• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Is Dawkins wrong about eugenics?

Delphic Oracle said:
That still leaves what I'll call the "ratio of influence" between what we might be pushing for and what could actually survive.



"Smaller dog" also came with "different shaped tail" and "knees higher up on the leg" at the same time (for example). The result was not known when the intention was laid down. Natural selection had to fill in everything we didn't account for. Painfully (literally and figuratively) slowly.



That's not a process we want to have play out on humans for a few centuries (at least) while we "trial and error" our way around.



The Russian experiment had the aid of much more modern understandings and ability to control for variables (not even conceived of in the past). Plus that analogy rather illustrated how long the equivalent would take for humans. Plus I don't think that one really took into consideration the "is this animal still as suitable for basic survival purposes in its natural environment as it is for the increased traits selected."
Click to expand...
Ah, I understand your point better. You do have a point but I don't think it means we can say eugenics wouldn't work in humans.
 
Delphic Oracle said:
See, there's the language that sets off alarm bells.

No dice.

Once you open the door to "eliminating" certain genes "for the good of all mankind" there's no going back.
Click to expand...
We are already doing that. An example from my country is Down's Syndrome, I believe abortion rates are now past 90%, we are "eliminating" Down's Syndrome.

And I think because of the terrible acts eugenics has been used to "support" and our knowledge and technology rapidly increasing what Dawkins said is more important than ever.

We are (and already have to a degree) going to be able to carry out eugenics in the lab, we won't have to wait generations, we won't have to kill "failures" and so on, if we don't want eugenics to happen via the "backdoor" we need to be marshaling our arguments against it right now. To argue whether it "can work" is missing the point of what he was warning about.

It could work, we need to take steps to stopping it working on moral grounds.
 
Checkmite said:
This is a somewhat specious argument; naturally the people who favor eugenics would consider their proposed end goal (typically, "fewer impure/nonwhite people in society compared to pure Europeans") is an improvement, otherwise they wouldn't pursue it.
Click to expand...

Right. So I don't think the defining characteristic of eugenics is whether or not its end goal is an objective improvement.

Here's a potential end goal that I think would be an improvement: my brother and his wife each have a single allele of a gene that leads to a genetic disease when present in two copies. Their third child died because she was born with two copies of this gene, which is invariably fatal in infancy. Imagine a eugenics program: everyone must get genetically tested at birth. Those with this gene are sterilized. I'd consider that pretty horrible: my brother has three other beautiful children and a great family life, and the world would be a much worse place had he had to suffer enforced sterilization. Moreover, most people with this gene don't marry others with the gene, so the risk per person is quite low.

The methodology of eugenics would be repugnant. But I would consider the goal to be a positive one. Luckily there are much better approaches to this goal. My brother and his wife started a charity raising funds toward research for treatment of the disease. Another avenue which seems to be happening: the last time I saw him he told me that there is a test that can be done on pregnant women, so selective abortion could be possible. That seems like a much better way to achieve the goal of eliminating this disease than a eugenics approach, but I'd consider the goal itself to be good.


But then, if you're one of those impure/nonwhite people, I'm sure that you not only wouldn't consider the situation an improvement, but would rather positively contend that it is the opposite. So you're essentially conceding that whether eugenics is "feasible" is itself subjective, and depends on whether you consider the proposed improvements to be improvements. Unless you're arguing that by "feasible" you just mean that killing or forbidding impure/nonwhite people to have children will eventually result in a net lower ratio of impure/nonwhite people to white people, which I don't think anybody attacking the feasibility of eugenics was questioning.

But that doesn't seem to be what Dawkins is arguing about though, because he's talking about genetic traits like "running" and "jumping" (which again, was never the kind of thing historically selected-for by eugenicists). Again redefining eugenics to simply mean "directed breeding", Dawkins argument can actually be simplified to "heredity exists", in which case thank you for bestowing this great wisdom upon us, Professor? But as above, I'm confident that this isn't what people who question the feasibility of eugenics are getting at; I think they're very definitely talking about whether or not the "improvement" really does improve anything, and it's actually Dawkins that is "missing the point" (or deliberately ignoring it and trying to force his own, which I can certainly see him doing).
Click to expand...

You seem to be saying that positive goals don't count as eugenics. Is this a semantic issue?
 
Can the people who want to discuss Eugenics and the people who want to complain that Richard "The New Hitler" Dawkins, the Official Atheist Pope opened his mouth about something please form off on different sides of the auditorium please?
 
I don't know if this is related to his previous tweet, but he's being weird on the internet again.
Human steak could of course be cultured. Would you eat it? I wouldn’t, but it’s hard to say why. It would be cultured from a single nameable person. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall served human placenta, also clone of 1 person, in this case the baby. I wouldn’t eat that either.
Click to expand...
 
Roboramma said:
Not necessarily. You could have a separate population upon which eugenics was practiced, with which the controlling population didn't interbreed.
Click to expand...


Then that's not really eugenics, trying to breed the best possible human. Since if you can't or don't have your current best possible humans in charge then they can't be your current best possible human in at least that regard.

Which of course goes to the fundamental scientific flaw of eugenics. The hypothesis that their is an objective genetically best possible human to strive for.
 
The Man said:
Then that's not really eugenics, trying to breed the best possible human. Since if you can't or don't have your current best possible humans in charge then they can't be your current best possible human in at least that regard.

Which of course goes to the fundamental scientific flaw of eugenics. The hypothesis that their is an objective genetically best possible human to strive for.
Click to expand...

I don't think that a necessary condition of eugenics is that it's striving for a best possible human.

I also don't think that a definition of "genetically best possible human" includes being in charge. I would expect any scientific definition to understand the difference between genes and environment, for one thing.
 
Evolution doesn't work on the biological entity level, it works on the gene level.

Someone who's name escapes me wrote a book about that so if this hypothetical person was, say, the topic of discussion he would know what he was talking about.
 
Roboramma said:
I don't think that a necessary condition of eugenics is that it's striving for a best possible human.

I also don't think that a definition of "genetically best possible human" includes being in charge. I would expect any scientific definition to understand the difference between genes and environment, for one thing.
Click to expand...

Great, so what then is the scientific definition of eugenics? In particular that incorporates that difference between "genes and environment"?

Simply 'the application of selective breeding to humans' doesn't define eugenics in any scientific way other than simply as selective breeding and makes no clear distinction between "genes and environment".

Without a particular scientific definition of eugenics to examine one can not claim any scientific validity to an as yet undefined scientific concept.

While selective breeding would certainly be a tool of eugenics every application of selective breeding can't be eugenics otherwise the word itself is superfluous. You mention the distinction of the environment from genetics in regard to a scientific definition of eugenics. While the environment is implied by the 'selective' part of selective breeding the distinction between the environment and genetics isn't made nor is the exact application of environment to the process, like say artificial insemination. Artificial insemination perhaps being another tool of eugenics and selective breeding but not in and of itself being either of those.

For example, on the distinction between the environment and genetics ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_breeding#Animal_breeding

In one case mentioned by animal behaviorist Temple Grandin, roosters bred for fast growth or heavy muscles did not know how to perform typical rooster courtship dances, which alienated the roosters from hens and led the roosters to kill the hens after mating with them.
Click to expand...

In that case the genetics separated the rooster from the normal courtship and mating environment.

Now does a lack of a scientific definition of eugenics make Dawkins assertion wrong? Well, technically no just as a lack of a definition can't establish the scientific validity of a concept, it likewise can't establish its invalidity either. However, because of that, the lack of an established scientific definition of eugenics is a scientific argument against claiming validity, just as it is against claiming invalidity. Does that make Dawkins base claim that it is better to oppose eugenics on moral grounds instead of scientific grounds, wrong? I don't think so.

First, a lot of people are not going to be concerned about a rigorous definition of eugenics. Similarly they may just note that the lack of such means you can't invalidate it scientifically or as exemplified here, and in the original link, not make a distinction between eugenics and simply selective breeding.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom