I can tell you've not seen this.
YouTube - "Idiocracy" introduction - the future of human evolution
Or you think it's acceptable for the group to be dragged down by the weak, the dumb, the poor, why not the handicapped?
A lot of this is very subjective though. I'd like to be stronger and faster, but strength/speed/size/etc. are often tradeoffs. People who I'd consider "stupid" have brains that are much better-suited to certain tasks than people who I'd consider "smart." If growing stupidity is a real problem though, you'd think the smart people would be smart enough to start having more kids to even things out. Heck, anyone even slightly above average would be doing humanity a favor.
No matter how deranged I think you are, I can recognize you're much smarter than average, yet you're deliberately taking yourself out of the gene pool by willfully not reproducing. Nikola Tesla did the same, because he considered himself unfit. As socially awkward and weird as he was, can anyone say that such a consummate inventor did the world a favor by letting his genes die with him?
Anyway, back to subjectivity and lack of omniscience: If the environmentalist fearmongers of thirty-forty years ago end up being right, and we end up going through some horrible ice age, the extra cushion on fat people might even come in handy. Poverty is causally irrelevant to genetics regardless of correlations, and handicapped people could have other very desirable genetic traits. For all we know right now, the person who cures cancer could end up being a one-legged albino who's deathly allergic to peanuts. If I started a eugenics campaign to sabotage EpiPens and keep peanut allergies from spreading (if they're even hereditary?), I could end up accidentally screwing the entire human race.
It's really difficult to classify people along a one-dimensional "fit" vs. "unfit" spectrum. There are people with extremely unadaptive genes all around, such as people with Down Syndrome, but they still bring love and happiness to people's lives, so their genes alone do not guarantee that their lives are a net negative for humanity. In any case, I don't exactly see them "breeding" and crowding everyone else out of the gene pool, so it's a moot point. On the other end of the spectrum, it's extremely difficult to find people with "desirable" traits all around. What if some guy almost has it all - looks, intelligence, speed, strength, drive, leadership skills - but has a kind of small penis? Should we throw him out? What if he has everything we look for, and we mass-produce him in factories, and then it turns out that only people with very different genes could survive some horrible virus that ends up exterminating humanity?
Also, consider that phenotypes and genotypes do not map 1:1. Given this, even blind people reproducing might possibly help strengthen the gene pool: People blind from birth must rely so much on their other senses to thrive, that their chances for reproduction can partially hinge upon the acuteness of their other senses. Over time, gene pools selecting for better hearing, etc. could mix with "regular" gene pools and result in a better product overall.
All that said, I have nothing against people voluntarily deciding not to reproduce, and I think it would be great if smarter couples started cranking out more babies. Heck, the latter is what evolutionary competition is all about! I favor biodiversity above genetic planning for sure, but I'm not an absolutist when it comes to the idea that "nobody is genetically better than anybody else." In fact, it's easy to see that it's untrue. It's much harder to rank people fairly though, and I'm cautious and reluctant about even trying, because we simply don't have enough information to do it reliably. I AM an absolutist when it comes to the use of government force to promote eugenics, because I see nothing but misery and ruin coming from it, and it's a total affront to human liberty.
So would you be in favor of at least not propping up those who refuse to cooperate?
I'm in favor of freedom, so that certainly means I don't think anybody should be FORCED to cooperate with or subsidize people who can't pull their own weight. That doesn't mean I'd refuse to help anyone who's disadvantaged or needs a hand, but it does mean that I'd refuse to help someone cranking out thirty kids and expecting sympathy. I just want the discretion to choose who to help and who not to help.
But there's a good reason to reduce UNWANTED GENES.
Like the one that leads people to think eugenics is a good idea?
My eugenics fetish is much more sensible than your Marxist politically correct fetish.
First, egalitarian thought predates Marx, and Marxist thought is a mere subset. Second, I'm really not being egalitarian here; I agree that some people are objectively more fit than others. I just think it's beyond our capability to accurately judge in the general sense, partly due to multidimensional spectrums, partly due to incomplete knowledge about each person, and partly due to incomplete knowledge about future threats. It's also far too dangerous to make anyone the arbiter of "good genes." The odds of them guessing correctly are very poor, and biodiversity is a much safer bet. Even aside from the corruption factor, treating people as equals under the law is just a much safer operating assumption. Most of us are roughly equal in the respects related to human dignity, anyway.
I wouldn't exactly be opposed to it.
I would however, still say that one cannot be for eugenics, and for slavery (by slavery I mean using humans for labor as we did centuries ago).
Yeah, because FrankRep is a hypocrite like that.
Are you deliberately missing the point here? The point was that most people don't oppose EVERYTHING Hitler did, because that would include innocuous things like eating breakfast and loving dogs. However, most people do oppose the authoritarian things Hitler did, because Hitler [among others] demonstrated why authoritarian policies were so destructive of freedom, [real] security, human dignity, and long-term economic prosperity. By following so many authoritarian policies, each of them tyrannical, he drew a crystal clear pattern that anyone paying attention can plainly see. From that point forward, any other authoritarian policy that "sounds like something Hitler would do" is widely recognized as bad, precisely because it follows that same pattern that has been shown to enable, lead to, and/or equate with tyranny. It is not "hypocrisy" to say that any Hitler-like policies that follow this pattern are bad, but eating breakfast is a-okay. It's just good judgment and pattern matching.
So at least we agree we can do it without it being abused.
A wise and benevolent Chinese emperor king of legend could, in theory, do it without abusing it, for a limited amount of time...maybe. However, when you're talking about a long-lived system passing through many hands (typically those most attracted to power - i.e. not the good people...and not the smartest, either), that's another story. The human element combined with the incentives makes it a statistical impossibility for such a system to work indefinitely without inevitably leading to complete devastation. You can flip a coin trillions of times and have it land on heads every time, but what are the odds? It's just a matter of time before it lands on tails. If it lands on tails three times or so, let's say that's Pol Pot, and he decides to exterminate all of the smart and/or educated people. Congratulations to everyone who created such a far-sighted system of centralized coercive power.
By the way, Hitler lived in a time where we were in exploration stages, you want to make an omelet without breaking eggs?
I'd rather not have any of the omelette that Hitler was cooking, and I think the eggs were worth saving for something much better...specifically, something that they volunteered for.
Not quite, it only turned out badly because Hitler lost the war.
Again, had Hitler won the war, Americans would praise him as they do Roosevelt and Churchill.
Yes, just as citizens of Oceania praise Big Brother. Just because people can be brainwashed to praise something (or else), that doesn't mean it's a good thing.
So why shouldn't eugenics be an acceptable response?
Response on whose part? It doesn't matter though, because it all comes down to the matter of a system of eugenics being unable to work the way its creator wants it to...unless its creator intends from the start for it to become completely corrupted and counterproductive.
I DO believe human civilization is part of nature, at least part of it is.
Civilization however, is not the same as embracing retarded people, treat handicap people as role models, or lying about how everybody is equal.
(yes, I just created a strawman, the fact you don't like what I said means you know you can't accept it either)
I don't quite follow the sentence in parentheses, but...
How many retarded people do you know of that are reproducing and creating armies of retarded people?
How many handicapped people do you know that you're better than at absolutely everything?
Saying, "Well, we're not all equal," is one thing. Actually trying to determine who is better, and acting on it with force, is something entirely different and far more dangerous. Who do you want to decide, and on what premise? In any case, it's moot, since the truth is that once a system like that is instituted, you would not have any control over it. You would simply be at the mercy of the sociopaths and genetic morons running it.
That's not scientific, so any use of that notion wouldn't be eugenics, even if it was GE for their own selfish reasons.
Both of which are not eugenics.
Perhaps you're right, which is why I've noted a few times that they might only be rightfully called "eugenicists," in quotes, i.e. phony eugenicists. It doesn't matter though, because no system of institutionalized eugenics could ever reliably and indefinitely distinguish between the real and fake ones.
If you're opposed to narcissism, ego extension by cloning and breeding, why aren't you opposed to irresponsible breeding?
It's because if I ever tried to use force to stop it, I would only make the problem worse. Narcissism feeds on centralized power, and farms more centralized power to feed on.
Not if socialism can help it.
I find it amazin you claim to know so much about "power elites" but turn a blind eye or manage to miss the obvious fact that socialism is DESTROYING HUMANITY, and conditioning humans to abandon genetic responsibility (yeah, I made up that term).
If you were an evil supervillain, you'd be the one who'd implement a merely adequate death trap and then say, "Nobody could survive that!" I'd be the one to say, "There's no kill like overkill," and the only way to be sure you've destroyed your enemy is to make them "deader than dead."
A lot more people responded to Ron Paul's message of liberty in 2007/2008 than any elites would have wanted. They'd be stupid not to continue tightening their grip with better and better measures, and the fact that the laws are getting worse every day indicates this is exactly what they're doing.
Watch idiocracy or look around you, see what tyrants are afraid of their people.
I sometimes share your notion that the people are perpetually too docile to be afraid of, but...the huge control grid, NSA surveillance dragnet, etc. indicate to me that the establishment is quite a bit more cautious and fearful.
And you're wrong, because I actually am a eugenicist, and I know what I believe.
You are neither a eugenicist nor a power elite, yet you claim to know what they believe.
I'm just following the incentives.
Do recall that I never misrepresented your beliefs about eugenics, though. In fact, I've been careful to explicitly set you apart from the people (real or imagined, if you will
) that cause people on this board to conflate eugenicists and Malthusians.
I can live with that.
Close. But more accurately, you (and others) started the strawman, so correcting the strawman is not denying I'm a Scotsman. Unless, understandably, the common usage of the words eugenicist & Malthusian has redefined this Scotsman.
You are right, I'm not a Malthusian and my goals CONTRADICT MALTHUSIANS.
(which is what I said from the first post, I am a eugenicist and I resent being lumped with Malthusians).
Right.
I would still say that your methods will better enable Malthusians than yourself, though.
And they're using the wrong terms.
You wouldn't like it if I called them minarchists or libertarians either.
I'd say a better comparison would be people calling Obama a socialist: Socialists resent it, because Obama is technically a corporatist and redistributionist, but not a "true" socialist. "True" socialists who actually believe in it have goals almost diametrically opposed to Obama's. Few here care to make a distinction though, since we recognize the fundamental collectivism and central planning of both make them parallel paths to the same destination in practice...because socialism cannot work the way "true" socialists want it to work, only the way oligarchs want it to work.
I know what their reasoning is, mostly wrong, which is why I corrected them, and defended my beliefs, and I intend to defend any eugenicist that's smeared as Malthusian.
Carry on, I guess.
By the way, when the NWO is the bad guy, conspiracy theorists have to jump around on why, first they're pro-gay, then they're pro-abortion, then they want slaves, then they want depopulation, then they want starvation, then they want socialism, sometimes they're pro-racist, sometimes they're communist.
WOW, either the NWO doesn't have their plan straight, or somebody just makes up mutually contradictory reasons why the NWO is bad.
Never forget that "conspiracy theorists" are not one homogeneous group. The stories jump around precisely because everyone has their own narrative. Of course, a few (like the JBS) do try to tie in everything under the sun and call it "cultural Marxism." ...for that matter, the powers that be are not one homogeneous group, either. There are obviously different factions, but they're united on the most basic goal of centralized hegemonic control of everyone and everything (the perennial lowbrow goal of countless rulers).
