https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/30/how-american-racism-influenced-hitler

No one would accept the government stepping in to abort autistic children, and it is by a similar token that i don’t really see good ethical grounds for banning sibling marriage. It is so rare and so naturally self-limiting that there is basically no point in enforcing it by law.

yes, but like, it was a public, widely debated talking point in the same vein as like

people talking about how to prevent diabetes

it was even surrounded by plenty of funny false medicine

nazis made it very unpopular to speak about, though.

I really don't understand your point then, isn't the health of the overall population the welfare of many individuals on a greater scale? Like, one child of incest with a disability is a tragedy, and a single individual that is suffering, 100 of them in a single town is a health problem for the population. I really don't understand the distinction you're trying to make and why it's important.

You're missing the key point of my comment.

The author posits eugenics as a concern for the purity? health? goodness? of the overall population. But in reality, much (most?) concern surrounding the fitness of future children is because we are concerned about the welfare of those children as individuals.

I think the author does include that in their very broad definition of eugenics, as not drinking during pregnancy is also a form of eugenics according to the author.

I don't think the term loses all meaning opening it up this much, it just becomes something that is irrational to oppose, of course people want children to born healthy, the question is just which measures and policies are worth having to produce this result.

In turns eugenics from a yes/no question to a which option question.

But we know in the US they would just tell minorities to abort.

I have a degree in genetics, I DEFINITELY am a eugenicist. The only issue is working on way to implement it which won't turn out poorly.

Edited cause of auto correct

What school of philosophical thought would defend following one’s passion and not wasting time on things that don’t fulfill one?

>Eugenics, a literal translation of the Greek for "good birth," aims to improve the population through interventions. Positive eugenics aims to increase “good” and “desirable” traits, whereas negative eugenics aims to reduce “bad” or “undesirable” traits.

Herein lies the problem with their theory: it assumes that people oppose incest for the good of the overall population.

I, and I assume most people, oppose incest out of concern for the welfare of the individual potential children. Children born with genetic diseases suffer. I believe it is our duty to prevent the suffering of children as much as possible.

To reduce eugenics merely to a "good birth" would include something as simple as taking prenatal vitamins. At which point the term loses all meaning.

Yeah that's also terrible.

I mean, I'm glad they stopped at least.

They also up until like 2014 force sterilized transgender people.

https://www.queerty.com/denmark-ends-forced-sterilization-of-transgender-people-20140613

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They abort practically all children with birth defects and disabilities. It isn't forced by law AFAIK but it's highly encouraged by the govt and medical staff.

Sure everyone is unique, We are all Humans in this way but our evolution/ development we went through in our childhood etc. is extremely individual, that means we think and know different than others. It’s just that we act like society wants us to and we suppress our uniqueness by that…in my opinion

I wonder if those people without an inner voice still read as if they were speaking the words? Or how do they read or listen?

There is a clinical name for people without an inner voice, but I forget what it’s called. Im reminded of Alexithymia and Aphantasia, if only because those are other phenomena where something is lacking in what is usually common.

Ahh I didn't know about that, that is indeed very troubling, I'll look more into that when I have time.

I'm not really familiar with anything other than what was mentioned in the article, access to abortion, pre-screening of pregnancies to give women the option to abort when the pregnancy is likely to result in a disabled person, access and encouragement to abort when a mother has been actively using drugs that damage the fetus during pregnancy.

As far as I know nothing forced, just a destigmatized culture around abortion and a lot of education about how to prevent disability. Coupled with government programs to aid the disabled that do exist.

I think similar policies in the US and other countries would be great, nothing extreme or forced.

I think encouraging people who are likely to produce disabled offspring to adopt and making it easier for them to do so could be great for society. Again, not forcing anyone, just providing better alternatives to people concerned for their health of their offspring than just hoping the genetic lottery is in your favor.

You didn’t explain their program and when I looked it up all I found was that they forcefully sterilized tens of thousand of mentally handicapped people… is that what you meant?

[deleted]

Not familiar with Danish politics. What are the policies?

Denmark seems to be doing pretty well in integrating eugenics motivated policies that are not turning the country into a dystopian nightmare (as far as I know that is, I've never been.)

It is a dangerous thing, which means it needs to be handled with care and precautions need to be in place, just like Uranium, nuclear power is fantastic and benefits many, many people. But it does have the capacity to go horrible wrong and cause massive environmental and economic problems when things go wrong. This is a reason to be very careful and be cautious when implementing new technology and ideas, but I still think we should pursue the lowest risk highest benefit possibilities.

EDIT Denmark has problems

You know I can’t say for sure. My inclination is to say that if he did have access to the 21st century neurolinguistic that we do he would probably not find them to alter his belief that “the text” was all consuming. My biggest crisis of confidence in semiotic thinking came when reading a piece on people who don’t have an inner monologue, and yet experience no real difference in linguistic ability. I will say I don’t think it was a particularly thorough article, but I do believe it’s accepted that there are people who can’t “hear” words inside their head.

Now, I did hear something else very interesting, in the same vein as what you mention about the brain activity of the inner voice—this time from the researcher himself being interviewed on a podcast. He said that when we read we actually imperceptibly speak the words we are reading. I think this provides a very interesting clue to consciousness. It could be seen as an echo reproduced from the recorded electrical signals (memory) of our brain.

This kind of interestingly ties in the-goku-special’s comment, because the question seems to then become: is the text just the phenomenological experience of the hypothetical reader?

But for Derrida, I think this would all make sense. Our brains, networks of nodes, electricity bouncing amount them—the effect, what we choose to call meaning or consciousness, if one chooses to see it within the same fabric of existence, within “the text”—there’s no difference.

So, essentially, yes I think Derrida would view the interior thought and the actual verbal signifier as distinct but closely related signifiers, which will produce unknown signification in whatever either cerebral cortices they encounter.

I really like this use of the term "positive eugenics" to help distinguish it from the very negative associations with the worst kinds of eugenics.

The interesting thing about it, is if you were to imagine yourself performing an experiment on the evolution of a population to determine which traits lend toward survivability, to simulate what you're proposing, the population within the constraints you defined, would in effect attempt to subvert the experiment by changing the constraints to suit its collective preferences. It would ruin the experiment in so far as you wouldn't have found those traits that improve survivability within constraints that matter, and given that we in the real world have no such controls over the real constraints that matter for the survivability of the human race, our own attempts to guide human evolution are similarly self-deluded, selfish and shortsighted. That having understanding of evolution somehow allows us to control our own evolution, seems to lead to a kind of contradiction wherein we seem to think that subverting evolution is evolution. It's fundamentally flawed.

I suppose none of that ultimately matters when there are untapped markets to explore with designer babies and what not. Or maybe it does, when at the end of the day, everything we do is factored into selection of the fittest whether we like it or not.