posted
What do you mean by "eugenics"? There is an enormous difference between individuals choosing a mate with what they think are desirable genetic characteristics, and societal movements that try to promote selection of certain "genetically desirable" mates.
Nazi's didn't just force sterilize "undesirable" members of society, they paid women who mated with Aryan men. I find both sides of that coin equally objectionable.
The problems with societally driven eugenics are many fold. The first being that the heritability of traits like "intelligence" or "athleticism" is at a minimum very complex.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
Kindly don't speak for everyone or even most people, Clive. You can't even speak well for yourself, so you're certainly not in a position to speak at all for any sort of majority.
In fact, most people around here in my opinion would hesitate to use the word 'loathsome' in reference to anyone.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
I think I may have used the word 'disgusting' a few times, although possibly in reference to actions or thoughts rather than people. But I am hardly typical.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Clive Candy: I'm not a sock puppet.
It's really too bad, considering that the only way people here are able to fathom your existence is by believing that you don't *really* exist, except as a figment of some bored person's imagination.
So who are you? Tresopax? Now that would be interesting.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
Clive I am going to take on your question because I am in the midst of writing a fine SF story based on a world where they seek to perfect the human DNA.
You have answered one of the main concerns about Eugenics already. You do not want to limit the number of un-preferred people in existence, but you want to create more preferred people. You are not wanting to kill, abort, or remove those who are not geniuses. You only want to push pro-creation into making more brilliant people.
Your one example is a bit sexist. You have a man telling a woman that she will only get married if she agrees to bear other people's children, not her own.
You can imagine how humiliating this would be for any person.
Further, it would be a lot easier just to impregnate the brilliant women with the seed of brilliant men. Would you marry a woman under the condition that sex was off limits to avoid an unwanted pregnancy that wasn't the perfect type, but you do get to raise, pay for, and take care of all those children she produces from other men?
But the big problem with Eugenics is defining the preferred type. The Nazi's main problem was the assumption that Arayan was perfection. Instead of breeding for intelligence or strength or any other useful trait, they went for Blonde Hair.
Even you seem to be stuck on "Thin and tall." What do those traits have to do with perfection accept in you own personal taste?
In my story the clones are genetically engineered for health. They live long not because they are smarter or stronger or blonde or Arayan or American or what ever. They are genetically programmed for health.
In the canine world we have used eugenics for centuries. What do we have as a result? The Pug, the Pika-poo? Designer lap dogs and giant perfections of the breed, many if not most of which must suffer from genetic problems--hips to weak to support their weight, hearts to small, aggressive behavior in tiny dogs. We let aesthetics rule our eugenics choices with these dogs, and the dogs get to suffer for it.
Do you think we'd do any better with humans?
Posts: 1941 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
clive, check out these other boring forums. maybe you can make them more interesting too. sadly i dont have time to join in the discussions you generate. but what youve done here is greatly amusing.
I don't always like Lisa, and rarely agree with her, but one of the things I DO like is she makes up her own mind, and defends her views.
I don't see HER starting 43 threads on poorly thought out topics simply for the sake of getting noticed.
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posted
Oh... I have been having the worst day ever and you all have finally given me something to laugh about. Thanks
Posts: 204 | Registered: Aug 2001
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1. Who decides what traits are desirable? Will we breed people to be poets or mathematicians, musicians or politicians, strategists or artists? Will we breed marathon runners or sprinters, basketball players or gymnasts? Do we want more Schwarteneggers or more Ghandis? Who will make those value judgements?
2. The heritability of most desirable character traits is very complex and controversial. Intelligence, for example, is a complex mix of genetic and environmental factors. The genetic component of other desirable traits, like say compassion or competitiveness, is even more questionable. If Clive is correct in asserting that some countries don't have enough intelligent people, that is far more likely a result of cultural and environmental factors than genetic factors.
3. We are messing with a very complex system. We do not understand genetics well enough to predict the outcome. What will we do with "mistakes"? How do deal unintended consequences? Eugenics means experimenting on human beings. Experimentation means we can not guarantee the outcome and experimentation always involves a good percentage of failures. What do you do when the "failure" of an experiment is a person?
4. There are natural limitations of the biological system and pushing them can lead to undesirable outcomes. Tall people, for example, are more prone to back problems, breast cancer and prostrate cancer. Mathematical genius tends to come at the expense of practical and interpersonal skills. We know from breeding animals that there are always trade offs.
5. Society is also a complex system. We have no idea how increasing the number of mathematicians or endurance athletes would affect society as a whole. In this respect, this is also an experiment and an experiment that has the potential to go terribly awry.
6. Society needs diversity. We need artists and scientists, doctors and mechanics, dancers and accountants. Many people of modest intelligence make important contributions to our society. Many people of low intelligence, have talents that enrich our lives.
7. What if our eugenics program results in people who are highly capable assholes? In our society, people with extraordinary abilities are often (although certainly not always) arrogant and have little patience or compassion for others. There is every reason to expect that a eugenics program would result in people who see themselves as "superior". After all, these would be people breed to have the traits their society valued most highly. What are the chances they would not see themselves as "superior" when they live in a society that defines them to be superior. Through out human history, "superior" people have seen themselves as being exceptions to the ethical and moral rules that apply to ordinary people. Breeding "superior people" poses a very real danger.
[ November 10, 2009, 04:53 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:7. What if our eugenics program results in people who are highly capable assholes? In our society, people with extraordinary abilities are often (although certainly not always) arrogant and have little patience or compassion for others. There is every reason to expect that a eugenics program would result in people who see themselves as "superior". After all, these would be people breed to have the traits their society valued most highly. What are the chances they would not see themselves as "superior" when they live in a society that defines them to be superior. Through out human history, "superior" people have seen themselves as being exceptions to the ethical and moral rules that apply to ordinary people. Breeding "superior people" poses a very real danger.
Like I said, Koontz.
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Clive Candy: I'm not a sock puppet.
It's really too bad, considering that the only way people here are able to fathom your existence is by believing that you don't *really* exist, except as a figment of some bored person's imagination.
So who are you? Tresopax? Now that would be interesting.
He's the Somalian. He said so himself.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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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.
Lisa is regardless of how abrasive she might be at times is a member of our community and an integral part of our online Nakama you are the invader who must be destroyed.
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And followed up with an excellent list of problems.
It's good to remember that the eugenics movement and compulsory sterilization weren't confined to Nazi Germany. The United States beat Germany - and provided Germany with a model for its own laws.
It's a period of our history we don't dwell on much, but it was very real to the estimated 60,000 Americans who were sterilized under eugenics laws (I tend to think that estimate is low, FWIW).
If anyone is interested, there's a fascinating firsthand account written by an inmate at an Oklahoma institution when the sterilization laws were passed in that state. The author - Marion Marle Woodson - was a journalist who had the bad timing to reach a crisis with his alcoholism several years before the founders of AA met. He allowed himself to be committed to the insane asylum as a desperate lifesaving measure. While he was there, he wrote. One of the chapters deals with The Sterilization Spectre - it's a great analysis from someone who hadn't given the issue much though prior to his confinement in an institution:
quote: I am leaving out of all consideration the question of whether society ever has the right to inflict sterilization. I am leaving that question to the churches, and the consciences of the people. Some of the greatest of the churches have taken an unyielding stand against any sterilization. I am not discussing whether it would be right to inflict sterilization for something of which the helpless victim is not willfully guilty. And I admit that at first reading and on first thought the law might appear to be a good one for society at large; but a closer analysis shows it to be as full of holes as a fish net; presenting uncounted opportunities for tragic travesties on rights while giving the perpetrators the protection of being within the law.
Full disclosure: I was responsible for getting this chapter published online. Woodson's memoir remains one of my all-time favorite books.
Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
quote:Originally posted by Kwea: Hardly.
I don't always like Lisa, and rarely agree with her, but one of the things I DO like is she makes up her own mind, and defends her views.
I don't see HER starting 43 threads on poorly thought out topics simply for the sake of getting noticed.
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.
Lisa is regardless of how abrasive she might be at times is a member of our community and an integral part of our online Nakama you are the invader who must be destroyed.
I am a veteran of this forum.
Posts: 33 | Registered: May 2004
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posted
With 33 posts in 5.5 years? I don't want to suggest that there's some sort of frequent-poster aristocracy here, but really, posting once every 2 months on average is not exactly a strong contribution to the community.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
I forgot the password to "the Somalian," and in June 04 established "the_Somalian." I think I had about 800 posts with that one. By the way, "somalian" is an incorrect word. The adjective is "Somali." It was a bad name and I changed it to this one.
Posts: 532 | Registered: Feb 2009
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
While it does raise the question to what extant are lurkers a part of the community but I think its safe to say that no amount of lurking in good intention can really make up for a few days of brazen troll like behavior spouting social values so conservative it makes Ron look liberal.
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posted
The point remains: You come in here every few months, spout a few threads in which your arguments are invariably ill-considered and simplistic, and then disappear again when you've had enough of being the fixed point which our least member can argue circles around.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: [QUOTE]Originally posted by Clive Candy:
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 Nazis gave eugenics a bad image what with their misapplication of the concepts and all. Yes, violating peoples rights in anyway because of eugenics is wrong and evil and the only thing I'm concerned here is individuals deciding to take steps to bring about superior babies.
Posts: 532 | Registered: Feb 2009
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posted
Clive. This isn't about ostracizing you because you're some evil invader.
It's just that you broke all the social rules. You barged into a community that existed before you made your presence known. That's kinda rude.
What fuels this forum are the relationships that exist as much as the content of our discussions. It takes serious time and energy to build your credibility on this forum, to establish your reputation and to communicate your personality.
You're being quite presumptuous.
Posts: 1604 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:The only thing I'm concerned here is individuals deciding to take steps to bring about superior babies.
Knock, knock, knocking down open doo--oors... Why don't you start by demonstrating that the stigma you speak so strongly against actually exists?
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: What's wrong with Eugenics?
1. Who decides what traits are desirable? Will we breed people to be poets or mathematicians, musicians or politicians, strategists or artists? Will we breed marathon runners or sprinters, basketball players or gymnasts? Do we want more Schwarteneggers or more Ghandis? Who will make those value judgements?
The parents of the child. It'll be left up to the free market. Of course, there is no guarantee that a child's qualities will match that of the genetic parents -- the children of Nobel science prize has shown that much, but it is true in general that smart people have smart children. If two people who scored high on the SATs mate, chances are their children will have high SAT scores as well. The question is, is it wrong for, say, an infertile couple to, instead of adopting, "order" a baby to be born via surrogacy with an egg and sperm from people with very desirable qualities? THEY know the desirable qualities they hope for in the child. The customer knows best.
quote: 2. The heritability of most desirable character traits is very complex and controversial. Intelligence, for example, is a complex mix of genetic and environmental factors. The genetic component of other desirable traits, like say compassion or competitiveness, is even more questionable. If Clive is correct in asserting that some countries don't have enough intelligent people, that is far more likely a result of cultural and environmental factors than genetic factors.
This is true, and hopefully advances in genetics will soon reveal these things. But right now, that intelligence is heritable is the position of many psychologists. Steven Pinker is a mainstream popular psychologist who holds that intelligence is a heritable trait. If you look at the yearly distribution of SAT scores, it's hard to ignore the fact that, out of something like 1.3 million students, just several hundred ever year end up with perfect scores (before the test was messed around with in 1995 perfect scores used to be earned by just a handful of people each year. Was everyone else just not trying as hard as these people? I don't think so. This pointed out to me that those who scored very high had a genetic advantage over everyone else, and if something is genetic surely it can be selected for.)
quote: 3. We are messing with a very complex system. We do not understand genetics well enough to predict the outcome. What will we do with "mistakes"? How do deal unintended consequences? Eugenics means experimenting on human beings. Experimentation means we can not guarantee the outcome and experimentation always involves a good percentage of failures. What do you do when the "failure" of an experiment is a person?
Abort it.
quote: 4. There are natural limitations of the biological system and pushing them can lead to undesirable outcomes. Tall people, for example, are more prone to back problems, breast cancer and prostrate cancer. Mathematical genius tends to come at the expense of practical and interpersonal skills. We know from breeding animals that there are always trade offs.
And a government in need of geniuses (that can't be found among that government's people) might very well decide those trade offs are worth it. But hopefully if a couple wanted to conceive a eugenic child today, perhaps the firm that provides the service would rigorously screen the people they get eggs and sperm from for all sorts harmful defects that can be passed down to the child.
quote: 5. Society is also a complex system. We have no idea how increasing the number of mathematicians or endurance athletes would affect society as a whole. In this respect, this is also an experiment and an experiment that has the potential to go terribly awry.
If we increased the number of geniuses/smart people, smartness would be cheap. Since smart people are more productive than non-smart people, this would be very beneficial to society.
quote: 6. Society needs diversity. We need artists and scientists, doctors and mechanics, dancers and accountants. Many people of modest intelligence make important contributions to our society. Many people of low intelligence, have talents that enrich our lives.
It's true, you need people to push carts and such, and surely geniuses aren't going to do that. This is a good point: there should always be people of normal to subnormal intelligence to do the jobs no one wants.
quote: 7. What if our eugenics program results in people who are highly capable assholes? In our society, people with extraordinary abilities are often (although certainly not always) arrogant and have little patience or compassion for others. There is every reason to expect that a eugenics program would result in people who see themselves as "superior". After all, these would be people breed to have the traits their society valued most highly. What are the chances they would not see themselves as "superior" when they live in a society that defines them to be superior. Through out human history, "superior" people have seen themselves as being exceptions to the ethical and moral rules that apply to ordinary people. Breeding "superior people" poses a very real danger.
People who have the IQ to get into MIT or Cal Tech are already "superior" in terms of intelligence. They're far more capable than normal people. And are they walking around considering themselves superior? Well some of them might be but in general it's considered shameful to boast of a genetic endowment you did nothing to earn.
Posts: 532 | Registered: Feb 2009
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quote:Originally posted by Clive Candy: It's true, you need people to push carts and such, and surely geniuses aren't going to do that. This is a good point: there should always be people of normal to subnormal intelligence to do the jobs no one wants.
quote:Originally posted by Clive Candy: It's true, you need people to push carts and such, and surely geniuses aren't going to do that. This is a good point: there should always be people of normal to subnormal intelligence to do the jobs no one wants.
Ah, a volunteer!
You know Lisa in real life?
Posts: 532 | Registered: Feb 2009
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posted
Lisa has demonstrated far more intelligence than you have. Which I realize is a low bar . . .
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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1. Every forum has its trolls and they are an integral part of them. They provide entertainment and, as Clive is doing, spark discussion. Honestly, I'm of the school of thought that if you don't like them, you don't take it out on them, because then you are just feeding them. A wise man once said don't argue with fools because people at a distance can't tell who is who.
2. Contrary to popular belief, Hatrack is not (or at least for a long period of time, was not) a very welcome place. I know a lot of you have been posting on this site for years and for some almost a decade, but sometimes this place can remind me of high school with all of the cliques and bickering that can carry over from thread to thread. I understand that a lot of you guys know each other fairly well, but that can be very intimidating to some of the other, newer posters on this site. There have been many, many times I have seen other members totally alienated from the Hatrack Community just because of what a few key members thought of them. Sometimes I get the impression that there is a school of thought going on around here that only the more senior members get the privilege to contribute to serious discussions, and the newer ones are expected to just look cute and agree with the general consensus like sheep. Let's be honest; there's a whole lot of dick measuring that takes place around here when it comes to post count, and it seems like a lot of people here don't take others seriously until they reach the 1000 post mark. This place can become quite hostile at times. That was part of the reason I stopped posting here, or even coming to this site. I remember when I left there were quite a few members of this site being totally harassed and picked on by other members (Blayne in particular I remember). I left after a couple of posters that I knew felt the same way about things as here as I did left, and I haven't been back long enough to determine whether anything has changed here or not, but I would like to think that it has. Just my 2 cents, take it or leave it.
Posts: 1158 | Registered: Feb 2006
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posted
Like I said, I haven't been back here very long, and I dunno if things have changed or not. Or maybe I should've just stayed gone.
Posts: 1158 | Registered: Feb 2006
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posted
Some of your critique is fair. Hatrack is not the most welcoming place on the web (for a variety of reasons) and establishing good cred does take time here.
Some of it was "i'm not a cool kid! wah!" paranoia. The "look cute and agree" bit was of the latter variety.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Originally posted by SoaPiNuReYe: Sometimes I get the impression that there is a school of thought going on around here that only the more senior members get the privilege to contribute to serious discussions, and the newer ones are expected to just look cute and agree with the general consensus like sheep.
It often takes more patience that I have to suffer fools and gloss over rudeness here. I definitely agree with your statement about sheep. Of course, I run against the grain by my very nature, so I'm always bucking whatever trend is going on. That doesn't always mean I'm right, though. That fact depends on the subject, and how well-informed I am compared to my audience.
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
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