Suffering is not evil per se, and we are free to make drastic distinctions in the moral value of suffering depending on the sufferer. In other words, if an AI spawned billions of copies of conscious beings that want to make huge cheesecakes, it may be right to just kill them all off. (I’m not sure about trillions.) On a more relevant note, that means second degree murder of Stephen Hawkins is a far worse action than first degree murder of Joe Plumber.
As a more inflammatory phrasing, I view the world largely in terms of intelligence, and feel that the smart are (typically) “worth more” than the average and below.
I also believe it is naive and wishful to believe that races, which developed (propensities towards) many distinct genetic traits (not just skin color, also hair color, facial shape, disease resistances, etc) do not have differences in intelligence distribution. Affirmative action is therefore racist, and accusations (against employers, scholarship committees, etc) of racist selection merely based on previous selectees (current employees, past scholarship winners, etc) are unfounded.
Hmmm....remove the inflammatory phrasing, and those sound like things I’d get a decent amount of agreement on.
(This also makes me wonder what makes certain phrasings inflammatory—because the opposition to societal positions which require defense is explicitly acknowledged?)
Lastly though, I have a qualified belief in eugenics. I greatly fear the Idiocracy scenario, and thus shudder every time I hear about some genius having few or no children, or women on food stamps having octuplets.
The qualification is that I am a libertarian, and would fear any government eugenics programs as well. Combining the two yields an awkward desire to have lots of children for the sake of having lots of children and a desire for a free-market form of eugenics, such as a private institution which pays the unintelligent to undergo voluntary sterilization.
On a similar note, while it may be justified to characterize a given black person as below-average intelligence (a stereotype) before meeting that person, that characterization still has sizable error bars, and making active judgements based on race is wrong.
Lastly though, I have a qualified belief in eugenics. I greatly fear the Idiocracy scenario, and thus shudder every time I hear about some genius having few or no children, or women on food stamps having octuplets.
Incidentally, the recent mother of octuplets was a nurse who was injured on the job and is receiving disability payments; she doesn’t seem like a particularly good case for eugenic sterilization.
However, measured intelligence can also change over time within a single race, depending on the external environment. I can’t find it now, but recently saw an article pointing out that the average IQ of students from one of the Scandinavian countries (Denmark?) had increased measurably over the last 50 years. Like everything else, intelligence has both biological and societal components. I certainly don’t know enough about intelligence to comment with confidence on its biological bases and how immutable (or mutable) they are, but as long as there is a societal component, then I see no inherent moral problem in trying to provide disadvantaged racial groups with the same favorable milieu that other groups have already profited from.
(And, for that matter, I think the actual harm suffered to white people by affirmative action on behalf of other groups is probably fairly small. There might be a zero-sum calculation about a specific job or specific slot at a college, but whites aren’t being systematically shut out of every opportunity they might have. There’s also a difference between promoting people who are blatantly unqualified for the positions they’re given because of their race, and favoring people who are perhaps at the margin of qualified but could easily improve. The spirit of American affirmative action appears to be the latter, although it’s surely implemented with greater and lesser degrees of faithfulness to that ideal.)
″...but recently saw an article pointing out that the average IQ of students from one of the Scandinavian countries (Denmark?) had increased measurably over the last 50 years.”
Isn’t that just the Flynn effect? It’s true of far many more countries than just Denmark.
Suffering is not evil per se, and we are free to make drastic distinctions in the moral value of suffering depending on the sufferer. In other words, if an AI spawned billions of copies of conscious beings that want to make huge cheesecakes, it may be right to just kill them all off. (I’m not sure about trillions.) On a more relevant note, that means second degree murder of Stephen Hawkins is a far worse action than first degree murder of Joe Plumber.
As a more inflammatory phrasing, I view the world largely in terms of intelligence, and feel that the smart are (typically) “worth more” than the average and below.
I also believe it is naive and wishful to believe that races, which developed (propensities towards) many distinct genetic traits (not just skin color, also hair color, facial shape, disease resistances, etc) do not have differences in intelligence distribution. Affirmative action is therefore racist, and accusations (against employers, scholarship committees, etc) of racist selection merely based on previous selectees (current employees, past scholarship winners, etc) are unfounded.
Hmmm....remove the inflammatory phrasing, and those sound like things I’d get a decent amount of agreement on.
(This also makes me wonder what makes certain phrasings inflammatory—because the opposition to societal positions which require defense is explicitly acknowledged?)
Lastly though, I have a qualified belief in eugenics. I greatly fear the Idiocracy scenario, and thus shudder every time I hear about some genius having few or no children, or women on food stamps having octuplets.
The qualification is that I am a libertarian, and would fear any government eugenics programs as well. Combining the two yields an awkward desire to have lots of children for the sake of having lots of children and a desire for a free-market form of eugenics, such as a private institution which pays the unintelligent to undergo voluntary sterilization.
On a similar note, while it may be justified to characterize a given black person as below-average intelligence (a stereotype) before meeting that person, that characterization still has sizable error bars, and making active judgements based on race is wrong.
I’d donate to that.
Incidentally, the recent mother of octuplets was a nurse who was injured on the job and is receiving disability payments; she doesn’t seem like a particularly good case for eugenic sterilization.
However, measured intelligence can also change over time within a single race, depending on the external environment. I can’t find it now, but recently saw an article pointing out that the average IQ of students from one of the Scandinavian countries (Denmark?) had increased measurably over the last 50 years. Like everything else, intelligence has both biological and societal components. I certainly don’t know enough about intelligence to comment with confidence on its biological bases and how immutable (or mutable) they are, but as long as there is a societal component, then I see no inherent moral problem in trying to provide disadvantaged racial groups with the same favorable milieu that other groups have already profited from.
(And, for that matter, I think the actual harm suffered to white people by affirmative action on behalf of other groups is probably fairly small. There might be a zero-sum calculation about a specific job or specific slot at a college, but whites aren’t being systematically shut out of every opportunity they might have. There’s also a difference between promoting people who are blatantly unqualified for the positions they’re given because of their race, and favoring people who are perhaps at the margin of qualified but could easily improve. The spirit of American affirmative action appears to be the latter, although it’s surely implemented with greater and lesser degrees of faithfulness to that ideal.)
Isn’t that just the Flynn effect? It’s true of far many more countries than just Denmark.