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A little deeper than the traditional (but correct) wisdom that promoting eugenics is bad
To be fair, excessive selective breeding of dogs has created several breeds with health issues and mixed breed dogs are generally healthier, it’s just that the ultimate health of the animal isn’t always of much importance to dog breeders and the dogs themselves aren’t capable of understanding the issue and it’s cause or voicing an objection.
I haven’t watched this video recently but I don’t remember it supporting dog eugenics. I, and everybody I talk to, make fun of the idea of doing selective breeding if it’s being discussed
The issue with the notion is always going to be what characteristics you’re selecting for, what makes those “good” or “desirable”, do we have an actual rigorously defined understanding of those characteristics and who is doing the selecting? Purely on the logic of the concept with no concern for implementation maybe it’s potentially beneficial but it’s impossible to examine it in some pure sense that’s free of ethical and political concerns and again, it’s going to need some well agreed upon notion of what “beneficial” looks like.
With the thesis of Idiocracy for example, a failure to artificially select for “intelligence” led to anomie, but intelligence isn’t well defined at all. More specifically, the film focuses on IQ as the metric of intelligence, which is a pretty good stab at providing some kind of definition but it’s unclear what simply optimizing for this number would do, if anything. And who gets to decide which attributes of humanity are simply deleted? Could we be so sure that the groups doing the selecting really know what’s in the best interests of everybody? So assuredly that it’s worth the costs in cruelty and oppression required to enforce their agenda for the long term good? Just how long term is this project anyway? Would we, in 500 years still have the same ideas about the optimal human? If we succeeded in raising average IQs, through eugenics programs are we obliged to do this forever with the bottom percentiles being restricted from breeding even when their IQ matches today’s upper percentile?
The trouble with a lot of ideas about improving the human condition is that they have to account for… humans and that’s usually where they fall apart.
While that’s my take on eugenics being a bad idea, I will come to the defence of Idiocracy the movie a bit by pointing out that I think this analysis gives it too much credit and then subjects it to scrutiny applicable to a weightier film, or rather I guess people have tried to give it that stature and she’s responding to that. It’s a pretty B grade movie with a lot of flaws. Somehow despite it being so in your face obvious, the entire eugenics implications went right over my head and I think that’s because, in the same way that there are schlocky B grade “horror” movies or cheesy “romance” films, that exist as “guilty pleasures” I think this fits in to a similar groove as a guilty pleasure lazy comedy. It invites you, through Joe to feel superior and by indulging in this and accepting that invitation, yes you can end up in philosophically dubious places if you think too hard but it really never felt to me like it was encouraging you to think too hard. Ironically, despite it’s subject matter, it is actually a dumb movie but in a good way. It’s 84 minutes of therapeutic smugness and snickering that’s fun to binge on, safe in the comfort that you’re totally in on the joke and you’re laughing at others who are stupider. Perhaps it’s in ill taste to appeal to our worst nature like that but it happens to have been made by someone who is very good at making comedy and it’s just so funny that the flaws just don’t really bother me. Critiquing it so seriously seems to miss the point and it’s like watching a horror movie and complaining about the poor decisions the characters make or asking whether the prurient gawking at death and violence means we secretly want to engage in it ourselves, when really it’s fairly clear that it’s just entertaining.
It’s bad for humans but ok for dogs?
To be fair, excessive selective breeding of dogs has created several breeds with health issues and mixed breed dogs are generally healthier, it’s just that the ultimate health of the animal isn’t always of much importance to dog breeders and the dogs themselves aren’t capable of understanding the issue and it’s cause or voicing an objection.
Who said it’s ok for dogs?
Breeders?
🥵
Are there any breeders in these comments or this video?
No. I was commenting on the fact the eugenics is a taboo subject for humans, but not for non human creatures.
I haven’t watched this video recently but I don’t remember it supporting dog eugenics. I, and everybody I talk to, make fun of the idea of doing selective breeding if it’s being discussed
No, just for several reasons people care less when it is done to animals.
The issue with the notion is always going to be what characteristics you’re selecting for, what makes those “good” or “desirable”, do we have an actual rigorously defined understanding of those characteristics and who is doing the selecting? Purely on the logic of the concept with no concern for implementation maybe it’s potentially beneficial but it’s impossible to examine it in some pure sense that’s free of ethical and political concerns and again, it’s going to need some well agreed upon notion of what “beneficial” looks like.
With the thesis of Idiocracy for example, a failure to artificially select for “intelligence” led to anomie, but intelligence isn’t well defined at all. More specifically, the film focuses on IQ as the metric of intelligence, which is a pretty good stab at providing some kind of definition but it’s unclear what simply optimizing for this number would do, if anything. And who gets to decide which attributes of humanity are simply deleted? Could we be so sure that the groups doing the selecting really know what’s in the best interests of everybody? So assuredly that it’s worth the costs in cruelty and oppression required to enforce their agenda for the long term good? Just how long term is this project anyway? Would we, in 500 years still have the same ideas about the optimal human? If we succeeded in raising average IQs, through eugenics programs are we obliged to do this forever with the bottom percentiles being restricted from breeding even when their IQ matches today’s upper percentile?
The trouble with a lot of ideas about improving the human condition is that they have to account for… humans and that’s usually where they fall apart.
While that’s my take on eugenics being a bad idea, I will come to the defence of Idiocracy the movie a bit by pointing out that I think this analysis gives it too much credit and then subjects it to scrutiny applicable to a weightier film, or rather I guess people have tried to give it that stature and she’s responding to that. It’s a pretty B grade movie with a lot of flaws. Somehow despite it being so in your face obvious, the entire eugenics implications went right over my head and I think that’s because, in the same way that there are schlocky B grade “horror” movies or cheesy “romance” films, that exist as “guilty pleasures” I think this fits in to a similar groove as a guilty pleasure lazy comedy. It invites you, through Joe to feel superior and by indulging in this and accepting that invitation, yes you can end up in philosophically dubious places if you think too hard but it really never felt to me like it was encouraging you to think too hard. Ironically, despite it’s subject matter, it is actually a dumb movie but in a good way. It’s 84 minutes of therapeutic smugness and snickering that’s fun to binge on, safe in the comfort that you’re totally in on the joke and you’re laughing at others who are stupider. Perhaps it’s in ill taste to appeal to our worst nature like that but it happens to have been made by someone who is very good at making comedy and it’s just so funny that the flaws just don’t really bother me. Critiquing it so seriously seems to miss the point and it’s like watching a horror movie and complaining about the poor decisions the characters make or asking whether the prurient gawking at death and violence means we secretly want to engage in it ourselves, when really it’s fairly clear that it’s just entertaining.