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Why do you think his "musings" are wrong? Seems like something very obvious to me, but I'm a complete lay person in this regard.

jaquers 6y ago
Also, I don't see him comparing eugenics to evolution. He's went on to say, 'just because it's morally wrong, doesn't mean it's not possible', which was the point he was making.
- andrewla 6y ago
  I agree, that's how I read his statement. But that statement is wrong. It is not possible. Eugenics is an incorrect theory. The idea that it is correct but morally repugnant is a terrifyingly ignorant stance (though commonly held). See my reply to the sibling comment -- briefly, variety is the driver of evolution, not selection. The more you constrain variety, the worse off the population is from an evolutionary perspective. Any attempt is net negative, a large-scale attempt would be disastrous, regardless of the moral or ethical implications.
  - jaquers 6y ago
    thanks for the thoughtful response.
andrewla 6y ago
The trick of it is that you can certainly practice selective breeding on humans. If you want taller humans, you can breed taller humans. Unethical, etc., but would work. That is not what eugenics is. Dawkins might just have misunderstood what eugenics was as an applied science, but it would be egregious in itself if so. Eugenics is the idea that we can "improve" the human stock through selective breeding, especially by excluding "undesirables". Any attempt to do this (unless you are omniscient) actually has the opposite effect -- variety is the fuel of evolution, not selection. Attempts to limit variability do things like create monocultures and other very dangerous and fragile systems. Acceptable risk for agriculture because our use cases are narrow (dangerous but mitigated by the fact that different strains are kept active for different purposes for most food stock), but for humans it would be a disaster. It's a mistake to think that ethics is the only thing that prevents us from engaging in large-scale eugenics -- it's just an application of a misunderstanding of the underlying science; like trying to create a Maxwell's Daemon for your perpetual motion machine.
- bobcostas55 6y ago
  >Any attempt to do this (unless you are omniscient) actually has the opposite effect Doesn't seem to have had the opposite effect in all the farm animals and plants we've been artificially selecting for millennia now...
- sgillen 6y ago
  Couldn’t you bake in variety as one of the desirable characteristics to pass on to the next generation? And also from that tweet it’s not even clear that Dawkins would disagree with you.. it seems like you are disagreeing with the common criteria for good that people will come up with rather than if eugenics itself would work. You even say yourself that if you were omniscient that eugenics could work... Like I do understand what you are saying, but it seems weird to me to take this one tweet you disagree with and conclude that Dawkins has only a shallow understanding of evolution, especially when it seems like you only disagree on the nuances of a definition.
  - andrewla 6y ago
    I gave the tweet as an example of a more general trend. The linked demonstration shows a similar shallowness (the focus on mechanism) which is what brought it to mind. On the other point, I don’t even understand what it means to breed for the trait of “variety”. It’s a collective, not an individual trait. If you allow individuals to practice eugenics by selecting their mates through mutual assent then that works, but that’s not eugenics.
    - sgillen 6y ago
      Fair enough.. I was thinking of a hypothetical eugenic society, where they could let (force?) everyone to breed every X years. Then they could try to optimize that entire batch of mates to optimize whatever traits they chose plus some measure of variety in the gene pool. Would that satisfy your definition of eugenics?
- btilly 6y ago
  Making this concrete, eugenics is based on the idea that breeding for the characteristics that we think are desirable will lead to better humans. However the characteristics that we think are desirable are often more connected with prejudice than anything desirable. And in the process of breeding for any one characteristic we often accidentally pull in others we don't like so much. Lest this seem like merely a theoretical point, read https://dogbehaviorscience.wordpress.com/2012/09/29/100-years-of-breed-improvement/ https://dogbehaviorscience.wordpress.com/2012/09/29/100-year... to see how this has played out in dog breeds. Eugenics would clearly accomplish something. It is unlikely that that something would be desirable.
yters 6y ago
If evolution is successful because it is unguided, then by guiding evolution we negate what got us here in the first place. On the other hand, if evolution is successful because it is guided by a supreme mind, then our physical properties are only a small facet of what makes us who we are. Thus, a eugenics breeding program is unlikely to make a big difference. And, if we do selectively breed a bunch of attractive, athletic, high IQ individuals, then that could lead to a moral disaster.

jaquers 6y ago

Also, I don't see him comparing eugenics to evolution. He's went on to say, 'just because it's morally wrong, doesn't mean it's not possible', which was the point he was making.

andrewla 6y ago
I agree, that's how I read his statement. But that statement is wrong. It is not possible. Eugenics is an incorrect theory. The idea that it is correct but morally repugnant is a terrifyingly ignorant stance (though commonly held). See my reply to the sibling comment -- briefly, variety is the driver of evolution, not selection. The more you constrain variety, the worse off the population is from an evolutionary perspective. Any attempt is net negative, a large-scale attempt would be disastrous, regardless of the moral or ethical implications.
- jaquers 6y ago
  thanks for the thoughtful response.

andrewla 6y ago

The trick of it is that you can certainly practice selective breeding on humans. If you want taller humans, you can breed taller humans. Unethical, etc., but would work. That is not what eugenics is. Dawkins might just have misunderstood what eugenics was as an applied science, but it would be egregious in itself if so. Eugenics is the idea that we can "improve" the human stock through selective breeding, especially by excluding "undesirables". Any attempt to do this (unless you are omniscient) actually has the opposite effect -- variety is the fuel of evolution, not selection. Attempts to limit variability do things like create monocultures and other very dangerous and fragile systems. Acceptable risk for agriculture because our use cases are narrow (dangerous but mitigated by the fact that different strains are kept active for different purposes for most food stock), but for humans it would be a disaster. It's a mistake to think that ethics is the only thing that prevents us from engaging in large-scale eugenics -- it's just an application of a misunderstanding of the underlying science; like trying to create a Maxwell's Daemon for your perpetual motion machine.

bobcostas55 6y ago
>Any attempt to do this (unless you are omniscient) actually has the opposite effect Doesn't seem to have had the opposite effect in all the farm animals and plants we've been artificially selecting for millennia now...
sgillen 6y ago
Couldn’t you bake in variety as one of the desirable characteristics to pass on to the next generation? And also from that tweet it’s not even clear that Dawkins would disagree with you.. it seems like you are disagreeing with the common criteria for good that people will come up with rather than if eugenics itself would work. You even say yourself that if you were omniscient that eugenics could work... Like I do understand what you are saying, but it seems weird to me to take this one tweet you disagree with and conclude that Dawkins has only a shallow understanding of evolution, especially when it seems like you only disagree on the nuances of a definition.
- andrewla 6y ago
  I gave the tweet as an example of a more general trend. The linked demonstration shows a similar shallowness (the focus on mechanism) which is what brought it to mind. On the other point, I don’t even understand what it means to breed for the trait of “variety”. It’s a collective, not an individual trait. If you allow individuals to practice eugenics by selecting their mates through mutual assent then that works, but that’s not eugenics.
  - sgillen 6y ago
    Fair enough.. I was thinking of a hypothetical eugenic society, where they could let (force?) everyone to breed every X years. Then they could try to optimize that entire batch of mates to optimize whatever traits they chose plus some measure of variety in the gene pool. Would that satisfy your definition of eugenics?
btilly 6y ago
Making this concrete, eugenics is based on the idea that breeding for the characteristics that we think are desirable will lead to better humans. However the characteristics that we think are desirable are often more connected with prejudice than anything desirable. And in the process of breeding for any one characteristic we often accidentally pull in others we don't like so much. Lest this seem like merely a theoretical point, read https://dogbehaviorscience.wordpress.com/2012/09/29/100-years-of-breed-improvement/ https://dogbehaviorscience.wordpress.com/2012/09/29/100-year... to see how this has played out in dog breeds. Eugenics would clearly accomplish something. It is unlikely that that something would be desirable.

yters 6y ago

If evolution is successful because it is unguided, then by guiding evolution we negate what got us here in the first place. On the other hand, if evolution is successful because it is guided by a supreme mind, then our physical properties are only a small facet of what makes us who we are. Thus, a eugenics breeding program is unlikely to make a big difference. And, if we do selectively breed a bunch of attractive, athletic, high IQ individuals, then that could lead to a moral disaster.