Algore is not a Darwinist. He's more of a Lysenko kinda guy.

HMMM who to trust the guy who wrote Sphere or the vast majority of scientists on earth?

A physician isn't a scientist? BTW, see Orrin's post to the survey which found that the majority of doctors don't think Darwinism can fully explain human origins.

"vast majority of scientists on earth"

What about the ones off of it, or who just live in their own little world? (Worlds funded by MacArthur and gov't grants and tenure, of course.)

The problem with the article is what Chrichton misses: The reason we don't discuss eugenics so much is because it has been outsourced to the private sector in the form of pre-emptive abortions, designer babies and the like.

I have to say I'm never quite sure what people mean when they say we have "disproved" eugenics. As Crichton notes, the terminology was so vague that there probably wasn't anything to prove or disprove. It wasn't like some scientist came up with definitive proof that eugenics didn't work, which would be like trying to disprove a popular religious belief. In fact, I'm pretty sure some revised version of this theory would still be taken seriously if not for the Holocaust.

At the broadest level, no one doubts that human beings can selectively mate and produce offspring with some particular quality enhanced. The argument against large-scale genetic tinkering is essentially, and properly, moral. It says that we have no right to force other people to live out our intellectual fantasies, or to degrade and look down our noses at other people just because they are not as smart as us, or as athletic, or whatever. To do so is abominable and degrading behavior. There really isn't much to say other than that.

BARRASSO, At one time, the "vast majority of scientists" were absolutely cdertain that:

The earth is flat
The position of stars at the time of birth determine the course of an individual's life
Iron can be turned into gold
Earth is the center of the universe
Witches should be burned
And, yes, blacks, homosexuals and Jews are inferior and should be eliminated from the gene pool

So rather than choose between the guy who wrote Sphere or the vast majority of scientists, maybe you should learn to think for yourself.

They may be on the earth, but they're still in their own little world.

BARRASSO, At one time, the "vast majority of scientists" were absolutely cdertain that:

The earth is flat

When?

Very sloppy thinking. We all jump to agree that certain science had been abused by politics. But then we go on to evaluate this or that scientific principle politically, and only politically.

Come on, now. We know how to think about these things. Is the concept provable amd disprovable? Is it repeatable? Does it fit the data? That a concept may be abused or misapplied does not make it false. Rather the morality which compasses the abuse, and the laws which permit the abuse, are defective.

It is just political. That's why Einstein was so troubled by Heisenberg, Schrodinger and Godel. The theories are all false and the results are a function of what you want to find.

Jon:

Of course, modern science demonstrates not just that the Earth is the center of the Universe but that you are.

brothersjuddblog.com/archives/2006/04/oughtnt_we_dig.html

This says it very well:

http://www.davidszondy.com/future/man/eugenics.htm

Posted by: Mikey at October 16, 2007 10:53 AM

Mikey: It tells the story well enough, but still confounds science and morality. Matt Murphy pointed out, and I tried to point out that the Eugenics movement was moral monstrosity. The science of genetics is a description of reality and is neither moral nor immoral.

If a trait is hereditable, it will be found in a population in accordance with Mendelian, and, yes Galtonian, principles. All this prattle about Hitler and Stalin is but the greatest of disloyalties, as Herbert Spencer put it, the fear that the truth will be not to one's liking.

Tell me now, having judged the Eugenics movement, rightly I should say, as an affront to human freedon and dignity, who among us is prepared to again outrage liberty and justice by declaring that individuals may not practice eugenics for themselves, should they wish.

You don't mean liberty and justice, which require persecuting eugenicists, but freedom or paganism, which requires permitting them.

Lou:

Mate with whom you will, I care not. Have or do not have children, I care not.

But when humans are being treated like cattle? when you stop seeing humans as individuals and start seeing them as groups as defined by whatever criteria? Then I care, for I hear the bell toll. It is the movement aspects, that bothers me. It is the easy we've-been-down-this-one-before slippery slope of having government start decreeing these answers when very little is known about the subject matter - too little to even honestly say there is a problem and what the question even consists of - that truly bothers me.

Posted by: Mikey at October 16, 2007 3:07 PM

Mikey: That's exactly what people do when given the freedom to marry whom they will--they seek and find mates of intelligence similar to their own. The degree of assortative mating along I.Q. lines is higher than for any other hereditable trait.

The key here is the degree of liberty in all its forms enabling individuals to find those soul-mates who encounter reality at the same level as themselves.

This is not about treating people as cattle. On the contrary, it is about liberating individuals from irrelevant constraints upon their life-choices. No one is to be told whom he or she is to marry. Rather, as old barriers to assorative mating--race, class, religion, mere geography--fall away, more of us are enabled to make that intellectual connection with a person who can understand us and whom we can understand.

Intelligence, not genes.