Eugenics

Eugenics isnt wrong, just some of the people who practiced it.

 

With plants and animals we don't really care about it. We do it without even thinking nowadays. Every modern dog breed and plant is a result of it.

But humanity is another thing altogether. If people voluntarily did so then I see no problem with it, but the idea of people being told who to mate with is asking for trouble. The problem as I see it is eugenics goes against free will and free choice in humanity.

I've always wondered though, what kind of body types could we make if we truly went for it. The average joe could be like Lebron James

 

They went for it prior to 1860.

 

"Maybe they Might Make US Taste Like Chicken."

 

That's just like the movie Gattica. It'll be interesting what things will be like 100 years from now.

 

There are people who, for various reasons, should not reproduce. I consider myself to be one of them.

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Sorry to come in late with a rant, but I'm stoned and this shit is interesting.

I'd say it is an inevitability.

It's like... you're a future parent and the doctor tells you your child will be born with debilitating autism, or maybe an incurable degenerative disorder. They will never be able to take care of themselves and will suffer greatly, as will you and your family. Or maybe due to genetics they die of cancer at 30. If they gave you an option to prevent that, would you not change that? Does anybody really want to be born that way? It seems to me that if tweaking a couple of genes can negate a life of suffering (not to mention take burden off of healthcare over their life,) it's kind of hard to pass on. Can you really say that no, your child is going to suffer because that's who they are?

Personally, I don't think a person is defined by their physical attributes... at least not when it comes to things like say... having diabetes, or being naturally frail. That's just part of what you deal with. It sucks... you lose all sorts of things, and your life costs more in the big picture. With those genes altered, that's still your child and still the same person, just with a better body to hold them. Plus, healthier bodies open all sorts of doors when it comes to disease prevention and just the kinds of lives people can live. Society itself could probably benefit greatly from correcting things that are by any measure defects... things that detract from physical/mental faculties, add hardship, or shorten lifespans are among the greatest sources of human suffering.

To me, ideology can't beat that level of practicality forever. People may object to it for all sorts of ideological reasons, but if that's the only reason not to take boatloads of previously unavoidable and often catastrophic suffering out of all of humanity... well, people aren't going to buy it. I know that people with genetic disorders often have acceptance of what they deal with and all, but there's no way they can't think of how different life could be... and then look to the people who say a way for other people to not have to live like they do is wrong because reasons. To me, that would sting... basically saying I and everyone like me should be predestined to suffer. Easy to say when it's not you living the shit!

I don't want to disrespect anybody's beliefs with that statement. I think people should live for whatever values best suit and make sense to them. But when it comes to feet on the ground, people on this side of the globe ultimately seem to defer to what results in fewer people being hurt.

The only concern for me is the potential for abuse. People could be bred certain ways for the wrong reasons and taken advantage of. Or maybe we start doing it for superficial reasons and start messing with looks, just completely fuck-up people's self images, or wind up over-homogenizing. What if your parents pick traits for you that you hate seeing in the mirror? On the flipside, it might be the only way we end racism, simply in the sense that appearance literally becomes arbitrary. Changing sex doesn't seem like a good idea. Who knows what messing with the ratio might do. That's really pushing it. I mean, why do that anyway? Because daddy really wants a little boy? I don't think it should ever be done for self-serving reasons... it opens the door to abuse. It should always be about healthier people. I mean, even messing with temperament is iffy, even if it's tempting to try and breed out criminality. You won't know how badly you needed certain types of people in the world until there are none left. Though on the whole no more psychopathy, and maybe less pronounced narcissism might not be so bad!

All of it is touchy... just in terms of balance. There are reasons we court and select mates like we do. Messing with things like physical attractiveness, or even mental/emotional attributes could totally fuck us up in the sense that everything we've learned about ourselves... about personhood becomes less relevant and we become lost in our relationships with ourselves, others, and the world around us. All of these seemingly arbitrary things are like anchors. Just to give one example... going back to the race issue. What are nations in the absence of natural ethnicity? That stuff ties people together. How will we do that without those things in the picture? There are ways, but how do we decide, and will people ever agree? At some point, all government and social hierarchies will have to change a lot, and there will undoubtedly be instability that will be hard to weather.

And then of course, there is the problem of not everybody getting them. I'm envisioning a potential scenario where most people do not get included, and an elite class of actually genetically superior people dominate the hierarchy, an they are controlling who gets to be in the cool super-humans club. And then when they do add someone, they're bred for specific goals, and how a person is born defines their life even more than it does now. In that way it could be a step backwards... forced tribalism. And then maybe the people below are made to be dumb, hardy, and easily controlled. A hierarchy with real sub-humans sounds terrible.

But honestly, I think the issues that come with genetically modified humans are likely not as bad as the whole world dealing with the huge multitude of terrible things it takes out of the equation. We don't have answers for those things. But societies could grow and learn to adjust to a world with edited genes. There just needs to be a very clear ethical line. Of course it'd still be crossed and we'd have to deal with it. But such is the nature of really all advancement. I think not too many would be content at all to go willy-nilly right away. A few would. And the rest would say they were fuckin nuts. So we may just be more cautious than we realize when we say it's power man can't handle.

It just has to be treated as a strictly medical thing. I think the moment we get hooked on philosophizing about fixing too many things, we're probably boned. Because not everybody is going to have the right ideas or intentions, and that would be a very powerful tool for them to screw things up with. Gotta stick with only the things everyone can agree are bad, on the simple basis that the person being spoofed doesn't have a say and may not agree on the 'extra' changes. So like, you can't give someone blue eyes just because more people think blue eyes are attractive. The person may not.

I think about the internet sometimes, social media, all that... it's incredible technology. Along with a few other things it has revolutionized our way of life. But the price is probably huge, and we just don't see how much we our hurting ourselves with this technology. But I like to think that as time goes by we'll get better at using it. People definitely understand it better now. There are many more widely known conventions for use. It's all a very slow learning process, but it's happening here and now. And eventually we'll look back at how terrible it was before and just be glad we have it figured out.

The fear of these things is natural. Change is inherently dangerous and chaotic. But again, that's every great leap for humanity. So to me it's not a reason to turn away, but rather to investigate very slowly. I think we kind of have to just give up when we stop being willing to use what is in front of us to survive, out of fear of what may happen. The odds of success or failure aren't inherently better or worse. The only way to know the trade off is to see it. I'm sure it would not become big overnight.

People will call it playing god, but if that's true, we're kind of already doing it with our food - it makes it much more affordable - more people are able to eat well... and you're eating it, too. I dunno, I'm an atheist-leaning agnostic, so stuff like that doesn't fully register to me. It seems to me that more and more decisions like this aren't left to religion though. It's more about cost/benefit and bare ethics. If we can find an ethical way to do it with low cost for the payout, you can bet it will happen, regardless of what people's personal, moral beliefs are. Some Jehovah's Witnesses believe that blood transfusions are wrong, and will actually die before getting one. But if you don't let your child have it when they need it, you can still lose your child. Because whatever objectively minimizes death/suffering is going to reach the most people. Our beliefs vary greatly, but everyone knows what pain is. It's difficult for people to accept sitting and just letting people suffer because 'it's the way of things.' All of society and technology exist because to us 'the way of things' could be a lot better! That's human nature.

So maybe the real question is what it will look like. What form of gene modz are people most likely to accept and how will it roll out?

 

Ahhhhh

Like Hitler.

j

 

It is practiced by some groups/races/religions if you look into it, and has done well..

 

If you look at any breeding program for anything there is lots of culling, purposeful inbreeding then culling the messed up results of inbreeding. I don't know how you can do that to humans in an ethical way. Any lesser methods than that don't produce good results.

 

Jump off the golden gate bridge then. Do us a favor

Lol. Did we have all these dibilitating diseases 50 years ago. 100? No! A lil bit ut nothing like you see today...how? Why? Vaccines no doubt...but the sheep sleep

 

Eugenics would be breeding out the genes, not some miracle hey the kids a downer abort it nonsense. Its selective breeding. A doctor in the 80s compiled nobel prize winner cum in hopes to create smarter kids, society called him a nazi so he stopped the program. Most of those kids were amazing.

 

as practiced by the european aristocracy, right their is 1000 years in inbreeding

I've yet to met a european who by doctors eye, has no genetic faults

 

People with an IQ that is under room temperature (NOT you, lol), should really not be encouraged to reproduce.

 

Haha my parents called me their guinea pig child because they learned how not to raise my siblings by learning from their fucks ups with me haha
My brother and sister are both very motivated and functional people
Too bad this wasn't a thing when I was conceived maybe I would've had a chance

 

Wonder how long until China changes their birthing program again.