Barking.

Coward.

Perhaps you think it won't prevent rights violations, but then argue that. Don't just label it 'eugenics' and think your job is done. — Bartricks

I don’t believe this is the case at all.

Answer the question. — Bartricks

Maybe you could answer ours before making demands?

Do you want to discuss this topic or simply pick a fight? You’ve tried to provoke me and now you’re doing your best to provoke another. We could have a civil discussion about this interesting topic.

To repeat, what exactly would be the criteria for ‘good parents’ and what are the positives and negatives that we can appreciate from a purely hypothetical position? I’m certainly not denying positives, and I have in fact asked almost an identical question in another forum so I understand knee-jerk reactions (the two people trying to engage in this discussion are not simply dismissing the topic).

So, children have a 'right' to a good home and a healthy upbringing. — Bartricks

Can you please clarify and explain on what basis you make this claim? For all of human history children have been born in all kinds of situations on all ends of the spectrum from “good to bad” and may likely live a life that ends up on the opposite side of the spectrum. There is no way to weight these things. How do you draw the line for what does or does not constitute a “good” home?

Maybe we can discuss this if the OP cannot?

I think it is undeniable that there are benefits to this scheme on a facile level. The question is really do the positives outweigh the negatives? Can we put together a strong argument for such eugenics and then see how well it bears up to scrutiny?

Given bartricks silence to my questioning I can only assume he’s not given this as much thought as we have so we can do a better job I reckon - as I mentioned above I’ve been down this road before.

He’s dodged that question already and then called someone else a coward.

I can make an attempt though as the topic has been of interest to me before.

The criteria I imagine we’d be looking at would be to judge families based on monetary income/wealth. I think it would be a reasonable plan to set up ‘limits’ for licenses after maybe the first or second child - so family sizes would be dictated by circumstances. Of course this is a flawed plan as circumstances change and families may be making good money one year and then unemployed the next. This does at least seem to be a reasonable position to start from.

One thing we do have to consider is how socialised children are - how exposed they are to other people in their early year (ages 1-4) - as this has a huge effect on their lexicon. What is deadly important here is the time children spend with their parents during these early stages of development. This is a problem if we’re only regarding ‘income’ as a means of measurement, yet we can certainly understand that a family with more money generally has more freedom to interact with children where a single parent working three jobs would be able to.

I think from here we can begin to tackle the problem of providing a reasonable approach toward development in early years - the most important item when thinking about human potential.

I think it would be a reasonable plan to set up ‘limits’ for licenses after maybe the first or second child - so family sizes would be dictated by circumstances. — I like sushi

It’s an observation only, but it seems to me that larger families come from those who struggle financially. If it’s true, why is this? I think it’s too difficult to establish why people have children, but why they have so many is worth thinking about. I imagine financial stress is a big contributor to dysfunctional families. Love doesn’t require an IQ test.

We have a pretty good idea about this already. In Kerala emphasis was put on educating young women. The effect was they didn’t marry so early, had less children and the area improved economically.

The situation is similar in Africa. Basically, if women have more control, education, then they make better choices concerning how they build a family - if they choose to; which most people do. If we just looking at individual countries the following comes into play ...

IQ is not a big deal really. Even if we were to consider IQ then the same follows as IQ, or rather ‘g’, is pretty concrete, yet in the early years it will drop of without stimulation. So, this beings us back to nurture in the early years of life. To put this into perspective wealthier families who have both parents contributing to interacting with their children as much as they can compared to parents who only have a few minutes a day to spare translates into classroom productivity - the former children end up coming arriving at school knowing how to count, read and write, whilst the later are at an incredible disadvantage having had no preschool teaching and a substantially limited lexicon.

So education (what was the education?) leads to fewer children leads to economic stability leads to stable children.

My point about love and IQ was in relation to mothers, that they had many children because they loved children. You don’t need a high IQ to love someone. But there is plenty of anecdotal evidence of young women having multiple children by different fathers. I’m not sure what’s behind that. Is it a naive search for some sort of security, or just not caring.

It seems that for a topic such as this what are and what are not “actual” rights needs to be agreed upon and hashed out. I agree of course that children ought to be raised in homes in which they have the love and care necessary for them likewise to give the same in their turn to others. The means by which this is encouraged and fostered is significant particularly assuming what are indeed the rights we have either as children and as a society. Even to judge based on money is tricky business. I don’t care much for the use of the word judge in these contexts as the potential of a human life born into any circumstances is not something we can judge or foresee. If we value that potential then the question becomes what are we willing to do to help. If a child is born to those less fortunate how can we help it and the parents reach potential. Are we value and seeking to help others? Are we seeking and valuing the potential for good? Or are we trying to safeguard our own security at the expense of judgment on others?

Bartrick’s post used the idea of licensing as a way to create a better world for everyone. I don’t disagree with that, just on how we do it. The objective is to have fewer people who are destructive, or obstructive, in that world. Smaller families might be a beginning but there is still the need for a particular quality, which I don’t think can be based on IQ or current circumstances.

Obviously one of those qualities would be caring. Only a caring society can raise caring children. Some caring children might come out of a dysfunctional society, but not enough to make a difference. Unless the society we want isn’t based on caring.

I guess the spot where this premise breaks for me is the idea of, “better.” Better seems so dependent on worse. It’s because of the worse that we appreciate and seek better. And it feels that this fluctuation necessarily be ongoing lest we lose humility. One might argue for instance that the effort to eradicate bullying has resulted in a general lack of toughness in kids today as they do not test and sharpen each other as in the past. Passing through trials is a perhaps better way to live? Hard manual labor with low pay and no cell phone may very well be a better way to live. What matters more that a child be brought into a particular level of comfort and security or that they learn how to treat others with love and kindness?

What matters more that a child be brought into a particular level of comfort and security or that they learn how to treat others with love and kindness? — Jack Foreman

I would support that because it’s that more than any evolutionary driving force that has brought us here today. Without that there would be nothing. It’s possible to argue against that, but that’s my belief. So it stands to reason we maintain what has been good for us.

Edit: licensing, as a demand, seems opposite to that.

Edit: sorry, I misread your post. Love and kindness counts most or comes first, anyway.

The user can filter the list of hotels for a location, time period, amenities that you require, and sort the list from lowest to highest price. They save the customer an incredible amount of time. — alcontali

But users would have found other ways to do this or shaped their own platforms as they have with other things where the parasites can't come in and make a lot of money. The further these companies mislead the user. They push hotels that pay extra premiums, without telling the users that they do this. The kind of information you are talking about would have arisen on customer built platforms over time, must like many other non-profit user generated information sources on line. Big money got their first and blocked this possibility, that functions in many other areas of life, where there is less money to be made.

No, they are not. It is the large hotel groups that are parasites. — alcontali

These are not mutually exclusive. Both are parasites. But these companies are more damaging for smaller chains and independents, like the one I worked at, because the larger hotels have advantages of economy of scale and more flexibility with staffing.
So if you think the hotel chains are a problem, well, these parasitical uneeded, provide no service to guests, middleman companies like booking.com just make the market harder for other companies.

So these countries are selling drugs that Western research developed for low prices?
— Coben

Patent protection for drugs expires after twenty years. After that, you can freely sell the medical molecule. We are no longer paying patent fees for the use of the wheel either. That particular patent expired in the stone age already.

Furthermore, most of the expense is in bribing the FDA into ignoring dangerous side effects. The FDA accept applications for new drugs only from a very small cartel of oligarchs. So, yes, very often it is western companies who originally paid the corruption fees for the fake FDA documentation of these products. The newer the product, the more likely it is really bad for your health. — alcontali

I agree with all this. Pharma includes some of the worst companies in the world adn they have a revolving door with the FDA. What I was pointing out was the your smugness about the coming destruction of the West and the superiority of the East is based in part on a skewed image, since currently the East is, via cheap labor and copying, relying on the West for much of what it does well.

Once, I even ended up at the reception of a hotel, asking for the price, and they said $150, but at booking.com they had listed the same room for $65. So, in front of the receptionist, I booked the room on booking:com; after which he grudgingly gave me the key to the room. So, I also gave them a low rating for service. — alcontali

I've worked in hotels, so I know this from the inside. That hotel left too much of a gap and she or he should have handled the situation much better. But they have had their margins stripped down to nothing by these parasites and, yes, they try to get a better margin from a portion of their customers.

Once these sites booking.com being one of the two main parasites came in, Espedia being even worse for hotels, hotels had to cut staff and the remaining staff had to cover 1 and half to two jobs. This cut into

service at every hotel

you will ever stay at.

Because these parasites do not have to work, they are like protection rackets with restaurants and bars in a town.

With minimal labor and no direct service around the actual work of hotels,

they take a huge percentage of the room fee. IOW they take a huge chunk of your money to do very little of the labor of serving you.

So every single hotel now can serve people less. This margin loss cuts into staffing, unkeep of facilities, amenities, everything.

The hotels try to keep up with these losses and they have two main ways to do this. Cut staff and force staff to work twice as hard .But it gets harder to leave reception and help with specific issues if there are less people to answer phones, check in, for example.

These companies are a kind of protection racket.

You are applauding people who have reduced service in hotels worldwide. They have unemployed people. They have added incredible stress to the people who work in hotels.

I know this from the inside. I watched the effects direcly on myself and my fellow staff, as the hotel had to cut staff and the exact effects this had on customers and staff health and turnover. I had to work almost what had been two full jobs and these were not luxury lazy jobs before. I had less time to deal with anomoles. I was later coming to rooms to fix tv problems or whatever. Staff turnover increseased. Which means that your bucks are now paying more for trainng new staff than they would have. You are served by less well trained staff at every single hotel you go to. The staff can respond to you less calmly and are likely to make more mistakes.

All because these companies are getting a large percentage of the hotelier fee, without providing any of that service, and most of their service is streamlined by programming down to a near nothing.

They got via google between you and the hotels and they charge you and the hotel - you indirectly - for their services and they make those serrvices worse.

Everywhere.

When those companies really got a lock on, service went down. And I know this because the hotels in the city I worked in got together with each other to see how they could collectively deal with the issue. They all had to cut staff. They all lost the ability to put money into all facets of the business. They all had to pressure workers to increase workloads to a point where you simply had to make people wait for things or not get them at all, whereas a year before you could handle it because more staff was on, more inventory was in and so on. If they'd had the capital and the balls, they perhaps could have collectively refused. IOW a union of hotel owners. But now it is way too late for that. They had a small window and it's gone.

We generally have a reasonable idea of what ‘better’ means. Given that our conceptual landscape shifts what is ‘better’ is never known in any pure sense. It’s simply a matter of balancing the immediate benefits with future benefits ... given that we’re not able to know our future and that we’re burden with the emotional contents of the present, our estimates may be incomplete but we can usually make progressively ‘better’ choices as we fumble along.

What is ‘better’ is generally understood from a human perspective not from pure logic.

We generally have a reasonable idea of what ‘better’ means. Given that our conceptual landscape shifts what is ‘better’ is never known in any pure sense. It’s simply a matter of balancing the immediate benefits with future benefits ... given that we’re not able to know our future and that we’re burden with the emotional contents of the present, our estimates may be incomplete but we can usually make progressively ‘better’ choices as we fumble along.

What is ‘better’ is generally understood from a human perspective not from pure logic. — I like sushi

A fumbling along with incomplete estimates related to the immediate emotionally burdened circumstances amidst shifting conceptual landscape methodology for describing better does not sound reasonable to me at all. We don’t know what better is often until we can see things in hindsight. And, what things we perceive as bad, could be better in the long run for us; if we can change ourselves and our perception. The better off that we are today at to technology and comfort and wealth may in all actuality be the worst things for us, to the extent that these things tend to take our eye off the ball. Or are these creature comforts the ball? I suppose better is determined by what your ball is. Maybe, instead of what is better? Would it be better to ask what is the ball? Or better still; would it be better not to ask at all? Where but from a human perspective does pure logic reside?

If you don’t find reality ‘reasonable’ ... well, so be it. Join the club. I imagine you’re quite capable of making choices based on what you deem ‘better’ or ‘worse’. If you deny this then you’ve got a lot of explaining to do because I don’t see how anyone can make choices without making judgements based on ‘better’ or ‘worse’ outcomes. We must necessarily balance out our predictions - shoddy as they may be. If you deem ‘hardship’ better then you deem hardship ‘better’. I’m not going to disagree with that completely.

True enough! I admit the choices of what I hope to be good are often tough. To figure out better still; forget about it. I struggle with what I believe to be right actions and more and more feel the desire to let go and be led. It’s not that I see hardship as better, only that it can be the necessary catalyst to better. There needs to be the contrast. How many great leaders scientists athletes note the value of failure? Is humility better? Maybe the way we act ought not be based so much on the betterness of the outcome, and instead the betterness of our motives and means.

Like everything the answer is generally ‘It depends!’

Regarding the general ‘ethic’/‘moralistic’ stance mine is quite firm in terms of the OP. I’m willing to act as I see fit and suffer the consequences of being wrong - that said I’m likely too cowardly to actually act as I see fit, but I’m working on it like everyone else.

I certainly don’t buy into the whole ‘no making a choice’ as a ‘moral’ stance to emulate. That is cowardice in my mind and just because someone refuses to make choices I’m not going to look at them as a role model for life.

Imagine if the proposal was put to the vote and the majority voted for eugenics and then you had the choice to overturn the decision and suffer the consequences. Would you? A great number of people here may refuse much like they’d refuse to pull the lever in the Trolley Problem ... I call that cowardice, and understand that in such a situation I am most likely going to take the ‘coward’s’ choice.

For me when it comes to ‘better’ or ‘worse’ it is simply down to me acting as I speak as much as I can and constantly assessing how my choices pan out and why they pan out the way they do. I’m always at least partially in the dark, but I strive to be attentive rather than shirk any sense of responsibility and frame it as ‘moral’.

You can see strange attitudes in this thread. There is the ease of painting the situation black and white in order to shut down any reasonable discussion and frame such a line of attack as justified and progressive. I think it’s nonsense.

We may not know exactly what we mean by human ‘flourishing’ but we sure as hell understand what equal opportunity means even if it is a practical impossibility given we’re all different to some degree or another. I refuse to dismiss the concept of ‘betterment’ or ‘flourishing’ just because it is an inconvenient problem to face and we’re likely going to make hideous mistakes along the way and call them ‘better’. Remaining static is pointless.

When I say ‘flourishing’ and ‘betterment’ I don’t for a second consider this to be anything like an easy or painless journey. Frankly put, I don’t see a life absent of mistakes and suffering as a life I’d want to live - this is the immediate ‘good’ at the cost of future ‘good’. We have to be bold sometimes, take risks and ‘suffer’ the hands we’re dealt. Passivity is not something I see as beneficial to this end - but doing nothing can work as a considered choice rather than as a refusal to step up (maybe call it an ‘effort of passivity’ rather than blank refusal).

Strawman. :roll:

I, for one, really, but really support the idea of licencing reproduction.

This means if I don't get a licence, I am in a position to go out and have as much sex with consenting partners as possible, without ever being bogged down to raise children, which is, basically, a long, continuous headache.

They should have introduced this licencing thing a long time ago.

? Explain. Saying something doesn't make it so (not normally). So, explain. Or are explanations beneath you?

Haha! Yeah, and then we’d have to introduce licenses flr having sex.

Yeah, and then we’d have to introduce licenses flr having sex. — I like sushi

Because the law makers are sadistic and deny people pleasure just because people enjoy pleasure?

Yeah, that's sensible, just look at the tax returns. Not only are you forced to enforce yourself to pay taxes, but you also have to wrestle with incomprehensible descriptions, a busy work of millions of unnecessary calculations, and declaring you haven't lied. (Which everybody does, but we declare the opposite anyway.)

So... they force us to hurt ourselves, at great lengths of effort and time, and morally condemn ourselves via selling our souls to the Devil as lying is a deadly sin.

Yep, you're right, Sushi. Anyone who forces its subjects to do this, would LOVE to have the control of who can have sex and who can't.

:roll:

180 Proof ? Explain. Saying something doesn't make it so (not normally). So, explain. Or are explanations beneath you? — Bartricks

:point: Res ipsa loquitur.