EPTElon Musk's lies, propaganda, etc. - Page 64
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Acrofales
Spain17915 Posts
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WombaT
Northern Ireland24385 Posts
On May 09 2025 04:53 Acrofales wrote: How inevitable. oBlade defending eugenics. Ineffective eugenics at that, which is what’s even more laughable. I don’t think we’re trending ‘less smart’, innately. If we’re expressing it, in certain domains it’s because of things like social media brainrot. Luckily, not something Musk is personally involved in otherwise it would look even more ridiculous. Intelligence untethered to good values is, outside of certain scenarios , useless, or indeed worse than that. Gimme some good-natured, moral idiots over these ‘intelligent’ sociopaths any day of the fucking week. If I’m in a nation fighting World War 2 or something, I want that war to be prosecuted by psychopaths. I probably don’t want to be in the front lines of said war, but you probably want ruthless Oblade seems a bright fellow or lass, I’d dare say more so than I, but my god it’s really not harnessed in any reasonable direction. | ||
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Yurie
11755 Posts
Apart from that I don't see why it would not work. Works fine for dogs, cats, plants etc. Would require eugenics to work on a reasonable timeline, such as 500 years, but isn't really impossible. | ||
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oBlade
United States5406 Posts
On May 09 2025 04:53 Acrofales wrote: How inevitable. oBlade defending eugenics. My mistake, I was wrong. You know what? It's actually a self-evidently good thing if smart people have fewer children and stupid people have more children. Smart people should have less children. The reason for this is there's a bad word called "eugenics" which was used by some bad people who wanted to improve something in a bad way for bad reasons. So improving things is bad. I am moral. For example, if you're against incest and first cousin marriage because of the heritable disease risk in the offspring that result from such relationships, you are a eugenicist. Oops. Oh and if you think global overpopulation is an issue, you are a racist. Because the countries with the highest fertility are black and brown. Oops. You surely don't think that way do you, virtuous man? So how about no. Eugenics is sterilizing the weak. Eugenics is China aborting female babies. Eugenics is trying to create a master race, usually to rule all the others. Which, by the way, that last thing - that is exactly what you will get in the future if you have a cohort of smart, elite resource-laden people interbreeding for years while the genetic proportion of stupid takes the lions share of the pie. Imagine the population becoming so dumb in the future we have to use genetic engineering to reverse it, for example. Do you find that more or less moral than simply making sure our society maintains its status quo now by figuring out why people don't have children, and encouraging it? It's not hard to figure out the cause, either. Smart people wield technology. Technology enables family planning. In the case of smart people, it enables family prevention. They're busy being educated and productive which takes life time away from children. Saying I am "defending eugenics" is pure BS. Think about this. We are the only species that has root access to our own evolution. There is no powerless raising of hands like "well, our society might be changing us in a certain way, nothing we can do, in fact even mentioning or thinking about the fact is some kind of evil." Our society is made by us. We control what it does to us. We aren't simple experiment subjects suffering its random effects. We together hold the administrator password to our society. If you apply incremental change over time, you get macro change. It compounds. The only handwave away from this issue is WombaT's, which is to claim there is no effect of a difference between generations. It's not borne out by the studies I personally saw, which map a clear negative correlation from intelligence to fertility in the US. Another point WombaT interestingly raises is this is not limited to any specific trait. Take psychopaths then. A society could continuously cull the 5-10% most antisocial among it until it had largely bred out stealing, murder, violence among it. Like forget an eye for an eye. Summary execution for littering. Okay, say you get your Barney the Dinosaur and Bambi society from that. The problem is that we need psychopaths (probably). We need them to be soldiers. We need them to guard the prisons that do exist. If any one criminal comes up, we need those traits on our side to defend us from the criminal. We need them in the slaughterhouses so we have delicious steak to cook for our friends. My view to put it simply is: Don't mess with huge things that you don't understand, because the risks of unintended consequences are enormous. In the case of humans, that boils down to something quite popular. Conservationism. Every other species, environmentalists insist we do nothing to fuck them up. Don't destroy their habitats. Don't mess up their population. Just apply that inwards to the most important animals of all. Human conservationism. Until we actually know how things work, making sure we remain as frozen to the current snapshot as possible, is the safest bet. A race of genius triathlete superhumans could very well be self-destructive. But a race of obese morons seems assuredly so. Humanity at present has survived in a reliable way that should be preserved by default and not abandoned without purposeful, intentional cause. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland24385 Posts
Thing is this tangent is more about Musk either being wrong, utterly full of shit, or both. The wider topic is interesting, sure absolutely. I may dip my toes back in later. | ||
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Broetchenholer
Germany1880 Posts
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Simberto
Germany11404 Posts
On May 10 2025 03:55 Broetchenholer wrote: Sorry, but no. Society has never selected for intelligence in our years of history. Evolution is not brains get bigger. Evolution is stuff goes into the direction of more survival. Do you know who survives best? The stupid immoral brawny human. Has alwAys and will always. Despite our society never valuing intelligence in our mates over looks, health and social competence, society has made more and more intelligent things. Because intelligence just happens and will always happen as long as you nurture it. Funnily enoughz that's something your political side of the American conversation is against, at least for those that have not earned it to be called intelligent because they have not had the money to train for their IQ test. I kinda disagree here. You fall into that jock nerd stereotype thing, assuming the smart people can't also be strong. Overall, being smarter is a huge advantage, both in survival and in gaining mates. Because all other things being equal, a smart person can do anything a stupid person can do, but also a few additional things. And if they are really smart, they know when to do those additional things, and when not to do those additional things. Note that "smart" doesn't mean "more moral" or anything along those lines, and it also doesn't mean "autistic". Most smart people are not rain man. Being smart involves a lot of things, not just being a sciencey nerd. However, being smart is costly. Brainpower costs calories. Historically (and prehistorically), that was a huge problem, because calories were the most important resource. Nowadays, that is basically not a problem. Smart people being able to foresee the consequences of having children for themselves might be a problem, though. But someone being smart also has a general evolutionary advantage for your family and clan, even if you personally don't reproduce as much. It allows them to acquire more resources, which allows for more children. Note that this is not an argument in favor of eugenics. Just an argument for "smartness" being something that is an evolutionary advantage. | ||
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