Richard Dawkins Claims Eugenics Works. He's Wrong.
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Boris Johnson's adviser Andrew Sabisky is a eugenicist and Richard Dawkins wants you to know that eugenics may be bad but it does work. But...it doesn't.
Transcript and links at / 34142453
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ABOUT: Rebecca Watson is the founder of the Skepchick Network, a collection of sites focused on science and critical thinking. She has written for outlets such as Slate, Popular Science, and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. She's also the host of Quiz-o-tron, a rowdy, live quiz show that pits scientists against comedians. Asteroid 153289 Rebeccawatson is named after her (her real name being 153289).
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Eugenicists think Megalodon was the Perfect Shark™ and then forget that it's extinct.
No that's not what eugenicists think. You're projecting your own lack of understanding of biology onto them.
does eugenics work?
no
citation: i'm autistic, eugenics would have me sterilised
Bit of an emotional argument
Holy crap- I had a cocker spaniel puppy as a kid who by the time he was 5 had cataracts over the bottom hemisphere of his eyes, a sensitive stomach, a skin disorder, and a seizure disorder. He would often trip over whatever he couldn’t see at his feet, fall, seizure, and then throw up. We never bought a puppy from a mall again, but honestly until today I thought Sparky just had been dealt a bad hand, poor pup.
“Purebred” is the aberration, people, dogs or people. It’s the opposite of natural. Sparky did not make it to age 7.
There is a difference between inbreeding and other qualities of genetics.
I agree. My childhood dog was part beagle, part basset hound, part cocker spaniel. He was the smartest, most empathic dog, and pretty healthy, too. Anybody who wants to get a new dog should get a mutt.
@@milascave2
Unless your mutt is so mixed that you cannot tell what is in it then it’ll have the same problems as purebreds. Crossing breeding between two, closely related at that, breeds doesn’t solve genetic diversity. Fact is purebreds aren’t going anywhere and even if you could flip a magic switch that got rid of the concept of purebreds the concept would reemerge in a decade.
Fact is purebreds have a lot of value for their working ability and the fact you roughly know what you are getting into.
It's so ironic seeing Dawkins say "Heaven forbid we should do it!"
The idea that one can simply divorce the question of "Would this work?" from the question of "Is this ethical?" presupposes that we have a common understanding of what it would mean for eugenics to 'work'. And in all the analogies Dawkins uses, the subjects being subjected to selective breeding (the animals and plants in question) have no say in the matter. So there's the related question: works for whom? In all the cases Dawkins cites, the crossbreeding is done to make plants and animals more useful to those exercising power over them (humans). So, if someone proposes to subject humans to the same techniques, the question is not just, "Will this work" but "Who is this supposed to work for?"
But we do have a common understanding of what it means for eugenics to work. It means to achieve the genetic changes in humans the eugenics program was supposed to achieve and this achieve the social goals the program was meant to achieve. You do not need to agree with the goals to recidivist that they work in their own terms. Not do you need to believe the means justified the ends to acknowledge the ends were obtained.
@@michaelprice9159 My point is that the issue of whether one agrees with the terms is rather significant.
@@amtlpaul No that want you're point
Now it's a good point and we should discuss it. For example those in power might wish to make people more compliant and that plan could work. I personally think this would be a dishwasher on multiple levels
To realize that Eugenics doesn’t work however requires empathy for its targets and the people who defend the efficacy of eugenics are at best callously indifferent to the humanity of Eugenics targets.
@@blixer8384 No it doesn't require empathy to be wrong. Empathy would lead you to say it would work but we shouldn't do it. Banning child labour to protect your income from competition would probably work. If it means children starve that didn't mean it doesn't work, just that you shouldn't do it
If a person is a eugenicist, they must also be a totalitarian. Otherwise, how do they propose we impose eugenics?
Tax incentives.
Remember China?
how stupid are you ? just giving people, you want more children from, stuff like government funded childcare, is more than enough and it would be an explicit eugenic policy with 0 authoritarianism. do you ever use your own brain or are you collecting talking points from online idiots like a frankenstein ? bad look
China is pretty totalitarian
tjungblast 00 that’s not eugenics that’s transhumanism. It will be ready right after teleportation.
@@Senumunu
but being ableist and fascist is a good look, lol?
Just a heads up, Adam's book is titled "How To Argue with a Racist" I tried looking up "Arguing with Racists" and couldn't find it. That being said, thank you for the recommendation!
This women single handedly killed the new atheist movement lmao. I as a Pakistani can laugh at you westerners who do not know the trojan horse that is Islam and its Islamophobia shield. Your children will cry under the mullahs feet, like we do, in a few decades. You people achieved modern liberal values and then destroyed them with post modernism.
Read this book. "Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity-and Why This Harms Everybody - Helen Pluckrose, James A. Lindsay"
The western liberal model gave people like me hope. The western leap from Scientific evidence based skepticism to post modern radical skepticism crushed all hope.
Another terrible side effect of eugenics is making a population more susceptible to novel infectious diseases. Genetic diversity is important for a very real reason.
'My "I don't endorse eugenics but it would work" T-shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt' - absolutely brilliant in exposing the mentality behind EdgeLords and their inability to master human communication.
Would there have been a more effective way to communicate that message?
(What I'm about to say is not related to Dawkins' apparent misunderstanding of eugenics, I'm making a generalised point based on the general attitude you've expressed.)
I'm autistic, and would very well make similar statements about other subjects. If the neurotypicals were to be offended, and belittle me for my inability to master "human" communication (You mean neurotypical :) Do not dehumanise me), then to me they would just be stupid and ableist.
Such statements are also only ever made in response to existing claims that "X wouldn't work". (Again, this is not about eugenics. Dawkins was simply wrong, as it does not work. I'm talking about similar examples where the immoral thing would in fact work for its intended immoral purpose.)
Please learn to consider the fact that not everyone's brain has the irrational hangups that yours has. The only issue with Dawkins' statement, is that it was inaccurate. Had eugenics actually worked, then there would be no problem with his statement, since he very explicitly also said that it would be morally wrong to actually do it.
I'll give an example: "Murder is wrong. But, if you want someone to be dead, then murder is definitely a method that works. That doesn't mean it's okay to murder people. It's simply a statement of fact."
Are you now going to call me an "edgelord", simply because your neurotypical brain, which works differently from mine, has some kind of weird emotional hangup with my 100% accurate and harmless statement? Are you going to dehumanise me by saying I'm bad at fucking "human communication", when clearly your real issue is that my brain works different from yours, which means I do not suffer from the same emotional hangups? (I will not insult your intelligence by asking if you would assume that my statement endorses murder. I certainly hope you're not that stupid.)
Piss off, ableist.
“kills them in 10-60% of cases” well....that’s quite a range
Yeah lol that was weird
Pugs have a high variability of genetic defects as well, depending on the family
I thought it was 10-16
Orynae I thought about that after posting the comment lol 😂
No, it's 10-60%
Barbarossa was bred so fast that he won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness. He was also bred so badly that his leg snapped in the Belmont's starting gates. They tried to save him for breeding purposes, but ultimately failed, and since thoroughbreds had to be witnessed conceived, and it was his back, weight-bearing leg that broke, they had to put him down. Selective breeding at work.
The following does not get said loudly or often enough:
The problem with eugenics isn’t a question of “will it work” or “is it ethical?”
The problem with eugenics is that it must embody some kind of ranking, some system to figure out which *people are better than others* so that the superior people can be propagated and the inferior people eliminated.
If every person has equal value (if “all men are created equal...”) then there is no superior person so therefore there is nothing superior to breed in the first place.
The premise of eugenics is that there exists today a subset of the set of all humans who are inferior and thus worthy of elimination, and eugenics also proposes that by the elimination of those inferior people from the gene pool then society overall will be improved. Both of those premises are wrong: there are no inferior people (we all have strengths and weaknesses) and since there are no inferior people if a subset is eliminated then there will be no improvement, just people missing, and people missing means nothing more than *less* genetic diversity.l
Well put!
On a purely pragmatic evolutionary level, the fewer varieties of human we have, the less likely we are to survive existential threats as a species.
the environment eliminates people all the time by selecting who is adapted enough to produce children and who is not. to not be at the mercy of the environment is what it means to be human but the environment we have created is itself selecting (and even selecting more harshly than the natural environment) also once again you fail to separate the moral argument from the scientific case.
Senko S. When you comment that I have “failed to separate the moral argument from the scientific case” do you mean that I have imposed a moral judgment when I started with the premise that “all humans are of equal value and worth, there are no superior people”? If that’s your point then yes, I am guilty as charged. Much of my point was to reframe the argument *as* a moral argument *not* a scientific argument.
If you accept a morality that states “some people are superior to others, they possess an intrinsic value and have more worth than other people” then the science of eugenics can be made to work (with some caveats like that genetics is harder than we think, and harmful mutations will accumulate, and accumulate faster the more strictly one imposes selection criteria).
If your position is that since you belong to a subset of humanity that is superior to the rest and therefore you “deserve” to reproduce where others do not, then I invite you to consider the basis for concluding your superiority and consider if some other group might be able to use the identical argument to conclude that *you* are the inferior one. In that case the only resolution is “might makes right” and you get war.
@@jpe1 the words "superior" and "deserving" are moral terms. The scientific case only describes who is more adapted to the environment and who is not. On the other hand you can not justify your moral axioms, only assert them. If this was a more religious society you certainly would have more people on your side. All of this is besides the point anyway. She miss characterized Dawkins. I am pretty sure that she knows that Dawkins is aware how genetic load functions and that the polarization of one trait comes at a cost. (Farm animals with health problems) this is not a case against eugenics but a case against polarizing certain phenotypes.
@@Senumunu whose side do you think I'm on, that you think I would have more people on *my* side if "this" was a more religious society? The moral axiom that you insist I cannot justify is anathema to religious folks; in my experience it is only the non-religious who subscribe to the position that all people are equal. I would love to be proved wrong on this, please feel free to give examples of religious folk advocating for universal equality among all humans.
If you want to argue that some people are better than others I am happy to have that debate, but it isn't really relevant to my point, because my point was very explicitly stated to be that *if* you agree that all people are equal *then* eugenics won't work. You have not invalidated my conclusion, and while I do agree that I didn't justify my axiom I don't have to justify it for the if-then relationship to be value.
Here's a simple example to help explain: If I say "if x>1 then 1/x < x" and you say "yeah but x
Yes, Richard, when you selectively breed for isolated traits you breed the best, dumbest, milk cow with complete dependence on another species for survival.
He knows this. He's a biologist lol. He's not saying you should just genetically manipulate so narrowly. He's also on record saying you shouldn't apply this to people in the real world anyway, since it is unethical. He was making an off the cuff tweet about how theoretically, he might like to select for certain traits in some hypothetical unrealistic scenario.
@@s0515033 yeah its it's a good thing he isn't regarded as a scientific authority to the public can just laugh off his glib trashy remarks.
@@DahVoozel I mean, he's an esteemed and highly published scientist. I guess according to your average creationist religious moron, he's not, ya.
@b- dubz He's not wrong. We've already been doing it for thousands of years. Enter the dog. It is not possible because it is unethical, which he's already said lol.
You think it is wrong for the wrong reasons, really. He thinks it is wrong for the right reasons, because he's informed.
@b- dubz That's rich, coming from the guy who thinks humans are magical creatures divorced from nature to which scientific principles don't apply. I think you need to take the college courses if you think selective breeding is fake.
Of course humans are not dogs. Are you going to launch into some crazy religious nonsense about how Humans are ultra special god-image beings with holy genetic code?
Please, bro. Save it. I have low tolerance for human worship.
I have no attachment to Eugenics at all. I've said it is unethical, as has Dawkins. What I am doing is defending Dawkins and the concept of selective breeding because you are deliberately misrepresenting him while pretending that selective breeding is fake because it has cons.
Eugenics works. Just look at the British royals.
Pugs were also my first thought in terms of selective breeding. The have become popular for their "cuteness' but you end up with dogs that can't breathe, have constant eye problems (including eyelashes growing inwards that scratch the eye), inflammation of the brain from a skull that is too small and tails that keep in moisture creating the perfect home for fleas to infest. Frankly so many purebred dogs are living such painful lives its cruel that there is still such a market for them.
you get these traits with non eugenic reproduction as well. it is an argument against polarization of certain traits and not an argument against eugenics.
@@Senumunu That's.... kind of what eugenics is.
@@cjermevpg6372 no. that's a phenotype humans have selectively bred for. You can use eugenics to breed dogs that are healthier and physically fitter than wild animals and even live longer.
Polarization of certain traits would mean not breeding in nature. You know, natural selection. It is a particular problem of artificial selection.
@@enfercesttout polarization of traits also means exclusive and more secured breeding in nature and in human society. the distinction between artificial and natural is fallacious as well. we are beings of nature.
Thing is, you can breed animals for specific, limited, traits. That's relatively easy.
But human eugenics is much harder. What characteristics would we choose? How would we breed genius athletes? What sort of genius? What sort of athletic ability? How long would that take? What else would they need in terms of education, healthcare, parental care, and so forth? Oh, yeah: could we maintain genetic diversity? After all, both selective breeding and eugenics are about winnowing undesirable characteristics. What happens after a few generations of the 'superior' people reproducing?
You want to winnow undesirable characteristics. Nature does this too. It is not a simple matter of "more genetic diversity is automatically better." You can increase diversity by eliminating selection, but that path leads to "failure to thrive" and extinction. Healthy diversity can be achieved in mammals by maintaining an effective population size of 50, or 100 if you want a generous margin of safety, and a total breeding population of 500, or 1000 for a generous margin of safety. At these sizes, selection against undesired traits will not pose a threat to genetic diversity. As to your last question, after a few generations, the lineages who had opted out would be thinking, "Gee, I wish my ancestors had practiced eugenics too."
A - How many generations of cow-precursors were bred before the breeders had stock that was sort of controllable and sort of predictable?
B - I recall listening to my Mom talk about breeding arabian horses back in the day.
The fact is when you combine arabian horses with desirable traits - the resulting foal rolls dice and if you're LUCKY it comes out with the desired traits. I recall my mom tracing various offspring of horses she knew (and a couple she owned) and how often very one was mystified by how they turned out.
Humans have not been through this filter of thousands of generations of controlled breeding, the way horses or cows have. Therefore the die roll of any given human child is MUCH more random than for horses or cows.
I do not think you could do any sort of human controlled breeding program without spending a long, long time on it. Like thousands of years.
Until then two humans mate and the child rolls the dice. Oh, and lets not forget the importance of epigenetics! Maybe we could breed a race of superior humans... by assuring mothers have adequate nutrition, medical care and support.
naaah, no one would want to pay for that!
Eugenists people will rarely say that their own genes and traits shouldnt be reproduced. That their genes should be the last of their line. It’s always someone else’s.
In Gattaca, the premise is that it's "the best of you". If someone is smart but short, they could have smart, tall babies. If they're dumb, their babies could be made smarter.
Genetic diversity is critical to rapid adaptation instead of concentrating a superior enhanced trait... Specialization can be deadly in a shifting environment
No it doesn't. Eugenics if done right would have resulted in us being centuries ahead today.
Hitler and his evil party completely demonized eugenics.
I don't care about race(I'm black), get people with iq above 160 and make them have 7-10 children all of whom would be taken care of by a special Institute where they will be raised in a scientifically designed perfect environment to enhance their skills to the fullest.
It can lead to more intelligent, beautiful, tall, physically fit humans. Don't you want that? I for one would love to live in that world. Imagine a few hundred thousand Einstein's, Hawking's, Hubble's in a 6ft tall perfect bodies with no flaws.
We have enough knowledge and resource to make this happen but selfish left would never allow such thing to happen because with all those perfect specimen around, blue,pink, purple haired fat chicks won't have much impact since no one will care
@@robertmills3830 I think intelligence is the kind of goal giving eugenics a bad name. Intelligence (if we use IQ as a proxy for now, which isn't unproblematic) whilst having a lot of genetic variance, that variance is found across many genes with no gene providing a substantial contribution. Because of that simply selectively breeding people with high IQ, whilst it might lead to slow improvements in IQ, is unlikely to lead to people who are Einsteins or Hawkings (at least not in any reasonable time span), nor beautiful, nor tall (other than by how much those genes relate to intelligence, height is correlated to intelligence but that is probably just a proxy for well nourished in childhood rather than straight genetic influence).
There is also some poorly understood association between autoimmune diseases and extreme intelligence. We might end up with a lot of sickly geniuses, and most really successful scientists are more productive if they are physically healthy (Hawkings being a notable exception), assuming Einsteins were your goal.
If governments really want more intelligent people they probably want to invest in pre-schools, early child care, neonatal & childhood nutrition, and some work to shift culture to value expressing extreme intelligence. We can likely improve the other parts of the variance in intelligence much more easily (and quickly) than via genetics. The Flynn effect, and its reversal, is interesting here.
Now if you want to select for 6 fingers, resistance to bubonic plague or coronavirus, these things have identified genetic basis with significant contributions from small numbers of genes, and we could likely achieve those quickly via breeding (or sufficient pandemics in some cases). Similarly American Jewish groups have had some success preventing carriers of the Tay Sachs disease producing children together, although their intent is I believe about avoiding the perils of recessive diseases (often the mutation itself may be okay or beneficial if you only have one copy, otherwise natural selection would have dealt with these variants), so whilst for some disorders they will shift the gene pool slowly for Tay Sachs they likely aren't changing the future risk substantially if they were to stop their programme, so that one itself is arguably not eugenics.
@@51monw I was rambling in the above comment since I was frustrated that even talking about eugenics is considered taboo so went to the extreme. I completely understand your point about there still being issues with diseases for example the diseases associated with Ashkenazi jew's DNA despite them being much more intelligent on average compared to the rest of the population. I've always been fascinated by eugenics, my point is that YES there are problems with eugenics but shouldn't we at least be having a dialogue on this? Shouldn't we at least be allocating some money on this research and promote geneticists to research and publish their own findings in scientific papers without the fear of being labeled racist/nazi or being canceled?
Thank you for responding tho.
@@51monw so will you be sacrificing your eyesight or your heart function for better muscle density then? Which traits will you drop in favour of which others? Eugenics is a moron's endeavor, genetic diversity is a fundamental constant of evolution. Without it, your species stops playing the game
@@robertmills3830 you don't think three centuries of open dialogue were what resulted in us all realizing this isn't worth the dialogue?
"I say humans fucked up a perfectly good wolf."
YES! Exactly! I've been saying this for years!
Good, now go play with a pack of wolves.
@@alexcnz92
Who said I wanted to? Wolves are meant to be out on their own, doing their own thing. Why the fuck would I want to treat them like a dog?
@@CloudsGirl7 you're intentionally missing the point. Yes maybe out in the wild wolves fare better than dogs, but dogs were bred to be be better than wolves both practically and emotionally, and on top of that the trained dog often lives a better life than a wild wolf. Breeding dogs didn't destroy the wolves, we don't live in a zero sum world; wolves still exist and we created dogs which are both better for us than wolves, and often live better lives themselves than if they were in the wild
the ancestor of the modern dog was only a relative to the wolf. sorry to screw up your tweet.
@@rationalobserver3675 you're intentionally missing the point. dogs aren't objectively universally better than wolves like you say they are, they're better slaves and have worse health.
As someone who breeds Dalmatians, I can say that “eugenics” didn’t work. Dalmatians were recently outbred with another bred (pointers) to improve the health of the breed, which it did. I am part of a group of individuals in various kennel clubs that thinks we should be outbreeding “purebreds” constantly so there is a gene flow between the breeds. It actually doesn’t take long to breed the desired look back into the breed and they are just way healthier.
Have y'all ever just thought to stop fucking around with dogs genetics?
@@SlamdogX You are vegan right?
The fuck you think dogs came from?
@@leonorf2730 I know, the stupidity is giving me an aneurysm right now.
@@SlamdogX While mutts are fine dogs and perfectly suitable as pets for most people, there are still benefits to having different breeds of dogs to choose from for specific tasks. Hunting, bomb sniffing, medical scent work, service dogs, police dogs, etc. require certain kinds of dogs. When you breed for working ability the dogs are usually a lot healthier than a pure show dog, although small gene pools can be a problem among working dogs as well.
Not only are dogs often bred in a way that results in negative health effects, but we’ve taken the species in more than one direction. So which is the “superior” dog? A German Shepherd? Bloodhound? Shiba Inu? Yorkshire Terrier? There are a lot of dog breeds because, surprise surprise, having a diversity of options is the most practical all-around choice, because it means you can adapt to more than one kind of task. If you want a dog that can follow even a faint trail, you get a Bloodhound. If you want a dog that can follow badgers into holes, you get a Dachshund. They’re physically unsuited for each other’s jobs, so if you don’t have both, you won’t be able to do one or the other well at all.
EDIT: I made some unfounded remarks about about the health problems of show-bred dogs, which aren’t actually true. Breeds do suffer from susceptibility to certain diseases, but I couldn’t find any evidence to support that those diseases are linked to the physical traits of the dogs in question, as I initially thought. I’ve left that part of the comment in-tact below in brackets, just for context for the replies to this comment, but I no longer think I was right to say the stuff that I did (except the bit about loving my non-breed dog, that bit still stands, obviously)
Dawkins is still wrong about eugenics having “worked” for dogs, though. Selective breeding and eugenics may be related concepts, broadly speaking, but they are not the same.
[ Of course, a lot of dogs nowadays are bred for the appearance of physical traits, rather than actual abilities, which is one thing that contributes to a lot of health problems. Show-bred German Shephards suffer from hip and spine problems not just because of genetic susceptibility, but because the shape of their bodies that defines them as German Shephards put a lot of strain on those parts. Dog breeds in general are weird; they’re only maintained by constant inbreeding, which kind of icks me out. I’ve got a mutt, myself - no idea what her heritage may be, she’s just “dog,” and I think that’s all she needs to be. ]
I have a show bred GSD and she doesn't have hip or spine problems and neither do five generations back in her pedigree. Hip dysplasia is tested through something called hip and elbow scoring, which is an X-ray done and sent to the OFA/BVA to judge hips before any dog is bred. Hip Dysplasia is also partly environmental, excessive exercise before the growth plates fuse or improper nutrition can also cause hip dysplasia. Regarding the shape of the breed causing hip dysplasia, well bred GSD are not more likely to develop HD than any other large breed. When it comes to hip dysplasia, they are in the middle of the pack, not uniquely susceptible. GSD clubs in the US, UK and Germany have done a LOT of work to promote health testing especially hip scoring and hip dysplasia rates have been falling for a long time.
Many show bred GSD also have working titles, most at least do some kind of work or sport at home due to the fact they need a job and need a purpose or they can become bored and destructive. They are still working dogs.
Regarding inbreeding, we also have something called COI. Coefficient of Inbreeding. I can put my dogs pedigree into a program as well as a possible father for her pups and it'll tell me what percentage the two would be inbred. My GSD's parents COI is 0%. The breed average COI according to the UK KC is 3.1%.
@@IsThatEtchas What your dog has, or doesn't have, in no way changes the fact that many dogs, of many breeds, have serious health problems, which are a direct result of the selective breeding to which they are subjected. Neither one dog, nor five generations of dogs, make up a species. The effects of selective breeding may not be seen today, or in five generations, but they make themselves known eventually, with devastating effect. Naturally, all this is beside the point. The real question is, would you subject your children to the same treatment to with you subject your dogs? Would you want to be subjected to it yourself?
@@user-sl7lc9zr4d I am using my own dog as an example to explain health testing and the common myths and issues regarding the breed. I said much more than just what my dog has or hasn't. Pretending that I'm only talking about my dog so you can ignore my points is silly. You haven't responded to any of my clarifications or explanations.
Would I screen my children for health issues? Would I screen myself for health issues? Yeah. If there was a particular health issue in my family line would I screen for it? Yeah. So would most people.
Would I selectively breed people for specific traits? No. But I'm not arguing that eugenics is all fine and good. I'm not promoting that viewpoint.
I'm specifically talking about dogs. You say inbreeding is an issue with show bred GSD, how do you respond to the average COI that I've provided you? What's your data that shows GSD are uniquely affected by Dysplasia due to their structure? What evidence do you have to support your POV?
@@IsThatEtchas The question is, would you breed your children like you do your dogs? Would you stop them from marrying someone with "bad genes", or force them to copulate with someone with "desirable traits"?
I watched this video to see you dunking on Richard Dawkins but now I'm just sad for all the cocker spaniels out there. 😥
So many ‘pure’ bred dogs are ridiculously unhealthy. It’s frustrating and so sad to watch a French bull dog try to play but it’s owner has to stop it before it faints.
Actually, Cuba had tried its hand at selectively bred cows to produce ultra milk pumping cows to boost Cuba's dairy industry. Castro loved his dairy, so many resources were funneled into this project. After innumerable cows, they succeeded: they made _one_ cow...
Their name was Ubre Blanca
Ubre Blanca is now dead.
The end.
That didn't help at all!
Actually, you've posted a little anecdote that sounds like bulls**t. I invite you to post evidence to convince us otherwise.
@heman Never been to Cuba, huh? You should. You'd find out how much "common knowledge" about the place is actually bulls**t.
Interesting story. It does make you wonder... if selective breeding is so simple and effective, why is there only one cow? It's almost as if there are multiple layers of nuance and confounding factors underlying the whole process. Like maybe the cows we have today are the results of trial and error over thousands of years, and genetic knowledge has only really sped that up a little bit. But sure, we could just force the strongest and smartest people to fuck. That won't have unforeseen consequences.
@Eric Beller I got another one... for something to come out of a cow, something has to go into a cow. Or as the Swiss would put it, those darn cows got too big for the existing stables, too heavy for the dirt paths and too voracious for the mountain meadows. It's as if humans aren't that good with visualizing unintended consequences.
It's now 2023 and Dawkins is still alive, kicking, and continuing to be a constant source of embarrassment to me as an atheist. I cringe every time I see his name in the news.
I know there is no god, because in a just world we could have traded Dawkins for Hitchens.
Another great addition to the legacy of Richard Dawkins.
Thats because Dawkings says the truth, I support eugenics.
@JohnnyTheWolf but more intelligent than you will ever be.
@@mgtowchampion7961 Did you forget /s or do you need to learn about the super facist. That is a real person, who called himself that, while on trial, if I remember correctly.
@Brutus Nero I'm not that bright ? I think agreeing with Dawkins proves you wrong.
@Brutus Nero Eugenics and atheism is the key to a healthier society.
I'm so glad you talked about this ridiculous subject Eugenics, as a black man I've heard people talk about how black people having a low IQ, but when I tell that I have doctors and business owners in my family and my daughter is electrical engineering, they suddenly go silent.
Which is just slightly better from a century ago when they would go on to say "well yes, but you are a credit..."
If you are so bright, why do you not grasp the concept of non-identical distributional curves?
@@michaels4255 ohh dear, you believe what ever you want to believe.
Different black ethnic groups have different IQs
Black Americans are usually dumb which is where the stereotype comes from
But Nigerians have proven themselves to be incredibly smart on all IQ tests
N=2 isn't science dumbass.
Also, here's the thing about eugenics: It was tried, several times, I lived under a eugenics programme myself in fact before it was reformed away due to public pressure. My family hid my diagnosis for almost two decades to avoid these measures by the state. And here's the kicker: The underclass has their own form of human genome modification. It's called car bombs, and it's thanks to this great innovation that we no longer have eugenics stated into western law. If posh academics and politicians want to have another round, then it might shine some light on the nuances of superior and inferior. Simply put, another scientific fact is that nerds can't fight. So they shouldn't be picking fights with poor people.
"And here's the kicker: The underclass has their own form of human genome modification. It's called car bombs" golden line
What country was this?
huh...... I wonder if Richard Dawkins can explain why, then, my learning disabled daughter and her learning disabled spouse produced a daughter who sings, dances, acts and is a 4.0 college-bound honors student.
Ask your genetic counselor.
Well, the first thing that pops into my head is trait dominance. I don't know this specific case though, or how dominance plays into whatever disabilities your daughter and son in-law have.
Your overall point i agree with though; we know far too little about the complicated world of genetics at this point to be fucking with it.
@@kragtorgaming6700 exactly
I know a couple who have mild to above average intelligence and got a 3 year old who write and do fractions. Its just way too unpredictable us to judge who will produce such a child.
Ps. I gald your daughter found happiness and started a family.
do you know what a distribution curve is ? it might help you on your eternal quest to figure out how genetic traits get passed on. dont stress it though. its not the easiest thing for preschoolers to learn.
As someone who has written books on genetics like Dawkins, he is 100% ideologically motivated to say what he says. I am absolutely sure that he is aware of everything you just said, but he doesn't care about it because he has other interests and they don't align with factuality.
Only thing in this i had never heard is just how unhealthy cockers are. Mine is about to turn 17 and has never had any health issues outside of salmonella as a puppy. She is losing her sight slowly this last year but can still run around easily and jump 2 feet into bed every night. Her brother lived to 16 too. I feel awful for so many other spaniels who live with such awful conditions
Richard’s been spending too much time with Sam “I’m just conducting a thought experiment...”
or... quite the opposite?
I actually thought, when I saw the tweet(s) :
Did his friend Sam fail to call and visit him recently, or something,
"cheating" friendship with IDW bunch, he's not invited...?
so he needed to step up his _cozy with eugenics_ game and get their attention?
Sam has to be one of the dumbest atheists I've ever seen.
Or maybe he just stated a morally neutral unassailable fact, other comment was so on the nose when he compared this to xians saying "if you believe in evolution then you believe in nazi eugenics" this is so apt I don't even consider it analogy, it's the exact same view.
Well I do remember the Eugenics Wars and how dandy that turned out...
Off topic, but there's an embarrassing ad for the epoch times ( right wing propaganda) that I watched on its entirety so hopefully you get the most money from it
Whoa, that's some loyalty.
I thought epoch times was the tin-foil hat periodical?
o7
The algorithm has decided that's your thing now. All hail the algorithm.
@m norton buswell China Uncensored is affiliated with Epoch Times btw
Perhaps a better question would be: can we selectively breed new atheists to not be extremely embarrassing?
The moral of the story: There's always a down side
Exactly, there are underlying traits that may piggyback on other traits, and its way more complicated than it seems. Selectively breeding for “desirable” traits will potentially put the end result human at risk of other, possibly new, ailments that scientists could never forsee, nor treat.
You pretty much stated my exact thoughts. Breeding for traits would work but humans are complex organisms and there could be catastrophic consequences to eugenics.
No, that does not follow. Problems in some animal breeds is because of breeders' goals and methods, not because horrible consequences are unavoidable. At any rate, we are breeding ourselves already, because we already have policies and practices in place that create non-random differential reproductive success, or that reduce natural selection to the point that mutational load can rise steadily in the population. Unfortunately, we would never consciously choose to select for most of the genetic changes that we are in fact selecting for very effectively. So it is not even a question of whether we shall do this. We already are! Why do you not worry about the consequences of that?
And this is why its a good thing that atheist/skeptics shouldnt idolize anyone or anything
"Humans fucked up a perfectly good wolf" XD XD XD behold, I am slain!
If by "works" he means that every time a eugenics program has been implemented it has been successful in severe repression and gross rights violations of already marginalised segments of a population, then he is correct. Since that also seems to be the actual underlying point of these programs I guess he's doubly correct, just not in the way he thinks.
I'm sure if he was being honest he would come out in support of eugenics'ing away Muslims.
JohnnyTheWolf
He probably will
dawkins is overlooking the millions of dogs who have been selectively bred who now all have hip and organ problems after 5 years, what a dum dum
You're talking about the programs and not the concept itself
@@SlamdogX Being Muslim is not a genetic trait. So no, eugenics will not work for that. Now if you want to make people in Muslim countries taller, Eugenics WILL work.
If he used "selective breeding" instead of the politically charged word eugenics it wouldn't of got the attention and clicks. He's an internet troll
It's the same thing
People fall for it though lol. It's hilarious to watch how easily you can manipulate people into getting reactions because they aren't informed enough to understand the issues. It is like when you mention the word "socialism" people freak the fuck out. But if you call it something else, everyone loves it.
@Venice Beach Sports Network It's possible that Dawkins isn't trolling, but just being intellectually lazy by confusing selective breeding with eugenics.
@Martin O'Donnell - Selective breeding is about breeding for an arbitrary set of traits, ignoring any other effects. Eugenics is specifically about 1) increasing *socially desirable* traits 2) *without* additional adverse consequences. Do you see the difference between those?
@@karmabeast All selective breeding is inherently a eugenic process, as it uses selective breeding to--get this--select traits you want and deselect those you don't want. By definition, if you are selecting/deselecting, you are doing it for "socially desirable reasons." You aren't doing it for random LOLwut reasons or to make things worse intentionally. No one is trying to select bad traits or have them. They are unavoidable.
Therefore, your distinction is 100% artificial, kinda like the difference between "cult" and "religion." Make believe differences that exist only to avoid offending a larger group of delusional people.
There is no confusion, really. Unless the confusion is on your end in an effort to spit hairs. Selective breeding is the "factual science" behind eugenics. The rest is bullshit, though.
@@s0515033 `By definition, if you are selecting/deselecting, you are doing it for "socially desirable reasons."`
Either I was being imprecise, or our definitions of "socially desirable" are *wildly* different. To try to clarify - socially desirable is at the broad societal, *not* self-selected ingroup, level. Also, those traits in question are supposedly desired *by the broad population who would undergo trait selection*.
Do you still think I'm splitting hairs? Or, if you think that what I typed does not describe the stated goal of eugenics, can you point me to some eugenisist texts that you think do actually describe eugenics?
edit: clarified `the stated goal of` eugenics
Personally I'm on the fence about stuff like gene editing - it provides a way with which we can help prevent genetic disorders but there are a lot of both moral and scientific problems with the use of this specific technology
My dog is totally a stray from Oakland. I found that very funny 😂😂
Of course he does. Of course. It's like something happened recently that just gave him the feeling that he had permission to tell us how he really feels.
Simon Sozzi Old people don’t give a shit
@@sheenasapunkrocker that too... but he's not stupid. A decade ago he wasn't making comments like this in Public.
He has always said nonsense, it's nothing new.
I think Dawkins has become addicted to notoriety and just insulting people's religion isn't giving him a satisfying enough fix these days.
@@SimonSozzi7258 actually... He was making comments like that much longer than 10 years ago
Fascinating. I must confess I’ve never given this so much thought.
Those dogs were not bred to be superior. They were bred by Victorians to look cute and weird to act as accessories. Still something that is perpetuated till this day and not spoken about.
Hearing all the problems dog breeding causes just makes me think "why weren't people happy with wolves? They're big fluffy Bois!"
You didn’t just say flushing woodcocks out of the bush did you? 😂
I want to be in the room with the mortician when they find Dawkins's Honkler tattoo
Naked, no doubt.
Eugenicists seem to rarely, if ever, define what they would try to breed for. Presumably they would try to breed for 'our most human traits'...but those extremely vaguely defined traits (presumably intelligence, good personality, good mental health, etc.) are all ones that can most accurately be measured under conditions in which each person is valued for their own sake, has excellent access to health care and education, and each person is able to acquire life's necessities without undue effort. Which, the astute reader has noticed, are precisely the conditions least likely support any sort of compulsory eugenics effort. So, if eugenicists are truly true believers they should be advocating for respect for the individual and for every individual to have enough resources that they truly do have opportunities, and then - once everyone is healthy and able to be the best person their genome allows - figure out a way to convince people to voluntarily carefully choose the next generations genes. Although, for such a sustained effort to to have a chance of working someone is going to first breed eugenicists for extreme patience, flexible long-term planning, and charm. (Particularly the charm, when they start talking the little amount present seems to retroactively vanish.)
I want us to raise humans with sweeter juice and smaller seeds.
And a higher vitamin C content?
@@pattheplanter We'll sacrifice nutritional content for a longer shelf life. Capitalism.
Gives me the same vibes as the Peep Show's "Kill All The Poor"
Great example with the Cocker Spaniel there! I have a Sprocker Spaniel! In an attempt to minimise any issues caused by inbreeding or lack of genetic variance in the population in the 'pure' breeds. Mixed breeds are the best! It's science! I'm glad that dog owners and breeders are starting to pick up on this. I'm new here btw, fantastic video! ( :
It actually a great example that the author of the video doesn't understand basic biology.
Is the fact that selectively bred dogs have a plethora of health issues proof that they are somewhat inferior to street dogs?
Well, biologically, there's no such thing as superior or inferior, better or worse, but just more adapted to the environment.
So, in a street environment, a mixed bred dog would thrive due to superior health and resistance.
But suppose you put both dogs in an environment in which the only food are small animals hiding inside bushes.
In this environment, the Cocker Spaniel would thrive and ultimately outnumber all other breeds!
Always ask yourself: best for what?
My OCD: * carefully untwists your tank top strap *
B stands for boundaries.
Healthy boundaries.
Also, about the common rebuttal "Dawkins presupposes that some traits are superior to others"
-yeah, so do you when you argue that all these dogs are worse off because of eugenics. But you don't expect me to turn your reasoning against you and act confused when you say retinal atrophy is bad.
I don't know, does it require much of a presupposition to conclude that retinal atrophy is undesirable, both for the dog and for the humans involved?
Had this thought. When we consider the """viability""" of eugenics we have no choice but to consider the moral and ethical questions. Why? Because eugenics doesn't give us the room to excise morality from it's practice. The selection process that determines "desirables" and "undesirables" is based on a series of value judgements that come from a moral philosophy. The practice of eugenics is fundamentally tied to its underlying moral philosophy.
If people want to debate the """viability""" of eugenics without considering the moral or ethical questions I suggest they find some eugenicists and ask them to start practicing in a more "objective" manner. We'll see how well that goes.
Dawkins didn't start the debate about eugenics being viable. Idiots who don't know basic biology did. He had to talk about the viability because Pele water getting the facts wrong and that matters is you actually want to argue against eugenics.
The crazy thing is, that this guy is an evolutionary biologist
Where can I find that book?
Can we talk about the fact that diversity is objectively good for genetics? Reproduction with a mixed race couple is more likely to filter out genetic problems while having a couple with overly similar genes is more likely to result in passing on existing problems. If racists cared about "superior genes" there would be more diversity. But let's be real, that's not their end goal.
When you started talking about the problems that Cocker Spaniels suffer, I teared up a bit.
You've basically agreed with him and you don't even realize it.
Eugenics just IS selective breeding, albeit with the intention of breeding traits that are being considered superior. The only difference between eugenics and selective breeding is the goal, but that isn't really a difference at all.
The cockerspaniel and all dog breeds, the animals and plants we eat, all of them are proof that selective breeding works for the particular traits that are considered desirable in that breed.
We didn't breed the cockerspaniel to be super healthy. We bred them to be good hunting dogs. We didn't breed the pug to be awesome at surviving on its own. Quite the opposite. We bred them to be exactly as they are.
For us humans, THAT was superior to the animals as they were in nature. If you accept that genes can be selected for, ans you accept that selecting for those genes can select for traits - itself a fundamental principle behind evolution and genetics- then, congrats, you are a eugenicist. You believe in its underlying principles.
Nah, you're just another lazy edgelord who decided to skip a whole bunch of what was said. Congrats on outing yourself as just another reactionary.
Surely it'd be preferable to have less intelligent people, who are easy to control, but are also efficient. Kind of like robots. Made to carry out tasks ranging from the simple to the complex, but always obediently. Oh wait, we've already got that.
"
Surely it'd be preferable to have less intelligent people, who are easy to control, but are also efficient."
And that's why we need to talk about the morality of eugenics without the false claims about it's effectiveness.
I have to respectfully object on two criticisms to the science behind eugenics that you are trying to make.
The more obvious is that AIDS is a bad example to put in terms of eugenics since it is caused by a virus (HIV). This means that even if you apply the eugenetic logic to this example, if you don't drive the virus into extintion as well, the measure wouldn't work. It's similar to proposing solving the flu via eugenics. The flu is an external organism, not a genetic disease.
The second is more complex and I would like to make an extended comment in case someone who reads it is not familiar with the topic.
The definition of eugenics is "the study of methods of improving human populations by the application of genetic principles". This definition of eugenics doesn't exclude gene edditing (which could be used with eugenics purposes), and that's one thing where selective breeding and eugenics differ. Eugenetic purposes can be acheived among others via selective breeding or gene editing, whereas selective breeding doesn't include artificial genetic modification. But since gene edditing in humans is not yet a thing (with the possible exception of the case of He Jiankui) and most eugenics has been taking place in terms of selective breeding, the analogy can be accepted for the sake of the argument.
The apparition of artificial selection-related genetic deseases as in the case of the cocker spaniel can be caused by several factors:
1) Inbreeding: when selective breeding takes place in domestic animals without paying attention to genetic diversity, the reduced population size (which in turn means reduced genetic diversity) can cause inbreeding related diseases. You might, by accident, eliminate from the gene pool genes that you don't need/want to lose. This is why modern breeders are paying attention do pedigrees, attend conventions of breeders and chose to breed animals based on traits and trying to avoid inbreeding.
2) Pleiotropy: when one gene can influence two or more seemingly unrelated phenotypic traits. This leads, for example, to the domestication syndrome in which animals are selected for tameness only and other traits that have not been selected for arise in the tamer generations (like floppy ears or smaller brain size). Therefore, not all mutations are correlated with only one phenotype and therefore, selecting for something might sometimes accidentally derive in other unwanted changes.
3) Epistasis: the existence of interactions between mutations. One gene might contribute to regulate the expression of another gene which could lead to undesired changes in phenotype in the next generations.
4) Loss of the mutation-selection balance: when the influx of deleterious mutations into a population over time is not counteracted by negative selection (which acts to purge deleterious mutations). The lack of selective pressure has also its negative effects in populations over all.
Despite all this, it does not mean that eugenics would not work in certain cases (as said, depending on your definition of what constitutes an "improvement"). If you define improvement in terms of a reduction of certain genetic deseases, the selective breeding to reduce in the gene pool the occurance of certain genetic deseases could work without most of the previously mentioned "side effects" since they are not normally linked to other essencial prossesses.
If your definition of "improvement" is to "run faster" or "jump higher" regardless of other side effects, it would also be possible since the eugenics definition doesn't make a specific case for health. Richard Dawkins could be wrong if he talked of eugenics working in cases of specific tasks that are more complex as in learned behaviour (like playing piano) in terms of "if you selectively breed the people that play piano well, each next genertation would get better and better at playing piano". This would be an extraordinary claim that would need extraordinary evidence, since it contradicts the observations that the development of the brain works more in an exploratory manner than determined by genes and is (as far as we know) more influenced by the environment (although some genetic effects can be observed too). But this is not his claim in those tweets.
Eugenics has to be discussed on scientific terms (not only on ethical terms), true. "When is eugenics possible?" and "Should we do it when it is?" But it is certainly not true to say that it does not work. Nowadays though, the discussion regarding eugenics is more complex than just classic selective breeding, since we already have cases such as gestational surrogacy, preimplantation genetic diagnosis and cytoplasmic transfer, not to mention that we are at the doorstep of gene edditing in humans with huge potentials for future generations' health. It would be interesting to hear your thoughts on that.
The "botheresome thinking" regarding the limitations, complexities and even impossibilities of "intelligence" improvement (which is in of itself a very problematic term) via eugenics is not present in those tweets, this is true, but it is present in the books he has written. Also, it's a point he hasn't made in the tweets and therefore a strawman. I would recomend to take the botheresome initiative of reading his work before accusing him of laziness. Anyone with the audacity of supporting eugenetic policies citing Dawkins' tweet will inevitably cross counter-arguments from other more extense comments in books by Dawkins himself so I don't think that argument would go very far.
There is material for criticism in Dawkins' work though, so I would encourage to make deeper analyses because the topics are quite interesting.
BOOM
Love to see these types of lazy “arguments” blown out of the water. I love some of Dawkins early work but I guess he just stopped paying attention and focused on staying relevant christ. Good debunking, miss you on the old podcast
give the man a break, he had a fucking stroke.
She didn't debunk shit. She only conflated eugenics with inbreeding (when they are completely separate things) and then rambled about muh minorities.
Adam Blade No, Rebecca was correct when she drew a line between eugenics (artificial selection of human traits in a population) and the question of which traits are preferable to artificially select for. (This is subjective). There is ultimately no argument for green eyes being more preferable to brown eyes in any other sense than subjective beauty or sexual selection. That is the point. No one agrees on which traits are “superior” in a potential mate. And even if everyone agreed, that wouldn’t make it morally justifiable to cull all the brown eyed people just because it would supposedly increase the “fitness” or “beauty” of the next generation.
@@Clefargle Ok, but Dawkins never made a moral argument. That's a strawman. He only said from a purely scientific point of view that eugenics would work on humans just like it already works on plants and cattle.
Adam Blade It doesn’t “work” though because we agree on which traits to select for in animals. (Milk production, egg size, color) With humans, eugenics wouldn’t “work” since we don’t have an objective basis for artificially selecting for one trait over another. We also recognize that many superficial traits have been championed as “superior” to others over the years. And that it is entirely wrongheaded to think of humans in that light, not just morally abhorrent. It’s fundamentally incorrect because there are no human traits that are fundamentally more desirable for society that we can select for. Either we don’t know their mechanism or it would be unethical to prescribe them as superior since they are subjective. (Like eye color)
Damn. Every shred of respect I’ve ever had for Dawkins has steadily been crushed.
I mean, if you deliberately try to misunderstand what he says, you will be disappointed yes. Reading comprehension solves the problem though.
There was nothing worthy of respect. His work as a biologists amounts to a handful of untestable hypotheses, and his writing of religion is not only badly written, but screams of complete and utter ignorance.
@@user-sl7lc9zr4d We found the creationist in the thread. Religious people always take offense when religious bullshit is pointed out as, in fact, bullshit.
Same. Like goddamn. How the mighty have fallen...... 😔
Then you're an idiot.
Even if (and that is a big IF) we disregard the grueling ethical and moral implications, him saying it "works" in animals like cows, is such a stretch. Even if we give him the benefit of the doubt and assume, he didn't mean dogs because there humans were guided by weird notions like making a Pekinese dog look a particular way, farm animals are not a good example if we want an animal to actually function as a living breathing life form. Chickens that cannot stand upright after the age of 6 weeks because they are selectively bread for extra large breast meat, are not an example of "working." And that is not even mentioning all the possible unintended consequences that might be a side effect of selecting for a trait while ignoring others.
It's like the people who think evolution has a "goal" and produces "the best life forms" or the "most advanced" species. No. Evolution leads to adaptation to circumstance or niches. Tiny elephants on Malta existed not because being small was so so cute but because their environment got cut off from a larger piece of land, so their food was restricted and being smaller meant less energy to keep the body alive. Moths did not change their wings between pre and post-industrialization in England because it was oh so cool to have dark wings now instead of boring white but because they adapted to a change in their environment.
The fact that anyone would think that we can actually assess our situation and all of our functions enough to do that, even with the best intentions and without evaluating blue eyes as better than brown eyes, is incomprehensible! We have been studying intelligence and nutrition for decades if not longer and what the heck do we know, really? We are still fighting over every result and how it fits into the overarching picture of what we think we know about our own functioning.
This kind of crap just betrays how lacking Dawkins is in so many aspects of actual scientific thinking or awareness of his own limitations. Like, it's fine to say you don't know. What's not fine is pandering to people who want to hear crap like what he said there.
I respectfully disagree. A world where everyone has less cancer, is as intelligent as our greatest minds, as athletic as our greatest athletes, and no one is ugly and ostracized for it sounds incredible!
I love how you break down concepts bringing in history, science and ethics.
Her implied ethics of possibly letting a human live in pain are in effect, hypocritical.
I don't see anything factually wrong with Dawkins' tweet. Genetics and evolutionary biology is literally his wheelhouse.
Unfortunately, people who know a lot about a subject can still have a bad take. Perhaps its his focus on genetics that leaves him blind to the problem of comparing selective breeding in herd animals with eugenics in human beings.
The short answer is this: In order for selective breeding to work, we need to be reasonably sure that the variation in the trait we are selecting for is genetic in nature. In animals, this is pretty easy because we can raise entire populations of animals under identical conditions and then just pick the ones which express the desired trait the most (that has lead to unintended problems as Rebecca pointed out with purebreed dogs and dairy cows, but that's not why he's wrong. That could be solved with more careful selection).
The problem is, unless you're selecting for something incredibly simple like hair or eye color, we have no way of separating genetic factors from environmental factors in complex trait expression in humans. We could give everyone IQ tests to select for intelligence, but even assuming that IQ tests are accurate measures of general intelligence (they're not, but for the sake of argument) there are a whole host of environmental factors which predict your performance on IQ tests (your parents' income, you access to education, proper nutrition and preventative medicine, access to leisure time, etc.). desirable
"Eugenics would work" has two meanings. The first, which you have picked up on, is that yes, if you manually cull genes from the gene pool then the gene pool ends up different than it was. The second more subtle meaning, though, is that eugenics would indisputably create a better society. The main reason we could never have that guarantee is that _which genes_ are the good ones is highly subjective and not something I would trust a politician with.
A politician would never want to selectively breed smarter people.... quite the opposite
this makes 0 sense. a stupid population is a net negative especially in the long term. what they would breed is capable but docile people that dont question authority.
@@Senumunu So the master race but with no backbone?
Reminds me of Mementos
@@haruhisuzumiya6650 it reminds me of day to day reality.
Yes, when I read _The Bell Curve_ back in the 1990's, it occurred to me that the rapidly merging intellectual and bourgeois classes would not want to breed competition for their children and grandchildren. They would rather "manage" the poor, benighted masses.
@@michaels4255 it does seem that way, but I do question why I am not blind to the fact that they want vassals not freemen
God, Dawk..., and country and queen and king, and sh-.
Are we really still doing this?
Thanks so much for making the nuanced argument. It is clear that 'selective breeding' would work for humans. But there is no clear way to define what is a 'better' set of traits other than the cold hard truth of the universe making that decision for the species.
Why are we even focused on breeding fitter meatbags?
Biological life forms are inferior to that of machines, robotic creatures are evolution’s final life forms.
Can we agree an any genetically worse traits? Down's, Tay Sachs, Cystic Fibrosis? Would you oppose say pre-conception screening for those? If so you'd need to suggest where you draw the line.
@@51monw I don't think one can make an absolute assertion of being genetically worse, even for something as horrible as Tay Sachs.
Clearly Tay Sachs disease is horrible; generally leading to painful death in early childhood. However Tay Sachs is a recessive trait; you have to get it from both parents in order to develop the disease. Apparently being a Tay Sachs _carrier_ offers protection from TB. So some amount of the Tay Sachs gene in the populations is probably good for the population, at least in the absence of drugs that treat TB.
I am personally familiar with the issues of Down Syndrome. Far more variable than Tay Sachs. One interesting bit of genetics: only approximately 20% of conceptions with Down Syndrome are viable and survive to birth, and people with DS have a significantly lower incidence of solid tumor cancers than the general population. This suggests that people with DS have a better than average genetic ability to correct and compensate for dysregulation of gene expression. Again bad for the individual, but possibly beneficially selective for the population as a whole. (A very few people with DS become parents. Children of women with DS often have significant developmental problems. Children of men with DS seem to develop typically. Also not much data.)
For what its worth, I support pre-parenting genetic testing for clearly horrible recessive traits; the idea that two people who carry the same recessive should not parent together. But I don't particularly support trying to 'clean' these recessive traits out of the population. I also personally feel that selective termination of otherwise wanted pregnancies because of DS demonstrates a sick societal view of people with disabilities.
Trying to draw a solid line for what constitutes a horrible recessive trait? I don't think such is possible.
Jon
@@jonathanedelson6733 I'm not suggesting scrubbing the variants, but even just avoiding the more serious combinations being expressed is a choice to (potentially) change gene frequencies in subsequent generations. Its evolution through our deliberate intellectual choices, it can still make the mistake of suppressing a useful variation even if it takes a few generations. Presumably just fancying more symmetry in our choice of mate is a crude approximation to selection for good genes to evolutionary biologists like Dawkins.
If we accept any such change, I think it is difficult to draw hard lines. Generally we let people do what they think is best for themselves, and accept some will make bad decisions. I'm minded more counseling/testing might be good. Can certainly envisage people on learning how their kids may inherit their parents "faults" might decide on fewer kids, not necessarily in terms of physical abnormalities, but things like personality traits. I know at least one friend was unknowingly carrying one copy of gene that she knew her husband had two copies of, their child is amazing, but the disability is life altering, worse than the father's presentation, and may get worse. Can't help feeling if we were a little more aggressive on screening they would at least of known it was 50:50 per child rather than 1:3000 before starting a family.
I don't for one second think we'd be better off without their child, but I do think the child's life would be a lot easier with the other copy of that gene from her mother.
As such I think not screening partners before conception ala Tay Sachs could quickly come to be seen as irresponsible as technology advances. Although it may mean knowingly accepting certain risks as our knowledge improves, rather than just spinning the wheel and hoping. Then I think the pressure will be on, especially for the "we want a baby but ...." couples, to provide more invasive approaches to choosing the mix.
Is Dawkins truly losing it? Has he always been this way? I really don’t know, if he was he hid it better than most...
Jonne Steen Redeker idk... I respected him but idk anymore
No, people are misunderstanding what he's saying. He's literally said the same thing for over 15 years. He's getting old, so his ability to explain is fading. He's not saying historical eugenics works or that it is good. He is saying that the concept of Eugenics is sound because Eugenics, as a concept, is just selective breeding to emphasize desired genetic traits. That's why modern dogs and bananas are the way they are today and why they are nothing like predecessors.
Lots of different kinds of eugenics are bogus, just like homeopathic and traditional Chinese "medicine" are bogus. The existence of fake medicines (chiropractic) doesn't make medicine bogus.
Was nazi Eugenics morally wrong and pseudoscience? Yes. All eugenics is morally wrong because even if it is true, you can't treat people like cattle. Dawkins said this himself.
Dawkins has said nothing wrong, incorrect, or even controversial. If you don't believe selecting breeding for trait manipulation is a genuine thing, take a loot at the fruit in your fridge and then google what the ancestor of that fruit was like. It will shock you. That's eugenics principles in action.
Damien Rafalowski oh ok thanks
*genetic traits that make up a good individual. Eu-genics after all. I think this video has enough examples to discredit concept itself too.
@@s0515033 A large portion of this video is about how this idea is wrong and "selective breeding" complex biological lifeforms is not easy or predictable and you end up with pugs.
The eugenics argument presumes not only that people with undesirable traits got that way because of heritable variation but that we have an adequate understanding of that variation to identify deleterious genotypes. It's very gene-centric, whereas the current paradigm of inheritance is moving away from the gene being the all-powerful signal of identity. Interestingly, there are people whose genotypes match those of people with active genetic disorders at all loci believed to be responsible but who are fine; this demonstrates that we, in fact, do not know as much as we think we know. The biological determinism hypothesis is actively falling apart, and yet we have lauded "intellectuals" attempting to use it to justify controlling the reproductive rights of powerless "undesirables." It's so last-century in terms of science and philosophy.
one of our childhood dogs was a German Shepherd. he couldn't become a police dog because, like a lot of German Shepherds, he had a fucked back. Police dog breeders have to import dogs from the other side of the world to try to keep some semblance of genetic diversity.
Everyone:
Richard Dawkins: "Hrm, I haven't been in the news for a few months. I'm going to tweet vaguely in support of eugenics. Everyone will think I'm so smart!"
He's an evolutionary biologist. He MIGHT know what he is talking about and the tweet MIGHT have been in response to something, but who knows? If only we had a Google to spend 5 minutes on to find out of our opinions were based on anything factual...... Derp.
@@philipmccorkle4247 Lol. If you bothered to watch Rebecca's video you would see that he's wrong.
@@malcolmcampbell2370 I know a thing or two about breeding programs and I can wholly tell you that she doesn't know what she is talking about. Plain and simple: She is utterly wrong.
VERY few genes control two different traits in the way that one good trait WILL carry a bad trait with it. That premise is just nonsensical in practice.
@@philipmccorkle4247 Suuuuure random white man on the internet. That's not at all what her point is and she cites case studies, which you don't. Just fuck off.
You completely missed the point, he never says he condones it, he rejects it by his own morals. He just makes the caveat of the hypothetical cases. Why is so hard to understand?
I'll try an analogy, the fact that someone would *entertain* the idea of death penalty for violent irredeemable psychopaths does not equates to support death penalty.
Wow, I've liked Dawkins for some time now, and didn't think he would tweet out something so stupid. I'm glad I stumbled upon this channel, you seem like a reasonable person.
1:56 "run faster, jump higher..." Maaan, I'm not gonna let you poison me. I threw it on the GROOOUND!
Over 10 years ago the CSIRO in australia tried genetically modifying sheep so the hormonal gene for wool growth roughly doubled in production. More of this gene = more wool right? It did work, but that hormone is also responsible for "other" hair (keratin) growths such as horns & hooves. The sheep's hooves start growing double the rate and ended up overgrowing, hobbling the sheep and causing immense pain. This caused much more maintenance for the farmers, who judged this maintenance wasn't worth the increased wool yield. I always think of that one case when people bring up this sort of stuff; even if you could somehow define a "positive" trait you don't know what is genetically/phenotypically attached to that trait and what suffering it will cause selecting for it.
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@hannah, we are already in the midst of a massive human breeding experiment that is much more radical than increasing the wool production of sheep, except we are implementing our experiments with no forethought whatever. Stop think of eugenics as going from doing nothing to doing something. We are not doing nothing. Eugenics would be going from unintelligent genetic manipulation to intelligent genetic manipulation, and that would be better. It would not introduce the possibility of unintended consequences where that possibility did not already exist.
*I think you nailed it in one, Ms. Watson.* It's not a matter of whether the fundamental mechanism of eugenics -- selective breeding -- works. It does, and we've been doing it for millennia. The failure of eugenics is in working out who decides what traits are superior, how the breeding program is implemented and how it impacts the preservation of human rights.
*As for Professor Dawkins,* I can only say I remain fond of his 2003 call to arms TED lecture. But he has always presented as a flawed human being who has made some less-than-socially-appropriate assertions. And yet do appreciate that he helped popularize the notion of challenging religious assertions with rational thought, a practice that was reserved only for classrooms and conservatories through the late 20th century.
*But eugenics* (however we want to define it) *provides an example* of all the mad science that is out there, which is to say the bleeding-edge technology we are developing right now often flying in the face of considerable ethical or existential concerns, from cloning to genetic engineering to artificial general intelligence to autonomous robots that engage in hazardous activities (or identify and autonomously attack the enemy). With all these technologies, we're either going to do them, and disregard ethical concerns, or find pragmatic reasons not to do them, so that the ethical concern is moot. Human civilizations, once they institutionalize, are invariably rat bastards, and won't care about ethical ramifications if the method accomplishes some intended outcome.
*Edit:* Formatting, style
Mmm I'd say that doing them doesn't necessarily mean that ethical concerns are discarded. And actually those technologies are being developed and I don't see them stopping.
I will never forget Richard Dawkins making David Icke look like a rational, reasonable and intelligent commentator. The contrast with Dawkins was cringeworthy. Icke had written a book. Dawkins argued that everything Icke had written in the book was wrong, then admitted he had not read the book. He then stated that he did not have to read the book in order to tell Icke that the book was entirely wrong. Icke calmly pointed out that this was a strange position for someone to try to defend,
@@pattheplanter Isn't Icke that wackadoo fraud who goes on about lizard people and shit? Yeah he's definitely wrong.
We already have a breeding program up and running, and it has consequences. Among other things, sanitary engineering, modern medicine, immigration policy, female education and job opportunities, birth control, and the welfare state are all having profound genetic effects, which few people are paying attention to. Is unconscious, unintelligent, and uninformed genetic engineering really better for our posterity than doing the same thing in an intelligent and thoughtful way? How so? The question is not whether we will do it. We already are doing it.
@@michaels4255 What breeding program is this? I don't think that anyone is arguing against blanket application of thought and consideration to breeding future generations. The concern is about who gets the power to make such decisions, and why? And if it is done by fiat (rather than entirely voluntarily) whose rights are oppressed in the process?
No problem with that statement.
Dysgenics has worked perfectly. Look at the majority of the population.
You, for instance.
@@HarryS77 Yes, thank you for displaying your worthy intelligence.
"These aren't my feelings these are facts."
Note the complete lack of citation. In any case most of these "facts" aren't relevant to even her claimed definition of eugenics. They just show it's possible to do selective breeding badly, and hence it's possible to do eugenics badly. So what?
Don't you misrepresent Dawkins position a bit?
Nature already uses "eugenics" all the time. Can't find enough food, escape a predator or reproduce? One less copy of your genes in the genepool. You can debate on your selection function, but there certianly is a group of local maxima in the space of possible organisms. If evolution by natural selection is a fact, so is the possibility of eugenics to select for X characteristics. Whats hard is to find out which traits to favor. This is probably NP hard on top of requiring understaning of most fields of scientific inquiry equal to thousands or even millions of years of linear progress. With enough knowledge, eugenics works. Does it work right now? No. Could it work in the future? Yes, if civization doesn't collapse. Would it be ethical? Probably not. Is it relevant? Not really, by the time eugenics could be used well, GNR will have outpaced selective breeding in terms of quick, easy and consistent improvements/results.
Thank you. My inner edge-Earl needed that.
7:04 We'll get him a new dog, one with an untwistable stomach. Greyhounds like Santa's little Helper were build for speed, but have a host of other problems.
Solid points were made! However, patellar luxation is not a disease of the eye, but rather of the knees.
Has this man never seen the many many many dogs with genetic health problems? What ever happened to the importance of biodiversity
Yea, dogs have a lot of problems. Selective breeding has negative consequences, which is why no such efforts should be taken lightly and it is unethical. That doesn't mean the concept is fake and wrong. Biology is complex, yes. Lots of dog breeds were fucked up because no one cared about the negatives. They just wanted the traits they wanted. But the fact that they GOT the traits they wanted means the concept self evidently works.
Examples are given why the concept suck. If you are talking about pure hypotheical, this isn't a scientific attitude. Blind dogs can't hunt.
Yet, when we breed pure bred dogs with different pure bred dogs, the genetic health problems decrease, and they don’t give birth to wolves. Again, selective breeding works. The genetic health problems you cite are a result of inbreeding and poorly diversified gene pools, NOT the selective breeding process itself. The desired trait originally bred for with dogs was the “not a wolf” trait, or the “won’t kill it’s master” trait. It is undeniable that worked.
this is an argument against the polarization of certain traits not against eugenics.
@@InigoMontoya- They probably bred them for tameness, like the Siberian foxes which can now be purchased for pets (another group of foxes was bred for hyper-aggression):
th-cam.com/video/ShaxRuy47p8/w-d-xo.html
Dawkins has lost the farking plot.
Dogs were not selected for good health, weren't they?
Big brain take:
Using a tool wrong yields bad results.
Using a tool correctly yields good results.
Ugh! Very similar to the abortion debate, where whenever anti-abortion activist aren't distorting facts they drag the terms of discussion into abstract reasoning and hypothetical scenario land, where real proven problems have to head through a confusing abstract lens to be allowed to register and things that barely ever happen can suddenly become the focus of fear. Win on "what if terms in a hot moral debate, and it takes quite the cool head to bother with wading through the needless abstraction to clarify the emptiness (and dangers) of the victory where the real world is concerned.
What most people don't understand about biology; a fundamental truth not as apparent in chemistry & physics, is that everything is a trade off. There is no perfect species, never a free lunch. Only species best adapted to their environment & selective pressure, and in a dynamic system what we term as "best adapted" isn't static. It is constantly changing based on selective pressure. Every advantage inevitably comes at the cost of some other disadvantage. Hopefully the advantage is able to offset that disadvantage or that trait will be lost in future generations. Every form of life we know of operates under this paradigm. Humans merely excel at proving consciousness & intelligence isn't nearly as useful to survival as we arrogantly believe.
Sure we've been around 150k years. But that's nothing compared to many other species. Birds laugh at our foolishness.
Silly point, which doesn't negate your comment at all, but I wanted to point out with sword bro types, like Skallagrim, there's a good example for that trade off in the fields you mentioned. They often talk about the fabled 'super metal!' that often appears in works of fiction, making for the ultimate sword. How there's really no 'ultimate' metal for a cutting weapon. If it's incredibly hard, or sharp, it will chip or even break from continous hits. If it's too light, your attacks won't have enough force to get past even light armor. If it's too flexible, it will wobble, and not cut through. All you can do is try to find the best balance between all these.
@@sacta exactly! It kills me how many people don't get that. Great example.
Granted, but if those trade offs were never worth making, evolution would not happen. Also, more intelligence may not be of much use to, let's say, a cow, but it is extremely useful to man. On the other had, tails, which are very useful for cats and most monkeys, are useless on humans. And rising mutational load is never good for any species, and that is what man is currently beset with.
"Humans merely excel at proving consciousness & intelligence isn't nearly as useful to survival as we arrogantly believe."
Humans are the only species on Earth that can leave the planet in the eventuality of a major catastrophe. That automatically makes humans the species with the highest survival rate of all, by far.
@@alexcnz92 This is the real world, not Star Wars, buddy. At most we can have comparatively a few humans in space at a time, and not long enough that they'd survive or reproduce too long after we fuck up the Earth if we don't get our act together.
HILARIOUS! Nice video. This is a mighty fine refutation to the notion that the model of the physical sciences can provide answers in every field of human interest.
Still a greater majority wanted this video then Brexit
What is “superior” is subjective, and not a scientific claim. You’re effectively arguing what was Dawkins point. The scientific principles of selective breeding are functional, however the objection in their application to humans is objectionable on moral grounds. The idea that a trait is “superior” is a moral distinction. As long as one views the issue as scientific implausibility the implication is that the ideal utopia is still eugenics, but crude reality of scientific impracticality is in the way. What Dawkins is saying is that the issue is not the science and that it is the morals. Selecting for brown eyes or blue eyes is easy enough, but the tyranny and genocide implied by doing so is a disgusting cost to pay in promotion of an arbitrary and non-consensual moral distinction about what is “superior” in the first place. The issue isn’t that we haven’t made the science work, it is that we shouldn’t.
So Dawkins warns is not to waste time on the scientific aspect, but condemn the moral one... And you still do it.
Yes, eugenics is morally abhorrent. That doesn't discard that if we were to perform a thought experiment of how to improve X trait, it is a sound solution. I'm the same way cannibalism is abhorrent, but it is a fact that it could ensure survival under extreme circumstances.
I honestly think you missed the point here, let's focus on the substance, not on our outrage.
The problem is that eugenics doesn’t work. It destroys the eugenicisied population.
@@mrsuspicious1743 yeah, Sparta didn't work in producing famed warriors in ancient Greece
@@Briaaanz Wow, a slave caste means that combatants can focus all time on training and preparing for combat with no need to spare time to the less glamorous tasks of civilisation? ANY degree of increased combat proficiency MUST be the result of an impromptu genetics program, and not the actual reason outlined above.
Crossbreeds are much healthier than pure bred doggos. We had one that lived to his mid 20's! He was also highly intelligent :)
Heterosis (hybrid vigor). However, it does not breed true.
I don't mind people getting together and selectively breeding themselves. I mean, hey... whatever gets you off.
However, the issue I have is where they try to stop others from breeding.
Genetic diversity is far more important than "superior traits"