Why eugenics is bad
(to my teenage self)
When I was younger, I had a strong belief that we were being foolish as a human race for not embracing eugenics and artificial genetic selection in humans. I have since changed my view on this and want to explore why.
When I was younger, I thought that it was obvious that eugenics would help humanity, and the only good reason not to was to protect people's freedom. I didn't care about the historical baggage attached to eugenics at the time (young and silly) and would envision a world in which we bred smart and healthy people with strong bodies and minds together to push humanity forward. It seems like the obvious answer to a lot of questions in society: we could reduce depression and addiction, we could reduce health problems and obesity, we could increase productivity and efficiency, and we could have happier humans. Instead of wasting so much money fixing broken people, why not raise the bar for humans to make it so that a ‘broken’ human was one that had an IQ of 120 and could run a marathon at the drop of a hat? This is a naive conception of eugenics and human progress.
Here are what I would say are the biggest problems with eugenics that we would still encounter if we lived in a post racial society:
Knowing what traits to select for is nearly impossible, and can be dangerous if wrong
Genetics are complex, and eugenics is a jackhammer when we would need a scalpel for traits we are interested in
By eliminating common ailments, we are losing out on rich aspects of humanity (autism, depression, drug addiction, etc.)
They are all highly related.
If we went back 100 years to 1920 and started selecting genes, what would we pick? Would we select for socially awkward, introverted nerds who are often on a spectrum of some sort? Those people helped us to build our technology infrastructure to a point that is almost ludicrous. And if we were selecting those types now, what would we lose out on in the future? We can’t know which traits are going to be valuable in the future, especially as our future seems to collapse into shorter time horizons.
There is also the problem of unintended consequences associated with modifying genetics for specific traits. Think of dogs we have now. Golden retrievers are absolutely awesome, but they have tons of health issues compared to mutts. They are still great dogs, but with humans we could find that we have some aspects of ourselves that are very destructive once we select for specific traits. There is no reason to believe we can get the best of every world; a human that is both athletic and smart is not necessarily the result of eugenics.
The third reason is that we get a lot of human richness from people who have traits we would likely eliminate. Some of the best mathematicians and computer scientists are almost certainly further along the autism spectrum than average. Some of the best art is made by depressed, drug addicted, or depressed and drug addicted people. Humanity is defined by people with many problems, and I can’t say that the cost outweighs the reward.
The future is going to be full of situations where genetic engineering, robotics modification, and various other forms of post humanism are used. Eugenics is going to be too slow, too rough, and not helpful enough to be a part of that future.