must establish that my claims against these organisations are true. That is difficult, because there is no valid basis for comparison, and no good objective way to measure good and bad attributes. But I think most people know through anecdotes, or just through their own personal opinions, that what I said is true, at least in the vast majority of cases.

I think it relates back to Dunbar’s Number.”

Organizations that do not rely on hierarchical leadership and delegation will fail when they hit the limitations of Dunbar’s Number. However, since there are not enough qualified decision makers, bureaucracy is inevitable. The larger an organization grows, the more leadership it theoretically needs to be effective, growing the organization further. This creates the demand for more when it inevitably fails. This is one way that bureaucracy self-feeds.

Even though IQ has peaked, there are hardly any geniuses anymore and innovation rates have fallen dramatically.^[2c] Bureaucracy has successfully contributed to the elimination of excellence and motivation.^[11] Nevertheless, despite the fall in intelligence and the growth in bureaucracy, society is still moving forward on momentum. It is unclear how long it can continue:

“Arguably this reversal has already happened in The West, and we are now living off capital – well embarked on a downslope of reduced societal efficiency which affects all nations (because the innovations and breakthroughs created by geniuses of European origin have usually spread to the rest of the world).”^[5c]

Bureaucracy turns people into cogs of the machine, destroying creativity and genius. Those individuals who manage to be effective risk being pushed out or failing upwards to their level of incompetence (i.e the Peter Principle), further feeding the bureaucratic machine. In some cases, such as government bureaucracy, it can actually punish or destroy those individuals who don’t conform.

Consider a typical school made up of many interlocking bureaucracies: school and district administration, a system of tenure, teacher unionization, state educational standards, and so forth.

Students, by and large, are ‘taught to the test’. While programs exist to support kids who exceed or fall behind, these tend to be one-size-fits-all approaches. In the rare case where a school provides one-on-one support staff, it is a coin flip whether they’ll be qualified. Schools must follow their procedures, no matter what. They will literally sue you in court before deviating from bureaucratic script.

It is almost impossible to fire bad teachers. They can only be transferred to other positions or schools. Once a bad teacher is in the system, the bureaucracies ensure that they will stay, perhaps even be promoted due to their incompetence.

Schools must ensure that feminist sociopolitical goals are met: boys should not exceed girls, and girls must be given enhanced opportunities and rewards.

All of these things are actively harmful to the purported goal of educating children, a job that schools do quite poorly.^[10]

Government is arguably the biggest, most powerful, and most obvious bureaucracy. The growth of government bureaucracy is roughly exponential. It is also negatively correlated with g. It is an unsurprising truism that the government does everything poorly, nonetheless the recent growth in government bureaucracy is astoundingly large. The impeachment hearings provide an excellent example of the insanity of government bureaucracies:

“The system can be described as a nonsensical bureaucratic run around, with gatekeepers of information at every step. State department officials are left with the claim that “they just work for the department,” and must follow those procedures.”

Democracy requires a highly intelligent population to work effectively.^[5b] America was founded as humanity was approaching its peak level of intelligence. The Founding Fathers were able to understand deep philosophical concepts in order to produce the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. They had no idea that one day a large percentage of the voting population would be completely unable to understand why certain rights were essential—freedom of speech, abhorrence of censorship, or the right to defend ourselves from tyranny. Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821) presciently declared:

“Every nation gets the government it deserves.”

Or as H. L. Mencken put it:

“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”

Bureaucracy is totalitarian and anti-democratic. Government and voters are steadily replacing democratic ideals with an anti-democratic, totalitarian, bureaucratic state. It isn’t that America is in late-stage capitalism, as some have suggested, but that we are just too dumb to have an effective democracy.

In the next part of the series, we’ll see how massive social changes combined with intelligence declines have served to dramatically change society itself in a very short time.

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^[1] “Sartorious N. (2013). Comorbidity of mental and physical diseases: a main challenge for medicine of the 21st century. Shanghai archives of psychiatry, 25(2), 68–69. doi:10.3969/j.issn.1002-0829.2013.02.002

^[2] YouTube Videos

^[a] Dutton, Edward (2019) “The Mutant Says in His Heart: There is No God”
^[b] Dutton, Edward (2019) “At Our Wits’ End I: The Rise and Fall of Western Intelligence”
^[c] Woodley, Michael A. (2019) “Why Are We Getting Less Intelligent“

^[3] “Human brains share a consistent genetic blueprint and possess enormous biochemical complexity” Allen Institute for Brain Science (2012).

^[4] ‘Capable’ refers to being able to do specialized work. Many of our professions require specialized mental skills that our ancestors would never had had to consider. As Flynn notes, moderns have a greater requirement for abstractions. This does not imply that the work is of high quality or creative.

^[5] Dutton E, Charlton B (2016) “The Genius Famine“

^[a] Chapter 12, section “Measuring the decline of intelligence”
^[b] Chapter 13, section “Genius and the educational system”
^[c] Chapter 12, section “Historical trends in the prevalence of genius”

^[6] Charlton, Bruce G. (2010) “The cancer of bureaucracy: How it will destroy science, medicine, education; and eventually everything else” Med Hypotheses, 74(6):961-5. doi:10.1016/j.mehy.2009.11.038

^[7] Giuseppe, C. (2012) “Bureaucracy and medicine: an unholy marriage.” Journal of Cardiovascular Medicine. 15(9):243–244. doi:10.4414/cvm.2012.01693

^[8] Charlton BG (2013) “Not even trying: the corruption of real science”

^[a] “I suspect that overall human capability (leaving aside specific domains) reached its peak or plateau around 1965-75 – at the time of the Apollo moon landings – and has been declining ever since.”

^[9] Hierarchical leadership and delegation is required to avoid the limitations of Dunbar’s Number.

^[10] It’s well known that children perform better academically when they are separated by sex. Not only does the bureaucracy forbid this (due to forced inclusion) in favor of social interaction, but they are no longer even allowed to acknowledge that girls are girls and boys are boys.

^[11] Everyone gets a trophy.

Mouse Utopia showed that removing hardship in mice populations led to genetic mutation buildup and eventual extinction. We will now examine human intelligence to look for evidence of genetic decline in human populations.

The g factor is a person’s real general intelligence. IQ tests attempt to measure g. We would like to estimate how g has changed over time by how IQ scores have changed. The Flynn effect is the large, sustained increase in IQ scores over time—3 points per decade. This creates an apparent paradox: if g increased 30 points in the 20th century, then the average ancestor from the 1800s would have been borderline mentally retarded. Flynn and others attribute the increases to environmental causes: education, specialization, health, and other social improvements.^[1][8a]

Examining low-complexity indicators of g—backward digit span test, simple reaction time, working memory tests, color discrimination, audio pitch discrimination, weight discrimination, 3D rotational measures, high order (hard to learn) vocabulary usage frequency, cranial (a)symmetry, and measures of creativity—shows secular declines over time.^[7][8c][8d] The Woodley effect (i.e. co-occurrence model) states that g has declined over time—1.5 points per decade—simultaneously with the Flynn effect.^[2][3][8c]

“To put this in perspective, 15 points would be approximately the difference in average IQ between a low level security guard (85) and a police constable (100), or between a high school science teacher (115) and a biology professor at an elite university (130). In other words, in terms of intelligence, the average Englishman from about 1880-1900 would be in roughly the top 15 per cent of the population in 2000 – and the difference would be even larger if we extrapolated back further towards about 1800 when the Industrial Revolution began to initiate massive demographic changes in the British population”^[6a]

Environment is leveraging huge gains (+30 IQ points) that mask the genetic decline (-15 g points)^[8c], but an Anti-Flynn effect is beginning. Meta-analysis shows secular IQ decline in 66 different observations from 13 different countries over 87 years and total sampling of 300,000 persons.^[4] The decline is most visible among those of higher socioeconomic status^[8b], where potential is tapped out.^[13]

In simple terms, humanity got stupider as it got much better at leveraging innate intelligence and learned skills, but the overall gains have started to plateau or decline.

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, child mortality was fairly consistent at ~40%.^[11] Mortality rates were highest among the poor, where disease, accidents, starvation, and poor living conditions resulted in very high mortality. In the middle class—the most intelligent group—high fertility rates and lower mortality rates led to a steady selection for intelligence.^[6c][14] This changed in the mid-1800s in response to demographic and socioeconomic changes and declining child mortality. Selection pressure, driven by high mortality rates, ended as nearly all babies now survive to adulthood.^[6d]

There are two primary drivers behind more than a century of general intelligence decline. The first is dysgenic breeding and the second is mutation accumulation.^[12] Neither factor alone is sufficient to explain the secular decline in g.^[6b]

Intelligence is negatively correlated with fertility. Those with low intelligence are breeding more than those with high intelligence. However, the Breeder’s Equation does not account for the magnitude of measured change because the most genetically fit reproduce not only less often, but also later in life (reflecting career-first feminism) Those with low g have a shorter gap between generations, effectively lapping those with high g—intensifying the dysgenic effect.^[8c] This is illustrated in this humorous clip (H/T: chronoblip).

The only significant exception is a group with relatively high fertility that has good genetic fitness associated with health and prosperity: the religious. Unfortunately, this group has been experiencing significant declines, right alongside the decline in g.

Bad genes are being passed on much faster than good genes, the bad overwhelming the good. But even eight human generations is not enough time to account for the entire drop in g. The remainder comes from mutation accumulation:

…until about 1800 only the minority of people with (on average) the ‘best genes’ (i.e. the lowest mutation load) would be able to survive and reproduce; and among the great majority of the population only a very small proportion of their offspring (averaging much less than two, probably less than one, per woman) would survive to a healthy adulthood, reproduce and raise children of their own. In this context, which was for almost all of human history until about two hundred years ago; both new and inherited deleterious mutations were filtered-out, or purged, from the population every generation by this very harsh form of natural selection.^[6c]

Many persons with deleterious mutations do not die, but go on to reproduce. Compounding this problem, social changes (reflecting career-first feminism) have increased the average age of parents. The older parents are at conception, the greater number of genetic mutations they will pass.^[5] Not only do mutations not get purged, but they are added at higher than historical rates.

Evolutionary theory requires both natural selection and random mutations. Since mutations are almost never beneficial^[15], selection is the only way to prevent increased mutational load.^[16] Accordingly, absent major societal changes, the decline in g is expected to continue.^[17]

Why worry about falling g, when we have those huge IQ gains? We live in a society where those leveraged IQ gains are essential to many professions. A significantly higher percentage of our population must work in more complex professions than could have ever been expected of our agrarian ancestors, yet our ancestors had much higher innate potential. Consider this timely tweet:

No one in 1850 (or even 1950) would have said something so inane as that slide. Heather asserts that those science teachers who cannot posit alternative hypotheses have a dangerous amount of power and should not be teaching it. But who else could do it? There are just not enough people to replace our leaders and teachers with those who have the requisite general intelligence. Our average teacher can do science (high IQ), but they can’t fully understand it (low general intelligence).

In the same vein, after universally recognizing the worth of the Bill of Rights, society is now debating the merits of its previously established concepts, such as free speech or the right to defend oneself from tyranny. In many ways we have vastly exceeded our ancestors, but in other ways, we are just…stupid.

The next part in the series will examine what happens when a population lowers ability (general intelligence) and improves environments and raises skills (high IQ).

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^[1] Dickens WT, Flynn JR (2001). “Heritability estimates versus large environmental effects: The IQ paradox resolved”. Psychological Review. 108 (2): 346–369. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.108.2.346.

^[2] Figueredo, AJ; Sarraff, M. (2018). “Michael A. Woodley of Menie, Yr“. Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science: 1–9. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3838-2.

^[3] Woodley, Michael A et al. “By their words ye shall know them: Evidence of genetic selection against general intelligence and concurrent environmental enrichment in vocabulary usage since the mid 19th century.” Frontiers in psychology vol. 6 361. 21 Apr. 2015, doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00361

^[4] Woodley of Menie, Michael A., Peñaherrera-Aguirre, Mateo, Fernandes, Heitor B. F., Figueredo, Aurelio-José. “What causes the anti-Flynn effect? A data synthesis and analysis of predictors.” Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, Vol 12(4), Oct 2018, 276-295

^[5] Woodley, Michael A. “How fragile is our intellect? Estimating losses in general intelligence due to both selection and mutation accumulation.” Personality and Individual Differences vol 75 80-84. Oct. 2014, doi:10.1016/j.paid.2014.10.047

^[6] Dutton E, Charlton B (2016) “The Genius Famine“

^[a] Chapter 12, section “Measuring the decline of intelligence”
^[b] Chapter 15: “What to do”
^[c] Chapter 2, section “The evolution of higher intelligence”
^[d] Chapter 12, section “High-IQ genes versus low-IQ genes”

^[7] See: Deary et al, 2004 and Deary’s analysis of Action & Schroeder, 2001.

^[8] YouTube Videos

^[a] Flynn, James. (2013) “Why our IQ levels are higher than our grandparents”
^[b] Woodley, Michael A. (2019) “The Scarr-Row Effect”
^[c] Woodley, Michael A. (2019) “Why Are We Getting Less Intelligent”
^[d] Woodley, Michael A. (2019) “Secular Declines in Colour Acuity“

^[11] Gapminder. “Sources: Child Morality”

^[12] Studies do not show a correlation between abortion and intelligence decline.

^[13] Studies do not show a correlation between declining g and black and white IQ gaps.

^[14] This selection is why almost all descendants of Western Europeans can trace their ancestry—by the 16^th century—to the wealthy or aristocrats

^[15] It is the claim of various proponents of Intelligent Design that beneficial mutations are nearly impossible to combine into macro-level improvements.

^[16] Most mutations have no noticeable effect and are considered benign. However, mutations are not truly random. Previously mutated sites are more likely to experience mutations in the future, increasing the odds of a harmful change.

^[17] This is not an argument in favor of eugenics. This would be pretty inconsistent considering that I have adopted three children with significant genetic abnormalities.

The purpose of this series is to examine the—potentially causal—role that feminism plays in society’s ills. Part 1 discussed how the birth control pill biochemically alters a woman to act contrary to the evolutionary imperative: to optimally reproduce. Part 2 will introduce the Mouse Utopia experiment and some societal implications.

Darwin’s theory of evolution has led to two main mechanisms: random genetic mutation and natural selection. It’s a matter of established science that mutations occur as a normal course of life and that these are passed to children during reproduction. Natural selection means that those with mostly beneficial mutations survive and pass their genes to their children and those with mostly negative mutations do not. Populations that operate this way are under Darwinian-selection.

In the 1960s and 1970s, researcher John Calhoun performed experiments on mice to find out what would happen to populations where Darwinian-selection mechanisms were removed. He set up utopian environments: spacious with unlimited food and water, clean bedding, and no predation. He seeded the experiment with eight of the best and healthiest stock mice he could acquire. His goal was to test population overcrowding.

Initially everything went great. The mice reproduced as mice do and the population grew exponentially. But then something surprising happened. Long before the colony ran out of space, the population growth slowed, plateaued, and then began to fall as reproduction eventually ceased entirely. This led to complete colony extinction.

During the decline, a number of strange behaviors were noted.

Females became more aggressive and male-like. They kicked their young out of the nest before they learned proper social behaviors. Males became disinterested in having sex. Females had to pressure the males for sex. Some homosexual behavior was witnessed.

Mice in the colony ceased to engage in normal, complex mice behaviors. They started clustering together into large groups in areas designed to hold smaller numbers. They would randomly attack each other. Cannibalism began, despite the unlimited food availability.

The most interesting were male effeminate mice who isolated themselves from the rest of the group and never had sex. They spent their entire day standing with others like them, eating, drinking, sleeping, and grooming themselves and each other. Calhoun described them as autistic creatures capable of only the most basic physiological behaviors. He called these the “Beautiful Ones” as their grooming led to clean, attractive, smooth fur coats.

When the social bonds of the colony ceased to function, Calhoun noted:

“Their spirit has died (the first death). They are no longer capable of executing the more complex behaviors compatible with species survival. The species in such settings die”

At the end of the experiment all that were left were the Beautiful Ones, females not interested in males, and social outcasts who did not perform normal mouse behaviors.

The Mouse Utopia experiments raise interesting questions about human populations. Prior to the industrial revolution, Western child mortality was around 40%, but this is now at 1%. Like Mouse Utopia, human populations have broken free of Darwinian selection. In Does Marriage Keep Society Afloat?, I noted that humanity’s population pyramids are inverting. This is most advanced in Japan:

Japan’s population is falling. Women are not interested in children. Men have lost interest in sex. Many don’t even bother to masturbate. Evolutionary maladaptive behaviors are entrenched. There is no end in sight. Other countries, like China, are following close behind. In America immigrants are replacing the native population, masking the same trends. Across the world fertility rates continue to decline.^[1]

What is happening to humanity?

Due to modern innovations in genetics, researchers have been able to identify a genetic mutation for autistic behavior (like the Beautiful Ones) in rodents to NLGN3 (paper 1; paper 2). Researcher Michael Woodley and his colleagues ran an experiment where sufficient numbers of captive-bred NLGN3 knockout mice were mixed with a population of wild mice. As in the Mouse Utopia experiment, the genetically-damaged mice caused social damage to the entire population. However, if the defective ones were removed, then the colony would begin to recover within as little as a week.

To explain these results, Michael Woodley formulated a general theory of Social Epistasis Amplification. The notion is that genetic mutations of a few can still have deleterious effect on the population of social species as a whole through genetic interactions at the social level (i.e. ‘interorganismal gene-gene interactions’).^[2]

Human populations are experiencing the effects of social epistasis. Feminism is one example. Feminists, who often have high mutational load, routinely promote genetically maladaptive behaviors (e.g. the birth control pill; forced assent of homosexuality and transgenderism; delayed marriage) on those with low mutational load. Doing what they suggests literally harms society. Nearly every article on this site serves to highlight these points. Moreover, it is not sufficient to reject feminism: nearly everyone is influenced. MGTOW is one example of resulting maladaptive behavior.^[3]

Future parts of this series will explore how we got to this point and expand upon these concepts in greater detail.

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^[1] And, unlike the mice, humans do not have unlimited resources.

^[2] This bears similarity to the social contagion concept.

^[3] The “Beautiful Ones” were the mice analog of MGTOW: socially isolated and asexual. In Mouse Utopia, mice going their own way ended up destroying the colony.

In response to The Pill Causes Bad Mate Selection, Gunner Q objected to the alpha/beta terminology used.

“…you are trying to use non-Vox Day/Heartiste definitions of Alpha and Beta. I missed that footnote on the first reading and it makes your arguments disingenuous at best. An Alpha man is the specific man that a specific woman SHOULD want? That’s a hopelessly moving goalpost.”

It’s important to note that the Manosphere did not invent these terms and the way it uses them need not be scientific nor consistent. In the context of scientific research on hormonal contraception, we need to consider how the terms are used in the scientific fields (e.g. evolutionary biology and psychology; anthropology).

It’s also important to note that the definitions are inherently fluid as a function of selection and adaptation. Different traits will be selected in different times, places, and situations (e.g. socioeconomic differences). Nevertheless, certain genetic expressions are fairly consistent and non-variable.

Alpha traits are (merely?) proxies—or indicators—of genetic fitness. Good looks (e.g. facial symmetry; tall height), good physical fitness, no deformities, masculinity^[1], wealth, and high social status all suggest good underlying genetics. It is fairly uncontroversial that most fertile women are attracted to men with these kinds of traits.^[2]

Beta traits are those traits that are not alpha traits, that is, those traits that do not correlate strongly—at the population level—with genetic fitness. Such traits may include being fun, nice, woman-like (e.g. emotional; caring and nurturing; empathetic), physically sub-optimal, and unattractive.

“The most sexually attractive men are very often terrible choices for fathering children. The Pill is not driving such behavior. Women have always gone for the bad boys.”

Simply put, ‘alpha‘ implies genetic fitness and ‘beta‘ does not. Both sets can include both positive and negative traits. This is a very important point. While alpha traits indicate good fitness for reproduction, beta traits indicate long-term relationship stability and good child-rearing skills. A woman can mate with someone with any combination of traits, desirable or not. But—critically—reproductive choice is permanent and thus the more important consideration. It’s possible to influence and change her mate’s traits over time^[3], but she can’t change her children’s genes after the fact.

“Women SHOULD want healthy, emotionally stable, productive men. Women DO want sociopaths, drug dealers and starving musicians. The Pill doesn’t change that.”

Not all such good men are beta men, nor are all alpha men sociopaths. Women do want these positive things and can find them in men of all types. Regardless, the alpha/beta distinctions are not about what any individual woman explicitly wants or should do. Choosing a mate in this context is amoral. It is her evolutionary imperative to find the best genetic match she is able to. Any given individual may fail at this task (either intentionally or unintentionally), but the pill lessens the desire for genetic (and sexual!) compatibility.

Hypergamy states that women will try to marry up. We know that there are upper bounds to this, for many different reasons (competition, limited selection, personal fitness, socioeconomic status, etc.). The most genetically fit man that an obese, low-intelligence, chain-smoking, tattooed, debt-ridden, short, blue-haired woman can mate with is going to be her ‘alpha’. He probably won’t have many (any?) really good alpha traits, but it’s the best that she can do personally.

In modern society there is now a disconnect between having sex and reproducing (and marrying). Abortion, contraception (e.g. the pill), social acceptance of fornication, and the rejection of patriarchy have all contributed to separating sex from the evolutionary imperative to reproduce. Historical societies, almost universally patriarchal, had structures in place to ensure that negative traits were suppressed socially and positive ones expressed. A modern woman can have it all: consequence-free sex, children with anyone (including bad boys), and having the State or a beta-male raise her children (e.g. society sanctioned cuckoldry).

Statistics on virginity show that women are almost universally promiscuous in their youth. Who they have sex with need not be who they end up choosing to mate or marry. There is really no question that women today are having sex with alpha men, but they are not necessarily staying with them. Not even Brad Pitt can keep a woman.

While on the pill women can have as much sex as she wants, but she won’t have children with anyone, alpha or beta. What matters is what she does when she goes off the pill. There are a number of possibilities. Is she giving an alpha children, but marrying a beta man? Or is she now denying her husband sex or frivorcing him?

So what we see is that the very structure of society has changed and the pill’s effects fit right into it. Whether this is causal or merely correlative is unclear.

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^[1] Another term that should probably be defined, if possible, more specifically.

^[2] One well-known example is a woman laughing at a not-funny joke that a tall, attractive, muscular, wealthy man says while otherwise mocking a short, unattractive, fat man who does the same thing. Or how some men are praised for “getting in touch with their feminine side” while other men are rejected for the same.

^[3] This almost certainly happens in almost all real marriages, but research on this topic is outside the scope of this post.

What role does feminism as a social movement play in society’s ills? Is it a cause of the fundamental problems or merely a symptom? While many people in the manosphere have asserted that feminism plays a key causal role, this notion has been questioned. I’ll be examining this broad question over a series of articles. In the first article in this series, I’ll be considering the validity—and societal impact—of the claim that hormonal oral contraception (“the pill”) negatively changes the way a woman selects a mate.

To answer this question we will consider the recent research done by Gurit E. Birnbaum entitled “The Bitter Pill: Cessation of Oral Contraceptives Enhances the Appeal of Alternative Mates”^[1] and the commentary by anthropologist Edward Dutton^[2].

Reproductive Strategy

Before discussing the pill, let’s consider the evolutionary imperative: to reproduce. Evolutionary biology leads a fertile woman towards a somewhat unconscious reproductive strategy that maximizes her chances to pass on her genes as many times as possible. This involves the following three primary areas:

(1) Reproductive Fitness

A normal fertile woman will prefer alpha male traits^[3] : physically fitness, good looks, and masculinity. These traits are proxies that indicate underlying good genes that give her the highest chance to produce healthy children with the lowest risk of genetic mutation.

(2) Compatible Immune System

A woman uses the body odors of men to help find the best genetic match that indicates immune system compatibility.^[5] Ideally, she should find a match that is not too similar, but also not too far away. The goal is to produce healthy children by avoiding both inbreeding and conflicting alleles. Historically, this meant marriage involving the genetic equivalents of distant cousins.

(3) Seeking Men of High Status

A woman will seek a man of high status.^[4] Her goal is to have as much wealth and support for her and her children. From an evolutionary standpoint, hypergamy is a proxy for genetic fitness.

This is a fertile woman’s natural state.

The Pill

Having established the natural tendency of women, we now ask whether the pill has any effect on this? The research indicates that it does.

While the natural reproductive strategy is expressed most strongly during a woman’s peak fertility—while she is ovulating—her overall preferences do not change throughout her cycle. By contrast, the pill works by taking a woman out of her fertility cycle and causes her to enter a period of semi-permanent infertility. This results in mental and physiological changes that cause her to unconsciously seek a non-reproductive strategy—inverting her default, natural strategy. Her focus shifts from reproductive success towards personal success.

(1) Reproduction is unimportant

A woman on the pill will seek beta male traits^[3] : nice, fun, woman-like, unattractive. These traits make a woman feel validated and supported. She may become repulsed by the alpha traits that she would find attractive in her fertile state.

(2) Genetic Incompatibility

Rather than finding a good genetic match for having children, a woman’s desires shift:

“…women’s perception of men may serve a different function: pursuing cooperative partners who assist with child care (“good parents”) rather than genetically compatible partners. Women may therefore revert to having opposite mate preferences, becoming fixed on seeking less genetically compatible men whose body odor resembles that of their apparently supportive genetic relatives.”

A man who is genetically like her brother or a close cousin is going to be much more likely to support her than a more distant match, even though any offspring would be less genetically fit.

(3) Seek Men of Any Status

If children don’t matter, then a good genetic match is unimportant. Any man will do. If she wants sex, status doesn’t matter. If she wants wealth, she’ll be able to temporarily extract wealth from almost anyone. If she wants a husband, the average beta will suffice.

The Consequences of the Pill

Of course these effects are not absolute. Individually, woman both on and off the pill can make alternate choices. Nevertheless, the overall negative effects should not be ignored.

The pill alters a fertile woman into an infertile woman, changing her life plan. She’s biologically no longer interested in children (outward focused), but in what makes her most comfortable and supported (inward focused). The hormones in the pill cause real physiological changes that change her perception of men. Even her sex drive can change. While this is listed medically as a side effect, biologically-speaking it seems to be the point.

There are two potential major scenarios where this will cause problems.

First, a woman on the pill before marriage selects a poor genetic fit (beta). Eventually when she stops taking the pill, she will have reduced attraction to her husband and suddenly be strongly attracted to the alpha men she would have naturally been attracted to before marriage.

Second, a woman marries a good genetic fit (alpha), but who goes on the pill after marriage (to avoid children), will develop a lack of sexual attraction to her husband. She may start criticizing her husband for his masculine traits and viewpoints that she was previously attracted to.

The marriage in both scenarios faces a heightened risk of sex-starvation, infidelity, or divorce. But even if these things do not happen, the swings will likely cause personal relationship instability and discontent. One can easily imagine this contributing to mental disorders like depression.

Analysis and Summary

Dating and marrying a woman while she is on the pill should be avoided. Men married to women who go on the pill after getting married should be aware of the risks.

The pill contributes to genetic and relationship mismatches. Divorce risk for most marriages is highest during fertile childbearing years, precisely when she is most likely to change pill usage. Contrast this with a pill-free normative natural marriage entering the infertile years: the relationship is firmly established and her husband has likely developed sufficient beta traits needed for her long-term support. Such a marriage is unlikely to end in divorce.

When women on the pill hook up with or marry poor genetically matched men, it does two things: (1) it leaves their otherwise best matched man unmatched and (2) takes someone else’s best matched man. What does this look like? Well, women on the pill can potentially have sex with as many “bad-boy” men as they can, but they generally won’t marry them. They’ll marry poorly matched men. Single men will be left with fewer prospects, as their best matches are marrying the wrong men. Married men will be left with greater divorce risk as the women who should have been their wives marry the wrong men. It’s an unmitigated sociological disaster for both married and unmarried men.

So what is the role of feminism? Feminism promotes female supremacy through its key tenets—careerism, marriage-avoidance, and children-avoidance through easy contraception, abortion, and divorce. All of these are, of course, counter to the evolutionary imperative.

The pill, while not essential to feminism, is a tool with a synergistic feedback effect. A number of red-pill memes demonstrate this: (1) women reproducing with feminine men produce more genetically feminine men, (2) women reproducing with masculine bad-boys have feminine men raise their (now) sociologically feminine boys (e.g. marrying single mothers), and (3) the pill amplifies feminine marital discontent. The pill helps enable these and more.

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^[1] Birnbaum, G.E., Zholtack, K., Mizrahi, M. et al. Evolutionary Psychological Science (2019) 5: 276. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40806-018-00186-6. (download here)

^[2] He has been accused of anti-semitism and supporting eugenics, demonetized by YouTube for various red-pill positions, and had his work rejected by academic publishers. He is friends with Bruce G. Charlton, who is not loved by our host. YMMV.

^[3] What is meant by alpha and beta in this context? While there are certainly men who—from an evolutionary standpoint—should not breed, each woman’s ideal alpha may be very different. Alpha should be defined as the best evolutionary choice available to a particular fertile woman. The beta is a man who does not maximize her offspring’s genetic odds of survival. He’s a bad genetic fit for her. He may be someone else’s alpha or no one’s at all. The terms are relative and contextual.

The terms alpha and beta are not value judgments. For example, alpha men often have low dependability and beta men have high dependability. A woman will probably be doing well if she finds a man with a good combination of alpha and beta traits to see her through various life stages.

While the terms are frequently assigned motives and morality in the manosphere, the use here is merely descriptive of the ways a normal population of fertile women find the best genetic match for reproduction. Trade-offs can and do occur, resulting in deviations from the mean or expected behavior, but the general concepts hold.

^[4] As with alpha and beta, high status is relative. Women seek the highest status that they can attain relative to their own status. This doesn’t mean they don’t marry men who have low-status in the absolute sense, nor does it imply that low-status men and women are unworthy of marriage. They are merely trying to maximize their genetic fit.

^[5] Wedekind, C., & Füri, S. (1997). Body odor preferences in men and women: do they aim for specific MHC combinations or simply heterozygosity? Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 264(1387), 1471–1479. (download here)