Eugenics.

[Bodzilla]

DXoAkomiknc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXoAkomiknc&feature=share


this was a very chilling video, who has watched this and what is your opinion on it?
i'll give my opinion once some people have seen and responded.

[TVTyrant]

Not really an on-topic comment, but this guy has the mist boring British documentary voice of all time. He should apply for some jobs in voice acting.

[thehoodedsmack]

He opens with a good point, that eugenics gets a really bad rap due to it's popularity amongst Nazi ideals.

I've always been a fan of eugenics. We never stop evolving, and people need to realize that. If globalization keeps up, then in several hundred years, if we can make it, we should all be a nicely-tanned race of tall, black-haired omega-men. At that point we stop having any real physiological differences and work on selecting the best of the best. Not by some government-controlled breeding program, mind you, but by people's own will.

The problem with implementing a beneficial eugenics program is that people don't like being told how to breed. They need to come to embrace the idea on their own. For example, I have no plans to have children whatsoever, I'd prefer to adopt. But if by some chance I could be swayed into it, I've set myself up with rules on choosing a mate. No history of heart conditions, no history of baldness, no more than 50% white, and other restrictions such that I don't create another useless singularly-ethnic individual. And even that's a long-shot. Both my grandfathers have had heart attacks, and my brother has a psychological disorder. My family's genes are very risky. Thus, I've taken the responsible route of removing myself from the gene pool.

That's proper eugenics: people understanding the implications of the effects of having children, and using their power responsibly. Vive le humanite.

[n00b1n8R]

Selective breeding? No thanks.
Gene selection between two parents? Sure.

[Rainbow Dash]

If the internet, and United States are any indication, there are significant portions of our population who don't deserve to continue their genes and should be prevented from breeding.

Otherwise I guess I don't see anything wrong with selecting specific genes to replace troublesome ones, but I personally wouldn't do it.

[king_nothing_]

I'm not sure exactly how he's asking for it to be implemented. Is he talking about state-controlled eugenics, or completely voluntary gene selection by parents? I find any type of law which forbids certain people from reproducing or passing on certain genes to be completely abhorrent. And no, that opinion is in no way influenced by the Nazis' use of eugenics. It just goes completely against the ideals of liberty and free will. It's disturbingly authoritarian. Sure, having better genes in the pool would be nice. The end does not justify the means, though. Taking away people's free will is wrong.

[Warsaw]

I like the idea of requiring a license to have children. So long as the process looks for the appropriate qualifiers, it can be very effective in weeding out irresponsible parents.

[nuttyyayap]

Warsaw, if that idea was implemented about 2 decades back, most of us wouldn't exist... But I agree.

[Bodzilla]

my personal opinion is that it's a dangerous road to be treading.

as far as selective breeding, we've determined diffidently that over time that decreasing the pool based on selective breeding weakens a species.
Diversity is what allows us to have the strength to fight of disease's, or at least have a section of the population thats either immune or resistant to it.
by breeding to remove unwanted genes from the pool we could be doin other damage to outself that would undermine the whole point.

Think of the Potato famine,
or in australia a new example would be the tasmanian Devil.
a hundred years ago the devil was actually hunted, nearly to extinction by man, untill conservative efforts managed to bring it back. But the smaller genepool meant that all the devils are very very geneically linked.
5 years ago a cancerous tumor was discovered growing on the face of them. It's highly contagious, and it's lethal. without the diversity in the population there hasnt been a recorded case of the devil fighting off or even surviving the disease.
in 5 years the tasmanian devils population has nose dived by up to 90%, because of this. and now efforts have brought a select unaffected as yet portion of the population to the mainland to literally sacrifice the entire population in the tasmanian wild.

[Warsaw]

I agree with that. I don't want selective breeding, I want smart breeding.

[TVTyrant]

I think the option of selecting between two adults genes is interesting, but preventing people from reproducing is just wrong. The reason we have a population problem is because other countries didnt have the financial capability of providing sexual awareness classes or birth control. In the 50s the Western countries made a concentrated effort to spread out populations and decrease the size of typical families. All of the countries that are overpopulated are usually the ones with the biggest separation of wealth. I think raising the lowest classes would be a better priority than a focus on eugenics.

[SiriusTexra]

Make people happier and more fulfilled, create opportunity, promote personal skill and activity and people won't feel the need to pump out child after to child for benefits or to feel like they need to create a fresh slate for the family because their personal ambitions went ass up.

Some people however just like creating life, and watching a person grow, the interesting development of a soul and a consciousness, and I can understand that. I think about it sometimes that every moment of every day, there is a potential person as I am, with a story and a life just waiting to unfold down there in my ballsack, but each and every day, I deny that person the life, by not giving them the female egg. I think, "well what if my father didn't screw my mum on that night that day that time ago, I'd have not been here completely and this entire everything I've ever done, the people I've met and impacted, and have impacted me..." it would all be a much different story. At any point, it could have been decided in a mere heartbeat, that I was not to be conceived, or someone else could've been conceived in my place because of a time discrepancy.

What happened for me, and for you, and for all of us, at conception, was random, beautiful, and there will never be another one like us, with all our infinite variables. The good, the bad, the love, the hate. It is all different colours of the interesting palette of life. Nulling any factor of anything, creates a hole.

It's easy for the living to choose and decide, sure, but they also tend to forget that we are all, an accident, even if we were planned. We could have been not "we" at all, and someone else would've filled our place in the family, with a different face, a different attitude and a different path altogether.


As far as I know, eugenics is just stupid and irrelevant, and a thing thought up purely out of nefarious puposes, and has no real gain to anything other than that pure gene bullshit.

A life chosen, over anothers, purely because of some "supposed" superiority is not a life worth living, in my opinion. Life is imperfect, random, that's what's beautiful about it. The little thing's we do differently, our quirks. The sound we make when we sneeze, our laugh. Why we play with things with out feet, why others like to dance and paint and others like to build things. To meet new beings who have been cultivated in a different petri dish to you, and to react with them and trade various experiences.

Just live your lives, be the best you can be, and empower each and every individual and you'll find the "population" will stabilize because it is fulfilled with the life it was given, and understands it's choices and how they led them to the present.

I dunno, it's a weird one, but I know deep down, that if anyone could've easily made a choice at any moment to not have me, because of my slight asthma as an imperfection for instance, my girlfriend wouldn't have met me and wouldn't be the same person, and wouldn't grow from binding with my experiences, as I to her in reverse.

We have a long long time to "perfect" our race, and by then, it won't be a big deal at all. It'll just be..how it was meant to be. Right now, we're just as we are, as we should be. A mingling race trying to understand itself, prying open all the doors and trying to find more. When we become these "perfect" beings, we won't know it even occured.

We're born, shooting off in our direction like a comet, we impact on the lives of the ones we choose to orbit as they do to others, and we die only to give birth to the next thing from our ashes. To live to love, to leave and never know if there was a before or after.

[sleepy1212]

Yes. Let's throw everything we know about evolution out of the window and hasten our own genetic drift.

It's a fine idea to eradicate genetic diseases but genes just don't work that way. Gene X doesn't just cause cancer. It also makes your fingernails strong and lessens the probability of ingrown eyelashes etc...

[side rant]If people are so dumb in the first place how are they expected to make an intelligent choice about which child to have and what genes it should have? They won't. If gene selection/selective breeding ever becomes status quo there's no way it won't be controlled for them, whether directly by the state or indirectly by corporations e.g., not born according to current genetic standards then forget having insurance/career/i don't date girls who don't have a 'Class A Genetic ID'.[/side rant]

Anyway, this is now a Gattaca thread, we've found a skin cell in the cafeteria and I'm afraid you'll have to exit the space shuttle.

[Warsaw]

We have recourse, in America anyways. It's called a "lawsuit."

Our over-catering to minorities might actually be worth something down the road. :-3

[DarkHalo003]

my personal opinion is that it's a dangerous road to be treading.

as far as selective breeding, we've determined diffidently that over time that decreasing the pool based on selective breeding weakens a species.
Diversity is what allows us to have the strength to fight of disease's, or at least have a section of the population thats either immune or resistant to it.
by breeding to remove unwanted genes from the pool we could be doin other damage to outself that would undermine the whole point.

Think of the Potato famine,
or in australia a new example would be the tasmanian Devil.
a hundred years ago the devil was actually hunted, nearly to extinction by man, untill conservative efforts managed to bring it back. But the smaller genepool meant that all the devils are very very geneically linked.
5 years ago a cancerous tumor was discovered growing on the face of them. It's highly contagious, and it's lethal. without the diversity in the population there hasnt been a recorded case of the devil fighting off or even surviving the disease.
in 5 years the tasmanian devils population has nose dived by up to 90%, because of this. and now efforts have brought a select unaffected as yet portion of the population to the mainland to literally sacrifice the entire population in the tasmanian wild.
I completely agree dude. Also, genes don't create the individual. Just because a person's parents are scum, doesn't make the person themselves as such. There are a lot of very beneficial people on this planet that had neglectful parents, so the idea of eugenics is really a flawed ideology. It's kind of like Communism: It looks good at first glance, but when practiced usually leads to utter ruin.

[rossmum]

eugenics is bad in any and every fucking form, you are all fucking sociopaths jesus fucking christ

like seriously i cannot fucking believe any of you can try and rationalise or justify this shit. dumb people will do dumb shit and die off, smart people won't, natural selection is doing just fine without the help of insane breeding programs or genetic fuckery. i hope you all realise that you are horrible people, by the way

also it is everyone's own individual choice who they get with, fuck off and leave that alone. even if they both have some horrible recessive gene, yeah it sucks but that's fucking life, go away.

good thing i only come here to shit up the occasional thread, i'd rather not be associated with a site where there is actually vocal support for this

[Pooky]

eugenics is bad in any and every fucking form, you are all fucking sociopaths jesus fucking christ

like seriously i cannot fucking believe any of you can try and rationalise or justify this shit. dumb people will do dumb shit and die off, smart people won't, natural selection is doing just fine without the help of insane breeding programs or genetic fuckery. i hope you all realise that you are horrible people, by the way

also it is everyone's own individual choice who they get with, fuck off and leave that alone. even if they both have some horrible recessive gene, yeah it sucks but that's fucking life, go away.

good thing i only come here to shit up the occasional thread, i'd rather not be associated with a site where there is actually vocal support for this

This is basically how I felt reading this thread.

[king_nothing_]

eugenics is bad in any and every fucking form, you are all fucking sociopaths jesus fucking christ

like seriously i cannot fucking believe any of you can try and rationalise or justify this shit. dumb people will do dumb shit and die off, smart people won't, natural selection is doing just fine without the help of insane breeding programs or genetic fuckery. i hope you all realise that you are horrible people, by the way

also it is everyone's own individual choice who they get with, fuck off and leave that alone. even if they both have some horrible recessive gene, yeah it sucks but that's fucking life, go away.

good thing i only come here to shit up the occasional thread, i'd rather not be associated with a site where there is actually vocal support for this
Hi,

Please retract your usage of the word "all". I am against this, as is apparent in my post.

Best Regards,

KingNothing

[rossmum]

yeah well :effort:, it's clear enough who mine was directed at and i can't be bothered to waste time figuring out who's for, against, or undecided when it's much faster to just call out 'all' the shitposters and leave the normal people to ignore that part