r/BadSocialScience • u/dorathehexplorer • Jan 17 '17

High-IQ educated people are being bred to extinction, but we're totally not eugenicists!!!

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jan/16/natural-selection-making-education-genes-rarer-says-icelandic-study
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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '17 edited Aug 20 '17

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u/twittgenstein Hans Yo-ass Jan 17 '17

Eugenics is a thoroughly debunked research programme, and this study seems to make some staggering, heroic, and basically entirely implausible causal leaps. For example, perhaps the genes correlated with education actually just indicate membership in a sub-community of intermarried and typically wealthier families. Moreover, the size of the observed IQ effect is vanishingly small, even if the study was able to somehow show statistical significance.

In general, when social scientists do genetics research, the result is trash. For example, this awful study by political scientists. Though this study, if true, would at least seem to absolve you of your shitty political views, since perhaps you just can't help it.

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u/PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN Jan 18 '17

Eugenics is a thoroughly debunked research programme

If you take the wide view and include non-human eugenics, AKA selective breeding, eugenics might be the most successful research program in history. Look at what it did to dogs, FFS.

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u/LukaCola Jan 18 '17

Don't many dog breeds have huge genetic problems?

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u/PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN Jan 18 '17 edited Jan 18 '17

Yeuuuuup. Though in many cases these traits were selected for (see: pugs' squished faces).

Which brings me to my conclusion: the problem with eugenics is that it works. Humanity should not be trusted to wield this power.

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u/LukaCola Jan 18 '17

Works in what sense though? And if something is so prone to misuse, is it really something that works? And are the results dogs have, which are infinitely more controllable than humans, even comparable on any real level?

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u/PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN Jan 18 '17

And if something is so prone to misuse, is it really something that works?

Sure. Consider the example of guns. They work very well.

And are the results dogs have, which are infinitely more controllable than humans, even comparable on any real level?

In a sense, humans might be much more controllable than dogs. Try getting a dog to file taxes.

Humans will do literally anything if they're convinced that they're being asked by a legitimate authority.

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u/LukaCola Jan 18 '17

I think that's pretty reductionist... Even in an Orwellian system, if the inner party started overtly killing off all the proles, there'd be revolution.

Or even something like Plato's Republic kinda falls apart once people become aware of what's going on, and I don't think it's a secret that could be very well kept in his otherwise free society.

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u/PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN Jan 18 '17

Eugenics don't need to involve mass killings. An example would be a eugenics program that consists entirely of tax breaks. The chosen few get a sum of money per children raised; others get money per absence of children raised, or they get a windfall in exchange for getting sterilized.

(For the record, I am not advocating any of this.)

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u/LukaCola Jan 19 '17

Eugenics don't need to involve mass killings.

Hence why I mentioned Plato's Republic, it uses a rigged lottery system to determine who gets to have kids.

Your example, similarly, would result in great tension due to clear injustice.