[Osx-nutters] Denial

[mmalc crawford]

On Aug 16, 2007, at 3:53 PM, Stefano Mori wrote:

> And you Malc are not allowed to breed as you've got the wrong genes,
>
Yup, that's pretty much the case.

> It's as if those Darwinian biologists came up with a forecast that in
> a thousand years we will become dumb mutants and so we must start
> instituting controlled breeding programmes to avert disaster, just
> because their models predict it.
>
Actually I think that implies an interesting question, although I  
didn't have the courage to ask Dawkins when he was "here" (he gave a  
talk in Menlo Park a couple of weeks ago) -- what are the selective  
pressures that act on the human species now?  Because medicine seems  
to be getting sufficiently good now that those who even fifty years  
ago might have died before reproducing are now having families.  And  
that is having what from some perspectives might be seen as  
deleterious consequences for the gene pool.  But one of the main  
reasons this will be a contentious issue is because of the spectre of  
words like eugenics.  When it comes to domesticated animals, crops,  
flowers, and so on, we're typically reasonably happy to forecast...


> People just underestimate how difficult it is to predict the future
> behavior of complex systems.
>
Sorry, but that's just obnoxiously condescending.  This is simply not  
the case.

mmalc