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>"It is fraught to judge individuals outside of their time, but it is clear from the documentation presented that Millikan lent his name and his prestige to a m

by fuzxi 6y ago

>"It is fraught to judge individuals outside of their time, but it is clear from the documentation presented that Millikan lent his name and his prestige to a morally reprehensible eugenics movement that already had been discredited scientifically during his time," Rosenbaum said. Source: the next sentence of the article.

mortdeus 6y ago
dont just downvote, present a counter argument that is based in science why I am wrong and use your own brains, don't just "defer to the experts". Just because I used an extreme analogy to prove a bad point, that doesn't mean you shouldn't contemplate every bad idea along with the good. I'm not saying we should practice eugenics on the human race, I am saying whether or not it is theoretically possible and whether or not scientists who brought up these ideas did so because they were nazis, or because they were pioneers traveling into dangerous lands for the very first time.
chordalkeyboard 6y ago
The sibling was flagged and killed while I wrote the following reply; I’m unwilling to let it vanish into the aether: > Eugenics, the only discredited science, that seems to work exceptionally well when applied to plants, livestock, microbiology, horses, household pets, but magically fails when the idea is applied to the human race? The failure is a result of the lack of a definition for “good genes” aside from whatever any random person thinks is good. That is, the fitness of an organism always and necessarily refers to a specific environment, and the characteristics (genes) that make it fit for that environment are not the same as the ones that make it fit for another environment. This means that there is no objective measure upon which to determine which genes are good and which are not. Eugenics is subjective. > The idea is morally reprehensible, but the idea that all you have to do to cull out say "sickle cell disease" from the human race as a whole is to stop say "black people" from breeding is actually scientifically sound. In the first place, sickle cell anemia provides some protection against malaria. So whether it is adaptive or maladaptive depends on the environment. But secondly, sickle cell evolved naturally, and removing it from the breeding population doesn’t stop that from happening again. > Like I said the idea is morally reprehensible and we should never do that. But the idea that you couldn't theoretically control a population and eliminate "undesirable" traits from the gene pool is just willfully ignoring the obvious soundness of the mathematics. I don’t think people are denying what you’re claiming here. They are responding by noting that there is an incredible power differential between the eugenicist and the people who are prevented from reproducing (I’m sure this is obvious) and there is no objective basis on which to scientifically decide who is supposed to reproduce and who is not. Together these facts create the inescapable impression that eugenics is about having kids and preventing the competition from doing the same.
deleted 6y ago
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by fuzxi 6y ago

mortdeus 6y ago

dont just downvote, present a counter argument that is based in science why I am wrong and use your own brains, don't just "defer to the experts". Just because I used an extreme analogy to prove a bad point, that doesn't mean you shouldn't contemplate every bad idea along with the good. I'm not saying we should practice eugenics on the human race, I am saying whether or not it is theoretically possible and whether or not scientists who brought up these ideas did so because they were nazis, or because they were pioneers traveling into dangerous lands for the very first time.

chordalkeyboard 6y ago

The sibling was flagged and killed while I wrote the following reply; I’m unwilling to let it vanish into the aether: > Eugenics, the only discredited science, that seems to work exceptionally well when applied to plants, livestock, microbiology, horses, household pets, but magically fails when the idea is applied to the human race? The failure is a result of the lack of a definition for “good genes” aside from whatever any random person thinks is good. That is, the fitness of an organism always and necessarily refers to a specific environment, and the characteristics (genes) that make it fit for that environment are not the same as the ones that make it fit for another environment. This means that there is no objective measure upon which to determine which genes are good and which are not. Eugenics is subjective. > The idea is morally reprehensible, but the idea that all you have to do to cull out say "sickle cell disease" from the human race as a whole is to stop say "black people" from breeding is actually scientifically sound. In the first place, sickle cell anemia provides some protection against malaria. So whether it is adaptive or maladaptive depends on the environment. But secondly, sickle cell evolved naturally, and removing it from the breeding population doesn’t stop that from happening again. > Like I said the idea is morally reprehensible and we should never do that. But the idea that you couldn't theoretically control a population and eliminate "undesirable" traits from the gene pool is just willfully ignoring the obvious soundness of the mathematics. I don’t think people are denying what you’re claiming here. They are responding by noting that there is an incredible power differential between the eugenicist and the people who are prevented from reproducing (I’m sure this is obvious) and there is no objective basis on which to scientifically decide who is supposed to reproduce and who is not. Together these facts create the inescapable impression that eugenics is about having kids and preventing the competition from doing the same.

deleted 6y ago

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