Is allowing people who wear glasses to reproduce ethical?
For example, if allowed the percentage of the population who wears glasses will go up.
These are clearly inferior genes.
It makes logical sense. But does it make ethical sense?
You are creating children with a severe disadvantage.


Think about it this way, if this affliction is genetic then we have a spectrum.

Abled Eyesight --- Glasses --- Blindness

How would we deal with people with genetic blindness to reproduce?
And would allowing people with bad eyesight lead to blindness in a couple of generations.

Survival of the fittest has told us the trend should be going towards better eyesight, but our modern tech negates the disadvantages those with bad eyesight, and therefore people don't make a conscious decision.

Different races seem to suffer different kinds of vision problems more than others.
And it is implied that sitting in the classroom all day, and artificial lighting are worsening or even activating these vision problems.

So who is really to blame.

refrences: https://consumer.healthday.com/eye-care-information-13/eye-and-vision-problem-news-295/ethnic-groups-have-differing-eye-problems-514573.html

Here's the real question: do we want geneticists making ethical decisions on behalf of people with an inability?
Well, maybe not.

If geneticists are making ethical choices, they shouldn't be making them on behalf of people with a disability, they should have to come up with reasons to make ethical decisions instead...
But how are we going to do that?

I hope we can talk about whether we want geneticists to decide for us or whether we want to decide for ourselves.

Edited 8/21/2019 06:57:16

One thing worth trying would be to get this generation to actually work like our ancestors did. Many of our weaknesses may come from how little we need nowadays.

TL;DR: Daily reminder that life as a human is getting better, not worse.

Myopia is just trending (in modern times) probably from a lack of natural light during early-ish development. I'm pretty sure Cacao's post is a joke, but @goodgame: it's not from not "actually working."

Plus if you're talking about physical labor, there's a reason that the people in our society doing the most physical work include prisoners, while the most successful/intelligent/productive humans on the planet generally work desk jobs. Non-recreational physical labor is seen as punishment, and that's not just a societal preference. You know what differentiates us from chimpanzees? Pound-for-pound, they're multiple times as strong as we are. Give a chimpanzee a pencil and it can probably actually kill you with it, John Wick style. Our species, on the other hand, gave up that raw strength for fine motor control- that chimpanzee, for all its brute power, won't actually be able to write on a piece of paper- if it even figures out that's what pencils are for.

I'm not saying you should stop hitting the gym, but our species' success comes from a series of adaptations. We have these (calorie-hungry) brains, hands that can write, the capacity to form complex societies and use (and develop!) tools like language. And for all the accomplishments of your great-great-great-great-grandparents, their generation was possibly the first generation of humanity whose living standards were actually higher than those of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers. (Yes- in quality-of-life terms, the development of farming and civilization actually set us back for 10,000 years until we finally industrialized).

Change is ugly, it's physiologically stressful on our species (glasses, Vitamin D deficiencies, etc.), but it's also a part of progress. Even today, the vast majority of our species will spend most of life engaging in simple tasks that are barely beyond the abilities of a common ape. In 2019, 12 millennia after the discovery of farming and millions of years since our species first walked on two feet and learned about fire, people- in developed countries- still feed themselves by lifting boxes, mailing packages, driving around, and otherwise spending their time doing rote tasks that fall well short of using their potential. Even people like Fizzer- who do creative, technical work- probably do a ton of tedious work and use only some of their capacity for intelligence and creativity. Thankfully, our era is also seeing unprecedented growth in semi-intelligent automation- by the time you die, you'll have seen a world that does even less work than you think we do today. Even some of the things today that seem to require brainpower will be done in 10-20 years by widespread automata.

Sure, it'll probably hurt for a while. Our bodies bear the indelible stamp of living in trees and plains- at least far more than they reflect anything approximating our modern environment. But that's not a problem with our way of life; it's just how selective pressure works, and it'll work out on its own based on what's best adapted to our real environment. At the same time, many of us have the capacity to actually, non-trivially change the world- something that's not true for the vast, vast majority of organisms. You can, in the course of your life, discover tools or make advancements that, at least for some people, will seriously change the way the world works. Fizzer, for example, did something as simple as making a good video game and distributing it for free over the internet, and that's actually significantly impacted at least dozens of people's lives. You can almost easily make things that didn't exist before- imagine a hunter-gatherer doing that 100,000 years ago (hell, they probably couldn't even form the right thoughts!) or even someone in the early 19th century being so able to reach people on a global scale (they couldn't even get to nearby towns easily!). That ability to create new things, to change the world, it's probably more true for you than it was for your great-grandparents, and it'll probably be more true for people 100 years from now than it is for us today.

You might (hopefully) spend your life differently than your grandparents did, but boy will you also be able to spend it a lot better. Glasses are a small price to pay for that.

Edited 8/22/2019 04:17:43

Grug strong
Grug no like pencil

I see you're restating what I'm saying.
But still doesn't solve the problem.

Humans are becoming dependent on technologies.
The problem here is. What happens when these technologies go away
Which are very realistic things that could happen.

Basically the problem is that humanity is becoming a glass canon. We have a clear weakness.
Untouched tribes would not be affected. They're basically a brick.

The future is Africa, not Star Trek. It hardly matters what we say or do, but there's no utopua in our future, but rather a return to primitivism.

Can’t really thing of much things that would prevent technology being used.
Fist things that come to mind is:
Weather, particularly rain if not waterproofed and SEUs caused by particles coming from space.
Electricity, can’t run most tech without an energy source. Only really a problem if energy is created faster that it being used. Eventually, fossils fuels (such as coal and gas, which power most power stations) will run out. Nuclear fission and nuclear fusion are much more reliable, however, fission produces nuclear waste and fusion currently uses more energy to maintain than what it produces. Power lines could also be damaged in extreme weather.
Cyber warfare, it’s possible to infect internet-enabled devices that control the production of electricity. Google Stuxnet.

Basically, if there’s a global war or the effects of global warming speed up, then electricity is most likely to be cut off. Global warming is linked with more frequent extreme weather.

If there comes a time in that a human needs to be resistant against radioactivity, but a glasses wearing human or a blind human has this ability to survive in radioactivity then the "gene defect" is a small price to pay.

humans have no natural enemies, humans have social behaviour and are smart to develop devices that makes it possible that even humans with a 'gene defect', such as bad seeing ability can have a normal life.

survival of the fittest is an evolutional factor that has a stronger influence when a population of a kind is in danger. If that is not the case the race builds a wide gene pool. the result is a high diversity in the genes. with the high diversity in the gene pool there might be some individuums that are resistant to radioactivity or other threats that may come up to humankind in future.

Even the catastrophe that humankind loses electricity would be only uncomfortable. but humankind would survive even this. Likely not all, but enough to keep humankind alive

Edited 8/31/2019 21:38:00

In the end, it comes down to a few possibilities:

1. We could be the first dominant race to do well in a mass extinction with constant improvements in technology and lifestyle.

2. A world war and/or lack of resources would bring our species to its knees, those already used to renaissance life or older would conquer the world, and history would repeat itself with empires and myths and revolutions.

3. Nuclear warfare or another huge mess up will cause the end of humanity, possibly the end of life on Earth.

Just a reminder that you're on the forums of a risk knock-off.
Have a nice day!

Edited 9/1/2019 00:38:39

No reason it can't be used for elsewhat.

Many tendencies of humans is to find many purposes possible for something

The next step here is: Can we weaponize Warlight?
And if so, how

Decreasing average IQs are observed fact in western countries.

https://www.euronews.com/2017/12/29/the-iq-of-europeans-is-dropping-due-to-technology-say-researchers

Let's be real. People are getting dumberer than ever. Real dumB with a capital B, okay? I'm just going to say it, because someone has to have the sack to say what others are afraid to say. That's where I come in, as a certified sack-haver.

It's funny, because the OP gave a weaksauce example of eugenics, namely eyesight, when we are all truly thinking about intelligence but nobody wanted to say it. Even I will stay away from mentioning anything concerning racial intelligence, simply because we are not allowed to think about it. But it hardly matters, because everyone is getting dumberer, even if certain races start out higher. Global IQ averages are falling everywhere.

It's been happening since man began farming, in fact. Farming is actually a really easy life, a point of disagreement I have with knyte. It requires a little effort during planting and reaping, but the growing period is so boring and easy that agrarian cultures generally used that period to grab weapons and go have fun in neighboring villages. Farming is so easy that you didn't need strength or speed. You didn't need robust bones and to heal from injuries fast, because you could rest in bed with a broken leg and not have to travel ten miles the next day, following the herd of aurochs your tribe was hunting. You didn't even need the quick wits of a hunter-gatherer, whose meal every day was a life-or-death decision of how best to hunt and gather. Crops growing in a field are a steady and predictable life insurance policy. Neanderthal had a brain 1740 cm3 in volume. You and I are sporting something closer to 1400 cm3 in volume, but even our own ancestors had 1500 before learning to farm.

Knyte said "cavemen could not even conceive of our modern world" and that's true, but it hardly makes us smart to be able to conceive of things that we can see in the modern world. Cavemen could conceive of what they saw, too. Yes, I can conceive of this smartphone. No, it does not make me intelligent because I press its button and make it go beep-boop. I can read a story like the Iliad on my smartphone with little mental effort in finding it. The ancients? They had to memorize every single word of the Iliad in their head.

Who is smarter? The man who uses a smartphone to read a book? Or the illiterate man who memorizes a 140,000 word story in his head?

Who is taller? Peter Dinklage standing on the shoulders of ten other midgets? Or Andre the Giant?

Perhaps Peter Dinklage, until the pyramid beneath him wobbles and crashes.

Edited 9/4/2019 12:18:43

This whole thread reminds me of the copypasta about drawing in retards because there is no distinction between irony and actual opinions

We've officially just caught our first retard then. Thanks for playing.

So be it

Take the blackpill- Life finds a way

Eugenics has proven to not be effective in the long run

Edited 9/4/2019 13:30:12

Something to think about: with mass extinctions there has been a pattern. Every time there was about a certain diversity of life, most of it disappeared. Life has reached that diversity not long before now, and already starting is the next mass extinction. Since most of these extinctions have killed of the dominant species, it is likely we won't survive. What makes this mass extinction different from others is that the others have been cause be events out of nature's control, such as asteroids and Pangea and ice ages; this one is the first to be cause by a part of nature, humans.