[quote]BillO21 wrote:
valiance. wrote:
BillO21 wrote:
Spry wrote:
In a nutshell (what I’ve said before):
The environment changes and therefore that which is superior today will not be tomorrow.
This was true 5,000 years ago but the best suited for the environment today are not the ones producing more offspring.
I am not saying I am for selective breeding btw
Just stating the facts hopefully
genes don’t care about the quality of life of their carriers. Simply by producing more offspring, the people you’re talking about are more fit.
The supposed targets of eugenic sterilization whose genes are to be excluded from the gene pool because of their supposed lower fitness are actually more fit than the eugenicists themselves. Fitness is independent of intelligence, strength, politics, or social decorum.
It’s about who has the most kids (well–genes spread to the next generation ie greenbeard alleles and kin selection).
Eugenics is about the upper classes thinking there’s way too many of the proles about… hey wouldn’t it be awesome if everyone was like us? It’s mere upper class snobbery (and racism) dressed up.
The people having the most kids are the most fit. They might be poor, uneducated, crass, uncultured, inclined to criminality, lascivious and indolent; buuuut their fitness is higher than that of the college educated couple who only have 2 kids.
Those illegal immigrants streaming over the border having 16 kids a piece? Their fitness is 8 times that of the upper middle class couple in the suburbs having 2 kids.
Bottom line eugenics is fuckin dumb. There will always be idiots around until we Harrison Bergeron the population. Learn to live with it.
oh props to orion (and everyone else) for mentioning jared diamond-eseque theories
and props to everyone shitting on eugenics and exposing it for the awful idea it really is
I guess we differ on what best fit is defined as. In today’s society anyone and everyone can reproduce making the amount of offspring being produced irrelevant to fit.
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You mean you differ with medical science, geneticists, and biologists about what best fit is. It’s not me you’re disagreeing with, it’s all of genetic science.
You’re going to have to come up with another term for the undesirable characteristics of those you don’t wish to be able to breed anymore, but it’s not “fitness”, not in the genetic or biological sense.
you see fitness anywhere on this page? Eugenics Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com
Sure eugenicists used the terms fit and unfit to describe those they like and didn’t like respectively, but that doesn’t mean those terms have any modern scientific value.
Maybe start with a list of traits you want to select for or against. That might be better than mucking about with genetic terminology with already established definitions.
And one final point: not to Godwin the thread or anything, but the most famous eugenicists in history were the Nazis. Think about that for a while.
[quote]Spry wrote:
BillO21, your logic is incorrect.
EVERYONE could ALWAYS reproduce in the past.
You are trying to say that poor fuckers are not the most fit but you can’t find any logic.
Fact is, they seem to be doing a good job of breeding AT THE MOMENT.
The environment may very well change where those rich people with few child out survive the poor (I’m thinking famine, etc.)
The environment right now is surplus food and the ability to fuck a lot.
So those lazy fuckers are the most fit.
Its odd how this has become an attack on rich versus poor.
Perhaps my reasoning is false also.
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You’re on the right track.
It’s NOT odd that this has become an attack on rich versus poor BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT EUGENICS IS ABOUT. It’s always been about a war on the weak: the mentally retarded or slow, those afflicted by genetic diseases, those deemed to be of inferior races etc. etc. it’s about powerful vs weak… which often correlates to rich vs poor