Do humans get smarter "all the time"?

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Mmm, forgot to add this.

Eugenics isn't about killing people, it's about trying encourage certain traits in a population and discourage others. This could be done equally well by giving tax breaks to people with the desired trait for every kid they have or by sterilizing those with an undesired trait as it could by killing people, which is wrong and no society should support it.

IMO a good way to introduce eugenics in our society is to have sterilization, or even castration, as a potential punishment for some crimes. Criminals are generally shown of lower IQ then the general population, so in theory this would smarten up society as a whole given time. I also suspect that some would find this more frightening then jail time or even the death penalty, so this would serve double duty as a deterrent.

Eugenics need do no such thing. I just think we need to consider more seriously which dipshits get to force their inept offspring on everyone else. Because stupidity correlates with improductivity (an economic burden on everyone else) and crime (making everyone else's life less livable), the perpetuation and flourishing of the stupid is very much the problem of everyone else. (Although for reference my last sentence in my previous post was actually tongue in cheek)

Although this is really besides the point in this thread...

yeah and soon enough every aspie'll be sterilized. it's something i'd rather not enact anytime soon. by soon, i mean within the next 50 or so years. maybe check back in down the line but i wouldn't trust today's society with a eugenics-based philosophy nor would i trust science with it yet either.

I would not trust anyone with it, ever. We aren't able to see all the different contingencies that might come up, so it's best not to regulate and force one genetic strain to be dominant.

exactly.

In practice, I agree that eugenics is generally a bad idea. Although inasmuch as we may be able to establish possible empirical correlates I do not see the idea that controlling who reproduces is a priori wrong. It's just a simple utilitarian expected value calculation.

What I find grating is the fact that people have been so well programmed to rebel at the idea of even discussing intelligently possible eugenic and dysgenic trends.



Cogs...

The issue you run into is how to decide who is or is not worthy to live/reproduce. Until you can find a good way of doing that, yes I will reject eugenics a priori.

And utilitarianism isn't necessarily right either. I don't hold to a consequentialist philosophy, so I do view eugenics as deontologically wrong, regardless of its outcomes.

Umm, aspies are not known for commiting crimes, particularly violent ones. How exactly would they be affect by a policy like the one I proposed?

If you actually stop to think about it, asperger's is a stupid thing to highly select against. The ones that are truly incapaciatated by it are unlikely to breed anyway, and so are already selected against. The reason why it keeps popping up in the population despite being selected against (via natural selection, not conspiricy) means that it must have some positive effect when it is less extreme. This is pretty easily proven by the link to high intellegence, and pointing to the luminaries that supposedly had it.

Eugenics is NOT about homogenizing a population into some kind of 'master' race with no variation. IMO, it doesn't take much thought and research to realize that thinking like that is increadibly stupid. Why do some many people think that that is the only way eugenics could possibly be applied?

some of us have a better understanding of human nature than others. the nature of the majority of people is to homogenize the population. just look at something as stupid and petty as gays getting married. it has pretty much no effect on people and people freak out over it and try to ban it.


i don't trust anyone with such absolutist authority as eugenics would grant to people.

In many cases they are getting more stupid. Two hundred years ago if a teenage single-parent had children there would be a big chance they would not be able to grow up till adult hood to continue the cycle. Now in today society they almost always will. Chavs and jocks are having kids willy nilly and there is no limiting factor to their population growth.

Human beings evolved intelligence as a way of surviving the harsh conditions. Intelligence is not needed hardly at all nowadays as a way of surviving.

Wars have factors in intelligence as advance nation dominate backwards ones, thus perpetuating the intelligence gene. No more significant wars mean that will no longer happen.

Last edited by Aspie_Chav on 26 May 2008, 2:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

So you don't so much reject the idea itself, but simply feel that it would be impossible to implement properly due to human nature?

somewhat. i also don't entirely trust all the information that comes out with regards to such studies...mainly because they've been tainted by conscious and unconscious biases before and that most likely won't be changing anytime soon.

it's kinda like socialism...it's a nice idea but the ability of us to implement it wouldn't work and doing so would only result in horrific tragedies.

The utilitarian criteria I put forth above are a good example. Weeding out the genes which correlate with doing certain antisocial things is one way to approach it. Controlling reproduction is just a strategy to increase future flourishing.


Good. At least you are consistent.

Even if I adopt your utilitarian views, you're still left with the challenge of what exactly you desire to select against, and getting other people to agree with you on that. What are you going to classify as anti-social?

it's operating off of the fallacy that there is such a thing as normalcy.

On the contrary; there is absolutely no need for such platonic silliness in a eugenic system as I have proposed. It is simple control of reproduction for utilitarian ends.

Orwell - It is simple. Laws embody values. Establish heritability of something that society want to discourage (e.g. criminal behavior). Favor reproduction of those who are less likely to do such. There are obvious technical details to be worked through, but the system is not obviously infeasible by any means. I merely suggest that you keep an open mind. I at least intuit that it is possible (should I feel the need to work through it); and the common counterargument that people have a natural right to reproduce I find... dubious.