[Mustang19]

It nonetheless reduces crop loss from disease for practical purposes. That is the purpose of this kind of plant breeding.

[General Battuta]

That's not the question you should be asking.

In fact this is a serious problem with you're reasoning. Twice now, on two different issues, you've said 'I would like a study, accounting for all possible confounding factors, using an experimental intervention to overcome directionality, which clearly resolves an enormously complex issue.' It's a request that betrays ignorance of the complexity of the topics you're discussing. The fact that you, by your own admission, do not read or understand the papers you've posted just makes it seem you're not qualified to handle these topics.

But hey, if you want to see where selective breeding can get you, go buy a purebred. Eugenics - look, I don't know why I've had to say this three times, I'll put it in caps and bold so hopefully you catch it:

EUGENICS REDUCES HETEROZYGOSITY ON THE ALLELES CODING FOR THE TARGETED TRAITS, WITH UNKNOWN EFFECTS ON CONSTELLATIONS THESE ALLELES MAY BE PART OF. IF THE TARGETED TRAITS PLAY A ROLE IN CONSTELLATIONS WITH ADAPTIVE VALUE, THAT ADAPTIVE VALUE WILL BE REDUCED (SEE: JOHNNY DEPP HYPOTHESIS). BECAUSE TRAITS EXPRESSED IN THE PHENOTYPE ARE SELECTED UPON, BREEDING FOR REDUCED DIVERSITY IN THE PHENOTYPE WILL HAVE UNPREDICTABLE CONSEQUENCES. REDUCED ALLELE DIVERSITY IS KNOWN TO LEAD TO THE INCREASED EXPRESSION OF HARMFUL RECESSIVE TRAITS, THE FIXING OF GENE VARIANTS IN THE POPULATION, AND THE EXTINCTION OF HETEROZYGOSITY ON PHENOTYPE-EXPRESSED ALLELES.

The diverse are robust. The homogeneous die out. You don't want to be like the cheetahs.

It nonetheless reduces crop loss from disease for practical purposes. That is the purpose of this kind of plant breeding.

bahahahahah

You know what's happening to crop monocultures, right? You get increased diseased resistance in the short term and total extinction in the long term. Check out the case of the banana.

[Mustang19]

Monocultures are susceptible to disease, but a polyculture approach is more effective. If you believe human eugenics will be counterproductive, do you believe plant eugenics, plant breeding, and the Green Revolution were all counterproductive?

[Snail]

isn't polyculture the same as just leaving stuff alone

[General Battuta]

Monocultures are susceptible to disease, but a polyculture approach is more effective. If you believe human eugenics will be counterproductive, do you believe plant eugenics, plant breeding, and the Green Revolution were all counterproductive?

If you didn't understand the post, just say so. Don't try to continue the discussion using only the parts that you got at a glance.

[The E]

isn't polyculture the same as just leaving stuff alone

Pretty much, yeah.

[Mustang19]

Plant breeding can be used to create both mono- and polycultures.

If you didn't understand the post, just say so. Don't try to continue the discussion using only the parts that you got at a glance.

Okay, I must have no idea what you are saying. Tell me that the Green Revolution was counterproductive and that we should cease using plant breeding.

[The E]

Sideslipping again. Read this. The Green Revolution made it necessary to build and maintain a repository of seeds that can be used to reintroduce variance.

Now, back to eugenics on humans, we'd probably have to institute similar measures if your idiotic plan would be implemented.
But why should we? Why should we deliberately introduce something we can have for free if we do not remove it?

[Mustang19]

Now, back to eugenics on humans, we'd probably have to institute similar measures if your idiotic plan would be implemented.
But why should we? Why should we deliberately introduce something we can have for free if we do not remove it?

If overall fitness increased the policy would be worthwhile. That is what happened with the GR.

[General Battuta]

Sideslipping. Not even aware that the Green Revolution demanded measures to reintroduce heterozygosity.

If you're unaware of the consequences of reduced heterozygosity, unaware of the likelihood of reduced heterozygosity, and unable to comprehend the role that reduced heterozygosity played in historical examples of selective breeding, you probably shouldn't be advocating the reduction of heterozygosity.

Now, back to eugenics on humans, we'd probably have to institute similar measures if your idiotic plan would be implemented.
But why should we? Why should we deliberately introduce something we can have for free if we do not remove it?

If overall fitness increased the policy would be worthwhile. That is what happened with the GR.

'if it works, then it would work'

You have completed your descent into logical collapse.

[Mustang19]

Eugenics need not aim to reduce heterozygosity. It can also be used to increase the prevalence of less common genotypes.

[Mikes]

You cannot boost a generic trait like disease resistance. There are far too many diseases operating on far too many vectors for that. In plant biology, you can boost a species resistance against specific conditions, but you can't make a plant completely resistant against everything.

Just give it up. That guy doesn t even understand how the concept works in the first place.

The whole point is to diversify as much as possible so that one new disease can t wipe out the whole human race (or at least affect a huge percentage).

If a species becomes too homogenous it s doomed the moment a disease exploits their traits. He s got it pretty much all backward.

[Mustang19]

'if it works, then it would work'

You have completed your descent into logical collapse.

If it was not for the GR India and Pakistan would have had a much harder time maintaining enough agricultural production to feed their people. The loss from reduced disease resistance was far outweighed by yield gains.

[General Battuta]

Eugenics need not aim to reduce heterozygosity. It can also be used to increase the prevalence of less common genotypes.

That's not what you proposed. In fact it's exactly the opposite.

also, lol

here is little disagreement that the Green Revolution acted to reduce agricultural biodiversity, as it relied on just a few high-yield varieties of each crop.

This has led to concerns about the susceptibility of a food supply to pathogens that cannot be controlled by agrochemicals, as well as the permanent loss of many valuable genetic traits bred into traditional varieties over thousands of years. To address these concerns, massive seed banks such as Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research’s (CGIAR) International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (now Bioversity International) have been established (see Svalbard Global Seed Vault).

There are varying opinions about the effect of the Green Revolution on wild biodiversity. One hypothesis speculates that by increasing production per unit of land area, agriculture will not need to expand into new, uncultivated areas to feed a growing human population.[40] However, land degradation and soil nutrients depletion have forced farmers to clear up formerly forested areas in order to keep up with production.[41] A counter-hypothesis speculates that biodiversity was sacrificed because traditional systems of agriculture that were displaced sometimes incorporated practices to preserve wild biodiversity, and because the Green Revolution expanded agricultural development into new areas where it was once unprofitable or too arid. For example, the development of wheat varieties tolerant to acid soil conditions with high aluminium content, permitted the introduction of agriculture in the Amazonian Cerrado ecosystem in Brazil.[40]

Nevertheless, the world community has clearly acknowledged the negative aspects of agricultural expansion as the 1992 Rio Treaty, signed by 189 nations, has generated numerous national Biodiversity Action Plans which assign significant biodiversity loss to agriculture's expansion into new domains.

So the Green Revolution ran headlong into the issue of diversity loss and they had to take action to counter it. So even in this metaphor, they hit exactly the problem we're warning about.

But it's worse than that. Crop generations are fast, the ramifications of breeding are easily understood, and productivity outcomes are easy to measure in the short term. Human generations are long, and no reliable outcome measures exist. Not only would you be unable to tell if your breeding program was having a net positive effect in any reasonable span of time, you wouldn't be able to tell if it was working at all. By the time your program to wipe out schizophrenia had accidentally tamped the human intelligence range down by a full standard deviation you'd be screwed.

'if it works, then it would work'

You have completed your descent into logical collapse.

If it was not for the GR India and Pakistan would have had a much harder time maintaining enough agricultural production to feed their people. The loss from reduced disease resistance was far outweighed by yield gains.

Stop sideslipping. The analogy you're trying to use doesn't work. If you can't make the argument for human eugenics, concede.

[Mikes]

you can't make the argument for human eugenics, concede.

Now it s more accurate imho.

That idea really does deserve to be buried right alongside the fascist ideologies that it is inevitably in bed with.

[Mustang19]

I took a class on plant genetics but I guess I wasn't paying attention. Well, in the absence of studies on the cost/benefit analysis of eugenics programs I can't say you win. But I say that you've proven a human eugenics program to be an excessive risk to take without further research. I know this is totally irrelevant, but I'm curious, do you believe with confidence that the Green Revolution was ultimately counterproductive?

[Kosh]

The Green Revolution was a necessity because the old ways just weren't enough to feed everyone anymore. That being said humans are far, far more complex creatures which makes tinkering with our genetics (through eugenics or even more directly with engineering) vastly more complex and difficult.


EDIT: And didn't Eugenics die out in the 40's?

[The E]

I took a class on plant genetics but I guess I wasn't paying attention. Well, in the absence of studies on the cost/benefit analysis of eugenics programs I can't say you win. But I say that you've proven a human eugenics program to be an excessive risk to take without further research. I know this is totally irrelevant, but I'm curious, do you believe with confidence that the Green Revolution was ultimately counterproductive?

Given that we're still eating, no.

But it did have a lot of unintended side effects that we now have to spend extra money to compensate for. Not much, mind you, given the scales, and given the effect, it's a cost well worth paying, but it's definitely not an ideal solution or a good template to follow.

[General Battuta]

I know this is totally irrelevant, but I'm curious, do you believe with confidence that the Green Revolution was ultimately counterproductive?

No. I believe it drastically impacted both productivity (in a good way) and biodiversity (in a bad way), and that the ramifications of these changes haven't yet settled out in a way we can understand in the long term. Thus undertaking any program which would have a similar potential impact on the human genome - remember, we have one species of already very homogeneous humans, not many species of diverse plants to work with - is too risky to be acceptable. Never mind the human rights abuse inherent in forcing or preventing breeding.

Plants are a very imperfect biological comparison. You can do insane things with plant genomes (double their total chromosome count, for instance) and they'll still survive and flourish. Not so for humans.

The genome is tangled in ways we don't yet know. Remove diversity on one allele, you may accidentally have an unexpected consequence for another trait. It's like Jenga, and we've only got one tower.

[Mustang19]

Couldn't you have just said "tl;dr excessive risk of inbreeding depression" from the start?