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Is Dawkins wrong about eugenics?

Belz... said:
Nonsense. All we need to do is decide what traits we want to see selected, and then do it. No need to know which genes code for them. We did that with dogds for thousands of years.
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I said that the hard part was that first we need to decide which traits we want to see selected.

You replied, "Nonsense. All we need to do is decide what traits we want to see selected.""
 
JoeMorgue said:
So people with complex ideas just don't get to talk on Twitter because it bugs you they can't fit an entire term paper with footnotes into 180 characters?
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Brb, I'm just spamming FBI crime statistics and getting upset when people accuse me of being a racist. Can't they see I'm just trying to be a good-faith, rational guy?
 
Dawkins is a world renowned evolutionary biologist. Eugenics isn't some weird thing outside of his wheelhouse. It's not like he started going off on rap music or the designed hitter rule.
 
Ian Osborne said:
I think his point is that arguments against eugenics on moral grounds and arguments on practical grounds are independent of each other, and you can dispute its morality without having to question its feasibility. Indeed, one should do just that, as it's perfectly feasible.
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To me it's identical when libertarian and conservative types deny climate change rather than merely rejecting policy proposals. In fact, this seems to me (in my experience) the most common form of climate change denial: addressing politics and not at all touching on the science except to deny it or engage in conspiracy theories.

But one doesn't HAVE to deny science in order to disagree with policy enacted to address a "problem".

It seems people are not being charitable with Dawkins.
 
pharphis said:
It seems people are not being charitable with Dawkins.
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I get the feeling the pretense is going to drop and the "To keep everything fair and balanced we must accept Dawkins as an atheist extremists, on par with Fred Phelps" arguments are going to start coming out soon.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Dawkins is a world renowned evolutionary biologist. Eugenics isn't some weird thing outside of his wheelhouse. It's not like he started going off on rap music or the designed hitter rule.
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Didn't he marry one of the Romanas? The one who looked like a pixie elf, not the statuesque one.
 
If by "Eugenics" he means the very broad concept of whether humans could be subject to selective breeding towards particular outcomes, then he'd be right(ish).

But that's more than just tone deaf, it's equivocation. Eugenics has a long history of focus on particular social traits. We could likely craft a breeding program that directed humanity's height, nose shape, ability to hold our breath. But the social traits at the heart of "Eugenics" are things that tend to be more nuanced and not yet fully understood combinations of genetics, epigenetics, personal environment and culture.

Animal breeding deals in much more crude strokes than the "productive society" Eugenics programs have sought. To use simply the word "Eugenics" if the aim is to say that some aspects of humans could be selected for through a breeding program seems purposefully courting controversy rather than trying to communicate anything useful.

And to those citing the limits of twitter- Twitter is not the only communication platform. It isn't even the only internet based short form platform. If you can't phrase your idea in a clear way on the platform, then use another one. I have a hard time categorizing this as anything other than trolling.
 
ISTM Dawkins has a valid point. Teleporting into bank vaults and teleporting out with all the money is immoral, but we don't put any effort into stopping people trying to do it, because (a) it's impossible, and (b) it's vanishingly unlikely that anyone trying it will do any harm whatsoever. It would be a mistake, however, to say that we don't need to stop people from trying to carry out programs of eugenics, because (a) it's possible, at the very least, to attempt it, though the results may not be what was intended, and (b) it can cause, and has in the past caused enormous suffering and harm. Sometimes "Keep your head out of the sand" is a worthwhile message.

Dave
 
JoeMorgue said:
Dawkins is a world renowned evolutionary biologist. Eugenics isn't some weird thing outside of his wheelhouse. It's not like he started going off on rap music or the designed hitter rule.
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Dawkins is also a world renowned tedious pedant and deliberate internet provocateur. Glad to see him out there defending his title of "tactless annoying guy".

It's been strange over the years to see all these big names of the "new atheism" or "skeptical" movement of the mid 2000's turn into old men yelling at clouds and vague-posting reactionary-right talking points.

Cavemonster said:
And to those citing the limits of twitter- Twitter is not the only communication platform. It isn't even the only internet based short form platform. If you can't phrase your idea in a clear way on the platform, then use another one. I have a hard time categorizing this as anything other than trolling.
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This whole post was a much more elegant phrasing at what I was trying (and failing) to get across. It's hard to imagine that Dawkins is unaware how these brief, vague, context-free takes on red-hot topics will be interpreted. It's a shame that someone who honestly could have claimed the title of "public intellectual" now seems to spend so much time trolling.
 
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SuburbanTurkey said:
Dawkins is also a world renowned tedious pedant and deliberate internet provocateur. Glad to see him out there defending his title of "tactless annoying guy".

It's been strange over the years to see all these big names of the "new atheism" or "skeptical" movement of the mid 2000's turn into old men yelling at clouds and vague-posting reactionary-right talking points.
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There it is...
 
JoeMorgue said:
I hate talking about this topic because everything associated with eugenics (rightfully) is just so goddamn skeevy.

But on the other hand anti-eugenics is one of those "but humans a different" arguments and those always sit poorly with me.
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It's not that humans are different, it's that the kind of traits Eugenics promoters talk about breeding for are different.

We could probably breed humans to be more docile, or to run faster. We shouldn't but we could do things similar to animal breeding to achieve physical and broad strokes results.

As a side note, those controlled breeding programs often have terrible results beyond the very narrow traits selected for. Purebred dogs are a cesspool of breathing problems, and susceptibility to all kinds of disease. For general health, a broad genetic pool tends to be a good idea.

But because we ARE humans and what we expect from humanity is not just broadly defined physical attributes, our different expectations create a difference. Breeding a horse that can run fast IS different than breeding a human who can positively contribute to society. Because distilling the latter into genetic specifics gets a hell of a lot trickier.
 
pipelineaudio said:
The cognitive dissonance in religiously motivated thinking boggles the mind. Sad to see it here
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We find the idea of practicing eugenics on humans to be morally repugnant. So we make up Just So Stories about how it's scientifically dubious, or something.

Kind of like saying that atomic bombs would be a moral horror, so it's a good thing that thermonuclear chain reactions just aren't feasible anyway.
 
theprestige said:
We find the idea of practicing eugenics on humans to be morally repugnant. So we make up Just So Stories about how it's scientifically dubious, or something.

Kind of like saying that atomic bombs would be a moral horror, so it's a good thing that thermonuclear chain reactions just aren't feasible anyway.
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But to date the attempts at practicing eugenics have been scientifically dubious: implemented by people who thought "criminality" was an inherited trait, for example.

It's a lot like communism: whether the theory's sound or not, all the real world attempts to practice have been flawed to the point of risibility.
 
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