Comment on Are we living in a golden age of stupidity?
freedom@lemy.lol 1 day agoI’m starting to believe natural selection didn’t just get us to where we are, it kept us here.
The genetic variation in the human brain will lead to more and more good and bad variations generation after generation. Stupidity used to have deadly consequences, now it’s just poverty (or the White House).
Our society wants to be inclusive and accepting and liberating and safe, but what if that just doesn’t work with our current make? What if these mild deviations and mutations only progress forwards when the weak traits perish? We don’t have that mechanism anymore so weak and dangerous personality traits persist and continue to vote.
It’s a scary thought, but I can’t see anything wrong with the logic, especially observing how it’s taking hold across the globe.
Wealth inequality is returning to pre-WW1 levels and climate change’s effects are becoming visible to the average person, making people desperate for a way out. Education budgets in the US have been steadily slashed, far-right agit-prop by people like Steve Bannon has flooded the internet while the political class that could oppose it are pacified by corporate donors.
No need for social darwinism or sketchy eugenics-flavored arguments to explain this.
What intelligence level on average do you need to be empathetic? Humans are a social creature because being in a community has survival utility. Individually we lose something, but gain in aggregate. Empathy is intelligence. And natural selection and outlining a hypothesis isn’t eugenics. You’ll note that no where in my comment did I advocate for this.
The eugenics connection is on you and your thoughts.
Empathy and intelligence are not the same. As evidenced by some highly intelligent people displaying a shocking lack of empathy, and some highly empathetic people not displaying the greatest intelligence.
Personally, I’d rather talk about knowledge and behavior. Intelligence and empathy are hard to quantize.
Leaning into natural selection, proposing we need to let it “run it’s course”, in a way, to “weed out the weak traits” is eugenics. So is thinking that some traits are “good” and others “bad” without qualifying “for the current social/environmental context”. Stupidity might be a good defense against existential depression.
Why do you yourself call the thought “scary” if you don’t think it’s eugenics? What exactly is scary about letting “weak traits perish” if not that it’s inviting a certain form of eugenics to decide who gets to reproduce and/or be born?
You’ll note I didn’t claim you advocate for it directly, just that your arguments are eugenics-flavored.
No rule applies 100% of the time. Understanding that putting good into the world can improve your environment beyond easily identified individual gains is an intelligent concept likely surfacing from group survival, not individual conscious thought.
Imagine you’re born into a world where 1 out of every 100 people is a socio/psychopath and 10 are (to use your terms) less knowledgeable and prone to manipulation of behavior.
Low socioeconomic status is likely to grow for the subset of 10ths that keeps growing exploited under the less ethical influence of the 1s. Low socioeconomic status is linked to having more offspring, which slowly grows the “10s” to higher and higher relative percentage of the population.
Identifying this mechanism and being concerned for the implications as related to life’s adaptation ability, is certainly controversial, but not eugenics. Eugenics is intentional, this hypothetical just a natural process. The thought of people perishing without recourse is the scary part. I never proposed it needed to run its course “because”, just that it might be too late to stop it now. To be eugenics flavored, I argue intent is necessary. Again, not advocating, just acknowledging it may be unavoidable.
A casual eugenics supporter.
You’re the one bring up eugenics buddy. Reading comprehension: the long lost art.
TronBronson@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
There is a social media aspect to this. We have amplified the worst behaviors and reenforced them with monetary gains. We broke the incentive structure in America where being a doctor was the highest calling. The media is also incentivized to spew division, we’ve basically made money the greatest reward in society, and only award it to the worst people. Its a really effective way to skew the sociopathic tendencies of the masses.
eldebryn@lemmy.world 2 minutes ago
Frankly, between blaming welfare and going for eugenics or blaming capitalism and going for socialism I’d much prefer the latter.