Is Dawkins wrong about eugenics?

[dann]

Whiteness, mostly.

It doesn't even work particularly well for people who are into that kind of thing:

In Denmark itself Riis-Knudsen served as chairman of the Danmarks Nationalsocialistiske Bevægelse (National Socialist Movement of Denmark), an openly neo-Nazi organisation founded in 1970. The movement had around 1000 members by 1988.
(...)
Riis-Knudsen caused further controversy in the late 1980s when he appeared on TV calling for Denmark to be purged of all immigrants,
(...)
Expelled from the DNSB in 1992 for "race mixing" in an engagement to a Palestinian Christian whom Riis-Knudsen argued was a "white Arab",
Povl Heinrich Riis-Knudsen (Wikipedia)

Brown sugar, how come you taste so good? Uh huh
Stones: Brown Sugar (Genius Lyrics)

Dawkins happens to be right about religion but seriously, he's kind of an *******.

Definitely!


ETA: The Nazi Lebensborn programme (Wikipedia) managed to produce Anni-Frid:

Sweden took in several hundred Lebensborn children from Norway after the war. A famous survivor is Anni-Frid Lyngstad, a member of the music group ABBA.

Unlike Agnetha, Anni-Frid is a non-blonde. I guess that Scandinavian Aryans shouldn't interbreed with German Nazis if they want their offspring to become blonde and blue-eyed ...

 

[Ron Obvious]

I honestly don't understand why Dawkins arouses so much ire, even among some atheists and sceptics. I can't see anything wrong with what he said, and he added all the obvious qualifiers: yes we can do stock breeding of humans like animals, but no, we shouldn't.

You'd have to be determined to take offence to see anything wrong with that. Of course, the perpetually-offended brigade has always had its jaundiced eye out for Dawkins.

 

[dann]

Some of the perpetually-offended conservative snowflakes also hate us for disliking Steven Pinker. That's just the way SQWs are, I guess.

 

[Checkmite]

I honestly don't understand why Dawkins arouses so much ire, even among some atheists and sceptics. I can't see anything wrong with what he said, and he added all the obvious qualifiers: yes we can do stock breeding of humans like animals, but no, we shouldn't.

No. His first tweet very much did not say "no we shouldn't"; in fact it seemed pointedly insistent on not-exactly-saying-that. That's precisely why it attracted so much ire.

 

[pipelineaudio]

The cognitive dissonance in religiously motivated thinking boggles the mind. Sad to see it here

 

[Checkmite]

As an aside, I can't help but chuckle at how comically bad this "clarification" tweet is:

For those determined to miss the point, I deplore the idea of a eugenic policy. I simply said deploring it doesn’t mean it wouldn’t work. Just as we breed cows to yield more milk, we could breed humans to run faster or jump higher. But heaven forbid that we should do it.

"I'm not saying I think eugenics is a good idea; I'm just casually throwing out there that it really could improve humanity"

 

[novaphile]

It has been argued that Western Civilisation has been practicing Eugenics for some time now.

Particularly, women choosing to have children later in life.

 

[angrysoba]

No. His first tweet very much did not say "no we shouldn't"; in fact it seemed pointedly insistent on not-exactly-saying-that. That's precisely why it attracted so much ire.

His main crime is posting things on Twitter where as far as I can see, missing the point and piling on is recreational sport.

 

[Checkmite]

There's a difference between "missing the point" and making a counterpoint; one that is lost on Dawkins evidently.

 

[Darat]

Right; because eugenics isn't additive, it's subtractive. It doesn't work by identifying "desirable" traits and collecting them, it works by identifying "undesirable" traits and trying to eliminate them - which means either killing people with those traits or compelling their removal from the breeding population.







Partners choosing each other based on "good traits", or parents using genetic technology to influence their own (and only their own) child, isn't eugenics though. Eugenics is a program that's applied to a population.

Eugenics can be used to favour a "positive" or "negative" trait, it's what we do with dogs and cats, cattle and all the animals we have "domesticated" sometimes you try to bred "out" a trait, some times you try to bred "in" a trait. The issue with eugenics is not that it wouldn't work but that we consider it morally wrong.

 

[Darat]

As Metullus noted, this seems to be Heinlein's Lazarus Long, specifically "Methuselah's Children". Not an ancient secret society (at least by our standards), but a 19th century law firm handling a trust with the purpose of extending human life.



Their procedure was indeed selective breeding based on longevity of ancestors. The results were collectively known as the Howard Families.



Later the protagonist notes: "They should have bred for brains rather than age."

There's a good series of short stories by Peter F Hamilton that uses a starting point that the Romans bred gladiators (at first) for longer lives, and they were successful so you end up with powerful families of long lived people. It's a fanciful and improbable starting point but he explores it with some rigour.

 

[Baylor]

It has been argued that Western Civilisation has been practicing Eugenics for some time now.

Particularly, women choosing to have children later in life.

Female mate choice is left to its (her) own devices; they're not forced to marry/breed with their cousins like in many parts of the world.

 

[Darat]

Technically no, he is not wrong, but is this really a thing that needs to be pointed out?

Perhaps he has come across people who are saying it shouldn't be tried because it is scientifically flawed idea? If that is the case he is right to make the point he does, we shouldn't be opposed to eugenics because it is "bad science" but because our values make it abhorrent.

 

[Ian Osborne]

Technically no, he is not wrong, but is this really a thing that needs to be pointed out?

Yes, if people are arguing against eugenics on the grounds that it's impossible in humans. Eugenics is back in the news with Andrew Sabisky being hired as an adviser by the Prime Minister's office. Perhaps this is exactly what was happening? I don't know enough about the background to Dawkins' tweet to say for certain, but it seems likely.

 

[Roboramma]

Sure; but perhaps it's telling that he had to be essentially scolded on social media before he actually made it clear whether he feels it's a good idea or not.

I actually think that's a good thing. He's a scientist, I'd rather he focused on the truth dimension rather than the moral dimension of things.

If he wants to wade into the moral questions (he certainly has with religion for instance), then as a member of society, that's cool. But I do think that there's value in separating the moral questions from the questions of fact. Being clear about the facts should happen first. And I don't think it's necessary for us to know where everyone stands on the moral issues.

I'm probably weird this way.

 

[Ian Osborne]

No. His first tweet very much did not say "no we shouldn't"; in fact it seemed pointedly insistent on not-exactly-saying-that. That's precisely why it attracted so much ire.

I think his point is that arguments against eugenics on moral grounds and arguments on practical grounds are independent of each other, and you can dispute its morality without having to question its feasibility. Indeed, one should do just that, as it's perfectly feasible.

 

[Puppycow]

The word "work" here is a bit ill-defined.

I'm also not sure exactly what he means by eugenics. Unless you are a horrible monster, a eugenics program for humans cannot be modeled after the selective breeding of pets or livestock. The individual animals are given absolutely no choice in the matter. You can't really apply that to humans, until you invent the artificial womb. Then I suppose that you could simply select desirable sperm to combine with desirable eggs to produce your new race of overmen or whatever.

 

[Checkmite]

Eugenics can be used to favour a "positive" or "negative" trait, it's what we do with dogs and cats, cattle and all the animals we have "domesticated" sometimes you try to bred "out" a trait, some times you try to bred "in" a trait. The issue with eugenics is not that it wouldn't work but that we consider it morally wrong.

No, no. You're making the same mistake Dawkins did, which is trying to force a redefinition of "eugenics" as just a completely interchangeable synonym for "directed breeding in general". It's not. Eugenics was invented as a social policy with a very specific goal in mind - the "improvement" of humans, not based on objectively better or more useful physical traits but ideologically (i.e., arbitrarily) chosen "desirable" ones. There is no stripping it of its sociological and political context; these are intrinsic.

Honestly, what is next - a dispassionate analysis of the positive and negative macroeconomic consequences of consolidating ghettos and interning their inhabitants in labor camps? "I'm not saying we should use concentration camps; I'm just making a point that there would be undeniable benefits in terms of reduced manufacturing costs, not to mention the immense savings on health care by disposing of ill worker-units rather than treating them while they're not producing".

 

[Darat]

No, no. You're making the same mistake Dawkins did, which is trying to force a redefinition of "eugenics" as just a completely interchangeable synonym for "directed breeding in general". It's not. Eugenics was invented as a social policy with a very specific goal in mind - the "improvement" of humans, not based on objectively better or more useful physical traits but ideologically (i.e., arbitrarily) chosen "desirable" ones. There is no stripping it of its sociological and political context; these are intrinsic.



Honestly, what is next - a dispassionate analysis of the positive and negative macroeconomic consequences of consolidating ghettos and interning their inhabitants in labor camps? "I'm not saying we should use concentration camps; I'm just making a point that there would be undeniable benefits in terms of reduced manufacturing costs, not to mention the immense savings on health care by disposing of ill worker-units rather than treating them while they're not producing".

Again you are missing the point, eugenics would work, there is nothing scientifically flawed about the idea. We know we can bred for pretty much anything that is expressed via genes, we've been doing it for our entire history as a species since we discovered agriculture.

Dawkins is not in any way shape or form supporting eugenics, or saying it could be used, never mind should be used.

The reasons as he makes very clear to oppose eugenics is not based on the science it is based on our values.

 

[Ian Osborne]

No, no. You're making the same mistake Dawkins did, which is trying to force a redefinition of "eugenics" as just a completely interchangeable synonym for "directed breeding in general". It's not. Eugenics was invented as a social policy with a very specific goal in mind - the "improvement" of humans, not based on objectively better or more useful physical traits but ideologically (i.e., arbitrarily) chosen "desirable" ones. There is no stripping it of its sociological and political context; these are intrinsic.

How does this contradict Dawkins' argument that eugenics is bad, but because it's immoral, not because it's unfeasible?

Honestly, what is next - a dispassionate analysis of the positive and negative macroeconomic consequences of consolidating ghettos and interning their inhabitants in labor camps? "I'm not saying we should use concentration camps; I'm just making a point that there would be undeniable benefits in terms of reduced manufacturing costs, not to mention the immense savings on health care by disposing of ill worker-units rather than treating them while they're not producing".

If someone's advocating concentration camps, and others are arguing against it in part by saying there would not be economic benefits, yes.