You propose that your parents should not have been allowed to have offspring based on their intelligence, and yet 1/3 of your parent's offspring are above-average and productive members of society. I know a wealthy family, in which both parents hold PhDs, who treated their 4 kids very well - yet all 4 are pot-smoking slackers who dropped out of high school to leach off the system.

By pretty much any arbitrary standard, your parents have actually done substantially better at parenting (1/3 successful offspring > 0/4).

And this is the fatal flaw of any eugenics solution: there is no possibility of an objective standard by which to judge the 'value' of a member of society. Even if such criteria were possible, there is no way we could guarantee that our criteria were beneficial to the long-term development of the human race.

[quote name='SteveDeFacto' timestamp='1327251170' post='4905119']
Someone did indeed call social workers to remove my sisters and I from the custody of my parents but there was no clear signs of abuse. I'm afraid at the moment a child must undergo severe abuse to the point of being life threatening in order for action to be taken.

I'm still bemused at how you jump from 'the social welfare safety net is badly implemented' to 'K1LL TH3 BR33D3RS!!!'. Would it not be simpler to just reform the system, so that social workers can effectively carry out their job?

Knowing the supply of organ transplants are very low. Should the mental state of recipients not be taken in to account?

Intelligence is not a prerequisite to being a good parent (in practice, genius-level intelligence often leads to terrible parenting). Intelligence is not a prerequisite to being a productive member of society (in practice, genius-level intelligence makes for very poor workers). As long as an individual has survivability and a reasonable quality-of-life expectation, intelligence should not factor into the equation.

[sub][sup](in this particular instance, there *are* both survivability and quality-of-life issues - but that doesn't mean we can set a general precedent)[/sup][/sub]
[/quote]

I have yet to be successful. There maybe no objective standard to judge one's value but I think we have a pretty decent system in place right now to judge if one is clinically insane. My mother's mother was placed in the care of a mental ward for schizophrenia. If at that point she were to have been sterilized and her children were removed from her custody the whole situation I endured would have been avoided.

There maybe no objective standard to judge one's value but I think we have a pretty decent system in place right now to judge if one is clinically insane. My mother's mother was placed in the care of a mental ward for schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is very common among genius-level intellects, along with bi-polar depression, sociopathy, and a host of other mental illnesses - there's considerable evidence to suggest that the mental illness is a side-effect of increased intellect/creativity.

In other words, if you sterilise everyone with mental health issues, you run the risk of eliminating science and art in a few generations.

[quote name='SteveDeFacto' timestamp='1327259702' post='4905161']
There maybe no objective standard to judge one's value but I think we have a pretty decent system in place right now to judge if one is clinically insane. My mother's mother was placed in the care of a mental ward for schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is very common among genius-level intellects, along with bi-polar depression, sociopathy, and a host of other mental illnesses - there's considerable evidence to suggest that the mental illness is a side-effect of increased intellect/creativity.

In other words, if you sterilise everyone with mental health issues, you run the risk of eliminating science and art in a few generations.
[/quote]

I am very aware of hypomania and the positive effects on creativity that result from too much dopamine. Just because a few people develop high intelligence due to mutations in their brain does not make up for the endless sea of morons.

I highly doubt this planet will ever become overpopulated; wars, diseases, natural disasters and other similar events tend to regulate population numbers pretty well. Also, have you ever thought about how much space there is? There's millions of acres that nobody is using. Also, if you think about it, humans have been around for quite a long time and we've done pretty well, at least with surviving.

And about regulating the "lesser" humans, why? Do you not think these kinds of problems have never been experienced before? This isn't solvable without extreme measures. But what if these extreme measures fail? We could be a lot worse off then we are now. Sometimes the side effects of a "solution" can be worse than the original problem.

[quote name='Luckless' timestamp='1327243727' post='4905106']
Or,... Try to keep up with me now as I make this radical shift in thinking... Maybe we could work on our social support systems, so that kids can be removed from such family environments and given the care and support they deserve?

Someone did indeed call social workers to remove my sisters and I from the custody of my parents but there was no clear signs of abuse. I'm afraid at the moment a child must undergo severe abuse to the point of being life threatening in order for action to be taken.

As for giving "All individuals a say in their future", do you mean a pure democracy? Where everyone gets to vote on issues, and we go with majority rule? Great idea. But only picture this: me and my friend vote that supporting Eugenics should carry the death penalty. And guess what,... You're the only other guy in the room. "Democracy" is great! As long as you're not the minority.

You can say what ever you want but it is a far better system then we have in place at the moment.
[/quote]

Wait, so let me get this straight. You claim to be above average, yet when I suggest that the current social support systems are currently inadequate, and need improvement, your 'counter-argument' is that they were inadequate... And therefore there is no room to improve them so this doesn't happen again? Really?

Oh, and the system that allows me and a friend to Kill You, because we out number you and have decided that killing you should be Law, is somehow an improvement on the current systems?

How is that in any way an improvement? Given the limited number of people agreeing with you here, you're not appearing to be on the side of the majority, which puts you in a very dangerous and powerless place in a purely democratic, majority rule, system. (aka, we can't kill you/take your stuff/take all your rights away, because there are more of us than there are of you, and you get No Say What-so-ever in what we do.)

[quote name='SteveDeFacto' timestamp='1327251170' post='4905119']
[quote name='Luckless' timestamp='1327243727' post='4905106']
Or,... Try to keep up with me now as I make this radical shift in thinking... Maybe we could work on our social support systems, so that kids can be removed from such family environments and given the care and support they deserve?

Someone did indeed call social workers to remove my sisters and I from the custody of my parents but there was no clear signs of abuse. I'm afraid at the moment a child must undergo severe abuse to the point of being life threatening in order for action to be taken.

As for giving "All individuals a say in their future", do you mean a pure democracy? Where everyone gets to vote on issues, and we go with majority rule? Great idea. But only picture this: me and my friend vote that supporting Eugenics should carry the death penalty. And guess what,... You're the only other guy in the room. "Democracy" is great! As long as you're not the minority.

You can say what ever you want but it is a far better system then we have in place at the moment.
[/quote]

Wait, so let me get this straight. You claim to be above average, yet when I suggest that the current social support systems are currently inadequate, and need improvement, your 'counter-argument' is that they were inadequate... And therefore there is no room to improve them so this doesn't happen again? Really?

Oh, and the system that allows me and a friend to Kill You, because we out number you and have decided that killing you should be Law, is somehow an improvement on the current systems?

How is that in any way an improvement? Given the limited number of people agreeing with you here, you're not appearing to be on the side of the majority, which puts you in a very dangerous and powerless place in a purely democratic, majority rule, system. (aka, we can't kill you/take your stuff/take all your rights away, because there are more of us than there are of you, and you get No Say What-so-ever in what we do.)
[/quote]

Why does it seem like whenever someone talks about eugenics or controlling over population people completely go off topic and rant about murder? Neither eugenics nor population control will require the death of anyone... sigh...

Because dictating intercourse or forced sterilization/abortion is sooo much better...

The murder part there, was about YOUR apparent suggestion that a majority rule system, where everyone gets an "equal" say in things, is 'better' than the Republics and other Constitutional governments seen in many parts of the world today.

How exactly is taking away all rights, freedoms, and effective voices from minorities a good thing?

The murder part there, was about YOUR apparent suggestion that a majority rule system, where everyone gets an "equal" say in things, is 'better' than the Republics and other Constitutional governments seen in many parts of the world today.

How exactly is taking away all rights, freedoms, and effective voices from minorities a good thing?

Democracy or a dictatorship. What other options are there? Currently the democracy in the US is very close to a dictatorship which is why I suggest an adhocracy which would take the money out of politics. What exactly do you suggest? Do you have a better idea than democracy?

The current state of the world is exceptional and transient. Both advocates of eugenetics and liberal doctrinaires who believe that education and rising standards of living will solve all problems, would do well to realize this.

We may have successfully hacked our legacy reproductive mechanism with anti-contraceptives, but the selective pressure introduced by this fact is enormous. If horniness no longer reliably leads to children, some other urge will take its place, in a few generations maximum. And while wealth may continue to increase at its exponential pace for a few more centuries, there are fundamental constraints to the number of ways you can rearrange a fixed number of atoms within a fixed lightcone. Our current interbellum, carried by the absence of meaningful resource constraints, will not last forever.

The bottom line being; there is really no need to invite the government into our bedrooms (disclaimer: I generally dont swing that way, so im definitely biased). Selection pressure will return when it is called for. The market will provide.