h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Effers,

"You call that me being hostile, Dogs"

Oops, yes that was a bit of a strong term to use.

"I'm impatient that so many men just don't see that equations, logic, reason amount to nothing more than a hill of beans when it comes to the way issues are discussed about harsh practical reality. The hard evidence. The best teacher of all."

Reason doesn't tell us what we should do, but can help us to explore. We can use it to help understand ourselves and our own motivations better, and sometimes to change. In this discussion here, I'm not trying to push you or anyone into agreeing that we ought to be all for sex selection, just trying to explore exactly why we think what we do. Sort of like group therapy with ideas.

"Were we to have this same discussion in a 100 years time, I optimistically hope it would make more sense, and I would be less mildly irritated with you, because the issues would have become neutral in a sociolgical sense."

OK so just to antagonise you again: in 100 years time when hopefully all traces of sexism have vanished, how would you feel about people being allowed to choose the sex of their child (for individual, rather than social reasons)?

"Revolutionary types like me always end up getting a bit impatient with idealists and theorists when it comes to the hard realities of real life, and all the power structures in place that make certain issues any thing other than neutral."

As Ed said once before I think, excusing perhaps one of my many social faux pas, I like to push ideas to their logical extremes to see what they look like - I find it useful. But I'm completely with you about the dangers of mistaking our abstractions for reality. You might find this blog entry I wrote interesting:

http://thesamovar.wordpress.com/2007/12/23/looking-for-the-simple-explanation/

>I wonder if people are against things like sex selection because of some idea that it's not natural.<

That's precisely *not* *my* reason. Mine is political. Hard and simple.

Cheers Dogs.

Shall check out your blog entry tomorrow.

"
The Y-chromosome is in a mess — a genetic ruin littered with molecular damage. Why is it such a shambles? Originally, the Y-chromosome was a perfectly respectable chromosome, just like the others, with a collection of genes doing all sorts of useful things — but its fate was sealed when it took on the mantle of deciding sex.

This probably happened in the early ancestors of the mammals, perhaps 100m years ago when they were small, insignificant creatures doing their best to avoid the ruling dynasty of the time — the dinosaurs. A mutation on one of those ancestral chromosomes suddenly, and quite by chance, enabled it to switch on the pathway to male development.

The problem is that the Y-chromosome has never been able to heal itself. Unlike X-chromosomes, which pair up and swap genes to minimise bad mutations, he Y-chromosome, which has no partner, cannot repair the damage inflicted by mutations, which keep accumulating. Like the face of the moon, still pitted by craters from all the meteors that have ever fallen onto its surface, Y-chromosomes cannot heal their own scars. It is a dying chromosome and one day it will become extinct.
"

http://www.gynarchy.org/texts/bryansykes2.htm

~~~

Of course this does not take technological intervention, such as genetic engineering, into account

~~~

Ed

<>

There's a miscarriage of justice here in blaming God....or at least double standards applied by you!

mikey

>>"the only thing amnioscentesis might have told us was the probability of an event that we wouldn't have regarded as a negative consequence"

>>It might have told you that there was "a high risk of gross suffering for the child" though?

Ah, no. It wouldn't. All it would have told us was probability of Downs Syndrome, severity unknown. And in my wife's twin pregnancy, the test would have had a high margin of error. Plus it would have confered a risk of miscarriage...this after a previous, recent (god-induced) one. Another term to add to the equation.

Which brings me to Frs...

I slightly sympathise with your dislike of Dogster's (let's call it) Vulcan-like stance. But I take it...and maybe he can comment on this...that he's role-playing. We need the logic as much as the emotion.

Damn wrong for you to make a sexist point of it, though. I *hope* you realise by now that my own attitude towards this issue is not sexist (do the extent that I am capable of overcoming my dreadful hormonal heritage). The sort of logic Dogster and I are playing through is *not* a male-female thing (women are even allowed to be scientists nowadays ). All I'm actually doing is unpicking the various strands that would have been going through my wife's and my mind at the time. We all do this sort of thing - although I doubt I was conscious of it at the time. It's only post hoc that I can express the decision process clearly.

Hi Ed,

I went out with a redhead once.

No hair, just a red head.



Gif

Hi Ed, Mikey,

>...*some* think that foetuses shoiuld be safe within their mother's womb. Not god, obviously.

I saw a talk by Lord Winston where he said that 80% of conceptions end in spontaneous abortion, mostly before the woman realises she is pregnant. (Others disagree and go for something more like 50%; it's hard to measure but it's definitely a high percentage.) So nothing we humans are likely to be able to do is ever going to make the womb anything other than the most dangerous place to be.

>There's a miscarriage of justice here in blaming God....or at least double standards applied by you!

I don't think Ed is blaming God; I think he's pointing out evidence that God doesn't exist (or at least, not a God like the Christian conception of one). How, from a Christian standpoint, is the high incidence of spontaneous abortion explained?

Gif

>>>I wonder if people are against things like sex selection because of some idea that it's not natural.<

FRS.
>>That's precisely *not* *my* reason. Mine is political. Hard and simple.

That. Is. Brilliant.

Our whole environment - including the urban, technological is 'natural'. Politics is about how we choose to run it.

Cor!...Frs...Dogs...you give good convo.

>>There's a miscarriage of justice here in blaming God....or at least double standards applied by you!

Not double standards, M. Satire. For avoidance of doubt: I do not believe in god. I cannot remotely blame a non-existent god for anything. But any *believer* who is against abortion has to ask themselves why their god favours it.

>>I went out with a redhead once.

I've had relations/ With wokmen of all nations...
Billy Bragg, 'Sexuality'.

Actually......that's true. Let's think...
English
Canadian
Trinidadian Asian
Guyanan black/Chinese
German
American
Ghanaian
New Zealand
Scottish.

But who's counting.

Hi Dogster,

>This seems reasonable, but isn't that just setting a bound on the amount of genetic screening or modification we should do?

Well, not a firm bound. Not even the most ardent eugenecist is suggesting we should all be genetically identical clones with zero variation. And of course at the other extreme there is no amount of variation that will make us completely immune from extinction (trilobites were one of the most diverse groups of all time). But in general - and remembering that we're playing the game that evolutionary survival is the only reason we're considering - more variation is better.

>But would parents want that?

I certainly wouldn't; but the challenge I set myself was to explain how evolution opposes eugenics. Morality and choice are something separate.

>I want to get to the bottom of something that has puzzled me for a long time - the moral case for why at an individual level parents shouldn't choose the sex of their child

I'd say it's the 'golden rule' which says you should act as you would like others to act. Unless you want to live in a society where everyone chooses the sex of their child, you shouldn't choose the sex of your own child. The same reason people don't (generally) cheat, steal or lie.

>I wonder if people are against things like sex selection because of some idea that it's not natural.

I'm sure some people are, but not me. What is the 'natural' survival rate to adulthood of human babies? Or the 'natural' survival rate of human mothers during birth?

No, I'll opt for highly unnatural births, thanks all the same. But I still think sex selection is a bad idea.



As to selection for disabilities; my objection to that would be that it is harmful to the child. If genetic selection is being done for the sake of the child, you could at least make a case for it (and I would support it in the case of things like blindness, which have a large detriment to the child and no obvious benefits). But when selecting for a disability, it's clearly being done for the benefit of the parents. They are using their child as a means, not an end.

>in 100 years time when hopefully all traces of sexism have vanished, how would you feel about people being allowed to choose the sex of their child

Ah, but if *all* traces of sexism have vanished, why would anyone *want* to choose the sex of their child?

Gif

wokmen? that would be 'women', not 'workmen'.

>>Ah, but if *all* traces of sexism have vanished, why would anyone *want* to choose the sex of their child?

Is it sexist to like baby girls (or boys)?
Is it racist to adore Women of Colour?
Is it homophobic to prefer sex with a different sex to one's own?

Depnds on how evolved the individual is, maybe.

Surely even if we did get all sexist about it and select for, say boys, girls would then become more valuable/powerful because you'd have all these straight men looking for wives so then everyone would start selecting for girls which would in turn make boys the better choice and, after a few thousand (or hundred thousand) years it'd kinda balance itself out?


Obviously, in this scenario, gay men would having a bonanza to begin with

Sorry if I seemed to be jumping on you Fanny Im just very sensitive when it comes to one sided eulogising over Winston Churchill. There's a lot of things I pour into a post sometimes that isnt always pertinent to the post Im replying to.




Still not happy about your use of the entirely *chav* thing. You wouldnt so easily bandy about a the *n* word, but it is intended as much the same thing.

"Sorry blicks but you are no chav. Maybe superficially. My definition of chav *always* includes, along with the other stuff which I like, the fundamental of taking pride in being 'thick', an affectation of course; but making a virtue of being stupid isn't anythingI've noticed you doing.

I am a chav I got over 70% on the stupid little test on the site you linked to. There is nothing you could teach a lot of the kids, who because of social conventions, treat books the way vampires treat garlic about fitting (or illegally unfitting) car stereos. What you're doing is using your attitude to learning in the same way as the people who wrote "The Bell Curve" used IQ tests.

Dont get me wrong dealing with *chav* kids nearly everyday makes me very weary of the attitudes of a lot of people who live around me but that doesnt mean that i need to classify them seperately fromt he rest of humanity. You might ignore the superficial elements that many talk about but even using the word gives it extra coinage it does not deserve.

When you mention an unwillingness to learn one name springs to mind.

It's a nasty name and I ve come to think of you as someone who's better than the ignorant and nasty people who tend to use it.

one love

As to selection for disabilities: F19585?thread=5196520

<>

Why?

Nobody's perfect, but while Churchill didn't win the war single-handedly it's quite possible that the war wouldn't have been won at all without him. He was unerring and determined in his opposition to Hitler.

He may have had his faults (and, despite being a great war-leader, the voters ousted him at the general election right after the war), but he is one of our great heroes for what he did.

"English
Canadian
Trinidadian Asian
Guyanan black/Chinese
German
American
Ghanaian
New Zealand
Scottish.

But who's counting.


No one should be counting. I once said something similar to friends and one of them said it sounded more like stamp collecting.

One of our great heroes of the second world war. Get real.

He err chomped on cigars stayed up late and said a lot of very inspirational things.

Im peed off by this the same as I am by Rosa Parkes gettingless press than MLK. Figure heads arent generally the ones making the big sacrifices and putting their own necks on the line. Churchill wasnt defusing bombs, sitting in a trenches or going without food for the war effort. He did some great things but its no surprise that the people who went to public schools and university when writting history books play up the role of someone from their background and almost forget to mention the millions who put their actually put their backs into the war effort who didnt go to public schools etc...etc...