posted
Not the bad "sterilize retards and the poor" kind but rather positive eugenics. Today we know that things like height, intelligence, and all sorts of psychological traits are heritable.
Why should people who seek to buy the eggs and sperm of beautiful and tall Ivy League students be made to feel guilty about practicing a form of eugenics?
posted
I can't find the link for the post on introductions to hatrack for newbies. Someone have it and want to post it please?
Posts: 1604 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
I can't wait for Clive Candy's threads to continue dancing purposefully into even more and more controversial territory just to get a response.
Tomorrow's planned hit: "What's wrong with forced sterilization?" followed by "What's wrong with the re-absorption of our old and feeble into the nutrient tanks?"
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: I can't wait for Clive Candy's threads to continue dancing purposefully into even more and more controversial territory just to get a response.
Tomorrow's planned hit: "What's wrong with forced sterilization?" followed by "What's wrong with the re-absorption of our old and feeble into the nutrient tanks?"
HAH! I laughed out loud at that one. IM IN THE LIBRARY!!! SHHH!!!
Posts: 1604 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Again, forced sterilization of people is downright evil. But what's wrong with trying to bring superior human beings into this world? As I said, intelligence, along with other psychological traits, are heritable. What's wrong with keeping this mind?
Some countries, for instance, simply do not have enough smart people. Why shouldn't their governments set up a eugenics program that ends up creating more geniuses?
Posts: 532 | Registered: Feb 2009
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posted
Eh, questions of degree. Every parent hopes to have healthy, smart, beautiful children. Everyone, consequently, marries the smartest, healthiest, prettiest person they can attract. (By some sort of weighting of these qualities, which can vary; and in some cases "attract" means "have unprotected sex with, oops.") I do not know of anyone who sees this 'natural' method as a problem. Then, quite a large fraction of women will abort a Down's-syndrome fetus (or other problems diagnosable in the womb); and there are many people who have problems with that. Finally, a few outliers are willing to advocate forced sterilisation or killing, and most people are against that - although it's not so long ago that doctors might routinely "fail" to give clearly-handicapped newborns the slap that makes them breathe, and I suspect that my father's generation would, at least, not be particularly shocked by that. On this spectrum, looking through sperm banks for the best donor doesn't seem particularly heinous. But then again, I suspect that the stigma Clive speaks of is a bit of a straw man, existing only to the extent that it allows posts "defending eugenics" from this non-existent attack.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
Yes but the natural method seems to be so...instinctive. Can a man say to a woman who is merely attractive but clearly of average intelligence "sorry, but I don't want to marry you as the chance of bringing into this world kids of average intelligence is significantly greater with you being their mother." What if he were to suggest to her that they marry, but only on the condition that she be implanted with the eggs of a pretty Ivy League student with impeccable SAT scores when they have kids? Wouldn't this man be vilified?
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Only instead of trying to avoid children with horrible diseases, why not encourage the birth of children with awesome traits?
Posts: 532 | Registered: Feb 2009
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posted
I AM EXTREME HYPOTHETICAL MAN. FEAR MY EXTREME AND CONVOLUTED HYPOTHETICAL RHETORIC. IT MAKES NO SENSE. IT DOES NOT HAVE TO. IT SHALL SEND YOU SCREAMING FROM THE BATTLEFIELD IRREGARDLESS!!!!
Posts: 3564 | Registered: Sep 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Clive Candy: Some countries, for instance, simply do not have enough smart people. Why shouldn't their governments set up a eugenics program that ends up creating more geniuses?
Only instead of trying to avoid children with horrible diseases, why not encourage the birth of children with awesome traits?
*LAUGH*
Whoever added that part of the wikiarticle is ill-informed. Dor Yeshorim is based in Brooklyn (although there is an Israeli branch). And they only do genetic screening. That's hardly "eugenics".
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Clive Candy: Not the bad "sterilize retards and the poor" kind but rather positive eugenics. Today we know that things like height, intelligence, and all sorts of psychological traits are heritable.
Why should people who seek to buy the eggs and sperm of beautiful and tall Ivy League students be made to feel guilty about practicing a form of eugenics?
Everyone who is surprised by this thread, raise your hands.
<crickets>
That's what I thought.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Actually, for a given definition of 'screening', it could be considered eugenics even if they aren't actually screened out. But then that's just my personal definition-I don't know if it's right or not.
When I 'screen calls' I listen to whoever's on the line or voicemail, and then decide whether or not to pick up or call back.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
My offer of tasty cookies didn't work in the other dumb trolling thread, so perhaps I should try smack? Something that really sells itself. I thought delicious cookies would, but those only proved temporarily effective. I need something both alluring and addictive.Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
Eh. Look: Clive is clearly trolling, in the sense of trying to provoke a reaction by posting controversial stuff. But what of it? His posts have led to several threads that I, for one, found interesting, even if Clive's take on them wasn't. He doesn't do personal attacks or foul language. Compared to the state of the forum two weeks ago, I'd say this is quite an improvement. Can we do without the dang cookies?
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:Originally posted by King of Men: It is, actually, if fetuses with undesirable traits are screened out.
It's several steps earlier; the results are used to determine whether a couple begins (or continues) dating. While that may technically be eugenics, it's not what most people mean by it.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: You'd have a point, KoM, except that he also doesn't do actual discussion.
Well yes, as I noted, Clive's take on the interesting threads was quite boring. The rest of us did some interesting discussion, though. The spark plug does no combustion, either.
quote:It's several steps earlier; the results are used to determine whether a couple begins (or continues) dating. While that may technically be eugenics, it's not what most people mean by it.
Only because most people are ignorant! Assortative mating by the assumed genetic characteristics of children was a big part of the German program. Translated, they paid bonuses for women who bore children, in or out of wedlock, by men with the correct Aryan traits. DNA testing would have been a nice added fillip, no doubt, but the principle is the same.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
KOM, I don't like how you're putting me down while endorsing my threads. It's like a case of eating your cake and wanting to have to you. You get to endorse my threads while at the same time making sure you remain on good terms with those who would wreck them.
Posts: 532 | Registered: Feb 2009
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quote:Originally posted by Clive Candy: Again, forced sterilization of people is downright evil. But what's wrong with trying to bring superior human beings into this world? As I said, intelligence, along with other psychological traits, are heritable. What's wrong with keeping this mind?
Some countries, for instance, simply do not have enough smart people. Why shouldn't their governments set up a eugenics program that ends up creating more geniuses?
I am going to respond to this question while being mindful of the audience.
There are many complex and integrated sociocultural, scientific, and moral issues interplaying into the issue of eugenics which I am going to conservatively estimate you are not going to be able to address. Like with sexual dynamics, homosexuality, and countless other social and moral subjects you have flailed around on, I doubt you're going to be able to work on reasonable grounds. But, for the time being, let's talk shop.
Eugenics as a subject comes in two primary forms: future implications, and historical implications. Currently, historical implications dominates the notion of what 'eugenics' represents, because it was utilized as a confirmational and advancement tool for people trying to enhance and/or legitimize their pre-existent intolerant biases.
Essentially, you had a bunch of nationalist race supremacists who believed wholly in the superiority of their own race and the necessity of preventing the encroachment of 'lesser races' upon their superior genetic (or 'genetic-cultural') stock. In the early days of applying understanding of heritable traits and evolution to scientific principles, these very same people siezed upon the use of 'scientific principles' to justify and make an ostensibly secular, objective test for eliminating deficients and lesser races and keeping the (usually white) stock pure. The "science" of eugenics developed around the pre-existent biases and motives of these fervent nationalists and was conducted with the same level of legitimacy as, say, phrenology.
Eugenic "science," was, consequently, astoundingly poor and dramatically errant. It was a classic example of bad science essentially manufactured wholesale to advance ideological aims. It was particularly guilty of poor survey and statistical models, false quantification, and blatant reification, something which I think you're advancing steadily towards confirming you are doing too.
The current modern-day implication of eugenics primarily involves the potential of designer babies, as opposed to wholesale social breeding systems. In that sense, it's 'soft eugenics,' a slightly more modern process of selective breeding that has little to fundamentally intrinsically deviate it from the very same sort of human societies have been practicing as far back as in prehistorical tribes and chiefdoms. It's just going to be certain parents of means under very specific circumstances spending money on the promise of prettier babies with less of a chance of certain illnesses. There's very little to argue here. They're not screening for intelligence. They're not engaging in a program of culling reproductive rights. It's not directed by any forces other than individual custom preference of parents, who still hold full reproductive rights that remain unchanged, in a non-program, non-organized private expenditure on designer babies.
The potential for future social genetic engineering programs won't really take root until well after overpopulation radically alters what most of the world considers fair in terms of reproductive rights.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Clive Candy: KOM, I don't like how you're putting me down while endorsing my threads. It's like a case of eating your cake and wanting to have to you. You get to endorse my threads while at the same time making sure you remain on good terms with those who would wreck them.
I think I am justified in saying that remaining on good terms with the Hatrackers has never been a priority of mine.
I call them as I see them: Your threads are interesting when others post in them. You're not.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
I think the whole thing will become irrelevant.
1) We will soon have good interfaces between machines and the human nervous system. If we want, this can augment and extend personal physical capability to the point that a mere few inches of height or pounds of muscle will be pointless, and (later) extend the capacity of human consciousness to a point where our current standard of genius will be below the mean.
2) We will sooner or later achieve a mastery of human biology that enables people to override genetic traits. Breeding for desired characteristics over multiple decades will be a quaint idea.
3) We'll either be dead or have overcome most of the challenges that require genius before too long.
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Clive Candy: KOM, I don't like how you're putting me down while endorsing my threads. It's like a case of eating your cake and wanting to have to you. You get to endorse my threads while at the same time making sure you remain on good terms with those who would wreck them.
I think I am justified in saying that remaining on good terms with the Hatrackers has never been a priority of mine.
I call them as I see them: Your threads are interesting when others post in them. You're not.
What a cowardly thing to say. If you find these sort of threads interesting, why don't you create them yourself? You don't, because you know that that this overwhelmingly liberal community would become angry at you if do so. Puhleaze.
Posts: 532 | Registered: Feb 2009
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quote:Originally posted by Clive Candy: KOM, I don't like how you're putting me down while endorsing my threads. It's like a case of eating your cake and wanting to have to you. You get to endorse my threads while at the same time making sure you remain on good terms with those who would wreck them.
Clive, you need to think, though. If there'd been a eugenics program before you were born, you wouldn't be here to start this thread.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Clive Candy: What a cowardly thing to say. If you find these sort of threads interesting, why don't you create them yourself? You don't, because you know that that this overwhelmingly liberal community would become angry at you if do so. Puhleaze.
... he's not going to make 'these' threads because he has no interest in making threads interesting by being a rube who argues ignorantly about fantastically controversial subjects, provoking hilarious interchange.
Which is the role that you are playing, whether you like it or not!
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
I don't know what it is, but something isn't right about Clive. It doesn't feel natural. He really feels like an alt, which really bothers me to discuss the topics that he brings up. I think it's a twisted way to engage with people socially when you create an alternate character to conduct conversations with. It's manipulation of a community, and is pretty twisted.
Posts: 1604 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Clive Candy: KOM, I don't like how you're putting me down while endorsing my threads. It's like a case of eating your cake and wanting to have to you. You get to endorse my threads while at the same time making sure you remain on good terms with those who would wreck them.
Clive, you need to think, though. If there'd been a eugenics program before you were born, you wouldn't be here to start this thread.
quote:Originally posted by Clive Candy: KOM, I don't like how you're putting me down while endorsing my threads. It's like a case of eating your cake and wanting to have to you. You get to endorse my threads while at the same time making sure you remain on good terms with those who would wreck them.
Clive, you need to think, though. If there'd been a eugenics program before you were born, you wouldn't be here to start this thread.
I don't think that is fair. Smart people can have stupid kids sometimes.
Posts: 2223 | Registered: Mar 2008
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posted
Clive, the appropriate playground response is "I'm rubber and you're glue. Whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you."
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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posted
Nu, that's a good question, actually; why don't I start threads, provocative or otherwise? I think basically I just like browsing, and then occasionally I see a post I want to respond to. I rarely feel the urge to start a discussion on anything in particular. Besides that, Hatrack is a form of procrastination, and as such rarely deliberate. I don't say to myself "I'll go to Hatrack and start a thread". I just find myself on Hatrack in the process of oughting to be doing something entirely different. Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Clive Candy: KOM, I don't like how you're putting me down while endorsing my threads. It's like a case of eating your cake and wanting to have to you. You get to endorse my threads while at the same time making sure you remain on good terms with those who would wreck them.
I think I am justified in saying that remaining on good terms with the Hatrackers has never been a priority of mine.
I think we can all get behind that statement.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Armoth: I don't know what it is, but something isn't right about Clive. It doesn't feel natural. He really feels like an alt, which really bothers me to discuss the topics that he brings up. I think it's a twisted way to engage with people socially when you create an alternate character to conduct conversations with. It's manipulation of a community, and is pretty twisted.
Smurfing (posting on alts) is pretty lame but ultimately something you have to treat as a baseline probable condition of the internet. Anyone who's not a known quantity (long-time interaction, met them at a con or something, can be fairly sure they're who they say they are, etc) is just a name who is anonymous and infinitely replicable.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Clive Candy: KOM, I don't like how you're putting me down while endorsing my threads. It's like a case of eating your cake and wanting to have to you. You get to endorse my threads while at the same time making sure you remain on good terms with those who would wreck them.
Clive, you need to think, though. If there'd been a eugenics program before you were born, you wouldn't be here to start this thread.
And you would?
Aw... that's so cute. Don't you mean "I know you are but what am I?"
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Armoth: I don't know what it is, but something isn't right about Clive. It doesn't feel natural. He really feels like an alt, which really bothers me to discuss the topics that he brings up. I think it's a twisted way to engage with people socially when you create an alternate character to conduct conversations with. It's manipulation of a community, and is pretty twisted.
That's a good point. He probably is an alt. And the irony is that he's accusing KoM (who doesn't give half a damn what anyone here thinks of him) of being worried about what other people think, when it's whoever's behind the alt that really has that worry. Kol ha-posel b'mumo posel, basically.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
In certain types of therapy groups, the leaders don't speak directly to the clients in the group but only comment on the "process." Like if people are asking why other clients aren't there, a group leader might respond, "There's a feeling of disappointment, today."
That's how I'm feeling about this thread.
Posts: 1261 | Registered: Apr 2004
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
I see nothing wrong with the concept of a 'positive eugenics' in the form of screening for negative medical traits such as illness or disorders, wouldn't blink if genetic tinkering gave the parents options to pick and choose appearance (to a degree) from a pool of their respective genetic traits and wouldn't mind if a persons genetic material was given a 'boost' in things like intelligence and creativity as long as it was offered to everyone equally and wasn't abused and strong oversight established.
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You're considered to be a loathsome person by most people here. Being disliked by you is not the bad thing that you think it is.
Posts: 532 | Registered: Feb 2009
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