Good Genes: An Argument for Eugenics

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While your comments aren't exactly inspiring, I was speaking about the general public sentiment and how to win it rather than anything that you specifically said.



Yes, and that determination involves removing people at some point; either pre-birth or when alive. The end result is that they cease to exist.



The Autistic spectrum is a complicated thing, but generally speaking it's best to teach awareness rather than pity, acceptance rather than prejudice.

I'm not really bothered about public sentiment.


Pre-birth is before existence. Having never existed, the pre-born cannot cease to exist.


Awareness and acceptance versus pity and prejudice. Let's take them one at a time:
Awareness is good as knowledge generally leads to understanding which leads to acceptance. Pity is useless and vain and prejudice is unfortunate.

But I am not talking about autism as people experience it now, but rather a couple of generations from now. I suspect there will be a lot of genetic modification and cybernetics. With our large population we need to start being more picky about offspring; otherwise, the burden of caring for those who can't contribute will bring civilization down. It's already started as shown by Trump's win.

It ends up being eugenic if a person whose had their genes altered has children whose genes are consequentially altered. I'm not saying that's necessarily a good or bad thing, just that would take a tremendous amount of adult responsibility on the part of the human race to run toward full resolution of everything that makes one adult inconveniently different from another adult. We've rarely shown that type of self-discipline so far in the history of civilization but developing such discipline might be critical for us to survive this as well as many other major changes coming toward us, such as dealing with the day where almost anyone could 3-d print devices or substances as dangerous as atomic bombs or create world-ending diseases with gene manipulating software from a home computer.

I think confusion around this topic arises from a failure to distinguish between respecting those who live versus all life being of equal value. Someone's life may be of less value, but that does not mean they should not be treated with equal respect. But being due respect as a person is not the same thing as one's life having value equal to others'.

This is why killing people is not the same thing as preventing potential humans from becoming people.

Respect for life is a red herring. If those who said they did, did respect life they would put more importance on the experience of it.

One thing I think we have to face up to immediately - nature doesn't care about us much at all. It doesn't care about giving us inclinations toward people like ourselves which pools common traits, with the complexities of the procreative dance it doesn't care about making cannon-fodder out of most men and women. It also doesn't care, if we homogenize our genes to have genetic equality, that the right disease could take everyone out.

We'd probably be attempting to zap the meeting of hereditary disease genes. At the same time our culture will have to seriously remodel how it handles hierarchy and that will be extremely difficult because the full weight of evolution is behind the current system we have right now which endorses hierarchies predicated on dominance. We can't survive that too much longer with our technology increasing the way it is.

True. The hierarchy will have nothing to base itself on. Could be good.

It's important to a chance of policy and attitudes.



Regardless of whether they count as 'existing' or not, the fact remains that if you stop someone from being born then they won't be able to exist in the future and their talents are lost to humanity.


Awareness and acceptance versus pity and prejudice. Let's take them one at a time:
Awareness is good as knowledge generally leads to understanding which leads to acceptance. Pity is useless and vain and prejudice is unfortunate.

Yup!



If we ever get to such an Orwellian world where we have to be very picky about such things, then better awareness of Autism will help in making sure that we (Autistic people) are the ones doing the picking and thriving.



It's a very pragnatic decision to be against eugenics; if we stop potential humans from becoming people then humanity will lose their talents.

Ok, so I'm fairly anti-eugenics, but as a geographer and science student this one point I would like to correct. Natural selection is natures means of selecting preferable genes to propagate to ensure the survival of the fittest. It is not natures means of birth control, we have evolved so far that natural selection is far less applicable to us (even though evolution continues with us fairly unaffected). Also, just letting people die because you've decided their genes aren't 'desirable' is in no way right. To tackle these points though, as you suggest that overpopulation will cause these problems (as natures safety mechanism? I guess that is what your believing).

Controlling birthrate in the means discussed is a fairly impractical and ineffective means of preventing the problems stated. Firstly, the major problem with overpopulation is what we term LICs, that's an acronym for "Low Income Countries", essentially developing countries like many in Africa and such. These countries contribute to the overpopulation problem as they have very large families for numerous reasons to name a few; the likelihood of one surviving is low, and they need as much free labour as possible on their farms and such, and notably they have poor female education and very poor access to contraception, both of which have a major impact on pregnancy rates.

To tackle just overpopulation itself, which realistically alone isn't much of an issue, we won't actually run out of space, but anyway, to tackle it you would be better to invest the money that this eugenics would cost, in better education, healthcare, contraception, housing and in developing those countries further.


Now, the other factors, the ones that are actually notable, war, famine, disease, and I'll throw in the other one which would be related but you left unmentioned (we might as well go for the complete list after all,) global warming.

Firstly, Famine, there is tonnes of ways to improve upon farming practices, the concepts of multistory farms, urban farming (i.e. utilising flat roofs in urban areas, which also serves to help the environment), notably, growing of animal meats (a while back in a laboratory the first steak was grown), and animals use up far to much space to rear on mass, growing the meat we want saves space, makes those PETA fantasists chill out and reduces methane emissions. Finally for solving famine, genetic engineering is a brilliant science, which for some reason is feared too much. Genetic engineering on humans is certainly ethically questionable with the poor leadership of today, but careful and controlled but still encouraged genetic engineering of crops and animals, and funding in research into this field would be greatly beneficial (which also counters your disease point, as vectors for disease, vaccines, and sometimes the diseases themselves can be modified to prevent disease outbreaks).

Investing in poorer countries with healthcare would also help treat disease. Also if countries co-operated a lot of these problems would be handled.

As far as global warming goes, switch to nuclear and renewable. Nuclear is safer than the media makes out, although its not perfect, its certainly far better then fossil fuels, and renewable aren't always perfect either, but are far better for the environment. Also, improvements on farming methods and construction methods would greatly protect the environment, and notably if the US would stop suggesting global warming is a myth, that would improve the situation a fair bit and give us some hope before we reach the 2 degree increase and point of no return which by then, our planet is almost certainly going to then be destroyed by our actions.(Interestingly, we SHOULD be in an ice age, yet this is one of the warmest periods the earth has gone through in a long long time. Conclude what you wish from that).


Finally, "war, what is it good for, absolutely nothing". Seems an applicable lyrical quote, even Star Trek understood that reasonable logic. Eugenics would likely lead to an increase in war. Your devaluing some people on grounds they are 'inferior'. Lets look at some notable wars and similar events and some of the causes and reasons for them:
Slavery (Global) and the executions and massacres and uprisings as a result of it: Reason - Coloured people believed to be inferior.
WW2 (Global): Hitler and the Nazi Party believed that the Jews, and various nationalities were inferior, and that they were superior and meant to bring good to the world.
The so called "War on Terror", Terrorist Attacks, Wars in the Middle East (US, Europe, Asia & North Africa / Middle East): Extremist Muslims believe non-Muslims and Westerners to be inferior, multiple notable Westerners (i.e. Donald Trump) believes the Middle East to be inferior.

Embracing difference will reduce war and conflict.

Also, you get to the problem of "what genes are inferior". Sure for some of them you can clearly define it, although in those cases it might be better to adjust the genes to cure it (i.e. in people susceptible to cancers) rather than to kill them off, but is Autism inferior? Is Tourettes Inferior? Are 'Normal People' Inferior? And in note to an example here, is Down Syndrome Inferior?

Well in the example someone posted, that person in their 20's was totally dependant on others due to their Down Syndrome, but they were happy like a toddler? Is that so wrong, I wouldn't say it is myself? They are happy, if they didn't exist there would not be that happiness. If you killed off so many people, you may risk not having many of today's geniuses, Einstein is thought to potentially have had autism, without him nuclear power and a large field of modern physics would be far less prevalent if existent at all.


There is only really one goal in the end the human race should aim for and that is to increase the net amount and intensity of happiness globally and ensuring that happiness for future generations.
Not to make society ultra-high-functioning. Telling someone they have a gene that won't make their kid a super-athlete so they can't raise a family certainly won't increase the net happiness of the world, and with the questionable morality and judgement of our society and its influential figures, this sort of idea could never be carried out fairly and as intended. A Hitler of one form or another would take over the scheme.

To sum it up though, I'd rather live in a crowded ecological society where we can be judged by character and not creed, than a war-torn planet of the odd survivor with no genetic defects at all.

(EDIT: As a little side-note, I noticed an interesting conflict these comment seems to create with two other of my views. I'm for the option of abortion although not forced abortion and not necessarily screening for everything, and I'm very much for quality of live over quantity. I'm sure eugenics would cause a decrease in both though.)

Who knows the contributions that could have come from those who have not existed? It's an unanswerable and meaningless question. What matters is how it is for those of us stuck in these lives.

But does genes necessarily determine how your life will be?
Nuture vs. Nature - Genes are not the only factor effecting how your life will turn out, so eugenics wouldn't necessarily offer an improvement in average quality of life.

Also, if you wish to just kill off people who are sad, doesn't suicide already handle that?

It might increase the chance though. Healthy people make good parents, so quality of life could be improved for children.

Because there are plenty of amazing people who could have been on the List if eugenics were around and active at the time of their birth.

This List must be huge. All the possible people and the ensuing possible events. Boggles the mind to think about really. I won't bother to spend my energy mourning the endless possibilities as it would be an empty gesture anyway.

This can be found regarding identical twins raised under differing circumstances.



Like me for example

Just a note on some previous xomments . autism rates are not rising, autism diagnosis rates are rising, due to increased advancement on technology and medicine as well as increased awareness.

But then your forcing people with good genes to have children they didn't want to have.
Those people won't be cared for by their families as much then in numerous cases, resulting in more of what you were trying to stop, although as a result of nuture, not nature. (You wouldn't even have mother nature to blame then! It'd actually be humanities fault)