One thing more…
Please use a full quote within it’s context when you quote me, so the meaning is not lost. What I said was this:
““Race” is an inflammatory term in many academic circles, so perhaps whoever constructed the definition you cite created a definitional constraint which is more easily criticized–a strawman.”
I don’t fear the “pitting” as far as I know, 
but whatever that is, surely it should be imposed only if warranted.
That’s a nice attitude in its own right, but ISTM that it doesn’t really belong here in Great Debates. If you just want to post “observations” without caring how they’re perceived, you’re probably going to be happier in MPSIMS or IMHO. This forum is for debating well-defined positions by means of evidence-supported rational argument. If other posters don’t find your arguments worthy of respect, you’re not succeeding in debate.
I think the problem is that you’re mixing up “deliberately chosen individual genetic modifications” with “eugenics”. Even if many individuals do end up in 50 or 100 years selecting their offspring’s genes for desired traits, and even if the cumulative effects of those selections do end up making the average human significantly less likely to be myopic, or more likely to be tall, or “improved” in some similar way, it won’t be “eugenics” per se.
You seem to be arguing that if we wait long enough, the word “eugenics” will change its meaning so your preferred usage of it will be appropriate.
Maybe it will, but that doesn’t mean it makes sense for you to use the word in your personal preferred sense of the term now. “Eugenics” at present refers to deliberate social initiatives to produce socially-defined “improvements” in the heritable characteristics of an entire human population, most commonly the entire human species.
Individuals making independent individual choices about what they personally consider desirable traits in their individual offspring don’t count as “eugenics”. Not even if everybody in the world is doing it.
I love the topic.
During my school days I suffered horribly due to other students being MUCH quicker and better learners than me. Gosh, it was HELL! Nothing too much worse than going into a “learning environment” only to (mainly) learn that most people around you are mental giants by comparrison! (I have improved as a person in many “good” ways since my school days, but still, I gotta be honest, so please don’t hold that sappy “learn to love yourself” phrase that I posted about the other day, as it doesn’t apply here. Gezz!
For me, I gotta think that the Lord is okay with us using our God-given common sense; and by that I mean taking the bull by the horns and, if necessary, drag as many misfits, creeps, uglies, losers and so on and so forth kicking and screaming into Sterilization Centers as quickly as possible! (And yes, I’ll be the first to go under the knife. No problem!)
Look at the pragmatic ants; they live beautifully structured lives, and you don’t see any of them working their butts off to aid and assist any malcontents, murderes, and lazies among them! They wouldn’t put up with it, So why are people less reasonable than ants?
Nobody seems to care that the Neanderthals died off, and yet the idea that the worst of our species shouldn’t be allowed to pollute the planet with copies of themselves is regarded as being “evil”? I don’t get it!
There are too many people with defects crapping out babies. Anyone that’s lived beyond 30 and has traveled a bit knows this is true. It’s not a “nice” thing to admit, but it’s true. In fact, it just pains the heck out of me that the situation is that – “generally” speaking! – it’s the people that are the most screwed up that are doing the most baby-making (versus people that are healthy, beautiful, bright, balanced and don’t have a propensity for committing crimes)!
Everything’s upside down.
You have to get a permit to drive a car or open a beauty salon, but there’s nothing to say that you can’t have as many babies as you want, even if you can’t afford them. How odd and misguided is that??
The world is a finite place with finite resources, and it’s all being ruined because too many of us don’t speak out against these undesirables living like animals with no regard to their fellow human beings, and the world at large. (Please; let’s not bog things down by going into “corporate exploitation” and all that. Focus on one ill at a time.)
Many years ago, this guy that I knew came up to me and told me that his girlfriend was pregnant, he was going to be a dad. But I had a low opinion of him because I knew the kind of person he was – law-breaker, drug user, etc. – and so he didn’t understand why it was that I couldn’t bring myself to say, “Oh, that’s just great! Congratulations!”
But I didn’t care (that he didn’t understand) because, sad as hell as it is to admit, I know first-hand the kind of pain that comes with dumb idiots that leap into “parenting” when they’re really not even fit to raise earth worms!
DEAR GOD, PEOPLE, STOP WITH ALL THIS "SENSITIVITY’’ AND PC CRAP, IT’S NOT THE WAY TO GO!!!
The way I see it, if you think that life and planet earth is worth cherishing, then you owe it to start being REAL about things by (bravely!) speaking up for this eugenics thing, 'cause the baby-making idiots are going to turn the whole thing into a nightmarish mess that the human race will never recover from if you don’t!
And for those who intend to flame me for my “Nazi” point of view: No, I don’t have kids. It would be wrong for me to toss my way less-than-perfect genes into the situation; and therefore, I haven’t and won’t kids. (I know that that at least makes you happy, right?)
Sorry for being perhaps a little loud and shrill, but, like I said, I know personally the all-around agoney of being a kid of two very irresponsible fools … even to the degree of being a bit of a dysfunctional human being (though a responsible one!) at this time of my life. Love your life and others, but NEVER ditch your God-given common sense relating to this issue, as too much is at stake!
stepping down from soapbox; soft sobs; did my little part (at the cost of my own dignity)
The fact that another poster finds my argument unworthy of respect is an editorial opinion on the part of the poster and not a reason, per se, that what I posted is not worthy of this section. The fact that I don’t take that lack of respect personally is also unimportant. It would be rather silly to demote every Great Debate topic to a different thread because another poster said “I don’t respect that opinion.” I think it’s fair to say Blake has crossed the line into the kind of comments that belong in the Pit more so than I in this thread.
The sidetracking of the thread to the definition of “eugenics” is what is irrelevant. I don’t care if someone says it should only be used for entire populations deliberately controlled. The science to manipulate the genes isn’t any different from the science that manipulates an individual’s genes, and that’s why “eugenics” as a scientific possibility hasn’t been discredited.
The core point is that if genes can be improved at the level of an individual then it’s scientifically possible to do it at the level of an entire population. The barrier becomes the ability to control the reproductive behaviour of an entire population and not the technical ability to improve the gene pool of the population.
Hardly. Since the thread is about eugenics, it’s impossible to have a coherent discussion of it without at least approximate agreement on how eugenics is defined.
And the other core point is that “improvement” is not a scientific designation, but rather a social and personal one.
Gene modification is definitely scientific, and it is definitely possible, at least in theory, to apply it not just to individuals but to an entire population. We have no quarrel on that point.
However, determining what constitutes a genetic “improvement” in a population is not a scientific process, but a social one. Eugenics as currently defined involves designating certain changes in heritable characteristics as “improvements”, based on socially-determined desiderata, and then enforcing the necessary reproductive choices on all members of the society to produce those changes in the population as a whole.
Since deciding what genetic features count as “improvements” is not and never can be a completely scientific process, eugenics as currently defined is not considered valid science. That still holds even though the physical process of actually modifying genes is, as you note, entirely scientific.
The social, non-scientific, basis of eugenics as currently defined is illustrated very clearly by the post preceding yours:
Whether or not we agree with this proposed policy, it clearly illustrates two crucial characteristics of eugenics: 1) the social determination of “desirable” versus “undesirable” genetic qualities (e.g., “misfits, creeps, uglies, losers”); and 2) the social coercion used to force the population to conform to the socially-determined eugenic goals.
As I noted before, simply letting individuals decide for themselves whether and how they’d like to modify their own offspring’s genetic traits is not eugenics as currently defined. Not even if everybody in the world is doing it.
If the OP is asking whether eugenics has been discredited as a worthy social policy to apply to be enforced on a population, well that’s a matter of opinion. I gave mine earlier.
If the OP is asking whether eugenics has been discredited because it is unscientific, I think your statement above sums it up nicely. Rather than argue the definition I’m perfectly happy saying that the enabling science for eugenics works at the level of an individual and therefore would work at the level of a population.
If the OP is asking whether eugenics has been discredited because there is no way to define and/or measure “improvements” perhaps I did not take the correct inference from the OP statement (in part):
“Given that we now know that many desirable traits, such as intelligence and strength, have some degree of heritability, and that many diseases, including mental illness, are likewise at least partly genetic in origin, can we truthfully claim that eugenics has been discredited?”
I took the core question to be whether or not it was scientifically possible to improve an entire population using gene manipulation. I would take hollow satisfaction in “discrediting” eugenics because we can’t define “improvement.”
Humanity is like a garden, it can florish and be beautiful, healthy and happy … or if it’s never weeded, it can become something tragic and horrible.
Last night, after I wrote my comments to this thread, I turned on the radio show ‘Coast to Coast,’ and there were two guests on it, a man and a woman, that were anthropologists and they were basically saying everything I said and more. Only they put a number on it and said they’d give humanity 50-60 years before the whole thing goes under.
Maybe in my comments last night I should have made clear that with the gameplan I have in mind, NO ONE would be tossed into an oven or truly be harmed. And, too, maybe I shouldn’t have included the remark about “uglies” being rounded up, either. It’s just that during my life dozens upon dozens of people have let me know that they don’t much care for my face … and so from my perspective, weeding out the homelies (along with the others I mentioned) seems like an overall good thing, as the intensity of deep pain I’ve felt on account of being ugly is something I’d not wish on anyone.
But you can pull up some potentially useful plants if you’re too zealous in your weeding. Jared Diamond says that some of our modern food plants, such as rye, oats, and lettuce, started out as weeds in fields of other cultivated crops.
Your “ugly-free” utopia is going to have some problems with staffing a physics department or a decent IT team, or at least have more trouble doing those things than we do in our world. We all know people who are unattractive but brilliant. Note: I’m not saying that all physicists or IT people are ugly, but some of them are, and you’ll have fewer people to choose from if you eliminate the ugly ones.
If you also make sure there are no people with mental illnesses, you might also have a paucity of artists, at least if one theory about the link between mental illness and creativity is right.
That points out a problem with eugenics- some inherited desirable traits (like creativity) might be associated with some less-desirable traits (like manic depression).
There’s another problem with trying to weed out ugly people- there’s some research indicating that one of the things that goes into making someone attractive is facial symmetry, which is affected by environmental conditions while the embryo is developing. If that’s true, you can’t get rid of all ugly people through eugenics- some embryos will still be subject to stresses that cause asymmetry (and therefore ugliness).
Oh? How do you plan to implement your gameplan then? Many people have a powerful and not entirely rational desire to have children of their own, despite any genetic flaws they might have. You are, at the very least, going to have to sterilize people against their will. Most people would consider that harming them.
There are people that have gotten into vehicles drunk and killed people, and so they now sit in prisons demanding to get out and drive some more. Who cares what they want!
My plan will never happen in my life-time, if ever, unfortunately. And that’s because there are too few people that see things the way I see them. I’m not God, so, who knows what’s coming down the pike? Maybe it’s good to have things continue as they are with this “anything goes!” way of living. But me and those two anthropologists (that I mentioned) feel that most indicators point to BIG disaster unless we make big changes as a species, and soon!
People with genetic deformities tend to feel pretty strongly about them.
But they have committed a crime. You commit a crime, you get some rights taken away. Being ugly isn’t a crime.
People have been reproducing with no meaningful eugenic controls for tens of thousands of years. Why should it suddenly cause a disaster now? (Oh, and appearing on Coast to Coast is hardly the equivalent of having one’s research published in a peer-reviewed journal…)
You could, in fact, argue that some things are better from a eugenic point of view now than they have been historically. Western countries at least have gotten rid of the institution of arranged marriage, which could result in someone having to marry and have children with a person with serious genetic defects in the interest of the families. There’s also less inbreeding in at least some Western populations, now that marriages between people of different races, religions, and social classes is more acceptable than it was in the past.
Very interesting stuff, Scylla - thanks.
Regards,
Shodan
Wait… so you actually stopped wanting to cull the morons from the gene pool? I wouldn’t say I was for eugenics because I don’t fully understand all the implications and besides–the word carries such negative baggage.
I also would not want to force anyone to be sterilized. But if a magic lightning bolt struck the earth and caused all the fuckwit genes in humans to disappear, I wouldn’t cry a lot.
I posit that there are at least two traits that are being selected for, albeit a bit inadvertently. The first trait is beauty. IMHO, backed by empirical observation, is that people who live within 10 miles of the beach are getting increasingly attractive. I, unfortunately, am an exception to this rule. Many people from the middle of the country come to L.A. and beach areas in general (NYC also) to seek out fame and fortune. They rarely get that breakout role, but they end up breeding with other attractive people resulting in a population full of beautiful but vapid real estate agents, stock brokers and car salesmen. No cite, but I’ve heard that physical attractiveness is correlated to financial success.
The other trait that is being positively selected for is intelligence. Silicon Valley has been attracting the best and brightest technical people from all over the planet since the 60’s. Once again, I’m talking out my ass, but the average IQ there must be running 120 or so. On the other hand, high incidence of Asperger’s Syndrome and nerdiness probably proportionally decreases one’s ability to procreate. So maybe selection for intelligence is a wash.
Of course, both of those phenomena are localized to California, so their effect on the total human gene pool – or even the American national gene pool – is probably negligible.