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AConcernedCoder t1_iytju73 wrote

Every time I read something like this it makes me wonder what happened to the sciences? Is anyone really at the helm? If anyone thinks the belief that the human race can be deliberately and artifically "improved" is a viable belief, you might as well pretend that owning a yacht makes you a master of world's oceans. In fact I'd guess that you'd actually have better chances braving the seas without navigational capabilities than you would attempting to steer the human race toward anything remotely qualified as an "improvement."

Nevermind good or evil, the belief itself is flawed, and adopting it comes with baggage, such as presuppositions about what an "improvement" is and all that entails, such as notions of "inferiority".

The best we can hope to accomplish for the human race from our understanding of genetics and evolution, in my estimation, is perhaps limited to harnessing its problem-solving power in limited contexts. We can help people affected by genetic disorders, and hope for the best: that our medical advances in fact improve our evolutionary fitness as a species, but we have to remember that everything we do happens within a context of natural selection, including attempts to manipulate it, which may or may not have the intended effect on fitness, and failing to take that into consideration doesn't bode well for the positive outcome.

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KillerPacifist1 t1_iyv0clp wrote

>Nevermind good or evil, the belief itself is flawed, and adopting it comes with baggage, such as presuppositions about what an "improvement" is and all that entails, such as notions of "inferiority".

I disagree with this assessment. Obviously the concept of self-improvement is not inherently flawed. Do you have the same objections to "improvement" when someone educates themselves, does brain excercises, learns a new skill, works out to improve their physique, or practices to improve their critical thinking skills? Do all of those actions carry so much baggage that the very belief that they may be worth doing is not viable?

That said, genetic manipulation does have some clear differences compared to something like working out. Due to the complexity of the system has more inherent risks, at least with our current understanding. It also has large potential societal impacts. People who have been successfully genetically engineered may have advantages over "wild-type" people to a degree similar to the advantages literare person has over an illiterate one.

These problems exist and should not be taken lightly, but are not reasons to dismiss the entire idea out of an appeal to naturalism or fear of unintended consequences. Any large change to our society (such as agriculture, reading and writing, or computers) will of course have unintended consequences, but that only means we should approach them with caution, not fear. We should not prohibit literacy because it may carry baggage.

I am also not sure I understand your appeal to natural selection as quoted below:

>The best we can hope to accomplish for the human race from our understanding of genetics and evolution, in my estimation, is perhaps limited to harnessing its problem-solving power in limited contexts. We can help people affected by genetic disorders, and hope for the best: that our medical advances in fact improve our evolutionary fitness as a species, but we have to remember that everything we do happens within a context of natural selection, including attempts to manipulate it, which may or may not have the intended effect on fitness, and failing to take that into consideration doesn't bode well for the positive outcome.

Natural selection and fitness literally just mean whoever has the most offspring. It makes no value judgements on what is good for the individual or society that individual lives in. As an extreme example, a serial rapist serving a life sentence in prison is likely more "fit" than a philosophy professor with a small but loving family. An individual's fitness is perhaps one of the worst metrics to determine if they are leading a "good" life.

Additionally we have already manipulated natural selection to an absurd degree just by changing our society. The modern world looks and behaves absolutely nothing like the world our ancestors evolved in for the last 200,000+ years. We are very poorly evolved for the our current circumstances. The fact that humans as a species have adapted as well as they have to such a rapidly changing environment is nothing short of remarkable considering we are trying to run 21st century society software on caveman hardware.

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AConcernedCoder t1_iywqyc9 wrote

>I disagree with this assessment. Obviously the concept of self-improvement is not inherently flawed. Do you have the same objections to "improvement" when someone educates themselves, does brain excercises, learns a new skill, works out to improve their physique, or practices to improve their critical thinking skills? Do all of those actions carry so much baggage that the very belief that they may be worth doing is not viable?

Not at all. The problem arises with the assumption that superiority itself is subject to the preferences of an agent that is itself subject to an evolutionary process.

That thought process is inherently problematic by counteracting evolution. From an evolutionary perspective, eugenics counteracts the optimization of fitness, by incentivizing decisions that constitute a selection process other than natural selection. It seeks to usurp evolution, replacing nature with the preferences of some other agent, be it unwise, unintelligent, racist, bigoted, or even good natured but inevitably short sighted, it doesn't matter. It is impossible for the agent to replace evolution because a process intentionally imposed by human preferences, but disguised as evolutionary, is a different process that is not evolution. The ironic thing is that even this does not escape natural selection, and last I checked, insanity does not exactly inspire confidence in the fitness of a population.

The bottom line here is that people are confusing evolution with a completely different idea. Maybe it arises from delusions of grandeur, as if advancement of knowledge itself contributes to this. It doesn't matter. You can't replace evolution itself and expect it to be evolution.

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>Natural selection and fitness literally just mean whoever has the most offspring.

Have you ever looked into the social complexity of other species? I don't think you're taking into consideration the range of variability and complexity of what the evolutionary process really entails.

Homicidal selection, genocidal selection, or forced procreation are not necessarily the same as natural selection. Can cannibalism truly benefit a population over the long haul? Evolutionary theory tells us that, even though we may think so, after all is said and done, natural selection occurs, that natural selection is the final gate keeper and it's not subject to someone's fallible preferences.

>Additionally we have already manipulated natural selection to an absurd degree just by changing our society. The modern world looks and behaves absolutely nothing like the world our ancestors evolved in for the last 200,000+ years. We are very poorly evolved for the our current circumstances. The fact that humans as a species have adapted as well as they have to such a rapidly changing environment is nothing short of remarkable considering we are trying to run 21st century society software on caveman hardware.

The drawback of having a capable mind, is the potential for error and insanity. In our current environment, do our capabiities lend to evolutionary fitness? It appears so, for now. If we destroy our environment will intelligence save us in the end? The answer isn't necessarily yes. For all we know, at this point it might be beneficial to have the ability to live in trees and to procreate less often. We don't know what the next evolutionary step looks like, nor can we, but we should try to survive anyways.

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OceansCarraway t1_iyu0dsl wrote

Scientist here.

  1. It's always been like this. Always. You can see great good, fantastic good, exemplars of true humanity--but science has only relatively recently had eugenics become publicly unacceptable. Privately, it's still in, VERY much so. Is any of it rational? Does any of it make the slightest degree of sense? Nope.

  2. No one is at the helm. Maybe the people who give the money, to a degree. But there's no one here to turn this ship around.

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bildramer t1_iyunj6c wrote

Is governments choosing to put children in schools not a deliberate and artificial improvement? So it's certainly possible, because it's been done.

Turns out, in the real world, nobody cares about philosophical debates, they don't wait, they go with their gut feeling or weird preconceived cultural notions about what's "improvement", and sometimes it even works out.

Also, what is a "viable belief"? Something being false is different from something being unpopular, and "unpopular" is different from "unpopular in the West".

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AConcernedCoder t1_iyyexde wrote

I swept my floors today and regularly keep cooking utensils sterilized to aide my survivability. From my perspective, it's an improvement of my living conditions, not the human race as a whole or the quality of its gene pool.

Likewise I wouldn't expect education to directly alter the genetic material of a species. How is this even controversial?

Edit: but you could, through education, attempt to alter the mating strategies of a population, which could be rooted in eugenics.

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