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Eugenics: what do you think?

Do you support eugenics?


  • Total voters
    38

Kullervo

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I don't see these reasons explicitly spelled out in the thread.

Not meant sardonically. I literally don't see them.

Can you spell them out or quote them?

Last I looked, this thread was about eugenics, not who should be allowed to vote or not. FDG and you are derailing this thread.

If you want to have a discussion about voting rights, start a new thread. Until then, please refer back to my OP post.
 

Tellenbach

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I'm all for improving the gene pool, but I would do it through cloning. Patrick Stewart and Morgan Freeman are starting to look real old; we really should try to preserve the DNA of our greatest minds and talent.
 

Mole

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Mole the Hippie

Mole is Australian.
Do they have hippies in Australia?

Of course Mole is an Australian hippie. He attended the Nimbin Aquarius Festival in Northern New South Wales.

Mole was a hippie environmentalist and took charge of the garbage of 20,000 hippies, collecting, sorting, dividing the garbage and selling it. And the environmental garbage collection was the only part of the Aquarius Festival that made money.

Riding on top of his garbage truck Mole was cheered wherever he went. And when he stopped he was fed and looked after.

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!

Click on Wordsworth, William. 1888. Complete Poetical Works.


Do join Mole in Nimbin and be sure to wear a flower in your hair, click on "Nimbin" Studio Tape - YouTube
 

indra

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Another article http://www.typologycentral.com/foru.../71369-nine-dies-father-hides-death-days.html about people having disabled child after disabled child has made me bang my head against a wall... Why doesn't somebody ask questions? Get involved? At least advise the couple to stop having children!

I am a firm believer in some sort of negative eugenics. Many people seem to believe you have a "right" to procreate as much as you have a right to free speech or to own property. I disagree, because in many cases the taxpayers end up having to support women's decisions to let somebody shoot their diseased seed into them, sometimes when they are well aware of the risks. Something ceases to be a right when it harms other people in some way, whether immidiately or in the future. Liberty is not the same as licence.

Anyway, I am interested to see what others' views are, and have also attached an extract on eugenics which explains the rationale well.


strong adviser of eugenics here

hint hint

Of course Mole is an Australian hippie. He attended the Nimbin Aquarius Festival in Northern New South Wales.

Mole was a hippie environmentalist and took charge of the garbage of 20,000 hippies, collecting, sorting, dividing the garbage and selling it. And the environmental garbage collection was the only part of the Aquarius Festival that made money.

Riding on top of his garbage truck Mole was cheered wherever he went. And when he stopped he was fed and looked after.

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!

Click on Wordsworth, William. 1888. Complete Poetical Works.


Do join Mole in Nimbin and be sure to wear a flower in your hair, click on "Nimbin" Studio Tape - YouTube

good on you, mole.
 

ygolo

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A big (if not the biggest) part of the health of a species as a whole is its diversity.

I have yet to see any eugenics programs that aim to improve this.

If we ever do this, I am expecting a potato famine situation, except it'll be us wiped out because we are all vulnerable to the same (unpredictable) thing instead of just our food source.
 

prplchknz

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i just don't think government should be the deciding factor in who reproduces and is born they fucked up the dmv and post office until they fix the dmv and post office i say absolutley not. what I'm saying is they fuck up small things why do you want them having control over this?
 

Mole

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A big (if not the biggest) part of the health of a species as a whole is its diversity.

I have yet to see any eugenics programs that aim to improve this.

If we ever do this, I am expecting a potato famine situation, except it'll be us wiped out because we are all vulnerable to the same (unpredictable) thing instead of just our food source.

To focus on the genetics of eugenics is disingenuous because eugenics is not a genetic problem, it is a moral problem.

Eugenics has been used to take us as close to absolute evil as we have come.

And the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was encoded as a response to the evil of eugenics.

So those who speak of eugenics in neutral terms are eitheir morally blind or morally evil.
 

Totenkindly

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Of course Mole is an Australian hippie. He attended the Nimbin Aquarius Festival in Northern New South Wales.

I stand corrected.
Apparently SilentMusings was fine, and Mole was the only one who was in error.
 

21%

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I believe people with hereditary conditions should be fully informed of the risks involved in having children (probability, life expectancy of affected children, medical costs and possible aid from the government), but the final decision should be theirs.
 

Mane

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That is what they should be informed of. If they have Googled genetically related problems and have not yet heard of PDG clinics, then Google Adsense has failed us miserably.

As for eugenics, the benefit of a society that knows how to squeeze the potential from people despite their problems far outweighs the benefit of a society that doesn't have those people to began with. But if a family is going to have X number of kids, then why not enable them to have the healthiest kids they can have? yes, PDG can have a cost in terms of genetic diversity, but I would rather put my money on the potential of genetic engineering then make people suffer on the slim chance that the genes for diabetes or breast cancer will mutate to that one genetic trait that will help us survive the next plague.
 

Totenkindly

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You guys never watched Gattaca, did you?

.... I suspect western culture will slowly add tweaks and add'l screening into the gene pool but avoid any kind of overt mandatory requirements. It'll be more elective and informative.
 

Nicodemus

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I am convinced that humanity is doomed whoever gets to breed. I would certainly prefer the world to be less populated by idiots, but eugenics poses too great a threat to my idea of freedom to be a viable option to bring about a more pleasant society. Not to mention that the practical and ethical problems it entails would crush any form of government outside of dictatorship.

A big (if not the biggest) part of the health of a species as a whole is its diversity.

I have yet to see any eugenics programs that aim to improve this.

If we ever do this, I am expecting a potato famine situation, except it'll be us wiped out because we are all vulnerable to the same (unpredictable) thing instead of just our food source.
I was thinking of the bee epidemic that is currently poised to end life of earth because decades of breeding for higher honey production rates bred out all the genetic 'flaws' that enabled bees to fight parasites on their own. There still are bee populations untouched by industrialization, able to withstand, for example, varroosis, but they are few. Many varieties of corn have similar problems for similar reasons.
 

Raffaella

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You guys never watched Gattaca, did you?

.... I suspect western culture will slowly add tweaks and add'l screening into the gene pool but avoid any kind of overt mandatory requirements. It'll be more elective and informative.

I always thought Gattaca is an extreme case of what could happen but probably won't happen in western societies. You're right, though, it is just tweaks that we're doing currently.


A big (if not the biggest) part of the health of a species as a whole is its diversity.

I have yet to see any eugenics programs that aim to improve this.

If we ever do this, I am expecting a potato famine situation, except it'll be us wiped out because we are all vulnerable to the same (unpredictable) thing instead of just our food source.

That's what I'm more concerned about. I mean we barely understand common chronic conditions, why the hell are we already messing around with genes? We can't foresee the long-term impact.
 

Qre:us

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Studies have reported that wealthier people have less children, on average, than poorer people. Evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology sheds light on why this may be:
- children are seen as economical resources (although they drain and burden the parents' resources in the beginning), so for the poor, who do not have control in gaining status through resources, they bank on children as their resources.
- mammals in harsh, unstable and unpredictable environments (environment likely to align with poverty than wealth), where the threat of dying young is very real, they tend to have more offsprings, very close in age to one another, to increase their reproductive chances, to pass on their genes to a viable progeny.

Of course, these are not conscious decisions that humans make, but that which drives us subconsciously. It makes a case for what is, not a justification for what should be. May also explain why people living poverty seem to be popping out kids, after kids, when all signs point to "STOP". Such as the case of the family in the OP.
 

Kullervo

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A big (if not the biggest) part of the health of a species as a whole is its diversity.

I have yet to see any eugenics programs that aim to improve this.

If we ever do this, I am expecting a potato famine situation, except it'll be us wiped out because we are all vulnerable to the same (unpredictable) thing instead of just our food source.

Nobody is advocating inbreeding, and there is already adequate genetic diversity within any given population. At most we are looking at around 10% of the population being refused licenses. Do the maths. Genetic bottlenecks involve taking a few individuals from a large population and rebuilding from scratch, which is utterly different to what is being suggested here. I am getting tired of the strawman "arguments" been put forward here.

I would also like to see you try somebody with cystic fibrosis or Huntington's chorea that their disorder give them a selective advantage.
 

Mole

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In 1948, the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights declared in article 16 that "men and women of full age, without limits due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to found a family".

The eugenists violated this right.
 
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