The Sinister Return of Eugenics | Hacker News Reader

The Sinister Return of Eugenics

newstatesman.com

13 pointscolinb23 comments

More fundamentally however eugenics is baked into reality. For a simple example look at how well you are when you are handsome, smart, healthy, tall and fit. And look at how you are treated when you are the opposite. I do not want to add any ethical qualifier to this but it is reality.

The shinier the shield, the darker the heart. Don't always assume someone who looks conventionally attract are good folk. I've had plenty of 'smilers' in my day that made my blood run cold when they turned on me.

This line stood out for me: "The capacity to give and receive love may be more central to the good life than self-admiring cleverness."

Eugenics is the most obvious example of the moral failure of utilitarianism, which in the end is really just man's attempt to invent morality for himself. In the end it results in an extremely ugly and selfish worldview. The "unfit" are to be exterminated in utero, the poor are to be prevented or dissuaded from reproducing. The claim is that this is better for the environment or for humanity as a whole, but I say the truth is that it's more convenient for the elite class who invented this evil ideology in the first place.

I learned a lot, but not convinced by the "return".

Anecdata, but concerning:

- My ex is an evolutionary biologist, and their professional events often have talks about how (or whether) to push back on eugenicists trying to twist your research. Her colleague had a paper that was all over white supremacist sites, even though her conclusion was the opposite of eugenic.

- I know a Chinese American VC who firmly believes certain races are less intelligent than others because of their race. He went to Stanford and has no other conservative views, to my knowledge.

- The most popular podcast in the world featured unchallenged eugenicist comments[1] based on debunked science.

It's hard to prove a major trend, but a very mainstream media company (Spotify) having unchecked eugenicist content in their most popular podcast is certainly not something you could find in comparable media ~20 years ago.

1. https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/technology/deleted-joe-rogan...

Thanks, I learned more! I had no idea.

I think we should also take into account the rate, width, and ease of communication these days. The percentage of the population which subscribes to eugenics may have held constant (or not, I'm not making an argument one way or the other) and its just easier to hear more of their voices with our new communication tech.

I'm also not saying the ideology isn't concerning either, I just think we need to consider looking at the issue from a few different perspectives to get a better understanding of the situation

You may be right. I just don't think you can collect accurate data on this topic from any angle.

I think we can at least feel confident that there is far greater ease of broadcasting eugenic ideas to credulous masses. We've seen from the anti-vax movement that a small handful (meaning fewer than 10) of determined, unscrupulous, and wealthy people can convince millions of people of pseudoscientific ideas.

>believes certain races are less intelligent than others because of their race. He went to Stanford and has no other conservative views

That isn't a conservative view though.

> That isn't a conservative view though.

It is in the US[1] and every other country I know of.

But let's define "conservative" first. According to Dictionary.com, it means:

> "disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change."[2]

Or to put it another way: to be conservative is to want to maintain the status quo or even return to the past. And what is eugenics? It is an idea of the past.

If you have a different definition of liberal or conservative, or you can find research that shows that conservatives have less negative views of the intelligence of non-European people, I would be interested to see it.

Even common phrases -- "progressive" vs. "traditional" views on race -- are used as euphemisms, where "traditional views" are more prejudiced. This is why people talk about their racist grandmother and not their racist grandson.

It is also why older people are more likely to see increasing racial diversity in the US as a bad thing[3], compared to other age groups. Old people are also more traditional, more conservative, and more Republican, on average.

1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/03/31/th...

2. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/conservative

3. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/08/23/most-americ...

> "progressive" vs. "traditional" views on race -- are used as euphemisms, where "traditional views" are more prejudiced

That's not true though. Allow me to demonstrate.

Ask any progressive the following question: Do you think the government and educational institutions should treat people differently based on the color of their skin - yes or no?

Now watch that progressive either a)change the subject and evade answering the question.. or b)Justify their reasoning for why they think people should be treated differently based on their skin color.

This is (by definition) support of racial discrimination. Many progressives have even gone so far as to claim the concept of racial equality is not progressive, demanding instead policies that seek to achieve racial equity, a concept that requires racial discrimination to implement.

So progressives literally support polices that require racial preferences/prejudice.

As to conservatives, they support equal treatment under the law regardless of race. At worst you could accuse some of supporting polices that could potentially have disparate impact. But progressives support actual racial discrimination. Which is worse, in your mind?

> So progressives literally support polices that require racial preferences/prejudice.

Racial preferences/prejudice != eugenics. They're different concepts. You can say that both are forms of racism, but this thread was original about eugenics.

You are describing affirmative action, which I have not said is a conservative idea (because it isn't).

> Now watch that progressive either a)change the subject and evade answering the question.. or b)Justify their reasoning for why they think people should be treated differently based on their skin color.

While I don't agree with affirmative action, you're intentionally misconstruing the actual argument for it.

The argument is: we can observe racial bias in society, and we can use institutions to compensate for it.

> As to conservatives, they support equal treatment under the law regardless of race. At worst you could accuse some of supporting polices that could potentially have disparate impact.

I could accuse conservative leaders of intentionally creating policies that have disparate impact[1]. I don't think most conservative voters are on board with it, but it's a massive problem with conservative leadership in the US.

> But progressives support actual racial discrimination. Which is worse, in your mind?

This is completely, utterly off-topic, but I'll respond anyway:

Both are bad and unacceptable. Conservative policies are, in effect, worse. The racism wasn't always open or public, but that doesn't mean it wasn't there. It was explicitly stated behind closed doors and in documents[1][2].

Conservative policies that criminalized behaviors associated with black people -- like using marijuana, loitering, tinting car windows, etc. -- have destroyed the lives of tens of millions of people. Affirmative action hasn't done that.

And what about the black people who weren't put in jail for being poor? Conservative policies openly discriminated against black people on the basis of race until 1968[3], and they have had a deep effect on generational wealth (and well-being) of Americans in the decades since then.

Conservatives were pro-slavery, pro-segregation, and pro-war on drugs. The KKK was a conservative organization, not a progressive one -- and modern conservatives are still using their slogan today[4]. Conservatives give harsher sentences to black people than to white people for the same crimes[5].

There is no reasonable argument based on historical evidence that a few decades of affirmative action can outweigh hundreds of years of grinding people into the dirt, including chattel slavery and mass incarceration for victimless crime. It's why black people overwhelming vote against Republicans, even though many of them are fiscally and socially conservative[6].

1. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-secret-files-of...

2. https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/the-shocking-and-sickening-st...

3. https://www.bostonfairhousing.org/timeline/1934-1968-FHA-Red...

4. https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/ku-klux-klan-s...

5. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2021/08/10/courts-in-more-...

6. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/02/27/5-facts-abo...

You have created quite a strawman. Nowhere in my post do I even mention Affirmative Action. Yet your entire defense of the seemingly natural urge that "progressives" have to treat people differently based on skin color is predicated on one aspect of their prejudice. But progressives support the use of racial prejudice in many aspects of life. Most, actually. In fact, racial preferences are the foundation of modern progressive thought.

In either case, your defense of racial prejudice is duly noted.

> your defense of racial prejudice is duly noted

I said I disagree with affirmative action. Nothing I have written suggests this. You're either a troll or you need to read my comment again.

> But progressives support the use of racial prejudice in many aspects of life.

Please list some and cite sources. The only one I know of is affirmative action.

Do you think the government and educational institutions should treat people differently based on the color of their skin - yes or no?

I said I didn't several comments ago. Do you have a counter-argument to make, one that addresses the facts I gave? It seems like this is a weird culture war issue for you, where you need to put me in a box and can't see past that.

>I said I didn't several comments ago.

I'm curious then, if you don't support racial equity programs, and that is foundational to modern progressive thought, then why would you still consider yourself a progressive? It's not like racial equity is "one thing" (a la abortion, gun rights etc) and you can just decide you aren't ideologically aligned with that one thing. It's the bedrock upon which all modern progressive ideology & policy proposals rest. I guess I'm curious how you square that circle, in your mind.

The pendulum swing of liberalism seems to naturally lead to Eugenics, when it's at it extreme. When I talk with my liberal friends, that's where discussions often end up - "Well, the dumb people are just fucking everything up." Even Sapolsky cites evidence of conservatives being less intelligent - suggesting, ironically, that they're a lesser category of people.

The problem with transhumanism is in the inequality it potentially engenders and the subsequent questions it poses about moral models of responsibility. If you can engineer a better human, aren't you now obligated to accept responsibility for the failings of those you don't improve? You can't control the behavior of the improved, albeit stochastically and indirectly, without implicitly accepting that those you don't aren't responsible.

I don't think that tracks with how we currently treat kids. We already know how to engineer a better human with high quality childhood nutrition and education and we could go even further with parental support programs, but what you get as a child is already entirely up to where you are born.

Your argument depends on a flawed and deterministic outlook of human improvement. Your premise that there is a mandate of responsibility to "better" other human beings is the justification of the philosopher-king dictatorship. It eerily resembles the argument made by Soviet Russia for push towards homo sovieticus. There is no such thing an inherent responsibility towards bettering others. Responsibilities are instruments, not ends in and of themselves. If wanting to "ascend" to being a greater individual is the choice of said of the individual, he should every right to, crab bucket be dammed.

I think logically if you accept the premise that some can be improved, then you have to answer the question of why not others. It's a moral opportunity cost, and equivalent to withholding food or water.

The costs compound to society at large though if withholding improvement affects others.

It's a moral question that has nothing to do with economic systems.

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