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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   25707 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 25, 2024

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I don't really know who it benefits to keep creating people without the skills necessary to live in modern society and then, when they fail to live in modern society, say "Yeah, they deserve to be tortured for that".

Is he saying we should practice eugenics?

Not that I'm opposed, but...he knows about heredity and the poor track record of educational interventions above and beyond what we're already doing, so what else could he mean by "creating people without the skills necessary to live in modern society?"

That's such a cop-out and a distraction. Criminals shouldn't have been born in the first place? Unless you have a time machine that's entirely irrelevant as to how to punish them in the meantime.

Relevant post on his Tumblr from 2017 when he was doing child psychiatry:

Public service announcement: if you have a kid with some kind of horrifying predatory criminal, and now your kid is a horrifying predatory criminal, and you have no idea how this happened because the father left before he was even born and your new husband is a great guy and you’ve both always done your best to raise your kid well and give him a good home, your kid’s psychiatrist will listen empathetically to your story, and then empathetically give you a copy of The Nurture Assumption.

…maybe not actually. But it will definitely be on his mind. And maybe it would get people to stop having so many kids with horrifying predatory criminals. Seriously, I’m doing inpatient child psychiatry now and I get multiple cases like this every day.

This part of the followup post also seems relevant:

2 Did you know there are whole institutions for dealing with kids who sexually molest other kids? And these institutions are always full? The world is much worse than anybody thinks and I cannot finish up my child psychiatry rotation quickly enough.

I don't think the tweet Spookykou quoted is nessesarily saying "putting people in prison is the moral equivalent of torturing children", he was just comparing IQ and self-restraint as he said. But note that some of the people who need to be locked up are children. (This also brings to mind the bit in his post Against Against Autism Cures regarding those who are locked in personal sensory hells regardless of whether they also need to be physically restrained or not.)

It seems pretty clear that Scott would favor a voluntary eugenics program and/or genetic engineering.

Back in 2015 he had a fictional op-ed exploring some of the questions about "voluntary" here:

Everything Not Obligatory Is Forbidden

In 2064 there were almost 200 murders nationwide, up from a low of fewer than 50 in 2060. Why is this killer, long believed to be almost eradicated, making a comeback? Criminologists are unanimous in laying the blame on unenhanced children, who lack the improved impulse-control and anger-management genes included in every modern super-enhancement designer baby gene therapy package.

I see in the comments of the post he also established his position more explicitly:

I mean, I am pro voluntary designer babies, although I’m only confident about this in cases where it’s clear enhancement (eg giving kids genes that make them healthier) and not control (eg giving kids genes that make them want to always do what their parents say).

I don’t think I’m pro mandatory designer babies. You might be able to convince me depending on the exact details of the situation. But it probably wouldn’t be through an argument like this.

That “transhumanism is simplified humanism” post at the bottom explains where I’m coming from pretty well.

He's explicit about it in this old post

The more things turn out to be genetic, the more I support universal funding for implantable contraception that allow people to choose when they do or don’t want children – thus breaking the cycle where people too impulsive or confused to use contraception have more children and increase frequency of those undesirable genes. I think I’d have a heck of a lot easier a time changing gene frequency in the population than you would changing people’s locus of control or self-efficacy or whatever, even if I wasn’t allowed to do anything immoral (except by very silly religious standards of “immoral”).

I mean, I think what he’s leaving out is that a lot of underclass single motherhood is essentially voluntary- the girl is baby crazy and bad at future planning, and she’s a hormone addled teenager so she gets pregnant from the sexy bad boy not the guy working to get out of the hood. And there are no marriageable men in most of these ghettos; they leave, so she knows she’s not getting married anyways.

Scott has literally donated money to sterilize drug users.

That link does not warrant that conclusion.

He announced his intention to donate money to sterilize drug users.

On the spur of the moment he said he "thinks" he "probably" will, but also expressed reservations about it. I wouldn't hang a man for such an offhand comment in an informal setting.

I mean on the one hand, yes, but on the other hand, we can assume people do the things they say they would like to do, absent evidence to the contrary.

Disagree. I'd like to do all kinds of things I never get around to. And at times I also find myself expressing interest in doing something which, upon later reflection, I don't actually have.

The link does not indicate that Scott donated money to sterilize drug users and that's that.

genetic engineering

I think most people would support this given the conditions that everyone gets a leg up and it was applied society wide IE the rich are not allowed to just make themselves genetic lords over the rest of humanity.

It doesn't take a super-Straussian read of Scott's material to know that he is into eugenics. I suppose he has always towed the line of encouraging eugenic reproduction rather than discouraging dysgenic reproduction, so this does feel like a newer take.

I think the Tumblr post about "do not have kids with psychopaths" was on the discourge-dysnenics side of the line.

I expect that what he has in mind would be something like government-sponsored genetic engineering or embryo screening for prospective underclass parents.

he has always towed the line

Ah, my favorite pet peeve rears its ugly head again: it’s toe the line

Hm, you learn something every day. For some reason I had always imagined this idiom arrived from something nautical and pictured... a tugboat? Towing some kind of line?

Always nice to encounter a fellow member of C.A.N.O.E.!

And since that's apparently impossible to google, try this.

I am opposed, but I find this excerpt you quote ironic since there's reason to believe that harsher criminal justice systems in the past created eugenic effects (but largely without the horrible effects of modern eugenics programs, since the object was not eugenics but rather justice).

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