Some people not only shouldn't be allowed to vote, they shouldn't be allowed to breed. Too bad that Hitler gave eugenics a bad name. If properly implemented, it could do wonders for our species. Instead, what we have now is the opposite: many that would not have survived to pollute the gene pool with their defects up to ten thousand years ago, as a result of civilization now do -- selection has been eliminated, and while diversity is good, any species with just one but not the other is doomed.
rfbrw said:
Yes, we had a system like that here down South up until a few decades ago. See, they gave this real hard test on history, etc which you needed to pass in order to vote. The only thing is, if your grandfather was eligible to vote, you didn't need to take the test.
Of course, most of the people whose grandfathers couldn't vote could not do so because they were in slavery at the time.
We got rid of that system.
This sounds suspiciously like you fellows are trying to put it back!
You, on the other hand, will be allowed to do both under any system likely to be adopted.Prune said:
Yes, that poor man is so misunderstood.Prune said:
When did you fellows decide to turn your back on 300 years of human progress?
No, he did exactly what you think is so positive about it. Your arrogance is almost amusing, where it not that those "meritocrats" - which obviously you think you are a paying member of, really believe they know whats best.
Did it ever occur to you that those who think they know what's good for others actually know f.. all?
The argument that people are not able to assess situations properly, points to one thing only - a failure of the educational system as devised by your meritocrats.
Your mistake is thinking that the elected ministers are the ones holding the power. It is the case that the deputy ministers and their associated buerocrats with all the knowledge available are the ones partly pushing an agenda or supplying the background information for decisions.
The poitical process - speak democracy - only chooses the colour of the political agenda, the technocrats - or your meritocrats - are the ones suplying the knowledge - and the results are often accordingly - see the fisheries desaster, only partly ministers are responsible for those.
What you advocate is the dictatorship of an elite - please ask yourself whom any elite serves, best example the us, where a tiny majority holds over 75% of all wealth - productive wealth and stored wealth - and the brave new world under the leadership of the experts (or meritocrats) is just around the corner.
Please remember what the soviet union was - exactly that what you propose. What do you think comprised the upper echelons of any of the various departments? People with merit, risen through the ranks, at the upper level unaccountable to almost anybody.
What you propose is worth fighting against to the death - arrogance paired with hubris..
You are doing one thing that is so enticing to the "orderly mind - designing an utopia. You have not learned that the best humans can do is to live in a society that allows them according to their capabilities express themselves and have some influence in the political process as it effects their interests. That what is called is: muddeling through, and this seems to be anathema to the "orderly mind.
But all of those "utopias" have led to one thing, and one thing only: cruelty, supression of ideas, massmorder and wars because such a meritocratic society deems itself better and therefore more deserving to rule.
Who defines the meritocrats? Who chooses them into positions of power? Who and how are future meritocrats educated and groomed?
Prune said:
Who says it fails?
Take a look around you. People from all over the world are risking life and limb to get into those very same nations with the democracy that you claim "fails".
Why is it that the countries that implement democracy seem to be those which most of the world consider the countries most worth living in?
I don't care that my view is unpopular -- the truth is often incongruous with the wishful thinking which you guys exhibit, along with the clear bias due to the pro-democracy (and a pseudo-democracy at that) brainwashing you've received.
kelticwizard, I never implied he was correct. You better go back and read what I actually wrote. It is unfortunate that eugenics is associated with him, as what he did had nothing to do with eugenics, for he was selecting for specific ethnicities. That is, he tarnished the whole concept.
kelticwizard, I never implied he was correct. You better go back and read what I actually wrote. It is unfortunate that eugenics is associated with him, as what he did had nothing to do with eugenics, for he was selecting for specific ethnicities. That is, he tarnished the whole concept.
BAH! Just because there are worse systems doesn't make it any good. It is exactly that because the best that has been done is so lacking that I posted what I did.
Prune said:
And as Audio-kraut has pointed out, what you are proposing has been tried in various forms and failed badly.
What makes you think a meritocracy will not fix the game so that they, their relatives and their children will not get advantages to remain in this ruling meritocracy?
That is simply a lie.
He decimated so called "people with undesirable traits" which included every child exhibiting "abnormal" features, reactions and problems with social behaviour.
Those were directed solely to children of " arian" origin.
You mix it up with his other measures against political opponents, ethnic minorities and jews.
He also established a breeding program as you might be aware of.
That is really hilarious? Who please exhibits wishful thinking? You, the proponent of a utopian world run by "saubermaenner" who know best (what is the difference between a society run by the representatives of a god and your meritocrats? ( The old saying is still true - about power and corruption, and it does not matter if those are men of merit or men of the cloth) or the rest of us unwashed who think it is best not to have too much power accumulate in the hands of the few. Who watches the ones in power?
Or are you really so convinced of the infallibility of the ones with "knowledge"? Then your's is just a "secular believe", as any believe hovering in the air of complete unreality.
Yes, and it is the selection criteria which are mistaken, as are the methods for implementing them -- but most importantly, this had far more to do with using these ethnicities as political scapegoats rather than improving the gene pool. What I'm talking about goes more along the lines of Matt Nuenke's discussion, though not the same and I disagree with a lot of what he writes.
Of course I do not believe in utopias, but I believe things can be done better.
With meritocracy defined as rule by those that have merit, it is quite devious of you in this argument to use your own definition of what the word merit entails in this case. I see leadership merit as not the ability to get or hold power, but a measure of fitness of the individual to the position in terms of what is likely to be contributed by the person to the wellbeing of the system and its citizens (as well as the individual) when holding this position.
Of course, human nature makes us easily corruptible by power. It is my belief that a carefully constructed system more similar to an empire than a democracy (to avoid all the theoretical problems with it, among other things), along with eugenics, can deal with this issue, and is the optimal (if imperfect like all the others) solution.
Prune said:
Sorry Prune, but you show a virtually complete and total misunderstanding of Darwinian evolutionary theory. Humanity, as a species, is strongest when most differentiated, not as an elite super race. Your idea of racial development would end in result similar to that of that in pedigree dogs. Breeding for certain characteristics that superficially enhance a species introduces flaws that doom that species to extinction outside a very narrow ecological niche.
I could go on, but there are many more profound and intelligent critics of eugenics than I, and you would be better reading the source material. But I assure you, eugenics has no more relevance than, say, phrenology.
pinkmouse, just because you are a moderator is no excuse for not bothering to read my posts in full when replying.
I have never suggested that race should be a factor -- that is ridiculous and I never implied that selecting based on race or ethnicity is a reasonable approach (hell, I've been with more asian girls than caucasian ones, so you certainly cannot call me racist), and I very much agree that ethical and moral considerations should play a role. But ignoring the need for eugenics will prevent us from eliminating untold suffering in the future (I didn't say infinite, for no matter what, it is unwarranted wishful thinking to consider the possibility that humanity, or life at all, can exist indefinitely -- there are cosmological constraints discussed by me elsewhere).
As I said, and I'm getting tired of repeating myself, you need both diversity and selection. Clearly, you have shown total ignorance of evolution for failing to recognize half of the process! There is plenty of diversity, but there is no consistent selection in our species today. Mathematically, in the search space diversification is just random guessing and about as useless; repeated cycles of randomization (this includes specialized versions such as breeding, not just mutation) followed by selection are almost always a much better approach. Indeed, in a population that is better than a purely randomly generated one (say, some evolutionary cycles have been applied), continuing just with randomization (==diversification) is almost guaranteed to WORSEN overall fitness, by whatever criteria you may choose to use. That means that we are in a situation where we must take the direction of our genetic development in explicit consideration.
I have never suggested that race should be a factor -- that is ridiculous and I never implied that selecting based on race or ethnicity is a reasonable approach (hell, I've been with more asian girls than caucasian ones, so you certainly cannot call me racist), and I very much agree that ethical and moral considerations should play a role. But ignoring the need for eugenics will prevent us from eliminating untold suffering in the future (I didn't say infinite, for no matter what, it is unwarranted wishful thinking to consider the possibility that humanity, or life at all, can exist indefinitely -- there are cosmological constraints discussed by me elsewhere).
I stand by my what I said. Oh, and I did read your comments. You just have a very biased view of what selection is. Perhaps the people you would like to cull are the most fit for survival in the world. Natural selection is not a conscious process, and as soon as it becomes conscious, then you end up in the pedigree situation, breeding down a dead end street, ( he says, mixing metaphors with gay abandon!).
Oh, and your mathematical approach is only valid if you know what you are breeding for. I certainly don't know the future of the human species, are you saying you do?
Oh, and your mathematical approach is only valid if you know what you are breeding for. I certainly don't know the future of the human species, are you saying you do?
I don't see where I listed any criterion at all, but you clearly reveal your bias in what you are assuming my criteria are. Certainly I never suggested fitness for survival of the individual is the one.
The selection criteria should be dynamic -- this has even been used mathematically in some types of stochastic algorithms. What is unacceptable is that selection is now close to random due to the setup of society, and the only way that can be changed in human civilization (short of going back to nature, which of course I do not advocate) is to make the process conscious.
The selection criteria should be dynamic -- this has even been used mathematically in some types of stochastic algorithms. What is unacceptable is that selection is now close to random due to the setup of society, and the only way that can be changed in human civilization (short of going back to nature, which of course I do not advocate) is to make the process conscious.
The actual criteria are irrelevant, consciously selecting for any attributes will weaken a species overall.
that is what a utopia is - carefully constructed.And to whose benefit? Any carefully constructed society - see the khmer rouge as the latest example - always decimates those that fall outside the "carefully constructed framework".
You are avoiding the truth, mr. prune - eugenics wre just that - elimination of undesirebale traits and thus the individual carrying them, within the "voelkischer staatskoerper". As those other groups - gypsies, jews, asians etc. were not "voelkisch", the term eugenics DID NOT APPLY TO THEM. Clear now?
They always can - but it is a difference if the better arises through a process of discussion - democracy by another name - which includes all member that live within the nation state, or is someting "thought out and implemented" by an unaccountable elite for its own selfpromotion.
The latter has proven desastrous - always, no exception, the nazis, the soviets, the feudal lords, the popes all thought of themselves as people of merit and deserving to rule; and the history counts the victims.
No, your ideas are ideas bred in the rarefied atmosphere of some ivory tower, removed both from history and the present reality, toying with intellectual "glassbeads".
Still you did not answer my question, participating in you game at the margins - who determines merit and what ere the criteria? who selects the meritorious ones? Who keeps a check on them?
Please look at A. Hitlers ideas of how to select and breed the ones having merit to combine absolute authority with absolut responsibility (to whom, and how held to account - no answer there either) in the second volume of Mein Kampf. You will find there also a definition as to the fitness and contribution of the "personality" to the society he wanted to create.
It is quite amusing how the orderly mind can only conceive the same range of ideas of how to run a society in a clean and efficient way over and over again. Marx desired this, as did hitler, as did the kmehr rouge, as did the catholic church, as did other thinkers including plato, moore etc.
But life does not run orderly, it is no clockwork, and it is more like the unpredictability of the quantum world than the cause and effekt starightforwardness of old physics. See recent examples.
Prune said:
No, it is the basis of Darwinian natural selection, if you don't understand that, then you don't understand evolutionary theory.
And again - who are the ones setting up the criteria, making the decisions? What is the concious selection being based upon - see examples of gender selectivity in india leading to a preponderance of male offspring.
What you advocate demands a knowledge of all the interactions possible between genes and how those interactions are presented in the phaenotype and all its psychological, physiological traits.
It also demands knowledge of all the possible environments those pheanotypes might have to survive in. In demands a knowledge of what are the most likely environments we will encounter in the future and select for them.
Are you not advocating a task we simply are not, and never will be up to, lacking simply: knowledge?
Youre response shows me one thing clearly that you want to achieve: the replacement of an omniscient god through an omniscient human.
Just a religion again by another name. Rational hubris.
It ain't gonna work.
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