Is Dawkins wrong about eugenics?

[The Man]

That is true, mainly because back then racism was mainstream and all the cool kids did it. So there was no real reason to even pretend otherwise. There was no reason to fiddle with the definitions.

But I just gave you examples of actual horrible implementations that could work just as well without even mentioning race. Even Aktion T4 totally didn't have race as a criterion at all. It's one of the few examples where even the actual Nazis were absolutely equal minded about being ass holes. Sterilizing by race only came a little bit later. You could pack the exact same goal as aiming to improve the IQ of the human species, bla, bla, bla.

Do you really want to get stuck against a "why are you against people being smarter?" argument? Because that's what'll happen if you try to argue with the fuzzily defined goal.

Personally I'd rather go:

A) ok, so how do you plan to go about it? Better funding for preschools in the formative years? Even as selective breeding goes, do you plan to raise funds to give extra child support to high IQ parents? Or what? Oh, silly me, of course it's preventing someone else from breeding, isn't it?

B) how do you know who is better or worse for that breeding program? See how long does that talk last before social darwinism rears its ugly head

Thus, by your own given examples there is absolutely no reason why one should even find themselves "stuck" against such an argument.

If you actually read my prior postings you'd see that my position has always been that what distinguishes "selective breeding" from the normal selections people make in just, well, "breeding", is how that selecting gets done. That also being where much of the moral debasement is enacted. So it seems we are more in agreement than not.

 

[The Man]

But more to the point, to illustrate the difference between goals and means, I could start from the same premises as back then (or for that matter among a lot of people right now):

A) the poor are stupid, and
B) the stupid should breed less

and come up with something like providing free contraception and abortions for the poor. I'm sure there are quite a few countries out there where that's not the case.

As long as nobody is forced to take the offer, and I manage to shut up about or at least sugar coat my criteria A and B, don't you think you'd have a pretty hard time opposing it on moral grounds? In fact, I'd probably be able to claim the moral high ground right off the bat, and be the hero of pretty much the whole left everywhere. And make no mistakes, it IS an eugenics program.

You can claim whatever you want and try to hide whatever you want. However, in order for your program to be effective it has to disproportionately affect your target group(s). That in and of itself is a bases for a moral objection to the program. Also many social programs are geared to helping families and children of the poor. In order to make the 'voluntary' compliance more enticing it has to be more beneficial not to have children than to have them. Again that in and of itself can be seen as an obvious attempt to breed down a particular population or populations. Not to mention having to overcome the basic desire to procreate even in unfavorable conditions.

 

[Darat]

You can claim whatever you want and try to hide whatever you want. However, in order for your program to be effective it has to disproportionately affect your target group(s). That in and of itself is a bases for a moral objection to the program. Also many social programs are geared to helping families and children of the poor. In order to make the 'voluntary' compliance more enticing it has to be more beneficial not to have children than to have them. Again that in and of itself can be seen as an obvious attempt to breed down a particular population or populations. Not to mention having to overcome the basic desire to procreate even in unfavorable conditions.

What is your objection?

 

[The Man]

It's pretty obvious nobody in this thread is working from that definition.

I suppose that's why no one here has claimed that anyone on this thread was "working from that definition".

Heck, even just assertions that were the starting point of this thread were made on some other social media.

What is the nature of your concern?

What's the nature of yours, other than apparently just claims no one on this thread has made?

In case you missed it..

Well, that's the thing, how you define it can determine how you might have to, or might be able to, get there. The result being either a form of eugenics less morally objectionable or one generally morally acceptable. Then even Dawkins assertion of opposing eugenics just on moral grounds starts to fade away

While, thankfully, no one on this thread is apparently "working from that definition" many others are.

 

[The Man]

What is your objection?

Objection to what? Please try to be specific.

 

[HansMustermann]

You can claim whatever you want and try to hide whatever you want. However, in order for your program to be effective it has to disproportionately affect your target group(s).

Note that neither I, nor IIRC Dawkins said anything about it passing some effectiveness threshold. Hell, I didn't even say it was a smart one. (Just using the social darwinism criterion there kinda disqualifies it from any kind of claim to intelligence)

That said, it would clearly affect the poor more than the rich, because only the poor would qualify for the aid at all.

That in and of itself is a bases for a moral objection to the program.

I wouldn't worry much. Pretty much just imagine now how much traction you'd get though with an objection boiling down to "OMG, it's immoral to help the poor more than the rich." Because that would be the only discrimination involved in my example.

I mean, I know there will be some nutcases who'll agree that any kind of helping the poor is wrong/distorting-the-market/whatever, but they tend to be a small minority.

Also many social programs are geared to helping families and children of the poor. In order to make the 'voluntary' compliance more enticing it has to be more beneficial not to have children than to have them. Again that in and of itself can be seen as an obvious attempt to breed down a particular population or populations. Not to mention having to overcome the basic desire to procreate even in unfavorable conditions.

Overcoming other pressures was also never a part of the definition, and it's not a criterion for efficiency. Those programs and pressures exist whether or not I start a charity to give free contraception to the poor. It's not like they'd only activate in response to it or anything. For judging effectiveness, you only have to see whether or not you end up with a result different from that baseline, and pretty much how much bang per buck do you get when you judge that difference made against the cost involved.

Essentially that objection is as daft as saying that paddles don't work, because you might not be able to row up certain rivers. Sure, but that's not the criterion for it working.

 

[lomiller]

I agree that the idea of a genetically perfect human doesn't make much sense. But a eugenicist doesn't actually need such a notion, only the notion of a better human.

There is, of course, no objective definition of what's better, but a eugenicist could have a subjective definition of what they considered to be better, and design a breeding program with that outcome in mind.

The notion of “a better human” is why eugenics fails IMO. What Dawkins is suggesting is that you could breed humans for specific traits just like you could with any other animal which is sensible. What eugenics proposes is that you can identify a set of traits that would make for a better human, and this is more questionable. IMO most of the traits proponents of eugenics would select for would be completely irrelevant.


You could breed humans for blond hair and blue eyes but it’s silly to think that makes them better humans. IMO, however, this is the type of thing people who have historically supported eugenics are interested in.

 

[blutoski]

The notion of “a better human” is why eugenics fails IMO. What Dawkins is suggesting is that you could breed humans for specific traits just like you could with any other animal which is sensible. What eugenics proposes is that you can identify a set of traits that would make for a better human, and this is more questionable. IMO most of the traits proponents of eugenics would select for would be completely irrelevant.


You could breed humans for blond hair and blue eyes but it’s silly to think that makes them better humans. IMO, however, this is the type of thing people who have historically supported eugenics are interested in.

And even with animals, we're not making better animals. We're making a breed better at a hyperspecific economic function in the food industry. If humans had some sort of apocalyptic virus and all died out, pretty much all of our domesticated species would follow shortly because they're utterly uncompetitive in a natural ecosystem.

So maybe, *maybe* there's an argument that an applied eugenics program can create humans with hyperspecific talents, but history with breeding suggests that doing so in such a short timeframe will associate them with heavy costs. Superquants who have to reproduce through IVF, maybe. Perfume designers with supersensitive smell, who are congenitally deaf dwarves. Artists whose saliva is multicoloured cubism, but they have an IQ of 30 and can't go to the bathroom by themselves.

 

[William Parcher]

And even with animals, we're not making better animals. We're making a breed better at a hyperspecific economic function in the food industry.

Don't leave out manmade domestic pet animals which may not be as hyperspecific as food animals.

 

[Roboramma]

The notion of “a better human” is why eugenics fails IMO. What Dawkins is suggesting is that you could breed humans for specific traits just like you could with any other animal which is sensible. What eugenics proposes is that you can identify a set of traits that would make for a better human, and this is more questionable. IMO most of the traits proponents of eugenics would select for would be completely irrelevant.


You could breed humans for blond hair and blue eyes but it’s silly to think that makes them better humans. IMO, however, this is the type of thing people who have historically supported eugenics are interested in.

How about breeding for longevity, for instance?

 

[lomiller]

How about breeding for longevity, for instance?

It’s probably not specific enough. Dog breeders are really only manipulating a couple dozen genes.


Also, we don’t really understand why things age or why longevity doesn’t select for itself already. There must be some underlying evolutionary reason behind it and it must be deeply engrained because all animals age. We probably stand a better change of short circuiting the aging process with medicine than we do “breeding it out”.

 

[William Parcher]

Also, we don’t really understand why things age or why longevity doesn’t select for itself already. There must be some underlying evolutionary reason behind it and it must be deeply engrained because all animals age.

Longevity would not be naturally selected for unless it includes longevity of reproductive fitness. It does exist in nature and I am thinking of crocodilians and other reptiles such as giant tortoises. These live a very long time and retain reproductive capability. They also continue to grow throughout their long life, or I think that is at least true for the crocodilians. I think that there are also some birds (albatrosses?) with long lives that continue to reproduce into old age.

 

[Cavemonster]

Longevity would not be naturally selected for unless it includes longevity of reproductive fitness.

I'd also suspect that longevity can be counterproductive to a species adaptability and can be selected against.

As was mentioned earlier, our longer time between generations makes humans a more difficult species to breed selectively than some others.

If you're talking about natural selection rather than artificial, longer lifetimes breeding mean that the same genes are sticking around longer. That makes the population genepool slower to change.

Imagine a population with a very long reproductively active lifespan hits a novel, life threatening challenge. Some small part of the population deals with it well, most don't. The longer the reproductive lifespan, the higher the percentage of the next generation WON't have those rarer genes. The higher the chances that the whole population dies in the face of this new challenge rather than a smaller subpopulation surviving.

Long reproductive lifespans work against genetic adaptability, even though they do have survival advantages too.

 

[d4m10n]

Also, we don’t really understand why things age or why longevity doesn’t select for itself already.

I'm not sure we need to understand the underlying mechanisms in order to select people who have, for example, eight great-grandparents all of whom lived past 80.

 

[lomiller]

I'm not sure we need to understand the underlying mechanisms in order to select people who have, for example, eight great-grandparents all of whom lived past 80.

You don’t need selective breeding for most people to live to 80, all you need is quality medical care and a healthy lifestyle. If you want people to live past 800 that’s a different story. If it’s even possible it seems more likely that it would be advances in medical science that does it, rather than selective breeding.

 

[Ron Swanson]

You don’t need selective breeding for most people to live to 80, all you need is quality medical care and a healthy lifestyle ........

You sound like Dr. McCoy from Star Trek TOS

 

[TragicMonkey]

You don’t need selective breeding for most people to live to 80, all you need is quality medical care and a healthy lifestyle.

I'm not so sure about that. There seem to be a lot of unknown factors in longevity. Both sides of my family are rather long-lived, and most of them haven't exerted a lick of effort towards living healthily.

 

[Distracted1]

I'm not so sure about that. There seem to be a lot of unknown factors in longevity. Both sides of my family are rather long-lived, and most of them haven't exerted a lick of effort towards living healthily.

My chain-smoking (for 72 years) hard drinking mother-in-law had half of a lung removed two years ago (at 83)did a little radiation, a little chemo, and is still going pretty damn strong.

There is obviously more to it than "clean living".

 

[blutoski]

I'm not sure we need to understand the underlying mechanisms in order to select people who have, for example, eight great-grandparents all of whom lived past 80.

There's always too many unknowns. For example, the mechanism of action could be 'willing to abandon their nation and avoid military service'. The side effect could be a nation that leaves itself undefended in times of war, which is vulnerable to genocide, undoing the extended life expectancy on average.

 

[blutoski]

Don't leave out manmade domestic pet animals which may not be as hyperspecific as food animals.

Agreed - I was just concentrating on the food supply domestication, partly because it's 99% of the domesticated biomass on earth, and partly to keep the conversation simple.

We also domesticate work animals, such as guard dogs, and companion animals, such as beagles and so on, but they're also examples of tradeoffs. One of my favourite cats was a ragdoll breed - they go all floppy when held by a human. Side effect? Whatever's happening to their nervous system to make them so cutely docile, it gives them no sensation of pain. They don't last a week in the wild. Just one example.

Other domesticated species include all those microbes we put in vats to make everything from beer to beano. I doubt any more than 1% of them could compete in the wild.