Eugenics: pros/cons discussion

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There is something of a stigma attached to being sterilised, so I wouldn't expect many to opt for it to be honest. I'm ignorant on the subject of sterilisation, but isn't it irreversible? What would you propose happen to someone if they hadn't wanted children, and so had themselves sterilised, but then laterwards did have the desire for a child?

I'm not clear on why you used "hobby" to describe child production? Although I'm sure there are some who do see it that way, I don't think that is how it is seen by most people.

I'm also not really sure, is attempting to prevent those who will not take the bearing of children seriously from doing so the main purpose of what you propose, or is it something else which you believe such a prevention will accomplish?

You would be surprised at how often men tend to opt for a visectomy. Heck, I am fully in favor of putting up billboards saying, "FREE VISECTOMIES! You can have all the unprotected sex you want without worrying about kids! Go here!" I wholeheartedly advocate helping them get themselves out of the breeding population. It's not that I have anything against them: it's just some people aren't into the hobby of raising children. I don't see any reason they should consider themselves obligated to play the game. Parenting just isn't for everybody, and there are some perfectly decent people out there who don't want to do it and probably SHOULDN'T. They can live perfectly happy and contented lives without having to worry about dealing with children.

There is such a thing as reversible contraception (corrected from sterilization. They have about the same meaning, but "contraception" is the more appropriate term if I understand correctly). However, medical technology is not yet advanced enough to guarantee that it will be successful. One day it will be, and I think that the ideas I am suggesting here may become more popular once this is so.

That's not how I see it at all. I was using this phrase as a rhetorical device for denoting that some people don't want kids, and they are really under no obligation whatsoever to have them. In fact, if they don't like the idea of dealing with that kind of responsibility, I encourage them to guard themselves against the possibility of being saddled with it. How is this a bad thing?

You mean you're accusing me of wanting to get people sterilized out of personal resentment toward them, and you think this is a dishonorable way of lashing out at people whom I deem inferior, either intellectually or morally. You suffer from a negative gut reaction to the idea of exerting control over people's sexual or reproductive rights, so you are trying to dismiss the idea by dimissing my motives, whether you are doing this consciously or subconsciously. Forgive me if I have misunderstood your own motives, sir, but this is what I usually see when I raise this sort of issue. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if I realized later that I only thought this of you because I myself was feeling defensive.

At least you haven't accused me of being an anti-semite or tried to compare my ideas to "racial hygeine."

And you haven't accused me of being arrogant or dismissive toward alternative views.

And you haven't tried to put words in my mouth by mangling my own words.

And you haven't attempted to provoke me into angry defensive behavior through subtle baiting games, which I deem particularly morally dubious. In fact, I have been a victim of such baiting games many times, and it always leaves me feeling very sad, lonely, and heartsick. It's not a nice thing to do to people, but sometimes people are ready to resort to them if they think it will help them discredit viewpoints they find to be disagreeable. It's like there is some kind of hole in them where their conscience is supposed to be. Orwell is one of these people. He was trying to bait me by repeatedly distorting and twisting my words, trying to provoke me into self-humiliating outrage. There is something terribly wrong with people who behave like Orwell does. There is something missing from them. Gives me the shivers.

In fact, I don't think that you have made a concerted effort at all to discredit my views by any dubious means whatsoever, and I think that you have raised a few perfectly valid points. You have given me a great deal of pause for thought, and I have definitely softened my views on this subject as a direct result.

And you seem to have every intention of being respectful and straightforward.

So please: stay around.

I'm addressing this first to ensure our communication continues with a good will

I wasn't meaning to accuse you of anything at all by asking that question. I was just meaning to ask what you envisionedthis initiative would accomplish, because I don't know the answer to the question, that is all. I'm not really sure what I said that could be taken to be such an accusation against you. I think, too, that I've been rather cool in my responses, so I don't think it was fair of you to accuse me of succumbing to a gut reaction.



I know there are many who have had a vasectomy, but my understanding is that a good portion of those are older and have already had children. I was thinking more about younger adults who are at the beginnings of sexual activity (since it is they who are most likely to have children accidentally or without due preparation). Among younger adults there would be more likely to be a stigma, much as there is with circumcision.

Since many young people begin sexual activity before reaching the legal age of consent, there arises the issue of whether it is okay to offer sterilisation to what are, with regards to the law, children. However, that is an issue upon which I would rather not dwell because I have a weak head for that sort of thing and I feel quite faint thinking about it (this is also why I have not looked at your other thread much, please forgive me). But I will say that since children are not deemed to be fully competent to make many choices, I imagine it would be seen the same for sterilisation, and I'm not without sympathy for this view.



I do think you overestimate the number of people who have no desire whatsoever for children. I would imagine that most who end up with children due to a lack of caution would have intended upon having a child eventually. I'm thinking better education would be a stronger deterant against this, and against those who do have children, believing they are ready when actually they are unprepared. I also think that, even with reversible sterilisation, it seems like it would be more convenient to use contraception, if the person is unsure about whether they will desire children, because of the risks and fears involved in undergoing an operation.

Something I'm not sure about, are you just basically saying there should be greater awareness of sterilisation and more promotion of sterilisation directed towards those who do not desire children? (This, again, is merely a question and I'm not assuming a certain answer. If I had an assumption in mind then I wouldn't ask the question because I would have already assumed to know the answer). That, alone, doesn't seem to be eugenics (I understood eugenics more to mean the promotion of superior offspring among society).

No personal attacks; one can target the idea or position - NOT the person.


M.

It's not a logistical problem that is likely to be solved any time in the foreseeable future, and even once we think we've figured it out we'll probably be wrong on a lot of important points. Hell, the Central Dogma of Biology is known to be wrong, and yet Besides that, we can never predict future circumstances so its best to simply keep the genetic diversity we have rather than meddling with the gene pool.


True, most scientists would not be adequate rulers. But how could such a policy be decided by people with little to no scientific background?

As far as your attacks on my character, they seem to be hyperbole. There was no place in the previous thread where I deliberately misinterpreted your claims, or attempted to put words in your mouth. If we were talking past each other, then either you did not write clearly or I did not read well. On an autistic site, you should never attribute to malice what could be easier explained by poor communication.

I would apologize for any miscommunication simply to appease your hurt feelings, but I am less inclined to do so given that you have been libeling me all over WP. I can tend to be an aggressive debater, and I don't deny that, but I typically stay within limits and am not generally regarded as dishonest.

I AM attacking his position. I'm attacking Orwell's position that it's okay to take what people say and twist it around to mean something else. It's low, and it's filthy. Does anyone disagree? Really, if you think that that kind of disgusting slight-of-hand is acceptable, speak up, buddy.

It might have been the lowly piece of scum, jerk part...but I am just guessing.

Alright, so you think that Eugenics would be a productive excercise under the circumstances that we could accurately predict all of the possible outcomes of our meddling. How do you defend this position? Isn't this an infringement on people's individual liberty? Isn't it also contrary to the tenant that "all people are created equal," which is one of the holiest tenants of Western democracy? Don't you also think that such an excercise would make our species less colorful, less interesting, and less the living work of art that it is? Is "perfection" really worth it in the end? Is there really someplace that the "human race" absolutely has to go?

You seem to support eugenics in theory, so how do you defend the position?

After all, I think it would be more productive to help the people we already have make better lives for themselves. For people who are inattentive, we are trying to create drugs they could use to treat this problem if they so chose. I think this is a far cry better than labelling them unfit, and it shows our society to have come a lot further than I would otherwise have expected. We should concentrate on improving ourselves individually, not on improving some invisible, truly meaningless thing like "the human race." We are a race of individuals, and we all deserve a chance to choose our own fates.

I figure the government could apoint scientific researchers to the position. I'm not sure how that kind of system would actually work, though. Since you seem to be a supporter of eugenics, though, would you like to make a suggestion as to how such a system could be constructed? Yes, I know you are not actually a supporter of the idea, but I honestly think that you should consider WHY a eugenics program would be wrong before pronouncing it as such.

Well, I get paranoid when I see people toying around with words like that. It freaks me out. It goes with a few other weird things about me, some good and some bad.

Sorry, bud, but your three-strikes period has expired. I cannot hold you to be trustworthy unless you do more than this to prove yourself to me. Unless I'm given reason to feel otherwise, I consider what I've had to say about you to be justified, even if I've been a bit histrionic in expressing it. I don't think that you were being completely honest toward me, Orwell, and it bothers me a lot. I wasn't counting strikes to make some kind of threat against you. You were just freaking me out, man. I was counting strikes to try to let you know that I was letting stuff pass without much scrutiny even though it made me nervous. I don't like the way you make me feel when you "talk past me." My heart is in my throat, and I feel like screaming or crying. I feel like you're doing it just to hurt me. If you're doing so, then I won't dirty my mind with what someone, somewhere, should probably say about you.

Last edited by ThisisjusthowItalk on 24 Apr 2009, 11:15 pm, edited 2 times in total.

You've made replies to Orwell, but what of my post ThisisjusthowItalk? Is it to be left unanswered?

The basic essence of eugenics is that there are some people who delegate to themselves the intellect and the right to direct the ends of human accomplishment. This leads directly to racial, religious and nationalistic discrimination which has demonstrated overwhelmingly horrible tragic results. The originator of this thread immediately indicated this type of paranoid distortion by flatly labeling me as an anti Semite and felt I could only be qualified to voice an opinion on the basis of how many people I might have killed in WWII. I am not comfortable assigning the final goals of humanity to that type of person nor do I feel he is rational enough to make reasonable statements. This is not a personal attack, merely an evaluation of the thoughts produced.

If we ignore the... unpleasantness... at start of the first page, is the OP actually talking about eugenics? What he seems to me to be saying is that he thinks there should be efforts made to promote the usefulness of sterilisation as a means of contraception amongst those who have no desire for children. Is this eugenics?

I don't recall him saying anything like, "we should flush those who posses trait x from the genepool by means of forcing them to be sterile." Of course, I must say here that I did not read the other thread for reasons I explained above, so I don't know if he expressed an opinion like that there. In this thread I'm sure he hasn't.

No, I have never said that. I just find it easier to reject eugenics on practical grounds without delving into deeper philosophical issues for now.


Yes. Yes. Very much so. Hell no. Not really.


I don't.


Same here.


QFT.


It wouldn't. I don't trust politicians to appoint unbiased scientists- look up Trofim Lysenko sometime.


I'm not, so no, I wouldn't.


Then why do you keep claiming that I am?


I have.

I have no need to prove myself to anyone.


You've been more than histrionic, you've been outright libelous and in blatant violation of WP rules. People have been banned for far less than what you've done in this thread and others. You've also established a pattern of behavior of flaming me in several threads.


I don't know what to say other than that I have been honest. There may have been some miscommunication, but I have not been deliberately dishonest towards you at any point.


You seem extremely sensitive to even the slightest criticism, even if it is only of your opinions rather than an outright insult. Because of the general atmosphere of PPR, where you *will* always get called out on your reasoning by someone, you might want to focus on other areas of WP if you are feeling so anxious about criticism.


I'm not. Why would I want to hurt you? How would I benefit from screwing with you?

I was interested in discussing the ethics of eugenics, period. Why would be right/wrong to set a goal for what humanity should/shouldn't be?

I'm nervous and jumpy as a startled jackrabbit, and it doesn't have anything to do with you. I'm suspicious right now, and I'm prone to see enemies under every rock and behind every bush that I see. I've been dragged through the mud by a few too many clever trolls in my day, and it's kind of turned me into a PTSD basket case.

Not really, no. I'm sorry for that, and it was rash of me.

I thought most people were circumcised, though? You do know that that foreskin some people are all attached to can pick up all kinds of parasites and other crap? I mean you just don't KNOW what's growing in that thing, and there's no guarantees even if you clean it. It's not worth it.

Anyway, under the scheme that I was suggesting, then nobody who feels that there is a stigma in this would be among the culls. Only people who really and truly don't have any intention of becoming mothers or fathers would be culled from the breeding population, at least according to the scenario that I have been suggesting in our exchange.

Ah, and there is another interesting concept: would it be productive, if we had a 100% reversible means of contraception, to keep people infertile until they CHOOSE to have their fertility reestablished? Shouldn't fertility be something we choose to have, not to dispense with? Surely hypothetical, but it's an interesting thought.

So you are promoting eugenics via education initiatives, right? Isn't it arguably eugenics at work if we are dispensing free condoms in incredibly poor communities, just because we deem them likely to have "unprotected" sex? Isn't it eugenics after a kind to discourage "teen pregnancy"?

It is still a means of interfering with who is and is not spreading their genes. Just because you are doing it using less brute force does not negate the fact that you are doing it. If we decide that "superior offspring" can only come from people who do not choose voluntary sterilization when it is offered, then we are still volunteering an ideal as to what a human being SHOULD be. I feel there are degrees and dimensions to the subject that most people have not considered very carefully.