No mention of abortion in this article. Particularly relevant because Iceland has no kids with down syndrome because of it, and European countries are following their pattern.
This is completely irrelevant. This article gives a rating on f "mixed" to the claim that abortions have eliminated nated or reduced downs syndrome, and their only refutation is that abortion is not mandated. They say nothing about the general concept of eliminating a genetic illness with selective breeding (effectively) because selective breeding will always have profound effects on genetic traits. This is the very basis of evolution itself and without acknowledging it's validity, you deny evolution as a whole. Please don't post irrelevant links that seem to support a refutation of the topic at hand while actually it has nothing to do with it.
Do you mean forcible abortions? The article is not focused on voluntary sexual sterilization. It is focused on sexual sterilization of people tricked/forced into it or paid for it. So I don't see why the article should have mentioned abortions unless it is of the forcible kind.
I was quite surprised to find out that out of 58.205 births in Denmark in 2015, 15.325 had their pregnancies terminated with abortion. That is 20% (1 in 5) of all pregnancies which gets terminated.
> According to UN statistics from 2006, in India 37 per cent of women have undergone sexual sterilisation.
If India's population in 2006 were approximately 1100 mill, then India had 550 mill women of whom 200 mill were sterilised. Are there some important information missing here? Were it only lower caste women which if I remember correctly constitute around 10 percent of the total population? 37 percent sounds high.
Perhaps since there was a grand available ($10-$20/person, as the article says) the numbers were significantly skewed. At 20$/person this totals $4,000M.
Although this doesn't mean sterilizations didn't happen, I'd be very interested to read more about this, preferably from a better source. If it happened, I've never heard of it and neither did many people I know, meaning it probably didn't get the kind of publicity this kind of Nazi-tier mass-sterilization programme should have gotten.
While I don't have a problem with eugenics as a purely philosophical thought exercise, actually implementing it is another question. It's pure hubris to think we understand humans -- at the physical, psychological, or spiritual level -- enough to know what constitutes superiority. It's further hubris to think that removing "inferior" humans will improve the overall state of humanity. If you haven't already, read A Brave New World because it works as a thought experiment of intentionally constraining the number of elite humans and artificially breeding massive numbers of lessor/inferior humans for the tasks beneath the interest and dignity of the Alpha Class. One of the side stories in that book is that the Alpha Class rules tried an experiment where an island was populated with only Alphas and they very rapidly descended into civil war because, each recognizing their ability and superiority, nobody wanted to work for anyone else.
A moral problem that can flow from eugenics as a thought exercise is considering certain groups of humans as less-than, inferior, or not worth consuming our resources. Once you accept that possibility it's only a matter of time before someone promotes or enacts policy to rid the world of the lessors. See the lessons learned from Nazi Germany or the Armenian Purge at the hands of the Young Turks, the wholesale genocide of the Celts by the Romans, etc. We either value human beings and human life or we start defining who needs to die.
What with automation and all, we will not require the Epsilon semi-morons. SO the bulk of humanity will not be required I guess. That was not forseen when the book was written.
As for 'eliminating' people, that's scare talk. We work today to improve people, but in most countries are not actively eliminating people. E.g. how is eugenics different from education and inoculation? Do we execute the un-inoculated?
Eugenics has a bad name, but it is scientifically valid. We now know that genetics play a huge role in life outcomes (e.g. adult IQ appears to be 70-80% heritable) and, for better or for worse, the eugenicists were right, even if their methods were morally wrong.
We don't focus enough on positive eugenics: getting smart, non-violent and conscientious people to have large families. Right now we do the opposite: smart folks feel all sorts of pressures to have a small or no family due to careers, the expense of elite schooling, the environment, etc. The opening scene of Idiocracy nailed it.
It is reasonable to look at soft negative eugenics, such as offering free, voluntary sterilization for reduction of prison sentences for violent crimes, but getting smart folks to have more kids is far more important.
The methods weren't "just" morally wrong but a bunch of hokum rationalized as science.
Just like yours.
Heritability does not mean heredity. Even taste is heritable. Results of the GWAS crowd are so bad that Plomin recently truned to praising his levels of signal for being not worse than social sciences. This is astounding from someone previously selling behavioral genetics as a rigorous science up there with actual genetics.
But IQ performance likely predicts success in data science, and not only that, it does predict success in a variety of subjects. I'm also with the post on the bottom -- I don't think Lior believes in his post. I interpret this as humble-bragging. There's enough silliness in this post that permits the author to wiggle away; I'm sure the author already agrees that it's unfair to pick two highly prejudicial examples, or reduce causal modelling down to Occam's razor.
Or perhaps it's a jab at subtle misconceptions on causal learning and empiricism. Either way it's not meant to be taken seriously at face value.
That is simply emotional nonsense, on par with young earth creationism. The heritability and heredity of intelligence, for example, has been established beyond all reasonable doubt and no one in the intelligence research arena disputes it.
I appreciate the moral sentiment, and to an extent I even feel it myself, but being a denialist is not an answer. We need sane, sober and humane discussions about public policy dealing with the increasingly uncomfortable results coming from the genetic research community.
Look at the definition, there is no possible way you can equate heredity with heritability unless you can't math, sorry. There's no moral sentiment to appreciate in understanding this definition, just education.
Denialism of the variance it isn't either, the issue is it's fallacious reification. That would be a concern for explanatory power and drawing conclusions even if actual statistical research into these very poorly understood mechanisms weren't so spurious on mathematical level (which was my initial interest).
My civil and rational response to you would be to sterilize you, as you are clearly incapable of intelligent parenthood.
People like you need to be removed from the gene pool.
