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> "Hey, you've got a broken gene? Sucks to be you, my rigid ethics requires you to play the lottery with worse odds than the others!" Nobody requires you to ha
by pessimizer 1y ago
> "Hey, you've got a broken gene? Sucks to be you, my rigid ethics requires you to play the lottery with worse odds than the others!"
Nobody requires you to have children. Your problem could just as easily have been infertility. So instead of gambling, you can choose to treat having a genetic disease like being infertile, or you can dabble in eugenics. My "rigid ethics" frowns on eugenics. We have lots of children who have already been born who need help. They may never satisfy your desire to see your (admittedly bad) genetics reflected in the world, but maybe they could give a legacy to your intellect and compassion?
Eugenics was once very popular among the middle and upper classes, though, before there were incidents. There's no reason to think that it won't be popular again. I think that society as a whole has to decide how we treat human lives though; your children don't strictly belong to you, they belong to themselves and are protected by the state (even against you.) I'm totally comfortable if we decide that this sort of thing is going to be criminal, or if we decide that this sort of thing is going to be mandatory. I just know where I sit on the issue.
And I also know that the places that eugenics survived was in things like dog and cat breeding, and the preferences of people for dogs and cats did not make them healthy, it made them interesting. Ready for the human version of "Twisty Cats"?
- fruitworks 1y agoThe fundamental problem with eugenics, besides the immorality, is the misalignment of artifical selection with natural selection. The eugenicists always think they know best, but mother nature always gets the last word in the end
- nradov 1y agoFor better or worse, modern sanitation, medical care, industrial farming, and predator control have virtually eliminated the effects of natural selection on human genetics. Any changes going forward will inevitably be mostly artificial.
- kenjackson 1y agoWell then natural selection has spoken. No need to select when it provides no survival benefits.
- fruitworks 1y agoThere is no need to select... until there is
- LtWorf 1y agoHealthcare is part of the environment an organism lives in…
- greygoo222 1y agoUtter nonsense. Anything that is possible is "natural."
- svnt 1y agoThese are terms of art in evolutionary theory.
- acadapter 1y agoWhat if, for example, a dentist refuses to remove malformed wisdom teeth because his morals don't allow him to fix problems that a person is born with, and only fixes tooth damage caused by accidents? The taboo against genetic repairs is more comparable to antivax, rather than eugenics. Every part of the medical sciences is an intervention against "nature taking its course", in order to prevent harm to the individual.
- fruitworks 1y ago>What if, for example, a dentist refuses to remove malformed wisdom teeth because his morals don't allow him to fix problems that a person is born with, and only fixes tooth damage caused by accidents? If every dentist did this, the genepool would improve. The difference between anti-vax and anti-eugenics is that eugenics makes society more fragile by producing a monoculture, whereas vaccinations make society more durable due to the network effects in the spread of disease
- Luker88 1y ago> If every dentist did this, the genepool would improve. Not really, especially since this is widely regarded not as much of a genetic problem, but as a difference in diet of modern society. I am also unsure if eugentics *necessarily* brings monoculture. We did it for hundred of years to dogs, and while some races are definitely worse off than others, we literally created more than any here care to remember, and many absolutely love races I find truly ugly. So the problem with eugenetics lies in understanding what culture lies behind it, imho. While there is a pull to uniformity, people don't like too much of the same, because instinctively you understand it loses value. No difference == no worse, but == no better too.
- estimator7292 1y ago> If every dentist did this, the genepool would improve I grew up in rural Kentucky. One of the worst, most ineffectual education systems on this continent. We were still taught, very clearly, and with zero ambiguity about how genetic inheritance works. A 7th grader in bumfuck Kentucky knows more about genetics than you've demonstrated here. Since you apparently missed class, I'll explain: evolution by natural selection only applies when the adaptation in question affects survivability before reproducing. A genetic problem that causes you to die or become infertile before you've had children can be evolved away. Anything that happens to you after reproductive age does not get affected by natural selection because the selection pressure of reproduction is gone. This is called an evolutionary shadow. Again, this is what we teach to middle school kids in rural Kentucky. You really don't have any excuse to be so ignorant.
- thaumasiotes 1y ago> My "rigid ethics" frowns on eugenics. This is a funny message to attach to "if you have bad genes, you shouldn't reproduce".
- lunar-whitey 1y agoUncharitably - GP likely believes (as many do) that the current zeitgeist of reproductive norms is ideal, as the possibility of it excluding themselves has never occurred to them.
- johnny22 1y agoThere are also many (some in the comments to this post) who have excluded themselves because of it. Not that they should have the final word the subject of course. I'm just saying you can't assume they they didn't because they have a contrary opinion.
- lunar-whitey 1y agoThis is true. However, people with that position tend to reveal it because it supports their argument.
- fruitworks 1y agoIt has occured to us, that is why we strongly oppose it
- pessimizer 1y ago> "if you have bad genes, you shouldn't reproduce" It would be, if I had said that. If I had something extremely screwed up about my genes, I definitely wouldn't reproduce, though. Reproduction is irreducibly narcissistic, even though it's fine - it's our purpose if we could be said to have one. But I don't need to watch a child suffer intensely to feed my ego. Also I, like everyone else, have plenty in my genes that I hope my kids don't get but it doesn't keep me from having them. They can have a big noses, or weird teeth; hopefully they'll have the character to overcome it. But I think you need to realize that people will be trying to breed extremely skinny girls with huge breasts, or extremely skinny boys with huge breasts, or that a trend will catch fire about girls with eyes really far apart because of some movie star, and there will be a generation with a million girls with brain damage and constant migraines. All because we couldn't tell wealthy people "no." Even if we're doing eugenics as a society, it would have to be tightly regulated in every way (what do we define as an illness?), and now you instantly have government eugenics. Are you happy with that?
- nlitened 1y agoI am confused with your position. On one hand you seem to think that eugenics is bad and wrong, on the other had you have a preference on what people should and should not have children — but isn’t it literally eugenics?
- pessimizer 1y ago> you have a preference on what people should and should not have children You read something that wasn't in my comment. I said that nobody is forcing anyone to gamble. You can choose to gamble, but nobody is forcing you to.
- fruitworks 1y agoOP doesn't express a preference, just references GP's preference.
- Teever 1y agoEugenics never went away, we just stopped calling it eugenics. Modern forms of family planning that include access to birth control, genetic testing, abortions, and prenatal screening can empower individuals to make choices that they feel will bring about the healthiest and happiest progeny. That's eugenics. We as a society should continue to allow individuals to make these kinds of choices rather than leave it up to fate or a central authority.
- expedition32 1y agoInteresting have we all forgotten how American politicians literally came out and said 11 year old rape victims should be forced to give birth? But if a billionaire wants eugenics well that's different then.
- greygoo222 1y agoSome group of people: I believe X, which contradicts Y Some different group of people: I believe Y, which contradicts X You, looking upon the masses: X and Y are contradictory. Why is everyone a hypocrite?
- ctoth 1y ago> instead of gambling, you can choose to treat having a genetic disease like being infertile ... I'm totally comfortable if we decide that this sort of thing is going to be criminal, I was born with retinoblastoma. You want the state to use criminal law to control my reproduction based on my genetics. You're "totally comfortable" with that. Easy position when it's not your eyes, not your children, not your choice being criminalized. You invoke eugenics like it's a magic word that wins the argument. But you're the one advocating for state control of reproduction based on genetic fitness. I just want to select among my own embryos. Your adoption argument only applies to people like me - people whose genetics you call "admittedly bad." Everyone else gets to reproduce freely. The cruelty is that you get to advocate for my childlessness from perfect safety. You'll never face the choice you want criminalized. You just get to feel righteous about it.
- lo_zamoyski 1y agoWe are childless. We could use legal reproductive tech like IVF, but we refuse to do so on moral grounds. This is painful for us, but we accept the reality of it, because, among other reasons, we refuse to commoditize human life and to kill human beings[0] to satisfy our desire to be parents. So please avoid the ad hominem and do not presume that moral opposition is merely some kind of flippant and insensitive response coming from those who are not affected. There are plenty of couples who make this moral decision, because they grasp the moral reality of the situation. No one is entitled to children. No one is entitled to any kind of child. This entitlement is precisely what makes it commodification. Children are not property. They are not a product to be customized. They’re human beings, and no one is entitled to another human being. It is good and natural to want children. It is good and natural to want healthy children. It is good and natural to marry and to try to have them. But it is not good to think you deserve them or that you are entitled to have them - and to have them in a desired condition - at any cost or by any means. A real parent puts his child’s good - real or potential - before his or her own, but this attitude of entitlement gets it exactly backwards. It involved begetting children from a fundamental position of disrespect toward them as human beings and toward all those who were thrown out in the process. While there is no moral issue in principle with gene therapies that involve correcting genetic defects in an embryo in the abstract; in practice, there is a lot we don’t know about genetics, the details of the process matter, and the flippant overconfidence of startups is worrying But doing screening and terminating ‘undesirable’ embryos is gravely immoral. [0] An embryo is not some ontologically other that later magically transubstantiates into a human being. “Embryo” and “fetus” describe stages of human development, like “infant”, “toddler”, “teenager”, or “adult”. It boggles the mind how blind and numb we are as a society to this reality, and so easily dehumanize human life in its early stages, simply because it doesn’t look like it does at more mature stages, and because it suits our desires.
- nradov 1y agoEugenics is still extremely popular and widely used in the form of sex selective abortions. This is one of the main reasons why population sex ratios are skewed in some countries.