It seems the prefix Eu maybe problematic for political reasons. Holding aside the history of the term for a moment, it makes sense to have disgenics (bad) and eugenics (good). But who decides which to use with any given practice becomes the issue. I suspect back then if both words existed, those practices would still be labeled as eugenics. Too often it takes time to see the error of our ways.
I wonder if the eu prefix is used to persuade people a practice is good, when it isn't accepted as good yet.
But I agree, once a term gets a bad meaning, it sticks, so it is futile to attempt rebranding the term.
DeJarnette's poem is typical. He praises the livestock and vegetables of the farmer based on their shapes and colors, then condemns the farmer's children based on their -shapes and colors. Nothing about their intelligence, creativity, charity (in which he is sadly lacking) or anything else but appearance.
Genetic variation is valuable and necessary. Without it, a species or a society would have little chance of surviving any significant stress. No one is perceptive enough to judge these things, especially in a creature as complex as a man. Even after a man is dead and appears to have lived a pointless life, who can say that if there had been other circumstances, it might not have been different.
If any of the -good- eugenics ideas are actually of value, they should be able to be justified on other grounds.
I was aghast to learn that forced sterilization continued for so long. It's almost like hearing "slavery was practiced in some parts of Alaska and Idaho until 2009."
Also, your movie list has simplified life for me: All life is downhill from economics.
Yeah, I'm sorry, but Fleischman is right here. Bans on sibling and 1st cousin marriage? Absolutely eugenics, and it's not even close. Likewise genetic counseling.
Really, you're not arguing here, you're just emoting a lot.
All three types of Down syndrome are genetic conditions (relating to the genes), but only 1% of all cases of Down syndrome have a hereditary component (passed from parent to child through the genes). Heredity is not a factor in trisomy 21 (nondisjunction) and mosaicism. It is a failure of cell division, that's all. Parents don't pass it on to the children in a hereditary way, nor do Down's Syndrome victims pass it on to their own children.
Thus, if you support Iceland's murder of Down's Syndrome kids in the womb, or America's murder of Down's Syndrome kids in the womb, you are absolutely a eugenicist. Period.
Your list of movies with economic themes omitted some examples which deserve mention because while fictionalized they portray actual people. "Margin Call" is supposedly about Goldman Sachs and "The Big Short" is biographical. "Wall Street" has a malevolent white collar crook who supposedly represents Ivan Boesky. "Wolf of Wall Street" is biographical but Jordan Belfort is such a compulsive liar that it is impossible to tell how accurate the movie is. ""Boiler Room", which portrays Stratton Oakmont with the names changed to protect the guilty, is a fictionalized account of Stratton Oakmont's favorite financial strategy, pump-and-dump. In one scene, the stockbrokers watch Alec Baldwin's famous monologue in "Glengarry Glen Ross." The late, unlamented Bernard Madoff has been portrayed in movies, too. "The Smartest Guys In The Room" is an accurate documentary of Enron while "The Crooked E" is fictionalized but at least the protagonist ends up happy.
Not sure I’ve seen any of these—other than Wall Street! The next time I offer such a list—and I have plenty more films to offer—I will certainly include Network, with special attention to Ned Beatty’s “The World Is a Corporation” speech: https://youtu.be/yuBe93FMiJc
Very charitable and thoughtful rebuttal. And a delight to read. Thank you!
Four things:
1- Do you reject the idea that our aversion to sibling sex is intuitive eugenics? You seem to have done so in a comment below. Even nonhuman animals have aversion to kin mating so I don't think it has anything to do with the benefits of alliance formation of outgroup marriage.
2- Eugenics" doesn't have a negative connotation in much of the world.
Steve Hsu says:
"In China, eugenics is a positive thing. It doesn't have the negative association that it does in the west with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. That just isn't a cultural association that in any part of Asia is made between, something like embryo selection or pre-implantation genetic testing or prenatal testing"
Would you predict that such a lack of association with the historical atrocities of the eugenics movement makes Asians more likely to perpetrate atrocities in the name of eugenics? If not... what's the harm in using the word eugenics? Also, China has begun to subsidize IVF and will probably subsidize polygenic screening, so there is a very real possibility that their lack of bad association with the word eugenics is going to have many real world ramifications.
3- I'm very much in favor of interventions like polygenic screening since, as I see it, we have come to the limits of what nutrition and educational interventions can do for e.g. affluent people in the West. How do you rhetorically combat the aversion to interventions that involve no coercion or imposition on choice when they are called eugenics? As I said in my essay, critics are using the word correctly.
4- As you said, agreeing with many of the statements I made doesn't make you a eugenicist. So, what statements would someone need to agree with to be called a eugenicist? Do you have to be in favor of sterilization or murder by the state on the basis of "bad genes"? Is there any commonly held belief that would actually make one a eugenicist?
> It’s a Wonderful Life: Terrific explanation of the principles of fractional-reserve banking.
Not really. What Jimmy Stewart described in the scene in question is a non-fractional reserve banking system; as bad as what he describes is, for the way it makes the bank vulnerable to runs, fractional reserve banking is significantly worse.
A bank running on a fractional reserve system does not simply take your money and lend it out to someone else; it takes your money, claims it as a "reserve asset," and then lends out several times that amount (which it does not actually possess!) to other people, such that its real assets are only a small *fraction* of the loans it makes. A reserve ratio of 10% means that for every $100 a bank takes in in deposits, they lend out $1,000. This makes them far, far more vulnerable to bank runs than even the Jimmy Stewart system, because their actual liquid cash reserves are more accounting trickery than they are real.
Honestly, I think that that scene does a real disservice. The film it's in is so beloved that so many people have seen it — and so many of them have seen it over and over again! — and that scene sticks in their mind and now they think they know how banking works. There have been plenty of times when I've had to explain to someone, "you know that scene in It's A Wonderful Life where Jimmy Stewart explains that your money isn't in the bank, it's in your neighbor's farm? Well, the truth is so much worse: what the bank *really* did is take your money and lend it out ten times over to a bunch of different neighbors. Not only does the bank not have your money, they lied and pretended they don't-have ten times as much of it as they actually don't-have!"
"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning." -- Henry Ford
It seems the prefix Eu maybe problematic for political reasons. Holding aside the history of the term for a moment, it makes sense to have disgenics (bad) and eugenics (good). But who decides which to use with any given practice becomes the issue. I suspect back then if both words existed, those practices would still be labeled as eugenics. Too often it takes time to see the error of our ways.
I wonder if the eu prefix is used to persuade people a practice is good, when it isn't accepted as good yet.
But I agree, once a term gets a bad meaning, it sticks, so it is futile to attempt rebranding the term.
DeJarnette's poem is typical. He praises the livestock and vegetables of the farmer based on their shapes and colors, then condemns the farmer's children based on their -shapes and colors. Nothing about their intelligence, creativity, charity (in which he is sadly lacking) or anything else but appearance.
Genetic variation is valuable and necessary. Without it, a species or a society would have little chance of surviving any significant stress. No one is perceptive enough to judge these things, especially in a creature as complex as a man. Even after a man is dead and appears to have lived a pointless life, who can say that if there had been other circumstances, it might not have been different.
If any of the -good- eugenics ideas are actually of value, they should be able to be justified on other grounds.
I was aghast to learn that forced sterilization continued for so long. It's almost like hearing "slavery was practiced in some parts of Alaska and Idaho until 2009."
Also, your movie list has simplified life for me: All life is downhill from economics.
Great post!
Yeah, I'm sorry, but Fleischman is right here. Bans on sibling and 1st cousin marriage? Absolutely eugenics, and it's not even close. Likewise genetic counseling.
Really, you're not arguing here, you're just emoting a lot.
All three types of Down syndrome are genetic conditions (relating to the genes), but only 1% of all cases of Down syndrome have a hereditary component (passed from parent to child through the genes). Heredity is not a factor in trisomy 21 (nondisjunction) and mosaicism. It is a failure of cell division, that's all. Parents don't pass it on to the children in a hereditary way, nor do Down's Syndrome victims pass it on to their own children.
Thus, if you support Iceland's murder of Down's Syndrome kids in the womb, or America's murder of Down's Syndrome kids in the womb, you are absolutely a eugenicist. Period.
Your list of movies with economic themes omitted some examples which deserve mention because while fictionalized they portray actual people. "Margin Call" is supposedly about Goldman Sachs and "The Big Short" is biographical. "Wall Street" has a malevolent white collar crook who supposedly represents Ivan Boesky. "Wolf of Wall Street" is biographical but Jordan Belfort is such a compulsive liar that it is impossible to tell how accurate the movie is. ""Boiler Room", which portrays Stratton Oakmont with the names changed to protect the guilty, is a fictionalized account of Stratton Oakmont's favorite financial strategy, pump-and-dump. In one scene, the stockbrokers watch Alec Baldwin's famous monologue in "Glengarry Glen Ross." The late, unlamented Bernard Madoff has been portrayed in movies, too. "The Smartest Guys In The Room" is an accurate documentary of Enron while "The Crooked E" is fictionalized but at least the protagonist ends up happy.
Not sure I’ve seen any of these—other than Wall Street! The next time I offer such a list—and I have plenty more films to offer—I will certainly include Network, with special attention to Ned Beatty’s “The World Is a Corporation” speech: https://youtu.be/yuBe93FMiJc
Very charitable and thoughtful rebuttal. And a delight to read. Thank you!
Four things:
1- Do you reject the idea that our aversion to sibling sex is intuitive eugenics? You seem to have done so in a comment below. Even nonhuman animals have aversion to kin mating so I don't think it has anything to do with the benefits of alliance formation of outgroup marriage.
2- Eugenics" doesn't have a negative connotation in much of the world.
Steve Hsu says:
"In China, eugenics is a positive thing. It doesn't have the negative association that it does in the west with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. That just isn't a cultural association that in any part of Asia is made between, something like embryo selection or pre-implantation genetic testing or prenatal testing"
Would you predict that such a lack of association with the historical atrocities of the eugenics movement makes Asians more likely to perpetrate atrocities in the name of eugenics? If not... what's the harm in using the word eugenics? Also, China has begun to subsidize IVF and will probably subsidize polygenic screening, so there is a very real possibility that their lack of bad association with the word eugenics is going to have many real world ramifications.
3- I'm very much in favor of interventions like polygenic screening since, as I see it, we have come to the limits of what nutrition and educational interventions can do for e.g. affluent people in the West. How do you rhetorically combat the aversion to interventions that involve no coercion or imposition on choice when they are called eugenics? As I said in my essay, critics are using the word correctly.
4- As you said, agreeing with many of the statements I made doesn't make you a eugenicist. So, what statements would someone need to agree with to be called a eugenicist? Do you have to be in favor of sterilization or murder by the state on the basis of "bad genes"? Is there any commonly held belief that would actually make one a eugenicist?
> It’s a Wonderful Life: Terrific explanation of the principles of fractional-reserve banking.
Not really. What Jimmy Stewart described in the scene in question is a non-fractional reserve banking system; as bad as what he describes is, for the way it makes the bank vulnerable to runs, fractional reserve banking is significantly worse.
A bank running on a fractional reserve system does not simply take your money and lend it out to someone else; it takes your money, claims it as a "reserve asset," and then lends out several times that amount (which it does not actually possess!) to other people, such that its real assets are only a small *fraction* of the loans it makes. A reserve ratio of 10% means that for every $100 a bank takes in in deposits, they lend out $1,000. This makes them far, far more vulnerable to bank runs than even the Jimmy Stewart system, because their actual liquid cash reserves are more accounting trickery than they are real.
Honestly, I think that that scene does a real disservice. The film it's in is so beloved that so many people have seen it — and so many of them have seen it over and over again! — and that scene sticks in their mind and now they think they know how banking works. There have been plenty of times when I've had to explain to someone, "you know that scene in It's A Wonderful Life where Jimmy Stewart explains that your money isn't in the bank, it's in your neighbor's farm? Well, the truth is so much worse: what the bank *really* did is take your money and lend it out ten times over to a bunch of different neighbors. Not only does the bank not have your money, they lied and pretended they don't-have ten times as much of it as they actually don't-have!"
"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning." -- Henry Ford