natded

The parent did a partner selection before the breeding took place, unless there was rape involved; and I doubt a parent that wants a kid that turns out right goes to: "hmm today I will breed with the disabled person to make for great offspring", no they will select for a mate that they think is good and this choice is implicitly eugenic: they will not declare to be august masters of eugenics but they will look for a good partner to provide healthy offspring.

Height is a good example: nobody thinks you grow taller by playing basketball, but many think you get smarter by going to school.

The focus on the mating part: if they don't produce an above replacement level of babies they are leading the lives of gay men functionally.

Intelligence has trade-offs, costs and other limitations or we would have maxed it out hard (ie. an "intelligence explosion" would have occurred).

Increased mental illness might be one, other one is the brain size being limited by the hips of mother. Brains / intelligence also has energy costs which we might not have been able to optimize for yet.

As such, I would say that intelligence is a cost that you run. It allowed for reproduction and survival for humans when they moved towards colder regions for example, but there's little to no reason to maintain that intelligence if you don't need to adapt anymore. I think you need harsh material constraints (I don't know, space faring) to keep it from shaving itself off in order to optimize the human machine.

Taleb is just coping for his audience in this post, it is sad that he lowers himself to such status games. OTOH, winning at status games is lindy so.

Idea that you can select against intelligence would lead to an idea that eugenics == good and that is a taboo. It is a can of worms in the High Status Discussion to bring up the idea that intelligence can be measured and inherited by offspring.

According to many even ITT, intelligence is some transcendental category which can only be divined by Nurture and Education.

The point of total nuclear war is not to declare a victor anyways. States that can ensure MAD have a nuclear deterrence based on irrationality, of which you cannot exactly reason rationally like this.

FWIW. if your city has blast doors at 100m+ depth you are for sure joining the nuclear exchange.