A lot of social policy is conceived on the erroneous assumption that the unintelligent or average-IQ masses can easily modify their behavior or make rational choices:
Agree. I've been preaching for years about 'cognitive oppression' — the tendency of high-IQ elites to order civilization in ways that are extremely confusing & overwhelming for lower-IQ people — in ways the higher-IQ folks can't even understand.
Example: expecting lower-IQ…
— Geoffrey Miller (@primalpoly) September 12, 2024
He ignores or overlooks that low-IQ people bear some responsibility, even if at no fault of their own, for making bad/suboptimal choices. Too many policy elites assume that individual problems can be solved society-wide. We’re not talking complicated things such as ‘understanding the federal tax code’ or ‘learning how to code’, but simple things taken for granted such as food choices, maintaining a budget, or not gambling all of one’s income on lottery tickets.
The responsibility or role of the individual vs society can be represented by the table:
| HBD/biology | Environmental | |
| Individual | Low IQ, preference for unhealthy foods, poor impulse control, slow metabolism, etc. | laziness due to boredom, poor time management, growing up in a broken family |
| Society/collective | Low national IQ, bad genetics and tendency to store fat on a population-wide level (e.g. Polynesian populations) | Lead poisoning in pipes, malnutrition due to war, infrastructure collapse |
Obesity in America, in general, is mostly an upper-left quadrant problem. As cremieux.xyz notes, food deserts are a myth. Despite the the dangers of obesity being well advertised, the popularity of dieting and fitness apps which have millions of downloads, the booming health and fitness industries, record gym attendance, and an abundance of free dieting information on social media–Americans are still fatter than ever. This points to biology in some way being the culprit.
An individual is responsible in the sense that it’s still intrinsic to the individual, even if not amenable to lifestyle modification or willpower. Obesity disproportionately affects low/average-IQ people. Junk food and marketing can be blamed, but it also does not help that low-IQ people may be predisposed to craving highly-palatable calorie-dense food, have worse impulse control or willpower (e.g. marshmallow test), have slower metabolisms relative to bodyweight, are averse to exercise, or possess genetic corelates between low-IQ and obesity.
This makes obesity especially impervious to lifestyle modification, and is why diets have such a high failure rate. Same for education, in which increased funding and smaller classroom size does not lead to better test scores or proficiency. Curing obesity, similar to raising academic underachievement of underperforming groups, is tantamount to trying to raise IQ, which is not possible. The only society-wide solution is to physically prevent these people from consuming such foods or to regulate junk food similar to tobacco products, which is not practical or possible. Or in regard to education, lowering the ceiling (dumbing-down) to try to create more equitable outcomes.
Perhaps policy-elites lack empathy, but then they are accused of being patronizing when they try to help or are otherwise blamed for insufficiently idiot-proofing society. There is no way to win. Somehow, unintelligent people must not be held accountable for their actions even if rescued from their poor choices.