LINK Richard Dawkins Puts Foot in Mouth Again With Tweets About How Eugenics “Works” | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos
Richard Dawkins is in the middle of another self-created controversy after posting a Twitter thread earlier today saying that eugenics “works” — and “why on earth wouldn’t it work for humans?” — adding later that, obviously, it’s been used for horrific things.
This may have been spurred by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson hiring an adviser, Andrew Sabisky, who has advocated eugenics to prevent a “permanent underclass.” Many critics are already calling for Johnson to fire the 27-year-old.
(Eugenics won't work with humans, in part, because modern humans are already hybrids from inter breeding with several proto-human species. Add in that most animals reach sexual maturity in less than two years, and for humans it takes thirteen to fifteen year, which makes long term breeding goals having to extend over several human lifetimes. Than there is the problem that it is nearly impossible to get desireed traits without also bringing undesired traits as well. So, it would entail a project that woudl take severla human lifetimes with no guaranteed desired results. How coudl such a project maintain interest and funding to the very end?)
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Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.Listen to this: I truly believe Covid was a way of getting rid of some old people (that are a drain on our social security, etc). It’s also weird that it kills people of certain genetics/race at a higher rate. I personally believe HIV was the same eugenics (kills gays and druggies and third world people).
>>. There was a lady that went to the Illuminati (or whatever) basically as a sex worker. She said the sex and all was not shocking- it was what she heard about “world eugenics and population reduction “. I don’t believe in lizard people or that David Icke shit - but I do wholeheartedly believe eugenics is going on
SocialDarwin
Level 5
Feb 17, 2021
0
If you consider age and poor nutrition, that covers almost everyone who died. The correlations with race are actually correlations with poor nutrition, because poor people generally don't eat a nutritious diet, but one that consists of a lot of junk food and other empty calories. Large swaths of poor people are people of color dur to institutionalized discrimination.
A virus doesn't know what race a person is. It can take advantage of bodies that are infirm, such as the old, or persons with poor nutrition.
@snytiger6
A virus doesn’t PICK old people. But, I but I kinda believe it was intentionally made,!I really do. But, it wasn’t as effective as they imagined it would be
>>. I think they either designed it OR/ just did NOT do much to stop it if it was natural. They had ample time to inact contact tracking and shut boarders. They were either intentionally letting it run or they are Rediculusly incompetent
Salo:
@SocialDarwin that's what 'they' want you to think
Eugenics will happen by default, whether people like it or not, and without government intervention. As in-vitro conception, gene editing and many other technologies become more available, rich people who can afford it will increasingly choose to have designer babies, perhaps with the real danger of creating a rich poor divide. And if governments try to regulate it, they will simply go to third world states to have the 'work' done under the table.
In fact the genie (pun) may already be out of the bottle, it would not surprise me to know that back street genetic work, already takes place. And when once the genie is out of the bottle, there is no putting it back.
Fernapple
Level 9
Feb 17, 2021
5
Outrage culture will apparently not tolerate scientists who lack communication skills.
Yet we tolerate and turn a blind eye toward the reverence of religious and other destructive cultists talking smack all the time. Where is the outrage for televangelists et al?
Mvtt
Level 7
Feb 16, 2021
3
Unfortunately, advances in biology, technology, CRISPR, etc., are going to make eugenics look like child's play. Read Homo Deus.
Mitch07102
Level 8
Feb 16, 2021
3
Sooooo . . . an evolutionary biologists says it would work ("Facts ignore ideology" ), and agrees that it should not be done ("A eugenic policy would be bad" ), but why would the ramblings of an atheist blogger be paid attention to ? 
FearlessFly
Level 9
Feb 16, 2021
1
I have to agree with you on this and until i got to your post thought i was the only one that noticed some dude was disagreeing with an expert. If Richard Dawkins had an opinion on who the world's hottest woman was or which breed of dog makes the best pet i would argue the toss. But when it comes to scientific fact i will bow my head.
Eugenics can't "work" because whether or not to reproduce and with whom to reproduce must, in any even remotely "free" society (certainly in any society I would want to live in), rank near the top of decisions one should be able to make for oneself. Yes, it could "work" in theory, if one had a sufficiently dictatorial and stable government to undertake a multi-generational human breeding project, but it's hard to imagine any value in pointing that out (as some people seem determined to do) when few people would want to live under the conditions that would be necessary. Whom would you trust to make the decisions about what traits to breed for and who gets to breed with whom?
Behind-the-dog
Level 6
Feb 16, 2021
2
Posted this above, but it may interest you.
Eugenics will happen by default, whether people like it or not, and without government intervention. As in-vitro conception, gene editing and many other technologies become more available, rich people who can afford it will increasingly choose to have designer babies, perhaps with the real danger of creating a rich poor divide. And if governments try to regulate it, they will simply go to third world states to have the 'work' done under the table.
In fact the genie (pun) may already be out of the bottle, it would not surprise me to know that back street genetic work, already takes place. And when once the genie is out of the bottle, there is no putting it back.
@Fernapple You're right, I wasn't looking at it that way. I was thinking of top-down, government-mandated programs, but to take your point one step further, anyone who takes genetics into account when choosing whom to reproduce with is essentially making a eugenic decision. Years ago, I seem to remember hearing about a man who sued his (probably ex-) wife because she didn't tell him she had had a nose job, so he didn't know she was carrying genes that might lead to offspring with noses he found objectionable. If I were in charge of the global eugenics program, assholes like him wouldn't get to breed at all, but in the broader scheme of things, I find that sort of individual decision to be less objectionable than a government-run eugenics program.
Here's a thought experiment: Suppose a woman who knows she carries a gene for a genetic disease on one X chromosome wants to have a child. She knows that a daughter has a 50% chance of also being a carrier, and a son would have a 50% chance of actually having the disease (assuming the disease is dominant). Now suppose that technology permits her to choose one of her eggs with a normal X chromosome for IVF (that may already be possible; I don't know). Slippery slopes aside, shouldn't she be allowed to make that decision? What if the "disease" is colorblindness? (FWIW, I am a little colorblind myself.)
For the record, I hate thought experiments like this. Probably a good thing I chose not to breed.
@Behind-the-dog Yes all of that is very true, and I would not want to prevent the ending of all genetic diseases, just for dated moral judgements Perhaps governments will try to prescribe lists of what can be edited out of the gene pool and what can not. Though I doubt that would work in practice.
In a sence we have all been doing, especially females, eugenics since the beginning of sex, what Darwin called sexual sellection. ( Peacocks tail's etc.) Unfortunately human females tend to favour, aggressively competetive males, and now that we have removed a lot of the dangers of aggression with medcine and health care ? Follow that line of thought.
@Fernapple I mostly agree, but I don't think we can blame all male aggression on sexual selection. A book called Demonic Males gives a good overview of the research on that issue, but to be honest, I read it so long ago that I wouldn't feel comfortable trying to summarize it here. Getting kind of off topic, anyway!
@Behind-the-dog Oh I think you can blame all male aggression, not on females but on female preferences. We are entirely made by the opposite sex, at least as far as the environment's restraints will allow, and when those restraints are removed.
Salo:
@Behind-the-dog just seeing the words dictatorial and stable in the same sentence is a worry. As you've seen in recent years, norms and expectations can change rapidly. Best keep the genius trapped in the bottle!
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