It’s one thing to deplore eugenics on ideological, political, moral grounds. It’s quite another to conclude that it wouldn’t work in practice. Of course it would. It works for cows, horses, pigs, dogs & roses. Why on earth wouldn’t it work for humans? Facts ignore ideology.
For those determined to miss the point, I deplore the idea of a eugenic policy. I simply said deploring it doesn’t mean it wouldn’t work. Just as we breed cows to yield more milk, we could breed humans to run faster or jump higher. But heaven forbid that we should do it.
A eugenic policy would be bad. I’m combating the illogical step from “X would be bad” to “So X is impossible”. It would work in the same sense as it works for cows. Let’s fight it on moral grounds. Deny obvious scientific facts & we lose – or at best derail – the argument.
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Helen Pluckrose & James Lindsay (‘Cynical Theories’) have done us a service. They sacrificed themselves to read, on behalf of the rest of us, the stupefyingly boring, pretentious & deliberately unclear literature of postmodern metabullshit. Now we can get on with real science.
Peter Medawar rumbled postmodernist metabullshit even before it got into its over-rated stride. He wrote the following in 1968 (reprinted in Pluto’s Republic).
PB Medawar, again reprinted in Pluto’s Republic, again anticipating postmodern metabaloney:
“No one who has something original or important to say will willingly run the risk of being misunderstood; people who write obscurely are either unskilled in writing or up to mischief.”