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Trump State Department official has called for mass sterilization of ‘low-IQ trash’
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 27 May 2025
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That's not true at all. No biologist will agree that IQ tests produce usable data that shows anything of the sort, IQ tests are a skills test and the biggest skills it tests are studying for an IQ test and speaking English fluently.
I don't know if you know this, but Eugenics was bunk science and it's been shown to be nothing more than academic racism that holds no validity
You're misinformed about eugenics (with a lower-case e, if you don't mind). Easily-measurable traits like height and weight are well known to have heritable components, as do diseases. Eugenics is an effective way to prevent genetic diseases. You probably don't realize that eugenics is a wider subject than the racist and ableist practices of nazis and other ethno-supremacists. You only think eugenics is bad because when people say "eugenics," what the nazis did is what comes to mind, rather than important and good technologies like IVF and selecting against zygotes with alleles associated with negative traits. (And yes, negative traits and positive traits are both heritable, though I'll freely admit that what makes a trait positive or negative is subjective.) See this discussion elsewhere in this thread.
I have a hypothesis that there are three camps of people: (1) those who generally get the science and limitations of IQ; (2) those who are racist bigots and use IQ to justify genocide; (3) those who assume that any attempt to measure intelligence is inherently racist and so IQ must be pseudoscience. (2) and (3) both assume that anyone purporting to be in camp (1) must actually be in camp (3)/(2) respectively.
Getting rid of negative traits gets out of control really fast. I would say more than AI.
How does AI factor into this? Also I'm interested to hear your scenario in which voluntarily getting rid of negative traits gets out of control. It's certainly plausible that we might have some kind of runaway evolution. Still, I think it's imperative we prevent genetic diseases.
Read like any sci-fi novel ever...
How about Brave New World off the top of my head? GATTACA as well.
I love GATTACA -- obviously a terrifying dystopian world. Cautionary tales exist to tell you to proceed with caution, not to avoid proceeding at all.
AI is a modern problem, getting rid of negative traits is a potential problem. Getting rid of negative traits incur that something about the person or being is a disorder. That could be schizophrenia or autism, that are more considered like problems, even though these are problems that are at the core of society, not problems with the people themselves. Getting rid of these might seem logical, but they also meddle with what a person is at its core. Now moving on to things that are more accepted by the literature as non deviant genetic 'traits' would be homosexuality and transness. What if this defiant and deviant mode of living was to be erased by genetic modification? I'm sure the parents would be proud, but you just got rid of something that is at the core of what that person is. That is against diversity by itself. Genetic modification in the sense of eugenics or getting rid of negative traits is the same as eliminating diversity and difference, which is why Hitler picked at it so much.
I'll elaborate even more: Arjun Appadurai implies at his "Fear of Small Numbers" that at the core of eliminating difference there is a deep desire for oneness. That those who are different are such small steps away from complete oneness and national identity. That is, I exist in the society which I identify as real, and anything against that is so close to inexistant that I could just wipe them out and be in my happy place. So close to it, but not quite. Something that Appadurai calls the state of "incompleteness".
It does not seem obvious to me that we should get rid of autism. I don't know any studies that suggest that people with autism have a lower quality of life. Autism is a form of being different -- neurodivergent. There may be disadvantages to being autistic, but there are likely advantages too. That is different from other more severe disorders that are genetic. (Is autism even genetic?)
Similarly, being LGBTQ+ is not a disadvantage in a sane society. In fact, being bisexual is an advantage I would argue. Regardless, it's not genetic, so why even bring that up?
But there are genetic disorders nearly everyone agrees should be eradicated.
I'm not really sure it matters what you think when history has shown again and again that there are people more than willing to use technology like this for evil, racist, etc. ends.
literally every technology can be used by evil racist ends. You've merely grouped two things into the same category, "eugenics" and called it a bad thing. If instead you had different words for these two things, it wouldn't occur to you to say they are both usable for evil ends. Why not just say "medicine" or "science" will be used for evil ends, as the Nazis did?
Stop calling it a choice: Biological factors drive homosexuality
Woah woah, I didn't call it a choice. I said it's not genetic. Guess I'm wrong -- there is a genetic component it appears. But twin studies prove it's not purely genetic.