# US Federal Eugenics Program **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 6, 2014, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-federal-eugenics-program/677993 "2014-01-06T01:53:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 11
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2014, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-federal-eugenics-program/677993/201 "2014-01-13T15:50:30Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > In other words, you’re jealous she’s doing better than you in evolutionary terms. Please don’t acscribe motivations to other posters. You can’t know what they’re thinking. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2014, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-federal-eugenics-program/677993/202 "2014-01-13T17:25:08Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > If that’s the case, then it should be easy for you to explain what’s wrong with it. It’s wrong because [list=A][li]it’s stupid, and [\*]because if it weren’t stupid, evolution wouldn’t work.[/list]So either you are a creationist, or your analogy is wrong.[/li] Your basic mistake, of course, is that the value of coins is inevitably cumulative while human intelligence is not. Setting three people each with an IQ of 80 to solving a problem will not get it done in the same time as setting one person with an IQ of 120. An analogy that isn’t wrong would be that you want to increase your average wealth. You have the choice of investing somewhere with an expected ROI of 3%, or somewhere with an expected ROI of 3.5%. So you choose to invest where you expect the higher return. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2014, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-federal-eugenics-program/677993/203 "2014-01-13T17:38:42Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > It’s wrong because [list=A][li]it’s stupid, and [\*]because if it weren’t stupid, evolution wouldn’t work.[/list]So either you are a creationist, or your analogy is wrong.[/li] > Your basic mistake, of course, is that the value of coins is inevitably cumulative while human intelligence is not. Setting three people each with an IQ of 80 to solving a problem will not get it done in the same time as setting one person with an IQ of 120. > > An analogy that isn’t wrong would be that you want to increase your average wealth. You have the choice of investing somewhere with an expected ROI of 3%, or somewhere with an expected ROI of 3.5%. So you choose to invest where you expect the higher return. > > Regards, > Shodan I’m neither a creationist nor stupid. My analogy is much more accurate than yours. I’m saying you don’t increase the cumulative total - intelligence or wealth - by eliminating items which possess small amounts of those qualities - dumb people or coins. This is so obviously true, it practically qualifies as a mathematical proof. In fact, I can express it as such. Let A and B be positive integers. In all cases A+B is larger than A. Your analogy however has no connection to the topic. How do you feel eliminating dumb people will work as an investment? Will it somehow make the people who aren’t eliminated more intelligent? Explain how that’s going to work. Use mathematics or biology or psychology. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2014, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-federal-eugenics-program/677993/204 "2014-01-13T18:44:05Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I’m neither a creationist nor stupid. Then your analogy must be wrong. > [@](#): > > I’m saying you don’t increase the cumulative total - intelligence or wealth - by eliminating items which possess small amounts of those qualities - dumb people or coins. As mentioned, there is no such thing as cumulative intelligence. > [@](#): > > How do you feel eliminating dumb people will work as an investment? Will it somehow make the people who aren’t eliminated more intelligent? Did you understand my point about how evolution works? Do you believe that evolution works by making those who reproduce more intelligent? (A hint: no, it does not.) Perhaps another example will help clarify. Suppose you wanted to maximize your output of milk on a dairy farm. When breeding your herd, you will need semen (much modern cattle breeding occurs thru artificial insemination). Would you select semen from any bull at random, or would you prefer semen from a bull whose female ancestors had a proven record of high milk production? Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2014, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-federal-eugenics-program/677993/205 "2014-01-13T19:05:53Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > As mentioned, there is no such thing as cumulative intelligence. There is such thing as **collective** intelligence. You and I don’t have it, by definition, but society does, and we participate in it. Humans are like wolves, not deer – we are social animals, we cannot thrive alone, and in particular the human mind cannot develop cut off from human society and all its **cumulative** knowledge acquired over the millennia. To have a culture is part of our biological makeup, though the culture’s contents are not. ---
**Author:** ![Blaster\_Master](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/cab0a1/32.png) [@Blaster\_Master](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blaster_Master)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2014, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-federal-eugenics-program/677993/206 "2014-01-13T21:06:19Z")
> [@johngalt2014](#): > > Because with our [ever expanding] entitlement system, they are incentivized to procreate more. Free sterilization would do nothing to counter that. So your solution to an ever expanding entitlement system is to… expand it? If the issue is with entitlements, you don’t add more, you eliminate the ones you have a problem with. > [@johngalt2014](#): > > It is entirely optional whether one wants to participate or not – i.e. they have the _right_ to choose. I disagree with this assertion. Subsidies reduce freedom, particularly in this case. Let’s consider a situation where we have a person not interested in gaming the system but is on hard times. If sterilization is cheap or free, ther person can choose to get sterlized if they don’t want children, or perhaps if they’re concerned about having children and making their economic situation worse, or perhaps they want children in the future and rather than sterlize they choose other means of birth control, or maybe they don’t care about the consequences and do whatever. Now let’s assume we implement your proposal. In theory, it adds another option, but it’s an unbalanced option because it includes ecomonic incentive on the part of the government. If I’m faced with hard times but still may want children in the future, there is now pressure to do something I may not want to do. This pressure did not exist prior to the actions of the government, so it is ecomonic coercion. A proposal to maximize freedom through coercion is self-contradictory. Ultimately, the biggest problem here comes from the base assumption made in the OP and embodied in the first quote that essentially the excessive entitlement programs essentially act as a subsidy to encourage the poor to procreate more than is desirable, and so we should counteract that by providing a counterincentive subsidy. The argument seems to be that there is a correlation between economic success and IQ, which as I understand is true, but the idea that both have a common genetic cause hasn’t been demonstrated. Frankly, I have difficulty buying that there is a genetic factor, muchless one that is significant enough to warrant this sort of government subsidy program, given that there are demonstrable other factors in play here, such as reduced educational opportunities for the poor. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2014, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-federal-eugenics-program/677993/207 "2014-01-13T21:11:36Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > There is such thing as **collective** intelligence. “Collective” is different from “cumulative”, and “intelligence” is different from “knowledge”. If you don’t agree, perhaps you could address my earlier example. Do you believe that three people with respective IQs of 50 can solve a problem more efficiently than one person with an IQ of 120? Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2014, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-federal-eugenics-program/677993/208 "2014-01-13T22:00:47Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > “Collective” is different from “cumulative”, and “intelligence” is different from “knowledge”. All intelligence is compound, because we have to rely on other people in order to acquire abstract reason in the first place. A person who grows up alone-ish on an island may have the capacity to understand quantum physics, but if he is never exposed to the bases of that information, he will develop that understanding. In fact, he will probably do quite poorly on an IQ test because such tests are not tailored to account for his background. And the abilities that IQ tests rate will mostly be pretty useless for the islander. So, yeah, the difference between “cumulative” and “collective” intelligence is vanishing. > [@](#): > > If you don’t agree, perhaps you could address my earlier example. Do you believe that three people with respective IQs of 50 can solve a problem more efficiently than one person with an IQ of 120? That would depend on the nature of the problem. Very possibly, three dullards could solve some kinds of problems more efficiently, due to the “_Rashomon_ effect”: more people looking at a problem is better, because they will view it from different angles, whereas a single genius runs a greater risk of overlooking something important. (Oh, and in your prior post, you said “80”, not “50”, way to move the goalposts.) ---
**Author:** ![Learjeff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/94ad74/32.png) [@Learjeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Learjeff)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2014, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-federal-eugenics-program/677993/209 "2014-01-13T22:26:19Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > I’m strongly opposed to your proposal. Government exists to protect people’s rights, not to sterilize people. Your proposal does not protect anyone’s rights. Rand’s Galt would never have suggested or supported it. Oh sheesh … just noticed this is 5 pages long. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2014, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-federal-eugenics-program/677993/210 "2014-01-13T22:58:03Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > As mentioned, there is no such thing as cumulative intelligence. Sure there is. Sometimes a stupid person comes up with a good idea. He may only come up with one good idea a year but it’s still one more good idea than society would have had is he wasn’t around. It’s not a competition between three stupid people and one smart person. I’ll readily concede that three stupid people that only produce one good idea each are contributing less than one smart person that produces a thousand good ideas. But if you combine them all together, they produce one thousand and three good ideas, which is more than any of them produce by themselves. > [@Shodan](#): > > Perhaps another example will help clarify. Suppose you wanted to maximize your output of milk on a dairy farm. When breeding your herd, you will need semen (much modern cattle breeding occurs thru artificial insemination). Would you select semen from any bull at random, or would you prefer semen from a bull whose female ancestors had a proven record of high milk production? People aren’t cows and society doesn’t work like a dairy farm. But even within that framework, your analogy doesn’t work. So you want to maximize the amount of milk you produce? You have a herd of a thousand top-quality milkers that are producing thirty liters of milk a day. And then I offer to let you have ten more cows that produce five liters of milk a day. If your goal is to maximize the amount of milk you produce, do you accept or decline my offer? (Here’s a hint: 30,050 liters is more than 30,000 liters.) Now you may argue that you’d have to feed those extra cows. If so, you didn’t read your own analogy - you claimed you only wanted to maximize your milk production not minimize your feed costs. And it demonstrates why a dairy farm a bad analogy for human society. If, for some reason, humanity was limited to only a fixed number of people then eugenics might make sense. But we haven’t reached any upper limit on human population so there’s no reason for us to “cull the herd”. Society can support both stupid people and smart people and collect the contributions from all of them. We can maximize our milk production by keeping both the good milkers and the bad milkers. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2014, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-federal-eugenics-program/677993/211 "2014-01-13T23:12:49Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > “Collective” is different from “cumulative”, and “intelligence” is different from “knowledge”. > > If you don’t agree, perhaps you could address my earlier example. Do you believe that three people with respective IQs of 50 can solve a problem more efficiently than one person with an IQ of 120? > > Regards, > Shodan No, but two persons with an IQ of 100 might, if they worked together. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2014, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-federal-eugenics-program/677993/212 "2014-01-13T23:23:29Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Sometimes a stupid person comes up with a good idea. He may only come up with one good idea a year but it’s still one more good idea than society would have had is he wasn’t around. But smart people are more likely to come up with good ideas than stupid ones. Thus if you want to maximize your chances of finding good ideas, you want as many participants to be smart, and as few to be stupid, as you can manage. > [@](#): > > I’ll readily concede that three stupid people that only produce one good idea each are contributing less than one smart person that produces a thousand good ideas. But if you combine them all together, they produce one thousand and three good ideas, which is more than any of them produce by themselves. And if somehow you can select the people you are going to combine, would you rather choose two smart people with a thousand ideas, or two dumb ones and one smart one? > [@](#): > > So you want to maximize the amount of milk you produce? You have a herd of a thousand top-quality milkers that are producing thirty liters of milk a day. And then I offer to let you have ten more cows that produce five liters of milk a day. If your goal is to maximize the amount of milk you produce, do you accept or decline my offer? (Here’s a hint: 30,050 liters is more than 30,000 liters.) The point is that I will accept your offer, but I get to pick which ten. I will pick the ten best milkers you’ve got. So I wind up with a lot more milk per year than 30,050. (Leaving aside the issue that milk is additive, and intelligence is not. Although I suppose defining intelligence as “number of good ideas per person per year” would make it additive. However, see what I said above.) Do you know how breeding animals works? It doesn’t work by simply trying to produce as many animals as possible and calling it success. It works by picking out qualities you want and breeding for those, so that your population contains individuals who have those traits instead of individuals who don’t. Evolution does the same. You don’t change the incidence of a given genotype by simply increasing the size of a population. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2014, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-federal-eugenics-program/677993/213 "2014-01-13T23:33:58Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Do you know how breeding animals works? It doesn’t work by simply trying to produce as many animals as possible and calling it success. It works by picking out qualities you want and breeding for those, so that your population contains individuals who have those traits instead of individuals who don’t. Evolution does the same. Well, actually, that’s not what evolution does, but whatever. ---
**Author:** ![Karrius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/71c47a/32.png) [@Karrius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Karrius)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2014, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-federal-eugenics-program/677993/214 "2014-01-13T23:38:47Z")
Shodan, is there are particular reason you’re arguing so strongly against those who are against federal eugenics programs? ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2014, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-federal-eugenics-program/677993/215 "2014-01-13T23:39:52Z")
As someone who believes in eugenics I don’t think that the OP is really talking about eugenics so much as trying to reduce reproduction among the poor. Using poverty as a proxy for intelligence and using intelligence as a proxy for value or evolution. Eugenics that only select out for poverty is a pretty bad program. Steve Jobs and Andrew Carnegie might never have been born. Half the professional athletes of today might never have been born. Heroes like Audie Murphy might never have been born. Some of the greatest artists of our time might never bave been born. People who deeply and profoundly affected the course of human history might never have been born. The OP’s method is too one dimensional. ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2014, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-federal-eugenics-program/677993/216 "2014-01-13T23:54:21Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Eugenics that only select out for poverty is a pretty bad program. Steve Jobs and Andrew Carnegie might never have been born. Or maybe they would. The real issue is that poverty isn’t genetic in origin, even if you can argue that certain factors correlated with success are genetic. Worse, IQ itself, for which the OP uses poverty as a proxy, is too poorly correlated with genetics for an effective eugenics solution. Arguing that certain people would or would not have been born is rather missing the point. Maybe without them, somebody else steps up. Maybe not. You’d have to assume that (1) such people are historically irreplaceable, which is doubtful in itself, and (2) that such people could be weeded out by this half-assed eugenics program in such a way that nobody else could fill the void. ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2014, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-federal-eugenics-program/677993/217 "2014-01-14T00:34:33Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > But smart people are more likely to come up with good ideas than stupid ones. Thus if you want to maximize your chances of finding good ideas, you want as many participants to be smart, and as few to be stupid, as you can manage. No. This proposed program just lowers the number of poor/dumb. You think that all the middle and upper class/smart people are suddenly going to have more children? So you’ll still have the same number of smarts but less people to wash their cars. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2014, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-federal-eugenics-program/677993/218 "2014-01-14T01:39:04Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > But smart people are more likely to come up with good ideas than stupid ones. Thus if you want to maximize your chances of finding good ideas, you want as many participants to be smart, and as few to be stupid, as you can manage. > > And if somehow you can select the people you are going to combine, would you rather choose two smart people with a thousand ideas, or two dumb ones and one smart one? > The point is that I will accept your offer, but I get to pick which ten. I will pick the ten best milkers you’ve got. > > So I wind up with a lot more milk per year than 30,050. (Leaving aside the issue that milk is additive, and intelligence is not. Although I suppose defining intelligence as “number of good ideas per person per year” would make it additive. However, see what I said above.) > > Do you know how breeding animals works? It doesn’t work by simply trying to produce as many animals as possible and calling it success. It works by picking out qualities you want and breeding for those, so that your population contains individuals who have those traits instead of individuals who don’t. Evolution does the same. > > You don’t change the incidence of a given genotype by simply increasing the size of a population. You’re still missing the central point. As long as we’re talking about positive numbers, A and B together will always be larger than A or B alone. This is a basic mathematical axiom - you can’t argue against it. You’re trying to avoid this by inventing scenarios which don’t apply; arguing, for example, that A might be bigger than B and C. But these scenarios and analogies don’t apply to the topic of this discussion, which is humanity. If you removed all of the stupid people in the world, the smart people who remained would not become smarter. But all of your arguments are based on the premise that somehow they would. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2014, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-federal-eugenics-program/677993/219 "2014-01-14T02:57:45Z")
I’m curious how the OP plans to deal with people who are smart (and should be reproducing) but are also poor, and thus tempted by his proposed subsidy. Or is the assumption that a smart person cannot _be_ poor? ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2014, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-federal-eugenics-program/677993/220 "2014-01-14T05:05:42Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > I find it a little amusing that in the novel from which the OP chose his username, two hero-protagonists (Dagny and Hank) have brothers who are antagonist parasites/looters. So much for genetics. And Rand herself had a long-lost sister who came here for a visit, and could have stayed . . . but **returned to the Soviet Union**. And of all the characters in Atlas, the one that the OP resembles most is Dr. Robert Stadler. Draw your own conclusions. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-federal-eugenics-program/677993.md?page=10) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-federal-eugenics-program/677993.md?page=12)