I assume Torres is thinking about transhumanism. Transhumanists want to use genetic engineering (amongst other) things, to ensure that people are born with more desirable capacities and abilities than they would be otherwise. That’s one thing that people sometimes mean by “eugenics”. There’s a culture gap between analytic philosophy out of which EA comes and other areas of academia here. Mildly “eugenic” views like this are quite common in analytic ethics I think, but my impression (less sure about this) is that they horrify a lot of people in other humanities disciplines.
Stronger “eugenic” views and, relatedly, extremely controversial views about race are also held by some prominent EAs, i.e. Scott Alexander, Nick Bostrom (at least at one point.) I.e. Scott is at least somewhat sympathetic to trying to influence which humans have children in order to improve the genetics of the population, though he is cagey about what his actual position is: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/galton-ehrlich-buck?hide_intro_popup=true Apart from the infamous racism email, Bostrom at one point discussed “dysgenic” trends (less intelligent people having more children) as an X-risk in one of his early papers (albeit to say that he didn’t think the issue was all that important.) A post defending a goal of trying to stop people from having children with a high chance of various genetically influenced diseases and claiming the “eugenics” label as a positive one received many upvotes on this forum: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/PTCw5CJT7cE6Kx9ZR/most-people-endorse-some-form-of-eugenics Peter Singer famously argues that it parents should have a right to kill disabled babies at birth if they want to replace them with non-disabled babies (because all babies aren’t “persons” anyway): https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/16/magazine/unspeakable-conversations.html
I’m inclined to write defenses of views in the latter paragraph:
My read (I admit I skimmed) is that Scott doesn’t opine because he is uncertain whether there is a large scale reproduction-influencing program that would be a good idea in a world without GE on the horizon, not that he has a hidden opinion about reproduction programs we ought to be doing despite the possibility of GE.
I don’t think the mere presence of a “dysgenic” discussion in a Bostrom paper merits criticism. Part of his self-assigned career path is to address all of the X-risks. This includes exceedingly implausible phenomena such as demon-summoning, because it’s probably a good idea for one smart human to have allocated a week to that disaster scenario. I don’t think dysgenic X-risks are obviously less plausible than demon-summoning, so I think it’s a good idea someone wrote about it a little.
The article on this forum originated as a response to Torres’ hyperbolic rhetoric, and primarily defends things that society is already doing such as forbidding incest.
Singer’s argument, if I remember correctly, does not involve eugenics at all. It involves the amount of enjoyment occurring in a profoundly disabled child vs a non-disabled child, and the effects on the parents, but not the effect on a gene pool. I believe the original actually indicated severe disabilities that are by their nature unlikely to be passed on (due to lethality, infertility, incompatibility with intercourse, or incompatibility with consent), so the only impact would be to add a sibling to the gene pool who might be a carrier for the disability.
You are right—thank you for clarifying. This is also what Torres says in their TESCREAL FAQ. I’ve retracted the comment to reflect that misunderstanding, although I’d still love Ozy’s take on the eugenics criticism.
I assume Torres is thinking about transhumanism. Transhumanists want to use genetic engineering (amongst other) things, to ensure that people are born with more desirable capacities and abilities than they would be otherwise. That’s one thing that people sometimes mean by “eugenics”. There’s a culture gap between analytic philosophy out of which EA comes and other areas of academia here. Mildly “eugenic” views like this are quite common in analytic ethics I think, but my impression (less sure about this) is that they horrify a lot of people in other humanities disciplines.
Stronger “eugenic” views and, relatedly, extremely controversial views about race are also held by some prominent EAs, i.e. Scott Alexander, Nick Bostrom (at least at one point.) I.e. Scott is at least somewhat sympathetic to trying to influence which humans have children in order to improve the genetics of the population, though he is cagey about what his actual position is: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/galton-ehrlich-buck?hide_intro_popup=true Apart from the infamous racism email, Bostrom at one point discussed “dysgenic” trends (less intelligent people having more children) as an X-risk in one of his early papers (albeit to say that he didn’t think the issue was all that important.) A post defending a goal of trying to stop people from having children with a high chance of various genetically influenced diseases and claiming the “eugenics” label as a positive one received many upvotes on this forum: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/PTCw5CJT7cE6Kx9ZR/most-people-endorse-some-form-of-eugenics Peter Singer famously argues that it parents should have a right to kill disabled babies at birth if they want to replace them with non-disabled babies (because all babies aren’t “persons” anyway): https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/16/magazine/unspeakable-conversations.html
I’m inclined to write defenses of views in the latter paragraph:
My read (I admit I skimmed) is that Scott doesn’t opine because he is uncertain whether there is a large scale reproduction-influencing program that would be a good idea in a world without GE on the horizon, not that he has a hidden opinion about reproduction programs we ought to be doing despite the possibility of GE.
I don’t think the mere presence of a “dysgenic” discussion in a Bostrom paper merits criticism. Part of his self-assigned career path is to address all of the X-risks. This includes exceedingly implausible phenomena such as demon-summoning, because it’s probably a good idea for one smart human to have allocated a week to that disaster scenario. I don’t think dysgenic X-risks are obviously less plausible than demon-summoning, so I think it’s a good idea someone wrote about it a little.
The article on this forum originated as a response to Torres’ hyperbolic rhetoric, and primarily defends things that society is already doing such as forbidding incest.
Singer’s argument, if I remember correctly, does not involve eugenics at all. It involves the amount of enjoyment occurring in a profoundly disabled child vs a non-disabled child, and the effects on the parents, but not the effect on a gene pool. I believe the original actually indicated severe disabilities that are by their nature unlikely to be passed on (due to lethality, infertility, incompatibility with intercourse, or incompatibility with consent), so the only impact would be to add a sibling to the gene pool who might be a carrier for the disability.
You are right—thank you for clarifying. This is also what Torres says in their TESCREAL FAQ. I’ve retracted the comment to reflect that misunderstanding, although I’d still love Ozy’s take on the eugenics criticism.
My take was originally in my article but wound up being cut for flow—I wound up posting it on my blog.