I’m glad the powers that be blew this forum up so that we could enjoy more discussions with Leonard from Memento as he tries to get to the bottom of the conspiracy to subvert valid scientific inquiry into the genetic basis behind why immigrants smell bad and talk funny.

Really did not expect this thread to go towards defenses of ****ing Unit 731 lol but we do contain multitudes.

I'm not arguing that the latter idea doesn't have merit. I'm arguing that it is being made very poorly.

Too few milkshakes thrown, in my opinion. Politically speaking, of course.

Am I doing either of those things by pointing out that I, in fact, didn't defend Nazi eugenics?

Is no one seeing the irony in these replies related to my actual point?

Maybe it is time to update the meaning of the word. Word meanings change over time, and in every case it has to start somewhere.

Interestingly, the version of race being actualized in Gangs of New York is probably more scientifically accurate, as it focused more on native geographic range, and less on melanin pigmentation. But they are still extremely problematic from a moral perspective, which is the point.

To be fair, people are literally defending Nazi research on D-Day ITT, it’s hard to not get a little holier-than-thou.

What the **** do Nazis have to do with curing malaria?

What made the Nazis bad? What made racist eugenics bad?

How do those bad things apply to genetically eliminating suseptability to diseases?

I blame Alanis Morrissette.

So you promise not to be as judgmental tomorrow?

No one considers Zolgensma to be "eugenics," except you, maybe.

Irrelevant. Scott Alexander's point is that eugenics is an off limits taboo subject. I posted his opinion in this thread and have directly been called a supporter of Nazi eugenics for doing so.

I'm too busy today to moderate this latest kerfuffle and I feel like TTHRIC anyway and debating the semantics of "eugenics" vs "genetic engineering" is not really that interesting. so I'm locking the thread for now. I may revisit later.

It's quite relevant. If you think genetic engineering and eugenics are synonymous terms, you should try educating yourself before demanding that people take you seriously. If you don't think genetic engineering and eugenics are synonymous terms, then it's pretty darn fair to attack you for standing up for Nazi eugenics when you insist on standing up for eugenics for the betterment of the human race. Nazi eugenics wasn't just limited to gassing Jews.

I haven't finally decided what I want to do with this thread, but I'll post some thoughts. Feedback is welcome by PM. There would probably be some value in a thread to discuss this as a moderation problem, but I expect that would be noisy and create its own, extra, moderation problem, so I'm not doing it for now.

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It's not surprising that this thread has moved from being about members of the so-called "intellectual dark web" to being about the kinds of controversial subjects that explain that name, i.e. The Bell Curve and so on. The focus on controversial subjects creates one moderation problem, having to do with what content or what viewpoints should be tolerated in this forum. In the guidelines, I wrote this:

It's almost inevitable that discussing The Bell Curve, eugenics, or other topics likely to come up in this thread will lead to posts that bump into those boundaries, regardless of who interprets where the lines are. For the most part, I've been comfortable with the idea that we can, theoretically, discuss some of these topics without condoning or allowing viewpoints which violate the rule, if we're all conscientious about the sensitivity of the topics, and keep in mind the guideline about respecting the shared humanity and basic equality and dignity of all people. Further, I think at least some of the discussion that's taken place is potentially useful for people, and the topics are still relevant to contemporary politics. Race and racism, for example, are still very relevant in American politics in my view. Despite the strong disagreement that some people have with this, I continue to think that this thread has been mostly tolerable with respect to acceptable content.

However, the second problem is just that having this thread creates a lot of noise, and it's not clear to me that every topic that might get discussed here is worth the noise. By noise I mean both the inevitable complaints about the subjects being allowed, as well as the tendency for the thread to get overheated.

Some of you think (roughly) that the noise is illegitimate in the sense of being only an expression of an irrational taboo against certain topics, and hold that the forum, or this thread, should not be held hostage by those social norms.

I disagree with that view at least to some extent. Taboos also serve a useful purpose, and in any case the guidelines recognize boundaries to acceptable discussion for reasons which I think are good, and probably also necessary from 2+2's perspective. Of course, it's also true that I said I don't think the content of this thread has crossed the line in my view (there are a few borderline posts), so I obviously disagree with some of the people who think it's absolutely outrageous and intolerable to have this thread.

But, I think the level of outrage matters even when I disagree with it, and as I said above I don't think every possible controversial subject is worth debating in this forum given the costs in moderation and public disapproval. Right now, I don't see a good way to manage those costs. I don't think either the level of outrage or the average quality of posts in this thread are likely to be very sensitive to the tweaks to moderation that I could easily make, for example.

I also am not super excited about the idea of this thread sucking up so much of the oxygen in the forum that nothing else gets talked about.

So, for now, I'm inclined to just leave this locked.

forum eugenics in action!