7 ms·

Eugenism is inevitable. You can't stop parents trying to get the best life for their children, that's pretty much their top priority. We don't like to frame it

by cm2187 4y ago

Eugenism is inevitable. You can't stop parents trying to get the best life for their children, that's pretty much their top priority. We don't like to frame it that way but we are already there with pre-natal tests. Even the selection of mating partner is a form of eugenics. College graduates only marrying college graduates, repeat that for many generations and it is bound to have an effect.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
thrown_43 4y ago
Eugenics is a comforting story the middle classes tell themselves feel better about being ruled by liars and swindlers. If you want the best life for your children teach them to be selectively sociopathic without a shred of decency. One day they can be the next Obama or Trump. Or Gates. Or Musk.
- imachine1980_ 4y ago
  Three of the four people(I think Obama wanst) are white sons of millioneirs, I don't think smart is the important part of the equation.
  - thrown_43 4y ago
    [dead]
flavius29663 4y ago
I keep thinking about eugenics, how can we have eugenics without resorting to genocide or ending up with a dystopia, like in Gattaca? Should we even strive to get eugenics, why bother? Where does diversity become detrimental to success for an individual? The clone of a perfect individual will always perform better than the peers, except when we need adaptation and flexibility. Will we get to a society where just some parents agree to alter the genes of their offspring like in Gattaca, for some very niche job opportunities? What happens when it goes wrong, can the child sue the parent?
- cm2187 4y ago
  I am not sure why you would associate eugenics with genocide. As the article mentions, today you can promote or suppress a gene by simply patching the genome. And frankly I am not sure which is more dystopian: a future where none of the kids are born with genetic diseases, predisposition to be obese, or simply stupid or ugly, vs the present where a kid has to live with those things he can do nothing about.
  - flavius29663 4y ago
    > a future where none of the kids are born with genetic diseases, predisposition to be obese, or simply stupid or ugly But we're all defective today, one way or another. It's incredibly rare for someone to be "perfect" genetically speaking, and a lot of those people will have a bad upbringing or something else to hold them back. It's true that being beautiful and above average smart will get you through life so much easier though. Anyway, have you seem Gattaca? It shows how this can become dystopian very quickly. Also, if we weed out "bad genes", we might get a surprise down the line, where those gene were actually essential for out survival as a species, and we might be wiped out by a pandemic or something similar. Yeah, I dunno, eugenics is hard, ethically speaking. Yes, I would have liked to be beautiful...who wouldn't ?
    - cm2187 4y ago
      I have seen Gattaca (a while ago). But if anything it illustrates the point of view of the guy who has to live with a flawed genome (though in the movie a minor imperfection). Isn't it the point of view of the kid who has to live with his below average genome today?
      - hgsgm 4y ago
        And then the guy who had an accident gets his life ruined because only the dominant subjective "perfection" is tolerated.
        deleted 4y ago
anonymouskimmer 4y ago
One of the major problems with eugenics highlighted in Gattaca is that it was used to artificially pre-select who was allowed to compete and who wasn't. > "Even the selection of mating partner is a form of eugenics." Only when the selection is done by those who aren't the two partners (e.g. arranged marriages, theoretically rape in the absence of abortion). Otherwise it's natural selection between partners - there's no guarantee the aspects two people find attractive in each other are genetically heritable. > "College graduates only marrying college graduates, repeat that for many generations and it is bound to have an effect." Assortative mating per se isn't necessarily eugenics. It takes an instruction from the outside on what mating partners should consider attractive in a potential mate. Without this instruction people will find a variety of differing, and even mutually exclusive, traits attractive, and will assort on these variety of traits, not on a hierarchy of traits. http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/topics_fs.pl?theme=33&search=&matches= http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/topics_fs.pl?theme=3... "Eugenicists realized that assortative mating did not always produce the best offspring, so sought ways to popularize what they considered to be good marriages. Francis Galton urged the brightest and the healthiest individuals to marry each other. He found an ideal situation in German university professors <emphasis mine> (then all male) who tended to marry the daughters of professors or their female graduate students <emphasis mine>. This positive expression of eugenics encouraged the selection of good mates through popular health books and Fitter Families Contests held at state fairs. The training of field workers at the Eugenics Record Office included exercises to help them analyze mate preferences and make better eugenic choices."
- lmm 4y ago
  > there's no guarantee the aspects two people find attractive in each other are genetically heritable. Evolution naturally tends in that direction. > Assortative mating per se isn't necessarily eugenics. It takes an instruction from the outside on what mating partners should consider attractive in a potential mate. Without this instruction people will find a variety of differing, and even mutually exclusive, traits attractive, and will assort on these variety of traits, not on a hierarchy of traits. Up to a point. There's still a pretty strong correlation between what different people find attractive, and there are certainly things that almost everyone agrees are unattractive.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
rlpb 4y ago
> College graduates only marrying college graduates, repeat that for many generations and it is bound to have an effect. I think there's enough infidelity around to cancel out this effect. You have around a million n*great grandparents at n=20. How many of those are likely fathered by "somebody else"? And that's just at n=20; evolution runs much slower than that. Even with perfect class-based marriage, good genes have inevitably worked their way across the social ladder through infidelity by now. "Bad" inbred lines only exist as lines; when measuring the total effect, illegitimate children need to be included, but of course they are invisible.
meindnoch 4y ago
In the future the state will collect sperm and eggs from all citizens, and implant random embryos into women who want children. Natural conception will be shunned like arranged marriages today.
- chii 4y ago
  > implant random embryos into women who want children. so what happens to men who want children?
  - meindnoch 4y ago
    There will be women employed by the state whose job will be carrying the embryos for people who don't want to do it themselves. One could argue that the majority of people will choose this option, since a qualified state clerk would likely be safer for the embryo than doing it the DIY way. This will be of course only a stopgap measure until artificial wombs become readily available.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
smrtinsert 4y ago
They can try, but over time reversion to the mean wipes it away. Inevitably the family will not produce the smartest or best looking or whatever other quality they have selected for.
Manuel_D 4y ago
When people talk about eugenics, they're usually talking about forced sterilization of people. If "selecting better genes fir offspring" is categorized as eugenics, then animals and humans alike have been practicing eugenics for millions or even billions of years. Sexual attraction is all about selecting the fittest mate that provides the best genes for one's offspring. For more complex species there more to it: mates may be selected based on likelihood of investing resources in offspring. But selecting good genes is a big part of sexual attraction.
ladyattis 4y ago
I don't think it's inevitable. If anything, eugenics has been disproven on many levels as a viable model. You can't infer the future from just a set of genes and trying to simulate their expression as there's just too many unknowns in our environment which leave doubt to the probable outcomes of any organism, human or otherwise. The key issue with Eugenics is its belief in a clockwork view of genetics which today has been disproven in the last 30 years. Life ain't a clockwork, it's a chaotic system.
Apofis 4y ago
Can't wait for the Homogenous Elite Society where everyone is a clone of each other.

by cm2187 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

thrown_43 4y ago

Eugenics is a comforting story the middle classes tell themselves feel better about being ruled by liars and swindlers. If you want the best life for your children teach them to be selectively sociopathic without a shred of decency. One day they can be the next Obama or Trump. Or Gates. Or Musk.

imachine1980_ 4y ago
Three of the four people(I think Obama wanst) are white sons of millioneirs, I don't think smart is the important part of the equation.
- thrown_43 4y ago
  [dead]

flavius29663 4y ago

I keep thinking about eugenics, how can we have eugenics without resorting to genocide or ending up with a dystopia, like in Gattaca? Should we even strive to get eugenics, why bother? Where does diversity become detrimental to success for an individual? The clone of a perfect individual will always perform better than the peers, except when we need adaptation and flexibility. Will we get to a society where just some parents agree to alter the genes of their offspring like in Gattaca, for some very niche job opportunities? What happens when it goes wrong, can the child sue the parent?

cm2187 4y ago
I am not sure why you would associate eugenics with genocide. As the article mentions, today you can promote or suppress a gene by simply patching the genome. And frankly I am not sure which is more dystopian: a future where none of the kids are born with genetic diseases, predisposition to be obese, or simply stupid or ugly, vs the present where a kid has to live with those things he can do nothing about.
- flavius29663 4y ago
  > a future where none of the kids are born with genetic diseases, predisposition to be obese, or simply stupid or ugly But we're all defective today, one way or another. It's incredibly rare for someone to be "perfect" genetically speaking, and a lot of those people will have a bad upbringing or something else to hold them back. It's true that being beautiful and above average smart will get you through life so much easier though. Anyway, have you seem Gattaca? It shows how this can become dystopian very quickly. Also, if we weed out "bad genes", we might get a surprise down the line, where those gene were actually essential for out survival as a species, and we might be wiped out by a pandemic or something similar. Yeah, I dunno, eugenics is hard, ethically speaking. Yes, I would have liked to be beautiful...who wouldn't ?
  - cm2187 4y ago
    I have seen Gattaca (a while ago). But if anything it illustrates the point of view of the guy who has to live with a flawed genome (though in the movie a minor imperfection). Isn't it the point of view of the kid who has to live with his below average genome today?
    - hgsgm 4y ago
      And then the guy who had an accident gets his life ruined because only the dominant subjective "perfection" is tolerated.
      - deleted 4y ago

anonymouskimmer 4y ago

One of the major problems with eugenics highlighted in Gattaca is that it was used to artificially pre-select who was allowed to compete and who wasn't. > "Even the selection of mating partner is a form of eugenics." Only when the selection is done by those who aren't the two partners (e.g. arranged marriages, theoretically rape in the absence of abortion). Otherwise it's natural selection between partners - there's no guarantee the aspects two people find attractive in each other are genetically heritable. > "College graduates only marrying college graduates, repeat that for many generations and it is bound to have an effect." Assortative mating per se isn't necessarily eugenics. It takes an instruction from the outside on what mating partners should consider attractive in a potential mate. Without this instruction people will find a variety of differing, and even mutually exclusive, traits attractive, and will assort on these variety of traits, not on a hierarchy of traits. http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/topics_fs.pl?theme=33&search=&matches= http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/topics_fs.pl?theme=3... "Eugenicists realized that assortative mating did not always produce the best offspring, so sought ways to popularize what they considered to be good marriages. Francis Galton urged the brightest and the healthiest individuals to marry each other. He found an ideal situation in German university professors <emphasis mine> (then all male) who tended to marry the daughters of professors or their female graduate students <emphasis mine>. This positive expression of eugenics encouraged the selection of good mates through popular health books and Fitter Families Contests held at state fairs. The training of field workers at the Eugenics Record Office included exercises to help them analyze mate preferences and make better eugenic choices."

lmm 4y ago
> there's no guarantee the aspects two people find attractive in each other are genetically heritable. Evolution naturally tends in that direction. > Assortative mating per se isn't necessarily eugenics. It takes an instruction from the outside on what mating partners should consider attractive in a potential mate. Without this instruction people will find a variety of differing, and even mutually exclusive, traits attractive, and will assort on these variety of traits, not on a hierarchy of traits. Up to a point. There's still a pretty strong correlation between what different people find attractive, and there are certainly things that almost everyone agrees are unattractive.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

rlpb 4y ago

> College graduates only marrying college graduates, repeat that for many generations and it is bound to have an effect. I think there's enough infidelity around to cancel out this effect. You have around a million n*great grandparents at n=20. How many of those are likely fathered by "somebody else"? And that's just at n=20; evolution runs much slower than that. Even with perfect class-based marriage, good genes have inevitably worked their way across the social ladder through infidelity by now. "Bad" inbred lines only exist as lines; when measuring the total effect, illegitimate children need to be included, but of course they are invisible.

meindnoch 4y ago

In the future the state will collect sperm and eggs from all citizens, and implant random embryos into women who want children. Natural conception will be shunned like arranged marriages today.

chii 4y ago
> implant random embryos into women who want children. so what happens to men who want children?
- meindnoch 4y ago
  There will be women employed by the state whose job will be carrying the embryos for people who don't want to do it themselves. One could argue that the majority of people will choose this option, since a qualified state clerk would likely be safer for the embryo than doing it the DIY way. This will be of course only a stopgap measure until artificial wombs become readily available.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

smrtinsert 4y ago

They can try, but over time reversion to the mean wipes it away. Inevitably the family will not produce the smartest or best looking or whatever other quality they have selected for.

Manuel_D 4y ago

When people talk about eugenics, they're usually talking about forced sterilization of people. If "selecting better genes fir offspring" is categorized as eugenics, then animals and humans alike have been practicing eugenics for millions or even billions of years. Sexual attraction is all about selecting the fittest mate that provides the best genes for one's offspring. For more complex species there more to it: mates may be selected based on likelihood of investing resources in offspring. But selecting good genes is a big part of sexual attraction.

ladyattis 4y ago

I don't think it's inevitable. If anything, eugenics has been disproven on many levels as a viable model. You can't infer the future from just a set of genes and trying to simulate their expression as there's just too many unknowns in our environment which leave doubt to the probable outcomes of any organism, human or otherwise. The key issue with Eugenics is its belief in a clockwork view of genetics which today has been disproven in the last 30 years. Life ain't a clockwork, it's a chaotic system.

Apofis 4y ago

Can't wait for the Homogenous Elite Society where everyone is a clone of each other.