3 ms·

The problem is "eugenics" has two meanings which is unhelpful for this discussion. 1) criminal practices of forced sterilisations, ethnic cleansing and mass as

by cm2187 3mo ago

The problem is "eugenics" has two meanings which is unhelpful for this discussion. 1) criminal practices of forced sterilisations, ethnic cleansing and mass assassinations to phase out undesired genes 2) the more generic practice of trying to improve the genetic characteristics of your children. I don't think there is much point in debating 1). But we would be naive to think we are not already doing 2). What else is a prenatal test for down syndrome? What else is selecting your mating partner for desirable characteristics? In animals it's called breeding and it works pretty well. And if you can patch the DNA of your kids to remove potential risks of cancers or other deficiencies, why wouldn't you? Is it better to let cancer take its toll?

Avicebron 3mo ago
The issue is where do you draw the line with 2)? What does "improve the genetic characteristics of your children" mean in practice? Everyone starts with 2) and then it creeps into 1).
- arghwhat 3mo ago
  There is no path that turns "I would like to terminate my pregnancy if the outcome is unfavorable" into "I would like to commit genocide on everyone whose genetics I do not like". Granted, someone who already wishes for or aligns with the idea of ethnic cleansing might start by only publicly sharing their wish for the former to begin with, but I don't see a sensible argument for it being a natural extension of the former.
  - cm2187 3mo ago
    I agree, though one could make the argument that our modern nanny states have been pretty brutal at enforcing health policies during covid, and if they convince themselves that they can eradicate certain diseases by mandating DNA patching or pregnancy terminations, them doing so "for our own good" is in the realm of the possible. But we are in coercion territory. What I am saying that we already practice eugenics without coercion, we just don't call it that.
    - mschuster91 3mo ago
      Vaccine mandates are an entirely different game than "this kind of life has no right to existence".
      - cm2187 3mo ago
        Well if you mandate DNA patching, how do you enforce it?
    - eru 3mo ago
      As far as I can tell, our modern nanny states haven't been 'pretty brutal at enforce health policies during covid'. I agree that there were pretty strong restrictions, many of them unnecessary. But in most places the population was pretty compliant or otherwise ignored the demands. I don't remember much brutality. What's your evidence for brutality?
  - laszlokorte 3mo ago
    "I would like my child to not be deaf" -> "Many (most?) people would prefer their child to not be deaf" -> (3) "Deaf community shrinks" -> "Social support for deaf people is reduced/seen as not necessary" -> "Parents of deaf children are blamed for carrying out the child" -> "Parents are nudged (forced) to terminate the pregnancy" -> goto (3) In a some way this is already happening (eg Judges forcing cochlea implants on babies while denying the parents support in learning/teaching sign language to the child) Many people see this as an attack on the deaf community and their culture - and I have to agree.
    - boxed 3mo ago
      Deafness is a huge handicap, in many ways significantly worse than blindness. That the victims of this horrible ailment start to self identify with it isn't a reason to subject new humans to it.
      - arghwhat 3mo ago
        I have previously had to install simple things like doorbells for deaf people, which is done through a very strobe light that can be seen from almost the entire apartment... if you're not behind a closed door at least. The idea of it being genuinely difficult for a person to be warned or notified is terrifying. Put your phone in your bag and you might as well have left it at home. Honking, people yelling or screaming for you to move out of harms way, even air sirens... You'll have no idea.
        laszlokorte 3mo ago
        Then maybe install the strobe lights in all important rooms? Most people have there phone on silent/vibration anyway and recently everybody uses noise-canceling headphones outside to not be bothered by other people... All the infrastructure that would support deaf people (like additional signal lights, vibration signals, subtitles...) are also very helpful for everybody else in specific situations. Everybody is handicapped part of the time
        3mo ago
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
- RobotToaster 3mo ago
  > The issue is where do you draw the line with 2)? What does "improve the genetic characteristics of your children" mean in practice? That should be entirely down to the parents. Someone having a genetically engineered baby doesn't affect anyone else.
  - dbspin 3mo ago
    > That should be entirely down to the parents. When making decisions that will affect (in planned and unpredictable ways) the phenotype of a person over their entire life course - society / medical experts and researchers etc necessarily need to have a say. We can't beat or euthanise our children, neither should we have carte blanche over their genetic makeup. Note - I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't employ gene modification to ameliorate health issues or even to improve other metrics. However this is absolutely not just 'down to the parents'.
  - sometimelurker 3mo ago
    But there's still some really major issues with 2). Do you think it would be fair to have the children of billionares to be much much more intelligent than normal people, let along the children of poor people? I'm not sure what the answer is, but its very worth thinking about. If you could grow an Einstein in a lab, imagine if all the Einsteins that were grown ended up being biased to Musk-adjacent worldviews. This is really not simple
arghwhat 3mo ago
A problem is that some see 2 as a subset of 1, upset at the idea that parents would wish to terminate pregnancies early that have strong indications of defects. I do imagine a good chunk of those people are of the horribly broken belief that abortions should be outlawed altogether, so not sure how many specifically go against such "filtering". Granted, if everyone were sequenced and had access to that information it probably wouldn't take too long before certain categorizations became a requirement on the dating profiles, and that's a slippery slope... (Regardless, nature filters us all by genetics in several stages, and our entire concept of sexual attraction and social groupings are based on the most direct form of priliminary selection for genetics that evolution could achieve with our limited available senses.)
- vlian2088 3mo ago
  >I do imagine a good chunk of those people are of the horribly broken belief that abortions should be outlawed altogether, so not sure how many specifically go against such "filtering". no, it is quite quite bafflingly the other way around. those who are against abortions non-religiously almost always make exceptions for rape, risk to the woman's life or health, and things like Down's.
croes 3mo ago
The people who do 1) claim do to it for 2)
sometimelurker 3mo ago
There's definitely a sane debate needed on this. I think there's a lot of things here people wouldn't be against, but at the same time more thought needs to be put into this. Like what if you could GMO your kids to be smarter, but it costs a lot. Should this be illegal, or should the govt pay for it for poorer people, and it just gets better and better. I doubt that there'll be a sane debate about this and I would love to be proven wrong.
eru 3mo ago
> 1) criminal practices of forced sterilisations, ethnic cleansing and mass assassinations to phase out undesired genes Whether it's criminal or not depends on the jurisdiction in question. Even abhorrent things can be perfectly legal, and many good things are criminalised.

by cm2187 3mo ago

Avicebron 3mo ago

The issue is where do you draw the line with 2)? What does "improve the genetic characteristics of your children" mean in practice? Everyone starts with 2) and then it creeps into 1).

arghwhat 3mo ago
There is no path that turns "I would like to terminate my pregnancy if the outcome is unfavorable" into "I would like to commit genocide on everyone whose genetics I do not like". Granted, someone who already wishes for or aligns with the idea of ethnic cleansing might start by only publicly sharing their wish for the former to begin with, but I don't see a sensible argument for it being a natural extension of the former.
- cm2187 3mo ago
  I agree, though one could make the argument that our modern nanny states have been pretty brutal at enforcing health policies during covid, and if they convince themselves that they can eradicate certain diseases by mandating DNA patching or pregnancy terminations, them doing so "for our own good" is in the realm of the possible. But we are in coercion territory. What I am saying that we already practice eugenics without coercion, we just don't call it that.
  - mschuster91 3mo ago
    Vaccine mandates are an entirely different game than "this kind of life has no right to existence".
    - cm2187 3mo ago
      Well if you mandate DNA patching, how do you enforce it?
  - eru 3mo ago
    As far as I can tell, our modern nanny states haven't been 'pretty brutal at enforce health policies during covid'. I agree that there were pretty strong restrictions, many of them unnecessary. But in most places the population was pretty compliant or otherwise ignored the demands. I don't remember much brutality. What's your evidence for brutality?
- laszlokorte 3mo ago
  "I would like my child to not be deaf" -> "Many (most?) people would prefer their child to not be deaf" -> (3) "Deaf community shrinks" -> "Social support for deaf people is reduced/seen as not necessary" -> "Parents of deaf children are blamed for carrying out the child" -> "Parents are nudged (forced) to terminate the pregnancy" -> goto (3) In a some way this is already happening (eg Judges forcing cochlea implants on babies while denying the parents support in learning/teaching sign language to the child) Many people see this as an attack on the deaf community and their culture - and I have to agree.
  - boxed 3mo ago
    Deafness is a huge handicap, in many ways significantly worse than blindness. That the victims of this horrible ailment start to self identify with it isn't a reason to subject new humans to it.
    - arghwhat 3mo ago
      I have previously had to install simple things like doorbells for deaf people, which is done through a very strobe light that can be seen from almost the entire apartment... if you're not behind a closed door at least. The idea of it being genuinely difficult for a person to be warned or notified is terrifying. Put your phone in your bag and you might as well have left it at home. Honking, people yelling or screaming for you to move out of harms way, even air sirens... You'll have no idea.
      - laszlokorte 3mo ago
        Then maybe install the strobe lights in all important rooms? Most people have there phone on silent/vibration anyway and recently everybody uses noise-canceling headphones outside to not be bothered by other people... All the infrastructure that would support deaf people (like additional signal lights, vibration signals, subtitles...) are also very helpful for everybody else in specific situations. Everybody is handicapped part of the time
        3mo ago
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
RobotToaster 3mo ago
> The issue is where do you draw the line with 2)? What does "improve the genetic characteristics of your children" mean in practice? That should be entirely down to the parents. Someone having a genetically engineered baby doesn't affect anyone else.
- dbspin 3mo ago
  > That should be entirely down to the parents. When making decisions that will affect (in planned and unpredictable ways) the phenotype of a person over their entire life course - society / medical experts and researchers etc necessarily need to have a say. We can't beat or euthanise our children, neither should we have carte blanche over their genetic makeup. Note - I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't employ gene modification to ameliorate health issues or even to improve other metrics. However this is absolutely not just 'down to the parents'.
- sometimelurker 3mo ago
  But there's still some really major issues with 2). Do you think it would be fair to have the children of billionares to be much much more intelligent than normal people, let along the children of poor people? I'm not sure what the answer is, but its very worth thinking about. If you could grow an Einstein in a lab, imagine if all the Einsteins that were grown ended up being biased to Musk-adjacent worldviews. This is really not simple

arghwhat 3mo ago

A problem is that some see 2 as a subset of 1, upset at the idea that parents would wish to terminate pregnancies early that have strong indications of defects. I do imagine a good chunk of those people are of the horribly broken belief that abortions should be outlawed altogether, so not sure how many specifically go against such "filtering". Granted, if everyone were sequenced and had access to that information it probably wouldn't take too long before certain categorizations became a requirement on the dating profiles, and that's a slippery slope... (Regardless, nature filters us all by genetics in several stages, and our entire concept of sexual attraction and social groupings are based on the most direct form of priliminary selection for genetics that evolution could achieve with our limited available senses.)

vlian2088 3mo ago
>I do imagine a good chunk of those people are of the horribly broken belief that abortions should be outlawed altogether, so not sure how many specifically go against such "filtering". no, it is quite quite bafflingly the other way around. those who are against abortions non-religiously almost always make exceptions for rape, risk to the woman's life or health, and things like Down's.

croes 3mo ago

The people who do 1) claim do to it for 2)

sometimelurker 3mo ago

There's definitely a sane debate needed on this. I think there's a lot of things here people wouldn't be against, but at the same time more thought needs to be put into this. Like what if you could GMO your kids to be smarter, but it costs a lot. Should this be illegal, or should the govt pay for it for poorer people, and it just gets better and better. I doubt that there'll be a sane debate about this and I would love to be proven wrong.

eru 3mo ago

> 1) criminal practices of forced sterilisations, ethnic cleansing and mass assassinations to phase out undesired genes Whether it's criminal or not depends on the jurisdiction in question. Even abhorrent things can be perfectly legal, and many good things are criminalised.