The issue is that the things people want to breed humans for - "intelligence", "beauty", "virtue", "character", "leadership", "creativity", "talent" - are not physical characteristics that have an objective and consistent definitionhttps://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/1228943686953664512 …
-
Show this thread
-
If you just wanted to throw morality and decency to the wind and engage in rapes and atrocities and so on to make people really tall or really short, sure, you could do that Make everyone be a redhead, make nobody a redhead, make skin really pale or dark No one says you can't
1 reply 3 retweets 104 likesShow this thread -
But the thing eugenicists are after, making people "better"? No, it's impossible - not just scientifically impossible but *logically* impossible Their idea of "better" isn't a real thing
1 reply 7 retweets 134 likesShow this thread -
It's not like it's never been tried Quite the opposite, people were fucking obsessed with it *Of course* we tried to practice "animal husbandry" on human beings It's where the term "good breeding" to mean class came from That's what all those aristocratic family trees are for
2 replies 11 retweets 112 likesShow this thread -
That's what the idea of an "aristocrat" is, that's what the word "aristeia" means, this idea that through social evolution the best human beings formed their own subspecies and rose to rule the rest of us The thing is, it obviously didn't work
2 replies 13 retweets 105 likesShow this thread -
The history of aristocratic breeding in humans is the same litany of health problems and genetic diseases as with fancy purebred dogs Only worse, because the "breed standard" we were trying to achieve with human nobles was completely imaginary
1 reply 12 retweets 119 likesShow this thread -
It would be one thing if Charles I's fucked up face was a sacrifice his family made to preserve their bloodline's great wisdom or purity of spirit or natural charisma or ability to control dragons But it wasn't None of those things actually existed in "royal blood"
1 reply 9 retweets 110 likesShow this thread -
The strongest argument against any of these things being heritable in any simple sense is that *that's what we tried for centuries*, we had so many societies based on trying to breed for positive human traits, and they all failed Kept getting overthrown by randos
1 reply 5 retweets 103 likesShow this thread -
This is one of those things that's been fairly well established by history and if you want to keep believing in eugenics you have to either go full neoreactionary ("The history books are lies with by peasants! The Hapsburgs really were superhuman demigods!") or just be stupid
1 reply 6 retweets 103 likesShow this thread
Falling into that same trap of "X has never REALLY been tried by SMART people who knew SCIENCE" etc
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.