Selective Breeding? [Re: Administration/Moderation Changes & New Admin Team Nominations]
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@Jaloopa let me help you.
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@Polygeekery and which part of that counters my saying it wasn't about you just mentioning the group?
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@Jaloopa .......can you read? What part of eugenics involves or encourages murder?
I repeat, words mean things.
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@Polygeekery we're arguing separate things. You weren't accused of death threats for simply mentioning Autism Speaks, which is what you first said.
I agree that calling what you did say death threats is ridiculous, and that despite you being a very handsome guy the retribution was far out of line, and that eugenics isn't murder. I disagree that anyone believes " mentioning their name is a death threat"
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@Jaloopa said in Selective Breeding? [Re: Administration/Moderation Changes & New Admin Team Nominations]:
@Polygeekery we're arguing separate things. You weren't accused of death threats for simply mentioning Autism Speaks, which is what you first said.
I agree that calling what you did say death threats is ridiculous, and that despite you being a very handsome guy the retribution was far out of line, and that eugenics isn't murder. I disagree that anyone believes " mentioning their name is a death threat"
I don't even think that you know what you're arguing.
@Jaloopa said in Selective Breeding? [Re: Administration/Moderation Changes & New Admin Team Nominations]:
The "death threat" was you saying you were rethinking your stance against eugenics
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@Polygeekery death threat in scare quotes. Thing that was interpreted (wrongly) as a death threat. I'm saying that " mentioning their name is a death threat" is not what happened, the comment after that wat what was interpreted as a death threat
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@Jaloopa said in Selective Breeding? [Re: Administration/Moderation Changes & New Admin Team Nominations]:
the comment after that wat what was interpreted as a death threat
Okay. It's still fucking stupid.
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@Polygeekery I agree. I just didn't like you misrepresenting exactly which bit of stupidity
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@Jaloopa it seems pointlessly pedantic, but have your little win.
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@Polygeekery said in Selective Breeding? [Re: Administration/Moderation Changes & New Admin Team Nominations]:
pointlessly pedantic,
Thank you for using my preferred pronoun
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@Jaloopa @Polygeekery Guys, I think the Garage is leaking again.
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@GOG it's because garage is in unusable state. I'd give them a pass until we have a moderator who can move it where it belongs.
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I honestly believe that once the science and technology is mature, it would be a good thing to work on removing bad stuff from our gene pool. But I'd prefer if humanity didn't start doing it en masse until it's actually well understood, and has been well understood for quite some time. Because the potential problems are species destroying. But humanity will jump all over that shit long before it's ready.
That said, there is a pretty interesting philosophical discussion to be had going beyond eradicating disease, and defining what a disease is.
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@Gąska Fair 'nuff.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Selective Breeding? [Re: Administration/Moderation Changes & New Admin Team Nominations]:
I wouldn't be shocked to find that you could test for a genetic risk factor, but the accuracy of that test would be both low and only probabalistic.
As it is probably related to the details of how neural connectivity is done, and that's governed by a lot of really complicated gene networks (it's related to cell growth, possibly of several cell types) that it has a genetic basis for predisposition would be unsurprising, and that it doesn't always manifest and manifests in different levels some of which are outright beneficial, well that wouldn't surprise me in the slightest. Such things have been recorded many times for other simpler biological systems. That the right mix of genes to trigger it could come from both parents in combination, very very possible indeed.
That said, any prenatal test for the condition is going to be hugely far off. I'm not even sure whether it is possible to have a test for it that is even marginally safe (given that interfering with the foetus directly is clinically a bad idea anyway, which limits you to mostly getting placental cells, and I don't know if they have the right developmental lineage for neural cells) and I'm certain that the genetics aren't understood. Predicting activity rates for hundreds or thousands of interlinked genes and enzymes when we don't even know what we're looking for…
Right now, by far and away the best tests for this condition are those done when the child shows signs of developmental problems. Well post-birth.
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In my opinion the problem with selective breeding, from the viewpoint of someone who would have been filtered out, is that you are very explicitly saying the world would have been a better place had they never been born.
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@PleegWat said in Selective Breeding? [Re: Administration/Moderation Changes & New Admin Team Nominations]:
In my opinion the problem with selective breeding, from the viewpoint of someone who would have been filtered out, is that you are very explicitly saying the world would have been a better place had they never been born.
Not really, it's saying that
the would wildthe world would have been a place of less suffering had they been born without the cause of suffering.
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@Carnage
But it is saying you consider it suffering and limiting even if the person involved doesn't.
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@Carnage said in Selective Breeding? [Re: Administration/Moderation Changes & New Admin Team Nominations]:
the would wild have been a place
That's quite a typo.
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@Gąska Edit distance: 3
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@PleegWat said in Selective Breeding? [Re: Administration/Moderation Changes & New Admin Team Nominations]:
In my opinion the problem with selective breeding, from the viewpoint of someone who would have been filtered out, is that you are very explicitly saying the world would have been a better place had they never been born.
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Interestingly, that's one of the leading arguments for legal abortions - and the very reason I'm against abortion.
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Conflating genome manipulation with selective breeding is very dishonest and prevents us from helping those who suffer the most. See @Benjamin-Hall's post about people who are the most affected by it not even being able to communicate their opinion due to their illness.
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@topspin said in Selective Breeding? [Re: Administration/Moderation Changes & New Admin Team Nominations]:
@Gąska Edit distance: 3
I wonder what's the Levenshtein distance in IPA.
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@Gąska said in Selective Breeding? [Re: Administration/Moderation Changes & New Admin Team Nominations]:
@PleegWat said in Selective Breeding? [Re: Administration/Moderation Changes & New Admin Team Nominations]:
In my opinion the problem with selective breeding, from the viewpoint of someone who would have been filtered out, is that you are very explicitly saying the world would have been a better place had they never been born.
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Interestingly, that's one of the leading arguments for legal abortions - and the very reason I'm against abortion.
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Conflating genome manipulation with selective breeding is very dishonest and prevents us from helping those who suffer the most. See @Benjamin-Hall's post about people who are the most affected by it not even being able to communicate their opinion due to their illness.
As I understand it, most abortions are based on the mother's desire to not have a child at that time at all, not on any genetic attribute of the child, though who the father is suspected to be may play into it in cases. And the the thread title does mention selective breeding.
I'm not sure if gene manipulation is any better than embryo screening, even if it is accessible to everyone, since there will be parents who opt against such methods for various reasons, and their children would be stuck with the stigma of "a proper parent would not have allowed you to be born". I imagine children from teen pregnancies suffer from this.
The severity of the affliction does play into this as well. Some conditions are already tested for which generally result in early child death, where the child has no chance of a good live. But conditions causing blindness or deafness have also been mentioned, and blind or deaf people can still lead a productive life.
I think the argument about "they wouldn't have had the affliction" does not hold. If that person who was deaf from birth, or who became blind at early age due to a genetic defect, had not had that condition, they would have developed to be completely different persons.
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@PleegWat As a note, at least in the US we already screen most babies for lots and lots and lots of disorders. Some of them are guarantees (your child has X), others are probabalistic (your child has a strongly-increased chance of getting X). Heck, many states require (or required) blood tests before marriage, to warn carriers of particular genetic traits that any children they have have a large chance of <bad thing>. OK, a lot of that was to try to control incestuous marriages, but...
And the vast majority (my mom's a midwife) of positive screening results don't end up in abortion. Even for Downs Syndrome.
Prenatal Genetic Screening Tests
Prenatal screening tests can tell you the chances that your fetus will have certain types of genetic disorders.
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@Gąska said in Selective Breeding? [Re: Administration/Moderation Changes & New Admin Team Nominations]:
@Carnage said in Selective Breeding? [Re: Administration/Moderation Changes & New Admin Team Nominations]:
the would wild have been a place
That's quite a typo.
Yeah, that's impressive even for me.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Selective Breeding? [Re: Administration/Moderation Changes & New Admin Team Nominations]:
OK, a lot of that was to try to control incestuous marriages
Are you sure about that?
We got married in California. When we took our planning trip to CA we laid out all the plans for marriage license and such. We asked about blood tests and there were none required (I don't think? It's been a while.) And I asked about the whole blood test for incest thing. The county official joked (as best I remember, and we all know how my memory is), "I don't think that was ever a thing. We used to have blood tests but we've always allowed even first cousins to marry."
My take was that it was to inform potential spouses of potential diseases. But since most people who marry today have already had sex most states have dropped it.
I'm welcome to be proven wrong though.
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@Polygeekery said in Selective Breeding? [Re: Administration/Moderation Changes & New Admin Team Nominations]:
@Benjamin-Hall said in Selective Breeding? [Re: Administration/Moderation Changes & New Admin Team Nominations]:
OK, a lot of that was to try to control incestuous marriages
Are you sure about that?
We got married in California. When we took our planning trip to CA we laid out all the plans for marriage license and such. We asked about blood tests and there were none required (I don't think? It's been a while.) And I asked about the whole blood test for incest thing. The county official joked (as best I remember, and we all know how my memory is), "I don't think that was ever a thing. We used to have blood tests but we've always allowed even first cousins to marry."
My take was that it was to inform potential spouses of potential diseases. But since most people who marry today have already had sex most states have dropped it.
I'm welcome to be proven wrong though.
To be honest,
. That particular part was sort of tongue-in-cheek.But yes, i think the overt reason was disease control (especially STDs). And I think (
to actually look for evidence) that you're right that most have dropped it.
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@PleegWat said in Selective Breeding? [Re: Administration/Moderation Changes & New Admin Team Nominations]:
As I understand it, most abortions are based on the mother's desire to not have a child at that time at all, not on any genetic attribute of the child, though who the father is suspected to be may play into it in cases.
But as soon as you mention how cruel it is to kill human beings just because you don't feel like taking care of them (helloooo, we have orphanages for that!), abortion apologists immediately jump to how cruel it is to sentence a child to a lifetime with severe incurable illness that makes them incapable of taking care of themselves - and sentence the mother to a lifetime of doing nothing but taking care of them. I could even list usernames of people here who told me exactly that.
And the the thread title does mention selective breeding.
Fair enough. I thought you read the rest of thread beforehand and replied to that.
I'm not sure if gene manipulation is any better than embryo screening, even if it is accessible to everyone, since there will be parents who opt against such methods for various reasons, and their children would be stuck with the stigma of "a proper parent would not have allowed you to be born".
Children are always going to be stuck with one stigma or another. If not autism, it'll be fatness. We shouldn't let 10 year old bullies dictate the political discourse on morality of medical procedures. Also, I don't see much difference between between mothers choosing to make their children disabled, and the anti-vaxxers - and last time I checked, hating on anti-vaxxers is perfectly fine.
The severity of the affliction does play into this as well. Some conditions are already tested for which generally result in early child death, where the child has no chance of a good live. But conditions causing blindness or deafness have also been mentioned, and blind or deaf people can still lead a productive life.
And every blind and deaf person I've ever talked to say they'd be even more productive if they weren't blind or deaf. It's possible to lead a productive life as an amputee too, but somehow we still try our hardest to save limbs from amputation.
I think the argument about "they wouldn't have had the affliction" does not hold. If that person who was deaf from birth, or who became blind at early age due to a genetic defect, had not had that condition, they would have developed to be completely different persons.
And a person who's never attended school would have developed to be a completely different person if they had, but I've never seen it used as an argument to stop building schools.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Selective Breeding? [Re: Administration/Moderation Changes & New Admin Team Nominations]:
Heck, many states require (or required) blood tests before marriage, to warn carriers of particular genetic traits that any children they have have a large chance of <bad thing>.
When we got married, my ex-wife and I had (required, I think) blood tests. AFAIK, they were for STDs only.
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@Gąska said in Selective Breeding? [Re: Administration/Moderation Changes & New Admin Team Nominations]:
@PleegWat said in Selective Breeding? [Re: Administration/Moderation Changes & New Admin Team Nominations]:
As I understand it, most abortions are based on the mother's desire to not have a child at that time at all, not on any genetic attribute of the child, though who the father is suspected to be may play into it in cases.
But as soon as you mention how cruel it is to kill human beings just because you don't feel like taking care of them (helloooo, we have orphanages for that!), abortion apologists immediately jump to how cruel it is to sentence a child to a lifetime with severe incurable illness that makes them incapable of taking care of themselves - and sentence the mother to a lifetime of doing nothing but taking care of them.
Just for the record: I'm not against genetic manipulation to prevent incurable diseases/conditions. But it should be restricted to that and not allow you to make your baby a fashion statement.
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@Rhywden same.
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@Rhywden said in Selective Breeding? [Re: Administration/Moderation Changes & New Admin Team Nominations]:
@Gąska said in Selective Breeding? [Re: Administration/Moderation Changes & New Admin Team Nominations]:
@PleegWat said in Selective Breeding? [Re: Administration/Moderation Changes & New Admin Team Nominations]:
As I understand it, most abortions are based on the mother's desire to not have a child at that time at all, not on any genetic attribute of the child, though who the father is suspected to be may play into it in cases.
But as soon as you mention how cruel it is to kill human beings just because you don't feel like taking care of them (helloooo, we have orphanages for that!), abortion apologists immediately jump to how cruel it is to sentence a child to a lifetime with severe incurable illness that makes them incapable of taking care of themselves - and sentence the mother to a lifetime of doing nothing but taking care of them.
Just for the record: I'm not against genetic manipulation to prevent incurable diseases/conditions. But it should be restricted to that and not allow you to make your baby a fashion statement.
Sure. Now where do you draw the line? How do you define "incurable condition"? Obviously "not being a blue-eyed blonde" is well over the line, but what about "having an IQ below 100"? That's
an "incurable condition" that will put your kid at a significant disadvantage in life, especially as society inexorably becomes more and more technological. Should parents be allowed to detect and "fix" that? TBH I'm not really sure whether I believe the answer to that question should be yes or no. There are good arguments on both sides of it.
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I'm not entirely comfortable with legal bans on cosmetic manipulation (1), but I certainly think that society should heavily disfavor parents who do so. Shame, disgust, etc.
(1) I'm not sure it would be effective, and it's hard to define. I'm always wary of the side effects of top down action. Note: this is me being unsure on the issue, not taking a hard stand either way.
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@Mason_Wheeler You may want to scroll up and look at my posts where I made the exact same argument.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Selective Breeding? [Re: Administration/Moderation Changes & New Admin Team Nominations]:
I'm not entirely comfortable with legal bans on cosmetic manipulation (1), but I certainly think that society should heavily disfavor parents who do so. Shame, disgust, etc.
Same here. I honestly believe that, if we ever live to see genetic manipulation done in practice, it'll be specific enough to only cover select few genetic disorders that no sane person would disagree that they're disorders - and as for cosmetic manipulation, we'll have the moral and legal side figured out long, long, long before we figure out the technical side. If we don't die in robot apocalypse earlier, that is (which, to be fair, I find much more likely than figuring out genetic manipulation at the level allowing for mass production of little Aryans).
Meanwhile, millions of children are suffering, and their parents are suffering with them.
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@Polygeekery said in Selective Breeding? [Re: Administration/Moderation Changes & New Admin Team Nominations]:
@topspin said in Selective Breeding? [Re: Administration/Moderation Changes & New Admin Team Nominations]:
And yet (at least as I read) the organization at issue refuses to have any actual autistic people have any say in the matters.
That is entirely untrue. They have had multiple members of their board and high level employees that are autistic. This takes seconds to debunk. FFS, Google "autism speaks board members" and get back to us.
You're only reading and believing the propaganda that leads people to believe that mentioning their name is a death threat. Do your own research.
- The claim may have been true at some point when it was made and they have since changed their policy. That's not propaganda.
- I just cursorily searched for it and could only find parents of autistic children. I've probably overlooked it, but would you name a board member with autism?
- "Doing my own research" was kind of what this thread was about, wasn't it?
at least as I read
I don't have a qualified opinion on it
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@topspin said in Selective Breeding? [Re: Administration/Moderation Changes & New Admin Team Nominations]:
I just cursorily searched for it and could only find parents of autistic children. I've probably overlooked it, but would you name a board member with autism?
Dr. Valerie Paradiz, VP of Services and Supports
https://www.autismspeaks.org/profile/meet-valerie-p
Dr. Stephen Shore, Board of Directors
I'm fairly certain that I have seen others mentioned in other articles. I assume that they just don't define themselves by their autism.
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@Gąska said in Selective Breeding? [Re: Administration/Moderation Changes & New Admin Team Nominations]:
If we don't die in robot apocalypse earlier, that is (which, to be fair, I find much more likely than figuring out genetic manipulation at the level allowing for mass production of little Aryans).
We're a long way from both of those. Genetic engineering of mammalian cells is horrendously difficult anyway, and both germline cells and human cells independently increase the difficulty further. And the robot apocalypse is largely laughable right now, as we're so so so far from building any type of AI that could handle enough of the real world to be a threat in any sort of concerted way.
Let's review this in a decade!
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@dkf said in Selective Breeding? [Re: Administration/Moderation Changes & New Admin Team Nominations]:
we're so so so far from building any type of AI that could handle enough of the real world to be a threat in any sort of concerted way
It's not AI I'm worried about. Instead, it's crappy, dumb software that is running something important.
Here, of all places, we shouldn't be underestimating the power of crappy, dumb software.
