Eugenics
Offline So, why is eugenics wrong? I mean, from a rational perspective?
I can see how I would argue that it is bad if you make a broad based claim, like white people are better than black people, so black people should not be allowed to breed. I imagine I can show evidence that runs contrary to the basic premise that white people are 'better' than black people. The problem I run into is when you make eugenics smaller and more focused.
Say we outlaw breeding for certain very bad genetic traits, things like that.
In a first world country, I would say that if the parents/families are willing to take that risk, it might bring them more happiness to move forward with the birth...and since it is a first world country, they probably have resources available to support the resulting child.
But what about the third world? Rationally, does it make more sense to push draconian population control / eugenics when the alternative is starvation and the death of healthy, due to resources consumed by the 'bad'?
I can also make a rational argument for not allowing eugenics stuff on existing people because it seems risky to myself in the long run. Who decides who is 'fixed', etc...I might end up on the chopping block. And I can argue against wide-spread eugenics by showing how genetic diversity is a good thing. So I suppose my overall point is about eugenics practices being employed before conception and at the fetus level, especially regarding non-wealthy societies.
I'm not sure if I was very clear, feel free to ask questions so I can clarify my own, hardly understood, question.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
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Humans already practise Eugenics without rationality or objectivity:
Go to a bar, get drunk off your ass, then select the chick that is drunk enough to go home with you.
Or if your religious: Go to church, select someone as equally delusional.
Don't you think anything would be an improvement?
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
Eugenics is the application of controlled, selective breeding to the human race for the purpose of improvement. It is the application of thousands of years of domestic breeding experience to the human population.
In this argument, Gauche is right. Selective abortion based on genetic issues is a bit different than the full-on application of historic breeding programs. There are some base issues they share in common, but the similarities end there. Eugenics (and domestic breeding) includes elements of selecting for positive traits, and intentionally breeding for those traits, as well as large-scale culling of entire family lines simply because one offspring expressed atavistic traits.
Interestingly, this is also why creationists who accuse Hitler of being a Darwinist are completely wrong. Hitler was attempting to apply domestic breeding experience to the human race. It wasn't "Darwinism" at all.
"Yes, I seriously believe that consciousness is a product of a natural process. I find that the neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers who proceed from that premise are the ones who are actually making useful contributions to our understanding of the mind." - PZ Myers
I guess it's not eugenics. We can call it those things (the examples I've given) what they are, however, it seems that there should be a name for them collectively.
BigUniverse wrote,
"Well the things that happen less often are more likely to be the result of the supper natural. A thing like loosing my keys in the morning is not likely supper natural, but finding a thousand dollars or meeting a celebrity might be."
Most of the cases you guys are talking about are not really inherited conditions- they are either rare genetic mutations or very recessive traits that only appear occassionally in the gene pool. Selective breeding would not be an effective way to deal with most of these issues. I have MS,for example,but the odds of my passing it to my own child are quite minimal.
The film "Idiocracy" is interesting because it envisions a society where the trailer trash is outbreeding intelligent people by such a margin as to reduce the collective IQ of all society. Fortunately, it doesn't work this way. I come from trailer trash, not so many generations back, and I still have above average intelligence. Many undesirable traits in society are not soley inherited, so Eugenics doesn't work to control them.
"Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense."