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I also asked if it's a longer dick, so let's get into the gay angle too, right? I just enumerated the known definitions of "superior", without having or implying any idea which one is yours. I thought mentioning the dick would be enough to make sure this list is made in mockery of the whole concept, not as a suggestion for it, but of course, it wasn't.
That said, if you are fine with eugenics, I am not sure why the racist angle offends you so much. Even if racist eugenics is wrong (which I am not sure if you believe or not, but it's immaterial) - it's a small wrong. It's like an argument between two theoretical physicists about quantum theory - one may come out right and another may come out wrong, but they both are and remain respected scientists, and their ideas, even is occasionally wrong, would still gain them respect. If eugenics is fine, the only sin of racist eugenics is they get some small details wrong, not that the whole thing is morally abominable.
Again, thanks, but fuck that. As a Jew, I don't want my shield against the fires of Auschwitz to be "high-quality genes", by any definition. Neither I want anybody else's. Either we agree that we don't do "genetic engineering by murdering people" thing (and forced sterilization and other things - which can not be "non-violent" by definition - are only a small step removed from it), regardless of how sure we are we got it right this time (we didn't, we never will) - or we are in the deepest pits of Hell, and no rationalization ever changes that.
Yeah, I remember, the forced sterilization programs and the Nobel prize for lobotomy. Thanks but no thanks.
Also, weren't those the same guys that were super-worried too many Jews are getting into Harvard and Yale? They finally solved that problem, I hear, took them a century but it's done.
I think you're making it a bit too easy on yourself here, though I broadly agree.
The holocaust was bad. (Galaxy brain take, I know.) It was such a humongous bad, and it existed in such a cluster of other bad things, that the entire memetic landscape around it is rightfully considered toxic forever. Nobody should be killed for genes, nobody should be sterilized for genes. But. But. Any child born with a preventable disease is still a stain on humanity's rap sheet! Any person born deaf, or born dumb, or born spastic - we say that such people not just have a right to life but exhibit their own worth, in one of the most blatant instances of sour grapes in the history of civilization. If that was true, why is nobody lining up to have their ears pierced, or their brain lobotomized? It seems obvious that if all other things were equal, you should choose for a child to be born healthy rather than sick, smart rather than stupid, capable rather than incapable. That impulse has enabled and abetted horrible crimes, and we may say that humanity is not capable of safely enacting such improvements, that it gives far too much license to sociopaths and demagogues to advocate disfigurement and naked murder - all granted. But the impulse in itself is good.
Then we can ask further: what of a woman who knowingly brings a sick child to term? Is it a moral good to bring a life into the world that is doomed to an early death? What of a child that is in continuous pain until their untimely but predictable death? If we continue along this line long enough, we either lose the ability to say that a child being born in suffering and doomed to death is morally bad, or we may end up in the bizarre position of "a significant crime is being committed, but we are bound to idly stand by." Fine, be that the case, we may know that granting ourselves license to intercede will only result in worse crimes. But I think we must hold in mind that this does not make the lesser crime a moral good.
A day may come when genetic editing becomes so cheap and widely available that any child can be easily modified before birth to exclude all of those disorders which make life not worth living, or even improve on the human template. When that day comes, I think we do not want to be ideologically committed to the idea that an act of willingly and knowingly creating beings to suffer has inherent moral worth.
Maybe. But that's what makes it so dangerous. And that's what requires the "100 foot pole approach" - we can't trust our obvious instincts to navigate us safely there. It's easy to avoid eating foods that are bad for us and smell and taste foul. It's much harder to avoid eating food that tastes awesome and still is bad for us. We need some special measures to avoid it. Like, not keeping such foods at home at all. Same approach here - exactly because it has a kernel of good in there, we must be extra careful to not let this kernel of good to lead us to the abominable places. Because we know it happened to us before.
Everybody is born in suffering and is doomed to death. The question is just timing. And I'm not sure where one would find the audacity to say they know the "correct" timing to make such kinds of decisions and force them on others.
What of an adult? What if you decide somebody's life is too hard and murder them? For their own good? After all, we are doing so many things to force people to behave in certain ways that they don't want to behave, for their own good. Why not make the ultimate step and murder them for their own good, since we are so smart we totally can decide for them that their lives aren't worth living?
Every human being will suffer. That's the part of being human (excluding Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, I guess, but I don't think you can be born this way?). Again, the question is just the form and the degree. I am all for reducing the amount of suffering, but deciding for another that their life is not worth living because of the suffering is a huge step, which we should be very very very careful about.
I do think there's a fundamental difference in morality between creating life and sustaining life. I don't think that we have a moral duty, for instance, to instantiate the greatest number of barely net positive existences (the Repugnant Conclusion). But to reject it requires assigning special moral worth to beings who are currently alive, which is why there is still, IMO, a moral difference between embryo selection for trait and murder for trait.
And at any rate, if you allow a citizen to give birth to a child whose life is going to be comparatively of much less value - to themselves - than another, you have also made a choice. Inaction is not inherently morally privileged.
Well, sure, I am fully on board with this. I just think that we will grow up to become worthy of this step, and when we do I would like us to have preserved that impulse to reduce suffering and multiply joy in our heart, not snuffed it out.
edit: That's overdramatic, but you know what I mean.
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