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David Gerard @awful.systems
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LW: [Request]: Use "Epilogenics" instead of "Eugenics" in most circumstances - people just don't like the word itself yes that must be it. Coined by Aella.

www.lesswrong.com [Request]: Use "Epilogenics" instead of "Eugenics" in most circumstances — LessWrong

I am conditionally in favor of human genetic augmentation. In particular, I think embryo selection for intelligence, health, happiness and other posi…

archive https://archive.is/8NW7e

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56 comments

  • This is the shit about "rational" thinking that pisses me off.

    you start with a premise that sounds reasonable: "Wouldn't it be good if future generations were better off than their parents?"

    Then you throw out all the hard parts of the question like:

    • what does it mean to be better off?
    • would there be equal access to the technology?
    • what would the social consequences be if there isn't?
    • could one group of people impose their designs for humanity on others?
    • have people tried this before? did anything go wrong?

    Then you ignore all of history, pretend it's just a surface level question of technical ability and the only objections people have must be because they're stupid.

    And voi-French noises you have yet another position to be smuggly superior in.

    Like fuck, we do this to other animals and we get fucking sheep that die if you don't sheer them and get infections around their bum, chickens with a fifth the lifespan of their ancestors, chickens that grow so fast their legs sometimes break, dogs so fucking inbred they are a mess of health problems.

    Maybe you could take a lesson from this about how fucking awful we are at deciding what traits are desirable and how twisted the logic of capital is. Or nah? maybe people who think a few random rich shits deciding on the perfect human will go about as well as other high modernist ideas are just idiots. That must be it.

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    • Then you throw out all the hard parts of the question like: Then you ignore all of history

      Seems to me that this is all swimming in the same water as End of History and anti-politics: defining humans and humanity out of the problem space, and insisting that in order to be taken seriously you must be focused only on productivity, good governance, and technological progress, the only problems.

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      • Yeah there's a book I quite like called seeing like a state. The author is an anthropologist who spent a lot of time studying SEA people living in the margins of states and non state areas as the state tried to bring them to heel.

        In this book he coins the term "high modernism" to talk about this style of thinking wherein problems are simply matters of technical expertise and can, and should, be solved by abstract design from the centre and this design should be inflexible (because it is ideal).

        While this kind of eugenics and sundry stuff isn't exactly the same I think it shares lots of characterists: The idea that you can solve real problems by sitting in a chair, the ignorance of how ideologically motivated you are and how heavily aesthetics features in your motivation (e.g. here they are far more concerned with the aesthetic of rows of healthy, pretty children doing well on tests than any of the messy details. Such as whether this is actually particularly useful in a world where many people suffer illness or disability merely because they are not given access to proper care), and the dismissal of other's reservations as a sort of "peasant ignorance" which in this case is highlighted by the notion it's merely the scary thoughts at the word holding people back, as if eugenics were some phantom we cower at in ignorance.

        Anyway moral of the story read the book it's good. Weirdly rationalists also sometimes read this book and take all the wrong lessons from it. Stuff like "wow it was bad to supplant traditional agriculture because it yielded just as well or better than western" instead of "Oh their obsession with rational farming made them completely blind to reality including the enormous human cost of their authoritarianism"

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    • "Well, step one will naturally have to be that every single person in the world accepts that I am the pinnacle of evolution and everybody else is comparatively worthless and nothing but a waste of space. Once we got that out of the way, we can tackle the question of how to make humanity as cool and awesome as I am while weeding out all the factors I do not approve of. Why is everybody looking at me like I am the crazy one? Didn't we just establish that everybody else is inferior trash?"

      - people claiming to be the rational ones.

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      • Well obviously they're garbage, they have boring hobbies like sewing while I have cool premium hobbies like writing bdsm erotica where AI dominates everyone at once.

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    • And as always, the axioms they want us to assume are just slid in there and it takes a minute to realise how effed they are:

      “intelligence, health, happiness and other positive traits”

      All sound good but problematic for reasons nobody here needs to rehash, and then just a few of sentences later slides in with “choosing an attractive spouse.” 🤢

      Evopsychers would defend that one as “attractive“ is obviously our genomes‘s way to select for other “good” traits. Jordan Peterson lobster nonsense.

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      • Beauty standards are fixed and appearance is not influenced by environmental factors such as lifestyle and diet.

        Come on keep up, we can't keep rehashing the basics.

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  • Ah we are at the race science, no HBD, no scientific racism, euh racialism period of Eugenics.

    (I could have also done this with AI).

    "it is non-coercive" Guess they are not even watching Gattaca anymore.

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  • Of course those motherfuckers brought up Tay Sachs into their garbage intellectual circle jerk. Of course they fucking did.

    Okay, question for the peanut gallery: my sister died 9 years ago this week from late onset tay sachs, and I haven't made a donation in her memory yet this year. Is there a good non-profit that's fighting the kinds of damage that the Race Tescrealists are doing? Because my sister would have supported me doing a spite and rage donation.

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  • Idk, the state didn't call it eugenics when they forced me to get steralised to transition. I didn't even want kids but I'm still mad about it.

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    • In the netherlands they apologized and are giving trans people affected money over this, doubt it applies to you (if it does you obv already knew) but yes it was fucked up.

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      • Australia, nsw mandates bottom surgery before document changes (or did back then at least). amusingly the federal government was much more lenient. The state is a federation though so states trump federal except where they have ceded power.

        Technically I could have preserved cells for IVF or something but I'm not, and definitely wasn't then, a millionaire.

        Also since the law goes back before that was possible obvious eugenics is obvious.

        I'm glad other nations are trying to make ammends in the beady-eye'd way of bean counters at least. Given that almost every traffic light here has surveillance cameras mounted on it and major political parties attend literal mask off Nazi rallies I suspect we're a way off over here haha.

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  • [Request]: Use "Breeding humans like livestock" instead of "Eugenics" in most circumstances.

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  • That's wikipedia verified data scientist and sex researcher Aella to you, mister!

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  • I read "epilogenic" as "like an epilogue".

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    • Epilogenic - relating to or involved in the creation of an epilogue

      Would be nice if this actually did cause the end and some kind of metaphorical postscript of eugenics but I doubt it's going to be that easy.

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    • An epilator is an electrical device used to remove hair by mechanically grasping multiple hairs simultaneously and pulling them out. The way in which epilators pull out hair is similar to waxing, but unlike waxing, they do not remove cells from the epidermis. Epilators may use an electric motor or be manually powered with a spring. They may also come with various attachments, like a smaller head to help with epilation of hard-to-reach areas, or an exfoliation head that may help exfoliate the skin before and after epilation.

      Closeup of the head of an epilator.

      Epilation can be painful to some people because, as with waxing, it involves pulling hair out of the roots. Because the first epilation of an area is often especially painful, some people prefer to have the area professionally waxed first, then use epilation to remove regrowth.[1] Pain from epilation is sometimes mitigated by reducing the speed of the device, relaxing the skin with a hot shower or bath, or using a numbing cream on the skin before epilation.

      Spring type

      Epilator in use.

      The first type of epilator was the original Epilady released in Israel, and manufactured by Mepro in kibbutz HaGoshrim in 1986.[2] The design incorporated a coil spring, which was bowed into a curve such that the coils on one side of the spring were squeezed tightly together while on the other side the coils were spread apart. The motor in the epilady rotated the spring, causing it to flex as it rotated. Moving the rotating spring across the skin caused the hairs to be caught up in the spring and pulled out through hair follicles.[3]

      Because the springs flexed continuously, they were subject to occasional failure and were sold separately as a replacement part.[citation needed]

      Today, there are manual epilators designed for the face that do not use a power supply. This design consists simply of a coil spring with two handles. The spring is then bowed into a curve and placed upon the unwanted facial hair whilst turning the handles. This caused the hairs to be caught between the coils of the springs and pulled out from the roots.[citation needed]

      Rotating disc type

      The Remington Lady Remington Smooth and Silky was designed to operate in a similar way to the spring type Epilady, except that a series of metal discs were used instead of a spring. It was the subject of extensive patent litigation in Europe due to a conceptual similarity to the spring type epilator.[4] The UK patent infringement case is known as Improver Corporation v Remington Consumer Product Limited [1990] F.S.R. 181.

      Tweezer type

      Epilator showing two different heads, cleaning brush and power adapter.

      The rotating disc design has been refined such that, in modern designs, the plates are no longer complete discs. The head of a modern epilator incorporates a series of metal plates mounted in a plastic housing. The ends of the plates may be exposed at one or both sides of the housing. As the head rotates, the tips of the plates move together and apart once per revolution. This creates a tweezing effect, where the hair between the plates, when they close, is pulled as the plates rotate away from the skin, then released as the plates separate. This allows a continuous cycle of gripping, pulling, extracting and discarding the hair as the epilator is moved across the skin.

      Depending upon the strength and brittleness of the hair, some may snap off rather than being pulled out. Because those hairs snap off just above the skin surface, they can look somewhat like stubble from shaving, but are far more sparsely spread because the other hairs have been pulled out entirely. As with waxing, because of the phases of growth that occur with hair, there is not as much regrowth following the first epilation. Regular epilation of regrowth is less painful than the initial epilation and the number of broken off hairs diminishes with regular epilation.

      Wet use type

      Many modern epilators have a built in rechargeable battery and are designed to be used either wet or dry. These types of devices are built to be used in or out of the shower or with an optional cream or gel. The use of a skin cream or gel is said to be helpful with reducing the pain and irritation associated with the dry use only devices.[5]

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  • Vigorous mask-dropping very early on in the post:

    The term "eugenics" has absorbed so much baggage over the last century that it somehow refers both to swiping right on Tinder when you see an attractive person and to the holocaust.

    Not all dating is done with reproduction in mind. What are members of the opposite, or indeed same gender: baby synthesis apparatus? Unless you go out of your way in selecting blue eyed, blond haired people, restricting the definition of beautiful to these people, and restricting the teleology of tinder to the begetting progeny, how is it even remotely eugenics?

    EDIT: Uncharacteristically for LW the post, was very short short, "very early" is actually about midway in a proposal of little substance, also choosing attractive partners doesn't guarantee ensure children anyway (unless using very specific definitions of beauty).

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    • swiping right on Tinder

      this is dude echoing the race scientists' own bad-faith arguments, where they claim that any selection whatsoever concerning partners - and especially not wanting to fuck them - is the same as race science really if you think about it

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  • (Numbers added by me for easier back references)

    Examples of epilogenics

1) Selecting an embryo for lower disease risk, higher intelligence, or some other trait good for both the individual and society
2) Gene editing for the purposes listed above
3) Choosing an attractive spouse

Examples of things that are not epilogenics

4) State-sponsored sterilization of people deemed “unfit”
5) Rules against marriage of family members such a siblings and cousins
6) Things people think of as eugenics even though they are often bad for genes (i.e. genocide)
    • 1 with the qualification of “good for… society” is just 4) with extra steps. 2) is just 1).
    • For 3), unless everyone you are dating never wears makeup/grooms themselves in any way, you probably aren’t looking at much genetic influence. You are probably instead just selecting for socioeconomic bracket, which is totally not what any of this is about, right?
    • For 5), is the implication is that the OP thinks anti-incest laws are eugenics and therefore bad and therefore should be abolished???
    • 6 Aella definitely googled “things that are bad for genes” with voice to text, got back “regular washing” and took that to heart

    Other:

    • I didn’t know the “eu” in “eugenics” came from greek.
    • Now I’m thinking about that whole “eudaimonia” thing from a while back. Every time it pops up in my head I think “Eudaimon now dog!” I wonder how YTMND is doing these days.
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  • please use her full name Aella (Girl)

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  • Aella: What about epilogenics? "epilogí" is greek for 'choice' instead of the 'eu' which means 'good'

    I'm pretty sure "[genetic] selection" was already calqued as επιλογή in modern Greek (as in "fisikí epilogí" for "natural selection", and apparently analogously technití or sexoualikí epilogí). Which makes this cute, although not particularly in a "sneer at this fake Greek word" sense because I feel like language really is just like that sometimes.

    OK, I just saw the comment below about eugenics being re-Greekified as eugonics. I think I'm losing my mind a bit.

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