are we remnants of something ancient?

[silent ABAB]

I've thought about that before, albeit only in the "preservation of species" sort of thing.

 

[smith2267]

Still waiting for the girls 2 cents on this

 

[Tarragon]

Still waiting for the girls 2 cents on this

I think you will probably be waiting for quite some time.... :bruised:

 

[wyverary]

Ultimately I think we as a human race will loose our genetic diversity mostly because those of us who should have been weeded out have not been due to medical science. I have watched so many medical programs about some poor kid that has been through so many medical procedures for years and years to keep them alive rather than letting them pass. I think we as a society are loosing what it means that sometimes things don't work out, that some times the genetics a child is born with are not meant to survive. These genes are supposed to be weeded out but now a lot of these children are being kept alive long enough to reproduce themselves. Then there are the ones who reproduce for a career choice rather than because they want to bring a child into this world to love and care for (I say this because in the town I currently live in this is actually what happens. For any girl raised in this town at present it is considered to be a miracle if she gets to age 20 without two children). If those of us who are educated and above average intelligence defer or not have children because of careers or choice or what have you does this mean we as a human race and breeding ourselves into an evolutionary dead end because only those who would normally not be able to breed are now being given every opportunity to breed? Or paid to breed?

I know I'm throwing some things out there that would be controversial but screw it I want to have a good intellectual debate where political correctness is irrelevant.

Actually, allowing these people to survive is, by definition, increasing the genetic diversity.

This thread has taken the express train to Crazy-Town. Y'all carry on.

 

[smith2267]

@ dragon, the problem with eugenics is, someone has to decide which traits are good (if nature isn't going to). And who do you trust to decide that? Hitler wanted us all to have blond hair.
A lot of NT's might think autism is a problem that needs getting rid of.

I guess I need to explain my train of thought...improving the gene pool in the absence of natural selection is eugenics.

 

[silent ABAB]

@ dragon, the problem with eugenics is, someone has to decide which traits are good (if nature isn't going to). And who do you trust to decide that? Hitler wanted us all to have blond hair.
A lot of NT's might think autism is a problem that needs getting rid of.

I guess I need to explain my train of thought...improving the gene pool in the absence of natural selection is eugenics.

I absolutely agree with you, I was literally thinking of putting up something like what you said before but in an actual thread. Like having a kid with all these deformities, having them fixed, and then having kids? I mean really? I think it would be an actually really good experiment if the NT/AS groups were split up to different areas and see what kind of family trees would spring up though.

 

[Soup]

So much of the eugenics movement past & present is predicated upon the basis & the unscientifically substantiated presumption of white Anglo-Saxon/Scandinavian superiority. Given many of the social advantages to be gleaned due to this social prejudice, many people would choose to genetically select for those traits: NOT necessarily because they preferred them personally or aesthetically (blonde hair was never anything great to me...) but because they know that western society thinks so. I never wanted to be taller than I am either.

 

[Dragon's Tooth]

@Dragons Tooth,

I see what you're saying about people surviving because we can save them medically rather than let them die. Very harsh truth, but there you go. It's a very tough subject as I'm sure I'm not the only one here who probably wouldn't have survived birth without medical intervention...

As for the thought about it being our moral duty to spread our wonderful aspie selves far and wide, Er, I wonder if we shouldn't organise a giant "love-in" between all is aspie males and our female counterparts here on AC?? :bounce: Im wonder how our female aspies would feel about their moral duty??

Prepare for a backlash of female indignation ....

As for being paid for mating, well I bet there won't be a shortage of male volunteers!! :wavespin:

Females might get upset again realising that they carry a "monetary" value(!!!)

But, hey, it's all rock n roll isn't it?

lol Tarragon. I don't take offence tbh. everyone has their opinion.

To clarify what I mean by being "paid" to have children ... I mean breeding for the sake of your dole cheque. We can skip around the PC-ness of it but at the end of the day it does happen and I happen to live in a town with a higher percentage of girls and women who do this. In fact getting knocked up by one of the men who work in the mine that is associated with this town is the equivalent of hitting the lottery for a lot of these women because not only do they then get a nice fat cheque from the government they get a nice fat cheque from said father of child. This is why I am all for father's being able to have the option to disown their children. Women can have an abortion but if a woman chooses not to have an abortion then the man is screwed. The power to bring children into this world is too much in the hands of women, the poor man doesn't get an equal say (then again some men I have no sympathy for ... if you catch my drift). And there are probably a few women out there who would be upset with that point but at the end of the day we get the option to end it, a man doesn't. Then again at the point of conception I guess both parties could be saying "hey lets use birth control ..."

Off topic however.

I also was not talking about eugenics when I mentioned medical intervention above. Some conditions are terrible on the child and it seems to me like keeping them alive is equivalent to torture. Some kids for instance have had aggressive forms of cancer their whole lives. We are talking 10, 15, 20 years of intense chemo therapy, radiation therapy, operations, medical test etc. These procedures are gruelling and horrific for an adult who has the option to say no. Children don't get that option. I saw one kid who kept having seizures and was in and out of hospital and had horrible tests by an adult standard since he was a kid and it turned out he had a broken enzyme path way so that he couldn't break down most food. He has to be on a feeding tube the rest of his life. I can't remember if he was all there but I think he might have had a few other things going on. That sort of thing is an evolutionary dead end. When I say we keep kids alive that should have died I'm more talking about the ones that have faults like above, or endless cancer or something pretty majorly wrong with them. I think it stops being about the child and being about the parents. I'm not saying we should run out and kill all red heads for instance. I'm saying that some pretty major **** ups in the DNA are being preserved instead of the children being allow to die within say a couple hours of birth.

I've seen kids that are so disabled they can't see, they can't hear, they can't move, they can't communicate, they can't eat etc. Normally these kids would have been left to die by their parents in times gone past, now our society demands that we keep them alive and raise them and burden ourselves with them for the rest of our lives. My greatest fear when I have children is this will happen because if I get a child in the more extreme end of disabilities I know I won't be able to cope. And at the end of the day if I say I can't cope society says "well up you you had the child". Then if you did something like a mercy killing so you can try and have your life back you are branded a murderer because you killed this thing that will never be independent of you and has destroyed your life.

There are many issues around this and I think its a bit narrow minded to say every human deserves the best life that can be. There are some horrific medical conditions out there and when you just patch them up and send them out into the world then your asking for trouble. Sometimes it just seems like the vessel that was made for said soul was not meant to last and that it would be best to let it go. Not try and patch it up repeatedly until its just old enough to have children.

We give this dignity to animals. When an animal gets too sick or too old or is injured so they don't have a quality to life then we let them pass. But not humans. Then its murder. not mercy.

I hope I have explained myself better ...

 

[Kingmatt333]

Really, people, i am rather worried about what is being discussed here! You do realize, of course, that if NTs are allowed to 'weed' out undesirable gentic traits, then we aspies and autistic people will be one of the first groups to go! As much as i hate to say it, it's true. The vast majority of NTs sadly veiw aspergers and autism as a great disabilty, that must be prevented or can somehow be 'cured.' Like thats going to happen... Anyway, on the subject of aspie gentics, i wouldn't really say we are a gentic 'remnant.' Aspergers is becoming more and more common with each generation, and i personally believe that it is simply a fork in the road of human evolution.
I realise that some people might veiw my views as extreme, so i apologize now.

 

[smith2267]

@kingmat, it is our strength that we can discuss things without cultural prejudice or undue emotion. And yes, you are right, we would be labelled defective by many.
If we have an evolutionary purpose, maybe it is to shake the herd up a bit....to approach a problem cold, without the preconceptions NT's have.

 

[smith2267]

So much of the eugenics movement past & present is predicated upon the basis & the unscientifically substantiated presumption of white Anglo-Saxon/Scandinavian superiority. Given many of the social advantages to be gleaned due to this social prejudice, many people would choose to genetically select for those traits: NOT necessarily because they preferred them personally or aesthetically (blonde hair was never anything great to me...) but because they know that western society thinks so. I never wanted to be taller than I am either.

There is a demonstrable IQ difference between the races. But that raises the obvious question of bias in the tests, since they are written mostly by the group that does the best on them...

 

[smith2267]

So much of the eugenics movement past & present is predicated upon the basis & the unscientifically substantiated presumption of white Anglo-Saxon/Scandinavian superiority. Given many of the social advantages to be gleaned due to this social prejudice, many people would choose to genetically select for those traits: NOT necessarily because they preferred them personally or aesthetically (blonde hair was never anything great to me...) but because they know that western society thinks so. I never wanted to be taller than I am either.

There is a demonstrable IQ difference between the races. But that raises the obvious question of bias in the tests, since they are written mostly by the group that does the best on them...

If we applied the same objective scientific standards to our own species that we do to others, we would divide homo sapiens into subspecies. of course the social and political problems that would cause are obvious.

Calling ourselves homo sapiens alba, or homo sapiens negro, etc., would just give stupid people more reason to hate each other.

 

[Soup]

Also, definitions of who belongs to what so-called 'race' are socially variable & unscientific. Take someone like Mariah Carey (the American singer) who calls herself 'African American but who is only 1/4th black. Barak Obama is 50% African & 50% white BUT is called an African American. He was raised by his white mother & her family & never knew his father. His father, a black African was a doctor. HE had the brains & the education: not his white mother. Americans refer to Tiger Woods as 'African American' but he is in fact 1/4th black 1/4 Thai, !/4th Native American & 1/4th Indian. American sociology began as a racist discourse predicated on the 'one drop rule' that states that any person with 1/16th so-called black ancestry shall be considered black. This bastardized blending of speudo-science & sociology has become axiomatic to many in America rendering it hard for mixed race people to acknowledge the truth & fullness of their heritage.

Until recently, all people of 'part black' ancestry got their 'white blood' from their father's line. It was a death penalty offence for a white woman to have sex with a black man. Some who did cried rape & the black man was lynched & the baby either quietly aborted or given away. Even as late as the 70's, Richard Nixon, an ultra conservative anti-abortionist was recorded saying that abortion was acceptable in cases where the girl was white & the baby was from a black man EVEN IF the woman hadn't been raped. HOWEVER...no such exception was to be made for black woman bearing a mixed baby from a white man even if she'd been raped.

In slave times (not that long ago, historically) black women were property so there was no such a thing as rape for them. There was a higher % age of bi-racial people being born right at the end of abolition (1863) than there are now. They were born slaves despite their fathers being plantation owners. It wasn't unusual for these same men to then impregnate the offspring & create 'quadroons & then octoroons'. When slavery ended, the age of consent for a white woman was 21. In some states, for a black girl, it was 11- rendering them still unrapeable. It wasn't until the 60s that black women began winning rape convictions against white rapists in America.

Any discussion of race based eugenics cannot be justly engaged in without looking honestly at the history of racial interaction & racial definitions in America. The IQ test itself was designed by a self-proclaimed racists & eugenicists with the intention (in part) of proving white superiority as a scientific fact. When a so-called black did score better than a white person, it was assumed that the black person had some white admixture that accounted for his scores. The APA got into some trouble a few years ago by publishing & legitimizing a study that 'proved' that Asians were the most intelligent people followed by Whites & with Blacks as the dumbest people. The study made the cover of time magazine. Nobody bothered to point out the flaws in how he defined 'Asians' & how he defined 'Whites' or 'Blacks'.

The problem goes beyond stupid people who seek justification for their idiotic racist views. The danger is that established academics (funded & supported by venerable institutions) are in positions to compound bastardized blends of pseudo-science & their own racist views & legitimize them by using their status as scholars & scientists to claim that their views are scientifically valid. This affects how schools teach & educate chidren, what learning materials are provided to whom, how teacher expectations limit some students while promoting others, how teacher expectations shape how they teach & how children, in turn learn to see themselves & their own potential.

As a teacher, I pay careful attention & watch myself for any biases that may affect how I handle the students.

 

[smith2267]

The problem goes beyond stupid people who seek justification for their idiotic racist views. The danger is that established academics (funded & supported by venerable institutions) are in positions to compound bastardized blends of pseudo-science & their own racist views & legitimize them by using their status as scholars & scientists to claim that their views are scientifically valid. This affects how schools teach & educate chidren, what learning materials are provided to whom, how teacher expectations limit some students while promoting others, how teacher expectations shape how they teach & how children, in turn learn to see themselves & their own potential.



As a teacher, I pay careful attention & watch myself for any biases that may affect how I handle the students.

Do you ever get tired of being right?
Yes, those in influence in academia do not necessarily deserve that influence. And people with good ideas but no status get ignored.

 

[Soup]

@ Smith: Thanks for the support, once again. What you said was just as true: I just expanded on the idea you expressed.

"And people with good ideas but no status get ignored." -Smith

Society has been conditioned to trust in those with letters preceding or following their name much in the way previous generations believed the word of any person of the cloth & before that, in the words of the nobles of the day. Different forms of might made right. Now that the church no longer holds the populace in thrall, it's academic credentials that rule the day. As soon as some PhD emerges with an armload of 'studies' backing his opinions, they become gospel.

Good ideas are one thing but we seem to have lost our ability to appreciate ideas or even debate them in a reasoned manner. We want absolutes: we want facts. Science can provide some (like whether or not you've got the Ebola virus or are anaemic) but when it comes to socially constructed 'truths', science becomes a poor tool for measuring their validity. Opinion, folk belief, so-called common sense & 'everybody knows this' truism shapes social patterns & since they are not scientific in nature & do not follow & are not shaped by scientifically discernible (& impartial) patterns (like gravity -which cares not whether it seizes hold of prince or pauper, sinner or saint). Those who call themselves social scientists are walking & talking oxymorons.

Sometimes society seems to me like novelty driven children. A kid gets a new teddy & he wants to carry it everywhere with him until he gets a new truck. Then, teddy is for bed time only & on it goes. All was in class & birth- until we learned better. Everything was in the genes for a while...until we learned that this is not the case. Science explains all things- some say...BUT some things are not governed by scientific rules but mere human will o' the wisp whims & trends.Right now, too, any boy (esp) who is fidgety in school has ADHD & must be medicated...only it is another lie.

 

[Dragon's Tooth]

I'm not sure how this thread started heading down race based eugenics ... which I am against.

Science explains all things- some say...BUT some things are not governed by scientific rules but mere human will o' the wisp whims & trends.Right now, too, any boy (esp) who is fidgety in school has ADHD & must be medicated...only it is another lie.

I sometimes wonder if ADHD is more parents too busy to pay attention to children syndrome. Our modern world seems very highly focused on parents working and then shoving their children in care centres where few of them will get specific undivided attention that they need. just a thought.

 

[Tarragon]

The natural world seems to have done alright in not mixing "intelligence" and natural selection. Who are we to intervene in something we don't really understand?

Oh, and I'm not convinced that humans are actually "intelligent", so that's the end of that one eh?

 

[Dragon's Tooth]

The natural world seems to have done alright in not mixing "intelligence" and natural selection. Who are we to intervene in something we don't really understand?

Oh, and I'm not convinced that humans are actually "intelligent", so that's the end of that one eh?

My dog has convinced me she is a simpleton, all the while winding me around her little finger like my cats do so that she gets everything she wants ... When I look in her eyes I don't see dull stupidity staring back ... I see "I got you" and a little smile. So who's the smarter one there? Also interesting when I talk to my dogs and I swear the understand exactly what I'm saying.

 

[Gomendosi]

My dog has convinced me she is a simpleton

Best intro to a post... ever!

 

[wyverary]

@ Smith: Thanks for the support, once again. What you said was just as true: I just expanded on the idea you expressed.

"And people with good ideas but no status get ignored." -Smith

Society has been conditioned to trust in those with letters preceding or following their name much in the way previous generations believed the word of any person of the cloth & before that, in the words of the nobles of the day. Different forms of might made right. Now that the church no longer holds the populace in thrall, it's academic credentials that rule the day. As soon as some PhD emerges with an armload of 'studies' backing his opinions, they become gospel.

Good ideas are one thing but we seem to have lost our ability to appreciate ideas or even debate them in a reasoned manner. We want absolutes: we want facts. Science can provide some (like whether or not you've got the Ebola virus or are anaemic) but when it comes to socially constructed 'truths', science becomes a poor tool for measuring their validity. Opinion, folk belief, so-called common sense & 'everybody knows this' truism shapes social patterns & since they are not scientific in nature & do not follow & are not shaped by scientifically discernible (& impartial) patterns (like gravity -which cares not whether it seizes hold of prince or pauper, sinner or saint). Those who call themselves social scientists are walking & talking oxymorons.

Sometimes society seems to me like novelty driven children. A kid gets a new teddy & he wants to carry it everywhere with him until he gets a new truck. Then, teddy is for bed time only & on it goes. All was in class & birth- until we learned better. Everything was in the genes for a while...until we learned that this is not the case. Science explains all things- some say...BUT some things are not governed by scientific rules but mere human will o' the wisp whims & trends.Right now, too, any boy (esp) who is fidgety in school has ADHD & must be medicated...only it is another lie.

In some instances (but certainly not all) I think it's less what the academics are saying and more how the public interpret them. Either there is heated debate among the scientists concerning the legitimacy of such-and-such study but the media feeds it to the public as "the gospel truth;" or the opposite happens, and places where the scientists are in strong accord but powers outside the scientific community are doing their best to muddy the waters. The latter seems to happen on hot-button issues like global warming, and it seems the former applies to everything having to do with "social sciences," "mental illness," what have you. Though there are most definitely bone-headed academics in the psych world - I've encountered them myself. There is a strong disconnect between academia and "the real world." The public need to be better educated, yes; but academics need to do a much better job of conveying their material honestly and transparently. And EVERYBODY needs to be willing to point out when someone in any camp is chock full o' shiitake.