Nature may frown on disability, and that’s fine, but we don’t have to. Even if eugenics could eliminate it, we shouldn’t necessarily try. I know alot of people with disabilities caused by genetic factors (some heritable, some not), and some of them are better people than some assholes with normal genes I know.
Eugenics is pointless because of epigenetics, which overwhelm any effort to alter genes. If we want to fix our DNA, we really ought to focus on epigenetic environmental factors, which probably have alot more impact than we ever realized.
Salient point. I agree, natural selection would work and eugenics would not be needed, *if *we didn’t redistribute wealth. But in the entitlement society of the USA, this most certainly is occurring, and it is obstructing the normal process of natural selection. In fact redistribution is occurring to such a degree that the non-producers are incentivized to procreate more than the producers – so not only is natural selection thwarted, but it is reversed – i.e. *unnatural *selection is occurring. This is why a eugenics program is needed, to counterbalance the redistribution effect on procreation for the genetically inferior.
No. The environment that current humans live in is one that includes welfare for the poor, and natural selection causes us to adapt to that environment. Even conceding for the moment your highly contentious assertion that “non-producers are incentivized to procreate more than the producers”, that simply shows that nature’s idea of fitness is different than yours. If poor people reproduce more, they are by definition the fittest. Why do you want to make people in general less fit in order to approximate your own personal ideal?
You’re saying we should adapt to some other environment than the one we currently find ourselves in? For political reasons? I think the burden is on you to show why this is necessary.
Hey, maybe we are humans who have the capacity and the values to live for more than just natural selection? Maybe we’ve created things like civilization that make natural selection less of a force, so that the strong can protect the weak, because it’s a good thing and all that?
Maybe we find value in all human life and don’t care if that thwarts natural laws?
In other words, even if eugenics could work, that wouldn’t make it necessary, or worthy.
We’re still guided by natural selection. And the OP is wrong to suggest we are somehow “unnaturally” thwarting it.
In fact, it is the OP who is suggesting the introduction of artificial selection to thwart the extant natural selection of the human race under the premise of restoring “natural” selection. Pretty bizarre stuff right there.
I’ll leave this open for now, but the OP hasn’t been back in 2 days and all of his posts were in this thread. I think you guys are arguing with a blank wall.
As I write this, the OP posted less than 45 minutes ago.
In any case, if “redistribution of wealth” is the bee in his bonnet, I invite him to consider this:
-a poor person gets a few hundred dollars a month in food stamps, a resource they didn’t earn and don’t deserve, just because they live somewhere that has a “redistribution” program, thwarting natural selection
-a rich person inherits $100 million from their parents, a resource they didn’t earn and don’t deserve, just because they happen to have been born. Is this not also a “redistribution” of wealth?
True. It’s a difference in the fundamental way people view society.
Eugenicists rank individuals on a scale of one to ten and then look at the average. They feel if we could eliminate the ones and twos, the average value would be raised.
But other people think that’s the wrong approach. Maybe society is additive. The ones and twos may not be as valuable as the nines and tens but they are adding something to the total. Remove the ones and twos and the sum value of society would be reduced.
Unless there’s a eugenics program of which I am unaware, this is untrue.
Caring for “the weak” and “civilization” are all part of natural selection as well. It’s the same fallacy as the OP (though in a different fashion) to think they’re not. It just happens to be the way natural selection among human beings works.
Note that it’s not just human beings that do this. Caring for sick or weak members of one’s family/herd/etc is behavior that extends beyond human beings to other species.
But you’re assuming a person has only good genes or only bad genes. That’s not true. All people are going to have a mix of good and bad traits.
By eliminating the people with bad traits, you lose all the benefit that would have come from their good traits. You’re better off instead targeting the specific bad traits and fixing those.
If you simply eliminate a criminal or a poor person, you’ve gained nothing. If you rehabilitate a criminal or give a poor person a job, you’ve eliminated the problem and gained a productive member of society.
We cannot thwart natural selection, because it is an inevitable and fundamental consequence of reality. What we ARE doing is altering our environment. We are actively and drastically changing the parameters that natural selection adapts us to. We are removing many sources of negative selective pressure. Natural selection is still happening, and will continue to do so, because there is no alternative. But, if you like the analogy, we are changing and loosening the shape of the mold into which we as a species are being pressed by selection.
And I’d like your response better if it weren’t just an ad hominem.
Perhaps you would like to actually address any of the points raised. Do you believe in Jonathan Chance’s un-cited assertion that there is no correlation between intelligence and contributions to society? If so, why?
Mea culpa on the timing thing. I had an old window open with old data.
In terms of what Shoden posted there I would contend that viewing one’s contribution to society solely based on earning power and such is extremely shortsighted. This is, of course, my opinion, but viewing oneself as what one does to earn money is as pointless as basing one’s worth on skin color or clothing. Contributions to society can - and in my opinion should be - far more than that. Art, raising children, inventing things and so forth are all means by which to contribute far more important that earning money.
In fact, I think I’ll start a thread one it. Give me a moment.
No, I mean civilization thwarts natural selection.
We care for the weak and the disabled instead of letting them die. We make a place for them. We prop them up.
I disagree. But if you want to say so, fine - it’s still a way that we coexist with the weak and disabled, making their natural deselection unnecessary to the survival of the rest of us.
Not even remotely to the point that we do it though. We care far beyond our own family or herd. We often care altruistically, in ways that could hurt our own chances for survival.
That’s not really the topic here. What we’re discussing is whether IQ is a genetic trait that’s fixed at conception or one which can be influenced by environment.
Eugenics only makes sense if you accept the following premises:
Intelligence is a fixed genetic trait.
Intelligence is the only measure of worth.
Intelligence can be separated from other desirable genetic traits.
People with lower intelligence subtract from society.
None of these premises are proven. But if any of them are wrong, then eugenics has no rational basis.