[Marcov]

Hey Marcov, I'm sure you're a great guy. But why care about what people think of you on the internet? HLP is positively geriatric compared to any image board, but you still need a thick skin from time to time. I would just let it go if I were you.

The point is, having someone post these about you in a thread that barely even has anything with your (reputedly) useless rantings of the past, which is quite irritating.

I guess I'll leave it at that, since a splitlock cycle might begin again...

[mustang191]

That's because all other causes have been eleminated. Untill there is solid evidence that cultural difference is not the cause, we'll assume that that is the case. Its the same as with some theories involving physics, especially when the field was still young.

When were genetic explanations "eliminated"? The APA stated that there is insufficient evidence to prove or disprove a genetic basis to IQ, not that there is enough evidence to rule it out.

Also, lol@captcha implemented to try to slow this thread from going on to 50+ pages /conspiracy

[Luis Dias]

What do you think would happen to the population as a whole if such people were stopped from breeding?

There's something about that mentally and physically handicapped people usually don't get to reproduce. The nazi's killed them because it simply was too expensive to keep them alive.

And there's a thing. I am also mentally handicapped, although there are some benefits to society for me being so. You can't just say 'we will sterelize all the mentally handicapped', since then you'd also remove a lot of potential benificial genes.

No I don't buy that. Of course there are "potentially beneficial genes" everywhere, but I don't recognize it as an argument. If you cull all the genes that generate handicapness, then you would get a less handicapped population, period. There are always unintended consequences, sure, but that's with everything. You just have to keep managing the process and the science.

This is a completely separate discussion of if this is desirable or not. To me, a society that would pursue this would be a complete dystopia.

[The E]

Do we need to go over this again with you, Luis? Or are you capable of reading the damn thread by yourself? Short version: Any sort of eugenics program will, inevitably, lead to a less varied genepool. The less variance there is, the higher the risk that you have vulnerabilities against disease vectors. Given that the only way to correct this stuff is to reintroduce variance that you previously removed, it's not a good idea to remove variance in the first place.

Also, lol@captcha implemented to try to slow this thread from going on to 50+ pages /conspiracy

No, that's just there to deter spambots. Should go away after 3 or 4 posts.

[mustang191]

Any sort of eugenics program will, inevitably, lead to a less varied genepool.

Not if the program specifically aims to increase genetic variability, eg, use desirable genotypes from foreign societies.

[Luis Dias]

Do we need to go over this again with you, Luis? Or are you capable of reading the damn thread by yourself? Short version: Any sort of eugenics program will, inevitably, lead to a less varied genepool. The less variance there is, the higher the risk that you have vulnerabilities against disease vectors. Given that the only way to correct this stuff is to reintroduce variance that you previously removed, it's not a good idea to remove variance in the first place.

If one were to believe this, one could even end up saying silly things as "there are no bad genes". Of course there are bad genes, worse and better gene pools. The problem is not knowing this, as I think it should be rather obvious to anyone. The problem is knowing which gene pools are actually better or worse. The problem is not "ontological", but "epistemological".

You and others claim that we should not touch the gene pool "ever", because that would create a "disturbance in the force", so to speak, and all hell would break loose. I don't buy that. It is an hypothesis that bases itself on the premise that the human gene pool is not robust enough to survive some tweakings, which is something that flies in the face of the whole process of evolution. I think there are too many movies out there about the "hubris" of science, and then people eat that idea that we are too stupid to understand any process so we should just do nothing dangerous. This is an idea deeply ingrained in our generation.


But the problem is, we will eventually mess with the human gene pool. And those who won't will be left behind, crusading about disturbances in the force and other worries. Mankind will just ignore this and move on, just as it has done the past millenia. And our grand grand children will thank us for that.

[The E]

Any sort of eugenics program will, inevitably, lead to a less varied genepool.

Not if the program specifically aims to increase genetic variability, eg, use desirable genotypes from foreign societies.

Define "desirable". And then disentangle the "desirable" parts from the ones you do not want. Until you can do that, stop wasting your and our time by dreaming about it.

If one were to believe this, one could even end up saying silly things as "there are no bad genes". Of course there are bad genes, worse and better gene pools. The problem is not knowing this, as I think it should be rather obvious to anyone. The problem is knowing which gene pools are actually better or worse. The problem is not "ontological", but "epistemological".

The quality of a gene pool is determined by its size. Making the pool smaller by breeding out things may increase short-term fitness, but will decrease long-term fitness. For reference look up the Green Revolution, and why there are seed banks for crops. AS WAS POINTED OUT IN THIS THREAD.

You and others claim that we should not touch the gene pool "ever", because that would create a "disturbance in the force", so to speak, and all hell would break loose. I don't buy that. It is an hypothesis that bases itself on the premise that the human gene pool is not robust enough to survive some tweakings, which is something that flies in the face of the whole process of evolution. I think there are too many movies out there about the "hubris" of science, and then people eat that idea that we are too stupid to understand any process so we should just do nothing dangerous. This is an idea deeply ingrained in our generation.

Given that our understanding of genetics, and how alleles interact, is still incomplete, and given that any experiments like that would need to run over multiple generations, and given that us humans are terrible at that sort of long term planning, WHY THE **** DO YOU THINK WE CAN START TINKERING WITH IT SAFELY? As our experience with such experiments in other, much more robust lifeforms show (Crops, again), once we start something like this, we can never, ever stop. You want to take control of a process that has run very well for millions of years without large-scale intervention; The implied hubris is staggering.

But the problem is, we will eventually mess with the human gene pool. And those who won't will be left behind, crusading about disturbances in the force and other worries. Mankind will just ignore this and move on, just as it has done the past millenia. And our grand grand children will thank us for that.

Maybe we will, maybe we won't. It all depends on advances in the relevant sciences that haven't materialized yet.

[Luis Dias]

If one were to believe this, one could even end up saying silly things as "there are no bad genes". Of course there are bad genes, worse and better gene pools. The problem is not knowing this, as I think it should be rather obvious to anyone. The problem is knowing which gene pools are actually better or worse. The problem is not "ontological", but "epistemological".

The quality of a gene pool is determined by its size. Making the pool smaller by breeding out things may increase short-term fitness, but will decrease long-term fitness. For reference look up the Green Revolution, and why there are seed banks for crops. AS WAS POINTED OUT IN THIS THREAD.

I don't understand why you think this is an argument. We've been messing with the gene pool of our food for thousands of years, and I'm yet to see anything other than benefits to that.

I'm not saying that an efficient "genetic program" would be stupid enough not to understand the necessity of keeping banks of genes stored somewhere. If there are "bugs" in the process, correct it. As I SAID IN THIS THREAD, you'd have to manage the process, adapt, etc.

You and others claim that we should not touch the gene pool "ever", because that would create a "disturbance in the force", so to speak, and all hell would break loose. I don't buy that. It is an hypothesis that bases itself on the premise that the human gene pool is not robust enough to survive some tweakings, which is something that flies in the face of the whole process of evolution. I think there are too many movies out there about the "hubris" of science, and then people eat that idea that we are too stupid to understand any process so we should just do nothing dangerous. This is an idea deeply ingrained in our generation.

Given that our understanding of genetics, and how alleles interact, is still incomplete, and given that any experiments like that would need to run over multiple generations, and given that us humans are terrible at that sort of long term planning, WHY THE **** DO YOU THINK WE CAN START TINKERING WITH IT SAFELY?

Where did I stated the term SAFELY? I even said dangerous. I also fail to see where our ignorance of all these processes created an agricultural holocaust. You don't need to understand the whole process if you have simple algorithms and reliable feedbacks. You speak about "long term" which is a good point, but then again this point also has the other side of it.

What if you don't tinker with the gene pool? There are also unintended, and possibly dangerous, consequences to that. Because of our sucessful health programs in the world, the pressures against genes that cause disease and deaths in the young, etc., no longer apply. The gene pool will inevitably "diverge" and occupy that landscape of possibilities as well. Which in turn will create a lot of finantial hurt in the health system.

(Albeit, I'm an optimist on that front, confident that any evolutionary drift towards such problems will be countered by technological advances).

As our experience with such experiments in other, much more robust lifeforms show (Crops, again), once we start something like this, we can never, ever stop. You want to take control of a process that has run very well for millions of years without large-scale intervention; The implied hubris is staggering.

The hubris that calls itself mankind and civilization, a whole process that altered the face of the earth in infinitesimal time scales compared with the hundreds of millions of years of evolution. I find it marvelous. And if mankind is to die out like the 99% of the species ever lived here, I'd rather risk it and have it with a bang, than just cowardly die out in a whimper.

But the problem is, we will eventually mess with the human gene pool. And those who won't will be left behind, crusading about disturbances in the force and other worries. Mankind will just ignore this and move on, just as it has done the past millenia. And our grand grand children will thank us for that.

Maybe we will, maybe we won't. It all depends on advances in the relevant sciences that haven't materialized yet.

You honestly believe we won't mess with our own genes within a hundred years?

[Grizzly]

Do we need to go over this again with you, Luis? Or are you capable of reading the damn thread by yourself? Short version: Any sort of eugenics program will, inevitably, lead to a less varied genepool. The less variance there is, the higher the risk that you have vulnerabilities against disease vectors. Given that the only way to correct this stuff is to reintroduce variance that you previously removed, it's not a good idea to remove variance in the first place.

If one were to believe this, one could even end up saying silly things as "there are no bad genes". Of course there are bad genes, worse and better gene pools. The problem is not knowing this, as I think it should be rather obvious to anyone. The problem is knowing which gene pools are actually better or worse. The problem is not "ontological", but "epistemological".

There is another problem. What you describe as 'good genes' now, could turn out to be 'awfully bad genes' later, just because of a change in enviroment. For example, some people with a lot of attention to detail are subject to information overload. There was hardly any information overload 50 years ago, so the extreme focus these people was a benefit. Now, with people being required to sample lots of data at once, those people have trouble keeping up with society, and suddenly, these cases have become 'autists', while they would never have been detected as such 50 years ago.

There are a lot of cases in crops where selecting for one trait has led to the elimination of others which later on turned to be quite usefull. For example, some fast-growth plants can less-then-perfect soils completely lifeless and practically turn the land into a barren wasteland. Since there's been exclusive selection for crops that grow fast and big, this problem became overlooked, and people with less-then-perfect-soils now have to deal with a small problem: The plants which could grow on their soils have become rather rare.

[mustang191]

Any sort of eugenics program will, inevitably, lead to a less varied genepool.

Not if the program specifically aims to increase genetic variability, eg, use desirable genotypes from foreign societies.

Define "desirable". And then disentangle the "desirable" parts from the ones you do not want. Until you can do that, stop wasting your and our time by dreaming about it.

greater ability and health without net undesirable tradeoffs.

Undesirable? The opposite. Below-average ability and health without net desirable tradeoffs.

[Unknown Target]

Here's a paper I wrote awhile ago. I sent it to a professor of mine for his thoughts and never received a response. Maybe it's relevant to this discussion? I just remembered it. To be honest I'm not even sure of what the whole thing says anymore!

So, I guess I just want to start with two simple questions; what is wrong with my generation, and why do we all assume that genetics can change your skin color, but nothing else?

To examine the latter of the two, and to do this we need to go way back to the very beginning; when humanity first spread out from the African continent and began to evolve separately but in parallel with his brethren on other continents. For the purposes of this section, I will speak only of the African and European subsets, as they are the best example of how the differences in the evolution of the different races, and what effect that has on society today.

Let's begin with the African continent; a harsh but bountiful environment; probably the most suited to dealing with humans as a threat - there are a lot of things that can eat you in Africa, and while some areas are covered with forest, in many areas this is not the case. This is a place where numbers are small and the competition is brutal and constant - so the creatures that evolve there will be the best suited to whatever micro environment those conditions provided to them. It's a place where that's constantly being scorched by the sun, and most lethal traumas are physical, produced from a physical blow as opposed to a fall.

For instance, let's look at it from the perspective of a human. A human being that evolves in an environment where it's constantly sunny will tend to have darker skinned people survive more often, due to the excess melanin in their skin. It'll also mean that their structure will be physically larger, taller to see over the vast landscapes and give more surface area for heat radiation. Their bones will be thinner for running and faces flatter so as to deflect blunt force blows. If it does not have a lot numbers to rely on (small tribes), have mostly close-in warfare (biting, clawing attackers and opponents with simple weapons made from the scraps of an arid environment), and have little contact with creatures outside of their small range.

....

*Snip*

You can read the rest on my page:

http://invertedvantage.tumblr.com/

[mustang191]

Their bones will be thinner for running and faces flatter so as to deflect blunt force blows.

Wait, flatter faces are worse for deflecting blows, right? I think "withstand" blunt force blows makes more sense. But that's just nitpicking. Interesting read and perspective UT.

It's pretty widely accepted that skin color differences are due to differing climates but people seem to insist that this is absolutely the only thing that evolution might select for in differing environments.

[The E]

I don't understand why you think this is an argument. We've been messing with the gene pool of our food for thousands of years, and I'm yet to see anything other than benefits to that.

EXCEPT that we can never, ever STOP tinkering. We can increase crop yield, we can increase resistance against certain diseases or climates, but we can not leave these things alone lest they get wiped out due to a new attack that hits these plants where they are weak. Now, in plants, this is easy to do, and even beneficial for us, but do you want to do the same things with humans? Please address the issue of how to do a large-scale genetic engineering program on humans so that it is controllable within the average humans planning horizon. You need several generations of engineering before you can see benefits, which means that you'll have to wait 20 or more years before you can be sure your tinkering has actually worked, and EVEN THEN, you can't be sure it did because you cannot raise lots of humans in a controlled environment.

I'm not saying that an efficient "genetic program" would be stupid enough not to understand the necessity of keeping banks of genes stored somewhere. If there are "bugs" in the process, correct it. As I SAID IN THIS THREAD, you'd have to manage the process, adapt, etc.

But why spend all this time and effort managing something that is able to self-correct?

Where did I stated the term SAFELY? I even said dangerous. I also fail to see where our ignorance of all these processes created an agricultural holocaust. You don't need to understand the whole process if you have simple algorithms and reliable feedbacks. You speak about "long term" which is a good point, but then again this point also has the other side of it.

What? Simple algorithms? Reliable feedback? When you're messing with lifeforms as complex as humans? Again, the average generation in humans is over 20 years. Humans cannot manage experiments on such timescales reliably.

What if you don't tinker with the gene pool? There are also unintended, and possibly dangerous, consequences to that. Because of our sucessful health programs in the world, the pressures against genes that cause disease and deaths in the young, etc., no longer apply. The gene pool will inevitably "diverge" and occupy that landscape of possibilities as well. Which in turn will create a lot of finantial hurt in the health system.

(Albeit, I'm an optimist on that front, confident that any evolutionary drift towards such problems will be countered by technological advances).


Let me remind you, most of the conditions that you want treated via gene modifications can also be treated safely and reliably via medication. If I would have to choose between taking pills, and undergoing genetic modifications, I know I'd choose the pills, because I know that we don't know all that much about how all this gene stuff works together.

The hubris that calls itself mankind and civilization, a whole process that altered the face of the earth in infinitesimal time scales compared with the hundreds of millions of years of evolution. I find it marvelous. And if mankind is to die out like the 99% of the species ever lived here, I'd rather risk it and have it with a bang, than just cowardly die out in a whimper.

Personally, I'd rather leave off the banging and continue living, but that's just me I guess. Look, your whole argumentation seems to be based on technological optimism. Which is good, any SF fan has that in spades, myself included. But where is the skepticism you were so proud of in that other thread?

You honestly believe we won't mess with our own genes within a hundred years?

I'm quite sure we will. However, I am equally sure that, for the reasons outlined above, it will not be something that will be large-scale. Individuals may opt to have their genes modded, but entire societies? Not in my lifetime, I think.

[Mustang19]

I like what UT said in his essay even if I don't agree with all of it. The decline in collective purpose after the 60s had more to do with loss of the protestant work ethic and weakening of social norms than a "we've already accomplished everything" mentality. This has been going on since the start of the industrial revolution and probably all the way back to the Enlightenment. Grumpy conservative moralizer time.

The industrial revolution and democracy led to increased social and geographic mobility, lessening the grip of community. The family was weakened as children became a liability to wage workers rather than a labor asset. Rising standards of living and shortening of the workweek made traditions of hard work and thrift obsolete. Discipline and traditional values developed under difficult preindustrial conditions died out and weren't replaced in decadent modern society where living is easy.

[General Battuta]

Here's a paper I wrote awhile ago. I sent it to a professor of mine for his thoughts and never received a response. Maybe it's relevant to this discussion? I just remembered it. To be honest I'm not even sure of what the whole thing says anymore!

So, I guess I just want to start with two simple questions; what is wrong with my generation, and why do we all assume that genetics can change your skin color, but nothing else?

To examine the latter of the two, and to do this we need to go way back to the very beginning; when humanity first spread out from the African continent and began to evolve separately but in parallel with his brethren on other continents. For the purposes of this section, I will speak only of the African and European subsets, as they are the best example of how the differences in the evolution of the different races, and what effect that has on society today.

Let's begin with the African continent; a harsh but bountiful environment; probably the most suited to dealing with humans as a threat - there are a lot of things that can eat you in Africa, and while some areas are covered with forest, in many areas this is not the case. This is a place where numbers are small and the competition is brutal and constant - so the creatures that evolve there will be the best suited to whatever micro environment those conditions provided to them. It's a place where that's constantly being scorched by the sun, and most lethal traumas are physical, produced from a physical blow as opposed to a fall.

For instance, let's look at it from the perspective of a human. A human being that evolves in an environment where it's constantly sunny will tend to have darker skinned people survive more often, due to the excess melanin in their skin. It'll also mean that their structure will be physically larger, taller to see over the vast landscapes and give more surface area for heat radiation. Their bones will be thinner for running and faces flatter so as to deflect blunt force blows. If it does not have a lot numbers to rely on (small tribes), have mostly close-in warfare (biting, clawing attackers and opponents with simple weapons made from the scraps of an arid environment), and have little contact with creatures outside of their small range.

....

*Snip*

You can read the rest on my page:

http://invertedvantage.tumblr.com/

Wow, that's one of the most disgustingly misguided fantasies I've ever seen.

Do yourself a favor and learn some evolutionary science instead of spinning yarns on the topic.

[The E]

"Decadent modern society"?  "Living is easy"? Seriously?

Here's what I think about that.

Bull. ****.

How old are you, exactly? Only someone who has no RL experience to speak of would say such a thing.

[Mustang19]

"Decadent modern society"?  "Living is easy"? Seriously?

Here's what I think about that.

Bull. ****.

How old are you, exactly? Only someone who has no RL experience to speak of would say such a thing.

12. Working conditions and hours are much better than they were in, say 1900 or before.

[General Battuta]

By any metric available and even near something like reliability, productivity, intelligence, and happiness have all increased globally since 1900.

If there's anything to be concerned about it's the impact of our ever-expanding productivity, intelligence, and happiness.

[The E]

12. Working conditions and hours are much better than they were in, say 1900 or before.

Right. So if that is true, you never really had to work for anything in your life that couldn't be considered an optional extra. You never had the feeling of waking up in the morning, not knowing where your next paycheck is coming from. You never had to plan anything beyond what you wanted to do for the next week.

Do NOT assume that just because your parents do everything for you, they don't have to do anything as well. Do NOT assume that your life experience gives you any perspective at all on living in the modern world.
Do NOT, even for a second, believe that the good old days really were all that good. And especially, ESPECIALLY do not think that you are qualified to make any statement whatsoever on morality.

[Mustang19]

I never said the good old days were good. I said that the good old days were nasty, and this was reflected in cultural developments.