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Comment by gouranga | Hacker News Reader

I'll probably get downvoted for this, but the Nazis had the right idea: eugenics.

This is not something I am opposed to from a scientific point of view.

We do it with livestock, so why not us?

(Before I accidentally invoke Godwin's law, I'm not saying I agree with the other things the Nazis did or that I agree with eliminating non-eugenic friendly individuals).

EDIT: I actually disagree entirely with eugenics - this was an experiment ot see what happens if you apply plain logic and no ethics to the problem. The number of upvotes was slightly worrying!!! For reference, my daughter is disabled and would fall foul of any appropriate eugenics principles which is not right.

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We also practiced eugenics in the US on a small scale though forced sterilizations.

Unfortunately, the problem with tests is it's vary hard to measure the right things. And vary easy to end up with a Japanese style system where meaningless information becomes important simply by being on the test.

So, in the US we sterilized some people who had genuine genetic issues, but others because they where slightly below average and came from a poor background, or and others for being gay.

We do it with livestock, so why not us?

That's my Human Shearing Prison Camp's slogan! We're also big in the soylent green business.

I see where you're coming from, but I strongly disagree with you in practice.

What are we even testing? What values are we trying to breed into or out of humanity? How do we form the selection criteria?

Most importantly, do we have any evidence that genetics has a strong effect on these values? I'm going to guess no on that.

Interesting, what kind of family policy would you propose, if not that of eliminating non-eugenic individuals? I mean, is there a way eugenics can work without removing human rights? (serious question, no judgement made) I haven't read Francis Galton's original doctrine so apologies if this is obvious to those who have.

Strong financial incentives for selected individuals to reproduce; penalties for others.

I didn't think of that! Which is strange considering I'm in China at the moment and it's not too far from the one child policy and their penalty system. Though I would have difficulty defending the human rights argument :) To be honest, I've been thinking about my question since asking and the only answer I can come up with is genetic engineering (designer babies).

Woo! Force people to have an abortion because they can't afford to reproduce. I want to call that torture, but feel extremist if I do. I can't think of any other way to vocalise it though.

I guess there is nowhere good this conversation can go.

You wouldn't have to force an abortion on anyone. Just force a "basic baby tax" to discourage the dirt poor to have children they can't even afford to feed or properly educate and a HUGE "extra baby tax" for any family having more than 2 children (or plug your favorite number in here if you want a certain level o population growth), and invest the collected money in improving education. And boom, instant improvement to all aspects of life! Not really a breach of human rights since you could take it as a minor amendment to the implied social contract. (the tax will not mean much for billionaires, but at least they can afford the best possible education for their kids and with some tax exemptions for important but not so well paid professionals - like university professors) (and you could add something like forced sterilization for people not affording to pay the "extra baby tax" after they've made one.

Tying this too to current wealth will easily be seen as locking-in and amplifying possibly unfair advantages in the pre-existing system. Why bother intertwining that negative stigma at the foundation of this idea that is supposed to make us a better species? All this centrally mandated, negative-penalty thinking just puts us at each others throats. The world needs better, imho.

Why not have the eugenics institute(s) find people of merit on whatever sets of measures they want and pay those they choose to have kids or to supply sperm/eggs/parenting (whichever they think important for the traits)? Maybe also give subsidized child-care to their progeny. This would allow for competition of metrics between and inside such organizations.

Sure only using positive feedback might be a bit slower than also availing ourselves of negative ones. But negative ones seem more tricky to implement, and we don't actually know what the species will need in the future, i.e. if we even have a single goal in this search space. Ethically less complicated to nurture the flowers you want to see blooming than to have a hand in cutting off others.

1. I don't trust "centralized" solutions to anything and an "eugenics institute" dictating what the best traits are seems scary even to me!

2. Yes, amplifying possibly unfair advantages is a nasty side-effect of this, but in a "mostly clean an functioning" capitalist society with not that much corruption, mafia and stuff this could be mitigated (I even goes the US comes close enough to this... by comparison on a global scale).

3. I don't think this will "put us at each other's throats"... poorer people to which the tax is targeted at should feel more motivated to have a better life, like swimming pool and better sports car than to have kids... or we'll need to fix this with more "pro-consumerist propaganda"!

4. And about positive versus negative feedback/motivations... I might have an overly "dark" view of human nature, but I think only negative/pain/punishment will work for those that need to be discouraged in having children (benefits might make the other change their minds and have more children but my intuition tells me it won't work - yes, we need some sort of controlled social engineering experiment to check this assumption, of course).

Taxes are very much a centralized mechanism. You suggested one in this domain. So you suggested a centralized mechanism for eugenics. Now you say you don't trust them... rather confusing.

On the other hand, the eugenics institutes I mentioned ("organizations" maybe you like that word better?); well, those could be lots of different groups of like-minded people/sub-groups spending their own resources the way they want to increase the frequency of traits in the world that they value.

If I and some friends want to pay to subsidize progeny of our choosing, how is that more scary than the various states of the world financially penalizing people (even sterilizing or jailing people in other suggestions of yours) toward similar ends?

dead thread and offtopic but to clarify:

a tax is centralized, but the fact that some can pay it and some cannot it not dictated by a central authority, that's the reasoning. The state would not decide who has enough money to pay the tax, and this would be an emergent effect from economy. NOBODY would decide and this I think would be a good thing!

Your group of friends could just as well finance the poor people that nevertheless they think have desirable traits.

NOTE: I still would'n support such my proposed soc-eng strategy in any current society because the erosion of human rights and possibility for abuse is far too great, so the discussion is entirely theoretical anyways, but it was fun

The people who you're trying to prevent from reproducing are the people who won't think about long term concerns like this baby tax when considering whether to have sex or have kids.

I said "and you could add something like forced sterilization for people not affording to pay the "extra baby tax" after they've made one", but you could easily add jail time in a society where loosing money is not a good enough deterrent (though when the social services will take someones house and car away and put their children in foster homes because they won't be able to pay the "extra baby tax", I think the deterrent would be enough...)

I seem to recall some people paying people for sterilization. That would seem to solve the problem.

NOTE: The only eugenics I am for are those based on voluntary gene replacement.

But this would only prevent the poor from reproducing. It is unclear what genetic makeup you're selecting for. Surely being poor has not so much to do with your genes.

Who forms the selection criteria?

Make the "penalty" a "tax" and money becomes the criteria. Add tax exemptions for valuable but not so well paid professionals like researchers, university professors etc. (it's not like the poor that would desperately want kids will suddenly struggle to become medical researchers or university professors just to avoid the tax). Plus, you can use the tax money to improve education and give free university education (some countries already have this). And if you're smart but you're not the "academic type", you'll probably find a well paid profession for yourself anyway so you shouldn't worry.

If you want to prevent individuals who are e.g. predisposed to certain disorders from being born, I don't see how money as criteria can help.

It's not supposed to do that! It's supposed to have people with "higher levels of" positive traits like intelligence, self-control, imagination to have more children then those with lower levels (and also to improve the chances that children get raised in families that can afford to offer them good education - so it takes care of the "nurture" part too, not just "nature" - and yes, this means that such a social engineering strategy would be more than just eugenics).

People predisposed to certain disorders usually have less offspring anyway... so nature does a pretty good job at this without help (ever seen a person with a severe mental illness having more than a couple of children, even by accident?)

Hmm. Well I was thinking in the context proposed by the grand-grand...parent, even though he backtracked:

"...eugenics. This is not something I am opposed to from a scientific point of view. We do it with livestock, so why not us?"

You can be predisposed to a lot of things -- diabetes, heart problems, and so on -- most of those don't necessarily prevent you from reproducing. But being "intelligent, motivated, imaginative" has little to do with having a "disadvantageous" genetic makeup leading to health issues. So you are not taking the whole "nature" part into account, only part of it.

Also note that I am not necessarily supporting eugenics, just thinking aloud. At the same time, I don't see how your proposal is any better than "classical" eugenics from the human rights point of view. We can take it one step further and assign an importance coefficient for voting. Let the professor/researcher vote count for 3 units; as for the proles, .7 will suffice. After all, why shouldn't people with intelligence, self-control, and imagination have more of a say in where the country is headed -- it's mostly their kids who will live in this country in the future, so it's only fair.

Ok, the thread is dead and we're off-topic but to clarify: I just don't find important things like good physical health (you can revolutionize theoretical physics before dying of a heart attack at 45... and yes you could be very unhappy knowing that you would die sooner but I don't care about about happiness either). The only worthy purpose for any eugenics-like social engineering strategy for me would be ACCELERATION OF SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS AT ALL/ANY COST, as I believe that in the long run this will lead to better overall health and change everything for "better".

NOTE: Yes, such a measure or anything similar would lead to human rights erosion that might amplify further, and this is why I wouldn't actually promote the proposed soc-eng strategy in any current society, but that's a different thing....

I don't understand. Happiness doesnt matter, but the ultimate virtue in your philosophical schema is scientific progress to make things "better", which is presumably aiming towards happiness, no?

Do you really think it makes sense to give voting rights to people who don't understand the issues, don't care and don't have a clue on how to fix them ?

That importance coefficient used to exist but it was mostly a measure of social influence rather than something that made sense.

I personally vote for dictatorship, with me as benevolent dictator ("Hold on, I'll just get my rape shoes") of doom.

So intelligence is the only positive attribute selected for? Nature hasnt imprinted anything else worth preserving?

Intelligence, self-control, being able to motivate yourself, "productive imagination" etc. ...actually the self control ability has been proven to be better correlated with financial and social success than IQ! Even successful artists do pretty well financially in an "evolved" society (the only context where I would find such a soc-eng strategy applicable anyway).

(and even to become something like a researcher and university professor you need much more than high IQ)

Id argue that college and the guilded trades (law, medicine )by have a net dysgenic influence in terms of propagating iq genes. They cause a great deal of delay in reproduction for the higher iq strata. Ofttimes, they don't reproduce at all, especially the females.

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