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There is no conundrum -- eugenics is wrong not because it is immoral, but also because it is fundamentally an incorrect theory and results from a misunderstandi

There is no conundrum -- eugenics is wrong not because it is immoral, but also because it is fundamentally an incorrect theory and results from a misunderstanding of how evolution works. The idea of eugenics is to use selective pressures to create superior humans over time. To increase the quality of the stock. To speed up the process of evolution. It was seen as the natural application of the theory of evolution -- do what nature does, but more deliberately. We breed animals for attributes that we find appealing, and we could try do the same for humans. We could breed for height (easy), for intelligence (tricky), for disease resistance (hard). We could do so by various positive incentives or from horrifying negative reinforcement. But doing so does not increase the "quality of the stock". Fundamentally evolution operates not by selection pressure, but by population variance. To explore the fitness landscape you don't make a guess about what the landscape looks like, because that's impossible, and landscapes change. You instead try to create as much robust variation as possible. Selective breeding of animals and plants for food or as pets has not increased their fitness; if anything it has dangerously compromised their fitness through monoculture effects. The reason I love this article is because Bryan was in a conundrum -- he knew in his heart that eugenics was wrong, but did not know enough science to realize that eugenics did not logically follow from evolution. So being told that eugenics is a natural application of evolution, he decided that therefore evolution itself must be wrong.

FrustratedMonky 2y ago
Maybe we are splitting hairs over 'fitness'. "We breed animals for attributes that we find appealing, and we could try do the same for humans. We could breed for height (easy), for intelligence (tricky), for disease resistance (hard). We could do so by various positive incentives or from horrifying negative reinforcement. But doing so does not increase the "quality of the stock"." I was just implying, we can use these practices to change human attributes also, just like animals. You are correct in overall fitness, example lot of dog breads or chickens that can't survive on their own. But have 'desired' attributes. Whether they are improving 'fitness', that's for debate. They would be improving their 'fitness' to survive under whatever pressure they were being put under to achieve some 'attribute', but that doesn't mean they would be more fit out in nature. But 'fitness' out in nature also changes with whatever environment the subject is placed in, example : desert versus jungle.
- andrewla 2y ago
  I think more than splitting hairs. Eugenics is not just the application of selective breeding to humans. We've been doing selective breeding since the dimmest reaches of history. Eugenics arose at the convergence of evolutionary theory -- that something like humans, who are qualitatively much more advanced, could arise from lower animals, was an insane idea. We can breed cows all we want, what we get are still cows. We're not breeding cows and ending up with pigs. So the idea became something like "evolution makes things better" (this is not true) and "we can already tell what better means" (also not true) and we can breed and cull humans (this is technically true), and therefore we can evolve humans to the next stage. This is nonsense and unscientific. Eugenics is a dead science. Its predicates are wrong -- like in the textbook in the linked article, those things are things that we know are either false or meaningless in a biological context.
  - FrustratedMonky 2y ago
    When is something a new species isn't really defined is it? There is some gray area? The whole Horse/Donkey/Mule situation. We can bread cows, when would a cow be so different that it is not a cow. That would take a long time, but I don't think it is impossible through breading. Maybe the problem here is the term 'eugenics' itself? There is too much baggage and different interpretations from its use during different time periods.. I think there are people today that would just use the word Eugenics to mean "Scientist doing gene type stuff to make superhumans". We can bread humans just like cows. So, Is there a modern term for human breading to increase 'desired attributes'. Some modern term for doing this in the realm of modern science, but that someone potentially could do for 'Nazi-like' goals of a better human? Like when a Chinese scientist uses CRISPR on a human, what would that be called? Forget arguments about fitness, or is it a new species, just using CRISPR to do something like give someone extra fingers or better eye-sight.
    - andrewla 2y ago
      I feel like this is drifting away from the point. Eugenics was a scientific movement with the aim of producing better humans through selective breeding and especially through involuntary culling and sterilization of humans with undesirable attributes. This "science" is what WJB was reacting to. He thought, as many thinkers of the time did, that it was an inevitable application of evolution. Thus he thought evolution was an incorrect theory. He did not know enough (nor did his contemporaries) to realize that it was the logical chain from evolution to eugenics that was fundamentally flawed. He was not reacting to CRISPR because it did not exist. Eugenics, like phrenology, is a discredited field, and it seems like it isn't worth it to resurrect the word. Other attempts to selectively breed or cull humans have their own moral dimensions that may or may not be less appealing, and may or may not fail for the same reasons that eugenics fails.

FrustratedMonky 2y ago

Maybe we are splitting hairs over 'fitness'. "We breed animals for attributes that we find appealing, and we could try do the same for humans. We could breed for height (easy), for intelligence (tricky), for disease resistance (hard). We could do so by various positive incentives or from horrifying negative reinforcement. But doing so does not increase the "quality of the stock"." I was just implying, we can use these practices to change human attributes also, just like animals. You are correct in overall fitness, example lot of dog breads or chickens that can't survive on their own. But have 'desired' attributes. Whether they are improving 'fitness', that's for debate. They would be improving their 'fitness' to survive under whatever pressure they were being put under to achieve some 'attribute', but that doesn't mean they would be more fit out in nature. But 'fitness' out in nature also changes with whatever environment the subject is placed in, example : desert versus jungle.

andrewla 2y ago
I think more than splitting hairs. Eugenics is not just the application of selective breeding to humans. We've been doing selective breeding since the dimmest reaches of history. Eugenics arose at the convergence of evolutionary theory -- that something like humans, who are qualitatively much more advanced, could arise from lower animals, was an insane idea. We can breed cows all we want, what we get are still cows. We're not breeding cows and ending up with pigs. So the idea became something like "evolution makes things better" (this is not true) and "we can already tell what better means" (also not true) and we can breed and cull humans (this is technically true), and therefore we can evolve humans to the next stage. This is nonsense and unscientific. Eugenics is a dead science. Its predicates are wrong -- like in the textbook in the linked article, those things are things that we know are either false or meaningless in a biological context.
- FrustratedMonky 2y ago
  When is something a new species isn't really defined is it? There is some gray area? The whole Horse/Donkey/Mule situation. We can bread cows, when would a cow be so different that it is not a cow. That would take a long time, but I don't think it is impossible through breading. Maybe the problem here is the term 'eugenics' itself? There is too much baggage and different interpretations from its use during different time periods.. I think there are people today that would just use the word Eugenics to mean "Scientist doing gene type stuff to make superhumans". We can bread humans just like cows. So, Is there a modern term for human breading to increase 'desired attributes'. Some modern term for doing this in the realm of modern science, but that someone potentially could do for 'Nazi-like' goals of a better human? Like when a Chinese scientist uses CRISPR on a human, what would that be called? Forget arguments about fitness, or is it a new species, just using CRISPR to do something like give someone extra fingers or better eye-sight.
  - andrewla 2y ago
    I feel like this is drifting away from the point. Eugenics was a scientific movement with the aim of producing better humans through selective breeding and especially through involuntary culling and sterilization of humans with undesirable attributes. This "science" is what WJB was reacting to. He thought, as many thinkers of the time did, that it was an inevitable application of evolution. Thus he thought evolution was an incorrect theory. He did not know enough (nor did his contemporaries) to realize that it was the logical chain from evolution to eugenics that was fundamentally flawed. He was not reacting to CRISPR because it did not exist. Eugenics, like phrenology, is a discredited field, and it seems like it isn't worth it to resurrect the word. Other attempts to selectively breed or cull humans have their own moral dimensions that may or may not be less appealing, and may or may not fail for the same reasons that eugenics fails.