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Eugenics?

Randomnity

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Eugenics is a sticky area of course. It seems to be a common theme in sci fi books that future earth will require "permits" to have children, dependent on things like genetic health and lifetime success. This has its good and its bad points, though it would certainly be oppressive to our current society.

I think it's outrageous that people can have 10 children on social assistance, though I'm not sure if there's a reasonable way to really prevent this, or even if the majority of people would be horrified by the idea. I would consider voting for a law that restricted number of children to perhaps 2 to avoid excessive population growth (if that were an issue, though in most developed countries it isn't at all). Or perhaps even 1 child, with extra "permits" available for qualified people. Is that sounding a little crazy yet? The drawbacks of such a policy might be worse than the advantages, though.

On a side note, I think people on social assistance should be strongly "encouraged" not to have children temporarily, until they're self-sufficient, since I know from family experience that it's EXTREMELY hard to work your way up to being self-sufficient when you have to pay for childcare (especially for multiple children), with entry-level jobs not paying enough to cover it. anyway, /tangent

The idea of improving your health genetically is certainly attractive, though the implementation is always the sticky part. Anything with such dramatic effects needs to be very well-researched, and even then, we could expect to have some ill effects.
 

InsatiableCuriosity

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Thought about it a lot after seeing an episode of House in which the disorder was unravelled once it was revealed that at the genetic level at least the two sufferers were effectively family.

NI isnt a very diverse society, maybe its just because of that but I think that information about genetics would be as useful to people as personality typology if they were selecting partners.

I dont necessarily see that as anymore elitist than the agreement that everyone drives on the one side of the road for instance.

...and do you really think the people you are talking about will ask for a genetic history when they feel the urge?? We cannot control domestic violence or rape as it is or are you proposing something akin to the holocaust experiments conducted by Mengele, or more aligned to Brave New World?
 

miss fortune

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No... I can't be for it... the very idea of it runs contrary to my basic thought patterns... who is to decide who can reproduce and who can't? what gives them the authority? what will they do with that power?

I don't trust authority... and I tend not to trust anyone who would seek out an authority position... people tend to abuse things of that sort and I wouldn't trust anyone making the decisions to really be deciding on a really fair basis...

on top of that, who is to say what's inferior and what isn't? who's to say that the kid IS going to turn out like their parents? how do we know that that would improve humanity? wouldn't letting things take a natural course be a better method? :huh:

now, don't get me wrong, I approve of birth control, I think that it should be more easily accessable and that everyone should be better educated on the topic... I don't even really LIKE children- but I DON'T trust anyone else to make the decision on the topic- there's something fundamentally disturbing about it- and authoritarian :shock:
 

Resonance

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I think in the time it will take to popularize eugenics and wise sexual selection, it will be irrelevant because we will have designer babies.
 

miss fortune

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or perhaps the earth will become so polluted that nobody will be able to reproduce... or at least reproduce and not create mutants of some sort? :huh:

(yes... I DO watch a lot of Futurama :ninja:)
 

prplchknz

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For me it is a question who has a right to decide with what set of genes you are going to be born. Your parents who on a genetic level are your equals and will live only for a few decades or natural selection that touches whole ecosystem and survived millions of years. We don't know enough about genetic processes on the population level to temper with it, as prplchknz said the more the merrier (by the way what a name - give the dyslexics a break :D).

But the worst is the feeling that somebody has power to temper with my genes - blah, blah. If there is anything private about me it's my combination of genes. If somebody has a power to modify it I am a product. What an ultimate power, somebody can change you as a person even before you exist.

Another thing is stopping genetic basis of medical conditions - but that issue is not as straight forward as removing and replacing genes - there is always a trade-off.

I was sited! did you see? did you did you did you did you?
 

Katsuni

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While I'm against the idea of eugenics, I'm also against the overuse of medications as well, which are allowing members of the world to breed, who should have died out; we *ARE* causing reversed eugenics...

For a good example of this, look at the rate of diabetics in the world; it's a hereditary (well one type is anyway, the other isn't), case which is rapidly growing in population, mostly due to the fact that people who should have died from it, instead survived due to medicine, and pass it down to their children. Cancer rates are soaring with hereditary cancers being a noticeably large issue as well. Allergies are a *MASSIVE* one... know anyone who's allergic to something? Oh yeah, it's practically impossible NOT to these days.

While it's good, for the individual, that these people have lived... it's slowly causing problems, and in the long term, we may end up breeding ourselves out of existence simply by letting the weak of the herd survive where they should've died, which can bring the rest of us down as a whole.

And I speak of this as a diabetic myself, whom acquired such from heredity. I know if I ever have kids, they'll be at a high risk of cancer, of heart disease, and of diabetes.

Does this mean that I think someone else should have the right to tell me I'm not ALLOWED to have children, due to medical concerns? No, it doesn't. If yeu want to start restricting people from having kids, how about yeu start with making them take a test first to show any remote inkling of responsibility instead of letting alcoholic abusive drug addicts pump them out so fast :O

But yeah, there is no good answer, short of just curing all the diseases, which renders the issue moot.

We do have a growing trend of general weakness in our genes though, and it is due to allowing those who should've been removed from it to breed. I still think they should be allowed to, but we should realize that this is still a problem that needs to be addressed, and ignoring it because it's not nice to say is not going to fix things.
 

Katsuni

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Who will take out the garbage when everyone has an IQ of 160+?

IQ is a sliding scale based on the 'average' individual.

100 is always average. If everyone had the equivalent of 160 iq today, then that iq would still be 100.

There will always be those slightly dumber than the others. Sure they may be brilliant, but not brilliant enough. That or we'll figure out some us-vs-them mentality to divide it up. Develop a caste system so they're forced to do so from birth or whotever.
 

prplchknz

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Who will take out the garbage when everyone has an IQ of 160+?

do they have arms and legs?

still its possible for someone to take out the garbage
i mean that doesn't rely on how smart you are its taking out the fucking trash.
 

Stanton Moore

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do they have arms and legs?

still its possible for someone to take out the garbage
i mean that doesn't rely on how smart you are its taking out the fucking trash.

The point is that when everyone is made smart by means of eugenics, no one will want to perform menial tasks, like being the garbage man, working at McD's, cleaning the house,picking stawberries; thus eugenics implies the necessity of a caste system, and that implies social inequality, because someone will need to do menial things.
 

Stanton Moore

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IQ is a sliding scale based on the 'average' individual.

100 is always average. If everyone had the equivalent of 160 iq today, then that iq would still be 100.

There will always be those slightly dumber than the others. Sure they may be brilliant, but not brilliant enough. That or we'll figure out some us-vs-them mentality to divide it up. Develop a caste system so they're forced to do so from birth or whotever.

Do you realize that IQ is just a proxy here? If the goal of eugenics is to increase the IQ of the general population, then the fact that intelligence has increased is relevent, not the details of the metric used. Get it? It's really not that difficult...
 

prplchknz

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The point is that when everyone is made smart by means of eugenics, no one will want to perform menial tasks, like being the garbage man, working at McD's, cleaning the house,picking stawberries; thus eugenics implies the necessity of a caste system, and that implies social inequality, because someone will need to do menial things.

yeah but their's only so many awesome jobs, so people will still be stuck with menial tasks.
 

Resonance

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Do you realize that IQ is just a proxy here? If the goal of eugenics is to increase the IQ of the general population, then the fact that intelligence has increased is relevent, not the details of the metric used. Get it? It's really not that difficult...

Yes, but she was correcting a technical error in your use of the shorthand to describe the concept. Which you are still making. The IQ will not increase; the intelligence measured by IQ will.
 

Mole

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Eugenics started in the USA where it showed itself to be evil. And this recommended it to the Germans who perfected it in the 30s and 40s.

"Personality Types", was published in 1921 and was associated with eugenics from the beginning.

All this is ignored because the most striking thing about the USA is its innocence.

Why, the USA has made a literary form of 'The Innocent Abroad'.

And if they are innocent, it means we fit into the opposite slot.
 
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