[Osx-nutters] Denial

[Stefano Mori]

On 2007-Aug-17, at 00:45, mmalc crawford wrote:

>> 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...

And when they started forecasting this stuff back in the 20s or  
thereabouts, influential thinkers were taken in by it and it was  
seriously considered. They proposed selective breeding to stop us all  
become stupid. As we know, eventually it became incorporated by the  
Nazis.

It's a brilliant and shocking example of scientific theories with  
implications for the greater good leading to terrible damage.

Stefano