• MotoAsh@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Sorry to disappoint you, but even just picking your partner off of looks is literally a form of eugenics if you preach being attracted to your partner… Parents who decide to abort a fetus with a terminal illness is ALSO literally and directly eugenics.

    Eugenics itself isn’t bad, it’s just certain morons think THEY deserve to decide such things for and about others.

    • thedirtyknapkin@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      no that’s part of natural selection. it’s our biology telling us what we want. eugenics is systemic planned pairing and breeding. it’s also had the ideas that a person’s quality is defined at birth baked into it from the start. it’s based on the concept of a person’s worth being defined by the circumstances of their birth and not by their efforts in life.

      also, actual science tells us that the best thing to “breed for”,if that’s the way you want to look at life, is genetic diversity. the healthiest stock has the most diverse gene pool. something every eugenicist also somehow manages to ignore that and deny that if improving or genetics is our goal we should be trying to all become a neutral brown and choose people the most different from us genetically.

      cause that’s the thing about dog breeds. we can engineer the perfect biological hunting machine… that dies by age 11 at the latest. because breeding for a trait never creates healthy offspring. which makes sense, we weren’t breeding for health. the natural desire of most parents is a healthy child. it’s what nature optimized for. when we start looking for other traits we tend to fuck it up.

      • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Nothing I said was incorrect. Eugenics IS NOT ONLY Nazi-style eugenics. Period. Ever.

        • thedirtyknapkin@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          the points i was making in the latter paragraphs is that even if there is nothing morally wrong and you’re not forcing anything it’s still an inherently flawed view of genetics. breeding the smartest, kindest and most capable people to have those traits you’ll still just end up with unhealthy offspring.

          • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            I do not defend the practice of attempting to pick “good” genes, but to point out eugenics is very much around and accepted by everyone. It’s just a question to what degree, and certain people want to extend their decisions on the matter to others.

            OFC you cannot simply pick pretty babies and end up with a “better” species. That is an ignorant, stupid, and Nazi-esque way to look at eugenics.

            Stop letting Nazis and other similarly ignorant fucking morons define the world.

            • thedirtyknapkin@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              ok, so what is your definition of eugenics?

              because the dictionary definition is “the selection of desired inheritable traits to improve future generations”. that is what I’m saying is an inherently flawed ideology and practice. if you mean something different you might choose a different word.

              • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
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                3 months ago

                Notice how NOWHERE in the definition is, “kill the undesirables”.

                The very fact that certain genetic traits are desirable means the entire culture has SOME eugenics built right in. I’m trying to point out how the very concept IS NOT out there weird and abnormal.

                This is exactly why and how horrible political ideologies fester: by treating them as if they’re abhorrent outliers that “cannot happen here”. No. Eugenics is alive and well, even in the US. It is within human nature. To act like entertaining the idea is abnormal, you push people to the extremes.

                Are people dumb for being so easily swayed? YES! Though there are a lot of dumb people who can be easily swayed.

                Eugenics should NOT be a dirty word, because it DOES exist in normal circles, and that fact can be leveraged by extremists to get people to sign on to their more extreme forms simply because, “anyone who thinks eugenics is good is evil!”. That’s just purely wrong and misguided.

                • thedirtyknapkin@lemmy.world
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                  3 months ago

                  i never said Eugenics means to kill the undesirables,i never said it was morally wrong. i said it was factually wrong and that it misunderstands genetics. yes, it’s societally common to think that there is merit to the idea that we could improve our species by selecting partners based on what we want out children to be like. I’m saying that it is misguided. not morally reprehensible, just not realistic.

                  please calm down, in not calling you a dick or anything. I’m just saying that eugenics doesn’t have scientific or factual merit. it’s a common misconception that genetics works that way.