Climb Mount Improbable: Evolvable Critters in JavaScript

Re:Climb Mount Improbable: Evolvable Critters in JavaScript by rictic on Wednesday May 27, 2020 @07:59PM (#23331726)

There's a natural human impulse to assert that something which is evil must also be ineffective. Often this is true, and it's great when it is, it's like getting something for free – you can improve both the moral situation of the universe and improve efficiency – but one must be prepared for the eventuality that reality doesn't cooperate.

I don't know shit about genetics, so I don't have anything to contribute here specifically, just to bear in mind that the universe may pose challenges where good people have to actively swim against the current of efficiency.

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Re:Climb Mount Improbable: Evolvable Critters in JavaScript by andrewla on Thursday May 28, 2020 @03:18PM (#23341231)

Oh, for sure. Environmentalists, for example, do not advocate (generally) for the direct murder of large numbers of people, which would certainly qualify as a solution to any number of environmental problems. Ethics are important.

But eugenics is not only unethical, it is also incorrect, and reflects a very reductionist view of evolution. Breeding (or genetically engineering) for IQ, for example, which Dawkins has explicitly mentioned as a "positive" version of eugenics[1], is incorrect for achieving the end of increasing intelligence as a species. Regardless of moral/ethical whatevers, it just won't work. In this particular case, IQ is a fair measure of general intelligence, but not comprehensive; even its most rabid proponents admit it rarely explains more than 20% of the variance of "success", so the idea that increasing IQ over the population would have a useful effect is laughably naive.

[1] https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/111203295062165913...

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