Gen Z's Test Scores, Mystical Dating, and Preference for Girls Signal Regression in Natural Selection
Source: https://www.facebook.com/americanspectator/. "Gen Z, Darwin, and the Decline of the Fittest | The American Spectator | USA News and Politics." November 7, 2026. spectator.org
The Gist
The author argues that Gen Z is getting less smart, picking partners using astrology and tarot, and increasingly favoring girls over boys. He believes these trends could damage the country's intellectual future and interfere with natural selection.
Conclusion
Gen Z's cognitive decline, reliance on mystical dating practices, and growing preference for baby girls over boys together threaten natural selection and America's intellectual future.
Premises
- Humans have generally become more cognitively capable with each successive generation, which is consistent with natural selection producing better-adapted organisms.
- Gen Z is the first modern generation to score lower on standardized tests than the previous generation, and the author claims they are proud of this, so further regression is more likely than progress.
- Gen Z is turning to astrology, psychics, tarot, and other mystical methods to choose mates, and the author sees no way these practices could pass advantageous traits to offspring.
- Research suggests people who believe in astrology tend to be less intelligent and more narcissistic, so mystical dating reinforces these traits in Gen Z.
- There is a growing cultural preference for baby girls over boys, shown by anecdotes of abortion because of fetal sex, 'gender disappointment,' and adoption preferences for girls.
- Because of 'greater male variability,' males are overrepresented at both the low and high extremes of intelligence, so fewer boys would mean fewer geniuses (and fewer fools) in STEM fields.
Assumptions
- Declining standardized test scores reflect a genuine decline in innate cognitive ability rather than changes in schooling, testing, or environment.
- Mate-selection practices like astrology shape the genetic traits of offspring, and believing in them reflects heritable traits.
- A few viral or anecdotal cases of boy-aversion represent a broad generational trend that changes actual sex ratios.
- Natural selection is a directed process that makes humans 'better' or 'smarter,' and can be 'unnatural' or 'in jeopardy' because of cultural choices.
- Gen Z is proud of its lower scores, and generational generalizations apply meaningfully to individuals.
- Tarot-based dating and sex preference are practiced widely enough to affect population-level outcomes.
- The greater male variability hypothesis implies that geniuses are lost when fewer boys are born.