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Eugenics: what do you think?

Do you support eugenics?


  • Total voters
    38

Cellmold

Wake, See, Sing, Dance
Joined
Mar 23, 2012
Messages
6,266
Eugenics in a reality filled with humans has the potential to be either a dream or a nightmare. Personally I have espoused that we will face many issues ahead with regards to resource consumption and population growth, although theories and opinions vary on that score. If the amount of children people have becomes a privilege as opposed to a right, (governed by a country's laws most likely aka China), then the attraction of how to govern the population's 'health' would probably be fairly irresistible.

The problem is we tend to advance ourself technologically before we do ethically or ideologically.

I'm actually somewhat indifferent, but I am fairly adamant that there are a lot of people who I would not like to see get control over such a thing as eugenics should, (or rather when), it become more feasible. [MENTION=21639]SilentMusings[/MENTION] would be chief among such people. Perhaps a system of interviews to assess the stability of the person would help.

A job interview to dictate the colour of your child's hair and eyes essentially.
 

ygolo

My termites win
Joined
Aug 6, 2007
Messages
5,986
Hybrid vigour occurs when you breed two highly homogyzogus parents for a number of different traits together to get the best of both worlds. However, the random mating of two people who will be homogyzous for one trait, hetereozygous for others, and have a whole lot of traits with more complex inheritance patterns, just because they are appreciably "different", will not increase health. You have no idea whatsoever what you are doing in this case. It would be like me knocking up your sister after a one night stand compared to controlled pedigree dog breeding.

If you can explain how the benefits of being heterozygous for any of the disorders I listed outweigh the consequences then you will have won this debate. But until then, you have not.

As I have consistently pointed out, the probability of there being an advantage to being heterozygous for the cystic fibrosis gene, for example, does not outweigh the disadvantages. Not by a country mile. The reason these disorders persist in the population is not because they convey some advantage but because the heterozygous individual often does not have such severe symptoms if any and may be able to reproduce. This is not an argument against evolution, only that any useful mutation would take a while to spread in any given population unless the environment drastically changed. Bargining on that chance occuring during our lifetimes is not rational because it is very low indeed. That is why I posted the meteorite analogy.

Why you people can't understand what I'm trying to tell you is utterly beyond me...

That you are optimisitic about genetic technology is highly hypocritical considering what you have stated earlier. As I have pointed out, enhancement will also lead to a loss of genetic diversity, and along with it a whole set of societal problems created by the population being unnaturally healthy. Be consistent.

I think the central point of contention is what we consider "eugenics".

I am all for gene therapy (that doesn't eliminate the actual genes in the next generation till we know for sure we know what we are doing). I agree with family planning. I agree with distributing contraception. I agree with encouraging people in overburdened areas to not have children. I agree with rewarding people for having fewer children.

I even think that making it manditory for people to stop having children to continue receiving welfare is not unreasonable.

What I am opposed to is forced sterilization or mass genocide. I know that you said that this is not what you are advocating. But if you paint with a brush that say things like: things that reduce effective working life, you are painting with a very broad brush. This includes mental disorders. This includes autism. Hell, this even includes pregnancy.

If it is not forced, if it is not en mass, and people are simply informed of disorders they could pass on and allowed to make decisions, who would be opposed to that?

The probabilities change drastically if you move from
1) individuals making informed decisions about their own progeny and being given incentive to reproduce less, to
2) individuals being forced into being sterilized (by law or whatever) for simply having conditions that reduce working life.

I know that you didn't explicitly say you wanted to eliminate many people based on traits alone, but many people interpreted this as your intention because of the other things you posted. Just thinking about things in such a broad brush is problematic.

If this has all been a case of "violent agreement", we can leave it at that and have a good laugh.

Based on the reps I've received, I have to say that many people believed you were painting with too broad a brush, and strongly implying some form of force based on phenotype (not genes, not behavior).
 

Julius_Van_Der_Beak

Up the Wolves
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Based on the reps I've received, I have to say that many people believed you were painting with too broad a brush, and strongly implying some form of force based on phenotype (not genes, not behavior).

Phenotype might be a word that is too big for someone of such superior breeding. Obviously, they perceive the universe with much more clarity than you or I, and so cannot be bothered to learn the meanings of such complicated terminology. They are too busy pondering important matters, like how to apply to Russian love camp.
 

Mane

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Jul 2, 2014
Messages
828
Phenotype might be a word that is too big for someone of such superior breeding. Obviously, they perceive the universe with much more clarity than you or I, and so cannot be bothered to learn the meanings of such complicated terminology. They are too busy pondering important matters, like how to apply to Russian love camp.

:rofl1::rotfl:

It's impressive in it's own way: He got a bunch of us to argue against sterilizing him.
 

st-t-toat

New member
Joined
Aug 4, 2014
Messages
77
eugenics - noun - the science of improving a population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics; a term so bristling with relativities one can imagine (some of) the consequences?
 

Mole

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eugenics - noun - the science of improving a population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics; a term so bristling with relativities one can imagine (some of) the consequences?

Normally eugenics is referred to as a pseudo science.
 

Mole

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help me, my dear Mole, bring me out of myself ... where then do we draw the line here between the science and the pseudoscience?

Well, science is based on evidence and reason. Science uses the scientific method. Science is based on scepticism. Science is published in peer review journals.

Pseudo science mimicks science but without evidence and reason, the scientific method, scepticism, and without being published in peer review journals.

Homeopathy is a pseudo science, while science is evidence based medicine.
Eugenics is pseudo science, while genetics is science.
Astrology is pseudo science, while astronomy is science.
Alchemy is pseudo science, while chemistry is science.
Mbti is pseudo science, while psychometrics is science.
Creationism is pseudo science, while Natual Selection is science.

Pseudo science is plausible, while science is fact.
 

st-t-toat

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Aug 4, 2014
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... Eugenics is pseudo science, while genetics is science ...

my dear Mole, thank you; i'm somewhat out-of-my-depth here, so, do please bear with me; shall we remain within the eugenics/genetics dichotomy you cite? my earlier quote (via oEOD) citing eugenics as a "science" is therefore in error? you have a tighter dictionary definition in mind, perhaps?
 

Mole

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my dear Mole, thank you; i'm somewhat out-of-my-depth here, so, do please bear with me; shall we remain within the eugenics/genetics dichotomy you cite? my earlier quote (via oEOD) citing eugenics as a "science" is therefore in error? you have a tighter dictionary definition in mind, perhaps?

My understanding of Eugenics doesn't come from the dictionary but from history.

The eugenics movement in the United States was largely discredited by the fact that eugenics was central to both the theory and practice of Nazism. Nevertheless, California in particular has a long and sordid history of forced sterilization: sterilizations were forced on prisoners as late as the mid-1960s, in part because California’s long-time attorney general was a vociferous supporter of the practice, and it wasn’t formally outlawed until 1979.

So it is no surprise to find Americans on this site advocating for Eugenics.

However the Nuremberg Trials found the Eugenicists guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced them to death.

The prime Eugenicist was Dr Josef Mengele, the Angel of Death, at Auschwitz Extermination Camp.

And Dr Joseph Mengele's Eugenic work was funded by the Americans at the highest level by the Rockefeller Foundation.
 

Nicodemus

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Aug 2, 2010
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My image of you is someone who has never held a real job, and sits at home posting fantasies on the internet and disputing scientific fact as not having to do with reality. I could be wrong.
Interestingly, if it were not for his family's money, he would probably be one of the people he wants to eliminate from the population because he is, and as an unsuccessful composer would continue to be, 'unable to provide for children', already suffering from debilitating psychological issues and working hard on developing alcoholism to further 'decrease his lifespan and ability to work normally' in the future.

The counterphobic force is strong with this one.
 

Ghoul

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Interestingly, if it were not for his family's money, he would probably be one of the people he wants to eliminate from the population because he is, and as an unsuccessful composer would continue to be, 'unable to provide for children', already suffering from debilitating psychological issues and working hard on developing alcoholism to further 'decrease his lifespan and ability to work normally' in the future.

The counterphobic force is strong with this one.

Woah. He must've really hurt you bruh. That's the longest post I've seen you make.
 

Nicodemus

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Woah. He must've really hurt you bruh. That's the longest post I've seen you make.
He assaults my sense of coherence on a regular basis. Not really woah and oh-dear material, though; he more or less boasts about these aspects of his life.
 

magpie

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He assaults my sense of coherence on a regular basis. Not really woah and oh-dear material, though; he more or less boasts about these aspects of his life.

Oh, I wasn't oh dearing you. Just the couple pages that I unfortunately skimmed. Now that is very oh dear.
 

st-t-toat

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My understanding of Eugenics doesn't come from the dictionary but from history. ... QUOTE]

my dear Mole, i have been browsing some of the history but the provenance of history is just so ... gordian; can we not move from pragmatics to semantics and save what is really a very new word from ... history?
 

Mole

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My understanding of Eugenics doesn't come from the dictionary but from history. ...

my dear Mole, i have been browsing some of the history but the provenance of history is just so ... gordian; can we not move from pragmatics to semantics and save what is really a very new word from ... history?

Gordian Knots are notoriously difficult to untangle, so the Gordian Knot has to be cut.

And interestingly the American revolutionary, Noah Webster, who wrote Webster's American Dictionary, cut the Gordian Knot of history by cutting American English off from its roots.

Yes, Noah Webster succeeded in deracinating American English.

So American English is the triumph of semantics over history.

But rather than being deracinated we are fortunate to speak the Queen's English found in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).
 
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do I support eugenics? fuck no!

pretty sure I have seen evidence to support the notion that diversity in the gene pool in the form of contributions by so called "defective" people is beneficial to the human race on the whole.

I am fundamentally against the idea of engineering some sort of master race even if the thought behind it is some well meaning utopian ideal. what gives us the right to decide that a person with a disability won't be able to contribute to society in a positive way, if these sort of badly thought ideas such as eugenics were to be implemented we wouldn't have geniuses like stephen hawking expanding our understanding of science. a lot of gifted artists would never be given a chance in life as we wouldn't recognise their potential for brilliance, we'd only note that they have a disability or their brain was wired slightly differently and so should be culled. this sort of power should never be granted to a state. it is such a bad flawed idea imo.
 
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