What is immoral about eugenics?

but this gap is not a global one, so in a lot af countries there wolud be no gap, then when trade and tourism picked up people wolud see te lack of gap and move

 

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That's an ad hominim. Happen to be the smartest person on the planet.

 

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Technically if everyone's perfect the world is going to be a better place, but wouldn't the same problems still exist? There are obviously going to be some people who are smarter, faster or better looking than everyone else. It wouldn't really change anything. Our standards would just be raised higher.

 

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A good many of our problems today are caused by plain stupidity. Improve intelligence and those problems will change from widespread to exceptional.

Lava

 

Occasionally ad hominem is actually valid criticism in a debate.

Lava

 

Yuck, does anyone want these people determining our future?

See the "Mad Genius" gene pool:
http://politics.slate.msn.com/id/103402/

William Shockley, one of the donors:
http://www.bellsystemmemorial.com/belllabs_transistor1.html

 

though I would agree somewhat, I have found that people have several probs, relating to how smart or dumb they are;
1) natural talent; i.e. genius or not
2) environmental factors; i.e. parents & parenting styles
3) cultural, societal values impressed & expressed
4) internal vs. external motivators
5) personality type
6) opportunity
7) rewards; i.e. money, prestige

which leaves us with Einsteins, Leonardos on one end & every spectrum in between, etc...

Oh, & just being smart isn't enough, boy, I've met some duzzies, they needed more than just common sense

 

Quite so Randolfo - but for any kind of success you need a bit of IQ, and this is partly heritable, for those that wish to partake in such a thing. Most dont of course. Beauty is too, to some extent, though that opens up a can of worms if we follow it.

There is no one type of person to breed for, if some people are going to go in for eugenics I daresay they'll have either differing criteria or else a shared set of criteria, as opposed to just one trait.

The idea suggested that the whole world will be forced into a eugenics program - I dunno, where is the logic behind that one?

Lava

 

We must not forget that gene diversity is essential to the survival of the species. We can never know when a specific trait or set of traits will be needed.

For example, the gene that codes for sickle-cell anemia also codes for increased resistance to malaria in heterozygotes (people with both the sickle-cell trait and the normal trait). Say we get rid of this trait in our quest for a better humanity. A few years later, there's a massive malaria outbreak.

To purposely eliminate any gene would appear to me as folly.

 

It seems to me an appropriate eugenics program for modern society would be breeding different strains of humans to meet the different demands in society. Breeding lines of firemen, soldiers, bicycle couriers, athletes, tax brokers, etc and so forth.
A system where someone chooses who should and shouldn't breed by who they like and dislike would obviously be pointless and would cause contempt among the masses.
But what is wrong with my idea? A little too logical perhaps?
Doing nothing and letting people go like a plague of rats is just irresponsible and ugly. Not to mention completely counter-productive.
I don't like modern societies structure at all, but I'm willing to comprimise and we can at least have the best possible lifeguards if we must have lifeguards.

 

Dr. Lou, do you really want to reduce humans to a colony of Carpenter ants?

But what about the dilemmas which will soon be upon us. Should those who carry the genes for Cystic Fibrosis (for instance) be allowed to continue to have children if a way to remove the gene is found, and they refuse the treatment?

What do you think of this:

Sound and Fury focuses on the conflicts in one Long Island, New York, family: A deaf couple, Peter and Nita Artinian, refuse to let their 5-year-old daughter, Heather, get an implant -- much to the dismay of Peter’s hearing parents. "If somebody gave me a pill that would make me hearing, would I take it? No way," Peter Artinian asserts in sign language. "I’d want to go to a hospital and throw it up and go back to being deaf. I want to be deaf....If the technology progresses, maybe it’s true deaf people will become extinct, and my heart will be broken. Deaf culture is something to value and cherish. It’s my culture." Other deaf people in the film echo his views, praising "deaf culture" and deriding attempts to cure deafness.

Militant "Deaf Pride" activism first gained national visibility in 1988, when six radical students at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., the country’s only liberal arts university for the deaf, successfully blocked the appointment of a hearing university president by organizing student protests. This movement has consciously modeled itself not only on the civil rights activism of the 1960s but even more directly on the gay pride movement. Just as gay activists sought to remove the stigma of "sickness" from homosexuality, deaf activists have been trying to challenge the view of deafness as a deficiency. They draw an explicit analogy between efforts to restore hearing to the deaf (or to prevent deafness altogether) and efforts to "cure" homosexuality.

The activists also insist that "deaf culture," complete with its own language -- American Sign Language, or ASL -- is no different from any other ethnic or linguistic culture. The only deaf people who are truly disabled, deaf activist M.J. Bienvenu has been quoted as saying, are those who "learn forced English while being denied sign." In her view, "for the rest of us, it is no more a disability than being Japanese would be." From such a perspective, "fixing" deafness is nothing less than cultural genocide.

http://www.reason.com/0204/co.cy.sound.shtml

How could any reasonable person be against restoring a sense? If someone could give me a pill that enhanced my existing senses (better vision, better hearing, better sense of smell) with no appreciable drawbacks, I wouldn't hesitate to take it.

Isn't refusing the cochlear implant child abuse, or at least neglect?

 

This is a red herring. Eugenics does not imply that everyone will be forced into a eugenics program. It is just not a realistic interpretation. Most of the population is much more interested in their kids having the genes of the people they love most than in eugenics, it always was so and always will be so.

Its like opposing condoms on the basis that there wil be no more babies and humans will become extinct.


Lava

 

1. You cant determine what job someone takes before theyre born.
2. The same qualities make people fit for a wide range of jobs
3. All the above require the same small desirable set of traits anyway, ie physical fitness and mental intelligence.
4. Most will never take part in eugenics anyhow, making it entirely ineffective at breding for jobs. The unlikely assumption that eugenics would be a worldwide compulsory program shows how people have still not managed to separate eugenics from the hideous days of Hitler's total lunacy, and his frankly idiotic attempts at malgenics.


Lava

 

QUOTE Repo Man:

>But what about the dilemmas which will soon be upon us. Should those
>who carry the genes for Cystic Fibrosis (for instance) be allowed to
>continue to have children if a way to remove the gene is found, and
>they refuse the treatment?

Imho it is always the case that sane parents shuold be able to choose concerning the life of their children rather than politicians. Trying to usurp parental decision making by popular politics is a truly stupid move - not that that stops people trying.


>What do you think of this:
>
>Sound and Fury focuses on the conflicts in one Long Island, New York, family:

If you let parents decide there will always be the odd dummy decisions. On the other hand if you let politicians and judges decide there will be a huge slew of dummy decisions.


> Isn't refusing the cochlear implant child abuse, or at least neglect?

Its not smart. But which do you want, parents to make these kind of decisions, or politicians?


Lava

 

Repo

It's a joke that YOU (as a human being) would use the word "reduce", but yes.

No, but you can test them when they're adults.
You'd have to start slow. Wolves weren't perfect for all the tasks men started them on. We just picked the most suitable ones, and bred the more suitable ones with the more suitable ones etc, untill we had a wide variation of types each specialised to a certain task.

You're just too used to mediocrity. People might be "fit" or "good enough" for a whole range of jobs. But we could make people perfect for a specific job. They might end up being capable of also doing similar jobs, but they'll be better at the job they're specialised for. Taxi drivers could differ from bus drivers in that they have slightly shorter necks and are more adept at conversation.
Anyway, we'll confront the "hurdle" of people being capable of more than one job (

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) when we get to it.

Thats a very basic understanding of living organisms. People aren't just fit or not fit or intelligent or not intelligent. There are infinite types of fitness/athletic ability and intelligences. We could craft a strain of homo sapien with numerous adaptations which specifically aid it in excelling at fighting fire and rescuing people.
We bred bloodhounds for their good sense of smell but there's so much more to them than that. They also have extreme determination and focus so that they'll stay on the scent and track it untill the very end.
I'm just illustrating that organisms can be bred to extreme degrees of specialisation. Now that we humans have decided to become one big team (like a global ant colony) we could at least become an efficient one, with all the occupations required for the good of the colony being filled by specimens who excell at that occupation and were bred for it.

It would be very simple to set up a system where those who don't fit in naturally struggle to survive and die, but don't realise they are being screwed. Rather spend their short lives critiqueing themselves and feeling insecure about not being good enough to live as a person. We could even subtly encourage suicide amongst this unfortunate population of misfits.
They could make up travelling circuses like they used to.
Or we could get them to work some pointless job at some fake "factory" which is actually just a place which sends out radioactive beams which sterilise all in the vicinity. We could also set up cameras around the fake factories, so that those in on the joke (everyone who fits into a real job) could watch a reality program after a hard day's work which features inferior people slaving away for no reason and being invisibly sterilised by radioactive beams.

 

Lou, sometimes I can't tell when you are being sarcastic.

 

I legitimately hold human rights in low regard. So my proposals for a better world don't necessarrily need to be devoid of outlandishly bizarre and hilarious breaches of human rights in order to be serious at the same time.
This time I was perhaps stretching it in the name of comedy, but really I wouldn't mind watching such a reality show and would have no moral objections to it.

 

Breed in a sense of dedication and you can stop paying wages.

 

Sounds a little like Brave New World. Oh and for the record, I find circus people facinating and talented.

 

Why?

Lava