I have to spend a week reading a math textbook instead of 2 hours because heckin eliterinos didn't want to breed enough and be mean to heckin non-eliterinos!
Eugenics will never succeed in societies that value liberty and the idea of human dignity so much. These include having access to the whole spectrum of human experience, including breeding.
Eugenics movements died because they were anti-Western. The real way to implement something like this would be to deal with Christianity and its offshoot humanism. Liberal, humanist democracies can't exist without their philosophical underpinnings, so they would die too. Then you could get to atheistic, Darwinian policies like eugenics.
Which is to say, you're asking for a monumentally difficult task. Not impossible, but very close to it.
Why are you implying that Eugenics is necessarily atheistic? In a just society the improvement of the general material quality of your polity would be central to Religion. Tesla and Galton's writings on the matter were both teleological.
We have the means to improve upon morality, aligning it with genetic health and technological progress.
Eugenics is not dead. It is alive and well and wreaking havoc but with a different name… This article and the comments that follow are proof that people would like to see applied eugenics. Why am I not surprised.
"If it’s not a widget that they can use to get a leg up personally,"
This is why egalitarianism wins, because it appeals to each individual personally, and most individuals today are selfish and high-time preferring.
"Why can’t we have a one child policy for the bottom half of the bell curve?"
Being extra-harsh on crime, lowering the minimum age for trial as an adult, and giving profuse executions before the culprits could pass on their genes could in fact work to exponentially reduce the fertility of the bottom, since in our industrial society (ala Dutton et al.) it seems only the criminal underclass has above-replacement fertility. Easiest way to decimate bottom birthrates are to remove the parents before they can breed.
Why is it important to restrict the bottom? Can’t you just find a high-IQ wife within the status quo and have a bunch of kids? Other elites can do the same. We’re wealthier than ever before, and technologies for eugenics are improving too. No need to lament!
Also, doesn’t human intelligence have a limit? The smartest person in each generation can’t just keep getting smarter infinitely, right?
Essentially, in the status quo, people can practice classical eugenics; it's just that high-IQ people generally aren't hyper-concerned with IQ-maxing the next generation. Therefore, I think you just need to convince high-IQ people to get into the business of eugenics more than any draconian policies.
Stupid people don't plan ahead and will outbreed smart people who invest in their children, in the absence of Darwinian selective pressure (gang violence, starvation, drug overdose, accidental deaths, abortion, infanticide etc.)
I'm not sure that's true, but I can accept the premise. Still, I don't see why we need restrictions. Many animal populations outbreed high-IQ humans, but there's no need to restrict that—just encourage (maybe even collectively incentivize) more children among high-IQ human populations and let the animals do their thing. The same can be said about low-IQ humans. Win on the margins and you can make progress. For example: be tough on crime—you can't breed in prison.
Is the purpose of the human project to perfectly optimize for intelligence? I think we can find a balance that includes other moral considerations—like freedom and the well-being of low-IQ humans, and even animals, if you're willing to extend your values to all entities that suffer.
If you showed that the bottom half of the bell curve posed an incredibly negative drag on the elites (or the human project generally), then maybe radical policy change would be necessary. However, that’s not the case.
Eugenics does not decrease freedom or well being. It increases the overall well being of everyone and in the long run will increase freedom properly understood. Eugenics merely decreases the evolutionary fitness of alleles that are bad for human values, ie liberty and well being, such as low IQ alleles, which naturally lend themselves to servitude and poverty.
"Many animal populations outbreed high-IQ humans, but there's no need to restrict that"... but we don't give those animals the vote, or food stamps, or Medicaid.
Low IQ populations can interbreed and demand rights if you don't enforce a caste system with negative intermarriage (can only marry down in social standing). It's simpler to imagine "castrate the dumbs" than figure out exact genetic makeup of artisans, priests, untouchables etc.
Stupid people are useful as biological robots that will tolerate horrid conditions, but figuring out exact management of those types is less important than ensuring you have smarts who can act as managers.
This doesn’t include any of the costs, which were certainly significant. People in western democracies don’t like being told how many children they can or can’t have, and are liable to violently revolt, or vote, should someone decide to implement a regime hostile to them.
Even in communist China they didn’t implement any form of eugenics (even giving exemptions to minorities under the one child policy).
Any complaint that doesn’t consider practical reality isn’t especially useful.
If your policy disregards the views and interests of the majority of the population, it can’t reasonably be called policy at all. More like wish fulfillment.
Cool. How do you accomplish that? What mechanisms are put in place to change birth rates to anywhere near the level you write here? What do you expect the response will be to that?
Eugenics are basically in no one’s interests who is currently alive. The timeline where you can get meaningful improvements is longer than most people care about. You’re proposing paternalistic restriction of birth rates for a benefit that won’t even have positive effects for generations, and for much of the population, they wouldn’t have many, if any, descendants alive to experience those benefits.
If you force it on the masses, they will eat shit. Public School, fluoride, Hollywood, Covid Lockdowns, Mass Immigration... Revolution is outdated when everyone is too civilized to break out into wanton violence. And those that do, are unorganized and easily put down.
The masses are docile, the reality is that the big change in the eugenics case would be skyrocketing elite fertility. It was elites who would be told to have 4+ kids who opposed eugenics with the most consequences.
Or, more articulately, anything short of (metaphorically) sticking a gun in someone's face will fail to triggure the fight-or-flight response, thus resistance to a political threat requires collective delayed gratification and organization that the masses don't have.
"We're just putting 1% poop powder in your food, shit sandwiches are just a conspiracy. Only stupid, paranoid rednecks will say it's a problem." Repeat every 10 years until guzzling diarrhea is normalized.
Erm that's like heckin' mean & shit because like...because it just is, ok!?
I have to spend a week reading a math textbook instead of 2 hours because heckin eliterinos didn't want to breed enough and be mean to heckin non-eliterinos!
Intelligence aside, there is also the prevention of mental disorders and heritable diseases. We could have been healthier and happier.
Eugenics will never succeed in societies that value liberty and the idea of human dignity so much. These include having access to the whole spectrum of human experience, including breeding.
Eugenics movements died because they were anti-Western. The real way to implement something like this would be to deal with Christianity and its offshoot humanism. Liberal, humanist democracies can't exist without their philosophical underpinnings, so they would die too. Then you could get to atheistic, Darwinian policies like eugenics.
Which is to say, you're asking for a monumentally difficult task. Not impossible, but very close to it.
Why are you implying that Eugenics is necessarily atheistic? In a just society the improvement of the general material quality of your polity would be central to Religion. Tesla and Galton's writings on the matter were both teleological.
We have the means to improve upon morality, aligning it with genetic health and technological progress.
Eugenics is not dead. It is alive and well and wreaking havoc but with a different name… This article and the comments that follow are proof that people would like to see applied eugenics. Why am I not surprised.
"If it’s not a widget that they can use to get a leg up personally,"
This is why egalitarianism wins, because it appeals to each individual personally, and most individuals today are selfish and high-time preferring.
"Why can’t we have a one child policy for the bottom half of the bell curve?"
Being extra-harsh on crime, lowering the minimum age for trial as an adult, and giving profuse executions before the culprits could pass on their genes could in fact work to exponentially reduce the fertility of the bottom, since in our industrial society (ala Dutton et al.) it seems only the criminal underclass has above-replacement fertility. Easiest way to decimate bottom birthrates are to remove the parents before they can breed.
Why is it important to restrict the bottom? Can’t you just find a high-IQ wife within the status quo and have a bunch of kids? Other elites can do the same. We’re wealthier than ever before, and technologies for eugenics are improving too. No need to lament!
Also, doesn’t human intelligence have a limit? The smartest person in each generation can’t just keep getting smarter infinitely, right?
Essentially, in the status quo, people can practice classical eugenics; it's just that high-IQ people generally aren't hyper-concerned with IQ-maxing the next generation. Therefore, I think you just need to convince high-IQ people to get into the business of eugenics more than any draconian policies.
Stupid people don't plan ahead and will outbreed smart people who invest in their children, in the absence of Darwinian selective pressure (gang violence, starvation, drug overdose, accidental deaths, abortion, infanticide etc.)
I'm not sure that's true, but I can accept the premise. Still, I don't see why we need restrictions. Many animal populations outbreed high-IQ humans, but there's no need to restrict that—just encourage (maybe even collectively incentivize) more children among high-IQ human populations and let the animals do their thing. The same can be said about low-IQ humans. Win on the margins and you can make progress. For example: be tough on crime—you can't breed in prison.
Is the purpose of the human project to perfectly optimize for intelligence? I think we can find a balance that includes other moral considerations—like freedom and the well-being of low-IQ humans, and even animals, if you're willing to extend your values to all entities that suffer.
If you showed that the bottom half of the bell curve posed an incredibly negative drag on the elites (or the human project generally), then maybe radical policy change would be necessary. However, that’s not the case.
Eugenics does not decrease freedom or well being. It increases the overall well being of everyone and in the long run will increase freedom properly understood. Eugenics merely decreases the evolutionary fitness of alleles that are bad for human values, ie liberty and well being, such as low IQ alleles, which naturally lend themselves to servitude and poverty.
"Many animal populations outbreed high-IQ humans, but there's no need to restrict that"... but we don't give those animals the vote, or food stamps, or Medicaid.
Low IQ populations can interbreed and demand rights if you don't enforce a caste system with negative intermarriage (can only marry down in social standing). It's simpler to imagine "castrate the dumbs" than figure out exact genetic makeup of artisans, priests, untouchables etc.
Stupid people are useful as biological robots that will tolerate horrid conditions, but figuring out exact management of those types is less important than ensuring you have smarts who can act as managers.
This doesn’t include any of the costs, which were certainly significant. People in western democracies don’t like being told how many children they can or can’t have, and are liable to violently revolt, or vote, should someone decide to implement a regime hostile to them.
Even in communist China they didn’t implement any form of eugenics (even giving exemptions to minorities under the one child policy).
Any complaint that doesn’t consider practical reality isn’t especially useful.
These "costs" are pulled out of thin air and are minuscule relative to the gains anyway. Did you even read the whole article?
If your policy disregards the views and interests of the majority of the population, it can’t reasonably be called policy at all. More like wish fulfillment.
eugenics is in the best interests of the population, by definition basically
Cool. How do you accomplish that? What mechanisms are put in place to change birth rates to anywhere near the level you write here? What do you expect the response will be to that?
Eugenics are basically in no one’s interests who is currently alive. The timeline where you can get meaningful improvements is longer than most people care about. You’re proposing paternalistic restriction of birth rates for a benefit that won’t even have positive effects for generations, and for much of the population, they wouldn’t have many, if any, descendants alive to experience those benefits.
If you force it on the masses, they will eat shit. Public School, fluoride, Hollywood, Covid Lockdowns, Mass Immigration... Revolution is outdated when everyone is too civilized to break out into wanton violence. And those that do, are unorganized and easily put down.
The masses are docile, the reality is that the big change in the eugenics case would be skyrocketing elite fertility. It was elites who would be told to have 4+ kids who opposed eugenics with the most consequences.
“If only my ideology had infinite power outside the existing political system it would be great” said every self-deluded armchair politician ever.
Or, more articulately, anything short of (metaphorically) sticking a gun in someone's face will fail to triggure the fight-or-flight response, thus resistance to a political threat requires collective delayed gratification and organization that the masses don't have.
"We're just putting 1% poop powder in your food, shit sandwiches are just a conspiracy. Only stupid, paranoid rednecks will say it's a problem." Repeat every 10 years until guzzling diarrhea is normalized.