Adoption is a great option for many couples, educated or not. I didn't say otherwise. What I said was that it's not a fully equivalent to having your own kids. Not worse, but not equivalent. If you're educated, high-IQ tiger parents and want to raise highly successful children, statistically you're better off having your own kids than adopting. This is not to say that adopted kids can't be successful or anything like that. But IQ is heritable, and the simple fact is that there aren't a lot of high IQ couples giving their kids up for adoption.

>If you're educated, high-IQ tiger parents and want to raise highly successful children, statistically you're better off having your own kids than adopting

This is the most depressing thing I read in this whole thread. The idea that one should view raising "highly successful" children as some kind of outcome they can control or influence through "high IQ tigerness" and cold economic analysis is humorous and sad all at once. Coupled with encouragement to not buck a pointless social tradition because it may make (shallow, deplorable) people judge you as less worthy and thus may negatively impact your future prospects of becoming more like them seems like a rather sad way to live life, but I guess we all have our own goals. The fact that after thousands of years our species is still mesmerized by shiny rocks we dug out of the ground is also odd to me, but apparently not others.

It's always amusing to see the two parallel readerships of HN collide. I love a good fireworks display.

Like BBC radio 4 has a leftie, public-services-union-member audience and a rightwing traditionalist audience who are largely unaware of each other, HN has an ivy league educated randian-hero readership and a more old-school, "just give me an ounce of weed and a hex editor and I'm happy forever" readership, and both is convinced the other is intruding on their community.

You're not alone. But we're outnumbered.