Comment by Fishysoup | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Fishysoup | Hacker News Reader

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Eugenics isn't the logical conclusion of the "leader caste" because we know that not only is it deeply unethical, it also doesn't work. We don't really know what makes someone "better", we don't know how to do it, and we don't even know how to define "better". Stephen Hawking contributed an enormous amount to society despite having a devastating genetic condition. Note, correcting devastating conditions in newborns (somatically, not in the germline - i.e. for individuals, not their descendants) might be OK, the only issue is where you draw the line. If you correct for sickle cell anemia or cancer prone-ness, should you also correct for depression? (assuming we ever figure out how to do that).

I think you have a good point about democracy maybe not benig the full answer. It seems to be a very flexible/enduring system so far (more so than e.g. fascism or communism), but technology might poke huge holes in it regarding free will (manipulating people's emotions to vote for someone, for example). Yuval Harari talks about this a lot in "21 ideas for the 21st century".

To veer off the topic of eugenics a little.

> We don't really know what makes someone "better", we don't know how to do it, and we don't even know how to define "better".

All of your problems go away if we use a "better" definition of "better".

What makes someone a "better" leader? That they were educated and raised in a "better" way. What makes that way "better"? Well, it should be evident - it, after all, produces "better" leaders.

True, it does lead to a kind of circular thinking, but that's allright - a lot of ink gets spilled to justify subjective preferences on objective grounds, like the ones I just described. If people can feel utterly convinced that by applying such circular criteria, they can demarcate that one piece of music is objectively better than another, surely those people would feel just as justified to use such circular criteria to decide that one leader's education, and upbringing, and social background is objectively better than another.

As long as you can let current leaders pick future leaders, you will indeed have a definition of "better". You might not like that definition very much, though.

Yeah I'm also pessimistic about misleading thinking + demagoguery. I do think that there's a good contingent of society that has a decent bullshit detector though. I guess we'll find out.

In my opinion eugenics is only wrong when it is forced. I see nothing wrong with providing financial incentives for people to reproduce if they have qualities that society tends to find positive, such as having a high IQ or performing well on some exam. Obviously no metric will be perfect, but they are at least a better proxy for intelligence than a coin flip.

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