Last week, famous biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins outraged all of the rage heads on Twitter by tweeting out, “It’s one thing to deplore eugenics on ideological, political, moral grounds. It’s quite another to conclude that it wouldn’t work in practice. Of course it would. It works for cows, horses, pigs, dogs & roses. Why on earth wouldn’t it work for humans? Facts ignore ideology” The rage heads responded with outrage and demands that he be thrown into a well for bad think.
It was one of those events where people revealed things about themselves that they probably wish they had kept private. The “world’s foremost philosopher” managed to step on a series of rakes responding to Paul Ramsey. Not satisfied with his twitter performance, he did a full hour on YouTube, where he must have broken a record for the number of logical fallacies committed in one sitting. Apparently he has yet to reach the chapter on Hume’s law or the masked-man fallacy.
Molyneux’s response was fairly typical, so it is a useful, if unfortunate, example to use when discussing the issue raised by Dawkins. Eugenics, however one defines it, can be both immoral and effective. The morality of it has nothing to do with whether it would work, however one defines that. They are separate issues. Slavery “worked” for a long time, but then we decided it was immoral and it was eliminated. Slavery was not eliminated because it was unworkable or impractical.
His blunders are not surprising, as we live in an age in which morality has been anathematized and made illegitimate. We are no longer allowed to oppose something on moral grounds. Instead we’re required to make economic arguments or make appeals to science. Simply not wanting something, because you don’t like it is no longer a legitimate position. We see this here. Molyneux could not simply say eugenics is immoral, so he claimed it would not work.
The narrow definition of eugenics, according to Webster’s, is “the practice or advocacy of controlled selective breeding of human populations to improve the population’s genetic composition.” Of course, the term is loaded with historical significance and has a strong negative connotation. It brings to mind evil doctors experimenting on children or the state sterilizing people they deem unfit. Of course, you know who looms over any discussion about human fitness these days.
That said, Western societies have been putting a thumb on the scale, as far as the mating habits of the people, for a long time. A great example of this is the laws against consanguineous marriage. In the Middle Ages, the Church and then secular rulers enforced rules against marrying close relatives. This had a huge impact on the human capital of Europe. Cousin marriage leads to lower intelligence and most likely amplifies normal kinship into clannishness.
Henry Harpending and Peter Frost argued that the prolific use of the death penalty in Western Europe, starting in the late Middle Ages, pacified the population. Young men, who committed crimes, were hanged, thus eliminating them from the breeding pool at an early age. Do this long enough and the genes of violent men are slowly reduced. As interpersonal violence declined, men prone to it declined in status, thus reducing their value in the sexual marketplace. That’s eugenics.
That’s also a great example of how the moral arguments about eugenics are mostly based on a cartoon version of the past. Few would deny that the reduction in interpersonal violence was a good thing for the West. Similarly, no one would argue that a society has no right to defend itself against the violent. Like everything else, morality is about trade-offs. Reducing the amount mayhem and violence with the prolific use of the death penalty looks like a pretty good trade-off.
Now, Frost and Harpending could be wrong about the impact of the death penalty, but their theory is not wrong. We can make rules that reduce the reproductive success of those possessing undesirable traits. Those rules, given enough time, will reduce that undesirable trait. If we wanted, we can use force to eliminate those people from the breeding pool. East Asia has been using soft coercion for generations to alter the breeding habits of their people.
Of course, a big part of the hysteria is the implications. If eugenics is a real thing, it means people are not amorphous blobs that can be molded into any shape. To give an inch on the eugenics question is to give up entirely on the blank slate theology. Instead the true believers argue against reality by denying it or avoiding it. You see that in the Dawkins thread, where various people, mostly women, offered ridiculous claims against the reality of animal husbandry and agriculture.
Ultimately, the topic of eugenics brings us back to that point about discussing morality and collective agency in the modern age. A eugenic policy would mean legitimizing the collective will. It would also mean accepting that people collectively have an identity that is rooted in their nature. The war on our collective humanity starts with denying us a right to say who we are and what makes us who we are. It means denying us the legitimacy to want what we want for no other reason than we want it.
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I find it funny that Dawkins’s obvious bid to remain relevant caught so many people up. The outrage and overreaction merely makes him seem “controversial” (edgy).
Has anyone offered Dawkins a guest spot yet?
Dawkins is not an unusual character in British intellectual circles. The outspoken intellectual, who violates convention is almost a stock character in Britain. The reaction is all about the feminized culture. Dawkins was just being himself.
Dawkin’s is a sad old man. He once ruled the edgy scene as one of the “four horsemen of atheism.” But around 2014 the most powerful religion in the West became Islam and criticizing Islam means criticizing brown people. So Dawkins was cast out, now he takes whatever crumb of attention he can. Dave Rubin interviewed him a few years back. Dawkin’s did his atheism bit and when he stuck in a “Trump voters are stupid” the audience of recovering atheists laughed and laughed and, for a moment, Dawkins could relive the atheist glory days. Fuck him, may the next… Read more »
Dawkins made some important contributions, but the over-the-top atheism was what people will remember him for, at least in the short term. it is a shame, but the narcotic of minor celebrity is powerful stuff.
It’s important to not confuse the man with the message, however. Dawkins the man is not the point in this discussion.
The man who gave us “memetics” now reduced to this.
Turns out that trying to be a “Cultural Christian” just means you have no real moral basis to object to anything.
Walrus, “moral basis” is no sine qua non for objecting to anything. That’s why Zman wrote above that, “The war on our collective humanity…means denying us the legitimacy to want what we want for no other reason than we want it.”
I love the whole “Trump voters and Republicans are stupid” shtick. They are the most un-self-aware people in existence. It never even occurs to them that they are on the side of the 85 and 92 IQ groups, not to mention the criminal underclass. They have close to 100% of the black vote and some ridiculously high percentage of the Mestizo vote. They are the two lowest IQ racial groups in the country.
I think they know this wrt IQ and constituency. Every once in a while they let those feelings emerge, ala Bloomberg.
When I hear such, I just assume they are talking about the group they really identify with—the ruling elites. Some think they are part of it already, other hope to join the group eventually. But is any event, such a group is not you, nor me.
Ironically, we may be closer to those low IQ groups, wrt common interest, rights, and human dignity than are these elitists.
I accept that some of us are not part of the ruling elites because there is no causal link between IQ and political power. But I do not except that in consequence we have something in common with the low IQ hordes. It is precisely the sense of alienation from both ruling power and moral chaos that is so isolating and black-pilled. That is why forming irl communities is the first order of dissident business.
I’ve always found it useful to discern a difference between “atheists” and what I term “anti-theists”. Dawkins is an example of the latter. We’ve always had atheists and agnostics and deists. But at the bottom line, they have a live and let live relationship with “believers”. I have no problems with atheists nor believers. I believe we see such a mixture in this group, yet little dissenting stemming from such. A comment here, a rejoinder there, and it’s back to the issue at hand—as it should be. We are here to discuss our common interests. Something seems to have arisen… Read more »
I am somewhat a reluctant atheist. I try to get around it by being a cultural Christian. The whole atheist movement is largely funded and led by “secular” Jews trying to break the back of our Christian culture. All of the anti-Christian stuff has been spearheaded by Jews, Most of it is pretty recent. When my parents were in school, for instance, they had to pray every day. School prayer was only illegal in schools for maybe 10 years when I started school around 1975. But I was in Catholic school. I will take the Christians over the “secular” left… Read more »
Compsci, I think the “anti-god, disappointed in god” types are simply a wholly owned subset of those who are disappointed in America, disappointed in Western Civilization, disappointed in Trump and anyone who doesn’t hate him, and so on and so on. They are disappointed in their own lives and selves, IMHO, and project it all out as the fault of “xxx”. The “anti-theists” are just a particular manifestation of all the rest of it. Treat them accordingly.
Dawkins’ involvement with the “New Atheism” that briefly flourished around 2010-2015 (basically Obama’s 2nd term) frequently illustrated that the NA movement, like so much of our current culture, was not really about what it was about. The “elevatorgate” incident (which may or may not have even happened) is a case in point. Briefly, there was a female grifter named Rebecca Watson. She had become “famous” in the NA circuit initially by posing for some kind of “girls of atheism” pinup calendar. Yes, such things existed… One day she was at a NA conference when some guy invited her back to… Read more »
He once ruled the edgy scene as one of the “four horsemen of atheism.” Edgy? That’s Dawkins in his dotage – none of those guys were edgy in any way, they merely took advantage of an America innocent of atheist notions and easily shocked. When he was at the top of his game, he wrote “The Selfish Gene” – the best layman book on evolution ever written. Killing Christianity did not bring about the scientific utopia Atheism was never about science or utopia, it was about not believing in stuff for which there is zero evidence, especially if said stuff… Read more »
Not even my spell checker recognizes “Jehova”.
Modern society is propagating undesirable traits in humans and suppressing the reproduction of decent and intelligent people. It’s everything from government handouts to African single mothers as the father of those children goes about making more babies with other women while getting his money car jacking and causing mayhem. Or the medical field spending enormous amounts of money saving the infant of that car jacker and mayhem creater whom is born premature within a highly expensive modern medical system paid for by white civilization. Or giving taxpayer paid medical care to anyone crossing our borders as they show up in… Read more »
You are exactly correct. In this country, this criminal justice reform that “conservatives” have taken up as their big cause is simply releasing vast numbers of “non-violent” blacks and latinos with predictable results. I’m a big believer in the “broken window” view toward policing and criminal justice and what’s to stop these low-IQ mental midgets who’ve made breaking the law a lifestyle from moving up to violent crime when released? Quick answer, nothing. I wish we could at least sterilize these miscreants before they leave prison.
They are not mental midgets wrt knowing risks and playing odds. From reports I’ve read, lots of our vibrant youth admitted to leaving their guns at home when stop and frisk was the policy of NYPD. We also see the opposite when you can beat the system, such as using pre-teens to accept drug purchase money and deliver drugs from stash houses since such “youths” at best go to “juvi”, not prison.
But I admit, if they had a higher than room IQ, they’d do anything other than sell/use drugs and gang bang.
California is the petri dish for cultivating the social cancer of woke justice. By effectively eliminating the penalty for possession or sales of hard drugs, a horde of heroin-addicted orcs has been unleashed to thieve in support of their habit and do violence to anyone frustrating their quest for the next high. We have what is essentially the direct opposite of the “broken windows” or “stop and frisk” theories; and it is failing massively. Why steralize? If long prison sentences are no longer economically viable, let’s return to the death penalty unencumbered by all the ridiculous procedural safeguards. One appeal… Read more »
Dysgenics. Ed Dutton agrees
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/at-our-wits-end-edward-dutton/1128334005
Intelligence no longer endows a survival benefit.
Governments impose a fertility tax upon the productive and provides a fertility benefit to the indigent.
What could possible go wrong?
And the benefit that IQ does provide, wealth, is not spent in rearing more children—but less. Two edged sword here.
bilejones, reversion to the mean can be a real bitch.
“Passive” eugenics is now commonly practiced. All large hospitals have eugenics “councilors”. They may term them something different, but that’s their job. Field is growing and positions can’t be filled fast enough. One hospital I am familiar with uses them in cancer treatment and also prebirth planning. Yes, folk are becoming aware that they may have family genetic problem that they well may pass on to their future progeny. Even low IQ folks get referred and are respectful, but painfully ignorant. Of course, the next logical step is in the womb testing and preventative abortion, all legal these days. At… Read more »
We live in an age of eugenics. It’s just that the rootless, alien people who now rule white societies view whiteness as the trait to be bred out of existence. Just take a look at the collapsed birth rates of every white nation.
Slavery was not eliminated because it was unworkable or impractical.
Yes, it was. It was no coincidence that slavery was abolished during the industrial revolution. The moral arguments against slavery were only allowed to arise when vested interests no longer had use for slaves. Those same interests then opportunistically opposed slavery as the virtue signaling was a benefit for them.
Funny how the people eliminating slavery in Europe were wholly unaware of the fact they were following the NAP, when they really thought they were following Christian teaching.
What’s NAP.?
Non-Aggression Principle. It is a big deal with libertarians.
Well, until you point out that a lot of their policies amount to forms of aggression in the pursuit of maximizing their own personal profits, and then they try to claim it’s somehow not aggression because it’s not as direct as just murdering people.
Thanks. It has its own Wikipedia page with multiple orange flags scattered throughout saying ‘this article has multiple issues’. That’s funny to me.
If YiddiPedia has problems with it, it’s got to be good.
The fallacy is often in the interaction between consenting adults. One has to realize that the assumption is the two adults are of equal knowledge and power. Not always the case.
I’ve seen a case made the the importation of large amounts of penniless Europeans – the Irish, made slavery less economically viable because employers were not responsible for the welfare of employees and their families while slave-owners were,
You spend no money on repairs and maintenance on cars you rent, not so on those you own.
That seems doubtful for a few reasons. First, the US was well on it’s way to phasing out slavery before industrialization. The Northwest Ordinance banned slavery in 1787. Congress outlawed the importation of slaves in 1808 and stopped US registered ships from carrying slaves well before that. Slavery was well on a downward path before significant Irish immigrants arrived. Only the cotton gin made is feasible again. Slavery isn’t expensive as long as you have a supply. The US cut that supply and therefore made slaves expensive. Look at places where slavery was allowed, like sugar cane plantations in the… Read more »
Little known fact–slave importation was a necessity to continue business as usual because, excepting American slavery, slaves were not much prone to reproduction. Make of that what you will. The English imperialist historian Froude wrote a remarkable accounting of Caribbean slavery during his visits there.
I looked that book up and Wikipedia has a page for the book written to refute it but does not have a page for the actual book so I decided if Wikipedia hates it that much, I had to have it and I brought it from a private seller in England for $20 including shipping. You know it’s really amazing the world today isn’t it. I’m pretty blackpilled about the future but it doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the Bounty of today
An interesting point of disagreement. No doubt slavery was becoming less and less profitable as an institution. Indeed, I’ve read that even in the South as machines replaced field hands in crop maintenance, other crops in other states were cultivated and slaves moved/sold there. In modern example, fast food service moving to replace workers when their wage rose to $15 hour. But if wages had remained stable, when would those companies have modernized? If slavery had remained legal, when would we have given up on using such “free” labor? Would I have a shack in the corner of my yard… Read more »
A similar argument can be made against the importation of cheap third world labor in general. Why don’t we have a robot that can harvest broccoli? Is it really that hard to make one or is there just no way to make money developing and selling the things?
I’m convinced that when future historians comment on this period they will estimate that cheap labor cost the West about 40 years worth of technological progress particularly in automation and AI. Of course those historians will probably be robots themselves so I imagine they’ll be biased.
I think you’re confused here. The Abolitionists always refuted slavery on moralistic grounds, but their movement only achieved critical mass when Industrialists believed it was in their own interest to champion the Abolitionist cause. The Industrialists acted because they believed the removal of Slaves would reduce the South’s autonomy and prevent them from selling their cotton to Britain and France rather than shipping it North.
The economic interests of Yankee Industrialization, cloaked in moralism, is what drove Slavery out of existence in the US, not some inevitable force.
I was referring to the British who were the first to abolish slavery.
This is just not true. I think you overestimate the efficacy of machinery to replace cheap labor in the 19th and 20th centuries. You are just repeating a silly internet meme.
It’s just a bad faith argument based on a poor understanding of industrial development by people who cannot credit the British or the West in general with any postive moral qualities.
Even today farm labor is still necessary.
You are historically illiterate: there were still plenty of uses for slaves. Only in the 20th century did the West develop technology which could replace cheap agricultural labour.
“Historically illiterate” is too harsh. If you’re disagreeable, nobody will care about how right you are.
It’s going to take awhile for the blank slaters to go away. It’s official dogma in America’s schools. Even teachers who know better mouth blank slate platitudes. I once, in a meeting with the special ed people, asked why we couldn’t get access to useful data- IQ tests, etc. It was as if I had asked
“ Could we start up a Hitler Youth chapter here?”
My father was a teacher in the inner city, and for most of his career he was a blank slater. Then he took a position giving placement tests, which were basically IQ tests. This gave him a good dose of race reality. I remember discussing education reform with him later in his life, and he said the only reform that would make any difference is to start with smarter kids.
There is a book, “Bad Students, not Bad Schools” by Weissberg. Which goes over this all in detail. I mention this book, because is is highly referenced such that most all arguments you’ll hear wrt “improving” schools, teachers, student environment, etc have been tried and shown to be failures. I have never had this argument with a teacher or Lefty (but I repeat myself) where their solution—usually more $$$, is not referenced in that book via a dozen or more failed programs. In short, the book is a long, somewhat dry read, but is a reference of great value if… Read more »
Actually, there is a single and simple solution to all social ills. Take resources from the productive and give them to the problematic. Ignore the disincentives to both from this transfer, and whether or not it works . Rinse and repeat.
I am a teacher, and yes, any discussion with faculty about racial differences in cognition triggers a maelstrom of acrimony. These people can’t distinguish between race realism and racial animus. Takes away their superhero capes, I think. The suggestion that they can’t purify entire biologies through Rosa Parks coloring books seems to offend them.
Funny thing is I get better results with the minority kids than the goodwhites. I make slight alterations in my teaching style or diction and it works. They like to argue, so I make sure to engage them directly and with frequent guidance.
My extended family is replete with teachers, adminstrators and others who support school funding initiatives. I’ve found that the easiest way to end the tedium of lengthy discussions about what is to done with today’s schools is to toss out the simple hate-fact, “You can’t educate the uneducable.” Blank slatists cannot grasp that obsolete farm equipment doesn’t belong in school because their jobs and livelihood require it, not because they are unaware of the futility.
Growing up in Baltimore (Lagos-on-Chesapeake as Z calls it) I came to the conclusion as a young man that the money spent on inner city schools would be better spent on tequila and hookers. At least those things have a measurable if temporary benefit to the people spending the money. After reading up on how corporations in the third world have a “bribery budget” to pay off corrupt local officials I came to think of these periodic urban campaigns for “better schools” as just teachers unions and inner city residents shaking down the local government for a bigger slice. Somehow… Read more »
In California it is illegal to give IQ tests to black children. If we allowed IQ testing in schools, that would put an end to some very destructive beliefs about schooling and how everyone should graduate HS. IMHO, we need to have a system that IQ tests kids and then they graduate from whatever grade their IQ allows them to graduate. So if a kid has a 90 IQ, he is graduated if he completes the 9th grade. This is already what happens in reality. 90 IQ kids who “graduate” from HS, effectively graduate with a 9th grade education. The… Read more »
Lack of IQ stat’s is common all over. There are proxies that are commonly used to estimate such. CA can’t eliminate these. This keeps a lot of current HBD research moving forward. It would move faster and be more accurate with better approximations—such as real WISC testing, but it won’t stop research and a countervailing argument to blank statism.
Yeah, they have done little to stop the research, but they also have been successful flooding high schools with low IQ kids who shouldn’t be there. They do nothing but disrupt actual smart kids who might benefit from being there. I think there is also a connection with “special ed” and retarded kids being in public school. It is little more than tax funded babysitting. What the hell are retarded children doing in public schools? We all feel sympathy for them and want them to be as good as they can, but they can’t be educated and simply do not… Read more »
Why bother? The modern economy no longer demands the output of free, universal public education. It’s time to recognize that K-12 is nothing more than subsidized day care for a lot of working single mothers. It should be redesigned from the ground up to serve those with the intelligence to contribute to the modern post-industrial economy, which will be a fraction of the current school-aged demographic. As for the remainder, either conscript them into military or civilian service at low wage and basis kit; or provide a modest UBI and let them fend for themselves. If it’s to be the… Read more »
Funny how so much of the blank slate cult is pushed by women and their moral preening over fairness. Yet they conveniently cover one eye for any test that might reveal the eugenic nature of their own biological sexual strategy at work. When it comes to their own dating-mating-child rearing choices, fairness is quickly eclipsed by their preferences for things that should be irrelevant given the built-in protections of modernity and their own strong-independent go-girl equality attributes. But still they seem to want genetic fitness: tall, strong, handsome high status men, as if we live in straw huts. All the… Read more »
I suppose that Inner city teachers must have a similar mindset to old Bill the last freshwater pearl fisher, eventually if you can just open enough mussels you’ll get a good’en https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBr4XR6uoPY
The biggest practical problem w eugenics is picking which traits will be an advantage in the future, when circumstances change. Two examples, IQ and sickle cell anemia. IQ would certainly seem an advantage. But today we can empirically see that high IQ people breed less than low IQ people. It would seem that if you make a safe, abundant environment, IQ is an impediment to breeding. And accordingly our IQ average is dropping. Sickle cell anemia is mostly found in African populations. When you have two copies of the gene for it, from both parents, you develop sickle cell anemia.… Read more »
This is why eugenics works very well for domesticated animals (removed as much as possible from predators and dangerous natural forces), but less well for humans (beings whose reason prevents them from being so divorced from nature). It’s easy to look at an outside thing and see what makes it more useful to you, but less so to apply that logic to yourself/your neighbors
The right question then isn’t “could we produce the results we want?”, but rather “are the results we want going to be what we need in the future?”
We do it all the time successfully… So id say that question has been answered long ago…
I think you have a very good point, eugenics works wonderfully for domesticated animals, less so for humans. The difference? Domesticated animals have to live in, but not manage, a controlled environment, human habitation and needs. Humans have to manage it.
But it also illustrates why the elites should perhaps be more into eugenics. Why not make the masses more docile, less likely to rebel? It seems the death penalty eugenics theory mentioned suggests they may have done just that. The kinds of men who don’t mind killing or committing crimes, could be dangerous revolutionary leaders??
Chances are whoever comes to be in charge of eugenics are going to be the ones most unfit to be in charge. The West will keep the brakes on but no doubt the Chinese are going to plunge in headfirst.
Higher intelligence hasn’t historically been an impediment. In fact historically the most intelligent and well-off had the most surviving children. What changed? Hostile social engineers took control.
Maybe you don’t even need social engineering, although I don’t disagree w your point there. But maybe abundance is enough to remove the competitive advantage of high IQ? Look up r/K strategy.
That the abundance was probably created by high IQ people then gives the whole thing a sort of cyclical spin.
We don’t really have an endless abundance, though. We have more “stuff” in general due improvements in agricultural technology (being used to farm things like corn and soy, not very good for you as a staple of your diet) and boomertech that boomers will tell us somehow means things are better than ever and there’s nothing to complain about, but entertainment on screens of course doesn’t negate the fact that the ability for young people to afford to get a house and pop out children is worse than ever. Lots of people in the middle socioecomically, probably your smartest and… Read more »
I am suspicious of the “people aren’t having kids because it’s too expensive” thesis. I’m not saying it’s not a factor at all, but I think it is a minor one, maybe 10%. First point: the people in US society who are having lots of kids are often the poorest. There are a lot of families out near me who start families in their late teens and 20s and support multiple kids on incomes much smaller than mine (there is also a tremendous amount of divorce and kids living with stepparents, aunts, and grandparents, which is a point I’ll come… Read more »
“What you do with your time and your money shows what you value. Our society shows by its actions that people don’t value marriage and children”
Too true. What cracks up/saddens me is how people say “children are too expensive…. children are too much responsibility”, then spend thousands of dollars on fences, furniture, toys, accessories, medical treatments and organic foods for their dog or cat.
Here’s the problem for me in an HBD nutshell, an incentive program for more children must apply to everyone. However, we don’t need more people of a general nature, we need more people of a specific nature. Crudely measured/described, this would mean White children. Raising the overall brith rate will do nothing for the current problem with minorities and their general inability to thrive in a highly technical society.
My general thinking is that we’d make more progress via disincentives and working on the birthrate among those dependent on government support.
Any policy to increase birthrates among “successful” people would have to make large families a mark of high status and wealth. It’s hard to see how you could do this without making large families impossibly difficult/expensive for people on more modest incomes. The problem is that western societies and increasingly other societies around the world are now so prosperous that even the least well off can afford to breed as much as they wish, thereby devaluing large family size as a status marker. Of course a return to grinding poverty, hunger and lethal infectious diseases would fix this “problem”. Good… Read more »
It’s two different problems to solve. Incentivize family creation for everyone. Impose an immigration moratorium, end birthright citizenship, and don’t renew any existing visas or hand out any more green cards. Aggressively deport. I know that’s currently on the the level of “and I want my very own pet unicorn,” but that’s what it would take to, maybe have a chance without separation.
Highly intelligent people created a comfortable world with I
incredible medical care and social programs and now people that would have died in the past, now don’t.
You know, not long before Baghdad was overtaken by military rule in the 9th century, the people were advocating for a 5-day work week and women to become judges, women were already in most professions at this point. It seems like myopia becomes an epidemic the more successful society but you need a much grander vision to keep it together
Sounds like you’ve read Glubb too or maybe the same sources he used. I believe he was onto something very important. What he said fits perfectly with ‘biohistory’ but also with PUA ‘game’.
Yep.
+1 for Pasha Glubb. He and Enoch Powell were two of the UK’s most insightful thinkers. Demography is destiny.
The biggest problem with eugenics is that the people administering the program would be the same clowns that run the rest of the public sector. Which if past performance is any guide to future performance, means that we would end up with the opposite outcome to whatever the original intentions were.
One of the reasons you can purchase pork and farmed catfish so cheaply is the work one of my cousins (one of Bloomberg’s dumb farm kids) has done over the last thirty years on lean/adipose genetic expression and manipulation. The shit works. In fact, is it frightening how well it works. Every technique they’ve used in animal models would work in humans.
Welp, now we are in the home stretch of neoliberalism, aren’t we? Most of our morals and ethics evolved because they worked and made us better people. When the left abandoned faith, morals and ethics…the cultural rot and decay accelerated. They assumed science would provide the answers… but all real science will do is pose more and more thorny moral and ethical questions. Without any foundation to work from…the only way out is down. The failures of the multiculti social experiment are now obvious and starting to bite. Equally obvious is that dysgenic cultures will be at the mercies of… Read more »
I only watched Molyneux’s short initial video on Dawkins’ tweet and I was shocked how bad it was. Hysterical teenage girl bad and entirely missing the point of Dawkins’ tweet.
The idea that Molyneux felt obligated to try to make his response from within a homo economicus worldview didn’t occur to me, because I have never observed that is how Molyneux sees the world. It is actually a kinder interpretation than what I came away with, that he was unable to separate the function of eugenics from its morality, because he responded to the concept with kneejerk emotionalism.
Dawkins SJW’ed himself. He was well aware of how his work implied that every aspect of human biology and culture was at its most basic, genetics dependent. This caused a bit of a blow back when it was first published. Naively he followed that up with The Extended Phenotype, explaining how the mechanism worked. He gave example after example of how “nurture” was not something separate from nature but part of nature. This book only made his problems worse. A few years earlier EO Wilson had been assaulted by (((activist))) at Harvard. Wilson had been rocked back on his heels… Read more »
So he sold his integrity in exchange for fame and fortune, in the process giving a whole generation of smug atheist types talking points. As a traditional Roman Catholic, I have very little sympathy for him.
Never meant to imply it was the noble thing to do, just not atypical. The crooked timber of humanity++++
I expect the greatest failed eugenics experiment in history was WW1 and WW2,too many men with the right stuff were killed,and the collapse of western civilization is the result.
Being the eternal optimist (or at least today), I might not go so far as to say collapse, but at a minimum – an increase in the angle of descent of western civ
That doesn’t really explain a country like Sweden though, does it? Sweden wasn’t involved in those but the problems are the same.
I saw somewhere that 25% of the Oxford class of 1914 were dead by 1918. A great aunt of mine, and many others, never married because their men were dead.
Same in Russia in WWII. I believe 80+% of men born in 1920 were dead in 1945. I even saw some quotes attributed to newspaper publications enjoining young men not to forget other unmarried young women. In other words, to father children with them outside of marriage. And I believe there is a video by Dutton alluding to the good looks of present day Russian and Ukrainian women as possibly due to their grandmothers being good looking enough to attract one of the remaining men to breed with her, while the ugly ones remained spinsters. 😉
I’ve wondered for a while if the supine lack of resistance to Asian rape gangs was the result of so many British male deaths in the world wars.
Modern progs, by virtue of their death cult ideology, are reducing their fertility rates to sub 1.0 levels. Hyper feminism, genital mutilation, anti-masculinity hysterics and worthless degree accumulation will render them as relevant in a few generations as the Shakers are to us today. Our generational (millennial) challenge will be to deal with the sad-sack leftovers striking out against their unhappiness by spreading their ideological poison. Luckily, pointing to them and their misery as clear examples of how not to live a life will help our cause.
White pill.
Dawkins’ atheism promotes the eugenic reduction of his own people because atheists have the lowest birth rates of anyone. Do you see him peddling his books in 99.3% Islamic Niger, birth rate 6.5 per woman?
https://www.conservapedia.com/Atheism_and_fertility_rates
Like many atheists he has developed a sentimental attachment to his own head, and wouldn’t wish to loosen that attachment by criticizing Islam, if you know what I mean.
I’ve had lots of debates about the blank slate theory, particularly with women. I simply give them the following scenario to show them they don’t really believe it either. If we are all the same and genetics don’t matter, then if you went to a sperm donor clinic and were presented with two samples…… The first being from a 6ft 2″ self-made millionaire, who donates to charity and also does triathlons, or a never worked 5ft 6″ guy who sold sperm for the money – then you would reply ‘either is fine for me thanks’. We all know that almost… Read more »
I can’t remember where I read it, but Dawkins himself has said human eugenics probably wouldn’t work, at least not to improve the species. Like dogs and cows, you could end up with all sorts of undesirable traits trying to breed desirable traits. Unlike dogs and cows, it could take a couple of decades before we find out about the evil unwanted traits. But, of course, leftists have to define eugenics in such a way where we’re all in, in order to argue against it. As Z points out, banning cousin marriage is a form of eugenics. Leftists hate the… Read more »
“I can’t remember where I read it, but Dawkins himself has said human eugenics probably wouldn’t work, at least not to improve the species”
I’m undecided about the morality of eugenics but I tend to doubt it would work. I think the Law of Unintended Consequences would come into play.
I saw a meme once. First panel stated PRODUCT OF NATURAL SELECTION and showed a picture of a wolf.
Second panel stated PRODUCT OF INTELLIGENT DESIGN and showed a picture of a pug…. nose flat against face, eyes almost bulging out of sockets, tongue hanging out of mouth.
All you say is true, but I’m not sure what effect an understanding at the genetic level—and breeding for that genome—would have. That is fast approaching. In other words, other genes/alleles cropping up may well be prevented or discarded.
Or worse, they think they understand, but do not. I am far more fearful of that. A lot of traits don’t come from a single gene. Without a complete understanding of all of the genes involved in a desirable trait, precise eugenics targeting those genes could end up turning on genes (or, more likely, combinations of genes) that have really evil effects.
Though you might learn something useful from statistics, we really won’t know until well after such efforts have been in effect for quite a while.
Zman, small correction: “Similarly, no one would argue that a society has a right to defend itself against the violent.” You clearly meant no one would “not” argue…
Looking at the gun control activists and some of these blue metropolis DAs running around lately, actually I think some people would argue that.
Forgive me if I can’t remember the author or exact quote, but to paraphrase it went something like, ” If we were to re-engineer one gene a generation in a hundred years we would be the equivalent of monkeys to our offspring ”
It’s pathetic we let our lessers dictate the advancement of humanity. If we are ever to get off this rock we’re going to need more robust bodies and greater intelligence.
For now we have ” The View ” and ” Caitlyn Jenner ”
God help us !
My suspicion is that it will go down like this. A country like China, with no scruples against breeding a superior being, perfects the technique. Such eugenic use is quickly banned in the US and other Western “enlightened”, but suicidal, societies. The elites—those of us with $$$—say screw you and visit such clinics beyond the reach of law—nor is the law willing to punish them, since they basically are the law. Such children after a time are shown/suspected to be enhanced and there rises a hew and cry for us as a nation to follow suit. Perhaps a hard nosed… Read more »
More likely is China or someplace tries it and the results, while promising at first, turn into a nightmare. We don’t know much about how genes really work. It’s like letting you 8 year old tinker around with source code that has millions of lines. Maybe taking out that command makes things run faster…..until the memory doesn’t get cleared and everything crashes.
The more topics concerning HBD realities are brought up in the main-stream the better. Zman, I’m not sure if you or some of the other readers here watched this video by Dr. Gapin last fall about men’s heath and testosterone levels falling in men. He starts getting into genetics around the 23:00 mark and, of course, the obligatory tip-toeing that goes with it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N11tqwVrhZo&feature=youtu.be
Yes, eugenics is a form of artificial selection similar to the practices of animal husbandry. And the transition from hunter-gatherer to agrarian society would not have occurred without the same sort of artificial selection practiced on plants. As such, civilization itself is an outgrowth of artificial selection. And none of the above is natural selection, which has been in play for about a billion years, and has worked pretty well to this point. Is man smarter than nature? We shall see.
I can never see the term “animal husbandry” without smiling at the memory of the Florida legislator who wanted to outlaw such a barbaric practice.
Care to guess at the:
Sex?
Hue?
Party?
Cheat sheet here
https://jonathanturley.org/2009/03/13/florida-senator-raises-alarm-over-animal-husbandry/
As I said, current genetic knowledge at the molecular level may well alleviate the need for “breed and select” husbandry—whether by man or Nature. Albeit, the first wide spread use of eugenics might be with a form of embryo select and implant. Commonly used now to treat infertile couples or for women delaying child bearing.
Are there people who honestly call him “the world’s foremost philosopher”? They must be deciding purely on the basis of how much they hate God. Dawkins is one of those Oxbridge types who at a certain stage of their career, lusting for more fame, stray into philosophy under the assumption that there’s no need to have actually read or practiced it before shooting your mouth off. How hard can it be, right? And yet it seems prestigious to them. Dawkins reminds me of a old joke about a professor who had a classroom joke about there being an infinite number… Read more »
Moly calls himself a philosopher now. He bills his site as the world’s most popular philosophy channel or something like that.
If a man, Christopher Hitchens just one example, is sharp, entertaining, and informative in all subjects in which he engages, the topic of religion will leave him competely divorced from all his best qualities. I’ve never seen it fail. Skewering religion can be made hilarious but committed atheists (religious atheist I call them) lose their best qualities on the subject.
Stefan Molyneux a philosopher? In another possible world, maybe. His formal training is in history. He doesn’t know anything about Hume because he’s probably never read any Hume. Except possibly the History of England. He seems to be a reasonably clever guy and some of what he says I agree with. But he’s no one I’d go to to learn anything about philosophy.
I didn’t even like him at his peak. I don’t know who does.
I believe he defines his philosophy every so often as “reason backed by fact based evidence and logic”. Or some such. I ignore the philosopher credentials, but often enjoy the videos. Can’t comment on the recent controversy as I have not followed it. But in general I’ve never heard a discussion that reminds me of anything I ever heard in the class room. Indeed, if you search for philosophy discussions on YouTube, you’ll get presentations that really are philosophical in nature and don’t resemble Molyneux’s presentations in the least. Ok, so he puts on airs. A lot of his stuff,… Read more »
Same here. I enjoy some of his interviews. I also understand that he’s established his family in Canada, and like other Canadian YouTuber’s he has to be super-vigilant about anything that he (or a guest) says that might be misconstrued and get him de-platformed from his source of income.
To add: the discussion of eugenics is from a masculine perspective, i.e., reducing or punishing undesirable traits. What we have is a ‘feminine’ eugenics: increasing or rewarding undesirable traits. Why? It’s the attitude of women raising children. ‘You scraped your knee, let me put a band aid on that.’ ‘You’re being bullied, let me deal with it.’ It’s good to protect kids, but adults, in theory being trained to handle themselves, should be accountable. Whether it’s throwing money at bad schools, subsidizing single moms, building section 8 housing in the ‘burbs, bailing out bankers and giving them more control over… Read more »
What it means is a group of men come in, they could be as dumb as stones, and take over the area being occupied by the effeminate men (see California). The world is and has always been tribes fighting over space. If one tribe just goes gay and gives up, even if it’s 10 times smarter, it’s a forfeit.
All the ethics in the world don’t mean a thing to the guy stepping on your neck.
What we’ve had in the last 70 years of the welfare state is a reverse-Eugenics program. Rampant immigration of mud people aside, paying the dumbest of our population to multiply is the single most destructive thing we’ve done. All in the name of “compassion” and a false programming of Christian charity merging with progressive taxation and wealth transfer. We allow Shenequa a path to an income by squirting out little knob heads, and Maria, and Krystal in the RV park in many cases. The sooner the welfare state bankrupts itself, the sooner this reverse-Eugenics program comes to an end. The… Read more »
Theodore Dalrymple’s column today was a big black pill. University hiring is aggressively dysgenic.