Natural selection isn't good. In terms of “bad things to do to humans”, it comes in just behind eugenics, and that's only because we haven't worked out how to do that without horrible horrible crimes against humanity (yet). (Yes, natural selection is legitimately bad enough that “make eugenics less genocidey and then do that instead” is actually on the table – I am so glad the problem can probably keep for another century or two, so I won't have to be responsible if we end up with some dystopia or other.)
These aren't good things. I mean, war does accomplish them, but… I'd rather they weren't accomplished.
There is nothing wrong with eugenics for Christ’s sake. People have such a knee jerk reaction to eugenics because of how it was used by Nazis, but before that the field had many noble goals.
If we provide the ability for people to select partners with some precision about what genes they carry and what might be passed to their offspring, we can ultimately create a world with stronger, smarter and healthier humans, and perhaps eliminate some genetic diseases along the way. Humans basically already practice eugenics anyway because of social structures, it’s just very inefficient.
The problem with eugenics isn’t the idea of selective breeding, but the conflation of mostly irrelevant traits or uninheritable traits with important and inheritable ones. Leading to a loss of genetic diversity and concentration of genetic diseases.
“If done right”, but I doubt it can ever _be_ done right...
Eugenics doesn’t inherently lead to human rights violations.
You can define better genes objectively by looking at genes of people that live the longest and with the least health issues. Natural selection is poor at selecting for traits that lead to longevity.
It's eugenics when you force it. It's social engineering when you alter the incentives/rewards landscape to get better outcomes. And it's... evolution when nature does it anyway.
Just labeling it as generically "bad" and charicaturising it in a way that bundles it with other despicable tendencies like maybe racism brings no insight to the discussion. Only muddies the waters and makes the whole discussion stupider.
Alright, let's talk about eugenics then? After all, it's not just Nazis that had eugenics programs in the newest history: the USA had forced sterilization well into the seventies, so it can't be all that bad.
Now, explain why that's a bad thing. Voluntary eugenics doesn't strike me as bad or immoral. If you're not forcibly sterilizing people, what's wrong with it?
I know that empirically, in terms of what society thinks, you are probably correct, but what is wrong with designer babies? Isn't it the only way we can continue the further improving and developing of the species (instead of making it worse by artifically keeping people with genetic diseases alive and reproducing), at the same time also avoiding the more horrendous parts of natural evolution and selection like genocide, race wars or idiocracy-styled trends of selecting by the dumb metric of sheer number of kids?
This will be the split between societies that practice eugenics plus other genetically deliberate policies and those that don’t. People talk about science denial but nobody points out the largest group of science deniers in the entire world: people who deny that natural selection exists. It’s as stupid as thinking the earth is flat.
Natural selection will happen whether or not we want it to. Every trait, physical or otherwise, that human beings posses is the result of natural selection. If we continue down this road where nobody gets removed from the gene pool because of modern medical intervention, we will eventually become very, very sick creatures. It will be a horrible existence. If health, intelligence, empathy and other traits aren’t selected for then they will shrink and eventually disappear. And it could happen much faster than it took to evolve those traits.
Don’t be a science denier. Confront the difficult truth that natural selection exists. We can find a morally acceptable solution if we put our minds to it.
This is a dangerously wrong and even ignorant opinion. There is everything wrong with eugenics, and it’s all contained in the core idea that you have some notion of what is “good” for your children (and correspondingly, further parts of the human race). Other people have already pointed out the “eugenics will be used for political gain” component, which is absolutely true and kills it there. Another issue which I don’t think you appreciate though is the need for genetic diversity and genetic drift. The act of going about systematically pushing everyone’s genes in a certain direction is not only impractical, since we really don’t know enough about genetics to do that reasonably well, it’s also incredibly stupid because we’re getting a temporary “positive” payoff now by potentially screwing up our ability to adapt later. Mistakes are the spice of life, literally; don’t try to get rid of them, you’ll only hurt yourself.
Eugenics is technically sound science. Selective breeding for traits is something we do with plants and animals. It works. You want pug nosed humans that yield 20% more crops, you can breed for that . There is nothing about selective breeding that technically wouldn't work for humans.
Now. Despite all of that, we should not do it. It is a moral wrong. It would require us to violate the autonomy of people. Don't want short people, you can't let short people reproduce. And so on. That's what makes it icky.
That's why we don't do it. And why we shouldn't. Not because it wouldn't work, it would. But because it would require us to violate another's autonomy.
Eugenics are not evil and would rid the world of many terrible, terrible hereditary diseases. However, the way to get it out of humanity should be done by the 'soft' way, not with violence.
These aren't good things. I mean, war does accomplish them, but… I'd rather they weren't accomplished.
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