Re: Things presented in-story as Good Ideas that seem like really Bad Ideas

I remember a novel titled L5. I thought the author was Mack Reynolds,
but apparently not; the author may have had a somewhat similar sounding
name.
The L5 colonies had a rule; no one could go there whose IQ was below a
certain limit, set at an above-average level. *And anyone born there who
was below that level would be sent to Earth.*
The central plot development was that another group was planning to
start up their own L5 colonies; it was a group of black people, with the
intent of providing L5 space for blacks. The question was: should the
existing L5 colonies co-operate with this project or not. It was
resolved in favor of cooperating when it was found the other group would
also follow the same high-IQ policy.
Why is it a bad idea?
Well, we know that when geniuses marry, their children experience what
is known as "regression o the mean". Essentially, there are numerous
different alleles which can cause genius-level intelligence, and so if
the members of a couple are geniuses from different genetic causes,
their higher intelligence won't breed true.
And it costs an awful lot of money to launch people into space.
So this space colony would basically have to import all its people from
Earth, having almost no ability to maintain its own population by
natural increase.
Not a great plan from a bunch of geniuses.
John Savard