this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2024
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Eugenics, or creating better humans with the wisdom not to trash the planet and constantly risk the final nuclear war. With new, more powerful weapons being invented every century, we may not be able to survive without eugenics, because when a single sociopathic dictator can afford an Earth-ending weapon, one of them will use it.
The funny thing is that a lot of those problems are better attributed to society/culture/education than genetics or biology, since it's people that vote/support other people. Unless you can somehow breed out psychopaths, and whatever makes people willing to sacrifice the collective for personal gain, from the human species, eugenics won't do shit.
The assignment was to state a topic. Not advocate for it.
Eugenics isn't a stupid idea on the face of it, but then you look at where our dog breeding has gone...
The good news is that humans are pretty adaptable already. The only things that really definitely could sink us are our inability to react to very abstract, gradual problems and our tribalism.
Without dog breeding, dogs would be still be wolves.
It's pretty unclear how much of the breeding 30000BC-1500AD was deliberate, and how much was just a kind of selection as people decided to eat their naughtiest dog when famine came. I'm talking about the highly-targeted breeding that brought us the pug unable to breath and German shepherds with back legs that stick out wrong because it looks cool.
Also, wolves are pretty good at what they do, I'm not sure it's fair to say they're worse than dogs somehow.
Breeding unhealthy dogs could be called dysgenics. It's like breeding better slaves instead of better humans.
Wolves are good, evolution worked. Pet dogs are extra lives producing added value to themselves and their owners.
Yeah, well what I'm saying is we'd do that to ourselves too; we're not to be trusted with our own biology. Not yet, at least.
Eugenics is the single stupidest idea in human history. To advocate for it now is to deny biology and history.
It relies on the same misunderstanding of evolution that underpins 'great replacement theory'.
The only place with eugenics in human history is agriculture. There were many genocides done using eugenics as an excuse with no clue of genetics, and you blame eugenics instead of the murderers.
We have gene editing now, so it's only a matter of cost when parents start customising their babies, which is a good thing because human variability will increase, making us as a species more resistant to unknown threats.
I agree with you but only on Eugenics being automatically downvoted. Look, I did it!
Eugenicists are the only people who should be barred from reproduction tbh