Who's your eugenecist? Can I get a referral?

But our thinking is a random collection of patterns. No one is exceptional. Even if we are eavesdropped by a tyrant central power...my thoughts remain free...I did live in a Russian colony. And I knew even my flat could have been listened in...[ later i learned my psychotherapist s office was microphoned due to one friend being very clever in secret opposition workings].. so Dennett - always living in the West - does not have firsthand experience when hi claims we can be stopped to feel free.

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Okay I can understand that, can you care about people not passing down Parkinson's disease to future generations because Parkinson's is really painful and hard to live with? I can, I think it would be great if people chose not to role the dice with the dangerous disease and it was reduced in future generations. What does that make me?

What if I know a couple that both have schizophrenia and I think they shouldn't reproduce because they're child has a 40% to have a schizoid type disorder and I've seen how difficult that is to live with?

What about the part of the article that talks about Ashkenazi Jews reducing genetic disorders by using genetic testing in mate selection, is that compassion for their future children? Or "purifying" their race? If the person administering the tests is more concerned about purity than individuals does that become eugenics and does it become dangerous?

I know a couple from my life that were told they were incompatible genetically, and they decided to trust Jesus and have two disabled children who both suffer far more than average and require lifelong support. I think what they did is wrong, both because of the suffering of their children, the burden on society and their family that they knowingly created, and because they're children are on the same ethical dilemma that they were in should they want to have children. Now that the children exist I believe they should get full community support, and they do. There is no reason to punish the child for the parents mistake. But I also don't see the point in pretending the parents didn't make a mistake. (Twice)

I have bad genes, my parents didn't know, but I do know, and I can't imagine feeling good about purposefully passing that down to another generation, my compassion isn't just for my own potential children, but their progeny too. I have trouble respecting people who knowingly, and proudly pass down traits much worse than mine, it seems incredibly selfish and inhumane. I don't understand why being critical of this is off limits for so many people.

I know good and bad traits are subjective at times, but when we go to great lengths to medicate away certain traits, because people can't live with having them, I don't see the harm in trying to prevent those traits from occuring in subtle, non-invasive ways, like education about ways to create legacy and positively influence future generations without reproduction. A lot of people live in reality of "die alone or make babies", helping people see alternatives and making other lifestyles equal could help people make more ethical decisions regarding reproduction.

I see why the distinction is important to you, but I don't think you can have a whole view without both, the suffering of individuals and the suffering of society is so closely related, if you only focus on one you blind yourself to the other and that makes it really easy for people to make horrible decisions.

This is already really long and ranty, but last point is, I know what Nazis are, and just like they're bad socialists that interpret socialist ideals in horrible ways, they are also bad eugenicists, that interpreted the ideas in the worst ways, there are non-fascist compassion motivated alternatives.

Reddit Moment!

I oppose incest because of the inherent power imbalance of a family member fucking their family. It is inherently abusive. To say that people oppose incest and inbreeding solely based on genetic purity or whatever is one of the most morally repugnant statements I can imagine.

The author's trying to muddy the water on the meaning of eugenics because his argument boils down to "I only refused to fuck my sister because I was worried about genetic purity."

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Isn't the decision to reproduce with your sibling deeply private? Or to take shots in the privacy of your home while pregnant deeply private? Isn't prohibiting and shaming these things collectivizing decisions about procreation?

Is that a bad thing?

Yes, of course the population is made up of individuals and each individual's suffering matters.

But that's not the eugenicists primary concern. It's easier to understand when you remember the really big eugenics movements, like Nazism and White Supremacy, which care less for the individual and more for the "purity" of the overall race.

It's an important distinction to make because it's an underlying worldview that does often affect our politics in subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, ways.

Think animal rights vs. conservationists. Most of the time these two groups align, but sometimes conservationists will seek to conserve the overall population of a species in ways that harms individual animals more than animal rights groups find acceptable.

So back to the question of incest: If I am a eugenicist, I oppose incest because I don't want the DNA of the overall population besmirched. If I care about individual rights, I am concerned about the welfare and suffering of individual children potentially born into more suffering than necessary.

In this debate, philosophers Daniel Dennett, Helen Steward and Patrick Haggard debate the nature of free will.

Steward puts forward an incompatibilist position arguing we need not hold that human action is necessarily part of a deterministic causal chain.

Haggard argues we should reject exceptionalist accounts of free will, and that the vast range of the context in which actions happen gives rise to the appearance of complexity, and that we can account for that range with mechanistic accounts.

Dennett argues there is often a mistaken conflation of cause and control, and that while every decision might be part of a causal chain, that does not mean our decisions and choices are necessarily controlled. Protecting against manipulation and control on the part of another agent means protecting the only sort of free will that really matters, he claims.

Well, I think an incest ban is very different than a mandatory abortion or a gene selecionar IVF. Most people would agree with the first (most people try to choose a partner with "good" traits anyway).

Right now for example the global IQ is decreasing for various factors, but one of them is high-IQ, educated women are less likely to have children. In a few generations, if this trend is not reversed, we will have a collapsing civilisation run by low IQ people who have no idea how to run the systems and technology that they've inherited from us. If you value civilisation, you may wish to reverse this trend. If you don't care then that's a different matter altogether. But for people who value civilisation, high quality traits are things like intelligence, social cohesion, physical health, mental health, co-operativeness, etc.

I want to learn how to create a rational frame for life

I grew up watching Naruto and it shaped the essence of my worldview and the worldview that I would one day try to rationalise. It's been a long time since I thought about that show but when I look back I realise that it has had a religious impact in who I am. Because the show has devolved a lot from what it was at the beggining I am going to be refering only to the part of the show up to the Shippuden franchise.

It's been a long time since I read the manga and watched the show and unlike other works from Classical literature it feels like a waste of time to re-read it because it is made for kids. I've since gone through some phases of my life, read some introductory books on philosophy, sociology, psychology, anthropology, politics, self-help, etc. I've read a lot but I never learnt how to frame life explicitly from the origin of conciousness to the conclusion that I want to arrive to which is that my goal is to live a life like one set in the world of Naruto, in harmony with nature, in a culturally flourishing country. My personal belief at the moment is that one needs a feudal monarchical system for that to take place. However, I would have a hard time arguing my conclusion because I am not confident in the axiomatic fundations on which I model my worldview. That is to say, I could walk somebody through how I view life. In a world where common sense has long left out the door I want to learn how to build up that foundation for myself.

Evidently there is bound to be discrepancy between Japnanese schools philosophers. Also, some people in Japan subscribe to European philosophical schools such as Marxism (something I'm not a big fan of). Therefore asking about Japanese philosophy would be a proxy for asking about World Philosophy. Hence, I will try to reformulate my question:

I admire and am fascinated by Japanese culture. I would like to know more about the traditional Japanese way of framing life and politics. I would also like to learn how to phrame my worldview. I am interested mostly in the core axioms and frameworks

Thank you very much for reading this post and if you have any suggestions I would love to check them out. So far I have really enjoyed IKIGAI and the KonMari method.

Thx for noticing

No but I’m now afraid to look it up cause it’s probably gonna ruin my day.

Ever hear of a Mississippi appendectomy?

>as not drinking during pregnancy is also a form of eugenics according to the author.

That's not really Eugenics, more Eu-evodevo.

If you generalize eugenics that much, then every single action you take can be determined to be either a eugenic or dysgenic action depending on the time scale and level of detail you examine outcomes.

>There's nothing wrong with positive eugenics, ie encouraging high quality people to breed

Who gets to define "high quality people" and decide who measures up to the definition? Who checks their work to make sure they're being honest and objective? Who checks theirs?

First of all Eugenics works.

It all depends on how you define things.

The most general/broad definition of eugenics includes a broad set of attitudes and actions some of which are commendable, others reprehensible.

However, the word as used typically is not this general form, but specifically the Eugenics of the early 20th century that was inspired by Social Darwinism.

This form of Eugenics is both wrong and reprehensible.

So am I a Eugenicist (social darwinist variety)? I am not.

Am I a Eugenicist (In the sense that I believe that genes have profound impacts on the organisms that they contribute to, and that knowledge of these impacts can and in some cases should be used)? Sure, the devil is in the details however.

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Moral abolitionism is a position that seeks to minimize moral discourse in one's life, which I would recommend based on your goal.

>[...] those who think of our reasons as ultimately connected to our contingent values and concerns should be especially attracted to the potential rewards of moving beyond moral discourse. For that discourse is not conducted in terms of what we care about or value. Rather, it is conducted in the language of rights, duties, obligations, requirements, impermissibility, and the like. Whether one is bound by various duties and such is not thought to depend on one’s contingent values, and therefore such discussion not only does not encourage, but positively discourages, investigation into what it is that we actually care about —how much, in what ways, and with what priority rankings.

(Article, Breakdown of Moral Judgment by Eric Campbell)

Not to mention the history of the US and serialization of certain WoC too… it would never work over here just off the history alone.

I would argue that, like child marriage, instances where sibling marriage does happen can be tied back to abuse. Inbreeding aside, sibling marriage can come in several forms. If it is kept illegal, it gives the state the excuse to investigate and break manipulated young girls from oppressive family structures.

Take FLDS, where they forcibly married girls underage to their cousins. Or they removed girls altogether from their homes with the consent of their parents and trapped them in a giant Texas compound. The girls knew nothing else, and were sexually abused by much older men.

Edit: Last thought: most sexual assaults in childhood are by family or friends close to the family.

So, banning sibling marriage may be a qualifier to stop low quality of life for the women that end up in the marriage, very similar to how loitering with intent to do prostitution allows police to question and find trafficing victims.

I think it circles back to the point that governments make up their own ideas of right and wrong, and it's dangerous to have it mandatory.

Yeah. It would get convoluted in the US pretty quickly. Already, abortion clinics are strategically overpopulated in the black communities. The pro-life crisis centers that are meant to get women to keep their babies are in white areas.