1. What Is Eugenics?
There are various ways to define eugenics, as it is used in this FAQs:
Eugenics is the deliberate social regulation of the genome.
Eugenics is about consciously selecting for traits that make people better members of society.
Eugenics is about selecting for traits that we value in other human beings, such as intelligence, health, and responsibility; and selecting against traits that we negatively value, such as irresponsibility and propensity to violence.
Eugenics selects for traits that are socially positive and selects against traits that are socially negative.
Eugenics is the self-direction of human evolution. – This definition is historically notable for being a slogan of the International Eugenics Conference, but it’s too vague and inaccurate. In a sense, one could argue that the unregulated reproduction that is occurring today is the “self-direction of human evolution”. The eugenics that we’re proposing must be directed by society.
Eugenics is selective breeding or artificial selection, as managed by society. However, “selective breeding” tends to apply to crops, plants, animals, and other organisms used by humans, rather than humans. Another important distinction is that “selective breeding” for non-humans tends to have connotations with top-down eugenics, whereas we’re proposing laissez-faire eugenics for humans.
Regardless, what is considered “eugenic” is always relative to a given environment and a set of values. If the environment in question is not specified, it’s usually assumed to be Modernity or the society that one lives in. No matter what we do, the social environment places selective pressures on the human genome. Pro-social selection is also a feedback loop.
In a biological context that doesn’t involve humans, “eugenic” is usually defined with respect to biological value, from the perspective of an organism. In which case, eugenics is the improvement of genetic qualities through selection, to make organisms more adaptive to their relative environments. But that is not the definition of eugenics that will be used in this FAQs. When we and most other people are talking about eugenics with respect to humans, eugenics is defined according to social value and modern civilization. We believe that eugenics will be necessary to sustain modern civilization.
Different people each define “eugenics” differently, with the broadest (and dare we say more accurate) definitions including the prohibition of incest1 and the selection of desirable traits since those help improve the quality of the gene pool. A gene pool cannot maintain a good quality if it allows a significant amount of incest, so prohibiting incest should count as negative eugenics at the very least.
The definition of Eugenics and people’s opinions of it are affected by the Sapir-Whorf Effect. Some people mistakenly believe that eugenics has to involve race, that it has to be tied to Nazism, or that it has to involve cherry-picking specific traits, and many other misconceptions, so this FAQs page was created to address all these misunderstandings and explain how eugenics can, in fact, collectively benefit society.
We are mainly arguing for (eugenic) population control (EPC), above all else. Fortunately, a favorable genetic selection will naturally follow from that, similar to how natural selection improves the fitness of organisms in nature. Depending on how eugenics is defined, the regulations we are proposing arguably don’t count as eugenics after all. If so, then we’re only proposing population control and nothing else. For this reason, many of the sections on this FAQs page will link to the Overpopulation FAQs page, where the questions are answered there.
1.1. But it’s completely subjective what “good” or “better” humans are.
Saying “there’s no objective way to define good” is not an argument against one definition or for another. We could just as easily say “there’s no objective way to define ‘chair’”. It’s just tactical nihilism.
Good genetics is intersubjective, not subjective. Most people can agree that we want smart, healthy, responsible, and productive humans who will make positive contributions to society. That is great criteria for laissez-faire eugenics. From an ideal society’s perspective, majority rules when determining what would be “best” for the society.
Making people better doesn’t sound like such a horrible thing, but it does imply that people aren’t born equal, and so it conflicts with the humanist belief in the intrinsic value and equality of human beings. The racial aspect of dysgenics makes it even more taboo. Not only are individuals unequal, races are also unequal. Eugenics doesn’t require racial genocide, but any race-blind eugenics program would affect racial demographics.
Instead of dealing with the moral and social issues involved, our culture just pretends that evolution doesn’t apply to humans. This is not rational. It is willful ignorance. – Blithering Genius, Dysgenics, Overpopulation and Conventional Ignorance
1.2. Examples of Socially-Acceptable Eugenics in Modern Society
Main Article: You’re Probably A Eugenicist—Diana Fleischman.
There is already popular support for several widely practiced and commonly accepted forms of Eugenics in modern society. Those instances just aren’t called Eugenics when they occur. Some examples include:
Outlawing incestual reproduction between close relatives.
Aborting fetuses that have severe birth defects.
Replacing defective mitochondrial DNA in children conceived via IVF.
GMOs and the selective breeding of plants and animals.
The prohibition of sperm and egg donations from people who have ADHD, ASD, or do not meet certain height requirements from some donor banks.
We support all those instances of eugenics, except for the last one.
Historically, Eugenics used to have a lot of public support in the early 1900s. So much so, that many Western countries had eugenics laws in the past. If the Nazis never rose power, it’s quite possible that most of the world never would’ve developed such negative (and irrational) attitudes towards Eugenics.
But abortion doesn’t count as eugenics.
Of course it does:
The founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, was a eugenicist.
The Link Between Abortion and Eugenics Makes Its Way to the Federal Appeals Courts.
Footnote buried in leaked abortion opinion invokes ’modern-day eugenics’.
I was pressured for wanting my at-risk baby. Abortion and eugenics can’t be separated.
Just as there are no rational arguments against eugenics, there are also no rational arguments against abortion.
Related: Four Beneficial Evolutionary Mutations That Humans Are Undergoing Right Now.
Related: Wikipedia: Familial Natural Short Sleep.
2. Why Should We Implement Eugenics? How Is Dysgenics A Threat To Humanity?
A better question would be: Why shouldn’t we implement eugenics? We live in a time where there is unprecedented evolutionary mismatch between the people living in society and the modern technological industrial environment. Biological evolution is slower than cultural evolution and humans evolve more slowly than pathogens.
I’m less personally offended that other comments, but please keep this off LessWrong. It doesn’t further the pursuit of rationality, and it’s far too politically charged for non-gated discussion.
For the record, I don’t think there’s any authority that can be trusted with guided eugenics—they’re all so damned corrupt, or will become so, that it’s only ever usable for evil. But that’s NOT my reason for hating to have it here—I really don’t want people to have this as their first impression of LessWrong, and I don’t want to attract people who want to debate this on the object level.
Eugenics would absolutely further rationality. The hard truth that most people can’t accept is that the ability to be rational and intelligent is not equally distributed among humans. Intelligence and IQ are both estimated to be ~80% heritable. Humans won’t become more rational or intelligent in the long run without eugenics. As I’ve explained on my website, reproduction licenses are the only viable way to accomplish this and prevent overpopulation. Reproduction licenses will kill many birds with just one stone. Reproduction licenses will protect human rights, not harm them.
The most important problems of our time are the ones that we can’t discuss. A truly rational forum has to be able and willing to talk about controversial topics. Humanity cannot afford to stop talking about these topics just because they offend people and trigger emotions.
I could make the same argument about anything that a government does.
“I don’t think anybody can be trusted to control the police.”
“I don’t think anybody can be trusted to run the military.”
“I don’t think anybody can be trusted to collect taxes.”
Et Cetera.
Anybody who oppose eugenics on the belief that “nobody can be trusted” might as well embrace anarchism, which is doomed to fail. It’s clearly not a rational argument against eugenics.
“Evil” is not a coherent concept. Morality is an illusion.
[edit 7d later: I was too angry here. I think there’s some version of this that can be defended, but it’s not the version I wrote while angry. edit 2mo latet: It’s pretty close, but my policy suggestions need refinement and I need to justify why I think the connection to past eugenics still exists.]
Get this Nazi shit off this fucking website already for fuck’s sake. Yeah yeah discourse norms, I’m supposed to be nice and be specific. But actually fuck off. I’m tired of all of y’all that upvote posts like these to 100 karma. If you can’t separate your shit from eugenics then your shit is bad. Someone else can make the reasoned argument, I’ve had enough.If we can’t get tech advanced enough to become shapeshifters, modify already grown bodies, we don’t get to mess with genes. I will never support tools that let people select children by any characteristic, they would have been used against me and so many of my friends. Wars have been fought over this, and if you try it, they will be again. Abortion should be blind to the child’s attributes.Mod note: Come on, I mean, you clearly knew this would get you a moderator warning. You can make arguments, but please don’t randomly rant at people with swear words. “Eugenics” sure is a mindkilly word, and my guess is people should just taboo it and talk about what they mean in more detail, but I don’t think that’s an excuse to just explode at people.
[edit 7d later: I was too angry here. I think there’s some version of this that can be defended, but it’s not the version I wrote while angry. edit 2mo latet: It’s pretty close, but my policy suggestions need refinement and I need to justify why I think the connection to past eugenics still exists.]
it kind of is, actually. Perhaps you could try not wearing your “pretense of neutrality” belief as attire and actually consider what you just said is acceptable. I’d rather say, “if something can reasonably be described as eugenics, that’s an automatic failure of acceptability, and you have to argue why your thing isnoteugenics in order for it to be welcomeanywhere.”bodily autonomy means against your parents, too.edit: i was ratelimited for this bullshit. fuck this websiteI mean, clearly there must be some way for people to argue in-favor of genetic enhancement. Like, my high-school textbook on ethics had a section on superbabies and that was totally fine and opinion in the class was pretty split about how humanity should relate to people using that kind of technology. Having discussion about genetic enhancement is obviously a thing that humanity needs to have if it wants to reasonably navigate the future.
The very most that I think you could defend in really any forum is that you don’t get to take “eugenics being good” as a given when you make a post, and you have to argue first that it’s worth talking about, but like, that’s exactly what this post is trying to do.
I agree. I would support genetic engineering in some cases, but I’ve explained why I don’t believe that is an adequate solution for humanity. It won’t solve the problems of dysgenics or overpopulation.
Yeah, that seems to be one of the most common criticisms of my FAQs pages. I actually agree that some people would be more receptive to my arguments if I tried to argue my support for it more gradually, but that’s just not my preferred writing style. It would’ve made it harder for me to write everything in this post. I have autism (it runs in my family), and my brain just doesn’t work that way, at least not for this topic.
Diana Fleischman has written a different essay that takes that approach, and some people might like it better. It’s good that there are differently written essays out there on this topic.
[edit 7d later: I was too angry here. I think there’s some version of this that can be defended, but it’s not the version I wrote while angry. edit 2mo latet: It’s pretty close, but my policy suggestions need refinement and I need to justify why I think the connection to past eugenics still exists.]
they’re welcome to argue in favor ofgenetic enhancement, as long as it happensafter birth. yes, I know it’s orders of magnitude harder. But knowinganythingabout an abortable child should be illegal. I’m a big fan of abortion,as long as it is blind to who is being aborted,because as soon as it depends on the child’s characteristics, it’s reaching into the distribution and killing some probabilistic people—without that, it’s not killing the probabilistic person. Another way to put this is, life begins at information leakage. anything else permits information leakage that imposes the agency of the parents. That’s not acceptable. Argue for augmenting a living organism all you want! we’ll need at least mild superintelligence to pull it off, unfortunately, but it’s absolutely permitted by physics. But your attempt to suppress the societal immune response to this thing in particular is unreasonable. Since you’ve already driven away the people who would say this in so many words by not banning it sooner, it is my responsibility to point this out. Almost everyone I know who I didn’t meet from lesswronghates this website,and they specifically cite acceptance of eugenics as why. You’re already silencing a crowd. I will not shut up.Look, you are clearly trying to argue for a policy where it would be impossible for me to argue against anything you say, despite us of course both knowing there are real arguments to be had here, and real considerations to be figured out.
The policy you are arguing for also has approximately no buy-in. Arguments for basic genetic disease screening and gender selection have been published in basically all major newspapers and a substantial fraction of medical journals in relevant fields. Yes, LessWrong has more real discussion of serious gene-editing, and some of that is taboo in more parts of society, but the specific line you are trying to draw here is societally quite rare.
I don’t really know what’s going on with you here. In any case, you have a moderator warning. If this kind of stuff triggers you, you can filter it out from your frontpage. It’s definitely not banned from LW, and if you leave comments that as aggressively attack people, or engage in mass-downvoting of people thinking or commenting about this stuff, I will give you at least a temporary ban. You are of course welcome to make arguments and contribute evidence to whatever people are talking about, but that’s mostly not what’s been happening here.
Why not? As I explained in the essay, modern civilization will collapse without some form of eugenics.
You’re probably still a eugenicist in some sense. Some people would argue that opposing incest and supporting abortion of any kind counts as eugenics.
Also, negative Eugenics laws have existed in many Western countries in the past. They only would’ve be used against you and your friends if you were violent criminals, or something along those lines. Are you saying that you support the reproduction of violent criminals, who will have offspring that also carry genes that predispose them to commit more violent crimes against others?
Nazism is not the same thing as eugenics. Eugenics doesn’t require fighting wars.
If abortion should be “blind to the child’s attributes”, then you should put your time and money where you mouth is and be willing to take of disabled children who will never have a future or be able to take care of themselves. If you won’t do that, then you should concede. Your dogma will not create a sustainable, long-lasting civilization.
Also, this is kind of personal, but my own brother is so mentally disabled that he cannot take care of himself. Both of my parents, my siblings, and myself all agree that it would’ve been better to abort him, if they knew that he would be as disabled as he is. Instead, my parents and myself will have to take care of him for the rest of our lives or until he dies. I love my brother, I don’t hate him, and I think it’s very unfortunate that he is disabled. But my parents and I still believe that it would’ve been better for everybody if he had never been born.
If you had to put up with everything that my family has had to put up with, I think you would change your mind. My hypothesis is that most people are against preventing dysgenics, until they have to experience the consequences of it for themselves.
Also, some social conservatives would insist that attribute-blind abortions still count as eugenics.
[edit 7d later: I was too angry here. I think there’s some version of this that can be defended, but it’s not the version I wrote while angry. edit 2mo latet: It’s pretty close, but my policy suggestions need refinement and I need to justify why I think the connection to past eugenics still exists.]
Solve these things in already-developed organisms. It’s orders of magnitude harder, yes, but it’s necessary for it to be morally acceptable. Your brother should get to go into cryonics and be revived once we can heal him. Failing that, it’s just the risk you take reproducing. Or at least, that will remain my perspective,since I will keep repeating, from my dad’s perspective, I would have been a defect worth eliminating. There is nothing you can say to convince me, and I will take every option available to me to prevent your success at this moral atrocity.Sorry about the suffering of ancient earth, but let’s fix it in a way that produces outcomes worth creating rather than hellscapes of conformity.What is “morally acceptable”? I think morality is an illusion. I’ve also argued that eugenics can be defended within the humanist value/moral framework of the West.
That’s a terrible idea. Cryonics is unlikely to succeed. My family also can’t afford to put him into cryonics. It’s also not any more likely that we could fix my brother, even if we did revive him with cryonics.
Why? And according to who? Numerous historical societies chose to let severely disabled people die on their own in the past, because it was maladaptive to take care of them. My parents can’t take care of him forever, and neither should society if he’s not able to make his own positive contributions.
Having to take care of a severely disabled person is a burden that literally nobody wants to have, if they have the choice of avoiding it. That’s the reality. If you disagree with me, then you better put your time, money, and effort where your mouth is and bear the burden yourself. If you won’t do that, then you’re a hypocrite.
It would be more productive if you gave a rational argument against eugenics. I shouldn’t have to tell you this, but “fuck off” is not a rational argument. LessWrong claims to be a forum for rational discussions. If you don’t have rational arguments against this post, then this is not the right forum for you.
You haven’t given a single rational justification for anything that you said here. Whereas, I’ve painstakingly every major argument against eugenics under the Sun in the FAQs.
I knew that I was going to get heavily downvoted for making this post, but I also don’t care. The inability of this forum to give rational arguments against my steelman arguments proves that not even most LessWrongers can handle True Rationality.
At LessWrong, rationality stops and emotions take over when the forum-goers encounter taboo and controversial topics.
[edit 7d later: I was too angry here. I think there’s some version of this that can be defended, but it’s not the version I wrote while angry. edit 2mo latet: It’s pretty close, but my policy suggestions need refinement and I need to justify why I think the connection to past eugenics still exists.]
I sure didn’t. I’m surprised you expected to be downvoted. This shit typically gets upvoted here. My comment being angry and nonspecific will likely be in the deep negatives.That said, I gave an argument sketch. People use this to eliminate people like me and my friends. Got a counter, or is my elevated emotion not worth taking seriously?