12 Comments
Nov 6, 2022Liked by Brian Chau

get jreg on!!!!!

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Believe it or not I've emailed jreg for the other podcast. He didn't respond though.

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one day Brian one day!

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I believe in an absolute good and morality. I think eugenics is approaching obligatory if we count embryo selection. Intentionally picking embryos that will produce children who will die younger and live less healthy lives when others are available and can be sequenced trivially, seems immoral to me. When it’s affordable and widespread, everyone should do it. I agree with Savulescu’s principle of procreative beneficence largely.

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You have to understand that eugenics is now a propaganda term, whatever it was before. The good news is that like Steve Hsu said, most people don't attach modern technologies like embryo selection or crispr to that propaganda term (https://cactus.substack.com/p/steve-hsu-the-future-of-human-evolution).

I do agree that some type of intervention is basically obligatory.

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I think it’s pejorative but these practices undoubtedly qualify as eugenics. They do get attacked for being eugenics by people that oppose them. Certain screening processes in IVF like chromosomal abnormalities don’t get people fired up but when we’re talking about cognitively enhancing people by standard deviations people use the term eugenics. Denying that it’s eugenics is impossible. I’ve written an article called Harmless Eugenics for how to address this objection to the practice.

Many eugenics practices are morally obligatory. I don’t think we should use the term in a disparaging way and I think morally upstanding people can support it. Even coercive eugenics. It’s not moral for a brother and sister to have a child. I would use coercive force to prevent that. I think states should ban cousin marriage as well.

I enjoyed your talk with Hsu by the way.

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Paige Harden isn’t really based in my view. The least based?….I guess. She attacks other based geneticists. Her anti-eugenics stuff and philosophy are very progressive. I didn’t know the IDW like her.

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How many left hereditarians even exist? Her and maybe Freddie deBoer? And it's a stretch, for him.

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Hereditarian means two different things which leads to confusion. They call them left hereditarian but they aren’t hereditarian on group differences.

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Ask to hold Anji’s hand, Brian.

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I do not date podcast co-hosts. Unlike some people.

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You must mean Jesse Singal and Katie Kerzog

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