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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   5260 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 16, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Charles Vance Millar (June 28, 1854 – October 31, 1926) was a Canadian lawyer and financier. He was the president and part-owner of the Toronto brewery of O'Keefe Brewery. He also owned racehorses, including the 1915 King's Plate–winning horse Tartarean. However, he is now best known for his unusual will which touched off the Great Stork Derby.

Millar's final prank was his will, which says in part:

This Will is necessarily uncommon and capricious because I have no dependents or near relations and no duty rests upon me to leave any property at my death and what I do leave is proof of my folly in gathering and retaining more than I required in my lifetime.

The will had several unusual bequests:

  • Three men who were known to despise each other (T. P. Galt, KC; J. D. Montgomery and James Haverson, KC) were granted joint lifetime tenancy in Millar's vacation home in Jamaica, on condition that they live in the property together.
  • To each practicing Protestant minister in Toronto, and every Orange Lodge in Toronto, a share of O'Keefe Brewery stock, a Catholic business, if they participated in its management and drew on its dividends.
  • Two anti-horse-racing advocates (Hon. William Raney, Reverend Samuel Chown) and a man who detested the Ontario Jockey Club (Abe Orpen) were to receive a share of Ontario Jockey Club stock, provided they are shareholders in three years. Raney's and Chown's share were eventually given to charity and Orpen accepted his share.
  • Each duly ordained Christian minister in Walkerville, Sandwich, and Windsor, "except Spracklin, who shot a hotelkeeper" was to receive a share of the Kenilworth Park Racetrack, located just outside Windsor, Ontario.

The tenth and final clause of his will was the largest. It required that the balance of Millar's estate was to be converted to cash ten years after his death and given to the Toronto woman who gave birth to the most children in that time. In the event of a tie, the bequest would be divided equally. The resulting contest became known as the Great Stork Derby.

Eleven families competed in the "baby race." Seven of them were disqualified, but eventually Judge William Edward Middleton ruled in favour of four mothers (Annie Katherine Smith, Kathleen Ellen Nagle, Lucy Alice Timleck, and Isabel Mary Maclean) who each received $110,000 for their nine children ($2.24 million in 2023 dollars). Three of the four had to pay back relief money given to them by the City of Toronto government. Two of the disqualified candidates, Lillian Kenny and Pauline Mae Clarke, each received $12,500 out of court in exchange for abandoning pending appeals.

The state should do more lottery-based rewards. A one-time 20K subvention per kid, that’s boring, and everyone knows it doesn’t pay for the child’s maintenance. But 20% chance of 100K, now you’re talking, people will keep pressing that button for the dopamine hit, then the gambler’s fallacy comes into play, they’ll be sure the 5th, 6th, 7th time’s the charm, and when you win it’s like getting a free kid, so you can get right on making the next one since you were already psychologically primed to pay for the previous baby.

This would be dysgenic though, for it would most influence the reproductive decisions of those who are poor and relatively high in negative risk aversion.

Something like a 20% of chance of 100K paid out linearly over 5 years in the form of non-refundable tax credits would work better. Thus, for one kid, you get a shot at getting a tax refund of 20K in a given year for five years, but only if in that given year you paid at least 20K in income taxes. Non-refundable, so if you only paid 15K in income taxes in a given year, you only get a refund of 15K that year; if you paid zero or less you get refunded zero. This would stack, so a pair of twins could get up to 40K knocked off your taxes a year for five years.

Having a lottery reward capped at annual income taxes paid would still preserve a lot of the fun and hype, but would be less dysgenic. The payout over five years has the added benefit of selecting for those with a modicum of future time orientation.

Or the hypothetical future time oriented person could get a 20k raise per year without having to have a kid.

Sub-1 TFR of 120 IQ children or 4+ TFR of 90 IQ children, which one is really more dysgenic?

Or the hypothetical future time oriented person could get a 20k raise per year without having to have a kid.

Or the person could have both, and the offspring-lottery tax bonus on top off it.

Sub-1 TFR of 120 IQ children or 4+ TFR of 90 IQ children, which one is really more dysgenic?

False dilemma. One can increase the birthrate of the smart while decreasing the birthrate of the dumb, it's merely lack of political will in the current status quo.

But indeed, 4+ TFR of those with <90 IQ is more dysgenic than sub-1 TFR of those with >120 IQ if your population has a mean IQ of 100 with baseline TFR of 2.

Or the person could have both, and the offspring-lottery tax bonus on top off it.

My point being, whoever feels like 20k of tax returns/year is big enough money to flip them towards having a kid is probably too risk averse to gamble, and whoever is rich enough that it's merely one of their calculated risks is going to have a kid or not based on other concerns.

One can increase the birthrate of the smart while decreasing the birthrate of the dumb, it's merely lack of political will in the current status quo.

Lack of political will sounds like cope. If one can do it and it is beneficial, there would be a will.

But indeed, 4+ TFR of those with <90 IQ is more dysgenic than sub-1 TFR of those with >120 IQ if your population has a mean IQ of 100 with baseline TFR of 2.

More dysgenic compared to having no -genic at all?

Lack of political will sounds like cope. If one can do it and it is beneficial, there would be a will.

I have to admit, this sounds completely wrong to me. The connection between capability, benefit and political will is tenuous at best. There is plenty of will for the impossible, or for the harmful.

Name a eugenic intervention. Face it- the poor and high time preference always are more willing to do stuff like that for cash.

Face it? My comment you're responding to basically said as such: hence the payout over time and varying amounts depending on income taxes paid. And I was just tweaking the original prompt to be—as explicitly stated—less dysgenic while still retaining a lot of the fun and hype, not necessarily eugenic (it might or might not be).

Speaking of cash and the poor and those with high time preference, an example of a eugenic intervention would be a flat cash amount (e.g., 10K or some other number) for tubal ligation for girls/women ages 14-32 or so. In the name of Equity and Inclusion, we could offer similarly aged men cash for vasectomies, too.

Name a eugenic intervention.

Maternity leave, lower taxes for filing as a couple, and accessible birth control (including abortion) seem to be eugenic interventions.

I’m not too worried about dysgenic effects at this juncture, we have so little children that I’d take even lower class stock. Besides ,such subventions already exist in a similar form with dysgenic effect, in germany we have ‘children’s money’, which is at 255 euros/month/kid for the poorest (297 if you work), then you get the same in tax credit as you go up in income.

Of course, most of those subventions are officially justified on the grounds that every child should have a “minimum” to live on, which some courts and left-wingers keep increasing like they do every other minimum. And when the right’s at the helm, they increase it for more natalist and family values reasons.

So it’s hard to get a big part of that into a randomized payout, but it kind of ruins the bonus psychological effect of gambling if it’s just tax credits over years.

What I want to do is psychologically trick people (the ultimate decision lies with women) into having kids. Not pay them the full cost, and even less enormous sums in tax credits so that rich women in banking and medicine who understand opportunity costs have children, just cheaply manipulate them for cents on the dollar.

(I’m trying to keep this fun for the thread’s sake, but I can’t help veering into the culture war, broadly defined.)

Side-note:

those who are poor and relatively high in negative risk aversion.

You could say the lower class are true risk-takers, mavericks and entrepreneurs, not scared bean counters like the middle class who insure everything and buy bonds despite having a stable job.

And yet, usually less risk aversion is correlated with higher economic status:

Numerous studies have found that individuals with less income are more risk averse than individuals with more income

Although I’ve also read that it’s U-shaped, with the middle class most risk averse, like the cliché above. In that perspective, it’s likely that a randomized bonus has a stronger positive effect than a fixed sum, ie more bang for your buck, also and especially for the rich.

I was discussing the, imo, incoherent, common view of risk a few days ago. I don’t think you can call the risk averse “those with a modicum of future time orientation” – The main distinction between losers and winners in this game is: how much are they willing to pay for their risk aversion, or for their risk taking? Buying insurance or a lottery ticket both make you a sucker, of opposite risk aversions.

I’m not too worried about dysgenic effects at this juncture, we have so little children that I’d take even lower class stock. Besides ,such subventions already exist in a similar form with dysgenic effect, in germany we have...

No thanks, I wouldn't wish this on any country, including Germany. If you're already in a hole, stop digging.

I don’t think you can call the risk averse “those with a modicum of future time orientation”

I'm not. Hence my wording of "The payout over five years has the added benefit of selecting for those with a modicum of future time orientation" to separate future time orientation from risk aversion.

I explicitly was discussing relative negative risk aversion (i.e., positive risk-seeking) and not just merely low or high risk aversion. Although come to think of it (even assuming no positive risk-seeking), I'd prefer the society I live in to have high rather than low risk aversion, for all else equal it would increase the expected returns of my portfolio into which I'm still contributing.

As a side note, the Frontiers family of journals has a reputation for being pay-to-play and shady, even by the standards or "standards" of the field of psychology. Possibly there are diamonds in the rough when it comes to any individual paper, but in general when submitting to Frontiers, academics have to weigh the costs/benefits of adding a publication (and any citations that may result) to their CV versus the Scarlet Letter of having a (or an additional) Frontiers publication.

Germany's problems are not dysgenic fertility. They are: low fertility, and terrible immigration policy. Why does the alt right conflate everything together? It does not matter that the lower class is reproducing more than the higher class if both are not at replacement level. Dysgenic fertility is a first world problem, so to speak – our problems are far more serious than dysgenic fertility. It’s like worrying about disproportionate drowning in the desert.

Why would all else be equal in high risk aversion world? It’d be a wasteland. People would almost never change jobs, or create companies. Capital would be far less productive, it’d be all tied up in swiss bonds. It’s true as the one-eyed in the land of the blind you would personally do very well. Hell, you could even become the world’s richest man by exploiting all the riskophobes, ie selling insurance (buffett reference).

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