Which “desirable traits” are we talking about?
Some commentary on that whole “eugenics would work” idea:
This is what I’m saying. What kind of “eu”? “Works” in what sense? Dawkins didn’t say.
Maybe it is a humanities thing to be careful with words and define your terms. Maybe, but ten years ago or so I would have said Dawkins knew how to do both.
I think all he means by “work” is if you were a monster with absolute control over human reproduction you could successfully breed for certain traits just as we have with dogs, etc. I think that’s beyond dispute, and the people feigning to dispute it by, say, claiming all dogs are genetic monsters are being a bit silly.
Dawkins also indicates he “deplore[s] eugenics on ideological, political, moral grounds”, so we’re all on the same page there as well as well.
As Ophelia said earlier, the interesting question is why he brought this up at all. I suspect he may have just become annoyed with seeing “eugenics wouldn’t work” stated as a fact repeatedly (and so might not have any particular “eu” in mind).
Skeletor is annoyed at other people for being nitpicky and not interpreting someone charitably.
Well, there goes another irony meter….
I like Dawkins’ writing, I have read several of his books, and I think he’s a very intelligent writer. So this shows how twitter makes it possible to see people blurt things out without thinking them through. He might believe this stuff, but twitter isn’t the place to argue for it, and it’s too easy to use the wrong wordage, etc. I don’t think anyone is immune from that. I do disagree with him on this one, but I sure don’t think that devalues all the stuff he has written that I found very agreeable.
Also, Skeletor, in addition to what Screechy said – the issue isn’t what you think he means by “work.” I could make guesses too, we all could, but that’s not the point – the point is that he didn’t make it clear what he means by it, in a remark that needed to be made clearly and with due care. Also also, actual geneticists have been telling him in replies that what you say is beyond dispute is not. See Jen McCreight’s tweet for instance.
twiliter – nah. Twitter isn’t that magical. Especially now that the character limit has been doubled, it’s perfectly possible to say something clearly in a tweet. Also Dawkins has been using Twitter heavily for years, and in fact he fancies himself quite good at it. He’s pointed out that there’s an art to saying things in a small space, and he enjoys the exercise. The trouble is, he’s not as good at it as he thinks he is.
And this tweet isn’t unusual, he’s said quite a few horrible things over the years. In particular he fumed for weeks about a Muslim school boy in the US who brought a clock to school for a science class and was interrogated by the police for doing so. Dawkins called him “Clock Boy.” He sounded like Trump.
I used to like his books too, but the personality he has revealed over the past decade or so has dulled my appreciation of them. (It has also made me wonder how much editorial help he had.)
Wow, I had no idea. Looks like I missed out on a lot by not paying attention to twitter. I think it’s possible to say something clearly in a small space, but in this case he does it wrongly. I think I’m also a little behind on my reading, the last book I read by Dawkins was Unweaving the Rainbow.
Speaking of eugenics, No 10 (Downing Street) has a new ‘adviser’ – brought in as a result of Dom C’s desire for a few more ‘misfits & weirdos’ to help him along his way: one Andrew Sabisky who is on record as saying that rich people are more intelligent and that Eugenics are ‘about selecting for good things’, such as being rich, I suppose, and advocating that “One way to get around the problems of unplanned pregnancies creating a permanent underclass would be to legally enforce universal uptake of long-term contraception at the onset of puberty.” (This last was published on Dom C’s website in 2014). He also believes that a higher rate of black Americans suffered from “intellectual disability” saying: “It [is] simply a consequence of the normal distribution of cognitive ability.” And he feels that female genital mutilation is nothing to get bothered about, and has written that “I am always straight up in saying that women’s sport is more comparable to the Paralympics than it is to men’s.” Perhaps Richard D might have a word with him.
All filched from today’s ‘Independent’.
The only thing that I felt about Richard D’s recent twitterings were their complete banality and pointlessness.
Here are a couple of Guardian articles on his unpleasantness about the schoolboy:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/sep/20/richard-dawkins-questions-ahmed-mohamed-motive-backlash
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/nov/25/richard-dawkins-links-isis-child-who-beheaded-man-and-clock-boy-ahmed-mohamed
It really was nasty stuff. It was painful to watch.
I am also trying to read (it is awful), on the principle that you should know your enemies, ‘The Sovereign Individual: How to Survive and Thrive During the Collapse of the Welfare State’ by James Dale Davidson & Lord William Rees-Mogg (the Mogg’s daddy). They draw on ‘The Selfish Gene’ to declare that being selfish actually gives you a leg-up in the evolutionary race so that you become rich and maximise the evolutionary benefits that accrue from this, such as having lots of descendants to whom your money will have been passed on and who will therefore also be rich. Mary Midgley had it right.
I also note that the Chancellor, Sajid Javid, whom Boris, on the advice of Dom C, has kicked out is an avid fan of Ayn Rand — though that, unfortunately, wasn’t what he was kicked out for.
@2, Sproooooing!!
I see that there’s quite a storm on Why Evolution is True over RD’s tweet, with Jerry Coyne quite rightly saying that RD shouldn’t indulge in this sort of thing, but apparently finds it impossible to refrain from doing so. One commentator suggests that RD may be tweeting in response to Downing Street’s new adviser (see above #6), and that adviser’s remarks on eugenics, but in that case RD should have been responsible enough to make it clear that that was what he was responding to. In any event, eugenics (which was at one point at least supported by many people who were regarded as scientists) has a thoroughly poisonous history, and RD could simply have made the point that because human beings are animals, we could be selectively bred for longer legs, or whiter skin, or, perhaps, to produce a servile race of Morlocks, or whatever certain people might want to breed for, assuming they are in a position to force their desired policies on society. This is an obvious and banal truth. (The anti-education brigade in certain countries, by the way, seem to be espousing a sort of social eugenics: don’t educate people properly, because otherwise they will learn to think and won’t vote Republican or Tory: we need our Morlocks!) Instead he brings up ‘eugenics’, asserts it could ‘work’ in one way or another, and then on the basis of the disjunction between facts and values, asserts that it is morally undesirable. And then complains in his usual fashion that other people aren’t intelligent enough to understand logic or him, or are suffering from a surfeit of ‘ideology’. Most of the WEIT crowd are vociferous in their support of RD, presumably on ideological grounds.
In any event, RD would have done better not to bring in, out of the blue (as it seems), such a remark on eugenics without making it clear what issue precisely he was addressing.
I must say, I agree, for once, with Skeletor that the remark on dog-breeding is ineffably stupid. There are plenty of dog breeds – Welsh & Border Collies, for instance – that don’t suffer from the sort of problems that occur in pets that have been bred only for their looks: pugs, for example.
It seems to me to be an entirely pointless tweet, saying only a shallowly obvious thing: if we set aside all social and moral considerations, yes, we will be able to breed for a selected trait. Which leaves me scratching my head as to what he wanted to achieve by saying that.
Looking at his feed, we see that it is just a random blurt. Weird.
And perhaps I should add that eugenics applied to a whole society would be impracticable and would not ‘work’, and, as some intelligent commenter on WEIT pointed out, would be ripe for abuse by racist and other unsavoury people who gain power.
*waves in general direction of gender scholarship*
Ummmm…
Keep waving! But also please wave in other directions as well when required.
The marketing and social media gods have all been selling us a huge line of BS that even some pretty smart people have bought into – that complex nuanced topics can be distilled to a seven second sound bite or 140 characters. Total rubbish. We all know that the only way to distill complex topics is with a single panel cartoon.
Pliny,
No, no, that’s just silly. Complex topics are best broken down by watching a series of YouTube videos in which a bearded dude rants into his laptop camera. I’ll link to my channel so you can truly understand this….
People really are making a meal out of this! Which “desirable traits” are we talking about? We’re not talking about any desirable traits!
By “works” Dawkins meant only that **If** you wanted to enhance a trait, and then selectively bred for that trait, then you would indeed enhance that trait.
Now, someone who *was* advocating eugenics, *would* indeed have particular traits in mind. But since Dawkins is *not* advocating eugenics, and is completely against it, he does *not* have any particular traits in mind.
His point really is more general: don’t let your attitudes to how you would like things to be, cloud your judgement as to how things actually are. (In contrast to: “Eugenics is immoral, and therefore it must be that it would not work”.)
@Holms #11: “Which leaves me scratching my head as to what he wanted to achieve by saying that.”
His aim is clearer once you realise that the Tweet is a reprise of the much longer discussion in his most recent book (“Science in the soul”). The surrounding context is all about the nature of science, and a discussion of scientists who have let their ideology cloud their science. Thus, scientists who have let their desire for “how I want things to me” cloud their judgement of “how things actually are”.
In that context, eugenics was just an example. “I dislike eugenics morally, therefore I’ll claim it doesn’t work”. This is a belt-and-braces approach to attacking eugenics: both reject it on moral grounds AND, for good measure, declare that it couldn’t work. This type of motivated reasoning is quite common, and that was Dawkins’s target.
OK, so the context wasn’t there in the Tweet, but nor was it that hard to see his intent (especially when he spelled it out in the third one)!
Uh, no. It doesn’t work that way. Nothing works that way, and Twitter really doesn’t work that way. Theory of mind. People reading a tweet aren’t going to know it’s a reprise of the much longer discussion in a book unless the tweet says so, which it didn’t.
And as I keep saying, the issue isn’t his intent, it’s what he actually said. I already know that one can come up with interpretations that make sense, but they don’t change what he said.
He’s supposed to be a great communicator. The tweet was a bad tweet and he was foolish to post it. The fact that you can explain it to your personal satisfaction is beside the point.
And yet, that’s not what he said. He didn’t say what you interpret him as meaning, he said what he did say.
@Ophelia:
“He’s supposed to be a great communicator.”
Yes, well, when it comes to books that go through multiple revisions and editing, anyhow.
“He didn’t say what you interpret him as meaning, he said what he did say.”
Though he did explicitly say (3rd Tweet): “A eugenic policy would be bad. I’m combating the illogical step from “X would be bad” to “So X is impossible”.”.
And also: “It would work in the same sense as it works for cows.”.
I know what he said in the third tweet. I’ve been talking about the first tweet.
I get that you think one must Never Dispute The Sacred Male Geniuses, from Shermer to Dawkins, but you’re not persuading anyone by telling us what Dawkins would have said if only he had said it.
Coel @17,
I haven’t seen anyone here claim that Dawkins is actually advocating for eugenics. Nor have I seen anyone say it anywhere else for that matter, though I’m sure you can find somebody on Twitter who did if you look hard enough, because you can always find someone.
YES, WE KNOW. His point is not lost on any of us. (His intention in making this bizarre tweet is confusing to many of us, but not the literal point being communicated.) Dawkins thinks that he is the wise Vulcan who sees things logically and clearly and without being clouded by emotions like us silly humans.* I fucking got it the first time, thanks, and I’m pretty sure everybody else did. It’s not that we disagree with that point. It’s that we take issue with the introductory factual premise which unnecessarily (and falsely) concedes that eugenics would “work.”
Imagine if someone posted “there are millions of child molesters who drive around kidnapping children every day. So tell your children never to get into some stranger’s van, even if the stranger has candy.” (This was, of course, standard parenting advice in the 70s.) The rest of us are pointing out that this is unnecessary scaremongering which overstates dramatically the risks of stranger abduction, distorts the problem of child molestation by focusing on “strangers” rather than relatives, teachers, coaches, priests, etc. Then you come along and say “but his point is that children shouldn’t get into vans with strange men offering them candy! That’s good advice!”
We know. When a person says two things, we can disagree with one of them without implying disagreement with the other. And if you found this paragraph patronizing, well, now you know how I felt reading your posts in which you oh-so-helpfully explained the oh-so-subtle point he was making.
*-I’m actually waiting for someone to show up and claim that Dawkins probably has Asperger’s. With apologies to Mike Godwin, I postulate that “as the length of an internet discussion about someone’s socially clueless comment increases, the probability that someone will invoke Asperger’s as an explanation approaches one.”
I hope Coel will finally grasp the point now.
I hope Coel – or somebody, it doesn’t have to be Coel – will finally explain why Dr. McCreight is wrong.
Hi @Screechy #23
“And if you found this paragraph patronizing, well, now you know how I felt reading your posts in which you oh-so-helpfully explained the oh-so-subtle point he was making.”
Apologies if it came across as patronising. I was simply taking at face value questions such as “which desirable traits are we talking about” and (#11) “Which leaves me scratching my head as to what he wanted to achieve by saying that.”
But if your basic objection is that eugenics wouldn’t actually work, then ok. Though that raises the question of why selective breeding works in farm animals, in that farmers generally can push the population of farm animals a long way in the direction they wish to.
Tim Harris, thank you for the information about Sabisky. Good grief. Johnson is taking another leaf from Trump’s book.
@Coel #26
Re the distinction between animal selective breeding and eugenics, I think that point was addressed extremely well in Claire’s comment that became the guest post linked below. Single selective traits are not the same thing as overall superiority.
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2020/guest-post-even-more-dystopian-than-brave-new-world/
@Sackbut #28:
“Re the distinction between animal selective breeding and eugenics […] Single selective traits are not the same thing as overall superiority.”
Breeding for “overall superiority” (whatever that is) is too unspecified to comment on. But one can, for example, breed a wolf into a sheep-dog or into a guide-dog for the blind, and those involve a whole basket of traits.
And while I’m on:
@clamboy #25: “I hope Coel … will finally explain why Dr. McCreight is wrong.”
That tweet is too sparse to actually rebut. But: “polygenic traits”, “epistasis”, so what?, breeding acts on multiple genes. “Recessive genes”? Again, so what, what’s the actual argument?
As above, it is demonstrably the case that we can breed wolves into all sorts of dog varieties with different capabilities (and yes, in some cases, people have bred maladaptive traits into them; that isn’t a refutation of eugenics, it shows that if you want to breed in traits then you can). And we’ve bred other animals for increased production of milk, wool, meat, and other traits. And wheat for increased yields. Etc. All of that surely qualifies as “eugenics”.
The “eugenics couldn’t work” claim seems to derive from “I regard it as immoral, so want it not to work”, or, just possibly “Dawkins said it did, and I want Dawkins to be wrong”. :-)
My one sentence summary is not worth commenting on. My purpose was to draw your attention to the guest post. Perhaps you will find it addresses your questions, or perhaps not, but it seems relevant to me.
Re Coel: Galton: eugenics is “the study of all agencies under human control which can improve or impair the racial quality of future generations”.
Dawkins, in his first tweet, is saying that eugenics would work towards the genetic betterment of future generations (I’ll leave out Galton’s ‘races’), but it would be morally undesirable to do this. But if it does genuinely work towards the genetic betterment of future generations, why would it be immoral? Wouldn’t the great good of genetic betterment trump the ‘smaller’ evils along the way? I don’t think that facts and values can be so neatly separated, and in fact they generally are not, as in the general assumption that industrialisation was a great good that has led to huge progress everywhere and therefore that the immiseration of the working classes in the late 18th and 19th centuries was the price that had to be paid, or, say, that the destruction of ‘primitive’ peoples under colonialism (in which I include the USA) was in the end a good thing, because it led to the splendid societies we live in today.
@sackbut #30: “My purpose was to draw your attention to the guest post.”
Yes, I’d read it in full, not just your one-sentence summary. The central argument is that, if you substantially modify an animal by selective breeding, then the selectively-bred version would likely get out-competed in the wild by the wild-type (so a sheep dog could not compete with a wolf in the wilds of Canada).
OK, but applying that to humans, humans could (in-principle) both selectively breed themselves, AND create the environment that we then needed. After all, we all now live in artificially constructed environments. We’re not still scavenging on the African savanna as our “wild type” ancestors did. And, further, if we collectively did go down that eugenics route (which of course we don’t want to for lots of reasons) then who would out-compete us? So I don’t find this argument convincing.
@Tim Harries: #31: “But if it does genuinely work towards the genetic betterment of future generations, why would it be immoral?”
First, different people will disagree on what is “better”. There is no objective standard of “better”, only different people’s preferences. Second, people would consider it immoral if they didn’t like the price to be paid.
For example, suppose — hypothetically — that you could make humans immune to the common cold if, for the next 5 generations, we sacrificed all first-born children to the gods at full moon. Most people would say “no thanks, I’ll put up with my distant descendants getting colds”, even though people would generally agree that it would be “better” if we were immune.
“Wouldn’t the great good of genetic betterment trump the ‘smaller’ evils along the way?”
Who says that the evils would be smaller than the goods of “genetic betterment”? Indeed, the whole point about eugenics is that people generally make exactly the opposite assessment.
Anyhow, all of that is pretty irrelevant to Dawkins’s point, which is simply that whether we could do it is a logically separate question from whether we would want to.
Except that that’s not the point he made.
I thought I’d sent a response to Coel, but it was rather in a rush before leaving for work this morning, and I obviously pressed the wrong button. Yes, Coel, we are aware of all that, and I and others have made similar points. Thank you. What is quite clear from your response (‘Who says that the evils would be smaller than the goods of “genetic betterment”? Indeed, the whole point about eugenics is that people generally make exactly the opposite assessment.’) is that most people are agreed that eugenics does not, and would not, work. Dawkins actually said that eugenics ‘would work in practice.’ (Perhaps you might re-read his first tweet.) That he has subsequently had to scramble to deny that he was saying what actually he did say, or, more generously, qualify it, is neither here or there. The little logical point that he is making and on which he supposes everything turns is neither here or there. Perhaps he should read a good moral philosopher like Sedgwick or Parfit or Meng-tse, who understand the complexity of human life and of ethics.
@Tim #35: “What is quite clear from your response … is that most people are agreed that eugenics does not, and would not, work”
If by “work” one means “does indeed enhance the traits one breeds for”, then yes it works. If by “work” one means “produces a society that people prefer”, then no it doesn’t work.
“Perhaps he should read a good moral philosopher like Sedgwick or Parfit or Meng-tse, who understand the complexity of human life and of ethics.”
I don’t see that he is lacking in his assessment of those things. Indeed, distinguishing between the two aspects just above was his central point.
I think, Coel, you should acquaint yourself with what eugenics actually is and historically has been, and stop pretending that it is merely a harmless way of talking about the fact that human beings, being mammals, are subject to evolutionary pressure and that therefore it would be possible to apply artificial evolutionary pressure to them, in the same way we have applied it to domestic animals. You yourself pose the question ‘Who says that the evils would be smaller than the goods of “genetic betterment”?’ Eugenicists definitely thought that the ‘goods’ of genetic betterment outweighed any evils. Perhaps you could provide examples yourself of the ‘goods’ that might accrue. Europeans thought that massacring native populations and destroying native cultures resulted in several goods. What is a ‘good’? From whose point of view? There are disagreements over what constitutes morality – profound ones. And perhaps you might take into consideration, too, the story of the mice and the cat that ends with the question ‘Who is going to bell the cat?’ It would need a tyranny to impose eugenics on any society. And the fact is that ‘is’ and ‘ought’ are, despite Hume, inextricably intertwined in the complexity of our lives, as attention to any contemporary debate – that over ‘trans rights’, for example – would show you.
“I cannot forbear adding to these reasonings an observation, which may, perhaps, be found of some importance. In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark’d, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surpriz’d to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence.”
― David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature
It is not the case that we have ‘facts’ on one side and something called ‘morality’ (which supposedly tells us unequivocally what is right or wrong) on the other, which are somehow in opposition and have nothing to do with each other. Hume is certainly right to put his finger on the imperceptible change between ‘is, and is not’ and ‘ought, or ought not’ in the writings of a certain kind of moralist, but facts about our nature as social beings and the kind of society and political system which would permit eugenicist programmes have to be taken into account in any judgement of the value of eugenics, or of anything else.
And as the example of Andrew Sabisky shows, there are plenty of people about who would be only too happy with eugenicist policies.
And there are of course supposed facts, such as that certain races are inferior (something espoused by the founder of eugenics as well, of course, by Dr Watson of ‘The Double Helix’ fame), or, as the great biologist J.B.S Haldane asserted, that Stalin was “a very great man who did a very good job”. Stalin certainly did a very good job of starving Ukrainian peasants and maintaining a reign of terror, so I suppose that is a factual remark. There is also, of course, the fact that what is considered moral changes. The Germans felt justified in their treatment of the Herero and Nama people of Namibia — they no longer do (though of course some do, just as some British people feel perfectly happy with the way the British dealt with the Mau-mau uprising in Kenya). There is now such an institution as gay marriage, despite the fulminations of fervent Christians. Which is to say, both what are taken as facts (including scientific facts) change and so does generally accepted morality. There is no impassible gulf between facts and ethical judgements, and there can’t be, and the facts in the case of the desirability or otherwise of eugenics go far beyond the fact that, biologically, it is possible to enhance desired traits in human beings as in any other animal.
Hi Tim, #37: “I think, Coel, you should acquaint yourself with what eugenics actually is and historically has been, …”
We are all well aware of that!
“… and stop pretending that it is merely a harmless way of talking about the fact that … it would be possible to apply artificial evolutionary pressure to them, …”
No-one is pretending that! The fact that there are BOTH political/social/moral aspects AND technical ones about genetics was EXPLICIT in the tweets (indeed was the whole point of the tweets!).
“Eugenicists definitely thought that the ‘goods’ of genetic betterment outweighed any evils.”
Which is why they were eugenicists. Everyone else makes the opposite assessment. What an utter meal is being made of this!
Cue a new round of “Dawkins ponders cannibalism!” outrage. I reckon this new one is deliberate trolling of Twitter. :-)
Then it is not a simple matter of people making an elementary mistake in logic, as RD’s first tweet suggested. I am glad that we are in agreement on this. Eugenics does not and cannot work in any good way if we take facts other than the basic biological one into account, facts that are independent of what might be our immediate and unthinking moral tastes or distastes. But I suppose one could regard massacres of whole populations or Stalin’s treatment of the Ukrainian peasantry, which Haldane had no problem with since it was in the service of the over-riding moral imperative of Communism, as forms of eugenics — they certainly ‘work’ in some respects. What would AngloSaxondom be without them? Jerry Coyne was absolutely right to say that RD shouldn’t indulge in his habit of tweeting things that seem positively designed to invite misunderstanding and criticism, so as, it seems (this is not JC’s point), to have the subsequent luxury of complaining that people are stupid and cannot understand the elementary logical points he was making. How splendid it is to be intelligent, and to know that you are! Bon appetit!
Hi Tim, “Eugenics does not and cannot work in any good way …”.
Agreed. People don’t want to be treated as farm animals and wouldn’t like a society that treated people as farm animals. People generally evaluate eugenics as being a bad thing.
By the way, I thought this was an insightful commentary on the affair, distinguishing between “high-decoupling” and “low-decoupling” people:
https://unherd.com/2020/02/eugenics-is-possible-is-not-the-same-as-eugenics-is-good/
Hi, Coel!
I’m glad that we are agreed in some way at least. I have read the commentary you link to, and think that, yes, it is some respects insightful, though it doesn’t make me respect Andrew Sabisky any more, I’m afraid. I think he (AS) is a nasty little thug in faux-intellectual clothing, as is Dominic Cummings. I am not at all convinced by the writer’s distinction between ‘high-decouplers’ and ‘low-decouplers’. The trouble with RD’s initial tweet is that he specifically says that eugenics would ‘work’ in practice, which suggests that the goals of eugenics would or could lead to the betterment of ‘the human race’, while saying that the means of achieving this would be morally unacceptable. But Galton’s ideas, and the ideas of the eugenicists in general, particularly in the USA & Nazi Germany, were profoundly racist and also expressed utter contempt for the ‘poorer classes’. Here is something actually from the Galton Institute:
“By 1873, Galton was further refining his ideas on eugenics, although the term was still yet to be invented. He wrote a letter to The Times headed Africa for the Chinese that expressed his racist philosophy in uncompromising terms, proposing that the African continent was given over lock, stock and barrel to the Chinese people: ‘the gain would be immense’ if they were to ‘outbreed and finally displace’ the native Africans. Furthermore, in the January 1873 edition of Fraser’s Magazine he published a rambling fifteen page article – Hereditary improvement – that set out in more detail than before his absurd and ghastly eugenic ‘Utopia’, where the genetic elite would be separated from the rest of society and would be given all manner of incentives and bequests. The genetic underclass would be expected to refrain from procreating otherwise they would be regarded as ‘enemies of the State’, forfeiting ‘all claims to kindness’.”
Perhaps Dawkins could come from the clouds and do a bit of ‘low decoupling’. Despite the hierarchy the writer you have referred me to seems to create between ‘high decoupling’ (intelligent and good) & ‘low decoupling’ (less intelligent, one supposes), I think the latter has a better grasp of reality.
Finally, thank you for the discussion, and let’s call it a day.
Coel @ 41 –
Hurr hurr. After all these comments you still miss the point. There won’t be any such outrage because what he said was perfectly clear. His tweet saying that eugenics could work was not perfectly clear.
Hi Ophelia #45:
“After all these comments you still miss the point … His tweet saying that eugenics could work was not perfectly clear.”
I do get that that’s the claim being made, yes, I just don’t agree with it.
The sense in which he intended “work” is clear from “It works for cows, horses, pigs, dogs & roses”, and that he is well aware that — when it comes to humans — there are also social and moral issues, is clear from “… deplore eugenics on ideological, political, moral grounds”.
To ‘work’, in the sense RD is using it, means ‘to perform a proper function, to produce the results that are intended’. Eugenics is, or was, intended to bring about a general genetic improvement in the human race principally by winnowing out individuals, races and classes deemed inferior and partly by encouraging the formation of a genetic elite (to which, by the way, President Trump believes he belongs). So in his original tweet RD is SAYING that although people object to eugenics on ‘ideological, political, and moral grounds’ (note the order of these ‘grounds’, it is telling), it would nevertheless lead to a general genetic improvement in the human race. And he ends with the unpleasant little squib, ‘Facts ignore ideology,’ which is of course the whole point of his tweet: to stick one in the eye of the ‘soft’ thinkers he despises. On one side is science with its ineluctable facts, on the other are the woolly-minded ideologues. Nothing in between. The tweet displays a vast arrogance and a vast contempt for anyone who does not think in the ‘high-decoupling’ manner in which he likes to think he thinks. And given that eugenics used at least to be supported by a number of important figures who were scientists, including its founder Galton, who made a number of important contributions to science, it is hardly surprising that many people were unhappy to see yet another scientist, or mere populariser of science in E.O. Wilson’s view, apparently claiming that eugenics would work in the sense of leading to the genetic betterment of the human race. It was a silly, irresponsible tweet, and Jerry Coyne was quite right to say that he wished RD would not indulge in this sort of thing. Since that first tweet of course RD has had to scramble to defend himself by bringing the distinction between ‘facts’ (nice and objective) and ‘values’ (irredeemably subjective), which apparently unintelligent and illogical people cannot, unlike himself, understand. It is not a pretty sight, or a sight which encourages much respect for RD.
And I should add that Ophelia, and others here, particularly Screechy Monkey, are absolutely right to address what RD is actually saying in that first tweet, as opposed to the kind of interpretations his defenders like to impose on it. He is making a petty, dishonest, spiteful little point in that first tweet, the sort of thing you see constantly being perpetrated by right-wing trolls on the internet. It does him no credit.
Hi Tim #47.
Well we’re not going to agree on this, are we? The word “eugenics” does not necessarily connote everything you claim.
“So in his original tweet RD is SAYING … it would nevertheless lead to a general genetic improvement in the human race.”
No, his “works” in dogs, roses, etc makes clear that he’s only saying that if you selectively breed for traits then you do enhance those traits.
Whether one considers those traits an “improvement” is a value judgement that is an entirely different matter: what one person wants in a dog or a rose may differ from someone else.
Again, the entire, whole point of the tweet is to distinguish between facts and value judgments. Thus his “works” contains no element of value judgement.
Summarising the 3 tweets:
1) Selective breeding for traits (= farming) does indeed enhance traits.
2) Morally/politically we don’t want to treat people as farm animals.
3) The fact of (2) does not negate (1)
“And he ends with the unpleasant little squib, ‘Facts ignore ideology,’ which is of course the whole point of his tweet: to stick one in the eye of the ‘soft’ thinkers he despises.”
Yes, he is attacking the ideological claim: because (2) therefore Not-(1).
No, Coel, we are not going to agree. Eugenics was a historical movement that had as its aims the general genetic betterment of the human race. That is a historical fact. It also incorporated value-judgments as to what such a general genetic betterment would be. That, too, is a historical fact. His words about dogs and roses do not make it clear that ‘he’s only saying that if you selectively breed for traits then you do enhance those traits.’ That is an ‘entirely, wholly’ banal truth, with which no-one would disagree. The ‘entire, whole point’ of the tweet was not to distinguish between facts and value judgements. It was to air his infantile prejudices, which, in case you hadn’t noticed, involve a value judgement.
Hi Tim #50:
“His words about dogs and roses do not make it clear that ‘he’s only saying that if you selectively breed for traits then you do enhance those traits.’ That is an ‘entirely, wholly’ banal truth, with which no-one would disagree.”
Then why do some people disagree with it, including the first Tweet at the head of this post? (And plenty of similar one can find.)
“It was to air his infantile prejudices, which, in case you hadn’t noticed, involve a value judgement.”
What value judgement do you think he was making?
On a more general point, I’d find these commentaries on Dawkins’s Tweet more convincing if they weren’t made by people whose disdain for Dawkins drips from every comment they make.
Sorry, Coel, I am not going to bother to go on with this. RD has written some interesting books (‘The Extended Phenotype’ & ‘Unweaving the Rainbow’, for example) and some iffy ones. It is a pity to see to see him descending to what he has descended to now: trolling around, an activity that invites disdain. And that is all I am going to say. Farewell.
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As for “people whose disdain for Dawkins drips from every comment they make” – where do you suppose that disdain comes from? It comes from all these years of disdainful de haut en bas snide tweets about “Clock Boy” and feminists and everyone’s failure to understand his brilliant genius tweets. I used to admire Dawkins, but then he started parading his ego on Twitter and on his blog and the admiration withered and died.
Hi Ophelia #53:
“… where do you suppose that disdain comes from?”
First, Dawkins is far from perfect (just like everyone else), and ok he can be intellectually superior and condescending, and yes I’m aware of the long history of his interactions with various American bloggers and others. And part of the problem is that he treats Twitter as though it were a living-room conversation with friends, where you can try out half-baked thoughts. But:
At least part of the disdain comes from the circular: “it’s obvious that Dawkins had bad intent with that Tweet, because he’s such an obnoxious individual. And I know he’s an obnoxious individual because of the bad intent in his Tweets”. That seems to be the basis on which Tim “knows” the “petty, dishonest, spiteful” intent of that first Tweet.
That’s awfully dismissive – “and ok he can be intellectually superior and condescending.” Yes, he can, and for someone keen to promote science & reason, that’s a bad thing. He doesn’t have to be like that, and lots of people who are keen to promote science & reason are not like that. And he doesn’t always limit it to that, either; as I keep pointing out, he can also be just plain mean. The “Clock Boy” crap was very damn mean.
But as I’ve said, I don’t particularly think he did have bad intent with the first tweet, I think he wrote it sloppily. That’s not a big deal in general, but when talking about little things like eugenics, especially as famous science guy, one should at least not be sloppy.
You seem to be quite sure that “eugenics” is just a neutral word for selecting beneficial qualities, but that’s wrong – it’s a word with a specific history. The neutral term is selective breeding. Eugenics is not a simple or value-free synonym for that.
@Ophelia #55:
“The “Clock Boy” crap was very damn mean.”
Well I agree with you on that one (especially from an adult with a huge Twitter following about a child). Or perhaps not so much deliberately mean, as thoughtlessly mean. That’s an example of Dawkins treating Twitter like a conversation in his living-room, which it isn’t.
In partial mitigation, he was responding mainly to the $15million dollar lawsuit, since the huge numbers of US lawsuits always sound absurd to Brits. So getting wrongly arrested for a few hours means you then get a sum of money which means you never have to do a day’s work but can just live in luxury for your entire life? (In the UK, law-suit amounts are more about *actual* damages)
So yes, bad move by Dawkins on that one. But, it would be nice if everyone disdainful of Dawkins for such reasons would be equally condemnatory of things like the media reaction to Nick Sandmann, a 15-yr-old boy who had done nothing at all wrong.
Notice I didn’t say deliberately mean; I just said mean. I don’t know if it was deliberate or not.
Let’s just skip the mitigation, ok? I know all that and I don’t care. He was mocking the kid, over and over again, to his many many followers.
You also could have skipped that silly last sentence. I object to bullying and dishonesty on the left all the damn time.
The best thing I can say about Dawkins first tweet is that he’s too far gone to recognise that it could quite legitimately be interpreted badly. The worst thing I could say about it is that he knew that and sent it out anyway.
I used to admire Dawkins very much. Now I still think he’s written some fine books, but I think the man himself is an arsehole and one who enjoys being an arsehole. I’ve seen him interacting with a fan in person. A fan whom I know to be a thoughtful, sensitive and educated person. Dawkins treated him like crap in such an unnecessary and out of hand way that many bystanders, not just me, gaped. You could make excuses about him being tired and sick of the crowds on his publicity tour or whatever, but in my mind no fundamentally decent person would have behaved that way, or if they had snapped, they would have immediately muttered some sort of apology.
I suspect Dawkins sees himself as an intellectually superior edgy contrarian. Good job if you can pull it off. He can’t.
Scientists deal in facts, unlike other people, therefore we ought to accept everything scientists say and if they say something ridiculous or sloppy or wrong we should work ourselves into contortions to pretend that they were really saying something else. (See the quotation from Hume at #37.) And then everything will come up roses.