Thank you mods. 👍

I'm not surprised that some dipshit named "Cult_of_chad" would be pro-eugenics.

this is relevent to the singularity community! nick bostrom is an influential figure. this is a big scandal, it makes sense to have a post about this

i guess the mods are playing it safe. trying to avoid politics. but u know, sometimes politics invades a community. thats life.

edit: for the record, i think eugenics is bad, and saying the n-word is bad, altho i think genetic modification/gene therapy might be useful someday for humans as long as it’s used for diseases that are universally seen as bad (as opposed to things like autism & down syndrome that have some defenders).

Everything is political. ESPECIALLY THE FUTURE DIRECTION OF HUMANITY & SENTIENCE.

But the singularity is not dependent on nick.

Are you lost? This is r/singularity.

I'd be disappointed if the plurality of the community here did not favor at least some forms of eugenics, considering all the aspiring post-humans and trans humanists we have around. Even with the influx of fresh faces post ChatGPT.

I'm so tired of this chicken-little bullshit that a bunch of "intellectual dark web" assholes go on about the "freedom of speech in academia" as though its so hard to communicate science without using racial slurs.

Elon Musk said he bought Twitter because he's sooooo concerned about the importance of "freedom of speech" to the future of society. Ha!!! He then prompltly un-banned a bunch of Neo Nazis like Richard Spensor while banning a bunch of people critical of him. It's all bull shit. We've been through this. Karl Popper already famously solved the "paradox of tolerance". Bigots have absolutely NOTHING to bring to the "marketplace of ideas". We already fought a world war over the information hazard that is Fascism! We don't need to mull these ideas over more. Their "absence" (bah!) in scientific or political discourse certainly is NOT among the biggest challenges facing humanity. It's way smaller than the rising prevalence of FASCISM ITSELF!

This idiocy NEEDS TO END. People working in genetic medicine ABSOLUTELY SHOULD be aware of the very thin line they walk between medicine and eugenics and ABSOLUTELY SHOULD be careful in how they communicate their ideas. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK, MR. BOSTROM?!

Who's worried about the free speech of minorities or children born in cancer villages who have no chance of ever get to voice their perspectives in the halls of academia.

You won't let this go, will you?

For the record, the Transhumanist movement in general is friendly to eugenics; it’s not surprising that Nick Bostrom would be sympathetic to it.

It doesn't pertain to the singularity. This sub is for discussing the singularity.

People loose their careers all the time because they say something or said something twenty years ago in a private email that they're not suppose to say. Pretty sure there's subreddits for those things but it has no effect on the singularity.

Also nowhere in the link you posted does Nick Bostrom say he is in support of Eugenics. He says he's in support of parents having options to "enhance" their own children.

What's wrong with improving humanity? We don't live in Nazi Germany. If we have the technology to make our children healthier at birth then we have an obligation to do that.

If you didn't realize this sub is highly political with a clear leaning, you haven't been paying any attention at all.

Tell us how you really feel.

>If we have the technology to make our children healthier at birth then we have an obligation to do that.

Eugenics isn't the same as medicine. What the actual fuck?

>Eugenics: the study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable.

We don't need to bread an Ubermench to cure diseases.

Is there a sub about the singularity that doesn't "lean" fascist?

Transhumanism is eugenics OP, think about that shit. Yes, people will have the freedom to make their skin darker or lighter, who gives a flying fuck about the real world when you live in the other “real worlds” that fullfill your personal utopia vision. Forget about it, it’s not worth running in circles in your mind.

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This is Facebook comment section tier lunacy. Get this pseud shit off our comfy politically neutral sub and go back to futurology with the rest of the unhinged panicky doomers

No it's not, dipshit. Eugenics is about breading a super-race free of "undesirable traits". It necessarily implies a group of people defining what they desire for another group of people (the "race").

Transhumanism implies no such authority. If I want eight arms, seven vaginas, thirteen penises, and my mother's Jewish teeth, I don't have to have someone else telling me that's undesirable.

You are the one who needs to think about what words mean.

do you think it would be good if it were possible that parents use genetic engineering to protect their baby from harmful genetic diseases?

Post-human doesn't imply eugenics. Why are all of these comments on crack? It's not complicated.

Eugenics is about breeding a "superior" race and the eradication of "undesirable traits".

It necessarily implies an authority defining what traits are desirable for a large group of people (the "race" in question).

Post-humanism doesn't imply any of that shit. It goes beyond breeding and race and the need to eradicate any specific trait.

If I wan't a tail with a jewish vagina on the end of it, it's none of anyone's fucking business. I don't need to be apart of your "race".

The fact that this distinction is lost on you is telling of why this debate needs to happen in this community. You guys don't even understand WHAT eugenics is and yet, you're a proponent? WTF?

Ectolife pods are around the corner anyway

Oh I won't even waste my time with you fruit cake

>do you think it would be good if it were possible that parents use genetic engineering to protect their baby from harmful genetic diseases?

That's not Eugenics! Though it walks a thin line if you start considering any variation to be a "disease". Should we get rid of all forms of neurodivergence? Is dark skin a disease?

>Eugenics: the study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable.

Eugenics is specifically about breading a race of people. It's about eliminating "undesirable traits" (historically: being black or jewish or gay or any other variation of the human condition that isn't straight and white). It necessarily implies an authority who defines what is or isn't "desirable" for other people (the "race").

The fact that you and Nick Bostrom and aparently every other person on this sub can't be bothered to understand the not so subtle difference between curing diseases and breading a fucking UBERMENCH indicates to me the dire need for such a conversation instead of letting the mods shut it down.

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if it were available via govt subsidies, would it be ethical for parents to increase their child’s empathy or intelligence

That's a good question! Don't let the mods catch you asking it! Apparently it's not ok to discuss this shit on r/singularity

According to Nick Bostrom, the inability to spout racist bullshit in academic circles without repercussions is preventing such discussions... somehow...

Ok, I get that your mad at him, but remember he was 22 when he wrote that article, and remember that this email was sent in 1995, a year prior the Bell Curve came out and started discussion on this again. It was in the vogue.

While Eugenics did mean achieving Genetic superiority by forced breeding, I see it referred to by Genetic manipulation as well lately. We really need another word for it, but I can't think of an all-encompassing word that isn't Eugenics. It's also worth pointing out that Gene editing is not completely unlike Normal Eugenics. People might not be able to afford genetic modification, nor will it be guaranteed that those already alive can get modified or put in new bodies. If that ends up being a reality, then Gene modification will potentially be just as immoral as Eugenics, meaning they will be equivalent.

​

The future is not set in stone, nor is any form of utopia guaranteed. We must all advocate for the best possible world if we want to see what we want.

Looks like the mods are right. It is pathetic that you find eugenics so repulsive. To post it on a sub where most people are rethinking everything about society and expect support is naive.

What is it exactly about Bostrom’s view that you disagree with? > In contemporary academic bioethics, the word “eugenics” is sometimes used in different and much broader sense, as including for example the view that prospective parents undergoing IVF should have access to genetic screening and diagnostic tools (as is currently the established practice in many countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom). There is a rich bioethical literature on these issues (see e.g. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/eugenics/), and it involves many complex moral considerations that cannot be captured in a single word or a slogan. I would be in favor of some uses and against others. Broadly speaking, I’m favorable to wide parental choice in these matters, including for some applications that would qualify as “enhancements” rather than “therapies”—to the extent that this distinction makes sense.

poggers

I think that's a very good question and I think a smart person would realize that such ideas tread into problematic territory. I would hope that people working in the field would be very aware of the problematic history of eugenics and would understand complicated terrain they tread.

Nick Bostrom seems to believe that exercising caution in the exploration of such powerful technology is getting in the way of important science. He seems to think that scientists shouldn't be burdened with such silly things like how their work might negatively impact society or how they might be able to communicate their ideas without using racial slurs or whatever.

Politics invades every sub I subscribe to like a virus. You are the virus carrier- trying to get us talking about who to cancel. Get a life.

Hey, mods can you take this one down, please?

Would rather deal with the sensational environmental doom post.

>Post-human doesn't imply eugenics.

There's a lot of overlap.

>Eugenics is about breeding a "superior" race and the eradication of "undesirable traits".

I mean, I can afford to give my kids a lot of advantages. In ten years that might amount to some nifty germline edits for every one of my descendants going forward. Project that advantage into the future...

If people don't want to use my tax money to subsidize these for everyone else's kids, that's their choice.

>It necessarily implies an authority defining what traits are desirable for a large group of people (the "race" in question).

It's called the FDA. As much as I hate them, this is literally their job.

>It goes beyond breeding and race and the need to eradicate any specific trait.

Some traits need eradicating. It doesn't have to be controversial; just allow parents choice and subsidize the costs where reasonable. This is hardly unprecedented, even with touchy issues. Look at the abortion rates for fetuses with Down's syndrome.

Why can't you people stay on one subject for more than one reply. It's like debating flat earthers, I swear!

Do you, or do you not understand the difference between Eugenics and Transhumanism?

To answer your question:I think Bostrom is intentionally muddying the waters. I'd love to see him actually point to a single person who believes that genetic screening and diagnostics tools for IVF alone constitute eugenics.

The term has a very clear definition:

>Eugenics: the study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable.

It's not just medicine. It's about breeding a race of people. It necessarily means there is some authority dictating what is desirable and what is undesirable for an entire population.

It has historically been used to horrific ends and it's pretty difficult to see how Bostrom himself might "redefine" it to be something less troubling or how eugenics could be used toward benevolent ends. Why impose your decisions on an entire race of people? Why not let individuals choose for themselves what traits they want or don't want?

Bostrom seems to believe in some form of Eugenics. That's clearly implied by:"Do I support eugenics? No, not as the term is commonly understood."

So there is some other definition of eugenics that he DOES support?All we get for an answer is what he thinks is overly broad (which definitely is NOT "the term as it is commonly understood". IVF genetic screening isn't "commonly understood" to be eugenics by any stretch of the imagination and I think Bostrom fucking knows that!

Does Bostrom believe that people working on such powerful technology should NOT be weary of the possible ill effect their work could have on society? Does he think that chastising the use of racial slurs and bigotry in the academic communication of such science places too much burden on scientists? Really?! That sounds pretty dumb.

Umm, think this came up a few days ago on here.

I support eugenics if the consequences of not doing it are significant and well known.

Like, it's one thing if your 'master race' is buncha people of a particular appearance who are still just humans and capable of losing.

On the other hand, if the edits make people, say:

(1) live for centuries (2) regenerate limbs (3) they are all smarter than the smartest people who ever lived (4) they are better in every sport all the time, with modified tissue that gives them superhuman strength and toughness (5) They all look like models, from age 15 to age 950.

Once you are talking about such vast improvements - something a super-intelligence could likely work out exactly how to do in a matter of a few years once one exists - it's arguably dooming any unedited child to, well, being retarded, ugly, and dead at 80.

In that situation, your "principals" have a crippling and large cost to someone not yet born.

I think the definition of eugenics needs an update.

Old school mad Nazi scientist eugenics = bad

Transhumanist eugenics = good

You've completely ignored the whole part of Eugenics that makes it fraught with problems:

>Why impose your decisions on an entire race of people? Why not let individuals choose for themselves what traits they want or don't want?

I've repeated this so so so many times. It's not rocket science.

>historically: being black or jewish or gay or any other variation of the human condition that isn't straight and white)

So this is actually false. The disreputable - as in, they are collected from data but are no longer discussed in polite academic company - studies on race and intelligence pretty much all found asians were smarter. Not white people. And for white people groups, subgroups of jewish people were the smartest.

I had a professor of human genetics who was aware of these studies, and his theory was that it was the western languages that gave westerners such overwhelming success for a period of time. It's the "operating system" not the hardware. And our large success with llms seems to suggest this is in fact correct, the hardware doesn't even need to be human!

So actually, no. In his opinion, the ubermensch was a kid from whichever asian subgroup has the highest IQ, with rich parents and growing up in a blue state in the USA... This was the "most successful" combination currently possible.

Also you gotta get real here. These differences are small. Every human is essentially mentally retarded compared to AI, both at tasks existing models are designed to do, and what they will soon be able to do.

This is a sub about the future of humanity. How could it possibly be a-political? Get a brain...

For the same reason we make parents vaccinate their children and send them to school. Because we know what happens if you don't do that.

No, it doesn't. The word means what it means. The part that makes it bad is that it's about breading a race. That necessarily implies an authority imposing its will on a large group of people. You can have transhumanism without eugenics. This is not complicated.

It's not some fluke of history that every time eugenics has been put into practice or proposed it's been a few people saying "I don't like these people, we should get rid of them. I like these other people: we should breed more of them." The concept is INHERENTLY BAD AT ITS VERY CORE.

When you do away with the idea of breeding a race (AKA: Eugenics). You're left with individual choice. Do I want a tail? yes! Do I want twelve arms? Nah. Should someone be forcing me to decide which traits are "good" or "bad"? FUCK NO!

Jesus christ. There's a line between keeping your children from dying and dictating the color of their skin. Somewhere in the middle there is complicated ground where the answer isn't so clear if something is for the good of a child or eugenics and that definitely deserves discussion, but it's not this bullshit of:

>Hurr! durr! Transhumanism = Eugenics! Hurr! Durr!

That everyone in this post is replying to me with like a bunch of lobotomized dipshits.

The problem is: The mods seem to think burying discussion about the problems of eugenics is a good idea and Nick Bostrom seems to think the main problem is that its frowned upon in academia when you act like a huge bigot, use racial slurs, and spout debunked Nazi "science".

Like, yeah Nick, I'm sure we'd be making way more progress in the field if we just let a bunch of racist trolls publish their "work". That must really be the biggest problem facing the field. \s

At age 22? In 1995? Yeah whatever. I don't care and neither should you.

Meh I disagree. Eugenics was always about improving/enhancing the human physical body through crazy stuff like breeding only certain people. This was only because they didn't have the technology that we have today. Not to mention the obsession with nationalism. But we don't live in that place anymore which is why the definition needs updating, because we live in different times.

There is no reason why words cannot be redefined, we do it all the time. Troll, catfish, cloud, tablet, cougar. All these words have been redefined in the last few years, what's the difference?

Maybe we could say there is eugenics and there is forced eugenics. See what adding an extra word can do, amazing right?

But hey you seem to have taken a pretty stubborn position on this so I have no interest in trying to convince you there is nothing wrong with eugenics anymore.

I don't have the energy to even respond to your bullshit parade of long debunked junk "science". You so confidently proclaim, with zero evidence, a littany of ignorant "facts".

You want to see a magic trick?

I can tell the future!

You're going to produce some "scientific" evidence for your racist bullshit that was rejected from publications NOT because it was riddled with flaws but because the powers that be don't want to acknowledge that melanin makes people dumb. Those papers are going to rely on a metric called "heritance" which you're going to conflate with "genetics" even though wealth has a high "heritance" measure and nobody has been able to find the gene that makes money shoot out of peoples' buttholes!

How did I do?

Fuck you, mods. I hope you all suck a giant donkey dick, then choke on the warm, thick load as it oozes down your throats.

You're a bunch of fucking cowards.

No, idiot. He doubled down on it 7 days ago.

You can disagree all you want. It just makes you wrong and ignorant.You could read about it. Who came up with it. What the actual definition of the word is, etc. if you want to be less wrong and less ignorant. But making up your own definition and history is wrong and dumb and ignorant.

Why the fuck would you choose to redefine the term Eugenics to something that has no relevance to what it meant to the creator of the term or the historical use of the term or the dictionary definition of the term?

You're going way out of your way to appologize for Bostrom being an idiot.

Should we "redefine" Rapist to mean "a unicorn that dances on rainbows"? WHY?

I don't care enough about the subject to know how much was correct and embarrassing vs unscientific. I was explaining that the modern version of it - often pushed by old white scientists - usually finds Asians the smartest and women more intelligent on average but with a tighter distribution. (This got the president of Harvard cancelled for mentioning this knowledge aloud). This makes your understanding of it incorrect.

"I hope you all suck a giant donkey dick, then choke on the warm, thick load as it oozes down your throats"

furries: Hot

But seriously move on

I for one don't think we should put so much value on intelligence. Maybe even health. There's no reason for humans to try to play God. It's not like we did such a good job on Earth. Correlation is not causation. So humans have more intelligence than chimpanzees. This might be explained by the difference in DNA. So do we really need to tweak this little piece of DNA? Is that what makes us intelligent? What if by increasing intelligence, we introduce bugs in our genetics? I have read Nick Bostrom's books. Some of his ideas make sense. But he obviously likes exaggerating and getting attention. So this email doesn't surprise me. We should beware false prophets who tap into our desires for a better world. So easy for them to introduce counterfactuals when they do that.

>I don't care enough about the subject to know how much was correct and embarrassing vs unscientific.

Yeah, no fucking shit. Yet you still spout it with supreme confidence and claim that I'm the one who's incorrect. Go figure...

I am confident I know what the numerous studies all said. I don't and you don't have sufficient evidence to disprove them or to prove the null hypothesis. (That intelligence isn't heritable)

Good for him

Oh I see what's going on now. You're using this latest Bostrom stuff as a platform for virtual signalling.

Ok, this makes sense why your comments are all so emotionally charged and you're dismissing what others are saying rather than trying to have a rational discussion about the subject. Cause you don't care what other people think.

They can't hear you, no one can, your post was removed, your'e shouting into an empty void.

I know

My comments are emotionally charged because 9/10 of the replies I’ve gotten are either pro-eugenics or incredibly ignorant about what Eugenics even means. It’s distressing. You seem to think it’s a synonym for genetic engineering. It’s not. You seem to think we should just redefine words on a whim so that nothing means anything anymore. It’s distressing to see how profoundly ignorant this entire community is about why Eugenics is bad. It’s distressing that the mods want to bury any discussion about it.

I’m not trying to signal shit. I’m not being cryptic. I’m being very direct. You don’t have to read between the lines. My thoughts are all there in black and white.

You haven’t provided a shred of evidence for me to disprove. You’re the one making the claim that “studies all said” something. Which studies? Link ‘‘em and I’ll be happy to knock them down.

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>The fact that you and Nick Bostrom and aparently every other person on this sub can't be bothered to understand the not so subtle difference between curing diseases and breading a fucking UBERMENCH indicates to me the dire need for such a conversation instead of letting the mods shut it down.

FUCKING YES!!!

I was definitely shocked to read that email. But I found his apology acceptable. And yeah, I'm probably biased, cause I've enjoyed a lot of his work.

Jennifer Doudna (creator of CRISPR) wrote a book about the subject of genetic engineering and while she does caution against misuse of the tech, she thinks much more good can come of it.

Dude you are being super unpleasant. It’s entirely possible to have this discussion in a respectful and open way, but you’re making every exchange into a combative showdown. Does it occur to you that, even if Bostrom’s stance on eugenics is distasteful, you are being exactly the type of interlocutor that he’s criticizing? You’d persuade more people to your side if you didn’t start from a position that everyone who doesn’t exactly mirror your opinions is shamefully wrong.

>Which studies? Link ‘‘em and I’ll be happy to knock them down.

You are not a rational actor and can't be trusted. You believe without evidence that everyone is equal because that's 'woke'. If it turns out that everyone is not equal you would not be able to accept the possibility and would have to start seeking false explanations.

Don't tell me what I believe. Provide proof of your claims or GTFO.

Go read the fucking original material instead of making bullshit claims because it makes your dick hard to imagine someone losing their career from something they said over 20 years ago.