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Comment by JakeAl | Hacker News Reader

All selective breeding is eugenics. If you believe in aborting babies with Down Syndrome, you're a eugenicist. If you believe in choosing a sperm donor based on genetic fitness, you're a eugenicist. If you selectively breed cattle, or your dog, you're a eugenicist. There are rare but debilitating genetic diseases that can arise from mixed race procreation as anyone who's watched Discovery Health may know. Before people judge, they should study the topic and motivation thoroughly. Eugenics does not means racist or genocide, nor does it mean a eugenicist is motivate by hatred or racism. The word for that is racist. There's a whole field of Genetic Counseling that exists for the purpose of eugenics and catering to the biological health of offspring that have emerged since our science has advanced enough to understand the role genes play in biological, physical and mental health. Read up on the topic. It's quite revealing.

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>All selective breeding is eugenics. If you believe in aborting babies with Down Syndrome, you're a eugenicist. If you believe in choosing a sperm donor based on genetic fitness, you're a eugenicist. If you selectively breed cattle, or your dog, you're a eugenicist.

Dating & Mating is eugenics at a conscious & subconscious level.

Some things are considered okay if individuals do them voluntarily, and bad when governments send men with guns to enforce them.

By the same logic, there is nothing wrong with censorship, because individuals also decide to not say certain things or not pay attention to certain things.

When is voluntary actually not? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3987372/ https://www.newsweek.com/what-women-about-male-sweat-100583

I think a lot of people are eugenicists, depending on the precise meaning.

Is bemoaning the fertility of some disfavoured social or religious group eugenicist? If it is then a hell of a lot of people are eugenicist, and definitely not confined to the right.

I expect that if humanity even invents fully functional external wombs and reliable CRISPR-level gene editing, humanity will call all progressives arguing for the right to have an abortion murderers. Society's frame of reference changes constantly, and what once was progressive will likely be looked unfavourably upon in the future. My guess for the next big shift in society: a movement towards complete abolishment of all consumption of animal products.

You can see this effect in a short scale too. J. K. Rowling was once considered a feminist and role figure for an accomplished woman, until her views on trans people made her no longer reflect the progressive opinions of today.

I think this is part of the normal progression of modern society, accelerated by the ability to reach out to countless people across the world.

It's interesting and perhaps a little scary to theorise what taboos will change from "disgusting" to "progressive" in the future. There's a good chance most people, even the progressive ones, will fall behind on the curve of acceptance at some point.

I myself believe that eugenics, if applied well, can help humanity. In practice, though, I don't think humanity can be trusted to apply it well, so any attempt to introduce it is doomed to be plagued by humanity's flaws. It's the same reason communism fails: humanity cannot work together enough to make something work that in theory would be beneficial to all of us.

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