Eugenics is back!
Eugenics is back!
117 comments
-
-
I love how natural selection has become personified by redditbros & co. as some man behind the curtain literally selecting things that are Universally Good™. Surely it couldn't be just the effect of random mutations on an organism's fitness in a particular environment or range of environments
Picturing Steve Buscemi's character in Spy Kids 2 punching the wall when he learns about penicillin
-
Shoutouts to the educators trying to instill into people that 'natural selection' doesn't magically turn animals into some mythical super strong super smart optimized ubermensch creatures after being cooked in the oven long enough, it just optimizes for animals who are able to successfully propagate enough to replace the dead.
'Natural selection' could 'optimize' towards hominids that almost universally die of health complications around 25 as long as they are better at surviving to maturity and cumming in each other and popping out a bunch of babies to continue the cycle.
-
who were those two fascist breeding losers that were profiled in the atlantic or whatever last year? they were trying to breed superchildren but at risk of being ableist, neither of them would survive in the wild. they seemed pretty good at capitalism and spreadsheets but were really just complete treat babies.
-
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/life/pronatalists-save-mankind-by-having-babies-silicon-valley/
Telegraph did an interview of these two absolute gigaweirdoes from Philly who are representative of the "pronatalist" wing of Effective Altruism/Capital-R Rationalism.
-
-
I've taken bio classes before, and my professor literally insisted that I NEVER assign human values to nature. Eugenics is assigning a human value to nature and therefore I have a logical reason to oppose eugenics.
-
-
Sleeping in caves is the enemy of natural selection. It lets people with too little body hair survive the cold. In long-long-long terms it will screw people over when the next big ice-age comes.
-
The average redditor is a fascist
-
I think at this point the average redditor is an LLM shilling for the IOF and any number of corporations, so yeah
I saw a comment earlier today that just said "The product is actually very interesting" like that's a thing that humans say
-
I saw a comment earlier today that just said "The product is actually very interesting" like that's a thing that humans say
a few weeks ago there was a tweet going around from a person who got called out for using AI generated email responses, except they did not use any AI, they were just autistic... I wonder how many people who have naturally flat voices/expressions or who learned how to communicate by copying others are going to be unintentionally hurt by people trying to detect AI. sucks for everyone from every angle.
-
"The product is actually very interesting" like that's a thing that humans say
neoliberal subjects are not human
-
The comment is actually very interesting.
-
-
-
-
This mf better not be wearing glasses or shoes
-
He's a redditor, so you just know he's a 6'3" ubermensch with bulging forearms, perfect vision, an IQ of 125, and no carpal tunnel pain from typing on a keyboard all day.
-
-
Great news! By rejecting modern medicine, you can choose to experience natural selection on your own!
-
I always find that a lot of these CHUDs who preach "law of the jungle" almost never go move to the jungle.
They can do that, but they would likely be surprised to find that for the majority of human history, people made room for so-called "undesirables" and only when we started having such grand hierarchies, that there was ever such a push to optimize our genetics like we're fucking cattle. They think that they'll wake up in Brave New World as an Alpha ready to spend eternity partying it up as a reward for being better, but most likely they will make great gammas and do menial work since they have shown a predisposition to blind loyalty to the ruling class, alongside taking great pride in being little more than cattle.
-
-
Eugenics is back
-
Our desire to save everyone
From the country that posts "You're about to find out why we can't afford healthcare" before launching a billion-dollar salvo of over-priced, clumsily engineered rocket bombs.
letting natural selection run its course
Like, how does this dipshit think natural selection works? Do you just run the algorithm for an extra 10,000 years and get Human-Plus?
You illiterate nob. Natural selection doesn't just stop happening because of modern medicine. Your brain consumes enormous amounts of caloric intact precisely because its vastly more efficient to learn to wash your hands than to hope your hundredth-generational offspring evolves fingers that leak antiseptic.
The point of modern medicine is to capitalize on that capacity for investigative reasoning. Not to simply lay down and submit to our birthed state like a bunch of instinct-driven bacteria.
-
Left: Our next generation will be nurtured to achieve their full potential and flourishing
Right: The weak will be purged from our next generation so that only the strong will live in glory
-
But its not like "Left" and "Right" are genetic cohorts anyway. Human brains are plastic and ideology is learned not instinctual.
What's more, if there's one thing that neoliberalism has cultivated in the modern Westroid, its a strong disdain for fucking. So the real threat to our future is not whether we are right or left, but whether we are ace or horny.
-
it's hard to believe, but mainstream movies used to have actual sex scenes
-
They still need cumming, they just want to minimize how much fucking is involved.
-
-
-
i'm sure the OP in screenshot would be the first to volunteer to die if they contracted an illness that could be treated with modern medicine. surely their argument isn't just an excuse to remove their particular brand of "undesirables"
-
Main character syndrome. "I, the protagonist of reality, could never get a terrible illness"
-
-
Elementary school understanding of genetics and mutations
-
This guy should go and Steve Jobs himself if he hates modern medicine so much.
-
Fuuuuuuck why does social Darwinism appeal to anyone
-
Same reason all hateful right wing grifts succeed. It promises the target that their pathetic existence is a result of the (insert enemy here) keeping them down and in a world with (insert horrible atrocity here) they would be the superior special ubermensch they've always imagined themselves to be. It offers ego stroking and enables them to avoid the repercussions of their own actions.
-
CHUDs see life as a video game.
It doesn't matter if our ideas work or that they will solve any problems, they see that these solved problems as boring and want to keep them so they can feel tough or whatever. Have you seen even some of their fantasies? Look at The Turner Diaries, pages of just mental masturbation about the race war like it's a video game fight. Even their masochistic desire to make life excruciatingly difficult through all their handouts to rent-seekers is them insisting we are all noobs that need to "git gud" like them, It's all pure LARP. Even if they got what they wanted and had an all-white utopia, they'd just go to killing each other.
CHUDs are mentally on the same level of a Powerpuff girls villain.
-
I think it's just scientific Calvinism.
-
-
The people saying this would surrender in less than a day if they were in Gaza.
-
On a somewhat related note, I saw a post on
the other day saying "it's better to die young and give your money to your children and grandchildren than have it drained by the healthcare and retirement system"Except in the real world where non-lizardpeople live I'm certain most of us would rather have grandma as long as possible.
-
I agree that having grandma around for as long as possible is the preferred solution, but nursing homes and healthcare institutions will absolutely drain you of every penny they can get their hands on. If grandma wants to pass on her house, making sure that the nursing home can't get their hands on it is something that should be considered before you send her there.
-
-
-
Whenever I see this take all I can think is: teen or libertarian (or both)
-
two groups that should not have unsupervised contact with each other
-
-
modern plumbing is the enemy of shitting in a hole in the ground
-
-
don't gotta hand it to him but googling shit is like half of my job, I'd be fucked if I had to try to remember enough to do it
-
-
-
This was also my opinion when I was like 14 or 15 and almost out of 8th grade. I don't necessarily feel bad about that opinion now, because I was a dumbass teen who spent way too much time on Reddit or speaking to people who might as well have been reddit-clones, but it does make me cringe.
-
-
Obviously this is a bad argument but it's also bad science.
Medicine didn't stop or break natural selection. Nothing stops natural selection.
Our homeboy doesn't point at a beaver dam and fall to their knees, crying out in anguish over how beavers have wrecked natural selection so what's the big deal when we also create things that improve our chances of survival?
People still have car crashes and natural disasters still happen. People die from asthma in the developed world all the time. People that have a disposition towards being too reckless or too aggressive are going to be statistically more likely to die by misadventure. People who are "insufficiently" social are much less likely to procreate.
Natural selection doesn't give a fuck about medicine and medicine doesn't remove selective pressure.
If they want to live in a world without humans changing the landscape that selective pressure exists within then they're welcome to strip naked, walk into their nearest wilderness and subsist by foraging for food without making any shelter or tools. In fact, I'd encourage them to do exactly that because the world would be a better place if the people who invoke natural selection in the place of an argument showed their commitment to natural selection.
-
they're welcome to strip naked, walk into their nearest wilderness and subsist by foraging for food without making any shelter or tools
Can I watch?
Jokes aside, I second this. Anyone who invokes law of the jungle or survival of the fittest should just return to monke.
-
-
If we're gonna have roundabout eugenics
I guess we can start having roundabout gulags
-
humans developed intelligence
humans developed intelligent ways to combat disease
-
Even if eugenics was a good thing (it isn't), do they really think that with their ideology that dysgenics wouldn't rise as well?
Porky will literally develop conditions to sabotage people on a genetic level until they become human cattle. To do otherwise would be "leaving money on the table". Although it was posted as a joke, this explains why some people push for car dependency even if they know that it will harm people. If we followed that advice beat for beat, the world would be shittier materially even if it 'benefits' the economy: the only thing we are given permission to care about.
-
-
If Darwinism is so good, I'd like to see evolution solve this
-
what is this again
-
Some fucked up nerve that does a weird loop around the neck. Not an issue for short-necked vertebrates, but evidently evolutionary pressures failed to "fix" it for stuff like giraffes and presumably super big dinosaurs. Of course with near future medicine, humans could rectify this if we wanted to. Take that mother nature!
-
-
-
I mean, yeah. Fuck natural selection. Shit sucks
-
It never left
-
-
He sounds like a Pokemon villain. LMAO.
-
-
It's never left sadly.
-
Eugenics has a point, actually. Because if all the eugenicists stopped breeding it would definitely be better for the human race.
-
Doubtful. Most of these losers aren't getting none and, if anything, it's making their opinions worse.
-
-
The problem is it not obvious why this is factually wrong.
It IS obvious why it's morally wrong.
The clarity comes when you actually understand science and realize that we're correcting our genes faster than mutation could ever hope to.
It's sad that nuance is lost.
-
The problem is it not obvious why this is factually wrong.
Well, I mean... no?
Mutations aren't "negative" things. They're just things and in some times and places that mutation is maladaptive, in others they're adaptive, and in many more cases they're just not gonna have a strong effect in either direction.
Its a very rudimentary understanding of mutation as a "wrong" thing that never gets corrected in basic education. Not even an ignorance of science thing, just a basic incorrect definition of the word.
-
If you want, I do have three logic-based reasons against eugenics:
- Eugenics means assigning human values to nature, and therefore our human emotions will determine what our kids might have.
- Eugenics is just hyper-domestication. They claim that modern medicine is evil, but eugenics will just domesticate us further and will really bite us in the ass if civilization collapses (CHUDs drool of the day civilization collapses and they can act out their LARP.)
- How do we know this won't set a precedent for using eugenics to create an inherit slave class as "the help" and who will get to decide who is and isn't a slave?
-
I do appreciate that.
Thing is, whatever the argument, everyone is too overwhelmed by the day-to-day to really respond to it logically. No nuance.
-
genes are pretty irrelevant to most things
the tallest people in pre-modern world were like 5'8" on average
that's now below average in every high-income countrymost of that is due to fossil fuels doing our manual labor and large amounts of food, but some of it is also due to medical advances (for instance ivermectin reducing parasite burden)
-
-
Putting this guy in the woods with a box of matches, a knife, and a go-pro. Leaning back in my chair and watching.
-
It's not like this whole society we live in wasn't originated from some monkies learning to take care of another monkey who broke their leg long enough that the bones fused back together
-
eugenics never left 🤷🏼
-
I for one think it's wonderful to question what we think we know. Such thoughtful consideration will eventually yield good results. Maybe we'll come back to where we started but with a more firm underpinning as to why exactly we believe it. Or maybe we won't, and that's often good too, in order to cast off false beliefs e.g. in believing in Santa Claus or a childish view of a God who grants our every good wish but demands nothing in return. The important thing I always keep in mind is that TRUTH has nothing whatsoever to fear from honest inquiry.
Also, interestingly enough, we seem to be on the cusp of being able to rewrite our own DNA, thus what genes we have at any given moment may not matter to people in a hundred years from now:-P.
-
The important thing I always keep in mind is that TRUTH has nothing whatsoever to fear from honest inquiry.
Sure, the fact is though that this person is clueless about natural selection, morphing it into Malthusian nonsense, and making an inquiry on that basis (so not developing science by expressing skepticism but flaunting their ignorance of things already explained). There is great harm in rejecting modern medicine to bring about “natural selection,” especially since this is merely a misunderstanding of the concept.
-
Ofc it's possible that I could be reading into it what I want to see, and yet too the reverse as well?
The last two sentences made me think that it was just a thought, which they (not OP, but the person whose name is scratched out) wanted answered, not at all like the style of like "hey, I'm just asking questions!" (no, you very much are not you bowtie-wearing MFer). But ofc that could be by design, if they were sea lioning?
Also, it's true: medical science really is diametrically opposed to allowing purely "natural selection" to have its way with humanity, as too is selective breeding (dogs, livestock, plants, etc.) that has been done by centuries. Humans like to divide things, so like things that "we" do gets one name, whereas things that "other" forces do gets a different name. Even though it's all the same DNA under the hood, and what survives is what manages to survive, good bad or whatever.
The whole thing is so short, and lacking context - unless I missed it somehow? - that it seems hard to know if it is genuine. Like if it was a Reddit post to shower thoughts, wouldn't it be good to treat it as an honest question, in that case, if we knew that?
If it is not a genuine question, then my reply still stands, but no longer applies since it was predicted on the question being genuine, which in that case it would merely be taking the form of a question but would really be sea lioning. The latter happens thousands of times daily on Reddit, and barely happens at all on Twitter/X - oh excuse me, barely ever does not happen:-P - so is uninteresting since h8rs gonna h8, and responding will not change thagt. So I thought I would reply to what was, to me, the more interesting part, that might actually have been meaningful if someone had told that to the person whose name is scratched out the made this.
I hope that explains why, right or wrong, I said that. And I hope this reply was interesting to you as well:-).
-
-
people can't really rewrite their own DNA
CRISPR is riddled with errors and even if it gets past some of this, it'll only be a real solution in germline editing
and even then you won't rewrite your entire DNA, only tiny parts of it. There are a few diseases which are truly genetic, but most diseases aren't
-
may not matter to people in a hundred years from now
Not now yes. But as this video explains beautifully, it might be possible, in some distant future. Ofc, it might not, though we won't know for another century, yet it is fun to speculate now.
e.g. the video starts off with:
Imagine you were alive back in the 1980's,
and were told that computers would soon take over everything:
from shopping, to dating, and the stock market,
that billions of people would be connected via a kind of web,
that you would own a handheld device, orders of magnitudes more powerful than supercomputers.
It would seem absurd, but then, all of it happened.
Science fiction became our reality, and we don't even think about it.
We're at a similar point today with genetic engineering.
Already I can envision things like taking out the tiniest portion of our liver, rewriting its genetic code, then transplanting our very own (modified) liver back into our bodies (after first growing a lot of cells, of the type that we selected for). Even if the liver only replaced some fraction of the natural cells that were previously there (I dunno... 10-50% maybe? I do not have an M.D. so it is mostly speculation), I think we would still have the new function that the new cells provide? e.g., even if 90% of the liver cells do NOT do the new chemical processing, if 10% DO, then that could be enough to make whatever that "function" is happen?
Or removing people's gallbladers could become a thing of the past, or even if you did that, you could maybe pop back in a new one? The latter is more generic stem cell stuff, not needing modification of any kind, genetic or otherwise, but now take it one step further and imagine that you inserted cells modified to produce a new chemical - a stronger digestive aid perhaps. You wouldn't need a whole LOT of cells to provide that gain-of-function, even just a little would alter the state from "chemical does not exist, at all" to "chemical now exists, in XYZ quantity".
And we haven't even BEGUN to dig into the microbiome: maybe we don't want to experiment with editing our own fully human DNA, but editing the bacterial DNA could have profound implications, especially for anything digestive-related.
Finally, while most diseases may not be fully genetic, some are, and in any case perhaps a genetic solution could be devised even if that was not the original cause? An example could be to implant a new organ that would permanently produce insulin, so so as to not require injections any longer - and if you could make that organ from the patient's very own cells, that would significantly reduce the chance of tissue rejection?
Or even with all the detail already, I still have yet to even so much as mention nanobots, lets say bacterial or viral ones. Tiny changes, to even a few cells, can have HUGE ramifications. See e.g. cancer, but what about making those kinds of changes work for rather than against us - e.g. by modifying bacteria or bacteriophages that have zero possibility of passing on those genetic changes to the human host, for safety? Heck, the insulin example is probably already possible now - we've been mass-producing insulin from bacteria since the 80s. There probably is some reason that we aren't seeing it - e.g. if bacteria in our small intestine were to produce insulin, could it get into our bloodstream that way or would it just become pooped out? Even if someone had to eat a yogurt once a week rather than receive insulin injections, many people might purchase such a product?
And from there it will only continue to grow... just as computers did, also having mostly started in the 80s. Check out the video - it's superb!:-D
-
-
117 comments
literally stone age hunter-gatherer societies took care of disabled, wounded, and sick members. we have evidence of successful brain surgeries (no, drilling holes in the skull was not just 'stupid caveman shit', it is a treatment for brain pressure/swelling), whose patients survived several decades, we have bodies missing limbs from early childhood surviving into elderly years, and basically anyone that ever got eaten by a tiger ends up buried with a tiger skull (because the group they belonged to hunted it down after it became a known threat).
like there's some valid worry over drug-resistant bacteria and viruses, but i'd rather maybe live to 90 with drug resistant threats to deal with than live to 30 knowing that the bacteria that killed me could have been easily treated lmfao.
yeah but have you consindered I have stopped reading at hunter-gatherer society and filled the rest in with my preconcieved notions about humanity
That's metal as fuck, do you know where I can read more about this?
i can't find where i first read it, but i think i'm confusing this with Dinofelis, which as far as i can tell probably went exinct due to climate change, but theres a bunch of claims i can't find sources for saying they were hunted by humans.
If a fellow hexbear is ever eaten by a tiger, I expect all of us to pick up stone axes and hunt it down
One of my favorite videos goes over a few specific cases of disability in prehistory by Trey the Explainer. Personally love the family that seemingly took too good care of their daughter and fed her too many sweets.
These are injuries and are generally not inherited by future offspring. A weakened immune system due to genetic factors offset by modern medicine will be.
This is a problem but not in the way eugenicists think it is. If there is no evolutionary pressure for something, it will inevitably be lost and become vestigial. The response to this is gene therapy which will hopefully be available before this becomes a major problem. There's no reason to let random people die since we'll be able to fix the negative effects before it becomes a problem.
Let's imagine the same scenario, you live to 90 but for every person treated today, 2 people die due to drug resistant bacteria in 40 years. Your scenario only works if drug resistant bacteria won't kill more people in the future than we could save today. The hopeful solution is that medical science will catch up and be able to deal with resistance. There's no reason to let people die today for a theoretical, but let's not stick our heads in the sand.
Longtermist spotted, deploy the pig feces
well it's a good thing we let covid rip then, eh? keep those immune muscles well trained!
Anti-biotic resistance is from people pumping massive amounts of drugs into animals for food in factory farms, not people being saved from dying from a small infection and "stopping natural selection." It will probably become a huge issue. Fortunately, since drug companies have stopped researching anti-biotics for lack of profit incentive, if we achieve socialism we should be able to solve it.
I'm not sure about that. Mutation is a random process, and natural selection is pretty random as well. I don't think there's anything inevitable about evolution, and the circumstances that determine if a trait is negative or favorable (for rapid procreation) are constantly changing.
i never implied otherwise. my point was that humans (and many other animals, like chimpanzees and beavers and dogs and ants) modify their environment to survive, which '''circumvents evolutionary presures''' according to vulgar eugenicists, and keep 'useless' disabled people alive and in their communities, all of which is contrary to 'eugenics' (the injured guy was '''clearly''' genetically inferior, a '''superior''' specimen would simply have avoided injury)