@Perun

[Helios Panoptes]

What is the reason for your opposition to eugenics?

[Petr]

Boleslaw, have you seen this thread of mine? :)


Libertarian critique of Genetic Central Planning (i.e., Eugenics)

Thus, even setting aside all ethical questions of forced breeding and forced sterilization, we can expect the results of any sustained eugenics program to be a disaster. Like centralized economic planning, a eugenics program would supplant a spontaneous order with a planned one — even while we do not understand and cannot possibly understand the supplanted order. To the extent that a eugenic society approaches total control over its breeding population, so too that society will expose itself to evolutionary dangers that it cannot hope to understand.

http://www.thephora.net/forum/showthread.php?t=24105


Petr

[Boleslaw]

Yes I did read it, very good.

This will have to be a work on progress.

[Petr]

Potyondi made a scientific case against eugenics below - he also tried to show that the eugenic order is artificial:

http://www.thephora.net/forum/showthread.php?t=6366&page=2&highlight=renzong

http://www.thephora.net/forum/showpost.php?p=77659&postcount=32

http://www.thephora.net/forum/showthread.php?t=6366&page=6&highlight=renzong


Petr

[Helios Panoptes]

Petr, it appears that both of those links are to the same thread. In any case, the author is being unfair by holding eugenics to a higher standard than is reasonable. It is like responding to someone who would like to reduce warfare that, in fact, he will never succeed because warfare will never be completely eliminated. It ignores that practical solutions are not looking for perfection, but rather improvement.

In addition, what about genetic testing? It is possible to perform the folliowing procedure: people who want to have children must apply for licenses. If someone is considered qualified at first glance, that person is subjected to various kinds of tests, including tests for undesirable recessives. Now, it is not plausible to stop all heteros from reproducing, but one might stop the less suitable in other respects from reproducing. This would be more efficient. It would be a nuisance when first implemented, but it would become less of one in the second generation when it could be applied to school children. There are already all kinds of tests on them now. Adding a few psychometric tests would not be difficult and scores could be recorded for future use. It does not seem that implausible, if one determined that it was the appropriate course of action.

[Boleslaw]

In addition, what about genetic testing? It is possible to perform the folliowing procedure: people who want to have children must apply for licenses. If someone is considered qualified at first glance, that person is subjected to various kinds of tests, including tests for undesirable recessives. Now, it is not plausible to stop all heteros from reproducing, but one might stop the less suitable in other respects from reproducing. This would be more efficient. It would be a nuisance when first implemented, but it would become less of one in the second generation when it could be applied to school children. There are already all kinds of tests on them now. Adding a few psychometric tests would not be difficult and scores could be recorded for future use.

This is a good demonstration of why Im against eugenics.

[Helios Panoptes]

This is a good demonstration of why Im against eugenics.

Well, I was only responding to another post. Personally, I don't think it's necessary to attack detrimental recessive alleles with the vigor described in that post. I do think the psychometric testing idea is reasonable. It doesn't make sense to me that a person with an IQ of 140 might be in a class with one with an IQ of 90. They are the same chronological age, but not the same mental age. The latter is more important. That is to say, it is a good idea completely independently of eugenics. Secondly, I also don't think it's bad to have restrictions on breeding. You have to apply for a permit to put a fence around your yard, but you can reproduce without any restrictions whatsoever? It doesn't make sense.

[Boleslaw]

It doesn't make sense to me that a person with an IQ of 140 might be in a class with one with an IQ of 90.

Why doesn't it? You deal with people of various different attributes, tempraments, skills, interests, etc all the time and in different circumstances. It's what we commonly call society.


You have to apply for a permit to put a fence around your yard, but you can reproduce without any restrictions whatsoever? It doesn't make sense.

No it doesn't make sense. A man should be allowed to put a fence around his yard, it's his property and as long as he's not violating the property of others.

[Geist]

Putting restrictions on reproduction seems to me to be the pinnacle of the anthrocentric world-view. The point where humans themselves become standing-reserve for society.

[Helios Panoptes]

Why doesn't it? You deal with people of various different attributes, tempraments, skills, interests, etc all the time and in different circumstances. It's what we commonly call society.

The answer is quite clear. Neither is able to learn at the pace and level appropriate to him. The class must be simple and slow-paced enough for the less intelligent to follow, which has the effect of boring the more intelligent. If the class were structured for the more intelligent student, then the less intelligent one would be unable to keep up. In the end, you wind up in the nether region between the two, thereby by leaving the more intelligent somewhat bored and the less intelligent somewhat frustrated. It is better to split them up and teach to their abilities.



No it doesn't make sense. A man should be allowed to put a fence around his yard, it's his property and as long as he's not violating the property of others.

This reply should have been anticipated. There's been a rhetorical breakdown on my end...

I agree that a man should be allowed to put up a fence if he likes without a permit. However, a man's offspring are ultimately others' burden, if they are unsuccessful. The man may be able to support his children if they are defective, but it is likely that they will eventually be loosed upon those surrounding them. We need to consider the ramifications of people having complete reproductive autonomy. In addition, there are others who have children that they are completely incapable of supporting at the time they have them, and society winds up handling them, too. A good analogy is that it's like throwing a stone into a pond; the ripples disrupt the water far from the impact point.

[Ixtab]

Like centralized economic planning, a eugenics program would supplant a spontaneous order with a planned oneExcept that (a) central economic planning was a success, and (b) eugenics is not a form of central planning or in any way analogous thereto. Eugenics is a choice made by individual parents. Reproductive therapy is a form of eugenics. Unborn babies can be genetically screened for traits which parents do not desire and terminated if in possession of such traits. Also parents will be able to produce a hundred embryos and select the embryo with the most desired combination of traits. This does not in any way require a central planning agency.

[Petr]

Except that (a) central economic planning was a success, and (b) eugenics is not a form of central planning or in any way analogous thereto.
Nobody takes your opinions seriously, Ix. :) Sometimes people may indulge or humor your eccentricities, but to those who already know you, it's all meaningless bwaa-bwaa-bwaa.


Petr

[Ixtab]

Nobody takes your opinions seriously, Ix. :) So no one, on this forum, agrees with the assertion that central economic planning was successful? I think there are many people here who would take such an opinion very seriously. Not that eugenics has anything to do with central planning, though.

[Geist]

Nobody takes your opinions seriously, Ix. :) Sometimes people may indulge or humor your eccentricities, but to those who already know you, it's all meaningless bwaa-bwaa-bwaa.


Petr

Please avoid these kinds of posts in The Lyceum. If you disagree with Ix debate him on the points.

[Roland]

I agree with Helios' indictments of the contemporary liberal organization of society in which the mentally advanced are leveled by the belief in the inherent mental equality of all humans. I submit that it is nonsensical and totalitarian to force all individuals to associate through non-exclusive institutions like schools, and the free market. There should be a system that protects the cultural and intellectual elite from the masses.

This argument isn't baseless, or radical; it is a fact that for millennia the common social-organizational form in civilization corresponded to some sort of caste system.

I believe the argument for a natural social order is sound, and I don't believe it is unreasonable to demand some recognition of the inherent inequality of human beings. The radicalism of eugenic planning, on the other hand, represents the antipode total-state to the totalitarianism of liberalism; it will mechanize society a long the lines of test scores. Such an organization will probably ignore social desideratum unaccounted for by science, but necessary for a healthy society.

Radical eugenic planning should therefore be avoided until a complete socio-biological map can be given for a human's being-in-the-world (desideratum etc.) - if such an account is possible.

[Boleslaw]

Roland, I'll have to address you later, but as far you're arguments about cultural elites and the mass - you set up a straw man there.

[Roland]

This may help:

To qualify, when I speak of the necessity of the recognition of a natural hierarchy, I am presupposing some sort of anterior union between the masses and the elites, be it in the form of a spatial (geo-political), ideologico-religious, economic, or racial union. I am not speaking of a fictional Earth populated only by atomized individuals.

[Schizo]

The eugenics is presented here as a striving for improvement of the human race(s). Nothing wrong with that alone.
But some points are missing.
For example the practical inability to set clear, impartial and objective criteria for its fruition. Also there are inescapable ethical controversies with that issue. I believe some natural eugenics works on intraspecies level as natural selection independent from man's interference. One of the laws of evolution is that the most progressive species multiple fastest and expand their areal.