[bobthechef]

Sounds like eugenics. Heh, no thanks.

Also "better" and "worse" only mean something relative to an end. I do not deny ends (I take human nature to be teleological, for example), but many "evolutionists" (i.e., those who accept a basically materialistic worldview) do deny the reality of ends (and are wholly incapable of accounting for them even if reduced to mental phenomena by virtue of having painted themselves into a metaphysical corner).

[exporectomy]

Do you have a real concern with eugenics or is it just because your culture demonizes it?

We already have little bits of eugenics baked into law and culture. Why not a little bit more? It doesn't have to involve death camps.

[SamoyedFurFluff]

Eugenics involved horrific deprivations of human dignity for arbitrary decisions of what seemed at the time to be “self evidently good” traits that are much less self evidently good now… if the traits were even retained.

[notriddle]

Same reason so many people object to censorship: nobody can be trusted with that kind of power.

[exporectomy]

Is that really why eugenics is demonized? That the human race (not any living individuals) is giving up its freedom to some sort of fallible authority?

I guess, like censorship, people only object to an arbitrary subset of it. People love censorship of "really bad" ideas just as they love eugenics of "really bad" genes.

Most people seem happy with asserting our authority of gene selection over animals though :P Conservationism is that. Not to mention actual selective breeding and killing of course. Perhaps we rightly believe humans truly are capable of being benevolent arbiters of who gets to reproduce and who doesn't in animals.

[cogman10]

Animal breeding is somewhat different from human breeding.

With animal breeding, there's almost always a set goal. Getting a fatter, tastier, more hardy, or in the extreme, aesthetically pleasing animal.

I doubt we'd really use eugenics for any of them. However, a pure eugenicist might say "Well, why not? Why not select for people less prone to cancer, more physically fit, with better immune systems?"

So then it comes into the question of what eugenics has historically been used for. The worst example would probably be the sterilization of gay people. We used it against mental illness in an age where lobotomy was considered a good treatment for mental illnesses such as hyperactivity.

And all of this, of course, sort of belays the fact that for humans there seems to be no reason why we couldn't use gene therapy in place of breeding programs. Why do we need eugenics when we can directly target the aspects we want in the future generation (and quite a few people would opt in for those changes).

We already seem some of this just in genetic testing of embryos and fetuses. When people know a fetus has downs syndrome, they get abortions and try again. I could see the same with a whole host of chronic illnesses.

[notriddle]

People select their own mates. On the assumption that you aren’t just advocating for stuff that’s always happening, you presumably want to set up some authority for who people mate with other than the couples involved. Why can’t they decide for themselves?

It really is pretty similar to the kinds of things that are used to advocate against E2E encryption. An attempt to have the state encroach on territory that used to be private.