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Comment by twright0 | Hacker News Reader

My favorite line of reasoning about eugenics[0]: let's just accept that eugenics is a good thing; so good, in fact, we can go back in time and give a past society the ability to decide on the physical and mental attributes of their future, our present. Who would you pick? Would you go back 50, 100, 200, 500 years to gift this power?

If you're uncomfortable with people several hundred years ago making decisions about your genetics, why should people several hundred years from now be comfortable with you making decisions about theirs?

[0] https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/eugenics-is-a-great-idea

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I think one should be honest: Most people are more comfortable with making decisions for others, than with others making decisions for you. It's obvious! I think the ethical, "symmetric" stance is somewhat disingenuous.

Similarly, I do not want the government to have certain powers. But I would happily award myself these powers if I were in charge, to be honest. I would never campaign for that, of course.

This brings me to my argument against eugenics: I think in the current world, it would have horrible effects. It would increase inequality, and create suffering. But that is not a neccessity. In another society, some elements of eugenics could be useful (to be clear: I'm not talking about deciding who can procreate and not, but for example preventing heritable diseases). The thing is, we can't agree on what this better society would look like. I of course believe that would be when I was in charge, but you'd probably disagree :-).

The problem with eugenics is the coercive nature of it. People practice their own eugenics all the time - it's what we do when we engage in mate selection.

Genetic engineering of offspring is a very different postulate to eugenics though - eugenics is trying to control people's reproductive choice towards an outcome desired by an external party, whereas genetic engineering would be parents trying to get desirable traits for their offspring.

Technically I already did this when I had my first child: me and my wife got genetically tested for possible hereditary overlaps, as well as got as many screenings as were available when the child was developing.

If those tests had shown risk factors, we would have picked IVF or other options to specifically knock out those traits from being passed on. If the technology to select a bunch of genes in my child that favored intelligence, or lower risks of lifestyle disease were available, you bet I would've paid a fair amount of money to get that done too.

We would breed them to be comfortable with our having made decisions about their genetics.

Where by "we" I mean the plutocrats who make decisions about how each of us lives now, the Peter Thiels, the Vladimir Putins, the Xis, the Bill Gateses, the Kochs, the Morgans, the Stanleys, the Goldmans and the Sachses.

And since most of those people are kooks and/or narcissistic sociopaths, the results would be even more disastrous than where we are today.

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