You have the opportunity to determine the beauty level and intelligence
level of your child, before the child is born, simply by turning two dials
from 1 to 10, 10 being high. "5" is average. To what number would you set your dials?

Edited by author 07-23-2004 08:34 PM
What is beauty?
Some men find women with big noses attractive others don't.
Some women find skinny guys more attractive than body builders.

A lot of men and women don't subscribe to the supermodel ideal of beauty.

 There are also many different kinds of intelligence and IQ can only effectively measure a few of them (e.g. the whole IQ vs EQ debate,). Everybody knows or has heard of people, who don't achieve well on IQ scores but never the less have other mental abilities that exceed the average person.

So I don't understand how one could have a one simple dial for both these things.

Lastly, beauty is not a purely physical attribute. It can be affected by intelligence. An average looking woman, can have an intelligence which will make her appear more beautiful and a very beautiful woman can have a flaw in her intelligence that could make her very ugly.

The human race has a strength in the fact that it is varied.

you should all be shot.if one dial does not affect the other.(which in nature seems to be true.)set the dials for the center of the sun!10,obviusly,fuck'in hippies,sheesh!

I would set both dials to 10. If the person was very intelligent and wise, and it was "useful" for him or her to be less beautiful from time to time (for example, to attract less attention), the person could always reduce the beauty manually, for example, by wearing no makeup or by avoiding flashy clothes. Possibly, I would set the beauty to 8 and the intelligence to 10 so that the focus would be on achievement rather than more shallow aspects of existence -- but let's see if the person "can have it all" and be happy.

If you do set the dials to 10 your kids will encounter problems. If your kids are too attractive they will have problems with the opposite gender. If your kids are too smart they may be bullied or have too much stress. You can`t set a dial before birth or even after birth, many children have problems that make thier attention spans short and keep them from learning as easily. Let children control thier dials for the first few years and they may be happy or change thier dials and wait for a good or bad outcome. My own father tampered with my dial and now I`m here instead of playing with other kids. Tamper your own dial before you tamper with your childrens` dials.