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Comment by arkh | Hacker News Reader

If IQ is closely related to genetics and IQ is important for your society (two bold assumptions) you could argue for some eugenics and advantage high IQ people for reproduction.

But as you say it could go really bad really fast. Especially if some of those high IQ genes are linked to some illness.

For your question about why some people are focused on ethnicity? As usual: people's appearance are easier to discriminate upon so it makes it easy to make different people an out-group. But it's not just some supremacists doing it: the hardcore NA "diversity is good" groups focus on skin color. I'd argue they seem to be worse because it feels like for them all blacks are the same (African American) while the recent history of Africa should tell them how wrong it is.

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It does not have to be genetics to show correlation. Sadly research in this area is sparse but we can establish that there will be some correlation;

1) Lack of proper nutrition is linked to lower IQ. This can be fairly easily explained in that the lack of resources will lead to less development in the brain, one of the most resource intensive organs in the body.

2) Certain ethnicity types are disproportionately poor (in the US). Lack of income generally also means that nutritional situation is less ideal.

From 1 and 2 you can easily conclude there is very likely some correlation.

Does that mean we should immediately deploy eugenics? Most likely not. As you mention, high IQ "genes" could be linked to something bad. IIRC they are linked to mental conditions like depression. (Which might lead to an interesting question: if we fix poverty, will people become more miserable on average because the average IQ goes up? It seems likely total misery will go down though)

I also agree with your later statements, a lot of people tend to put all people with black skin into a single pot but there are some many fascinating different cultures and a fascinating history once you go beyond colonialism.

I think a lot of people tend to forget that diversity isn't only skin color. Diversity goes deeper than skin and body.

>argue for some eugenics and advantage high IQ people for reproduction

See .. I find this line of thinking heinous. Why do you not instantly trip up when you type this?

You should have a reason for that. Just feeling terrible might mean you're inside an echo chamber.

Most people support eugenics in the form of outlawing incest because it can lead to faulty offspring. We also think treating neurodegenerative diseases is a good thing. Most parents also hope their kids will be smart. Or at least they don't hope for the opposite. Women don't like to have kids past 40 partly because of higher risk of Down's syndrome. And there's a test for that which can help them decide to abort the baby. All these things are us trying to make future humans smarter, mostly by eugenic techniques.

Maybe you're thinking of actually killing people? That's not quite the same as selective breeding.

Those are all perfectly appealing reasons to step one iota closer to the reality described, which is that we should promote the DNA-privileged forward on the sexual reproduction stack.

Which is something, I think, a little different to all the nice, shiny new things we're getting from CRISPR, et al., sure. Its the dangerous, vile things I care about: opening the door for selective breeding and clones, racial purism, etc.

The technology is one thing; the ethics another tube entirely. Somethings things go boom, othertimes BOOM.

What's wrong with racial purism? We do it with dog breeding. What are the ethical problems?

Race-war flamebait is off-topic here and we ban accounts that post like this. Please keep it elsewhere from now on.

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Purebred dogs suffer a host of genetic diseases resulting in considerable suffering.

It is. But if you close your mind enough you can't even think about those kind of argument and follow the kind of thinking some people do, how can you mount a valid argument against it?

It's heinous! Eugenics bad! Are not good arguments. You have to try and follow thoughts along ways you (and most people you know) don't or you end-up creating your own echo chamber. Try playing devil's advocate sometimes you may learn a lot about how you think and why.

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