Much of this argument could be short-circuited by pulling apart what Scott means by ‘eugenics’ - it’s clear from the context (missing from the OP’s post) that he’s referring to liberal eugenics, which argues that parents should have the right to have some sort of genetic choice over their offspring (and has almost nothing in common with the coercive “eugenics” to which the OP refers).
Liberal eugenics is already widespread, in a sense. Take embryo selection, where parents choose which embryo to bring to term depending on its genetic qualities. We’ve had chorionic villus sampling to check an embryo for Down syndrome for decades; it’s commonplace.
Just dropping the word “eugenics” again and again with no clarification or context is very misleading.
While I think it’s important to understand what Scott means when Scott says eugenics, I think:
a. I’m not certain clarifying that you mean “liberal eugenics” will actually pacify the critics, depending on why they think eugenics is wrong,
b. if there’s really two kinds of thing called “eugenics”, and one of them has a long history of being practiced by horrible, racist people coercively to further their horrible, racist views, and the other one is just fine, I think Scott is reckless in using the word here. I’ve never heard of “liberal eugenics” before reading this post. I don’t think it’s unreasonable of me to hear “eugenics” and think “oh, you mean that racist, coercive thing”.
I don’t think Scott is racist or a white supremacist but based on stuff like this I don’t get very surprised when I find people who do.
My response to (b): the word is probably beyond rehabilitation now, but I also think that people ought to be able to have discussions about bioethics without having to clarify their terms every ten seconds. I actually think it is unreasonable of someone to skim someone’s post on something, see a word that looks objectionable, and cast aspersions over their whole worldview as a result.
Reminds me of when I saw a recipe which called for palm sugar. The comments were full of people who were outraged at the inclusion of such an exploitative, unsustainable ingredient. Of course, they were actually thinking of palm oil (palm sugar production is largely sustainable) but had just pattern-matched ‘palm’ as ‘that bad food thing’.
Much of this argument could be short-circuited by pulling apart what Scott means by ‘eugenics’ - it’s clear from the context (missing from the OP’s post) that he’s referring to liberal eugenics, which argues that parents should have the right to have some sort of genetic choice over their offspring (and has almost nothing in common with the coercive “eugenics” to which the OP refers).
Liberal eugenics is already widespread, in a sense. Take embryo selection, where parents choose which embryo to bring to term depending on its genetic qualities. We’ve had chorionic villus sampling to check an embryo for Down syndrome for decades; it’s commonplace.
Just dropping the word “eugenics” again and again with no clarification or context is very misleading.
While I think it’s important to understand what Scott means when Scott says eugenics, I think:
a. I’m not certain clarifying that you mean “liberal eugenics” will actually pacify the critics, depending on why they think eugenics is wrong,
b. if there’s really two kinds of thing called “eugenics”, and one of them has a long history of being practiced by horrible, racist people coercively to further their horrible, racist views, and the other one is just fine, I think Scott is reckless in using the word here. I’ve never heard of “liberal eugenics” before reading this post. I don’t think it’s unreasonable of me to hear “eugenics” and think “oh, you mean that racist, coercive thing”.
I don’t think Scott is racist or a white supremacist but based on stuff like this I don’t get very surprised when I find people who do.
My response to (b): the word is probably beyond rehabilitation now, but I also think that people ought to be able to have discussions about bioethics without having to clarify their terms every ten seconds. I actually think it is unreasonable of someone to skim someone’s post on something, see a word that looks objectionable, and cast aspersions over their whole worldview as a result.
Reminds me of when I saw a recipe which called for palm sugar. The comments were full of people who were outraged at the inclusion of such an exploitative, unsustainable ingredient. Of course, they were actually thinking of palm oil (palm sugar production is largely sustainable) but had just pattern-matched ‘palm’ as ‘that bad food thing’.