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Comment by nnq | Hacker News Reader

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?)

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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.

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