"Four standard deviations below us!" Helorm bursts out, when she's finished her sworn job of transmitting.  She can't even imagine a society like that; -4sd is low enough that someone would have trouble learning calculus or statistics, even as an adult.  The sequence of events leading up to a 'giant failure fractal' suddenly seems much more horrifyingly plausible: some historical accident leads to eugenics being forbidden; undo and backtrace through however many generations of not breeding for intelligence, and all the positive change in dath ilan that can be attributed to that.  And an entire planet ends up - and even if their standard deviations are wider, that's still - "Thellim, that would make you one of their cognitive elite!"

"Four standard deviations below us!" Helorm bursts out, when she's finished her sworn job of transmitting.  She can't even imagine a society like that; -4sd is low enough that someone would have trouble learning calculus or statistics, even as an adult.  The sequence of events leading up to a 'giant failure fractal' suddenly seems much more horrifyingly plausible: some historical accident leads to heredity-optimization being forbidden; undo and backtrace through however many generations of not breeding for intelligence, and all the positive change in dath ilan that can be attributed to that.  And an entire planet ends up - and even if their standard deviations are wider, that's still - "Thellim, that would make you one of their cognitive elite!"

"Four standard deviations below us!" Helorm bursts out, when she's finished her sworn job of transmitting.  She can't even imagine a society like that; -4sd is low enough that someone would have trouble learning calculus or statistics, even as an adult.  The sequence of events leading up to a 'giant failure fractal' suddenly seems much more horrifyingly plausible: some historical accident leads to heredity-optimization being forbidden; undo and backtrace through however many generations of not selecting for intelligence, and all the positive change in dath ilan that can be attributed to that.  And an entire planet ends up - and even if their standard deviations are wider, that's still - "Thellim, that would make you one of their cognitive elite!"