Eugenicists

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25 Apr 2009, 5:03 pm

There have been a few times where I have encountered people whom I thought should not be allowed to have children. It had nothing to do with their intelligence or finances, but rather the way they treat children.

Sand
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25 Apr 2009, 11:25 pm

claire333 wrote:

If you remember the Salem witch trials you would be dubious about giving children the powerful weapon of threatening their parents with castration by false accusation. It could result in a very dirty business indeed.

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26 Apr 2009, 1:31 am

Haliphron wrote:

Ive come to the sobering conclusion that those who advocate Eugenics, particularly those with the power to direct policy, should be neutralized before they cause undue harm to innocent people. Any one else agree? Perhaps if Hitler, Himmler, and Mengele were selectively assassinated the Holocaust might have never happened.

Neutralized as in neutered or neutralized as in killed? Or neutralized as in being isolated from positions of power and responsibility? If Hitler had been given an isolated cell with good light and art equipment and no opportunity to rouse the rabble, he would have done no damage to society.

I once heard of an interesting idea: Hitler goes into producing what we would call a "heavy metal" illustrated novel rather than politics and power. He would have done far less damage.

ruveyn

ascan
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26 Apr 2009, 2:50 am

Sand wrote:

ascan wrote:

Sand wrote:

Yeah. Like all those very bright hardworking guys on Wall Street and in the automobile industry who totally screwed up the economy.

I'm glad you agree, at least in principle, that eugenics can be used legitimately, Sand.

Well, is that what you think? That cutting the balls off financiers would cure the monetary problems of the country?

I do not, Sand, as you well know. Anyway, it's not very useful to reduce the argument to eugenics = forcible sterilisation, is it?.

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26 Apr 2009, 4:09 pm

ascan wrote:

I do not, Sand, as you well know. Anyway, it's not very useful to reduce the argument to eugenics = forcible sterilisation, is it?.

Eugenics is as much about mating high quality people as it is about preventing the dysgenic from reproducing. Probably more so. Mate the best and brightest with each other and you get a bright next generation.

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Sand
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26 Apr 2009, 4:20 pm

ruveyn wrote:

ascan wrote:

I do not, Sand, as you well know. Anyway, it's not very useful to reduce the argument to eugenics = forcible sterilisation, is it?.

See http://iq-test.learninginfo.org/iq03.htm

techstepgenr8tion
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26 Apr 2009, 5:19 pm

This is one of those areas where scientific reality and civil liberties as we understand them will probably never be able to coexist peacefully.

I agree with Ascan that rearranging incentive priorities is necessary but the very basis of doing something in accordance with natural law - you have an entire half of your society in England and almost that over here even who have a completely different understanding of reality; mainly one that dictates that whatever they don't want to see isn't there (or they'll just blame capitalism). With opposition like that there's really no hope as in both sides have to at least agree on some common fundamental reality.

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27 Apr 2009, 3:33 am

Sand wrote:

ruveyn wrote:

ascan wrote:

I do not, Sand, as you well know. Anyway, it's not very useful to reduce the argument to eugenics = forcible sterilisation, is it?.

See http://iq-test.learninginfo.org/iq03.htm

Obviously, Sand, the site you linked to has an interest in selectively picking evidence to support environmental influence on IQ. However, I think it's fairly widely accepted that there's a significant genetic control. Bright people, generally speaking, have bright kids. Of course, a whole bunch of other factors then impact on an individual's place in society (like AS).

Sand
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27 Apr 2009, 4:59 am

ascan wrote:

Sand wrote:

ruveyn wrote:

ascan wrote:

I do not, Sand, as you well know. Anyway, it's not very useful to reduce the argument to eugenics = forcible sterilisation, is it?.

See http://iq-test.learninginfo.org/iq03.htm

Whatever the evidence cherry picking, it is a valid point of view. And beyond that IQ does not necessarily indicate good sense. I have heard that people in Mensa spend most of their time congratulating each other on their scores rather than producing anythng useful. I notice a bit of that around here also.

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27 Apr 2009, 5:54 am

Sand wrote:

I only scanned through the text linked to, Sand, so correct me if I'm wrong, but my recollection is that the author didn't rule out a significant genetic influence. He was only saying that environment acts as a limited modifier of that innate cognitive ability. Naturally, that was embellished to suit the site's agenda.

As for good sense, I'm not sure how you measure that. I do know that earnings (a measure of success in our society, rightly or wrongly) correlate well with IQ within a certain range (a few SDs either side of the mean, I recall). I'd assume that another measure of success, and of a person's "worth" to society, academic achievement, would follow the same pattern.

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27 Apr 2009, 6:27 am

ascan wrote:

Sand wrote:

It depends upon what you call success. The Wall Streeters who are generously allocating each other millions of dollars that have been shoveled in their direction by a panicked federal government might be considered sucesses and Van Gogh who never sold one of his paintings that are now worth millions so he might be considered a failure. Money, it seems, is the measure. L.Ron Hubbard who scammed quite a few gullible people came off at the top while J. Christ frankly cannot be considered to have a particularly happy demise. Hitler seems, at the end to have been totally f ucked while Stalin got out while the getting was good.

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27 Apr 2009, 12:15 pm

It has been a few years and now i reread that IQ isn't static? what's new pussycat whoho :roll:

Honestly though, as someone who studies some genetics in university (in the overall view of bio anthropology), i daresay that there isn't any good or bad genes, it's all rather grey. Especially when you find out that one that gives someone an advantage somewhere becomes a disadvantage somewhere else.... =/

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28 Apr 2009, 7:36 am

Dreaming of genes topic

Hindsight is 20/20 vision, and high IQ.

Inheritance is random, and there may be some unexpected results. Even cloning is not an absolute certainty. But do we not know this, already? :roll:

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ascan
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28 Apr 2009, 2:03 pm

Sand wrote:

It depends upon what you call success...

It does, and I used two widely accepted measures of success to illustrate my point: academic achievement and earnings. Both correlate with intelligence. Can you think of any measure of success where low intelligence is a benefit?

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28 Apr 2009, 2:12 pm

sartresue wrote:

...Inheritance is random, and there may be some unexpected results.

But often the likelyhood of a certain result can be assigned a probability.

Sand
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28 Apr 2009, 2:24 pm

ascan wrote:

sartresue wrote:

...Inheritance is random, and there may be some unexpected results.

But often the likelyhood of a certain result can be assigned a probability.

But the conscious weeding out of what is assumed to be irrelevant factors has a reasonable chance of destroying valuable unknowns. Human personality is a meld of such a multiple of factors with such wide possibilities in discerning all sorts of inputs and combining them in novel and unexpected ways that the losses in using traditional standards may be far more damaging than the gains. Every day many of the elements concerning DNA which were once assumed to be "junk" have been revealed to have vital functions. There are too many unknowns to be confident of sensible sorting.

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