What is it with the conservatives' obsession with legislating everybody's reproductive processes?

You know the answer to that as well as I do, Skerlnik....

Conservatives want to "get government off our backs".

And IN OUR PANTS!!!!!

Yikes! Hell, there's barely enough room in my pants for ME!

Brag, brag, brag.

Oh wait.... you were talking about your butt, weren't you?

I thought you were implying something else was too big.

Like ol Thor.

No, there's more than enough focus on genitalia-size contests on this forum, as it is.

Amen, brudda.

Amen.

And assuming that they were not run by idiots, I would be qualified for neither of them. I may be obviously of more European stock than African, but I am not "pure" by any stretch of the imagination. Nor am I concerned with it, as "race" is nothing more than a social construct-- and unlike other social constructs, "race" serves no purpose.

On the other hand, assuming that these banks had criteria other than "racial purity", in order to represent not just the purest but also the best of their respective "races", they would both be serving my agenda. The products of either program, assuming that they didn't share the program's racist ideology, would be superior mates for my grandchildren.

There would be trends, but as you say, none of these would be exclusive. I doubt the trends would even be as exaggerated as most people seem to think-- after all, the best professional athletes are all college graduates, and they seem articulate enough in their interviews. They might not be two-percenters, but they are certainly on the right-hand side of the bell curve.

I'd say that Rabbit knows who I am and knows what I'm trying to do. He doesn't have suspicions about my "agenda"-- he knows what my agenda is and disagrees with it. That's certainly fair enough, though I generally wish that anyone who can argue against me coherently would contribute to my eugenics goals.

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IQ also measures verbal ability and visual reasoning. The better professional tests manage to cover a great variety of intellectual capacities-- and to my knowledge, every Nobel Prize winner was an individual of considerably above-average IQ.

In any case, IQ as a measurable statistic is valuable all on its own as it is powerfully correlated with every aspect of socioeconomic success.

I believe that really depends on how the offer is phrased, and in what context. Most people, if a doctor sat them down with test results and told them sympathetically that it would be better if they did not produce children, would consider the issue and probably comply.

The others would be offended, of course, but if they are not penalized for refusing, I doubt even a significant minority would actually resort to violence. Evolution is a game of statistics, and my system is designed to be effective without requiring the full cooperation of the population-- since there is no way to secure that cooperation without force, and I have already ruled out force as an acceptable solution.

I do not believe that the risk is as great as you have portrayed, and at very least, it is only a consequence of the negative eugenics portions of the program. They could be abandoned with little damage to the overall value of the program, especially if the least controversial aspects-- genetic screening and prenatal care-- were preserved.

However, if given a choice, I would choose personal performance in a heartbeat. I think watching the world burn would be a heavy price to pay... but it is a price I would willingly pay to secure my descendants' place in it. It is a price I would pay to see a better-- and consistently improving-- humanity created.

Well, contrary to stereotype, most geniuses are not sickly and frail. Most of them are actually healthy and physically fit, compared to the average.

That's my solution as well. But I don't have as much of a problem with it as you have-- I've never ascribed to the notion that all people were created equal.

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Universal healthcare, improved funding for education, and government subsidized abortion for defective fetuses. I'm a conservative now?

Never could keep track of these things.

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Not you, specifically, just musing in general. From losing their collective minds over stem cells, abortion, definitions of marriages, etc., there appears to be a very interesting obsessive phenomenon, I think.

Didn't mean to insult you, sorry.

Rabbit bows to the Rat

What may be deemed 'beneficial' today, might not be tomorrow. And how do we know that certain specific traits are particularly and certainly beneficial while other specific traits are not particularly beneficial? I should think that the benefit of any given trait would be relative to any given environment. Ergo, your policy requires substantive agreement about what is, and what is not, "beneficial".

Besides which, the future represents an unknown environment. How can presume to say we know what traits are most beneficial for tomorrow?

Yes, the challenges of hunting and gathering are pretty much long behind us. However, cancer, AIDS, Bird Flu and influenza (to name a few examples) are not. As a species, we are not outside the ecosystem of viral killers. Odd genetic mutations not associated with any (theoretically) beneficial traits may ultimately prove to be the most important elements of human species survival against some unknown future viral outbreak. Micro-organisms mutate too you know.

And who is the "out-group" with respect to those who are presumed to possess the most beneficial traits? I respectfully submit, they are those who supposedly lack those presumably beneficial traits. Thus you appear to admit here that mixed/random breeding is necessary/good.

Improvement of such management and efficiency in distribution channels would thus require authorative control. A central committee as it were would be necessary for that. And we already know that authorative control of distribution channels is even less functional and efficient than private markets in every respect that can be measured (cf. Soviet Union, et al).

I also do not believe that every resource shortage on our planet is a result of failed distribution. That assertion requires some substantiation (take oil for example).

And your plan to increase breeding of some particular class of people will help this how? Large sections of the population will not voluntarily decide to stop breeding just because you think they ought to. Stopping the 'non-beneficial' from breeding randomly and freely must require authoritarian methods (or huge subsidies paid from public revenues).

And Canada and the USA have the least problem because of all the western nations, they are the ones who have large immigrant intakes. There is no shortage of population on the planet - only a shortage of working age people in the rich western economies. There is a MASSIVE surplus of people in the rest of the world (begging to come here) - more than enough to supply the need of western economies' need for population growth.

That is to say, opening up immigration policy is a much easier, cheaper and far more effective way to address this particular issue rather than the elaborate structure of subsidies and 're-education' campaigns necessary to support your enterprise - which would ultimately be experimental of unknown result. We know what happens when we change our immigration laws. That's a known factor.

Huh? Doesn't this undercut your own general proposal?

So high quality education and healthcare programs only improves ones own life for the duration of the program? What about the offspring of these people who benefit from improved education and healthcare? The offspring benefit from better educated parents with better health. That logically must benefit the offspring even if the program is stopped before the children hit school-age, the benefit of education or improved health doesn't evaporate or revert back to the previous state. Educated parents are able to educate children.

That's a tautology. Public education and healthcare programs, assuming they last longer than a single generation, are considerably more lasting.

Indeed, outside of the USA, there are several western countries that have sustained both public education and public healthcare for several generations already. Obviously these programs are not that fragile. Indeed, every academic study on them tends to stress how 'sticky' these programs really are.

If everything is always available to everyone, then how can your eugenics program presume to have any possible effect?

You must have some distinction of those with 'beneficial traits' to be encouraged to breed, and those who don't have those traits and are not to be encouraged (and indeed, need to be discouraged). If you don't do that, all the 'voluntary' improvements you seek will be only a pebble in the ocean for overall effect, given the mass of humanity counts in the billions. Like I said above, the 'undesirables' are going to keep breeding unless you seriously compel them to stop.

Or alternatively, wouldn't a general improvement in universal education and universal healthcare do more to increase the amount of 'beneficial' breeding types out there? No actual breeding of any kind is needed for that. Gene successes are affected by environment. Improving the environment is something we humans have lots of experience with - it is a known policy instrument. Improving genepools is a whole new ballgame filled with unknowns. Rational consideration dictates serious caution here.

This just repeats the question. How do we know what are the best available phenotypes? One has to impose a value-scale for doing that.

Yes, this is what we do with cattle, pigs and chickens. We seek to improve their suitability for our dinner table.

That's a value-scale that is rational and well understood. What value-scale are you proposing to use for judging human beings?

Getting dangerous here Rat. Sounds like fat or ugly people might be unsuitable for breeding - even if they are otherwise prosperous with stable-marriages.

So some massive database of individual genetic information is going to be available to me to use to decide whom I should want to breed with, but the government or other nefarious interests will not use this information for their own purposes at all? That defies credibility.

Yes. And you are suggesting that the methods that most people generally use to actually do this - the very methods humans have used for thousands of years - is insufficient. Sounds to me like you are trying to fix something that doesn't seem to be broken.

Okay, I'll accept this theoretically, but it still doesn't prove that improving 'breeding' practices would be more beneficial to more people than just improving the education/healthcare environment.

So the wholly subjective methods used for thousands of years, that have served the species from the savannah to skyscrapers, are now considered improper and ought to be replaced by a more consciously objective method?

Wouldn't it be prudent to at least show that there is something wrong with the traditionally subjective method before one presumes to say that some other new method is better?

I repeat my argument from above -- you have to show that it is broken before I'm willing to go along with any plan to 'fix it'. I just don't see any evidence that wholly subjective methods of breeding selection has been anything but beneficial to human species survival. Humans are not breeding themselves into mongrels - or living less long or dying younger. Indeed, quite the contrary. That suggests that the old wholly subjective method does seem to work pretty good.

Thus, I put to you, if it ain't broke, why fix it? Or if you want to fix it - prove it is broken first. As it stands, I see no prima facie evidence that our present wholly subjective breeding methods are anything but efficient, effective and successful.

I'm okay with your desire for your children and your descendants to be smarter and healthier than you are. That's rational and reasonable.

The part about "[more] than the general population of humanity" doesn't seem quite so rational and reasonable. That has hints of the scary elements of eugenic theory.

Yes, certainly. No argument here.

Once again we hit that almost invisible line between a 'reasonable private concern' and individual private acts - and what I'd say was an 'unreasonable' attempt to ensure your will over the future - through the use of public policy to affect the masses.

That is to say, if it is your own private concern, it may be considered quite reasonable. But if it is to be considered a public policy, it suggests the increased possibility of dangerous abuses in the future which is a relatively high risk that I consider entirely unjustified given a) human past record of abusing eugenic theory, and b) the present wholly subjective breeding method has not been shown to be flawed or unsatisfactory and in need of particular 'repair or improvement'.

Riposte!

Helping you to achieve your personal eugenics goals, I'm okay with that. It's the public policy angle that I'm hung up on.

I should have made myself more clear. Mutations to my DNA, your DNA, and non-bubble living human's DNA occur regularly during their lifetime. As a potential parent's DNA has already mutated by the time they are able to procreate, the selective breeding, based on genetics (if I understand your views correctly), is not as easily controlled as one may think, with the technology as it exists today.

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I am an American. That's the way most of us put it, just matter of factly. They are plain words, those four: you could write them on your thumbnail, or sweep them clear across this bright autumn sky. But remember too, that they are more than just words. They are a way of life. So whenever you speak them; speak them firmly, speak them proudly, speak them gratefully. I am an American. ...a tradition

I do not believe that our environment will change so much that what is beneficial now will no longer be of use to us in the foreseeable future-- especially concerning my main eugenic focuses on intelligence, healthy skeletal structure proportions, and freedom from deformity. We might argue a bit about whether or not we need worry about food shortage and its evolutionary influence on fat storage.

And I think that if there is much debate over whether a given trait is beneficial or not, the most prudent course of action would be to ignore it-- allow it resolve itself naturally. If the trait is detrimental, it will cause people eventually to be less qualified for benefits.

Yes, but aside from, say, deliberately reducing ambient radiation on the planet-- or deliberately irradiating people-- I do not see how any eugenics program would influence the rate of random mutation in either direction. My stance on new mutations is much like my stance on any other unknown trait-- leave it alone and see how it plays out in ten or twenty generations.