S6E22 - The Germ Makers (Eugenics, pt2) - Cult or Just Weird

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Chris (00:00):
Transhumanism's quest to eliminate disability is entangled, therefore, historically, structurally, and symbolically, with racism and cissexism. While transhumanists might want to deny these connections, they are deeply embedded in the construction and positioning of disability. Intellectual disability, in particular, has been used to oppress racial and sexual others. What are. What's happening? That's just.

Kayla (00:39):
The chair did that.

Chris (00:40):
The chair did what?

Kayla (00:42):
Made me turn.

Chris (00:45):
Oh, my God.

Kayla (00:46):
This is the chair.

Chris (00:50):
Turning in the chair made you laugh.

Kayla (00:52):
Look. No, it's just the chair.

Chris (00:54):
Well, yeah, it just. It's just off. It's just off. What? I don't know.

Kayla (00:58):
Like, it's just I have to anchor myself with my hands the whole time.

Chris (01:03):
Yeah. Welcome to chairing. I don't know. So when you sit in your chair.

Kayla (01:07):
Out there, you just spin around wildly?

Chris (01:10):
I don't think that was wild. I think you were just, like, slightly spinning there. All right, I'm warmed up. Was that all recording or.

Kayla (01:20):
No, that was all. That was all recording. Don't worry. And make sure you get all the gold.

Chris (01:24):
Good. No, that's not gold. That was. That was garbage. That was garbage. Bamboo.

Kayla (01:28):
Grade a gold.

Chris (01:29):
Grade a garbage. Gold. I guess we'll just say welcome to cult are just weird right off the bat. I'm Chris. I'm game designer slash data scientist.

Kayla (01:39):
I'm Kayla. I'm not gonna tell you what I am. I'm gonna let you decide for yourselves.

Chris (01:44):
No, you're supposed. It's our credentials.

Kayla (01:46):
I'm gonna let you define me. Also, I write tv.

Chris (01:50):
Welcome to cult or just weird. We are happy that you are here. If you want to make this conversation two ways, you can come join us on discord. The link is in the show notes. Also, go to Patreon and give us money.

Kayla (02:06):
Obviously, that's.

Chris (02:07):
Yeah, more the money thing. And then talk with us. Actually, if you give us money on Patreon, you get access to exclusive channels in the discord.

Kayla (02:15):
They're the best channels.

Chris (02:16):
Bada bing. There's my call to action. Do you want to do some banter? Actually, you know what's funny? It's not funny. It's more horrible and pathetic.

Kayla (02:25):
Right.

Chris (02:27):
Like, I was doing. So when I remember, I was doing the transcripts for all the episodes.

Kayla (02:30):
Yes. Which. All the episode transcripts are now up if you need, including the old episodes. They're all there for you.

Chris (02:36):
Which means I had to go through some of the old episodes and. Oh, my God, they are so fucking cringe, dude.

Kayla (02:41):
Don't.

Chris (02:42):
Especially the thing that made me think of it was just saying the word banter because, like, in the old episodes, it's like two or three seasons where, like, each and every episode in a row, our opening chit chat, I'll call. It, was like, should we do banter? I don't know. Is this. Does this count? Like, oh, my God, it's so bad.

Kayla (03:02):
What are we doing here?

Chris (03:03):
I wanted to, like, reach back in time and choke myself, and it was only, like, three years ago.

Kayla (03:08):
I want to choke myself three years ago for a lot of reasons.

Chris (03:11):
Yeah, I guess that's true. Well, okay, so actually, let's just get to it. Like, I was gonna. I had a plan of, like, oh, let's. I'm going to talk about some of the video games I've been playing. Oh, let's talk about the tv show we just watched.

Kayla (03:23):
The people don't care.

Chris (03:24):
We got to get to the content here. We got to really get to the topic, because just like last week, it's kind of big, and I don't think I'm going to make a shorty episode out of such a big topic. So the reason the topic's big is because it's eugenics. We've been talking about eugenics. We want to talk about eugenics because it's related to transhumanism, but eugenics is a big topic. So before we get into episode number two about it, I just kind of want to, like, recap what the goal of these episodes are. So basically, I just. I began feeling more and more like, as were studying TESCREAL this season, I just got the feeling that it's, like, impossible to understand this bundle of ideologies without understanding eugenics.

(04:11):
So I just felt like it was super important to at least scratch the surface of eugenics as a topic. As usual. What counts as the surface of something is entirely unclear, and scratching at it just causes you to get sucked in more and more. But I just wanted to state that goal of educating about eugenics so as not just to enrich, but actually allow for understanding of transhumanism. And the rest of all the letters, that doesn't mean I think they're the same thing, or even that one is a subset of the other. The relationship is much more complicated than that.

Kayla (04:46):
Wait, I thought were here because you were accusing all transhumanists and TESCREALists of being secret. That's not what we're doing here. You're not accusing them all of being secret eugenicists?

Chris (04:55):
Well, a little.

Kayla (04:58):
That was a joke from Kayla.

Chris (05:02):
There's one more thing. I think there's actually another area of study that I have become convinced that there's a third link in that chain there. To understand transhumanism, you have to understand eugenics. And to understand eugenics. Well, we'll get to that.

Kayla (05:16):
Oh.

Chris (05:17):
Are you ready?

Kayla (05:19):
Maybe. Yes, I am.

Chris (05:21):
You better. It doesn't matter.

Kayla (05:22):
But I was born ready.

Chris (05:23):
That was a rhetorical question. So the structure of the episode here, you and I are going to talk about the actual substantive ideological connections between transhumanism and eugenics. And then we're also going to kind of talk about like the people involved and then we're going to talk about that third thing that I said we would get into. Alright, so, question. Do you remember the eugenics slogan we ended last episode with?

Kayla (05:46):
No.

Chris (05:47):
No, of course you don't, because that was a week ago. Okay. It goes like. Like this. Like. So eugenics is the self direction of human evolution.

Kayla (05:56):
I remember that now.

Chris (05:57):
Right. So that was a slogan at some eugenics conference in like the twenties or something. But I just, I. The reason I left us with that is because it just sounds like such a transhumanist statement.

Kayla (06:08):
Yeah.

Chris (06:09):
Another question. This one should be much easier. A good friend who listens to the show asked me this exact question actually a few weeks ago at dinner. Based on everything we've learned so far, do you think that the fundamental through line in transhumanist ideology is eugenics?

Kayla (06:30):
Are you asking me, are you just asking Kayla, stating that a friend asked you this question?

Chris (06:35):
Both. Both of those things. Hey, a friend asked me this, but.

Kayla (06:37):
Don'T give me your input. Anyway, moving on. Is it eugenicist to combine with a computer? I think. No, I think that it is not eugenicist to be like, hey, I want a cyborg arm or I'm going to like, transhuman my body. I think if the transhumanists are like, I am going to have a baby in this way with the standard quote unquote way that we have a baby, but while it's in the womb, we're going to genetically standard way.

Chris (07:17):
Can you describe it in detail?

Kayla (07:19):
Well, it's a lot of in and.

Chris (07:21):
Out, in and out humping.

Kayla (07:22):
Yeah.

Chris (07:23):
Okay.

Kayla (07:25):
I think where it starts to get into a potentially. Do you really want that to be part of our podcast?

Chris (07:31):
Yeah.

Kayla (07:32):
Okay, well, you're the one wasting time. I think where the gray area starts to come in is like, are the transhumanists saying by and large that like, human birth should be controlled largely via IVF in a way that, like, engineers, like, are we doing baby engineering as, like, as, like, a standard?

Chris (07:52):
Sure.

Kayla (07:52):
I think there's a difference between doing baby engineering and doing, like, hey, cool. When you, like, are. When you exist as a person, you, like, give yourself a cyborg body. I think those are different things.

Chris (08:05):
Right. So when you say baby engineering, I'm assuming you mean, like, babies with, like, little hard hats and slide rules going.

Kayla (08:11):
Out and building construction babies.

Chris (08:13):
Right. Okay. Okay. That makes sense. No, I think I pretty much agree with you there. But, you know, of course, I'm asking this at the top of the episode, so maybe we revisit that question.

Kayla (08:23):
Yeah, I'm an ill informed member of the public. I don't know.

Chris (08:26):
I just wanted your hot take. Here's another hot take. So I don't know if you remember our friend James Hughes. Do you remember that name from multiple episodes ago? No, he's come up a couple times.

Kayla (08:38):
Okay.

Chris (08:38):
Okay. So James hughes was the. He was the head of. I don't know what title it was, but the head of the world transhumanist organization association, excuse me. That then became humanity plus. And he was the guy that was sort of, like, at the helm when they had that big, like, libertarian left split.

Kayla (08:56):
Right, right.

Chris (08:57):
And he's the one that took it left. He's also published a rebuttal to the whole TESCREAL thing. I think we mentioned that in the episodes where we interviewed Doctor Torres, but he published a big, oh, why? This is a conspiracy theory, but it's a critique from the left. He's a very left guy, so he's an interesting character. He reminds me of a lot of the guys, even not to call him a eugenicist. I'm not saying that. But he reminds me a lot of some of the characters from last episode where it's like, he's progressive, he's science focused. But does he have a blind spot? I don't know.

Kayla (09:37):
Right?

Chris (09:38):
I don't know. I did. Like. I'm gonna read this quote, though. Here's what he has to say about that whole question. Basically, quote, whether germinal choice is.

Kayla (09:48):
What is germinal? I'm sorry.

Chris (09:50):
Germinal is a country in Europe.

Kayla (09:53):
Okay.

Chris (09:54):
Yeah, they have beer and bratwurst. No, germinal. Just germ. Or. Germinal is referring to germ cells, and germ cells are the cells that develop into a reproductive cell, like either an egg or a sperm. So germinal just refers to, like, reproductive stuff.

Kayla (10:09):
Okay.

Chris (10:09):
Okay. So he says whether germinal choice really is eugenics depends one's definition of eugenics, which, like, yeah, I don't know. It feels kind of obvious to me. But anyway, he continues, the eugenics movement that spread across Europe and the United States before 1945 encouraged selective breeding and was responsible for the mandatory sterilization of criminals, the poor, the disabled, and dark skinned people based on unscientific theories. There are very few advocates of this older eugenics around today. And to the extent that anyone advocates racist, classist, or authoritarian ideas, they are to be despised. But if eugenics includes believing that individuals free of state coercion should have the right to change their own genes and then have children, then the advocates of human enhancement and germinal choice are indeed eugenicists.

(10:56):
If eugenics also includes the belief that parents and society have an obligation to give our children and the next generation the healthiest bodies and brains possible, then most people are eugenicists. Once safe, beneficial gene therapies are available, parents will feel the same sense of obligation to provide them for their kids as they do a good education and good health care. As bioethicist Arthur Kaplan has said, many parents will leap at the chance to make their children smarter, fitter, and prettiereghenite. They'll slowly get used to the idea that a genetic edge is not greatly different from an environmental edge. On the other hand, if eugenics is authoritarian genetic correctness, it is precisely the bioluttites who are today's eugenicists.

(11:37):
The bioluttites are the ones who want laws on what kind of children we can and can't have, who want to forbid people from controlling their own bodies and reproductive choices, end quote. Does that clear things up at all?

Kayla (11:50):
I got a lot of things to say, and I can't say most of them. I think there's some really insidious twisting of words there. And I don't care for the phrase bio Luddites.

Chris (12:04):
I don't care for that either. I came away from this quote mixed as you are. I still like James Hughes. I think most of what I've read from him has been generally good. And I don't think this is all bad either.

Kayla (12:18):
Agreed.

Chris (12:19):
There's just, like, several things in here that are kind of sus, that make me go like, ew, I don't like that you said that.

Kayla (12:23):
Well, what seems to constantly be missing from these conversations is, like, the hows. And I'm not sure if everybody who's listening to somebody saying those words, that implies that all reproduction is going to become IVF. That implies that all reproduction, I mean.

Chris (12:43):
Transhumanists might say that's the case, though.

Kayla (12:46):
And I am so worried about the financial aspect of that. I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about that desire to turn reproduction solely into an assisted reproductive technology approach. That's not. I have a lot of things to say. It'll take a lot to. We only have so much time here, so I want to wait and see what you have to say more about this stuff.

Chris (13:15):
Yeah.

Kayla (13:16):
Some people watch Gattaca and come away with one conclusion, and some people watch Gattaca and come away with another.

Chris (13:21):
Right, right. Well, I think it's that type of film and it's that type of topic. Right. Like, it's a confusing topic, even for people who, like, oh, he's progressive and has, like, a lot of good ideas. I'm still kind of uncertain about his take on it. However, I will say that I think that summarizes sort of the transhumanist take on things. Right. Like, a lot of the points he made in there are talking points that come up again and again. Right. Like, oh, well, what's the difference between this and giving my kid the best chance at school and blah, blah, right.

Kayla (13:55):
It would take a long time to sit here and talk about it, but there are differences.

Chris (13:57):
There are differences. But as to the talking points of transhumanists, when this topic comes up, I feel like that's a pretty good representation.

Kayla (14:06):
Okay. Got it.

Chris (14:07):
As an aside, my answer to my friend a few weeks ago, on the whole, like, is transhumanism just eugenics? I said no. It was kind of equivalent to what you were talking about. But my, like, well, okay, if it's. If the answer is no, then what is it? Then I gave him this whole long answer about how I think that, like, the pedigree of transhumanism is actually more humanism and that eugenics and transhumanism are both branches on that tree. They're not. Like, the trunk isn't eugenics, and transhumanism comes off of it. Humanism is the trunk, and they both come off of it. After doing all this research in the last couple weeks now, I'm like, okay, I still think that's the case.

(14:52):
I still think that the central thread is humanism and progress and enlightenment and that those are branches, but there's also all these vines going in between the branches, and one of them is grafted to the other. It's just, it's so complicated. Like, you can't even envision a tree you know, like, I get confused. Like, I think were talking about this today where sometimes I feel like I'm, like, one zoom out away from just saying, did you know that people influence other people throughout time? People have influenced people. I feel like I'm, like, one step away from that.

Kayla (15:27):
Everything is everything. Yeah, all of the time.

Chris (15:30):
I know.

Kayla (15:31):
I do. Like what he said about, yo, if you want to change your genetics and then have kids, like, cool. Cool as hell. I'm like, yeah, that sounds great. I think another thing that's missing from this conversation is just what choice means. And it's something that I haven't seen a lot of engagement with, because, like, what does choice mean in this world? Does choice mean that these options are, quote unquote, available to everyone? Or does, like, we keep talking about, does choice mean these options are available to the wealthy elite? Because if these options are only available to a certain price point, then it starts to be a really. An extreme version of the, like, conversation. It's equivalent to somebody being like, well, you don't have to have an iPhone to get by in today's society. You can also have android.

(16:19):
And that's kind of leaving out.

Chris (16:21):
Excuse me.

Kayla (16:22):
That's leaving out the fact that, like, an iPhone, there are huge swaths of people that simply cannot afford a smartphone at all. And so it's not about, like, the quote, unquote, choice between smartphones. It's the choice if there is not a choice for some people because of the price.

Chris (16:38):
Is it the green text box?

Kayla (16:39):
It's the green text box.

Chris (16:40):
Yeah, that makes sense. We should eugenics away Android phones. No, no, I get. No, I get what. I get what you're saying. Just to further disambiguate here, like, I think there's kind of also another subdivision. Okay, so we're past coercive control from the government right now. We're into, like, it's freedom of choice. But is it really free if we live in this system where, like, you have to work five jobs just to, like, pay half your rent, and then Elon Musk can, like, pay for 10 million genetic blah, blah, whatever? Right? So that's one thing, and I will say for sure that a guy like James Hughes, I have seen in his writing him stress that actually, one of his big points is, this stuff is going to happen. We have to make it accessible or we're screwed.

(17:30):
That's part of, like, why he's good. That's part of why is because that's one of his main thrusts, I think that there is still yet another subdivision here, though, of like, okay, even if it's accessible to everyone, even if it's free real estate, right? Is there not still something that makes you feel weird about like certain choices that people might still be compelled, feel compelled to make?

Kayla (17:56):
Oh, yeah, this is not a choice. It stops being a choice when it becomes the default.

Chris (18:00):
Yeah. And this is where I want to kind of like jump in a little bit with like, some of the discussions we've been having on discord and with you and me offline, like, not sleeping.

Kayla (18:11):
Because we're just laying back, being like, let's talk about eugenics.

Chris (18:14):
Jesus Christ. Don't admit that we are the worst. But these discussions were still, I still thought they were interesting, right? So one point that one of our discorders brought up was that, okay, so we had this scenario that we talked about last week where what if you were able to select for in utero, some trait, like, say, if somebody was gay or not, right? This is, this is the sort of thought experiment that Doctor Watson of Watson and Crick fame brought up. Would it be okay for the mother to terminate that pregnancy? And so the thing that the sort of the discussion that came up was, well, I think that she should still have her bodily autonomy. And I think that was Doctor Watson's position as well. That doesn't mean that.

(19:02):
So I don't think the state should be involved, but that doesn't mean that I won't shun this person and think that they're despicable.

Kayla (19:08):
Right?

Chris (19:09):
So I think that's an important distinction is like, it's kind of like a free speech thing, right? It's like, okay, well, just because the government isn't controlling it doesn't mean I like what you have to say.

Kayla (19:19):
I don't have to sit here and listen to you. And I also then have the free speech to say, shut the fuck up, right? Or walk away.

Chris (19:25):
I support your, you know, freedom of your bodily autonomy to have made that decision. I don't support the decision itself. I think that's perfectly fine. But I do think that there's an additional layer of like, okay, but there's still like, I can do that. Like Voltaire, I will fight for the right of that person that I disagree with, whatever. But then we actually have an example, and you're the one that actually reminded me about this example. We have a real world example of something that you can actually select for in utero that has a massive impact on society. We don't have to, I think the way that it got brought up, as I was saying, well, it's a good thing we don't have to worry about this so much. Cause the science is bad.

(20:07):
And you were like, yeah, but what about sex selection, right? What about the fact that every time that you and I have gone to the IVF doctor for talking about implantation, they've been like, so which embryo do you want?

Kayla (20:19):
Which sex do you want? Do you guys have a sex preference? And it's, like, very casual. And there's no, like, you're not having the conversation with, like, a counselor. You're having it with just, like, the random doctor and or nurse. It's like.

Chris (20:29):
And it's a snap decision. It's like, just on. It's like she's, you know, you're sitting on the exam table, and she's just standing there going like, hey, which one do you want? As if it was, like, a coke flavor or something. And that strikes us as weird. And maybe that's not caused the huge problem over here, but parents that are able to sex select in utero in other countries, that has been very damaging societally. So I'm talking about India and China specifically here. Not to, like, rag on other countries, but there's a major disparity in the number of men and women in those countries. Right now, it's only, like, a one or 2%, but that actually ends up translating to being, like, millions of millions.

Kayla (21:13):
More men than women, more men than.

Chris (21:15):
Women, which then creates a whole downstream just a host of problems, to the point where the indian government has laws on the books. They try to correct for this. But there's been so much sex selection in utero. And there's another thing. There's infanticide, too. There's been so much. And by sex flushing in utero, I literally mean, like, oh, if you genetically test and it's a girl, you abort it.

Kayla (21:37):
Right. We're not talking about, like, IVF choosing which embryo. We're talking about quote unquote traditional.

Chris (21:42):
I'm sure that goes on, too.

Kayla (21:43):
But we're talking quote unquote traditional pregnancies in which. Yeah, once the fetus in utero is sexed, a decision is made to abort depending on that sex.

Chris (21:52):
Right? So that's literally eugenics. It's not like a phenotype trait. That's like, well, this is caused by a million different factors. It's like, nope, there's an X chromosome and Y chromosomes real easy. We can do it for sure. And it has a massive effect. And so were just talking about like, okay, well that sucks. And like, obviously, you know, we don't, obviously can't blame the parents, right? It's the system, right.

Kayla (22:14):
I don't blame any individuals for that.

Chris (22:15):
It's extreme in terms of like having a son versus a daughter. It's like extreme. It's way more costly for things like Dowry and whatnot, to have a daughter in some of these countries. So I totally don't blame the parents for, I say wanting to make that decision.

Kayla (22:30):
Sure.

Chris (22:30):
I'm sure for a lot of them it's needing. Right.

Kayla (22:32):
And I'm also assuming that, like I'm assuming that some of, for, in regards to China, I'm assuming that some of this is a result of the quote unquote one child policy that was on the right. And we are as random Americans. So like, you know, take this with a grain of salt, but from, and.

Chris (22:47):
If you're from there, please email us and, you know, correct us or help us understand. Culturesweirdmail.com dot what we do know is.

Kayla (22:55):
These sex selective abortions are occurring and have drastically altered the sex ratios in the countries right.

Chris (23:02):
Now. Obviously, the easy answer to this is, well, geez, it would be nice if these existing social norms that we find to be pretty oppressive if those weren't around. And it sure would have been nice if those weren't there before we discovered genetic engineering technology that would have been real nice. But we have these social norms that were developed a thousand years ago over time. And now all of a sudden it's like, and now you can select your sex of your child in Europe, right? And I think that like, aside from just being like an interesting and depressing thing to talk about, it also kind of illustrates that, like, okay, well, even in a quote unquote liberal eugenic situation and maybe even where there's equal access, there might still be an issue.

(23:53):
If you're doing this type of stuff in a society that has certain norms. It's exactly what Doctor Torres was saying in the interview. Right? If the society has certain preferences and then you give people a choice even though it's not state control, it could end up being bad.

Kayla (24:09):
Right? Right.

Chris (24:11):
So this is like we don't have enough time to solve this problem, this intractable problem for the globe.

Kayla (24:17):
Wait, you and I aren't going to finish this by the end of the hour and a half?

Chris (24:20):
No, I just wanted to bring it up as an example of some stuff that we've talked about, both you and I and on discord and in relation to the multiple layers of why this can get uncomfortable. I also want to mention here, just to kind of, like, harken back to the, hey, this is all of a branch of humanism and enlightenment. I think it's also worth questioning. Like, is progress always great?

Kayla (24:47):
Ooh, is progress bad? Line go up bad.

Chris (24:51):
Right? Well, that's what Chris is saying.

Kayla (24:53):
Chris is saying progress is bad.

Chris (24:56):
Yeah, I'm saying progress is bad. No, like, we've had this discussion, too, right? Like, is progress always good? Sometimes it's clearly good. Like, if you have an ectopic pregnancy now, you don't die. You would have died before. That's good. That's a good part of progress. But is it always good? I don't know. We have.

Kayla (25:13):
Is having a computer on your car dashboard better than what the car dashboard used to be? No, that's considered progress is, like, now the dashboard console is an iPad versus before it was dials. And I do not think that's in the head. That's a very clear, to me, example of, like, progress not necessarily being better.

Chris (25:31):
Yeah. And if you don't subscribe to car, then your car doesn't go, please kill me. But that's, like, you know, it's a little hard for us to envision because we're, like, in western society, but, you know, it might beneficial to us if we maybe thought about other civilizational paradigms other than western progress. Line go up, everything, start bad, get good. And, like, it's. It permeates everything. Right? Like, we're talking about evolution and genetics here. Like, a lot of what happens with a lot of the rhetoric, at least it used to be this way, when talking about evolution and natural selection, is that evolution improves organisms and they get better over time and more advanced. And that's what the eugenicists talk about, too. Now, luckily, we've moved past that to talking about being more fit for your environment.

(26:21):
Evolution doesn't have a bias towards good or bad.

Kayla (26:24):
When I had to learn that survival of the fittest didn't mean survival of the biggest and the strongest, but survival for the organism most fit to its niche, like, that really changed things for me, how I thought about this.

Chris (26:38):
There's also the bias about, like, oh, these people are primitive versus our civilization is advanced. Like, we tend to think of certain civilizations as being backwards in time versions of us, rather than their own civilization that actually exists alongside us. It's a very colonial mindset, obviously. I don't think we have that as much anymore, but certainly that still permeates right. And that goes back to the whole, like, everything's progress. Everything is a line going up. Is that true? Always. I think it would be. It would behoove us to question that sometimes. All right, so I said, we talk about ideas, and then we talk about people. Time to talk about a people. Time to talk about the Huxley family. So, the Huxley family man, Aldous, they were. Aldous is one of them. So, Aldous, what did Aldous do? He wrote brave new World.

Kayla (27:32):
He did? And I pretended to read that in high school, and I would just, like, carry it around, but it wasn't assigned.

Chris (27:39):
Whoa.

Kayla (27:39):
It was just like, oh, I should read this book. And I like, oh, you are so adorable. No, it's because I kept starting it, and then it was, like, kind of really boring, and I never finished it.

Chris (27:48):
Yeah, were supposed to read, Tessa the d'Urbervilles in high school.

Kayla (27:51):
Not doing that.

Chris (27:52):
And we watched the movie so that we wouldn't have to read the book, and were too bored by the movie.

Kayla (27:57):
Yeah, that's a bad sign.

Chris (28:00):
In any case, we're not actually here to talk about Aldous. We're here to talk about another member of his family, his brother, Julian. Actually, before we talk about Julian, their grandfather. I did not write down his first name here, but their grandpa, great grandpappy Huxley. Grandpappy Huxley coined the word agnostic. Oh, so these guys were word coiners. Julian coined a bunch of terms. I would say, aside from the one we're about to talk about, the other most famous one might be ethnic group. So he coined the term ethnic group to talk about.

Kayla (28:33):
How do you coined that? How's that not just a term?

Chris (28:38):
Yeah. So it was basically like a replacement for the word race. As the idea of race, science was becoming heavily discredited, and the late forties and fifties, they needed, like, a different way to talk about human groups in a way that was, like, more precise. So that was. That was him coining that word. He also coined the word transhumanist, or transhumanist.

Kayla (29:03):
Oh, Huxley did that.

Chris (29:05):
Huxley did that. There's some. I read some things where it's like, oh, well, actually, so and so said it before in this publication or whatever, but he's widely credited with, like, coining and popularizing the term.

Kayla (29:17):
He's the elon musk of the term.

Chris (29:20):
But, yeah, that's why he's sort of like. He's like the typical tie in. So when people talk about, like, oh, you know, transhumanism is just eugenics. Right. A lot of the times, the exhibit a is Julian Huxley. Because Julian Huxley was himself a eugenicist. And then he coined the term transhumanism. Now, was he a transhumanist himself? Not really. Like, sort of like he had. He espoused some transhumanist ideas. But I like the connective tissue there is weird to me because, like, mostly he was very similar to the guys we talked about last week, where he's like just this badass scientist that unfortunately was. Also had eugenics ideas a little more damning in his case because it was post world War Two. But then it was sort of like. It also wasn't the same eugenics as before. Like, it was more liberal eugenics. Right.

(30:10):
He was a very progressive guy. He was an internationalist. He actually visited the Soviet Union several times, visited the United States. Like, he was a guy that was, like, in favor of internationalism and international community. In fact, he was the first director of UNESCO. Oh, so UNESCO is the United nations educational, scientific and cultural organization. That's UNESCO. You've probably heard it before as like, UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Kayla (30:40):
Yeah.

Chris (30:40):
So they're kind of like a international national park type thing, but they actually do, like a ton of stuff. This is an aside. This is not about Julian Huxley, but there's like, there's a ton of stuff that they get involved in. There's like all these ngO's that they sponsor.

Kayla (30:55):
Oh, I didn't know that.

Chris (30:56):
And. Yeah. Oh, they're into all kinds of stuff. In fact, one of the things I found was, do you know the international baccalaureate program?

Kayla (31:02):
Yeah. The thing that you did in high school. Cause you're a big nerd.

Chris (31:04):
Ib? Yeah. Yeah, that's UNESCO.

Kayla (31:06):
What does that mean?

Chris (31:08):
UNESCO created the International Baccalaureate program.

Kayla (31:11):
Is UNESCO bad?

Chris (31:13):
UNESCO is globalist.

Kayla (31:14):
Is it bad?

Chris (31:15):
It's a globalist agenda. I mean, I don't think so. Its founding mission says here to advance peace, sustainable development and human rights by facilitating collaboration and dialogue among nations. So that sounds.

Kayla (31:29):
Do you feel like that's what was.

Chris (31:30):
Achieved in IB pretty good? Yeah, absolutely. I am the most peaceable and cooperative person that has ever existed, Kayla, thanks to IB. So that's UNESCO. Just to hammer home several things. One is like, he was big and important. Two is he was very internationalist. Three, he was the founding member or head of lots of things. So he was also the founding member of the WWF. Like the chair slamming the wrestlers. Yeah. So he was a wrestler.

Kayla (32:00):
Hell, yeah. Nah, the animal one, right?

Chris (32:03):
That was a slow pitch for. Yeah, the animal one. He was big into conservation. Huge into conservation. In fact, if I had to say, like, number one, it would probably be conservation. Interesting in terms of his interests, because he was a biologist, right? So it kind of makes sense. Let's see. He was the secretary of the Zoological Society of London.

Kayla (32:23):
Okay, I'm sorry, how do people have the time?

Chris (32:25):
I don't know. And he was also the president of the British Eugenics Society from 1959 to 1962.

Kayla (32:34):
Oh, also, he's less good than the animals.

Chris (32:36):
Yeah. First president of the British Humanist association. As if to just like, swoop right in and support my argument about humanism being the trunk of the tree here. He was also known for being like, a good communicator, like presentation of science and popularization of science. But again, eugenicist. So here's a quote. It says in his, and his Wikipedia article says he actually used this quote several times. This argument several times. No one doubts the wisdom of managing the germ plasm of agricultural stocks. So why not apply the same concept to human stocks?

Kayla (33:14):
I can think of a couple reasons, Mister Huxley.

Chris (33:16):
I can think of a couple reasons. Now, again, but that's common talking point for eugenicists.

Kayla (33:21):
Why? Why do they want to think of themselves as livestock? Why do they want to think of themselves as livestock?

Chris (33:30):
I don't know. But again, mixed bag. He advocated ensuring that lower classes had a nutritious diet, education, and facilities for recreation. And that was like, partially because. Yay. But also partially because he knows that the higher you move up the social ladder, it tends to correlate with a decrease in number of births.

Kayla (33:54):
The less will have to eugenics. You.

Chris (33:56):
Right. The less will have to force eugenics. You. I mean, I don't think he believed in forced eugenics, but he did believe in. Well, here, I'll read another quote by him then. We must plan our eugenic policy along some such lines as the following. The lowest strata, allegedly less well endowed genetically, are reproducing relatively too fast. So there it is again.

Kayla (34:17):
Did Mike Judge write this?

Chris (34:18):
I know, right? Therefore, birth control methods must be taught them. They must not have too easy access to relief or hospital treatment, lest the removal of the last check on natural selection should make it too easy for children to be produced or to survive long. Unemployment should be ground for sterilization, or at least relief should be contingent upon no further children being brought into the world, and so on.

Kayla (34:40):
That's really, really awful.

Chris (34:43):
Much of our eugenic program will be curative and remedial merely instead of preventative and constructive. End quote.

Kayla (34:49):
Good Lord.

Chris (34:50):
I know it's not great. I'm like, he does all this great stuff, and then he drops that bomb, and I'm like, holy shit. What the fuck? He also, though, like, he, you know, we talked before about the fallacy of thinking of evolution as, like, an advanced, you know, march of advancement. So he has this quote. The ordinary man, or at least the ordinary poet, philosopher, or theologian, always was anxious to find purpose in the evolutionary process. I believe this reasoning to be totally false, end quote. So he was against that. You know, I. It's a mixed bag. Like, I don't know what to say about Julian Huxley, other than, like, he's the common tie in thread that people like to use when they talk about the connection between eugenics and transhumanism. I personally don't like that thread. Seems very thin to me.

(35:44):
I think that the ideological thread is just there anyway, and it's much stronger. I don't think Julian Huxley was the guy that was like, oh, eugenics, oh, transhumanism. I'm going to tie them together.

Kayla (35:56):
Right.

Chris (35:56):
I don't think it was that. I think it was just like, some of the goals are broadly the same. Right? Taking human society, taking the human species, and transcending it into human 2.0 is both a goal of eugenics and also a goal of transhumanism. So I think there's just overlap. I don't think Huxley was, like, the guy that connected it. Oh, he was also a debunker, but in a good way. It says that he took interest investigating the claims of parapsychology and spiritualism, joining the Society for Psychical research 1928. And then he said, after investigations, he found the field to be unscientific and full of charlatans. So basically, like, he joined the society in, like, good faith, basically being like, this is interesting. And then he was like, oh, this is all bullshit. And then he left.

(36:45):
So he kind of took this interest in debunking paranormal stuff as well, on top of everything else.

Kayla (36:52):
The interesting thing here is that, like, this is Aldous Huxley's brother, right?

Chris (36:57):
Yeah.

Kayla (36:58):
Brave new world is about a society in which the society has been engineered into an intelligence based social hierarchy, and it's a dystopia, utilizing things like birth control and these different things.

Chris (37:16):
They purposely breed dums to be workers.

Kayla (37:18):
Yeah. And it's presented as a dystopia.

Chris (37:22):
I know. I couldn't even tell. Like, I know that one quote I read was pretty damning. But I can't say for sure that all of his ideas about eugenics were, like, that damning, like, you know, blanket statement that eugenics is shitty overall for, you know, the many layers that we've talked about. But I don't know. Like, he just. I'm so confused about the guy. Like, I think to me, he's much more confusing than Francis Galtone. Francis Galton, you know, big time scientist, but big, huge blind spot with. With eugenics. Julian Huxley. I don't know. Like, most of what I read about him was just, like, good stuff. And then there was, like, you know, a few paragraphs about, like, oh, he did eugenic stuff, too. And here's, like, a really bad quote. I don't know, man. It's so hard. It's hard.

Kayla (38:13):
His eugenics stuff was bad. The end.

Chris (38:15):
Yeah, you're right.

Kayla (38:16):
I. His conservation stuff, probably good. His eugenics stuff, bad.

Chris (38:21):
Yeah. All right, so Huxley was doing his stuff in, like, the first half of the 20th century. He died, I think, in 1975. So let's move the timeline forward a little bit here. On the way. I'm just going to point out something out the window here is that apparently marriage counseling is eugenicist. His roots, like, the guy that basically invented marriage counseling had some eugenic.

Kayla (38:48):
What does that mean? What is the guy who, the guy.

Chris (38:51):
Who was like, I'm gonna start doing marriage counseling as a thing. Like, marriage counseling hasn't always been a thing. It started being a thing in, like, the fifties or sixties. And the guy that invented it was a eugenicist. And part of the idea behind marriage counseling Washington for, like, eugenic aims, like, let's make sure the good match marriages don't break up. That was part of it was to, like, have this. It had a partially eugenic aim to it.

Kayla (39:18):
Right?

Chris (39:19):
That's not what it is. Now, you can still drink your celestial seasonings tea. You can still get your marriage counseling. But it's just, it's interesting how many places eugenics leaked all over and touched. It's like a lot of. A lot of people.

Kayla (39:34):
Yeah. It's like foundational building block shit.

Chris (39:37):
Yeah. So now let's move into current times. So we're talking about how eugenics and transhumanism are related. Here's another quote, actually, from an article written by Susan Levin in slate.com. Transhumanism as we know it, however, is a marriage. Hey, marriage. Marriage of sorts, between substantive commitments shared with anglo american eugenics. There it is. And the notion that living things and machines are basically alike, the latter stemming from developments in computing and information theory during and after World War Two, end quote. So what she's saying is, like, transhumanism equals eugenics plus the sort of overarching paradigm of thinking of human beings as machines, which she contends basically in the article, she contends with both of those things. Okay, so she would say that it's. Yeah, the DNA is definitely there. We've talked about Nick Bostrom quite a bit on.

(40:42):
On the show recently because he's one of the, like, he's basically the. If you had to name one guy that was like, TESCREAL, or it was like, behind all this. Yeah, you'd probably name Nick Bostrom.

Kayla (40:53):
We have a Nick Bostrom book in our library. Like, in our book?

Chris (40:56):
Yeah, it's called Super Intelligence. I've never read it, though.

Kayla (40:58):
I've never read it. Kind of thinking of taking it off of our bookcase.

Chris (41:02):
Well, you might be more inclined to do that after we talk about the Nick Bostrom email.

Kayla (41:09):
I don't want to talk about that.

Chris (41:10):
Let's talk about the Nick Bostrom email, because if we're going to be talking about TESCREAL transhumanists that have eugenic thinking, we need to talk about this email. So this is from a vice article entitled prominent AI Philosopher and father of longtermism sent a very racist email to a nineties philosophy listserv. By the way, do you know who dug this email up and found it out in the muck?

Kayla (41:36):
Would I ever be able to guess?

Chris (41:38):
Yes.

Kayla (41:39):
You?

Chris (41:39):
Emile Torres.

Kayla (41:41):
Really?

Chris (41:41):
Yeah. Emile Torres found this email actually, good quote. Nick Bostrom, an influential philosopher at the University of Oxford who has been called the father of long termist movement, of the longtermist movement, has apologized for a racist email he sent in the mid nineties. In the email, Bostrom said that, quote, trigger here, this is not me saying this.

Kayla (42:02):
He's saying racial slurs.

Chris (42:05):
Bostrom said that, quote, blacks are more stupid than whites, adding, quote, I like that sentence and think it is true, end quote. And then use the racial slur. So the racial slur part of it was basically like, he continued writing stuff and then was like, I like that sentence. And I think that it's true. But if I were to say that in mixed company, then people would hear it as me saying, blah, n word, blah. Or like, I really.

Kayla (42:31):
But I'll write it down. But I'll write it down. Send it in mixed company. I'll write it down.

Chris (42:37):
Yes, but it wasn't mixed company. It was a listserv that contained a lot of people in it that were in this exact movement that we're talking about. So the fact that he felt comfortable sending that email in the company of other people that we might call, like, proto TESCREALists.

Kayla (42:51):
Right.

Chris (42:52):
I think is pretty informative. So he did do a apology. So he was, you know, he did the. And it was like, not a bad apology. You know, I fully, I don't remember the exact wording, but it was basically like, I fully recant this. These are not views that I hold now. I wish I hadn't said that. I don't think it fully addressed, though. Like, I still just, I kind of feel like too much of the emphasis, both in the reporting on it and in his reply and in his apology. I still think the emphasis is too much on, like, the racial slur and not the sentiment. Not the sentiment.

Kayla (43:29):
That's icky.

Chris (43:30):
Like, I'm not gonna say the racial slur, but I actually think that saying blacks are more stupid than whites, I like that sentence and think it's true, is actually the worst thing to say because that's the other thing was just like, haha. I'm just saying this for, like, shock value.

Kayla (43:43):
Not a cool thing to say, but not a. The former thing is, like, awful.

Chris (43:49):
Yeah. The former thing is like, oh, that's actually really dangerous. Yeah, that's like, literal scientific racism has been disproven. Like, first of all, throughout IQ, I had a whole thing I was going to talk about IQ in this episode.

Kayla (44:05):
Oh, we gave up on IQ.

Chris (44:06):
I gave up on IQ. It's just too much, you guys. That should say a whole nother rabbit hole of IQ where, like, is that test even meaningful? A lot of people say no.

Kayla (44:15):
I say no.

Chris (44:17):
Yeah. So there is a measurable difference. People find a measurable difference in average iqs across different races. But if you control for things like socioeconomic status, those things disappear. And also they tend to converge over time. So if you look at the black community, over time, the average IQ as measured has gone up over time as their socioeconomic conditions have improved. So there's just a ton of evidence pointing to the fact that there's, like, it's widely scientifically accepted that there's no. And also, race is not a scientific thing. It doesn't have any genetic basis. So, like, there's multiple reasons why scientific racism is harmful and also wrong, apparently.

Kayla (45:06):
Jamie Loftus did an entire podcast season about Mensa, and I think it was recommended to us at the first episode, really gets into the eugenic background of Mensa. So since we're not covering that, you can go listen to that on our episode. You can go listen to Jamie Loftus.

Chris (45:21):
Also, did you know that, like, in the general population, IQ has been slowly raising over time?

Kayla (45:26):
Interesting.

Chris (45:27):
People don't know why. There's, like, a name for the effect. I forget what it's called.

Kayla (45:29):
It's because we're eating more.

Chris (45:31):
That's what some people think. Some people think we're just, like, healthier now. Yeah. Because of, you know, better access.

Kayla (45:37):
We don't have rickets or whatever.

Chris (45:38):
Yeah. So I don't know. But in general, it's been going up and computers. But also fundamentally, IQ is busted. So what does that mean anyway? Okay, the point of all this, though, was to, again, talk about, like, if we're got. If we got this, like, founding father of TESCREAL stuff, feeling very comfortable putting his scientific racist viewpoint out there on this listserv. I don't think that looks good for transhumanism and TESCREALism in terms of its eugenic ties.

Kayla (46:09):
It also makes me feel a lot better about the decision we made at the very beginning of this season. Oh, man. Where we almost. Have we talked about this yet?

Chris (46:18):
I don't know.

Kayla (46:19):
We almost opened the season by reading a story written by Nick Bostrom.

Chris (46:25):
Right.

Kayla (46:25):
And then went, you know what? Actually, this story's really dumb. And then we did.

Chris (46:31):
I might be an idiot.

Kayla (46:32):
I still really like the story. It's.

Chris (46:33):
The story's fine. The story's cool.

Kayla (46:35):
Especially as adapted by. I don't know who it is. Adapted by the youtuber who popularized this story. If you go look up the Nick Bostrom dragon story, you'll find it. But, yeah, we almost opened the season by talking about this story that equates death to a big dragon that eats a whole town.

Chris (46:51):
I'm so glad that our radar was on for that.

Kayla (46:53):
Yeah, went, I don't know, actually.

Chris (46:54):
This is kind of silly. Part of it was. A big part of it was when were talking about how he was railing against. I don't know who he was bitching about, but, like, hey, why aren't we trying to solve death? Like, why aren't we trying to put resources towards.

Kayla (47:09):
That was the story was about curing.

Chris (47:11):
Death because that's what the story was about. And were like, does he know about medicine?

Kayla (47:15):
Has he ever gone to the doctor?

Chris (47:17):
At the bare minimum, he has no bell disease. So the other thing is he, like, in case you were wondering if that was a one time thing, sure, that spike of racism was a one time thing, but he has repeatedly talked about dysgenic pressures being one. So you know how they're, like, super into existential risk? Like, that's a big thing for them, is, like, for TESCREALs. It's like, oh, we got to fight x risk. We got to fight existential risk, because that's, you know, that's the thing that will prevent the transhumanist project from happening. One of the existential risks, depending on who you ask, and definitely, according to Bostrom, is dysgenic pressures, which is. Which is idiocracy. They're all worried about idiocracy.

Kayla (47:58):
Are you fucking kidding me?

Chris (47:59):
That's what dysgenic pressures mean.

Kayla (48:01):
Nick Bostrom's a dumbass. Nick Bostrom is really making me think of that quote from the previous episode about, like, an idiot doesn't know he's an idiot. And, like, the people who think that they're the smartest are the ones who are trying to fashion the world in their own image.

Chris (48:12):
Exactly.

Kayla (48:12):
And, like, maybe Nick Bostrom should, like, take a long, hard look in the mirror, because none of us are as smart as we think we are.

Chris (48:17):
And that's where it gets, like, super racist and eugenics. That's where the eugenics and the racism really come in, is the, like, dysgenic pressures. So when you say, dumb people are going to out produce us, and then you also say, I think blacks are stupider than whites. All right. Had to talk about the Nick Bostrom thing. Obviously. We've been sitting on that one for a really long time.

Kayla (48:38):
Also, Nick Bostrom's institute failed recently.

Chris (48:41):
Yes. Which is, I think, honestly, after doing all this, is probably a good thing. It's the future of humanity Institute. That's why we named those episodes future of humanity, those previous few episodes. Okay, so we talked about some ideas. We talked about some people, and I promised you I would complete the sentence. You can't understand transhumanism without understanding eugenics. And you can't understand eugenics without understanding something that I had not read about before, although I had definitely heard thoughts, conclusions, the influence of this theoretical practice, but without understanding crip theory. Oh, so what is crypt theory? First of all, I I need to specify that I am not using that word in a derogatory manner.

Kayla (49:30):
That word has historically been.

Chris (49:31):
That word has historically been used as a slur. It is currently in the process of being reclaimed.

Kayla (49:37):
It's similar. I think I could be speaking out of turn, similar to queer.

Chris (49:41):
I've read that in several places that parallels have been drawn between the reclaim of Crip and the reclaim of queer. And in fact, crip theory specifically talks about the intersection of disability and queerness. So that's like one of its big things. All right, so that's what crip theory is in a nutshell. It's a lot more than that, actually. Before I get to this quote, the other thing I should mention is that it intersects heavily with the idea of the social model of disability. So there's something called the social model of disability, which was proposed as an alternative to the medical model of disability. I think this is stuff that we've probably heard about more. We've encountered these ideas a little more than. I'd never heard the word crip theory, but I had heard the social model.

(50:33):
I just don't know if I'd heard the term. But basically the idea with that is that rather than assuming that disability is something that needs to be cured and it's on the individual to conform to whatever the society says is a normal human being, instead, we should view disability as a social construct based on, like, you know, nobody is the average, right? So everybody has some difference from the average. And that is definitely true of disabled people. And we should be focused, therefore, on bringing society up to speed, not on bringing the individuals up to speed.

Kayla (51:11):
So more like building ramps to get.

Chris (51:13):
Into building ramps rather than curing the. Whatever it is, quote unquote. Like it's very. It's very much about, like, we don't need to be cured. We have value as is, right? This isn't a disease. The guy that invented it, by the way, or that coined the phrase and proposed it, he was, like, very clear that this isn't like the be all and end all. This is just like an alternative to the dominant view, which is the medicalized state. Right? So he wasn't saying, like, I have all the answers. I just want to make that clear. Like he was saying, this is an alternative view, that we really should be thinking about it at least much more this way than the other way, because there are critiques. Right?

(51:54):
Like some disability advocates will say, like, well, you know, I actually have something that is, like, biologically very painful, and I would like that to be cured, please. And like, you know, if we push too hard in the other direction, in the social model direction, then do we, you know, make that less likely to happen because we're just trying to do curb cuts and elevators everywhere?

Kayla (52:15):
I.

Chris (52:15):
But again, the creator of this was very clear that it wasn't like, well, I'm not saying that this is the only answer.

Kayla (52:21):
Right. Like, I've heard that argument when talking about things that might be considered disabilities, such as, like, chronic illness. So, like, in the fibromyalgia or, like, me CFS community, and probably now the long Covid community, like long Covid is disabling. But long Covid people who have long Covid probably would rather have a cure than, like, sure not.

Chris (52:45):
Yeah. So it's important to have multiple perspectives, but I think it's super valuable to have, just because the medical perspective is so dominant, to have that social model as an alternative way of thinking about it. So here's a quote from an article I read entitled transhumanism is eugenics for educated white liberals. Very damning.

Kayla (53:08):
Yeah.

Chris (53:09):
And also, I kind of feel like that's what we've been talking about.

Kayla (53:12):
Yeah. Yeah.

Chris (53:15):
In sharp contrast to transhumanist thinking and philosophical common sense, quote unquote. In general, crip theorists generally hold that the existence of disability is a positive good, something that should be embraced and valued. I think this is me just saying, as an aside, whatever critiques there are of the social model or of this, like, I think that statement is pretty unambiguously true in Garland Thompson's words. I don't know who that is, but this is what the article author is quoting. The human variations that we think of as disabilities are something that we should conserve and protect because they are essential, inevitable aspects of human being, and because these lived experiences provide individuals and human communities with multiple opportunities for expression, creativity, resourcefulness, relationships, and flourishing. So this. By the way, the author of this article's name is Mitch Syria, who is.

(54:09):
I'm just gonna read her little blurb from the. From her university website. So she's a professor at the University of Missouri St. Louis. She is the author of an intersectional feminist theory of moral responsibility published by. We don't need to know that. Regular contributor to biopolitical philosophy, she they is a queer disabled philosopher with specializations in ethics, moral psychology, marxist feminism, and critical disability theory.

Kayla (54:39):
Can we be friends?

Chris (54:40):
So she's just like, all the things. But I really liked, obviously, like that quote. I liked the article in general. I want to read you another quote from the same article, and then we'll talk about it for just a sec. Historically. Oh, this is the quote, by the way, historically, disability was affiliated with blackness and genderqueerness, and these associations persist today. As so and so puts it, we don't need another name. Queerness, broadly conceived, is regularly understood or positioned in contemporary culture. As always, a bit disabled, and vice versa. Consequently, to promote a non disabled body is to promote a white cisgender body that is a normal. This is in context of the article, non freakish body. Transhumanism's quest to eliminate disability is entangled, therefore, historically, structurally, and symbolically, with racism and cissexism.

(55:30):
While transhumanists might want to deny these connections, they are deeply embedded in the construction and positioning of disability. Intellectual disability in particular. This last sentence is kind of like why I'm reading this. Intellectual disability in particular has been used to oppress racial and sexual others, end quote. So this is why I say, like, I don't think you can understand eugenics either without understanding crip theory, because eugenics is basically talking about let's eliminate the people that let's do a genocide, essentially, whether it's actually killing them or sterilizing them on people that we consider to be unfit. And that is a social construct. And because it's a social construct, they can apply it to whatever they want, and they tend to apply it to the power structures that they want to preserve.

(56:18):
So that's why it's inexorably linked to the racist structures that we have, is because it's like, well, we just need to say that black people aren't. We just need to have smart people like Nick Bostrom say that, I think blacks are stupider than whites, and then that just opens the door for whatever tool you want to deploy at them.

Kayla (56:37):
Right, right.

Chris (56:38):
So it's. That's. So it's all connected.

Kayla (56:40):
I'm really grateful that there's, like, academics doing this work because that was an incredible way to put into, like, actual substantive, like, argument. Why this is not a good phrase. Human diversity, that's not a good phrase. Right.

Chris (56:55):
Actually, human biodiversity is one of their favorite things to who. To say to. Yeah, crip theorists love the phrase human biodiversity.

Kayla (57:04):
Okay, then I'll say it.

Chris (57:06):
They use, like, in fact, they use that to contrast against genetic selection or eugenics.

Kayla (57:13):
To have an academic argument for human biodiversity, I think is really good to have. Because it can feel like, well, I just feel like it's good to have different kinds of people, and it just feels icky to, like, genetically engineer everyone to be blue eyed and blonde. Like, that's not a great argument. To be like, well, it just feels wrong. So to have academics putting into words and, like, quote unquote, rational arguments of, like, why human biodiversity is important and why it is a benefit to our society as part of these, like, the ability to argue against the actual, quote, unquote, rationalists who are able to come up with very logical sounding arguments of why liberal eugenics is good, actually. I'm really happy to hear that.

Chris (57:58):
Yeah. And I think that it's important to listen to those. Like, this feels icky, but I think kind of what you're saying and what this person's doing is explaining where that feeling comes from.

Kayla (58:09):
Right. And making it more than just a feeling.

Chris (58:12):
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So overall, I guess, what would you make of the crip theorists derision of transhumanism?

Kayla (58:22):
I'm just going to go back to the thing that I said about that quote. That's kind of how I feel about it as a whole. I feel like I want to learn more about this because this feels like something that I feel like I could align with.

Chris (58:36):
How does it make you feel about transhumanism? Like, the fact that they don't like it.

Kayla (58:40):
The fact that crip theorists don't like transhumanism? Yeah, I think it's probably reductive to say they don't like transhumanism.

Chris (58:48):
You know what? I'm actually gonna. I'm gonna stop you here because I'm. I'm.

Kayla (58:52):
You're trying to get me to. You have. You have answer in mind? Tell me what that is.

Chris (58:57):
Cause I kind of asked you a trick question.

Kayla (58:59):
Yeah. Tell me what I'm supposed to think.

Chris (59:00):
Because I know something that you don't.

Kayla (59:02):
Oh, no?

Chris (59:03):
Crypt theorists aren't actually anti transhumanists.

Kayla (59:07):
Oh, that's what I said.

Chris (59:08):
I think. I'd say they're very anti tescreal. If I'm gonna, like, pull this back to, like, the TESCREAL thing and how TESCREAL kind of feels as a bundle different than any one piece of this, I would say that, yeah, they're anti tescreal, anti Bostrom's flavor of transhumanism.

Kayla (59:24):
Same.

Chris (59:25):
However, very interestingly, while crip theorists tend to be against genetic human enhancement, for all the discussed reasons, they actually tend to be very pro cybernetics.

Kayla (59:37):
Oh, hell yeah.

Chris (59:38):
They are very pro. And you can, like. As soon as I say that, you can kind of see why. Right.

Kayla (59:43):
It's like that TikTok that I sent you 2 seconds ago of, like, that girl who she. I believe she's an amputee. She does not have her forearms. And she was talking about how, like, prosthetics used to suck because were trying so hard to make them look like a, quote unquote like biological arms. And now these ones that are.

Chris (01:00:01):
Nobody was, by the way. Nobody was asking for their input. They were just like, here's your arm.

Kayla (01:00:05):
Now that we've started to design, now that disabled people are part of that design process, the fucking prosthetics are cool as hell. Cause they, like, do different things and aren't just hindered by trying to look like a biological arm. And hers were like, in addition to having different abilities than a biological arm, it was also pink and sparkly. It was cool.

Chris (01:00:25):
Yeah, it was dope as hell. And again, it hearkens back to the design with not for that exact phrase actually came up several times in my reading of crypt theory stuff. So it makes a lot of sense. Like, they will. Like, part of the is part of it is what you were just saying. Part of it is also, like. Crypt theorists also like to point out that it's. There's like, this diy element to it that, like, they don't. It's exactly what you were talking about, actually. They. They are against the commodification and top down non disabled people designing for them. Sure they are. For a disabled person saying, like, I need to be part of this design process. Disabled people designing their own cybernetic enhancements. Yada, yada. Does that make sense?

Kayla (01:01:14):
Yes.

Chris (01:01:15):
Okay. So, in fact, there's like a very famous. I didn't know about it, but I actually think I might have heard it. It's called the cyborg manifesto. So it is. I'm gonna read from its Wikipedia article here again. It's an essay written by Donna Haraway and published in 1985 in the Socialist Review. In it, the concept of the cyborg represents a rejection of rigid boundaries, notably those separating human from animal and human from machine. Haraway writes, the cyborg does not dream of community on the model of the organic family. This time, without the Oedipal project, a cyborg would not recognize the Garden of Eden. It is not made of mud and cannot dream of returning to dust. The manifesto challenges traditional notions of feminism, particularly feminism that focuses on identity politics and instead encourages coalition through affinity.

(01:02:05):
Haraway uses the concept of a cyborg to represent the plasticity of identity and to highlight the limitations of socially imposed identities. The manifesto is considered a major milestone in the development of feminist post humanist theory. A lot of ists in there.

Kayla (01:02:21):
Fuck yeah. This is the stuff that I fuck with. This feels good. This doesn't feel bad and icky. This feels good.

Chris (01:02:28):
This is why I am talking about it at the end, actually, of the show.

Kayla (01:02:33):
And I just want to interject here, just because I wanted to. I came across a slightly eugenics. Not slightly. I came across a eugenics related thing when I was researching effective altruism. Who, again, are the. They're the EA of TESCREAL and one of their founding fathers, Peter Singer, has actually been targeted by disabled activists and by disabled protesters. I can't say definitely crip theorists, but crip theorist adjacent, folks, because Peter Singer has a lot to say about how it's morally and ethically okay to euthanize severely disabled infants and severely disabled people. And it's, you know, this episode's not about that. So I'm not gonna get into the nuance of all of that. But this is a person who's very influential in the TESCREAL movement, who has been protested by disabled activists specifically for saying it's morally and ethically okay to euthanize severely disabled infants.

Chris (01:03:32):
That's not a good thing to say. Don't say that. Don't think that. And then also definitely don't have say it. So I just thought that was, like, that was very interesting how as much as they're against genetic selection, eugenics, they are in favor of bionic enhancement. I also just. If you want to hear some stuff that you fuck with, there's also modeled on the cyborg manifesto. There is a crypt technoscience manifesto. So in, it's a whole thing. But I did grab the four commitments of crip technoscience from the manifesto. So I'm just going to read them to you here real quick, because you just. You're going to love it. One, crypt technoscience centers the work of disabled people as knowers and makers. Actually, I think that's kind of, like, very salient to what were talking about before.

(01:04:22):
Two, crypt technoscience is committed to access as friction.

Kayla (01:04:26):
Ooh.

Chris (01:04:27):
There's a whole thing in there about, like, access not being this, like, passive something like it's. It's. It's wild. Three, crip technoscience is committed to interdependence as political technology.

Kayla (01:04:40):
Yes. Yes.

Chris (01:04:42):
Four, crip technoscience is committed to disability justice. That one's easy.

Kayla (01:04:46):
Great.

Chris (01:04:46):
But I just. I think my favorite one there is. Number two is the committed to access as friction. I didn't fully understand what I was reading.

Kayla (01:04:53):
Yeah, I don't really understand either. I really like how it sounds, but I'm. I'm. Number three is my jam.

Chris (01:04:58):
Yeah. Number three is. Yeah. Interdependence is political technology. Hell, yeah. So just wrapping up that whole thing, like, I think that, like, when I came across this stuff, I was like, oh. Like, this is if I really want to talk about, like, modern transhumanism versus eugenics, or is it eugenicist or which parts of transhumanism are and aren't. I just feel like that this, like, viewing it through this lens is super helpful.

Kayla (01:05:21):
It's really nice to know that if I want to, like, talk about transhumanist stuff, I don't have to only be in TESCREAL communities, that there. There's people talking about this stuff in a non TESCREAL way. And I'm just really grateful to know that's happening. And that really helps me. That really helps me.

Chris (01:05:39):
Same, bruh. Same. So in general, this has been an enormously challenging subject to grapple with across many different avenues. Eugenics and transhumanism, as topics are emotionally challenging, ethically challenging, and intellectually challenging. It's the type of topic where one finds it extremely difficult to find something either in the literature or in your own mind that you might call solid ground. There's been a lot of gray area. We've talked about a lot of, like, well, I like this guy, but I don't know. He's also got, like, a really bad stuff, too. There's a lot of, like, I don't like the conclusions I'm being forced to draw about, like, how I feel like people should be able to choose their, you know, Gattaca babies or whatever.

Kayla (01:06:22):
I.

Chris (01:06:23):
A lot of. I don't understand where idea number one stops and idea number two ends. And by the way, if the right person gets that wrong, it could be very damaging. So when I find myself in this sort of intellectual, ethical mirror fun house, I'm just going to be on the lookout for a guidepost or handhold of some kind just to help me think straight. So I want to wrap up these two episodes talking about an article that I read published in the Atlantic in 2004 by one Michael Sandel. By the way, I looked him up now, and apparently he's like some sort of, like, rock star philosopher who sells out concert venues and stuff.

Kayla (01:07:02):
Oh, my God, he's Ian Malcolm.

Chris (01:07:04):
He's like, literally Ian Malcolm. Anyway, so this article, and there was actually even ended up writing a book centered around it. But the article is entitled the Case against Perfection. Here's what I found steadying in the article. And as an aside, he says this idea is actually derived, by the way, from a theologian named William F. May, just to make sure I'm giving the right credit here. But in this article, he posits that there are two types of love, or at least there is a particular axis along which you can categorize love into two different kinds. The first kind, he says, is accepting love. The second is transforming love. Accepting love affirms someone's being, and transforming love seeks their well being, and if they are in balance, each corrects for the excesses of the other. By the way, this was proposed.

(01:07:54):
I'm saying this as these are two types of love, because I think that this is very universally applicable.

Kayla (01:08:01):
Okay.

Chris (01:08:02):
It was proposed initially as there are two types of love that parents give to their children.

Kayla (01:08:06):
Okay?

Chris (01:08:07):
So that will make some of these quotes make more sense when they start talking about parents and children.

Kayla (01:08:11):
Got it.

Chris (01:08:11):
It also, like, has a lot to do with eugenics, and that's where the parent children analogy comes in.

Kayla (01:08:18):
Sure, sure.

Chris (01:08:19):
I just didn't state it that way initially because I think it's very universally applicable to any type of loving relationship. Anyway, if they are in balance, transforming and accepting love, each corrects for the excesses of the other, so they're not hard concepts like, you probably already kind of get it right. Accepting love is what it sounds like, affirming that which is loving a son or daughter, unconditionally forgiving your husband for an unspeakable crime, such as hosting a podcast. Transforming love is also kind of what it sounds like. That's the kind of love that makes you want to see your child succeed and thrive, or the kind of love that lets you support your husband in his quest to become a better person and stop podcasting. But you're not gonna laugh at that at all.

Kayla (01:09:01):
I got really confused as to when you stopped doing the quote, and when you were you, and I was like, what's happening here?

Chris (01:09:09):
Sorry, I did a terrible job. That's no, this guy is actually quote making. He's talking about how I shouldn't be podcasting. It's very precious.

Kayla (01:09:17):
I was like, that joke's really on point. But that was you making the joke.

Chris (01:09:22):
Okay? Your interpretation was way funnier than the actual joke.

Kayla (01:09:27):
I love you enough to allow you to do your podcast.

Chris (01:09:30):
Thanks. But the balance is the key, right? So this is how. Here, I'll start telling you what I'm quoting now. So this is how William May, the aforementioned theologian, it's the quote within a quote. This is how he puts it. Parents find it difficult to maintain an equilibrium between the two sides of love. Accepting love without transforming love slides into indulgence and finally neglect. Transforming love without accepting love badgers and finally rejects, end quote, and what Sandel ultimately posits is that the eugenic project represents a sort of apotheosis, a final boss, if you will, of the victory of transformative love over accepting love wildly out of balance and thus ultimately unavoidably pernicious.

(01:10:17):
Even if you were able to somehow make the science work perfectly and keep state coercion at bay, not just because it is a powerful tool for social class dominance, which it is, and not just because it is sloppy pseudoscience, which it is, but because it robs humanity of the great gift of mindfully contemplating the unfolding of our time on earth. Sandel if bioengineering made the myth of the self made man come true, it would be difficult to view our talents as gifts for which we are indebted, rather than as achievements for which we are responsible. This would transform three key features of our moral humility, responsibility and solidarity. In a social world that prizes mastery and control. Parenthood is a school for humility.

(01:11:05):
That we care deeply about our children and yet cannot choose the kind we want teaches parents to be open to the unbidden. Such openness is disposition worth affirming, not only within families but in the wider world as well. It invites us to abide the unexpected, to live with dissonance, to reign in the impulse to control a gattaca like world in which parents become accustomed to specifying the sex and genetic traits of their children would be a world inhospitable to the unbidden, a gated community writ large. The awareness that our talents and abilities are not wholly our own doing restrains our tendency towards hubris. This demand for performance and perfection animates the impulse to rail against the given. Sandel. The deepest moral objection to enhancement lies less in the perfection it seeks than in the human disposition it expresses and promotes.

(01:12:00):
For example, the parental desire for a child to be of a certain genetic quality is incompatible with the special kind of unconditional love parents should have for their children, he writes, and he's talking about may again here. To appreciate children as gifts is to accept them as they come, not as objects of our design or products of our will or instruments of our ambition. End quote.

Kayla (01:12:23):
As gifts or as gifs. Sorry.

Chris (01:12:28):
As gifs of our ambition.

Kayla (01:12:33):
That is extremely profound. Yeah, I'm gonna be thinking about that for. I don't know if I have a great, like. Here's my pithy reaction to that.

Chris (01:12:41):
Give me your 140 character hot tape.

Kayla (01:12:44):
But I'll be thinking about that for a while. And that.

Chris (01:12:46):
Me too.

Kayla (01:12:49):
That feels a lot more that feels a lot better to contemplate than some of the stuff we've been having to contemplate with these TESCREAL episodes.

Chris (01:12:58):
Yeah, and it really helps. Again, it helps me. It gives me a framework, a little scaffolding onto which I can kind of, like, help hang the different ideas that I'm, like, being buffeted with all this research. And we've talked about a bunch of scenarios, right? Like, we talked about the scenario earlier of, like, what. What if we can sex select? And what if we can do this? And what about this scenario? Wouldn't that be bad? Like, there's a lot of what ifs in this, and a lot of sort of, like, positing different scenarios and asking about what Doctor Watson thought and whatever. In the case against perfection article, Sandel also draws upon such scenarios to help distill the discussion and the ideas of this. He writes, these scenarios raise a hard question. If it is morally troubling to contemplate.

(01:13:43):
And then he talks about the scenarios, like stuff we've talked about. If it is morally troubling to contemplate these scenarios, doesn't this suggest that something is wrong with acting on any eugenic preference, even when no state coercion is involved? Removing the coercion does not vindicate eugenics. The problem with eugenics in genetic engineering is that they represent the one sided triumph of willfulness over giftedness, of dominion over reverence, of molding over beholding. Why, we may wonder, should we worry about this triumph? Why not shake off our unease about genetic enhancement as so much superstition? What would be lost if biotechnology dissolved our sense of giftedness? It is more plausible to view genetic engineering as the ultimate expression of our resolve to see ourselves astride the world, the masters of our nature. But that promise of mastery is flawed.

(01:14:36):
It threatens to banish our appreciation of life as a gift and to leave us with nothing to affirm or behold outside our own will. This is Chris, this is Kayla, and.

Kayla (01:14:50):
This is Ben Culter. Just weird.

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S6E22 - The Germ Makers (Eugenics, pt2)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}S6E22 - The Germ Makers (Eugenics, pt2)