<p>:: claps hands enthusiastically:: THANK YOU. i really wanted to know what you were gonna say to that.</p>
<p>So if we have the technological capacity to create possible transplants for people suffering from organ diseases, we should use it, wink?</p>
<p>Everything has a bad side, and everything has the potential to be abused. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use it at all. And mind you, I said voluntary eugenics. Definitely not forced eugenics or government supported eugenics. </p>
<p>Here’s a statistic I’d love to find: Whether children in a poor environment for traditional intelligence improve if they’re brought into a better environment, i.e. if you adopt a baby from an inner-city area that traditionally has a huge drop-out rate and bring it into a middle or upper-middle class family in a traditionally more successful area, how will it do in school?</p>
<p>but isnt that sort of like living in a bad neighborhood but having a nourishing home and school?
if thats the case, from personal experience id say theyd do pretty darn good.lol.</p>
<p>Drats, I was hoping this wouldn’t get personal. I’m just about positive I’m going to offend someone in the course of this conversation. My apologies in advance.</p>
<p>Slightly different. Low intelligence parents and poor school moving to high intelligence adopted parents and good school. It would also depend on when the child was adopted- very near birth and minimal contact with the birth mother would mean that the child was raised in the higher-achieving societal niche, if the child was adopted later, there would be environmental effects from the lower-achieving niche there too.</p>
<p>and to d-yu (way back up there): if we are all smarter and stronger, there will aways be that group who has to do the menial work. and if we are all smarter then no one will want to do it.</p>
<p>Earil: to answer your second question, we learned about a study in psych class last year about some kids from the rural Ozarks or some such place with comparatively low intelligence, who, when transplanted to a more urban area, experienced an immediate rise in IQ (dammit, I can’t remember the name of the study! I’ll look for it and let you know).</p>
<p>To your first question: I think we need to be careful about the steps we take. When we move at a gradual pace, suddenly things were deemed unethical a few years ago are acceptable. Like I said, direct benefits to people for medicinal purposes are okay in my mind. But commercialization of bioengineering for cosmetic reasons or eugenics is going too far.</p>
<p>Voluntary eugenics would be an interesting social experiement, but I doubt the most uneducated would even understand what that means.</p>
<p>Panic, we won’t all be of the same income level. Pay the people doing menial work a lot because their job sucks, or invent ways to improve it.</p>
<p>yes i see but none the less there would be that group that it would not make a difference because the low intelligence might have been passed on. neglect that it would be interesting and im sure the situation exsists. i mean that would have to be some adoption case or another.</p>
<p>yeah wouldnt voluntary eugenics be a catch-22. because the ideal people that you want to stop reproducing would be too slow (if that word offends im sorry) to grasp the concept or consent to it.</p>
<p>Intelligent people need intellectual stimulation. The vast majority probably wouldn’t be excited to do menial labor regardless of the pay. Take the example of /Brave New World/ – they created specifically less intelligent lower classes to do the menial work, and who actually /liked/ doing it.</p>
<p>No, but it’s definitely possible to explain it to them. I’d say most people have at least a rudimentary idea of what genes and genetics are. Offer cheap, easy contraceptives and explain the personal economic reasons to have fewer children- fewer mouths to feed, fewer birthday presents to buy. People are very motivated by money. It could be done easily. Yes, one of their children could be the next Gandhi, or the next Hitler. We really don’t know. No one’s forcing them to have fewer children, however they could offer them easy options to reduce the risk of unwanted pregnancies.</p>
<p>i dont know about liking it but there is a use for all people. and all people deserve to be stimulated intellectually it might be on a different level for some.</p>
<p>ahh yes but people know that. there are condoms, people complain about not being able to feed their kids but they dont really do anything to stop. instead they turn to things like welfare, abortion, or other people to fix their problem.</p>
<p>What kinds of groups would you target? High school drop-outs? Those with certain IQ’s? Those who live in the ghettos or Hickville? (I hope that doesn’t offend.)</p>
<p>It’s not like we could eradicate idiots. Some people will always be smarter than others. The invention of more efficient and less human-driven machines to do unpleasant tasks would very likely occur if all the smart people are mad about having to clean streets or be janitors. And it’s not like we could totally eradicate people with lesser intelligence. I’m more interested in a gradual improvement than a radical change, this stuff spread out over a bunch of generations, not an immediate plan to encourage smart people to make millions of babies.</p>
<p>Condoms and contraception are not expensive, and virtually every public school in America educates students about that. But the most at-risk kids just tend not to listen.</p>
<p>i think it should be something that (though it wont happen cuz some states still only teach abstinence) is taught to all teens of a certain age. like just bring out the information.
cuz its a problem. i hear stories like every year of that one girl who’s had like 5 abortions, or that guy who’s a baby daddy before he’s in college.</p>
<p>yeah and then there’s the question where do you decide smart starts? and who decides? cuz no offense but some of the smarter people i know i wouldnt want to reproduce. no offense to anyone.</p>
<p>Educated people simply tend to reproduce less. How would we encourage them to have more babies, especially since many of them are career-oriented and feel they have less time to raise children. Eugenics is a two-part process: the less intelligent reproduce less, the more intelligent reproduce more.</p>
<p>lol play only barry white. and globally when will we run outta space for all these people. population isnt exactly declining, at least i dont think it is.</p>
<p>IQ’s don’t always make accurate predictions, so no to that one. Drop outs are a possibility, although there are extenuating circumstances that could cause otherwise intelligent or normal people to drop out of school, and that would have to be taken into account. What would really work best would be a nationwide campaign to not overproduce, targeting areas of traditional less success, and a campaign for birth control and safer sex in middle and high schools. This would help both environmental and biological factors.</p>