I wonder if Eugenics fell out of favor as the percent of population involved in agriculture declined throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. When Darwin and Mendel's theories came out, around half of the American population was engaged in agriculture. Eugenics is common sense when you're dealing with crops, we've been selecting for better crops and better livestock for thousands of years. When you're working in a factory, or an office, it is more obscure.
I wish I could double like for your statement on books having low info-density. Although it looks good and learned to have a full bookshelf I find papers so much better for actually learning about topics in a given timeframe. Chatgpt and DeepSeek have been great at sourcing papers for me, even on esoteric topics like New World crop use in Qing China.
Eugenics will get popular once individuals can use it to enhance themselves. When it has nothing actionable to do then its in self interest to engage in virtue signaling.
Epigenetic therapies will come after genetic editing of embryos. But even that will do little for a generation that only cares about themselves, and not about their children
You know, I've done calc, linear algebra, stats, and physics, and I don't trust our current thought leaders to be picking the future gene pool. I don't know what government I would trust to engage in eugenics, frankly. They'll just try to breed people who will agree with them!
Also when you try to breed all the smart people together you wind up getting more autism. There's probably some sort of physiologic limits to how high human IQ can go, perhaps in a few decades we'll understand why.
One thing I find confusing is that you don't actually need Darwin or Galton to do eugenics. Any society from the invention of selective breeding 10k years ago onwards could in theory have bred super soldiers, super farmers, super bureaucrats, super scientists and gained massive advantages in competition against other societies. Why didn't cultural evolution select for that and make eugenics the standard in like the bronze age?
I wouldn't worry about the implementation issue. Democracy isn't eternal any genuine aristocracy or monarchy would not only be convinced but rather be proactively Eugenic
“I propose we can’t have eugenics because people are biased against it and aren’t smart enough to overcome that bias using evidence”
I tend to agree, but one must attempt to separate the political environment from the scientific environment wrt eventual implementation. Perhaps your concept of “implementation”—I’ll leave that ill defined for the moment—is immersed in Western democracies and its reliance on persuasion of the people, all of whom have some (regrettably I must agree) say in policy in the West’s “democratic” system. Can that be said to be true of other forms of political organization? Would we for example consider China—a country that forcefully implemented a “one child” policy for decades—as a society concerned with the moral niceties of eugenics, especially as related to higher IQ and better health outcomes for its future generations?
My suspicion is that when the technology for eugenics reaches the stage of potential and reliable implementation, it will happen first in China (due to wealth and government control). When the effects of such a policy become obvious in generation or two, we will play “catch up” in the West. It might be too late, but I think the precedent will be set and those wishing to optimize their offspring’s health and abilities will jump at the chance. I remember when abortion was illegal here in the US, however those with means simply hopped a flight to countries where the procedure was legal. Within a single generation, Roe vs Wade opened the floodgates to the procedure. So it will be here for eugenics.
Then I must have missed out on your theme somewhere. Perhaps you’d elaborate? My understanding is that in the absence of “strict Darwinian selection”, we’ve been in a period of dysgenics, i.e., increasing “spiteful mutants” as Woodley first put it for at least 150 years. You can’t unring that bell, but you may overcome it through selective/enhanced reproduction—if that’s a correct term. That is my understanding of eugenics—repairing the genetic line.
Okay, and why is the share of learned people who do radically lower than it used to be? Eugenics used to be all the rage among the learned.
Even if their collective IQ has dropped somewhat (which may or may not be true), that can’t be the main reason. There are sociological and ideological forces at play.
what even is your argument? That people who support eugenics are dumb? do you think we solved the problem of dysgenics ? We havent, this is a fundamental issue with civilization. The academics, scientists, and medical professionals who pushed for eugenics in the 20th century were never actually refuted, their policies became unpopular on moral grounds.
Indeed, i would assume these people are like myself, having opinions that would unpopular and unpalatable to the masses but supported by science, reality, and data. I’m just smart enough to notice and keep my mouth shut
Eugenics is possible, but it cannot be an open policy, but it must simply be an unravelling of the current dysgenic policies, and perhaps controlled application of evolutionary pressures that favour intelligence in survival. I'm sure you are aware of Ed Dutton's work on this, his argument rests on the idea that social nets as we have them force the collective IQ sown over generations through perverted incentives.
Theoretically the obvious answer to this would be a political system which isn’t dependent on public opinion at all be it a open despotate or a covert one either way it would have to be a ruling system which just quietly forces down whatever necessary policies into the general population, there are clear ethical issues with such a solution however not because of the new government model mind you but rather in the ensuring the long term success of the process of eugenic selection at a national level: this would have to be a multi generational project and any break of the chain would doom any national system and any eugenic effort with it.
Alternatively lower scale systems of eugenics seem much easier to implement if one makes it palpable for the public: who would complain about a completely voluntary system of matchmaking which paired high IQ individuals or specially gifted athletes and technical geniuses and helps them to form family’s? Then again such a solution would have only marginal results, yet with about 80 families formed from pairings of fairly high IQ individuals there would still be noticeable improvement for these lineages…
I don't think its intelligence deficiency that prevents people from grasping it. In fact, I'm almost certain it's easier to convince a 90IQ manual labourer of benefits of eugenics than it is to convince a 115IQ college educated professional.
Very good and based opinion. I wonder though if this implies that a society run by high IQ scientist-experts would be generally better than what we have today?
I wonder if Eugenics fell out of favor as the percent of population involved in agriculture declined throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. When Darwin and Mendel's theories came out, around half of the American population was engaged in agriculture. Eugenics is common sense when you're dealing with crops, we've been selecting for better crops and better livestock for thousands of years. When you're working in a factory, or an office, it is more obscure.
That and the fact that most people probably don’t even have a basic understanding of Eugenics. They just hear it as a bad word to not be discussed.
Darn city slickers!
I wish I could double like for your statement on books having low info-density. Although it looks good and learned to have a full bookshelf I find papers so much better for actually learning about topics in a given timeframe. Chatgpt and DeepSeek have been great at sourcing papers for me, even on esoteric topics like New World crop use in Qing China.
Eugenics will get popular once individuals can use it to enhance themselves. When it has nothing actionable to do then its in self interest to engage in virtue signaling.
Epigenetic therapies will come after genetic editing of embryos. But even that will do little for a generation that only cares about themselves, and not about their children
You know, I've done calc, linear algebra, stats, and physics, and I don't trust our current thought leaders to be picking the future gene pool. I don't know what government I would trust to engage in eugenics, frankly. They'll just try to breed people who will agree with them!
Also when you try to breed all the smart people together you wind up getting more autism. There's probably some sort of physiologic limits to how high human IQ can go, perhaps in a few decades we'll understand why.
One thing I find confusing is that you don't actually need Darwin or Galton to do eugenics. Any society from the invention of selective breeding 10k years ago onwards could in theory have bred super soldiers, super farmers, super bureaucrats, super scientists and gained massive advantages in competition against other societies. Why didn't cultural evolution select for that and make eugenics the standard in like the bronze age?
On of the Habsburg kings wanted to do that for his soldiers but the pope said no.
Link? I could only find https://www.cracked.com/article_29146_prussias-king-tried-to-breed-army-gigantic-super-soldiers.html regarding Fredrick 2. Hohenzollern, not a Habsburg, of course the pope was irrelevant to him.
I must be high IQ the way I want to be around smart beautiful people and be separated from ugly retards
I wouldn't worry about the implementation issue. Democracy isn't eternal any genuine aristocracy or monarchy would not only be convinced but rather be proactively Eugenic
Well, that was depressing.
Humans no, the Dwarven people yes
“I propose we can’t have eugenics because people are biased against it and aren’t smart enough to overcome that bias using evidence”
I tend to agree, but one must attempt to separate the political environment from the scientific environment wrt eventual implementation. Perhaps your concept of “implementation”—I’ll leave that ill defined for the moment—is immersed in Western democracies and its reliance on persuasion of the people, all of whom have some (regrettably I must agree) say in policy in the West’s “democratic” system. Can that be said to be true of other forms of political organization? Would we for example consider China—a country that forcefully implemented a “one child” policy for decades—as a society concerned with the moral niceties of eugenics, especially as related to higher IQ and better health outcomes for its future generations?
My suspicion is that when the technology for eugenics reaches the stage of potential and reliable implementation, it will happen first in China (due to wealth and government control). When the effects of such a policy become obvious in generation or two, we will play “catch up” in the West. It might be too late, but I think the precedent will be set and those wishing to optimize their offspring’s health and abilities will jump at the chance. I remember when abortion was illegal here in the US, however those with means simply hopped a flight to countries where the procedure was legal. Within a single generation, Roe vs Wade opened the floodgates to the procedure. So it will be here for eugenics.
Eugenics is not in the future technologically, that's a different thing entirely. Eugenics is what we've missed out on for 150 years.
Then I must have missed out on your theme somewhere. Perhaps you’d elaborate? My understanding is that in the absence of “strict Darwinian selection”, we’ve been in a period of dysgenics, i.e., increasing “spiteful mutants” as Woodley first put it for at least 150 years. You can’t unring that bell, but you may overcome it through selective/enhanced reproduction—if that’s a correct term. That is my understanding of eugenics—repairing the genetic line.
I’m not sure this makes much sense. Nowadays in the West, the higher a person’s IQ, the less likely they are to be vocal eugenicists.
Some vocal eugenicists have high IQs but they’re a relatively small group. Clearly, this is about more than just IQ.
Eugenics is about raising IQ and has always been a thing for the learned.
How many Nobel Prize winners support eugenics now?
a few
Okay, and why is the share of learned people who do radically lower than it used to be? Eugenics used to be all the rage among the learned.
Even if their collective IQ has dropped somewhat (which may or may not be true), that can’t be the main reason. There are sociological and ideological forces at play.
their bias grew because of dysgenics
if you judge the credibility of an idea by the number of nobel prize winners who support it, you might be a product of dysgenics
And what is this straw man the product of?
what even is your argument? That people who support eugenics are dumb? do you think we solved the problem of dysgenics ? We havent, this is a fundamental issue with civilization. The academics, scientists, and medical professionals who pushed for eugenics in the 20th century were never actually refuted, their policies became unpopular on moral grounds.
Indeed, i would assume these people are like myself, having opinions that would unpopular and unpalatable to the masses but supported by science, reality, and data. I’m just smart enough to notice and keep my mouth shut
Eugenics is possible, but it cannot be an open policy, but it must simply be an unravelling of the current dysgenic policies, and perhaps controlled application of evolutionary pressures that favour intelligence in survival. I'm sure you are aware of Ed Dutton's work on this, his argument rests on the idea that social nets as we have them force the collective IQ sown over generations through perverted incentives.
Theoretically the obvious answer to this would be a political system which isn’t dependent on public opinion at all be it a open despotate or a covert one either way it would have to be a ruling system which just quietly forces down whatever necessary policies into the general population, there are clear ethical issues with such a solution however not because of the new government model mind you but rather in the ensuring the long term success of the process of eugenic selection at a national level: this would have to be a multi generational project and any break of the chain would doom any national system and any eugenic effort with it.
Alternatively lower scale systems of eugenics seem much easier to implement if one makes it palpable for the public: who would complain about a completely voluntary system of matchmaking which paired high IQ individuals or specially gifted athletes and technical geniuses and helps them to form family’s? Then again such a solution would have only marginal results, yet with about 80 families formed from pairings of fairly high IQ individuals there would still be noticeable improvement for these lineages…
The concept of eugenics is very simple to grasp.
I don't think its intelligence deficiency that prevents people from grasping it. In fact, I'm almost certain it's easier to convince a 90IQ manual labourer of benefits of eugenics than it is to convince a 115IQ college educated professional.
What other good ideas in your view are impossible to implement?
Very good and based opinion. I wonder though if this implies that a society run by high IQ scientist-experts would be generally better than what we have today?