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I think the issue you are probably running into is a lot more nuanced then you are portraying it to be. Whether you are religious or scientific or some mix of b

I think the issue you are probably running into is a lot more nuanced then you are portraying it to be. Whether you are religious or scientific or some mix of both, creating offspring is a pretty fundamental instinct that is very deeply ingrained into humans. Logic might say "If you have a genetic abnormality you should stop procreating for the greater good of society/your potential offspring/yourself". But we aren't wired to think that way. We think of procreating. The percentage of people who want absolutely zero offspring at any point in their entire life is really tiny. People want children and will put themselves into great levels of harm to have them. You can't really fight that. Children make us happy. The reason people tend to think of eugenics and concentration camps and such is because they don't know where your slippery slope leads to. If someone with huntington's disease should not have children for the greater good, what about people with a family history of cancer, or a family history of heart disease. We find people with a tendency towards weight gain less desirable, should those people also not have children? What about people with baldness? It seems absurd but maybe they also aren't all that desirable. Where is the line where we say "You are desirable enough to have children"? And if we draw a line, do we need to enforce it? I mean people with huntington's disease certainly cost society a lot without bringing as much benefit. Should we force people like that not to have kids? Where do we lay that line in the sand and say "this is for the greater good!" To me, I entirely understand why people give you scorn for your opinion. It is a slippery slope and it goes against a fundamental human instinct that brings joy and happiness regardless of the overall cost, pain, and suffering.

mattigames 8y ago
Being wired to think that way doesn't make it right under any light whatsoever; and I never say anything about enforcing anything; that's where the slippery slope starts by you and everyone else who thinks the same, where people pretend you are talking about enforcing, but you are just bringing the _option_ of not having children as a valid way to end the suffering, because even talking about such option brings all the hatred when it should be seen as a logical way to avoid suffering without stepping on the rights of anyone to reproduce.
- ejstronge 8y ago
  Your approach might reduce the rates of these genetic illnesses, but it would not eradicate them, as most commmon genetic illnesses have a non-negligible rate of spontaneous occurrence.
  - st26 8y ago
    Do we know if latent precursors combine, or is it really spontaneous/random?
    - ejstronge 8y ago
      Great question! I would wager that both occur. Each disease will have slightly different genetics, but Huntington's disease provides a good example. There, we know that some individuals have a predisposition to developing the disease - this bias results from having over a certain threshold of repeating DNA bases in the Huntingtin gene. Here's an accessible discussion of Huntington's and similar diseases: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3175376/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3175376/ .
- trcollinson 8y ago
  Sorry I might not have made it clear, I just understand the reason why people scorn you for your opinion. I think your opinion is at least somewhat valid and has merit. At the very least I think that it is worth debating and shouldn’t be met with scorn. As a few have pointed out the slippery slope argument is a bad one. They are right. The slippery slope could be a logical fallacy. But logical fallacies often lead to scorning and anger and fights and such.
jopsen 8y ago
The slippery slope argument is nonsense. By that logic taxes is a slippery slope to communism. Employment a slippery slope to prostitution :) We should encourage people with rare generic deceases to use fertility treatments that filters out particularly bad genes; or adopt children instead.
- Ntrails 8y ago
  > We should encourage people with rare generic deceases to use fertility treatments that filters out particularly bad genes; or adopt children instead. Where does it end? My Aunt had cancer. My father high blood pressure. I think one uncle on my estranged mothers family was quite mad. Am I allowed to procreate? Who draws the line on what is an acceptable level of hereditary risk factors?
  - lightbyte 8y ago
    >We should encourage people with rare genetic diseases That is the line. It ends there.
- trcollinson 8y ago
  I agree that the slippery slope could be a logical fallacy. It really just describes why the parent post gets scorn when he brings up his idea. Lots of people believe logical fallacies and get upset because of those fallacies. Heck, look at the current US presidential administration. By the way, there are a ton of people who actually do believe that taxes are a slippery slope to socialism! The employment one is funny. But I think there are people who believe consumerism or capitalism is a slippery slope to criminal activity like prostitution. People are so funny.
projektir 8y ago
I think it's really dangerous to talk about we're wired to this or that. It does two things: - give the thing an odd, unearned, protection status: lots of things people are wired to are frankly pretty terrible and we could do without them (hierarchical dominance dynamics); - it's very hard to prove that we're actually wired to something vs it being cultural. Given that we can't even prove this, the above is extra strange: we might be giving special statuses to unnaturally developed processes, and the status quo. Procreation is not special because people want it. It's special because of its effects on populations and politics. But that's neither here nor there in terms of whether or it makes sense for a given group of people to procreate. That question shouldn't be closed. > Where is the line where we say "You are desirable enough to have children"? If there is a process out there that already exists, and you find yourself really not wanting to make a decision that is relevant to the continuation of that process, here's a little secret: the decision nonetheless will be made, and always has been made, just not by you. So there's no slippery slope here, because the selection process is already in place, we're just washing our hands of it, so it looks like an easy decision because it's not our fault when a child with a horrible disease is born. It similarly not our fault when some people are unable to develop relationships. But it is real, it is true, and it happens. And we could make a difference. This is the eternal question of whether humans are ready to actually take responsibility for the process of the world or if they want to continue let it flow freely hoping it works out...
- krageon 8y ago
  You make a good point, although I have a reservation about you somehow knowing "we could do without" some wired instincts that at first glance seem destructive. It's hard to verify whether or not society would do better if people weren't wired that way, so it seems quite spurious to assume that that would be the case. If you do it from a purely ideological standpoint I can certainly see that, but then you have to recognise it's not a given: It's simply something that you wish was true.

mattigames 8y ago

Being wired to think that way doesn't make it right under any light whatsoever; and I never say anything about enforcing anything; that's where the slippery slope starts by you and everyone else who thinks the same, where people pretend you are talking about enforcing, but you are just bringing the _option_ of not having children as a valid way to end the suffering, because even talking about such option brings all the hatred when it should be seen as a logical way to avoid suffering without stepping on the rights of anyone to reproduce.

ejstronge 8y ago
Your approach might reduce the rates of these genetic illnesses, but it would not eradicate them, as most commmon genetic illnesses have a non-negligible rate of spontaneous occurrence.
- st26 8y ago
  Do we know if latent precursors combine, or is it really spontaneous/random?
  - ejstronge 8y ago
    Great question! I would wager that both occur. Each disease will have slightly different genetics, but Huntington's disease provides a good example. There, we know that some individuals have a predisposition to developing the disease - this bias results from having over a certain threshold of repeating DNA bases in the Huntingtin gene. Here's an accessible discussion of Huntington's and similar diseases: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3175376/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3175376/ .
trcollinson 8y ago
Sorry I might not have made it clear, I just understand the reason why people scorn you for your opinion. I think your opinion is at least somewhat valid and has merit. At the very least I think that it is worth debating and shouldn’t be met with scorn. As a few have pointed out the slippery slope argument is a bad one. They are right. The slippery slope could be a logical fallacy. But logical fallacies often lead to scorning and anger and fights and such.

jopsen 8y ago

The slippery slope argument is nonsense. By that logic taxes is a slippery slope to communism. Employment a slippery slope to prostitution :) We should encourage people with rare generic deceases to use fertility treatments that filters out particularly bad genes; or adopt children instead.

Ntrails 8y ago
> We should encourage people with rare generic deceases to use fertility treatments that filters out particularly bad genes; or adopt children instead. Where does it end? My Aunt had cancer. My father high blood pressure. I think one uncle on my estranged mothers family was quite mad. Am I allowed to procreate? Who draws the line on what is an acceptable level of hereditary risk factors?
- lightbyte 8y ago
  >We should encourage people with rare genetic diseases That is the line. It ends there.
trcollinson 8y ago
I agree that the slippery slope could be a logical fallacy. It really just describes why the parent post gets scorn when he brings up his idea. Lots of people believe logical fallacies and get upset because of those fallacies. Heck, look at the current US presidential administration. By the way, there are a ton of people who actually do believe that taxes are a slippery slope to socialism! The employment one is funny. But I think there are people who believe consumerism or capitalism is a slippery slope to criminal activity like prostitution. People are so funny.

projektir 8y ago

I think it's really dangerous to talk about we're wired to this or that. It does two things: - give the thing an odd, unearned, protection status: lots of things people are wired to are frankly pretty terrible and we could do without them (hierarchical dominance dynamics); - it's very hard to prove that we're actually wired to something vs it being cultural. Given that we can't even prove this, the above is extra strange: we might be giving special statuses to unnaturally developed processes, and the status quo. Procreation is not special because people want it. It's special because of its effects on populations and politics. But that's neither here nor there in terms of whether or it makes sense for a given group of people to procreate. That question shouldn't be closed. > Where is the line where we say "You are desirable enough to have children"? If there is a process out there that already exists, and you find yourself really not wanting to make a decision that is relevant to the continuation of that process, here's a little secret: the decision nonetheless will be made, and always has been made, just not by you. So there's no slippery slope here, because the selection process is already in place, we're just washing our hands of it, so it looks like an easy decision because it's not our fault when a child with a horrible disease is born. It similarly not our fault when some people are unable to develop relationships. But it is real, it is true, and it happens. And we could make a difference. This is the eternal question of whether humans are ready to actually take responsibility for the process of the world or if they want to continue let it flow freely hoping it works out...

krageon 8y ago
You make a good point, although I have a reservation about you somehow knowing "we could do without" some wired instincts that at first glance seem destructive. It's hard to verify whether or not society would do better if people weren't wired that way, so it seems quite spurious to assume that that would be the case. If you do it from a purely ideological standpoint I can certainly see that, but then you have to recognise it's not a given: It's simply something that you wish was true.