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Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 17, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I am sorry to ask others to do the leg work for me but I have vague memories of a thread about eugenics on Twitter (2018? very unsure) created by someone (possibly a woman?) that I'm hoping to find again. Their post was a series of polls that had examples and asked readers "do you consider this to be eugenics". Questions were along the lines of "Dave and Adam are a gay couple looking to conceive a child. With gene editing technology they can reduce the chance of their child having a debilitating disease by 90%. Is this eugenics? Is this good? What about a 30% chance?". Other similar questions with different couples and different setups. I'd hope to find these polls again because I remember the questions making me believe that people are for eugenics but they just wont say it. When I sat and actually pondered the questions I almost always ended up saying "yes this is eugenics and yes I support/would do this myself". I want to give the same "quiz" to close friends and see their response/reaction.

I want to give the same "quiz" to close friends and see their response/reaction.

Be sure to be clear, not handwavey, about whether you're posing the question in terms of still-mainly-fictional "gene editing", or here-and-now "embryo selection".

  1. "Improving your bloodline" (in the abstract) is one thing.
  2. Improving your bloodline by siring a bunch of children and killing the "unfit" ones is another thing.
  3. Some would say improving your bloodline by producing a bunch of embryos and gestating only the "best" ones is a third thing still.

The "shiri's scissors" around prenatal infanticide could distort your inquiry on eugenics unless you take measures to address those distortions.