Most people are too set in their world view to make sense of this. You need to pretty much accept that 1) intelligence is genetic, 2) that intelligent (particularly women) people have less children, 3) The difference between 1st and 3rd world nations is roughly 20 IQ points. 4) That this implies that human races aren't equal in average intelligence. 5) That the egalitarian dream is a lie.

Regarding the killing of the Jews by the Nazis, this had little to do with eugenics and everything with nationalism. The statistics show that European Jews are in fact more intelligent than Caucasians, and they have a slew of Nobel prizes to prove it. So from a eugenic viewpoint killing the Jews made little sense.

Regarding a solution, as pointed out by Chris Bailey a libertarian form of social Darwinism is a solution that doesn't involve the state. Combine this with allowing, and even subsidizing, genetic screening and manipulation and you have so called liberal eugenics as portrayed in the movie Gattaca.

Thats a bit of a rubbish analogy. You may feel that going deaf is like being hit by a car, and thats fine. Not everyone will feel like that. Sure it must suck, I wouldn't mind too much tho. What I would mind is losing my sight but I am sure I would cope some how. You are not driving a car over a child: living with an affliction like that can be coped with. It may be different if you were going to live 3 weeks in agonising pain and then die, then I might agree… but being deaf or carrying some other genetic anomoly? Not a chance.

What I object to, and what it seems everyone else here also objects to, is that someone could have the right to tell me that I cannot have a deaf or otherwise disabled child. Some people live for having disabled children, it may complete their lives in some way that would ultimately be unobtainable otherwise. You have no right to put little boxes around people and say "this is wrong". Your badness is not my badness, and never will be. Your entire argument is based on the assumption that the human race is ultimately doomed because we have people who are unproductive in society… this is entirely incorrect. Those people may be "unproductive" in an economic sense, but they bring all sorts of other riches to society too many to name here.

Quite apart from that, how can anyone be sure that removing a genetic stream from the population would be beneficial? I mean, look at the downs syndrome case and tell me that hasn't got the potential to be useful?


When you meddle with stuff like this, you damn well have to be sure that you are doing the right thing, and that is impossible beyond a personal choice.

Isn't that what China does?



I mean, I just thought it was discouraged to have more than one child. I mean heavily discouraged sure, but only discouraged.

Yes you are right, it would be a cold day in hell before I start to believe fud like that.


Moot point, already explained that it can be described as eugenics.

Depends on your selection criteria right?



Ok never seen it. All for subsidisation of programs like that as long as you can opt in or out by free will.

Presumably you're not deaf, and therefore have no idea how profoundly isolating it is, even no idea of the sense of loss involved at no longer being able to properly listen to the kind of music I enjoy.

But the severity of the problem is entirely irrelevant, anyway. If you find it easier to understand as an analogy, then ask yourself: what is the moral distinction between deliberately conceiving a deaf child and taking a child with normal hearing and deliberately causing it to become deaf? You presumably accept that the latter is a form of genuine abuse? Presumably you wouldn't be comfortable with two people looking after a child if their idea of childcare was to deliberately and irreparably damage its hearing?

What you then have to ask is how much useful difference there is between making a child deaf on purpose and making a child deaf through negligence. I am actually willing to accept that injuring someone through negligence may be less bad than doing it on purpose, but negligence still implies culpability. I don't feel that people who cause a child to become deaf through their own negligence should be allowed to get away with it.


No one is suggesting that. People will, sadly, always be disabled in accidents, and will need someone to look after them when they are. That's an altruistic act, and one that should be encouraged. But there is a world of difference between being a person who wants to care for the disabled and being a person who actively wants people to become disabled so that they can care for them. The first of those things is admirable, the second is an abomination that should be condemned in the strongest possible terms.

(It is also, incidentally, a profound misconception to imagine that adhering to a eugenic philosophy means that the value of a disabled person's life will somehow be diminished. It isn't. It's simply seen as desirable to prevent people from becoming disabled wherever possible.)

Quite frankly, that depends on how any one individual would view deafness. You are entirely missing my point.. You are right, "how deaf" is entirely irrelevant, but you cannot decide that it is morally wrong for someone else. You do not know how they perceive being deaf, and it would be entirely wrong to make that decision for someone else no matter what your views are. For you, it is lonely and isolating. For some, it may define them as a person and they may even see it as a positive trait.



There is an entire world of difference between going naturally deaf (even if it was avoidable) and forcing something into someones ear to make them deaf. Surely you are not drawing a comparison?



Again this would depend on how you would view deafness. If you see it as a massive detrimental trait, then yes, fine. If you see it as being a good thing, even a defining trait, then no.




yes, that is what you are suggesting…



I think I see some of your point. It is a fine line, there is no world of difference. If the parents are willing to accept blind (no pun intended) fate then generally its ok. If they want a deaf child then that affliction is not actually *that* bad. If they want the child to be disabled terribly as to cause the child pain and suffering, then perhaps no. But that is their decision, not ours or yours. You cannot tell them "no", it is not your right.



And how would you make the decision, on a general basis, that these unborn disabled children would not have any positive effect on society? You cannot. That is a decision to be made by the individual.

This thread has nothing on that evolution thread I am responsible for starting. At least in that thread nearly everybody took the debate seriously and provided some insightful contributions to the debate. I kinda gave up reading this thread back on page 4 when someone (DH maybe? I forgot already) mentioned the evolution thread. I think this thread has changed topics a couple times at least and therefore I lost interest when it became a "Scandum is an idiot" thread.

I'm still proud of how that evolution thread went. 300+ posts and 21 pages with very little arguing and plenty debating is indeed a spectacular feat on any forum.

Amen to that, so to speak ;) It was a very insightful and interesting thread. This one is not so good I agree.



Did anyone say he was an idiot? His views are slightly to the extreme and based on quackery - which is what I disagree with. However he is perfectly entitled to think whatever he likes. Just expect people to react to extreme views with, well, extreme reactions..

The glass is half empty vs the glass is half full.

I'm not deaf, I am however visually impaired, not blind, but 'bad' enough to not be able to drive a car, needing some provisions to be able to use a computer, not being able to watch movies in a cinema, more annoyingly, not being able to recognize people untill they are really close.

I'm also not the only one in my family with such a condition, and there is a genetic component to it.

So, I could look at everything I can't do because of this, but, I can also look at what I have and make good use of that. Your 'usefulness' doesn't depend on what you can't do, but on how well you do the things you can do.

Anyway, if I follow you, it would have been better if you, me, certain members of my family and presumably your family would never have been born.

That is what you are saying, right?

I find it notable that those arguing for evolution on that thread are arguing for intelligent design on this thread. ;-)

*lol*

I'm afraid the intelligent component may need some discussion.



Amen to that.

"Scandum is an idiot"? Asocial by choice or compulsion, perhaps, but hardly an idiot. It's just that when his teacher wrote home, "Plays well with others.", she meant he was using them as toys. :wink:

lol @ Sandi

I just don't understand why people can't stop from interfering. These extremely complicated and difficult to understand and/or implement programs would occur naturally if every aspect of it were left completely alone. That doesn't mean leaving it the way it is now, it means removing programs currently in place that interfere and then allowing nature to take it's course. Our design, regardless of how it came to be, is very well implemented. It can govern itself.

The same wikipedia page talks about forced abortions, infanticide, sterilizations. It's true that the official line in some places is to use incentives and penalties, but the reality doesn't always match. I'm talking about an implementation that doesn't resort to anything beyond straight incentives and penalties at fiscal levels.


Your argument assumes that medicine and other technology in general do not exist to prevent nature from taking its course in the first place. Many centuries ago, people outside the norm of physical ability would be likely to die very young; today such people can live long, healthy lives. It doesn't make sense to speak of "nature correcting itself" in this state. Still, I have a bigger problem with this kind of argument ("nature is best", "let nature do its thing", etc.) because it is usually made by people perfectly happy to use all kind of technology and especially medicine, therefore clearly demonstrating their belief that "the natural way" is in fact not their preference in all things.

The "natural way" is often frankly dangerous. Would you rather that your wife give birth at a hospital or in a bathtub? Some people answer the latter and that is their prerogative I suppose (as long as it's the woman's decision!) but empirically it is quite clear that the vast majority of people would rather avoid or at least mitigate the myriad risks related to child-birth to whatever extent possible.

So really, I don't agree that we can let nature take its course, or that we even should. We have been improving our condition ever since we were able to. That still doesn't mean that a single defect, or even two or three or twenty, suffice to rule out a child as unworthy of life. There is a world of difference between improving and helping on the one hand, and outright denial of life on the other.

Curiously, this would have given them less or no chance to procreate, yet that didn't weed out people outside the norm of physical ability.

Recessive genes, perhaps…? :smirk:

Why we continue to have these kinds of discussions on a MUD related forum astounds me…

And again…

Drama Llamas

[Edit:] To remove offending apostrophe. ;)

DH - I was referring explicitly to the topic of limiting the number of dependent people around today, in the same context as I mentioned earlier. I'm not talking about medicine or science. I'm talking about not dumping the burden of unproductive society on productive society. I also have a hard time explaining myself. =)



EDIT: Basically, if we stop taking care of those that can't take care of themselves, they won't be around anymore, or they will learn to take care of themselves.

Well, being able to take care of oneself or not is not exactly the same as being a productive member of society.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Haw...

First reaction: seems a bit inhumane.

Second response; since I really cannot think you mean that we should leave people to die on the streets because they cannot feed themselves is: what exactly do you mean by that and how would it work?






perhaps genetic mutations, as explained by evolution? hang on… here we go again..