I wasn't really talking about the practicality of it, especially because it's the furthest thing from the Overton Window imaginable. Literally everything else is closer to it. Even marrying toddlers, as shown by recent events. Slavery's half-inside the window.
It was just about the fact that it's possible.
> assuming "we have the science".
This isn't really disputable, given how much bigger nature is than nurture. See e.g. POTUS and his dad. Obviously it's not 100%, nothing is, but denying that "we have the science" to massively influence things would be purely out of ideological dislike.
Humans have practiced eugenics on animals on an absurdly huge scale. See domestication and its effects. Humans are animals, the idea that it would somehow be completely different for them has no basis in science.
If you find yourself in a situation where you want to do something Nazis did — just not that way — you are halfway there.
I think the problem is that by making everything objective, systemic, numerically tracked, quantified, etc, etc. we've actively selected for evil people. The people who get ahead in those systems, the groups who's interests get served, are not the good ones. They are the evil ones who have no qualms about exploiting the vulnerabilities and oversights of the system. In our quest to optimized everything, we have optimized for the prioritization of dishonest people and bad causes that attract dishonest people and it shows at every level.
Ted K would probably have something to say about this.
Imo, if we took tribe numbers now and went back to old world cave and stick we would see similar problems as we do today.
And yes agree about participation within one or more tribes, very similar to prisoner's dillema but with n>2 participants this time, and defection therefore has more of a payoff for every n.
Hard disagree.
I fully believe that we are collectively responsible for all of our problems because we are a shitfuck tragically tribal species who, in a world of ever expanding tribe sizes, desperately cling onto tribe sizes that our tiny brains can handle, hence becoming tribal about a myriad of trivial and pointless things like sports, racism, which bathroom someone uses or which policy on immigrants one supports. Dunbar's number.
And we're so tied up in these micro tribal problems that we completely ignore the macro tribal problems that affect every single one of us. We're shit out of luck we literally evolved to act like this and there's nothing we can do to stop the behaviour; it's innate.
Global temperatures are still rising and will continue to do so. We can try to stop it but we won't be able to.