Are debates in these places making us all bullies?

[brimstoneSalad]

Social welfare programs do allow for the least fit to live, but if you know of the stats for unwed mothers and what difficulties their children go through, then it is easy to see natural eugenic still at work.

The issue is that these are largely social issues -- nurture instead of nature -- and not a matter of genetics or eugenics. It's largely just people who have grown up in a shitty situation to become shitty parents and raise kids in a shitty situation because of it.

I agree that dysgenics could be a problem with IQ (which is something like 80% genetic, in terms of differences between people), but people with high IQs also tend toward depression. If we let them kill themselves instead of helping them, that just makes the problem worse and only the blissfully ignorant and stupid live to procreate.

We have to look at more variables before we decide it's OK for somebody to kill his or herself, or that natural selection is legitimately doing a good job; right now it's just leading us down the road to idiocracy.

[Greatest I am]

Not Genetics! Think Downs Syndrome or being gay in a straight world.

Overall though, I am more optimistic of the future than you seem to be. I think that natural selection and natural eugenics are doing a good job.

As to killing ourselves. I believe in freedom of choice.

Check out this clip and if you know the movie, do you think that the shooter should be prosecuted? I do not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjjVVNln0wo

Regards
DL

[brimstoneSalad]

Not Genetics! Think Downs Syndrome or being gay in a straight world.

I don't know what you mean by that.

Overall though, I am more optimistic of the future than you seem to be. I think that natural selection and natural eugenics are doing a good job.

Let's be clear about what you mean by natural selection: you're talking about human technology not intervening, right?

You're talking about letting people with diseases die instead of treating them, supposedly to make the population "genetically stronger", or not helping people with fertility problems have kids (who tend to be people who are relatively well off and can afford to care for those children)?

We are barely subject to natural selection. Humans artificially change our environment all the time.

There is no natural eugenics. Eugenics means intentional selection based on unnatural criterion that WE find important rather than letting nature take its course. It's about human selection of traits or genes we deem to be good, not just what is most successful.

Eugenics, for example, might favor compassion, even if that would make a human weaker "in the wild".

[Greatest I am]

[

quote="Greatest I am"]Not Genetics! Think Downs Syndrome or being gay in a straight world.

I don't know what you mean by that.

What I mean is that our DNA produces many conditions that either help or are hinder us in terms of our overall physical and mental environment.

Overall though, I am more optimistic of the future than you seem to be. I think that natural selection and natural eugenics are doing a good job.

Let's be clear about what you mean by natural selection: you're talking about human technology not intervening, right?

Not really. Humans are a large part of the environment and we have both positive and negative effects on it. We and all around us are the environment. That would include the science we produce.

You're talking about letting people with diseases die instead of treating them, supposedly to make the population "genetically stronger", or not helping people with fertility problems have kids (who tend to be people who are relatively well off and can afford to care for those children)?

Again, no. We are naturally altruistic and good and all help each other in various ways.

I was only pointing out that those in the lower echelons of success are generally at the negative end of the eugenics at work.

We are barely subject to natural selection. Humans artificially change our environment all the time.

Indeed. Some for good and some for what ends up being evil.

There is no natural eugenics. Eugenics means intentional selection based on unnatural criterion that WE find important rather than letting nature take its course. It's about human selection of traits or genes we deem to be good, not just what is most successful.

There certainly is a natural eugenics that both produce the fittest as well as the least fit. I see both the best and the worst but recognize, thanks to history, that most will see the work as a negative. What you put accentuates that negative while not looking much at the positive.

Eugenics, for example, might favor compassion, even if that would make a human weaker "in the wild".

[/quote]

It could if he was too compassionate toward other animal that we see as food, while his family goes hungry. Within the tribe itself compassion, at least for humans, which are the weakest species on the planet, is a must if we are to survive and thrive.

I see eugenics as synonymous with evolution as it also works to show the fittest as well as the least fit.

Regards
DL