posted
If this is some attempt to get me to register for NY Times readership then sorry, let the liberal propaganda machine die its slow death. Summarize the content if it is not summed up enough in the headline.
As for whether human breeding is practical for emphasizing desired traits, I suggest a look at the NFL and the NBA. The Nazi's just did not have as much time as we did...
Posts: 475 | Registered: Aug 2006
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posted
That makes so much more sense than the You Tube moving people.
I didn't realize they were regular kids. I'd always heard that women were recruited to breed with Aryan men. It's nice to know even the Nazis weren't THAT vile.
I'm also not sure you can say the program was a failure after one generation. What can you hope to do in one generation? Given the tendency of recessive genes to pop up when you least expect them, I'd think the program was unlikely at best. At worst, you could never have bred the recessive genes out.
And in the end, with the Earth's population reaching record numbers, what difference does it make? Who cares if we're perfect? There's enough people to go around.
Posts: 2283 | Registered: Dec 2003
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quote:If anything, the reunion served as proof that racial engineering has its limits.
It proved no such thing. Their breeding program only had one generation. A breeding program of one generation is no breeding program at all.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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1) It fell apart in one generation (apparently -- we'll have to see if someone has secretly kept the program going).
2) The products of the first generation appear pretty normal (and yes, it's true that subsequent crosses would've required that the "defective" ones be blocked from breeding, so the fact that they aren't ALL perfect isn't really that telling).
3) They don't really appear to be a bunch of people loyal to the idea of them being part of a master race.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
3) wouldn't be a genetic trait anyway, so I don't see how you can conclude anything from that. And 2) just follows from 1), which in truth has nothing to do with the breeding program as such; there was this little war going on, don'tcherknow.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
The Nazi eugenics program wasn't around long enough to create a real breeding program.
Now, if they'd had ten generations and full liberty to 'cull' as they pleased, you'd start to see differences.
Thing is, though, the nazis were too obsessed with phenotype. They would have prioritized selection based on pointless outward visual indicators. It's great for racist zealots who preen over hair shades and eye colors, but would all but completely stunt any notable physical and mental aptitude strengthening.
All eugenic programs also entail confounding risks anyway, too. You always get unintended weaknesses when you homogenize based on limited criteria.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
Yeah, homogenization is not a great idea. Also breeding for physical characteristics like being a pretty, blond, and blue eyed wouldn't do much for churning out rocket scientists and neurosurgeons. Now, a breeding program based on IQ makes a bit more sense. But we already do that anyway, for all intents and purposes. But people mate assortatively, and everyone wants to reproduce, so while smart people marry other smart people it's not like less intelligent people don't have any kids. Or less attractive people. Like in the House episode where he talks to his hallucination: "9s marry 9s, 10s marry 10s, 4s marry 4s. Maybe there's some wiggle room if there's a lot of money or somebody gets pregnant . . ."
Anyway, there's regression to the mean with IQ and looks, but if you're way above or way below the mean the deviation isn't that extreme, so when smart and goodlooking people hang out with each other for long enough over time and interbreed you can get brighter and cuter than average kids at a higher rate than in the normal population. But everyone is still having kids too, so you don't get overall improvement of the genes.
Preventing "undesirable" people from having children and promoting "desirable" kids, along with maybe some mucking about with the genes mechanically is the only thing that would "improve" genes over time.
Posts: 471 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Also breeding for physical characteristics like being a pretty, blond, and blue eyed wouldn't do much for churning out rocket scientists and neurosurgeons.
While that is self evident to you and me, you are forgetting that Nazi's believed their racist lies. They believed that northern European racial characteristics like height, blond hair and blue eyes were linked to IQ and other important human characteristics.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
Actually, the Nazi breeding "program" included more than just selecting specimens. It was also based on indoctrination of women and their offspring. It was a "program" in more respects than just their understanding of genetics.
As such, it could fail on multiple levels, including not having enough generations, selection on characteristics that were not necessarily the best in terms of long-term genetic superiority.
There is also no indication that they would cull a sub-standard child just for a lack of outward Aryan phenotype. The several thousand children that resulted from this program were mostly the offspring of SS officers and single women recruited for their political zeal (and willingness to bear children out of wedlock). The SS officers were not uniform (pardon the pun) in their Aryan characteristics. There was party power politics and nepotism thrown in as well. For all the strict logic of the "eugenics" movement, in practice the "elite" sperm came from a mixed back of party loyalists, and the eggs were from a convenience sample of young idealistic women.
At any rate, the article is indeed wrong to judge that the program was a failure because the people who arose from it were/are pretty much normal. But really, the program was a failure, in part, because it wasn't actually selection based on things that are under genetic control -- at least not strongly so (I suppose there might be a genetic component to political zealotry -- a comforting thought that we might be able to breed ourselves out of it someday...)...
So, it was a flop as a program, in at least the three ways I stated, and probably more.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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quote:Also breeding for physical characteristics like being a pretty, blond, and blue eyed wouldn't do much for churning out rocket scientists and neurosurgeons.
While that is self evident to you and me, you are forgetting that Nazi's believed their racist lies. They believed that northern European racial characteristics like height, blond hair and blue eyes were linked to IQ and other important human characteristics.
Certainly they believed it, but they would still have found themselves without any extra amount of brilliant people - genetically, anyway. Presumably, being the product of a eugenics program would give people confidence in themselves, not to mention that being expected to do well is often a self-fulfilling prophecy. So they'd get whatever cultural help is going in the brilliance department, but none of the genetics.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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1) It fell apart in one generation (apparently -- we'll have to see if someone has secretly kept the program going).
2) The products of the first generation appear pretty normal (and yes, it's true that subsequent crosses would've required that the "defective" ones be blocked from breeding, so the fact that they aren't ALL perfect isn't really that telling).
3) They don't really appear to be a bunch of people loyal to the idea of them being part of a master race.
4) Cuz only stupid people could believe in a master race. So only stupid people took part.
5) Fortunately, stupidity isn't an inheritable trait. While some parts of overall intelligence might be partially determined by genetics, people hafta work really hard at using that intelligence to deceive themselves in order to maintain their own stupidity.
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:Actually, the Nazi breeding "program" included more than just selecting specimens. It was also based on indoctrination of women and their offspring.
Considering that most of the offspring didn't even know about this program because the Third Reich collapsed before they were old enough, it's no surprise that the nonexistent indoctrination didn't take.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
"The Sun is pushed across the Sky by a dung beetle."
There are many such statements that can be made which have no bearing on reality. All statements are not equally valid.
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
But you didn't say that the statment is false. I would have no problem with that.
What you said is that a person has to be stupid to believe it. That's what I'm objecting to.
I'll give you this though -- you probably do have to be uninformed, delusional, or paranoid to believe that a dung beetle pushes the sun across the sky.
But you don't have to be stupid.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
I'm not sure if aspectre was being serious or not, but it seems to me that there is no obvious reason a master race shoudn't exist after some sufficiently heavy eugenics, taking the concept as meaning "group of people with significant superiority in the inheritable and measurable components of athletics, intelligence and beauty".
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:Originally posted by King of Men: I'm not sure if aspectre was being serious or not, but it seems to me that there is no obvious reason a master race shoudn't exist after some sufficiently heavy eugenics, taking the concept as meaning "group of people with significant superiority in the inheritable and measurable components of athletics, intelligence and beauty".
Agreed. It may not be PC to admit it, but such a program would be possible and most likely succeed in theory. It's the implementation of it that seems to cause most people to have ideological problems with it.
Posts: 1412 | Registered: Oct 2005
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Selective breeding in dogs has gotten us from a Wolf to a Chihuahua, Great Dane, and Blood Hound in as little as 17,000 years, artificially selecting for different traits consistently over many generations is a powerful thing.
That's probably 3500 or so generations of dog since the first wolf, I would doubt the first generation of artificially selecting for traits worked out any better for pre-historic man than it did for Hitler.
There's nothing fundamentally different about dogs and humans that the same sort of selective breeding couldn't result in similar pronounced differences. If some alien race came down and started breeding a population of humans to be small, and another to be large, we'd have Hobbit races and Giant races in no time.
Of course, if this hypothetical alien race wanted to selectively breed attractive, healthy, athletic, intelligent humans, they'd be awfully stupid to limit the initial pool to just one "race" of people.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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quote:Actually, the Nazi breeding "program" included more than just selecting specimens. It was also based on indoctrination of women and their offspring.
Considering that most of the offspring didn't even know about this program because the Third Reich collapsed before they were old enough, it's no surprise that the nonexistent indoctrination didn't take.
It's actually not accurate to say that the indoctrination was non-existent. Many of the children were raised by their SS parents or close relatives. Also, the women who volunteered for the program DID go through the indoctrination (it was considered part of the special care they received during their pregnancy).
Among the many reasons that this program failed is that the social and political infrastructure necessary to keep it going was forcibly removed. Doesn't mean the program is less of a flop...
It may mean that the reasons for its failure are uninteresting.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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