I thought the point was that society was completely wrong and was basically overhyping the thing they'd all bought into. They had decided their method was so superior that naturally born people wouldn't live past 30. He'd already well beaten that, outlived his parents and didn't seem sick now. Society was far removed from reality and somehow forgot that natural birth worked fine for all but very recent human history. I find this statement about how society works more compelling than the cautionary about genetic discrimination.
> "Eugenics was a failure because it fundamentally misunderstands human development and behavior. We now have strong evidence that nurture and social expectations play a bigger role in behavior and outcomes than your genetics"
Wait - you think the problem with eugenics is that it was ineffective? I think we need to talk a lot more about eugenics.
> I think society settled on a response of "yeah, but we shouldn't actively do anything about it as a group."
I hope there comes a day when humanity is responsible enough to handle precise gene-tailoring of humans without it devolving into a cliche Sci-Fi dystopia. Until then, I'm glad that humanity has settled on "Eugenics could theoretically work but we know we're not responsible enough to do it right, so let's not". It feels like a very enlightened stance: better than pretending selective breeding would literally not work, and certainly better than doing it badly. Why could we come to such a sensible consensus on this topic but fail to do so on so many others?
All that being said, I still want to see what would happen if Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky had a child together. You know. For science.
> I think it's purely a creation of the author for the purpose of making his point
It's a deliberate critique of eugenics, which was a popular and little criticized school of thought at the time of writing, and which did in its original iteration claim to offer the prospect of engineering people to fit assigned social roles.
I think the point was that the eugenics movement was one of the early examples of overenthusiastic technocratic cheerleading. Eugenics was all the rage among intellectuals and science enthusiasts at the time.
> Eugenics takes for granted the idea that some "genetic purity" is good for its own sake. Why? Why is a world with fewer, but "genetically superior" people, (and more genetically similar), better than a world with more people and more genetic variety? That's not even necessarily good even if you myopically focus on the actual gene pool, much less if you take all the other aspects of humanity into account.
'Genetic purity' is not a charitable way of looking at eugenics; how about 'genetic quality'? That's what most of us seek. Nobody asks for a disabled baby.
Should we edit our genes to allow for more diversity? How about all the diverse genetic mutations we haven't dreamed of yet! We could rediscover a lot of weird and wonderful maladaptations that our ancestors have spent millions of years weeding out. We'll have X-Men in no time.
Agreed, but this brings up the topic of nature vs. nurture, and perhaps even the previously (~90 years ago now?) popular concept of eugenics.
I think society settled on a response of "yeah, but we shouldn't actively do anything about it as a group." It seems to be best left to individuals to seek out parental partners and enjoy the outcomes on a personal level.
I interpreted your comment as a rude remark dismissing a long explanation from jkn for why this article could easily be used as an argument for eugenics.
EDIT: BTW, down voted your comment above for being offtopic. So is this one so I wont blame anyone if they downvote.
It was just a brief way of saying, "All you've communicated is that the equation of the two doesn't feel right, without giving anyone a reason to deem your view more persuasive."
This is basically what happened:
A: That seems dangerously close to eugenics, in that it's weeding out people with bad genes.
B: Oh yeah? If you distorted your view by listening to crying moms who agree with me (and not similar weepers on the other side), you'd agree with me.
> This gets particularly interesting when we consider that most people would be absolutely horrified at the idea of killing humans which are "imperfect" in some way, yet as one of the sibling comments says:
>> Its perfectly fine to take an active hand in evolution by selective breeding through marriage, thus "remove "bad" genes from a family tree and potentially adding "good" ones.
Eugenics got itself a bad name early in the 20th century, but if you discard that cultural meme, the basic idea of purposefully improving genetic traits does make quite a lot of sense. It's that meme that makes people discard the concept wholesale.
> What you said is not even an argument - it is just an expression of personal preference towards specific actions.
Which is the whole point. Eugenics is “fiction masquerading as fact”, as you put it. The core hypothesis (selective breeding works) is sound, but the traits that historical Eugenicists were trying to breed into the populace were all subjective, fictional correlates of what they thought were desirable. It’s not about MY preconceived preferences, but about what preconceived preferences the person running the eugenics experiment has.
When I say it can’t be done “right”, what I mean is that what constitutes the “eu-“ part of eugenics, meaning “good” or “best” is inherently subjective, and the choices of a particular experiment may end up being counterproductive to the goal of creating the “best” humans.
> for eugenics, these “desired” traits pretty much boils down to upper class, white, man
That's entirely your extrapolation. One can advocate for the "breeding out" of hereditary genetic diseases. Not that I would. But such a thing is certainly in the realms of possibility.
> The second quote is a recommendation the same way as governments “recommended” the poor, the disabled, and the indigenous, to use birth control.
Governments may have had such policies in the past to reduce certain populations. But Downs isn't a hereditary disease and is just as likely for "upper class white" people as the categories you mention. Such abortions would not have any measurable genetic effect on the population. He's only saying that he thinks bringing the child into the world would cause more suffering than it's worth. I'm not sure I agree 100% but I certainly sympathise. As recent parents, my partner and I had to have the discussion about what we'd do if the 20-week genetic screening revealed something like Downs. To be frank, we probably wouldn't have gone ahead with it. Many, many other parents would make that choice in that situation.
> Eugenics, as a term, to have meaning, is an extreme of breeding behavior. It isn't just regular assortative mating among local populations.
That's circular logic. The whole point of the argument is that eugenics (as it is normally understood) is of a piece with regular assortive mating; people look for good aspects in a partner all the time, and there's no clear sharp line between that and what we normally call eugenics.
What makes you think GP is talking about eugenics?
If anything, they're talking about natural selection which is not eugenics. Eugenics is when you select fitness at birth.
GP would be endorsing genocide, or maybe epigenetics if anything, based on the small out of context comment. I highly doubt either was the intention and wonder how you got to the eugenics conclusion.
>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,
this is what's potentially wrong with eugenics, in the abstract there is nothing wrong with being able to choose genetic traits, but it will be left to the prejudices and ill-informed opinions of people not to mention fashion. Many traits that do not have anything to do with smarter, healthier and stronger humans would be selected for or selected against skewing the population unnaturally.
Would this have any deleterious effect - not sure. After all if it doesn't directly effect having smarter, healthier, or stronger humans what is the harm in - let's have an example - having red hair and freckles suddenly cut from the gene pool by 3/4ths? Probably no harm, maybe the redheads out there will be upset that there is sort of genetic vote to eliminate them, but they'll get over it or just get old and die so what's the harm?
on edit: to clarify - verged into sarcasm with my ending example as obviously I do think it would be harmful, although I can't really show with any certainty that I am correct, and just as obviously don't know that my scenario would happen - if it did I expect it would not be because most people chose against having redheaded children but rather for having other types of characteristics.
>Primarily because the "genetically inferior" person somehow had more motivation and drive than the genetically engineered ones.
But this has nothing to do with the moral issue. Maybe it was the fact that "in-valids" had to struggle and deal with discrimination which caused the character to give his most, given that he knew where he standed while the 'valids' are in a place of comfort.
> we're not really cut out for long-term thinking and abstract mentation for its own sake appeals to only a tiny minority. There is great value to living in the moment but most people don't know how to do it
That's the most convincing argument in favor of eugenics that I've ever heard. It's a shame that we can't easily test for affinity for long-term, abstract thinking; nor for ability to live in the moment.
> ...eugenics, as a theory, is perfectly harmless, until such time as one begins imposing eugenic criteria for others.
Which becomes nigh-inevitable once eugenic theories are readmitted to the discourse, because once you postulate that individual reproductive behavior has a detrimental effect on society as a whole, it becomes a public health matter. As is trivially obvious from the history of the century just past, that particular slope is very steep and very slippery, and it leads into a crevasse whose contents are horrifying indeed.
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