This view is popular, even if in jest like "haha Idiocracy was right guise!!" but in real life it smacks of eugenics and the Divine Right Of The Rich.
Success correlates well with things like wealth, education level of your parents, early-age nutrition, and other things that can be considered "inherited" in a way, but children of poor and "unsuccessful" people can become financially and socially important as well, it just happens at a lower rate.
Suggesting that more poor children than wealthy children will impoverish society in more than just a statistical sense implies there's something immeasurably special about the people who become wealthy and famous, as if the mere act of breeding with them will produce superior humans.
> Suggesting that more poor children than wealthy children will impoverish society in more than just a statistical sense implies there's something immeasurably special about the people who become wealthy and famous, as if the mere act of breeding with them will produce superior humans.
Every trait we've managed to come up with an objective measure for is heritable, to a lesser or greater (but usually greater) extent. "Of course intelligence isn't heritable" - but somehow score on every test we can think of for it is. Same for creativity. Same for personality traits.
Children largely resemble their genetic parents; we don't have to like it but it's still reality. If the people who contribute the most to society, who help out their fellow humans the most (and I'm not saying that's the rich - but it is largely, as grandparent said, the successful), have fewer children than those who don't, we should be worried.
Even assuming that genetics have absolutely no role in success (a bit unlikely I think), culture is a real thing. Plenty of people will admit they had a huge advantage because their family discussed finance at the dinner table when they grew up, or growing up the child of a business owner.
It's hard to imagine there being no negative side effects to the successful portion of the population shrinking at a faster rate.
Impressive unpacking of a low detail, fairly innocuous comment, into a high detail, somewhat sinister assertion. What mechanism do you use to add specific details where none existed before?
The very use of the word "dysgenic" wrt human populations is a form of virtue signaling that is far from unknown to internet circles such as HN. The comment might have been overzealous about rebutting a perceived narrative, but that statement is a basis for that narrative.
I can't speak for the commenter, but it could be a simple yet rigorous heuristic of seeing a particular buzzword used in certain conversations, reading the context statement that the buzzword is employed under, and matching that statement to a particular ideological narrative that is often prevalent in discussion circles such as HN.
I just realized the original person that made the comment wasn't the one that replied, my bad.
But I agree, this is indeed what happened. Another similarly true explanation is, he used his imagination.
It's interesting to me how judging people based on heuristics is sometimes fine, even admirable, but other times it is Very Very Bad.
It's also funny how these types of ideas seem to offend people, judging by voting anyways. No looking behind the real curtain or something like that I suppose.
Doesn’t seem to be much judgment going on in that comment towards people. Maybe judgment towards a preexisting narrative or meme. People need to take things less personally in arguments, and feel less offended when the ideas they’re repeating are challenged.
> Doesn’t seem to be much judgment going on in that comment towards people.
Are we perhaps referring to different comments? I was referring to: "This view is popular, even if in jest like "haha Idiocracy was right guise!!" but in real life it smacks of eugenics and the Divine Right Of The Rich."
Just for fun, let's pedantically parse the words and see if that's where we differ (key [words/phrases in brackets] for my parsing).
>>> If [[successful] people are having fewer kids] than [unsuccessful] people then haven't we created a [dysgenic] system?
>> [This view] is popular, even if in jest like "haha Idiocracy was right guise!!" but [in real life] [it] [[smacks of] [eugenics]] and the Divine Right Of The Rich.
...
> Seems like that comment is judging a narrative or a meme, and not the person who made the comment itself.
To be extra safe, let's add some context, to make sure we're using the same definitions and "facts":
Dysgenics is the study of factors producing the accumulation and perpetuation of defective or disadvantageous genes and traits in offspring of a particular population or species. The adjective "dysgenic" is the antonym of "eugenic".
"smacks of": To be a sign or symbol of something: signify, stand for, symbolize
"eugenics": Eugenics is the science of improving the human species by selectively mating people with specific desirable hereditary traits. It aims to reduce human suffering by “breeding out” disease, disabilities and so-called undesirable characteristics from the human population.
"The heritability of IQ for adults is between 57% and 73%[6] with some more-recent estimates as high as 80%[7] and 86%.[8] IQ goes from being weakly correlated with genetics, for children, to being strongly correlated with genetics for late teens and adults. The heritability of IQ increases with age and reaches an asymptote at 18–20 years of age and continues at that level well into adulthood. This phenomenon is known as the Wilson Effect.[9] Recent studies suggest that family and parenting characteristics are not significant contributors to variation in IQ scores;[10] however, poor prenatal environment, malnutrition and disease can have deleterious effects.[11][12]"
To me (my interpretation):
- OP seems to be asserting that "successful" people having fewer kids is detrimental to the overall well being of society.
- The person replying implies disagreement with this popular view (narrative/meme), but then goes on to assert (again, my interpretation) that those who hold this view (when it is put forth "in real life", which is what I interpret "it" to refer to) are in support (at least implicitly) of eugenics.
Do you perhaps think OP doesn't personally hold the stated view, or the replier doesn't believe OP personally holds the stated view? Personally, when I see no language to indicate either are talking in purely theoretical/philosophical (devil's advocate, etc) terms, by default I tend to take people's statements at face value (while keeping in mind the ever-present possibility that something important was lost in translation).
I'm genuinely very curious if this is significantly different than how you view (parse the language to derive the actually intended meaning) the exchange?
It might be a mistaken assumption born from misclustering, but given that, as you point out, dysgenic is the antonym of eugenics, and as we can see from a not unrelated conversation from the past day [0] repeating that popular narrative, it is not a leap to presume that all of this is related.
That comment is certainly related, but unless I'm misunderstanding the relevance to our conversation that you're seeing, it's an aspect other than the one I'm interested in, which is:
a) the mechanism used by CptFribble to produce specific details where none existed before (although I think we've settled this, and are not in disagreement?)
b) how you and I came to different conclusions on whether CptFribble's comment was (or was not) judgemental of slang800 (attributing a personal support of eugenics) - this I don't think is settled?
