Eugenics

[Phil153]

Once again I'm forced to combat the nonsense that passes for rational thought on these boards. It's quite disturbing to see the degree to which otherwise intelligent people suppress truth to fit their political and ethical beliefs. David can have his penises, while we discuss the real issues.

In another thread, Mickey Brausch stated:

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Engaging in eugenics would involve the potential of so many mistakes (e.g. we would be focusing in producing tall humans, something that could prove disastrous down the road) that the exercise is technically a non-starter, even before the moral arguments begin.

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I submit that this is total nonsense. While there are potential dangers with a poorly crafted eugenics program, it's trivial to think of an example where this isn't the case. For example, removing the bottom 50% (in terms of intelligence) of each ethnic group. IMO this would greatly benefit the human gene pool and the long term success of the human race, with few drawbacks.

If you disagree, I'd like to hear why. Obviously this point ignores the moral and political considerations, which are huge.

[chaosuk]

Well one could argue that it depends how you measure success and benefit. For some people measuring the long-term success of the human race cannot preclude morality.

However, this is also no perfect way to measure intelligence and it is perhaps not inconceivable that people with lower IQs (one candidate intelligence metric) correlate better with other human qualities which have been key to our survivial. Even if measuring intelligence is a practical rather than theoretical boundary it is still a stumbling block - although it could be theoretical if all the ingredients of mankind's recipe for success were sprinkled all the cross sections.

It certainly appears, though, our short-termist goal-seeking society is reversing evolution - encouraging, in general, bright driven people not to procreate, and through the welfare state, those less so too reproduce.

That said I (ignorantly) agree that eugenics could in theory benefit mankind.

[madnak]

Intelligence definitely has its drawbacks.

Not that I disagree with you: intelligence and creativity are what make us human. It's what we do, and it's the only way I can see for us to become more powerful than we are now.

So in theory I agree with the intellect-based eugenics, even using an imperfect metric (you might get some people from the 30th percentile, and lose some people from the 70th percentile, if you took the top 50% IQ scores. But it's pretty clear that there's some correlation, and at least the extreme outliers (which I think are most important) will be obvious).

Of course, the question of implementing a eugenics program, and the ethics of such a program... Well, as you said, that's a whole different subject.

Personally I wouldn't mind a (100% voluntary) eugenics program operating in isolation with a few generations of highly intelligent subjects. Personally I don't want to have kids, but even so I'd probably be willing to participate in the experiment myself. It would be exciting to help breed a new race of geniuses. The major problem I can see with that is controlling the offspring (who would obviously have the choice to leave the program).

Still, that's not likely to happen, and it's possible our control over the genome itself will reach such a point that we can "create" any changes we want through cloning/etc.

[FortunaMaximus]

I have to agree with Mickey's stand on this.

There are already clear examples of eugenics in isolated communities without much influx of fresh DNA, so to speak. One might as well make the distinction between the pygmy tribes of Africa and Mennonites and European royalty.

And what arises from those examples, I think, is a early warning for future eugenics experiments. Those groups, in and of themselves, are no better and no worse than each other as a whole. And there are diseases that each group carry to a higher degree than most because it is embedded in their genetic substructures. (I know, no such thing, right?)

And this requires a concession to the validity of your argument that intelligence as a whole can be increased. But in a mortal species with constant growth and renewal, this may not be a signifcant enough net gain. Certainly, there is a recent example posted (the Ashkenazi argument) that has merit.

Genetics in present may not make the distinction on a broad spectrum between the range that is H. sap. And we are trying to turn this into a social differentation issue by attacking racism.

We, as a whole, learn from our mistakes, and the growth of any factor has to follow a recursive path that mimics the growth of our population. Trying to accelerate one while decelerating the other has to be creating a net loss somewhere.

There are benefits, I do agree. But there is great potential for irreversible mistakes that would require genome tinkering to fix. And our current understanding of the genome practically guarantees we will make more mistakes than we will successes.

What of creativity, of genius, of that intangible element that causes individuals to set himself/herself apart from the rest? This has to be more an artistic emergence than soild repetitive breeding. However, there is certainly an argument in where you could say you'd increase the probability of these singularities occuring.

Hmm. Rhetoric before breakfast can get weird.

[Rduke55]

I can see it now.



Seriously though, Madnak is right about intelligence possibly having it's drawbacks in regards to reproduction. You can't just say "smarter people are better for the human race"

Also there are the problems with testing, etc.

And I'm curious why you said "Removal of the bottom 50% of each ethnic group" rather than just "Removal of bottom 50%." regardless of ethnicity. Is this to avoid accusations of race-based eugenics or is there some other idea?

[Darryl_P]

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And I'm curious why you said "Removal of the bottom 50% of each ethnic group" rather than just "Removal of bottom 50%." regardless of ethnicity. Is this to avoid accusations of race-based eugenics or is there some other idea?

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I'm betting it's what you suggest, ie. to avoid the race issue, although I would have been greatly amused if someone had emotionally responded "You want to exterminate all blacks, that's not fair!" followed by "oops" after recognizing what he revealed in terms of his own views regarding intelligence and race.

[Darryl_P]

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I submit that this is total nonsense. While there are potential dangers with a poorly crafted eugenics program, it's trivial to think of an example where this isn't the case. For example, removing the bottom 50% (in terms of intelligence) of each ethnic group. IMO this would greatly benefit the human gene pool and the long term success of the human race, with few drawbacks.


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I agree with the concept of wanting to exert influence on the human gene pool. That's consistent with wanting to have sex IMO. Where we probably disagree is the extent of the measures that should be taken to achieve such an aim.

My philosophy is that tinkering with natural processes is a very dangerous game, because of the extreme unpredictability of future consequences. So it should be done only slowly and with great care.

The maximum degree I would take it to is to try to create an environment in which intelligent people WANT to multiply and not-so-intelligent folks have all sorts of disincentives to do same.

The current system is obviously achieving the opposite, so basically that means it should be dismantled. If that means WW3 because the current human population is too dumb/ignorant to do it any other way, then so be it.

But simply sterilizing the bottom 50% in intelligence would likely backfire, ie. lead to war in which the outcome would be a system that's even more low IQ skewed than today (in terms of fertility, motivation to have kids, etc.).

I guess my point is that whatever you do, it needs the involvement of a large chunk of humanity (ie. a war), rather than just a small group of people conducting an experiment with ramifications that require IQs of 500 or more to predict.

[Rduke55]

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My philosophy is that tinkering with natural processes is a very dangerous game, because of the extreme unpredictability of future consequences.

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In the Ashkenazi jew thread I mentioned that they have higher test scores but also lots of inherited neurological diseases and some people believe the two are related.

[madnak]

I think there's a good chance the brain could stand to restructure itself. Look at all the people with neurological deficits but also with unbelievable mental talents. Idiot savants and the like, those musical geniuses and the hypermnesiacs and the schizophrenic and socipathic geniuses. I think an explosion of variance in mental traits is a good sign: those traits that are well-adapted will presumably be selected for. Of course, our current environment is probably very different from our future environment, and the selective pressures are so unstable right now it's hard to know which way is up.

If we were to create a stable environment that specifically selects for traits that result in a high output of great ideas, technologies, and artworks, then presumably we could "force" the evolution of a kind of ubermensch. Doesn't that follow?

[FortunaMaximus]

Yes, at the risk of exclusion. And I think that's the main chicken bone where eugenics is involved.

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?