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Eugenics supporters?

EGarrett said:
I see it as simply a matter of descriptive versus prescriptive. The theory of evolution describes WHAT happens, it does not mean that you SHOULD become actively involved in it. Likewise, the theory of gravity tells you that if you jump off a building, you'll fall to the ground. That doesn't mean that it's saying you SHOULD jump off buildings and fall to the ground.

The question is mind-numbingly ignorant.
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Your response is totally irrelevant to my statements resulting in a time-wasting strawman argument which adds nothing to the thread.
 
GodMark2 said:
Count another pro Eugener here. It's quite lovely on the spring, when the cold Oregon winter rains give way to the warm Oregon spring rains.
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Check my link. I wan't referring to Eugene OR.

However, I did attend a UofO game vs Cal a few years ago there!
 
Here is some interesting background information

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

High school and college textbooks from the 1920s through the '40s often had chapters touting the scientific progress to be had from applying eugenic principles to the population. Many early scientific journals devoted to heredity in general were run by eugenicists and featured eugenics articles alongside studies of heredity in nonhuman organisms. After eugenics fell out of scientific favor, most references to eugenics were removed from textbooks and subsequent editions of relevant journals. Even the names of some journals changed to reflect new attitudes.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Galton_class_eugenics.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_International_Eugenics_Conference
 
T'ai Chi, the problem with eugenics was that people's politics and personal beliefs got in the way of science.

Oh. Wait. That's exactly the same problem creationists have. What a coincidence!
 
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The author of Freakanomics tried to make the case that the decrease in crime in the U.S. over the past 30 years is connected to the legalization of abortion. His argument is that if all those unwanted babies had actually been born a significant amount of them would have eventually entered a life of crime.
 
what the [rule10] is going on in this thread?

Eugenics: Getting rid of horrible (life threatening, permantly disabling or severe quality of life reduction) diseases good. If we could keep some Scandanavians around for aesthetic purposes that would be nice. Otherwise, no.

Eugene: Nice place to pass through and get Thai food of my way between Seattle and LA.
 
In My Spare Time said:
Getting rid of horrible (life threatening, permantly disabling or severe quality of life reduction) diseases good. If we could keep some Scandanavians around for aesthetic purposes that would be nice. Otherwise, no.
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I had no idea being Scandinavian was considered a permanent disability. Can I park in special designated areas now? :)
 
JEROME DA GNOME said:
2/24/2005

[qimg]http://metamedia.stanford.edu/imagebin/dumb-Neanderthal.jpg[/qimg]

http://metamedia.stanford.edu/~mshanks/weblog/?m=200502
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Yeah, he's got a big nose and big lips. He also has light skin, and rather Caucasian-looking hair. Does that make it racist against whites? Besides, who are you to say that Neanderthals didn't have big noses and big lips? If some humans have those features, is it implausible that Neanderthals could have had them as well? Did it ever occur to you that maybe, just maybe, that's what Neanderthals actually looked like?

Aren't you being racist in expecting renditions of our ancestors and our ancestors' relatives to not have any features that black people have today? I mean, these creatures are just as closely related to black people as to anybody else. Even if this were a question of fairness rather than science, why would you want to exclude all black features from renditions of our ancestors and other hominids?

I see this image comes from the BBC. Let's look at another rendition they did of a Neanderthal in the same documentary:
neanderthal.jpg

Oh my God, that guy looks really white! Why oh why are they making fun of white people?

Seriously, nobody knows for sure what Neanderthals looked like. There's a little bit of guesswork that needs to be done in any rendition, and here it looks like the BBC filled that in with features that are found in modern humans (and yes, black people are humans too, so they were included).

P.S. It looks like the science supports the notion that Neanderthals did indeed have big noses. So scientists who render them that way are not being racist, they're being responsible scientists.
http://www.britannica.com/eb/topic-407406/Neanderthal
Noses didn't need cold to evolve.
By: Bower, Bruce. Science News, 4/23/2005, Vol. 167 Issue 17, p270-270
This article focuses on the evolution of the the nose. Fossil evidence that Neandertals possessed exceptionally large, broad noses has often been explained as an evolutionary response to life in cold, dry locales. However, new data indicate that climate played no role in shaping the Neandertal nose. Marc R. Meyer of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and his coworkers found similarly sized nasal passages in a set of 10 Neandertal skulls, some from Mediterranean and Middle Eastern sites that were warm and humid and others from frigid European sites. Moreover, big, broad noses appear just as often in people from either warm or cold climates, Meyer notes. Reading Level (Lexile): 1330;
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PogoPedant said:
I had no idea being Scandinavian was considered a permanent disability. Can I park in special designated areas now? :)
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I was trying to create two different acceptable scenarios for eugenics, one for limiting diseases, another for keeping some Scandanivians around. But the stupidity inherent in my Scandanavian background made me too disabled to express that clearly.
 
Diagoras, what was that about promoters of eugenics and racism?

The subject of human evolution warranted a separate one-page discussion. Unfortunately, that discussion reflected the scientific racism of popular at the time.” (EL, 23) Hunter reported in his book, “There once lived upon the earth races of men who were much lower in their mental organization than the present inhabitants.” (CB, 195) At first, man was “little better than one of the lower animals.” (CB, 196) Hunter indicated that of the “five races or varieties of men” found today, some are clearly more evolved than others. There are, Hunter claimed, the four lower types of humans, including the “Ethiopian or negro type,” “the Malay or brown race,” “the American Indian,” and the “Mongolian or yellow race.” “Finally,” Hunter concluded, there is “the highest type of all, the Caucasians, represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America.” (CB, 196)
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http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/eugenics.html
 
What? Please address the points that I raised. I just shot down your argument, and if you're intellectually honest you ought to acknowledge that. I'm not here to defend quotes by blatant racists whose opinions are discredited by all mainstream scientists.
 
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Diagoras said:
What? Please address the points that I raised. I just shot down your argument, and if you're intellectually honest you ought to acknowledge that. I'm not here to defend quotes by blatant racists whose opinions are discredited by all mainstream scientists.
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Really, what was my point that you shot down?

That eugenicists are racist?

How does my quote not follow that line of thought? (Ohh; I see that you agree that it is racist thought!)
 
JEROME DA GNOME said:
Really, what was my point that you shot down?

That eugenicists are racist?
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What? When did I ever say anything about eugenicists and racism?

You said the following:
Why do the artist renditions of "cave-men" have big lips and dark skin?
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Alleging that these artists are racist for portraying cavemen with black features. Then you provided a BBC rendition of a Neanderthal that you thought looked black. I explained why this doesn't mean they're racist. The fact is, that Neanderthal probably looked "black" to you because he had a big nose, and Neanderthals did indeed have big noses. If anything, your objection to that photo is revealing of your own racist line of thinking.

How does my quote not follow that line of thought? (Ohh; I see that you agree that it is racist thought!)
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How does your quote follow from anything? I wasn't even talking about eugenicists, or trying to claim that there's no historical link between eugenics and racism.
 
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Radrook said:
Your response is totally irrelevant to my statements resulting in a time-wasting strawman argument which adds nothing to the thread.
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On the contrary. I was actually giving a far more accurate description of what was wrong with the question. It's not a matter of beliefs being taken to unethical extremes, as you put it. That's wrong. There is no extreme to take evolutionary "belief" to, because there IS NO belief about what "should be" associated with evolution. To assume there is is to mistake a descriptive theory for a prescriptive idea.
 
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