Come on, Bryan. As an economist, your criticism of Fisher is gratuitous. We all know war takes the best of our young men, and that is only one small aspect of its destructive nature. Fisher's criticism of war is very similar to criticizing Keynes's silly notion that war could somehow produce prosperity. War itself is "dysgenic." Fisher's denunciation of it is not. I should add: Of course, I condemn any leaning of FIsher's toward eugenics. But this interview itself is not what you say it is.
"McNamara's Morons," low-IQ Viet Nam-era soldiers who died and were wounded at much higher than average rates, would seem to refute your assertion that war is (always) dysgenic.
I.Fisher was apparently an early advocate in that era of eugenics that spawned Margaret Sanger and Adolph Hitler. It's not hard to understand that if we can breed better sheep, that we could also breed better people. The problems appear when defining "better". As my favorite SciFi character defiantly stated, " I know this - they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten? They'll swing back to the belief that they can make people... better. And I do not hold to that". Fisher isn't an object lesson of a bygone era of bad ideas - he displays the same hubris we see in politics today.
Defining "better" is easy in the vast majority of cases.
We want no-one in society with low cognitive ability, extreme violent tendencies, sociopathic personality, very low pain and suffering tolerance, or high propensity for physical diseases and mental torment. If we're able to do this reliably, improving these traits as much as possible will clearly just be an unalloyed good.
Traits we have bred into livestock, like obedience, loyalty, or deliciously fatty tails, are more controversial, and there are always going to be a few traits where the socially-optimal outcome, or one preferred by a nation state, diverges from the most desirable for individuals or parents, so some caution is needed.
But this shouldn't distract from the fact that there is a "better" and "worse" outcome in most cases.
Good response! We see the social interventions of attempting to rebuild people and society in the image of self anointed Visionaries, today, in the US.
Come on, Bryan. As an economist, your criticism of Fisher is gratuitous. We all know war takes the best of our young men, and that is only one small aspect of its destructive nature. Fisher's criticism of war is very similar to criticizing Keynes's silly notion that war could somehow produce prosperity. War itself is "dysgenic." Fisher's denunciation of it is not. I should add: Of course, I condemn any leaning of FIsher's toward eugenics. But this interview itself is not what you say it is.
"McNamara's Morons," low-IQ Viet Nam-era soldiers who died and were wounded at much higher than average rates, would seem to refute your assertion that war is (always) dysgenic.
I.Fisher was apparently an early advocate in that era of eugenics that spawned Margaret Sanger and Adolph Hitler. It's not hard to understand that if we can breed better sheep, that we could also breed better people. The problems appear when defining "better". As my favorite SciFi character defiantly stated, " I know this - they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten? They'll swing back to the belief that they can make people... better. And I do not hold to that". Fisher isn't an object lesson of a bygone era of bad ideas - he displays the same hubris we see in politics today.
Defining "better" is easy in the vast majority of cases.
We want no-one in society with low cognitive ability, extreme violent tendencies, sociopathic personality, very low pain and suffering tolerance, or high propensity for physical diseases and mental torment. If we're able to do this reliably, improving these traits as much as possible will clearly just be an unalloyed good.
Traits we have bred into livestock, like obedience, loyalty, or deliciously fatty tails, are more controversial, and there are always going to be a few traits where the socially-optimal outcome, or one preferred by a nation state, diverges from the most desirable for individuals or parents, so some caution is needed.
But this shouldn't distract from the fact that there is a "better" and "worse" outcome in most cases.
Good response! We see the social interventions of attempting to rebuild people and society in the image of self anointed Visionaries, today, in the US.
I don’t see how such ideals
Will ever cease to exist.
Compare https://gwern.net/backstop on the subject of war.
Is equal-opportunity communism a la FDR not a slightly lesser evil than dysgenic communism a la LBJ?
How was this man's name spelled? With or without a "c"? I see it both ways in this post.