> our much more intelligent children will realize total species improvement is a better investment
I view this as a fallacy which is close kin to the "algorithms are neutral" fallacy. Scenario: we, with our incredibly poor understanding of genetics vs. the total impact of those on a fully-developed organism do this:
1. Make more "intelligent" humans, but oops the genetic modification we make reduces empathy. E.g. the "high-functioning autistic" stereotype. Now we have "bright" humans who are less capable of understanding and mirroring emotional impacts on others.
2. Second oops: the empathy reduction above doesn't also reduce instincts governing human tribalism.
3. Coup de grace: now we have a "race" of perfect little fascists, capable of incredible feats of rationalization to cover for their poorly-understood desires, a stronger than ever in-group vs out-group anathema, and with barely a twinge for the others their actions are now crushing.
Society crumbles due to lack of social cohesion and mass genocide. Thanks for playing! Please enter 25￠ to continue.
I've realized that I have an even deeper problem with the whole notion of eugenics-for-"intelligence" here. It's mired in the better-living-through-[TECH THING] mentality.
I'll digress with an example from medicine: humanity made amazing, world-changing strides in health care on two important fronts: antibiotics and trauma surgery. These areas, the pill and the scalpel, then grew to encompass the vast part of the mindshare of modern Western-style medicine. But at some point the model fails to meet with the real world: pharmaceutical companies spend vast resources trying to create pills that alleviate symptoms, but don't address root causes. Surgeons invent surgeries we don't need, which have no effect on end outcomes. Here, the slowly growing field of "functional medicine" is seeking to move forward with rigorous, evidence-based approaches to diagnosing and addressing many previously intractable (or only superficially treated) conditions by tackling underlying root causes.
Back to the eugenics thing. It presumptively answers the question of "why, as a society, aren't we a whole lot smarter than we are?" with a generic "Better genetics FTW!" I have a counter-hypothesis: humanity is currently terrible at maximizing the potential of the members of society we have right now. I'd go so far as to say that the idea that eugenics-for-smarts is even useful is built on little more than a whole bunch of terrible classist, racist belief systems. Worse, it's like some junior dev ratholing for weeks optimizing the heck some function which uses .001% of the app's resources. There are bigger problems to solve, start with those.
A breadcrumb in that direction: we've now had multiple examples of fantastic high-school level math instructors who pop up, take an underserved student body that an "honors" class series wouldn't touch, and turns them into star math students, knocking down AP Calculus exams with aplomb. Yet the school districts they're in invariably end up fighting these teachers tooth-and-nail. We should be sending in people like field anthropologists to understand and document the personal, social, and pedagogical methods at play here, and figure out how to train teachers and build schools to make these wins fully replicable.
I am fully on board with tackling the social issues that prevent equalizing education. I guess my hope is that a spread of smarter kids will find a solution, when we've spent the last 2,000 years failing to find solutions to unequal classes.
I view this as a fallacy which is close kin to the "algorithms are neutral" fallacy. Scenario: we, with our incredibly poor understanding of genetics vs. the total impact of those on a fully-developed organism do this:
1. Make more "intelligent" humans, but oops the genetic modification we make reduces empathy. E.g. the "high-functioning autistic" stereotype. Now we have "bright" humans who are less capable of understanding and mirroring emotional impacts on others.
2. Second oops: the empathy reduction above doesn't also reduce instincts governing human tribalism.
3. Coup de grace: now we have a "race" of perfect little fascists, capable of incredible feats of rationalization to cover for their poorly-understood desires, a stronger than ever in-group vs out-group anathema, and with barely a twinge for the others their actions are now crushing.
Society crumbles due to lack of social cohesion and mass genocide. Thanks for playing! Please enter 25￠ to continue.