Open Menu
AllLocalCommunitiesAbout
lotide
AllLocalCommunitiesAbout
Login

Does the net positive of Eugenics out weigh the negative? How so?

⁨8⁩ ⁨likes⁩

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Patnou@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

source

Comments

Sort:hotnewtop
  • riskable@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Who decides what genes are best?

    People who have the genetics for sickle cell anemia have a greater chance of surviving malaria.

    Forget the ethics for a moment: Eugenics is flawed from the very premise that putting all our (genetic) eggs in one basket is somehow a good idea.

    source
    • the_q@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Technically evolution decides what genes are best… Eventually.

      source
      • kbobabob@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Shouldn’t this be constantly instead of eventually? Genetic changes are happening all the time

        source
        • -> View More Comments
    • Patnou@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      I was more thinking like Gattaca where they take the part out of the DNA that causes heart disease and other stuff to give kids the best start at life. Then why can’t we use the gene for sickle cell to create a cure for malaria?

      source
      • KoboldCoterie@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        If you watched Gattaca and thought, “This is a good blueprint for the future”, you missed the point the movie was making.

        source
        • -> View More Comments
      • ViatorOmnium@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Because the mutation that causes anemia is the one that prevents malaria. You can’t have one without the other.

        source
      • JustPlainDave@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        You didn’t finish that movie, did you?

        source
      • cattywampas@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        I think a big problem is it becomes a slippery slope. We can all agree that heart disease and cancer are bad. What about asthma? Ok, probably bad, let’s get rid of that. Near-signtedness? Hmm. Being short? Not having a strong jawline? Male pattern baldness? The “wrong” skin color?

        source
      • Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Watch better films.

        Do not believe all that they tell you.

        source
  • the_q@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Image

    source
    • Patnou@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      I think you were like the second comment on here. But you have to admit it’s been good or great discourse.

      source
  • Nemo@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Okay, three things, least important first:

    Using “net” positive already refers to comparing it against the negative. If you want just the positive before comparison, use “gross”.

    Second, there is no positive to eugenics. There are hypothetical gains to make but they are unrealizable. This is because the mechanisms to decide who gets to reproduce will immediately be corrupted. Immediately. Every time.

    And finally, the negatives are huge. Personal anguish, public unrest, widespread violation of civil rights depending on how draconian you make your regime, the downsides are huge and certain.

    So unrealizable and uncertain gains at the a huge and certain price: No. No eugenics.

    If you want to personally have lots of children with smart, beautiful, talented people, well, get in line.

    source
  • cattywampas@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    No, because eugenics requires inhibiting the fertility of people against their will.

    source
  • socsa@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    I don’t understand why these troll posts are allowed.

    source
    • Patnou@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Freedom of speech. Plus mods only respond to reporting.

      source
  • Flax_vert@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    It has been 0 days since Lemmy Users started considering Eugenics again 🫩

    source
    • Patnou@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      You do have to admit though all comments even the ones giving me shit. Are decent reads.

      source
      • Flax_vert@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        I love how society always goes full circle on eugenics. Where I live recently had it legalised. Anyone protesting it in a wrong manner gets jailed. Someone should study how we can’t seem to beat fascism.

        source
  • Miller@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    If humanity had complete understanding of genetics and always had the best motivations then possibly but realistically we are never even going to have one out of two.

    source
  • Auli@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    So we can all be the same.

    source
  • NotAnonymousAtAll@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    All this to a missed knowledge part on myself.

    Maybe next time you want to publicly discuss a topic you already know is controversial do some minimum amount of research about what that term actually means before.

    source
  • impairedimperator@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    I think it depends on how it is carried out.

    If I was to have kids, I’d want them to have the best shot at life, and if that includes genetic editing, then I’m making some GMO kids.

    If you want to have kids, I should have no say in those kids.

    The problem is that eugenics folks are generally more concerned with other people’s kids. As with 95% of the problems in the world, if people would mind their own business and let others live as they do, there would be no problem.

    Note that the main character in Gattaca is also a piece of shit who (a) knew he was on borrowed time and (b) was the only pilot on a multi year interplanetary mission. His need for personal success quite possibly doomed five others.

    source
    • Auli@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      So why do you get to decide what your kid looks like?

      source
      • impairedimperator@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        …because that’s how having kids works, regardless of genetic editing. Do you think fetuses get a character creation screen or something? Lol.

        source
  • Gladaed@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    It gets a bad rap because most people opposed genocide and ethnocides nowadays. Hitler wasn’t the only one committing them. History is littered with genocides. A lot of successful ones too. Discarding the idea as sullyed by Nazis is denying the horrors.

    source
  • Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    1. Define Eugenics
    source
    • Patnou@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Like the movie Gattaca

      source
      • RBWells@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        That’s gene editing, not eugenics. Taking an already created embryo and messing with it would be gene editing.

        Eugenics is a government deciding you have undesirable characteristics so they sterilize you, or deciding you have desirable characteristics so they breed you.

        source
      • cattywampas@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Everyone wears suits and fedoras and drives electric hot rods?

        source
  • GreenBeard@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    The fundamental problem with Eugenics is that the more fit for a specific niche you become, the more vulnerable you are to niche collapse. For example, if someone was genetically optimized to be the perfect software engineer, and now AI had made their job redundant, and the rest of their skills were mediocre at best, they now are not fit for anything else. We see this in nature all the time where a species becomes so hyper-specialized at one thing, the second there’s a shift in the environment they are instantly past-tense.

    Diversity lacks efficiency, but it improves resilience. Another example, if you over-engineer the drive shaft on a truck to very precisely meet the expected load limit and no more to save weight, the second you encounter a situation that overloads the drive shaft it will snap like a twig. The added weight of safety tolerances is inefficient… but it is also the only way to approach a world far too complex for you to anticipate every possible variable.

    For an example of how this works in human biology, lets say you found a way to completely eliminate sickle-cell anemia. That’s great, people will live much more healthy lives right? Except the second you do that, millions of people that you cured instantly start keeling over dead. Why? Because the sickle-cell was protecting them from malaria, and while it wasn’t a great solution, far fewer died from sickle-cell than would have from unchecked malaria.

    Engineering is always limited by how many of the real world variables you actually know about. It’s the unknown unknowns that will sink your titanic every time. This scattershot, random evolutionary system that produces us? Yeah, there’s a reason nature works that way. It’s actually the most efficient way to keep surfacing variables you didn’t yet know existed. For a lot of really complicated reasons, it’s actually impossible for you to think of everything when trying to engineer the perfect human, and a surprising number of things you can’t figure out a reason for and assume they’re useless at best or a harmful waste at worst, turn out to be the one thing that saves you when everyone else is dropping like flies to a thing you didn’t even know could happen yesterday.

    source
  • SuiXi3D@fedia.io ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Only if the ones dying are fuckin’ Nazi scum.

    source
    • snarkysadierose@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      “no you see everyone else did eugenics wrong, im just going to kill the people I think are bad”

      source
      • Patnou@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        What does killing have to do with any of this?

        source
  • Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    When so many people become murderers, what is your “net positive”?

    source
    • Patnou@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Curing diseases like a cancer gene or something else that can give the child the best start at life.

      source