Slashdot Mirror
Smarter Teens Have Less Sex
Tech.Luver writes "Gene Expression reports,
"Tyler Cowen quotes from a new study testing the relationship between grades and delayed sexual activity.
Last December I passed a paper along to Razib showing that high-school age adolescents with higher IQs and extremely low IQs were less likely to have had first intercourse than those with average to below average intelligence. (i.e. for males with IQs under 70, 63.3% were still virgins, for those with IQs between 70-90 only 50.2% were virgin, 58.6% were virgins with IQs between 90-110, and 70.3% with IQs over 110 were virgins)
In fact, a more detailed study from 2000 is devoted strictly to this topic, and finds the same thing: Smart Teens Don't Have Sex (or Kiss Much Either). ""
in 3..2..1..
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Well, then I must have been ultrasmart... :(
The smarter you are the more likely you are to be on /. and if you're on /. well... we all know what that does to your sex life.
This sig is false.
I've got a girlfriend in Brazil. She's a model and I can go down and have sex with her whenever I want.
Since slashdotters have typically IQ in the range of 160 to 220, the will remain virgins till age 72 or so by my extrapolation.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Idiocracy, here we come!
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
I know this is Slashdot, so the majority of users have not had sex. But if you think this article is implying that means you're smart.. you have just committed a common logical fallacy. Sorry to burst your bubble.
Isn't the definition of a "smart teen", one that DOES have sex? You gotta admit; the teens that have sex must be doing something smart.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Uh huh. And later in life, they're called "Yes sir, right away, sir!"
"You will pay for your lack of vision..." - Emperor Palpatine to Ray Charles
That explains the mouth-breathing 14 year olds pushing their babies in strollers and carrying another in their belly I see lumbering around downtown Winnipeg at lunch. They should coat welfare cheques with birth control hormones.
Trolling is a art,
I should be a super genius.
This would actuelly make a really cool Slashdot vote.
How old were you, the first time you had sex:
Below 15
15
16
17
18
19+
What is sex??
Maybe smarter kids generally just don't feel the need to lie about having sex. And extremely stupid ones don't think to lie about it. Just a thought.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
You gotta love how far-removed this quotation gets:
Cmdr Taco posts that:
Tech_Luver writes that:
Gene Expression reports that:
Tyler Cowen quotes from a:
Razib paper showing that:
A survey found that:
***
I'm worried that if I tell someone that I read about this on slashdot, the universe might implode.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
In the Victorian era, the celebrities of the time were engineers and scientists - the people who shaped the world, rather than the vapid, talentless bimbos we celebrate today. We can only hope that at some point in the future, it will once again be cool to be smart.
Man, I wish I was born in the Victorian era. Sigh.
Peter
becasue we wear tinfoil condoms.
Cheers!
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
We've long known that birth rate is inversely correlated with education. So this result really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Simpler then that...
Teenagers with low IQ normally are not left alone to do what they will. Because parents don't trust them to do the smart thing because they arn't, combined with the fact they get usually get extra adult help means less exposure with other kids, and the oposit sex feels guilty about sexual activity with that group, so combined that will make a lower rate.
High IQ teens stop and think and realize that risks of Sex as a teenager (STD, Pregnacny) will get in away with their life plans being with higher IQ society expects more from them with their life plans so they stay away from such risks. Basicly I am not going to let a Baby get in my way to become a doctor. After I get my degree and a steady job then I may focus on having a family, Logical reasoning by people with higher IQ.
Teens in the middle are not pressured to become a Doctor or whatever so they have less ambitions for life and figure it may be worth the risk. Combined with the fact they may not think things fully out and let biological pressures take over what people say they should do.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I doubt it's less chance for sex. More that there's a lot else to do that's more fun. Like, writing a beautiful piece of code, surely beats wasting a night on hot sex.
I'll go cry now.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Seriously, even among Slashdot readers, I doubt many of you guys would marry someone smarter than you.
Of course not, but mostly because it's really hard to find someone smarter than me.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
There is plenty of time for sex and sex when you think you know so much when you actually know very little is much more likely to lead to complications.
But there's only so much time for sex with teenagers. Get it while you can guys.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I'm in my mid-twenties, and I didn't have sex until the very end of high school, and didn't date at all, and I seriously don't feel like I missed out on a damn thing. Sex when I was 18 was awkward and boring, I can't imagine the kind of horrible flopping around I would have had if I had been 14 or 15.
I know we live in an ephebophilic society where your teenage years are supposed to be when the best years of anyone's life, but let's all be honest here: Being a teenager sucks. You can't drive, you can't drink without having to sneak around, you're kind of an idiot, you don't know what the hell you're doing when it comes to members of the opposite sex, and that's not even starting to mention acne, braces and a bad fashion sense. I much prefer my twenties, and I'm looking forward to my thirties. I'm having a great time compared to ten years ago.
So maybe being smart and not having sex in high school isn't that groundbreaking of a correlation. Why is it so important to have any sex when you're in high school anyways? Shouldn't it be more important to have good sex when you're older? Where's the study on sex lives of single smart twenty- and thirty-somethings? I'd be interested in that study.
P.S. Watch the "abstinence only" crowd use this as ammunition: "See! Smart teenagers choose abstinence!"
If groups with different IQs have different sex habits, and I learn about your sex habits, then by using Bayes' theorem I can also make inferences about your IQ. Obviously just statistical inferences ("he has less sex, therefore, he is more likely to be smart"), but still.
i was one of those high-IQ virgins and let me state, from first hand experience, the following: HA HA HA HA HA!
yeah, right, i didn't WANT any girls to pay attention to me! that's it!
you've got to be kidding me.
i could live a little longer in this prison
The real question is, are some teens getting less sex because they are smart, or are they smart because they are getting less sex (for whatever reason)?
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
Now if I could only remember who said that...
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
Actually no. In reality you get to management by who you know and social skills.
What you know and your IQ actually tend to hurt your chances.
I hate to burst the geek bubble but it's truth.
want proof? WOZ is a rich geek but never was upper management.
Gates was never a geek, he was a poser and the face man. (sorry gate's early code is horrible and first year quality) he had business sense and knew people as well as has social skills in a bizzare way.
Jobs = Face man he is the guy that makes you like him so much you will sell him your stuff at cost or buy his product by standing in a line outside for hours when there is no supply problems.
If you are a geek and high IQ I STRONGLY suggest taking etiquette classes, social interaction classes and do everything in your power to have the knowledge to fake being good at party socializing. You have to be the guy that everyone loves in the first 15 minutes of meeting them. Speak eloquently, be good at faking that you really are interested in how well her pedicure went and how that CEO of that company had a horrifying day because he had to way 30 minutes for road service to show up and fix his flat tire.
Crack the code of socalizing, get that one done and you will become upper management.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
There are a few of reasons I think this might be true:
1. Smarter teens believe that sex can be risky. Namely: Unwanted pregnancy, disease, emotional distress and not to mention social pressures from parents.
2. Smarter teens may have higher standards as they are able to distinguish better between "good mate" and "not so good mate."
2a. Finding a good mate may mean finding an intellectual equal.
3. A deep fulfilling intellectual and emotional relationship may be more important than and a prerequisite to simple sexual pleasure.
Seriously, though, to be here on campus with 15,000 other young women and still a virgin
Which just goes to show - regardless of what those Wild Co-eds On Spring Break Woo-Hoo! videos seem to show, it's just as hard to get some if you're a lesbian.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
i see our high IQs also allow us to invent quite plausible excuses for why we can't get laid!
i could live a little longer in this prison
It's our choice of course. However, you may regret those missed opportunities twenty years from now. "Saving yourself" for some conjectured Ms./Mr. Right is quite a gamble - you won't get that time back if the person doesn't materialize, or doesn't turn out to be the perfect mate you'd envisioned.
At your age, you should be taking in as many new experiences as you can. There won't be many other times in your life where you are as unencumbered by obligations and responsibilities.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Think of it this way, if everyone was as smart as you and me, we would just be of average intelligence.
As an example case, I was a virgin until I was 26. Yes, if I'm honest it's true that I had utterly no clue how to understand or communicate with the opposite sex, but I'll also admit that sex quite simply isn't something that I've ever consistently had a strong interest in.
Although this is nothing whatsoever against the person who this happened with, even after losing my virginity, I can remember thinking of that experience, while reasonably enjoyable and positive, as not seeming to deserve anything like the degree of hype that most people associate with the act. Most of the people I've known seem to regard sex as being the pinnacle of human experience, and that is an attitude which I find deeply sad.
I know that a predictable response to this will probably be to speculate that I am in fact homosexual, but I do not believe that to be the case, and to be honest, that is something else about the customary attitude towards sex that I find deeply pathetic. Namely the idea that if a person doesn't have one preference, then they *must* by definition have another, because not being helplessly addicted to sex in either straight or gay form is supposedly completely impossible...in most people's minds, it just doesn't compute.
Some of us honestly view reproduction as being the domain of animals. Given that we have more than enough other human beings who are quite happy to devote their own lives to that activity, this means that those of us who have that attitude are also able to persue the expansion and enhancement of our minds, without fear as to the possible consequences to the human population.
If you're someone for whom sex is the most important element of your existence, I'd strongly advocate getting a life.
I can't believe a story that basically says, "nerds lack social skills", made it to the front page. :)
This is one of the most insightful posts I have seen on Slashdot. This is the stuff they DON'T teach you in university but they should. Moving into upper management isn't about WHAT you know, it's about WHO you know. You can call it bullshitting, ass kissing, whatever ... but the perception people have of you determines where your glass ceiling lies. Yes, keep your skills up to date, but also keep your address book up to date and send a keepalive on your entire social network every quarter. Crap ... now I can't use my mod points here.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
Having thought back to my High School days, much of this sounds pretty accurate. I know there'll be many Slashdot jokes around about this, but think seriously about it for a bit. Those who threw it out there too much at High School, how many of those people who you knew are now living on crap wages, in a crap job, are unmarried, uncommitted and immature parents or single mothers struggling to keep a roof over their heads with no ability to plan for the future?
;-).
I live in the UK, but the answer in my case is all of the people I could think of scarily. I caught up with a few people from High School not long ago, and the stuff that's happened to many of the people from school who concentrated on sex and immature relationships is shocking. It's a tale of divorce, single motherhood, poverty and immaturity. These people also tend to be extremely crap at romantic and sexual relationships when they're older, as well as pretty immature. Taking one example, how many people in their late twenties think that getting married to someone you only met six months ago, divorcing that person a few years later, getting back together with an ex a few months after said divorce and having a baby with that person after only a few weeks or months of being together is mature? They still act like 15 year olds, and in some cases, worse.
As for me, I have a good job with good money, working with people who I like and get on with, I have a lovely girlfriend and I'm still as horny as hell from all that High School abstinence
Seriously though, looking around from my own personal experience, scarily, I think a whole social underclass is being created. I also think this is largely responsible for the increase in divorce, the increase in single motherhood and the inevitable problems for their children that has brought with it. Those having sex in High School generally just aren't mature enough to handle sex, and that's setting them up for life.
So use a condom smart guy. One day you'll realize sex is no big deal and you wasted a lot of time being freaked out about it instead of doing it. I don't think you should go fuck a random girl, but expecting sex to be some magical experience with your soul mate is really setting yourself up for disappointment.
One day you're going to meet someone you love and respect and want to stay with forever. You want to "sow your wild oats" before that, or you'll spend the rest of your life wondering what sex with other women would be like. It's a lot easer to know you've made the right choice when you've tried a few of the other options.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I'm not quite sure what grades are a good measure of. Being able to color inside the lines? Following instructions and memorizing facts? Rarely they can measure understanding and creativity, but that's highly dependent on the skill of the instructor creating the assignments.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
If groups with different IQs have different sex habits, and I learn about your sex habits, then by using Bayes' theorem I can also make inferences about your IQ. Obviously just statistical inferences ("he has less sex, therefore, he is more likely to be smart"), but still.
Except that the change happens in both directions away from the average, so the most you can make is a statistical inference about how far from the norm they probably are, rather than in which direction.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
My observation has been that those who are more hard-working or studious tend to have less time for relationships, physical included, and the other things that come along with them (children, etc). Perhaps it's not so much that they're smart as that they're busy?
... and the fact that I don't want to fuck anything that moves doesn't... Sir, I think you suffer from what is called Necrophilia.Cheers!
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
I'd actually like to say a bit about that. Much has been made of the fact that there are those guys in every city, in every walk of life, who want to have sex with teenagers. Usually this is spun as "omg predators everywhere!", but that's hardly a rational analysis. Do you know why there are so many of those people? Because it's entirely natural and normal for a sexually mature male to want to have sex with a pubescent female. And there's nothing wrong with that.
Now I'm not saying they don't catch any deviants. Obviously they do. There's a lot of social conditioning against our natural desires, and it takes someone somewhat deviant to ignore that. I'm just saying that these guys are not sick freaks because they want to have sex with teenagers. Most of them are just lonely people with natural desires who think they've found a willing partner and made the wrong decision. The way they are treated by Dateline, the legal system, and the general public is more disgusting than anything they'd do with a willing partner.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Nothing like avoiding the good things in life because you're afraid of the minuscule possibility that something might happen.
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
First, I'm not going to call you a homosexual (not that there's anything wrong with that!).
I'll just point out that from a scientific perspective, we are animals, and from a genetic point of view, reproduction is the pinnacle of our existence. From an evolutionary standpoint, there's not much purpose to our lives if we don't pass on our genes. I know that not every smart person is scientifically inclined, but I think it's safe to say that scientific understanding takes intelligence. It is not unintelligent to recognize the importance of sex in human lives.
From a non-scientific standpoint, I think there is an important debate, common to us all, about what provides the greatest satisfaction and enjoyment (and meaning) in life. Is it achievement, or is it connection? I think it's safe to say that you'll find many smart, successful people who nevertheless believe that their love and family is the most satisfying and important part of their lives. The idea that sex/achievement is a binary choice is false. Einstein and Hemingway and Picasso (and etc) all had lovers.
From a strictly physical standpoint, sex can create feelings that are unachievable any other way. But the same is true from an emotional standpoint as well--there's no closer emotional connection that can be made to another person. Physical intimacy is the distinguishing characteristic of love, of partner from friend. I don't find anything sad about that.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Even if you have sex with an infected person, completely unprotected, your risk of catching HIV is something like 0.1%. So yeah, you roll the dice, but, most of the time, you'd actually be fine.
This is my sig.
There are plenty of ugly people of the opposite sex. Being ugly does not stop you from finding a partner. Insecurity about your own hideous appearance is really the only obstacle.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Given the poor spelling, random capitalization, and generally dreadful grammar, I can draw only one conclusion: You must have gotten tons of action in high school.
Free condoms are partly birth control (better than nothing), partly awkward situations (watch for cute girls taking some), and mostly for practical jokes.
On our campus, there were two very large mixing bowls on a table, and two cute girls sitting behind said table handing them out.
One way: Grab as many as you can and run. Or just calmly take a whole bowl, muttering about how it won't even last you a week...
Another: Slowly count them out loud as you take them. "Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday morning, Wednesday lunch, Wednesday evening, three for all night Wednesday... Thursday, Friday, Saturday..."
Or count them another way: "Jenny, Katie, Sarah -- whoops, better take three for Sarah... Becky, Erin, Samantha..."
Or hang a calendar on your wall and tape them to it, for when people visit. Or make a condom collage! Endless possibilities!
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I lost my virginity to my wife two years before we got married. I wasn't disappointed in the least. And I've never once regretted the fact that the only sexual experiences I've had have been meaningful and fulfilling.
Once you've made love with someone you truly love for a few years, the act itself becomes increasingly less important, in my experience. It's not about the sex, it's about sharing the experience with someone who I'm very close to. Sure, at a very base, primal level, I'm curious about sex with other women. But then I realize that sex without the love that my wife and I share could never be as fulfilling, period.
I understand that not every guy is like that. Some guys will spend their whole lives sowing their wild oats. Different strokes for different folks. I won't judge those people for living their lives the way they see fit. I just ask that you return the favor.
Sex is pretty complicated. Not really the act itself - though there is a fair amount of understanding what goes where when to have the act be as satisfying as it can be. I mean more the relationship surrounding sex. Sex is, after all, one of the most intimate acts you can undertake - it can cut to the core of your personality if you let it, or you can guard that core at the expense of the experience.
My point is this; I know plenty of people who wanted certain things out of their sex life but who never achieved it, because they were either afraid of rejection and so did not admit to it, or they were already committed and did not wish to rock the boat. Sleeping with people for whom you feel comfortable having an intimate relationship is not an act that you should necessarily 'reserve' for only the very most worthy situation. Sometimes it's better to learn how to be close to people, and to learn how that extreme closeness affects you, affects them, affects your relationship with them, and with others. These learning experiences are generally categorized as reckless, but I think that usually - 95% of the time - they're far from it. They're natural, and humans learn from it.
Why is it, then, that there is such a prevalence of the mindset that if you never do something, the first person you do it with will be the perfect person? That it somehow increases your chances of finding a working relationship? If anything, the people I know whom have had a great deal of sex are more in tune with how it affects their relationship. I'm not advocating being enslaved to your loins - but there are multiple ways for that enslavement to incur. Letting them run rampant is one; never learning mastery over them is another.
[Ego]out
In all my years of having sex, I have never had a condom split. Somebody must be doing something wrong.
Now let's analyze this attitude. A full 1 million Americans are HIV+ out of a population of 302 million. So there is a 1 in 300 chance that that hot chick you picked up at the bar is HIV+, give or take.
The chance of an HIV+ woman infecting a man through one act of unprotected sex is between 0.1% and 1%. The 1% figure is for men with genital lacerations. Let's take a rate of 0.5%.
Condoms are known to block HIV transmission. The average breakage/slippage rate for condoms is a whopping 4.6% (hello, people! Learn to use the tools!).
Ok. So let's say you pick up a chick at the bar and go home and have protected sex. You are two orders of magnitude more likely to get killed by a car while walking to her house than you are to contract HIV from her.
Hope that helps put things into perspective.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
The act of sexual intercourse is a very natural human instinct. I would bet that a majority of people out there have sex, or at least have had sex at some point.
In theory, 50% of the people out there, teens or otherwise, are in the middle of the intelligence spectrum. The remainder of the population naturally gravitate to one of the other extremes.
Now, by definition, people approaching either extreme of the curve are increasingly further away from the 'average middle'.
I don't have handy any information about what the personal habits of 'non-normal' people are (when plotted across a curve of intelligence), but since the mind is perhaps our singular most defining feature as a species, I would hypothesize that people of average intelligence behave in very average ways.
Since sexual intercourse is a 'normal' or 'average' behavior, I bet that most of the people with 'normal' or 'average' intelligence participate in the act according to the average frequency of their peers.
I would also hypothesize that deviations from 'average' intelligence on either side of the curve change a great many behavioral characteristics. Since sexual behavior is (in my opinion) a baser, hard-wired bit of evolutionary programming, no doubt intelligence has some relationship with sexual behavior.
A lot of the relationship here, though is probably due to basic statistics and very difficult-to-quantify variables. A majority of people behave as the majority of people do.
Message contains 1 attachment: spam.gif
As the German saying goes: "Dumm fickt gut", which roughly translates as "A stupid person is a great lay." It appears that you cannot beat experience here...
Actually, at Caltech the ratio is about 70:30
And it's about 50:50 by weight...
We're all born with nothing.
If you die in debt, you're ahead.
The real obstacle is poor social skills.
There is also an unfortunate misconception: nerds and geeks aren't just smart people. They're smart people with social deficits and, often, low cultural capital. There are smart people who are also popular, charismatic, and confident.
Life's not fair.