2013 : WHAT *SHOULD* WE BE WORRIED ABOUT? - Chinese Eugenics

Chinese Eugenics
Geoffrey Miller : Evolutionary psychologist, NYU Stern Business School and University of New Mexico; author of The Mating Mind and Spent

China has been running the world's largest and most successful eugenics program for more than thirty years, driving China's ever-faster rise as the global superpower. I worry that this poses some existential threat to Western civilization. Yet the most likely result is that America and Europe linger around a few hundred more years as also-rans on the world-historical stage, nursing our anti-hereditarian political correctness to the bitter end. When I learned about Chinese eugenics this summer, I was astonished that its population policies had received so little attention.

The BGI Cognitive Genomics Project is currently doing whole-genome sequencing of 1,000 very-high-IQ people around the world, hunting for sets of sets of IQ-predicting alleles. I know because I recently contributed my DNA to the project, not fully understanding the implications.

My real worry is the Western response.

egde.org



I thought it was interesting and could not find something with "china + iq" in the search....

Supposing they get 15 IQ per generation and have been doing this for ~30 years + mix in these high IQ samples they are collecting, imagine that.. hard working, high IQ, high population and probably the next power in the world if not already.... Things do not look great for us mere mortals lol over in the west.

Since this is what a high IQ buys you I will continue to relish my ignorance

What good is being intelligent if you aren't healthy enough to enjoy it?

I was wondering if they will set up breeding farms to deliver these high IQ babies. With the way they are killing off the female babies, where will they get the women to carry them? Yikes.

Fascinating article, but luckily Nature doesn't favor intelligence alone. In fact, selecting (or breeding in this case) for an intelligent population is inherently risky, because it doesn't take into account other genetic variations that offer advantages other than just intelligence. For example, their scientist might select for only intelligence traits, and create a population bottleneck in which the subsequent prodigy all have defects of the immune system or psychological problems (schizophrenia or biploar or w/e). Or perhaps the bottle neck leaves out good traits that another less intelligent population might have. Nature awards diversity in a population, not simply intelligence. They would be wise to consider this before proceeding with their experiments.

-Ghoster

The smog issue in China shows a real increase in intelligence there.

Eugenics creates problems down the line as previous posters have said. Shallow allele pools are linked with greater population sensitivity to disease e.g. spanish flu, bubonic plague.

Selecting purely for intelligence ignores future problems which intelligence alone cannot handle, see link between intelligence and schizophrenia, that Stargate episode where Thor says "we're too clever to fight the replicators, we need humans because you're stupider than us" and various other intelligence-physical detriment links.

Ethically, I'd rather stick to my beliefs that the individual must be protected, sacrifice for collective is necessary at times but in extremes can severely impact quality of life of individuals. My beliefs may be the product of my time and culture, and if I'd been born 100 years from now, they might have been different, but I wasn't, so they're not.

reply to post by pacifier2012


Do we know for sure that the "lack of" pollution control is not some sort of population control? Maybe they are culling the herd.

reply to post by SMOKINGGUN2012


They certainly don't require pollution to do that. As they have the One-Child Policy in place and a consenting population. Also, pollution, particularly air pollution is indiscriminate. It culls the population, somewhat, but not acutely...it simply degrades a person's health over time. So it wouldn't be effective and I'm sure the technocrats that run Chinese Government would have realized that fact. Nope, this is just what advancing a civilization from pre-industrial to developed looks like.

-The Ghoster

Originally posted by SMOKINGGUN2012
reply to post by pacifier2012

 

Do we know for sure that the "lack of" pollution control is not some sort of population control? Maybe they are culling the herd.

Great plan, we are all breathing the same air as the so called "elites" that want to see our demise.