Posted on 04/11/2011 8:28:42 PM PDT by TheDingoAteMyBaby
All I can say is that Professor Julian Savulescu really doesn’t have a lot of common sense.
It doesn’t take much thought to realize that factors other than intelligence keep people in poverty or make people choose to be criminals. Even factors such as psychopathy are not predictors of how that person will fare in life (in any case, psychopathy is probably a result of environment and genes, making it not possible to eliminate just from a genetic test).
Sure, there is a need for high IQ people. We’re the ones figuring out the basic science that will lead to medical treatments years down the road. We’re developing new technology, writing music, making art, and doing all sorts of great things for the betterment of humanity. But there is no way we do our high IQ stuff without the support of the average or low IQ people—the administrative staff, janitors, cooks, etc. There’s no need for someone with a 160 IQ to be running the industrial dish washer or collecting the trash.
I’ll bet that Professor Julian Savulescu has all kinds of staff supporting him and the other thinkers in his department. I wouldn’t be surprised if, while dismissing them from his idea of a perfect utopia, he’s probably taking their services for granted...
C. S. Lewis pointed out the fundamental problem with doing this long ago in his essay book The Abolition Of Man.
Who knows, if it were possible to “wave a magic wand” and make men “smarter” without committing immoral acts, people would invent robots to do the mind numbing tasks.
Aside from the moralit of the situation, IVF is freakin’ expensive. Who’s paying for all this?
(Oh, right, the government . . . I forget. Silly me.)
even the Spartans didn’t do that
http://ancientstandard.com/2007/12/03/this-is-sparta-%E2%80%93-no-baby-throwing-allowed-ca-5th-c-bc/
Note the link to freerepublic in the article :)
“The problem is...no one is smart enough to really know WHAT intelligence is. They can’t accurately measure it much less predict who’s going to get it.”
If there is an intelligence gene(s), it could very be something that results in slightly higher blood flow to the brain.
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This person is not an ethicist but an agnostic eugenisist.
You got that right. In short, some of those most evil people to ever walk the planet had a high IQ. IQ is important, but is not the determining factor.
Depends on the definition. My best friend was labeled “slow” at school because his dad was the county drunk.
He now runs an engineering department.
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