[ QUOTE ]
Yes, at the risk of exclusion. And I think that's the main chicken bone where eugenics is involved.
[/ QUOTE ]
I'm not sure that's possible to avoid. Even without our interference. Natural blondes are becoming less frequent, for example - will they eventually die out? Who knows. If I were designing a program I'd try to select people who wanted to participate, first and foremost, rather than people who score well on any specific metric. That shouldn't matter much, so long as selection favors the smart, we could start with a group of total idiots and still end up with a smarter-than-average "breed." Once the initial offspring end up in the "program," presumably it would be easy to control for cultural differences. That way those excluded would mainly be those who
chose to be excluded.
[ QUOTE ]
FWIW, personally I don't like the concept. Why are we trying to fix perfectly good sexual reproduction? We learn from our mistakes, is this not so?
[/ QUOTE ]
Not in terms of evolution, no. It's a process of adaptation to an environment. It's
very possible for us to evolve smaller brains and lower levels of intelligence, for example. The idea of evolution as continual "improvement" is a myth.
I don't think we can be certain of the selective pressures acting on us right now. So it's a crap shoot as to where we'll go. By some metrics it seems very likely that smart people are
less fit. For example, there's an inverse correlation between intelligence level measured by IQ and number of kids. I don't think that really indicates much, but it's worrying.
I think
choosing to create humans who are good at innovating and communicating is much preferable to reaching a situation of, for instance,
Eloi and Morlocks.