On Wed, Aug 22, 2001 at 11:00:49PM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:
> Oh. Do you think that when Galton and the late 19th century
> types used the word (speaking of historical usage), they had
> in mind government force? Or did the various Eugenics Societies
> merely encourage the "fit" to breed and the unfit not to?
It was different between different nations, but many of the eugenics
proponents did lobby for various government initiatives that in many
cases amounted to force. The sterilization programs in the US and
various european nations were one result, for example. In general the
memeset said "we got this huge problem we need to solve fast", and given
the control-centric thinking at that time even the most liberal eugenics
promoter was (perhaps inadvertently) promoting dangerous initiatives.
> I
> recall the right-wing William Shockley proposing that we pay
> $1000 per I.Q. point below 100 to people to not have children.
> If I had a real nation, and I cared about whether it prospered
> in a competitive world, I think that I'd go along with his
> proposal!
Would you allow immigration? Think about it. And how do you make sure
people with < 100 IQ don't cheat on the tests to get lower scores?
Seriously, the idea is of course rather pointless because the
heritability of intelligence is not that strong and the generation time
of humans is long, so when you would get your genetic change outside
factors such as intelligence amplification would likely be far larger
than any genetic benefits. Not to mention the issues whether high IQ
really helps a nation better than free trade or an open society.
Not to mention the ethical problems with a government using tax money to
reward lack of intelligence.
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