[Icarus]

Ugly people could be humane and choose to have less children, say, only one. That would mean that only one child would inherit, and concentrating all the wealth in one descendant might allow him (assuming it's a male) to marry a post-wall former hottie with good genes and have not entirely physically repulsive children.

If the descendant is a female, then conceiving her and putting her in this world was an act of cruelty. Being ugly is worse than a death sentence for a woman. Unfair? Fairness is a human construction. Nature does not care.

What if these two ugly people who want to breed are very smart? Then having children would make some sense. Little Jimmy won't have time to worry about looking like a monster when he's studying 100 hours per week to obtain a double major in Physics / Math at Caltech.

Razib Khan wrote about this a few days ago on GNXP:

Quote:

So sorry to turn this upside down, but personal eugenics may in fact be a boon for the ugly, stupid, and psychologically unstable, because it gives them a opportunity to close much of the gap with those who were lucky in the genetic lottery. Some of you may object to terms such as “ugly,” “stupid,” or “psychological unstable.” But people with these issues have to deal with them in their day to day. One can make all the platitudes one wants to make about “inner beauty,” but very few people live by this ideal.

[soup]

(05-21-2013 08:07 AM)Icarus Wrote:  

Ugly people could be humane and choose to have less children, say, only one. That would mean that only one child would inherit, and concentrating all the wealth in one descendant might allow him (assuming it's a male) to marry a post-wall former hottie with good genes and have not entirely physically repulsive children.

If the descendant is a female, then conceiving her and putting her in this world was an act of cruelty. Being ugly is worse than a death sentence for a woman. Unfair? Fairness is a human construction. Nature does not care.

What if these two ugly people who want to breed are very smart? Then having children would make some sense. Little Jimmy won't have time to worry about looking like a monster when he's studying 100 hours per week to obtain a double major in Physics / Math at Caltech.

Razib Khan wrote about this a few days ago on GNXP:

Quote:

So sorry to turn this upside down, but personal eugenics may in fact be a boon for the ugly, stupid, and psychologically unstable, because it gives them a opportunity to close much of the gap with those who were lucky in the genetic lottery. Some of you may object to terms such as “ugly,” “stupid,” or “psychological unstable.” But people with these issues have to deal with them in their day to day. One can make all the platitudes one wants to make about “inner beauty,” but very few people live by this ideal.

Interesting, but it isn't going to help a homely girl in terms of sexual market value.

[Lemmo]

(05-20-2013 06:41 PM)ghostdog Wrote:  

I'm sort of torn about this.
Passing on your genes is a very strange process. People disguise the selfishness of it with the idea that they're doing it for the love of their potential child. It's for YOU though. YOU were thrown into life by two people doing the same thing for themselves as well, and you're inside a vessel that wants to do the same thing. So ugly people will go ahead and mate no matter what. 39 year old women will have their downs syndrome kids.
Is two ugly people mating wrong? What is right or wrong beyond humans? Right and wrong is about your survival. Of course they'll see it as right to live and spread their genes. You will not argue them out of it. Everybody is just tossing whatever genes they can into the pool and hoping their genes come out the winners. That's life.
Your parents don't really care about your well-being. They care about your health because your health means you'll reproduce. If you were born defected, they'd be sad not because of your suffering but because you won't give them little grandkids. If you're gay, they'll be disappointed as well if that means you don't pass on the genes.
Until there is some process that allows them to predict the face of an embryo and select the best one, they're just going to bump uglies with the best person they can get and hope for the best. It doesn't matter to them if the kid goes through some trials and tribulations for being ugly before it finds another ugly person spreads its genes. Spreading the genes is all that matters.

I think in this case wrong=making another person suffer through your selfish behavior. If your philosophy were correct and people were just fuck machines incapable of restraining themselves in their quest for maximum genetic dispersal, you wouldn't have such a thing as birth control or countries with birth rates of 1.

But your analogy is appropriate. An ugly person breeding and hoping for the best and that love will conquer all is basically like the 39 year old women who thinks it is OK to have a kid because she'd be a great mom and ignores the risk of Downs (although at 39 the risk of passing on ugliness is higher than passing on Downs).

But the question seems academic. If someone is so ugly that it should factor into their thoughts about having kids, chances are they won't have the opportunity to have kids anyway except in a few isolated cases (at least that is my impression but I don't live in the US so I don't know what sort of grotesque couplings one sees there).

[soup]

So, 17 say ugly people shouldn't reproduce.
12 say they should.

What do you think?

After reading this thread, I'm not so sure anymore. If this stuff is so random that it's out our 2013 control, maybe it doesn't matter.

But, if there is any control involved, I highly recommend that parents try as hard as they can to make sure their daughters turn out as attractive as possible.

[eradicator]

(05-22-2013 04:05 AM)soup Wrote:  

So, 17 say ugly people shouldn't reproduce.
12 say they should.

What do you think?

After reading this thread, I'm not so sure anymore. If this stuff is so random that it's out our 2013 control, maybe it doesn't matter.

But, if there is any control involved, I highly recommend that parents try as hard as they can to make sure their daughters turn out as attractive as possible.

I voted yes. I know we shouldn't really deal in extremes, but in this case, if we followed the majority's advice, this couple would not have been allowed to reproduce.






Their child? Albert Einstein.

[soup]

(05-22-2013 04:34 AM)master_thespian Wrote:  

(05-22-2013 04:05 AM)soup Wrote:  

So, 17 say ugly people shouldn't reproduce.
12 say they should.

What do you think?

After reading this thread, I'm not so sure anymore. If this stuff is so random that it's out our 2013 control, maybe it doesn't matter.

But, if there is any control involved, I highly recommend that parents try as hard as they can to make sure their daughters turn out as attractive as possible.

I voted yes. I know we shouldn't really deal in extremes, but in this case, if we followed the majority's advice, this couple would not have been allowed to reproduce.






Their child? Albert Einstein.

Yeah, but they aren't an ugly couple. Sort of average.

And besides that, we all know that E=mc2 is a rape formula because it favors the speed of light over other speeds, so..

[eradicator]

(05-22-2013 04:36 AM)soup Wrote:  

(05-22-2013 04:34 AM)master_thespian Wrote:  

(05-22-2013 04:05 AM)soup Wrote:  

So, 17 say ugly people shouldn't reproduce.
12 say they should.

What do you think?

After reading this thread, I'm not so sure anymore. If this stuff is so random that it's out our 2013 control, maybe it doesn't matter.

But, if there is any control involved, I highly recommend that parents try as hard as they can to make sure their daughters turn out as attractive as possible.

I voted yes. I know we shouldn't really deal in extremes, but in this case, if we followed the majority's advice, this couple would not have been allowed to reproduce.






Their child? Albert Einstein.

Yeah, but they aren't an ugly couple. Sort of average.

And besides that, we all know that E=mc2 is a rape formula because it favors the speed of light over other speeds, so..

I guess that is subjective, they are pretty plain looking, not overweight or unsightly, but definitely not good looking.

My point was this: some of the brightest minds in any generation are often going to be focused on work or research and not bettering themselves overall physically, or improving their social skills. They will have zero game. Should they reproduce? If they are going to be responsible, good parents, sure.

[Icarus]

(05-22-2013 04:34 AM)master_thespian Wrote:  

if we followed the majority's advice, this couple would not have been allowed to reproduce.






Their child? Albert Einstein.

No. The couple in the photo is Albert Einstein himself, and his Serbian wife Mileva Marić. Their son was called Hans Albert Einstein, who was an engineering professor at Berkeley, which is not exactly as impressive as winning a Nobel prize. Their marriage was not exactly "happy ever after". Einstein's demands:

Quote:

CONDITIONS

You will make sure:
that my clothes and laundry are kept in good order;
that I will receive my three meals regularly in my room;
that my bedroom and study are kept neat, and especially that my desk is left for my use only.

You will renounce all personal relations with me insofar as they are not completely necessary for social reasons. Specifically, You will forego:
my sitting at home with you;
my going out or travelling with you.

You will obey the following points in your relations with me:
you will not expect any intimacy from me, nor will you reproach me in any way;
you will stop talking to me if I request it;
you will leave my bedroom or study immediately without protest if I request it.

You will undertake not to belittle me in front of our children, either through words or behavior.

[eradicator]

(05-22-2013 05:12 AM)Icarus Wrote:  

(05-22-2013 04:34 AM)master_thespian Wrote:  

if we followed the majority's advice, this couple would not have been allowed to reproduce.






Their child? Albert Einstein.

No. The couple in the photo is Albert Einstein himself, and his Serbian wife

OK try this,



those are albert einstein's ugly ass parents. They are ugly, should they have been not allowed to reproduce because their looks are below average? Eugenics threads

[Icarus]

(05-22-2013 05:57 AM)master_thespian Wrote:  

those are albert einstein's ugly ass parents. They are ugly, should they have been not allowed to reproduce because their looks are below average? Eugenics threads

One could rank couples based on looks, intelligence, etc and then impose rank-dependent limits on the number of offspring:

• Ugly couples of high IQ would be allowed to have a certain number of children, say, 2 or 3.
  

• Ugly couples of low IQ would be allowed to have only one child. Concentrating all the family's wealth in one descendant would perhaps allow him / her to buy a remotely satisfying life.
  

• Beautiful couples of high IQ would be subsidized by the state, so that they could have 8-10 children.
  

• Beautiful couples of low IQ would be allowed to have a few children, since the ugly people need to breed with prettier people in order to increase their lineage's genetic quality.
  

If this were carried out over a few generations, the quality of the population would increase dramatically. It would be a true egalitarian utopia where almost everyone is smart and beautiful. It would largely eliminate luck, since almost everyone would win in the cruel and heartless genetic lottery. If monogamy were imposed and enforced on top of this eugenic program, every man and every woman would be able to find a pretty and smart wife and husband.

[eradicator]

(05-22-2013 06:11 AM)Icarus Wrote:  

(05-22-2013 05:57 AM)master_thespian Wrote:  

those are albert einstein's ugly ass parents. They are ugly, should they have been not allowed to reproduce because their looks are below average? Eugenics threads

One could rank couples based on looks, intelligence, etc and then impose rank-dependent limits on the number of offspring:

• Ugly couples of high IQ would be allowed to have a certain number of children, say, 2 or 3.
  

• Ugly couples of low IQ would be allowed to have only one child. Concentrating all the family's wealth in one descendant would perhaps allow him / her to buy a remotely satisfying life.
  

• Beautiful couples of high IQ would be subsidized by the state, so that they could have 8-10 children.
  

• Beautiful couples of low IQ would be allowed to have a few children, since the ugly people need to breed with prettier people in order to increase their lineage's genetic quality.
  

If this were carried out over a few generations, the quality of the population would increase dramatically. It would be a true egalitarian utopia where almost everyone is smart and beautiful. It would largely eliminate luck, since almost everyone would win in the cruel and heartless genetic lottery. If monogamy were imposed and enforced on top of this eugenic program, every man and every woman would be able to find a pretty and smart wife and husband.

Did you just finish watching the film "Gattica"?

[Icarus]

(05-22-2013 06:26 AM)master_thespian Wrote:  

Did you just finish watching the film "Gattica"?

It's Gattaca. No, never watched it. These ideas are very, very old. Hollywood invented nothing. Here's what Plutarch wrote almost 2000 years ago about Sparta:

Quote:

Lycurgus was of a persuasion that children were not so much the property of their parents as of the whole commonwealth, and, therefore, would not have his citizens begot by the first-comers, but by the best men that could be found; the laws of other nations seemed to him very absurd and inconsistent, where people would be so solicitous for their dogs and horses as to exert interest and to pay money to procure fine breeding, and yet kept their wives shut up, to be made mothers only by themselves, who might be foolish, infirm, or diseased; as if it were not apparent that children of a bad breed would prove their bad qualities first upon those who kept and were rearing them, and well-born children, in like manner, their good qualities.

And here's what English (humanist, internationalist, and leftist!!) evolutionary biologist Sir Julian S. Huxley wrote in 1936 (already after Hitler rose to power in Germany) on eugenics:

Quote:

Once the full implications of evolutionary biology are grasped, eugenics will inevitably become part of the religion of the future, or of whatever complex of sentiments may in the future take the place of organized religion. It is not merely a sane outlet for human altruism, but is of all outlets for altruism that which is most comprehensive and of longest range.

[cardguy]

Eugenics works well in alot of animals - but it wouldn't work well with humans. There is not enough spare capacity in the human genome for us to start selelcting for certain traits. This is because the population of humanity dropped to around 10,000 people.

This was 70,000 years ago. A supervolcano explosion in Indonesia (The Tolbe Catastrophe) was thought to be the reason for this 'human bottleneck' which nearly wiped out humanity.

But - recent research suggests this wasn't the cause - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22355515

As such - humanity is already too inbred for us to start introducing any more inbreeding (which is what Eugenics is a form of).

I would love to live in a world where all the guys were handsome and smart, and all the girls looked like supermodels. But humans do not have enough biodiversity to allow for such programmes. Without introducing some really fucked-up side effects.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck

http://io9.com/5925024/why-eugenics-will-always-fail

[cardguy]

On a separate point - if every girl in the world looked like a supermodel. Would it get boring?

I seem to remember Darwin himself saying this once. And how if every girl was very good looking in a similar way - men would start to look for tiny differences to rank one girl as being more attractive than another. And prettty soon we would be back to where we started - with girls being ranked as hot or ugly - but on a much narrower set of criteria than we have today.

I experienced this myself in the red light district of Amsterdam. There was about 60 girls - all pretty much equally good looking. And I could fuck any one of them. The first couple of times I picked the girls that seemed the hottest to me. And it wasn't an easy decision to make.

On the third night - I was so bored of seeing hot girls wearing lingerie, with bleached hair dancing in windows that I was determined to find somebody different.

Eventually I found the only girl in the whole district who was not wearing lingerie. She was wearing some nice cotton pyjama bottoms. And a pink cotton top. And just that small difference alone made her more appealing to me that the others. Even though there were other girls who looked better.

It is hard to describe. But - whilst it is nice at first - your mind starts to crave novelty after spending a couple of nights seeing hot girls in nothing but lingerie. As I went with the girl on the third night - I amused myself that even when fucking a hooker I couldn't help but think about interesting insights I have learned from books.

Born a nerd. Die a nerd!

[NY Digital]

The whole "inbred" logic is extremely flawed. There was a small amount of humans to begin with.

[MikeinMKE]

Has anybody else noticed the trend of handsome couples of TV/Movies having ugly kids scripted into the show?

Two examples that come to mind are "Californication" and "Hung".

Both shows have two very attractive sets of parents with very UGLY/AWKWARD kids.





What's this about? Perhaps in the case of "Hung" it's just for comedic effect, and maybe "Californication" was just Ducovhney scripting in a friend's daughter to play Becca?

[Icarus]

(05-23-2013 09:22 AM)cardguy Wrote:  

Eugenics works well in alot of animals - but it wouldn't work well with humans.

Proof by assertion? Keep in mind that the word "eugenics" means "good birth". What is "good" can change over time and space.

(05-23-2013 09:22 AM)cardguy Wrote:  

There is not enough spare capacity in the human genome for us to start selecting for certain traits. This is because the population of humanity dropped to around 10,000 people.

Dropped to 10,000 some 70,000s years ago!!! You are forgetting that reproduction involves randomization. New genetic information is created each time an egg is fertilized. The biological purpose of sex is to generate new genetic information. The environment then performs the selection.

10,000s of years ago, humans were very different from today. Speciation took place. When traveling, I can identify a Polish girl, or a Swedish girl from 100 meters away, because there are facial traits characteristic to certain tribes. Our genes tell the history of our ancestors, going back 100s of generations.

(05-23-2013 09:22 AM)cardguy Wrote:  

As such - humanity is already too inbred for us to start introducing any more inbreeding (which is what Eugenics is a form of).

Eugenics is about the phenotype, not the genotype. Different genotypes can lead to barely discernible phenotypes.

Claiming that "eugenics will always fail" is ridiculous, since it's an excessively strong assertion, and technology in DNA sequencing is advancing very rapidly. Soon, one may be able to non-destructively sequence the genomes of fertilized eggs, and decide which one to implant in the mother's uterus. That may prevent defective children from ever being born, which is immensely altruistic.

Lastly, "eugenics" (or, perhaps, dysgenics) already exists in a decentralized form, since the advent of the welfare state gives women almost absolute power to decide which men get to pass their genes, and which don't. Would you prefer that decision to be carried out by a benevolent philosopher king, or by former sorostitutes about to hit the wall?

[cardguy]

Hell - I don't know. You are probably right. I am just going over some stuff I read a few months ago.

Still - I am unsure how a system of Eugenics could be successful without incurring the law of unintended consequences.

Science has a history of meddling in areas that it thought it understood well. When in fact it did not. Which is why I subscribe to pessimistic meta-induction particularly in compex situations like trying to select for certain characteristics among humans:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pessimistic_induction

The long-term consequences is something to worry about. And I am unsure how such a prject would ever take get political support.

[Samseau]

I think Eugenics may work itself out in human species. After all, if shit hits the fan it may be that only the smartest and most beautiful will survive.