# Why Is Eugenics Bad

> While reading a book, I learned that transhumanism was derived from eugenics (see: Transhumanism and Eugenics). Even though I do not know much about transhumanism, I became wary of it, and in order to make that wariness more concrete, I ended up organizing my thoughts on why eugenics is bad. Of course I know that eugenics is bad (it feels bad even to my own moral intuitions, everyone around me says it is bad, and all sorts of articles and books say it is bad), but I do not think I had ever really thought deeply for myself about exactly why it is bad. I believe that if I understand well why eugenics is bad, I will be better able to identify and be on guard against concepts or attempts that may not appear to be eugenic at first glance but are in fact eugenic.

While reading a book, I learned that <transhumanism> was derived from [eugenics](https://wiki.g15e.com/pages/Eugenics.txt) (see: [Transhumanism and Eugenics](https://wiki.g15e.com/pages/Transhumanism%20and%20eugenics.txt)). Even though I do not know much about transhumanism, I became wary of it, and in order to make that wariness more concrete, I ended up organizing my thoughts on why eugenics is bad. Of course I know that eugenics is bad (it feels bad even to my own moral intuitions, everyone around me says it is bad, and all sorts of articles and books say it is bad), but I do not think I had ever really thought deeply for myself about exactly why it is bad. I believe that if I understand well why eugenics is bad, I will be better able to identify and be on guard against concepts or attempts that may not appear to be eugenic at first glance but are in fact eugenic.

## Is Something Bad If It Was Derived from Eugenics?

The following logical fallacy is called the <fallacy of origins>.

1. X is bad.
2. Y originated from X.
3. Therefore Y is bad.

The inference that transhumanism originated from eugenics, therefore transhumanism is unconditionally bad, is likewise a fallacy of origins. To clarify why eugenics is bad, and more specifically what aspects of transhumanism (or any arbitrary concept related to eugenics) we should be wary of, additional reasoning is needed.

## Is It Bad to Use Artificial Means to Make Humans Fit Some Standard?

What if we used as our criterion: "It is bad to set some standard and use artificial means to make humans fit that standard"? Let us consider whether this criterion can distinguish the following two cases.

- I wear glasses in order to improve my eyesight.
- Some citizens are subjected to <forced sterilization> in order to improve the "purity of the national bloodline."

Let us examine whether it is a problem for me to buy and wear glasses in order to improve my eyesight.

- **"Set some standard"**: Movie theaters, lecture halls, and even designs for living room sizes that take into account the distance between the TV and the sofa all presuppose some standard regarding eyesight (a category of normal vision).
- **"To make humans fit"**: If cost and efficiency were no concern, there would be ways to fit the environment to humans instead of fitting humans to the environment. For example, if there were a great variety of screening rooms designed for different levels of eyesight, people could watch movies without wearing glasses. The problem, however, is that the cost would become excessively large. The same goes for lecture halls and so on. In the end, with cost-effectiveness in mind, instead of fitting the environment to humans, we are making humans fit the environment.
- **"Use artificial means"**: People whose eyesight falls outside the "normal range" must use artificial means such as surgery or prescription glasses in order to have experiences similar to those of others.

According to this assessment, the current situation in which one must wear glasses in order to improve eyesight is unjust. That is not entirely wrong, but the conclusion that it is bad to a degree indistinguishable from eugenics is extremely strange.

## Other Criteria

The above conclusion (that wearing glasses and eugenic ethnic cleansing are similarly bad) strongly conflicts with my moral intuition. I suspect others would think similarly. In order to arrive at <reflective equilibrium>, let us add a few items.

- Is the standard of "improvement" or "goodness" reasonable?
- Who defines the standard of "improvement" or "goodness," and through what process? Are plural standards allowed?
- Is individual autonomy guaranteed with respect to whether to accept the standard? Is state power coercing it? Is there implicit or social pressure?
- Are humans regarded solely as means for other ends? That is, are humans being [objectified](https://wiki.g15e.com/pages/Objectification.txt)?
- (If one is a <consequentialist>) Does it lead to good outcomes?

Let us make a table and compare them.

|         | Ethnic cleansing | Wearing glasses |
| ------- | ---- | ---- |
| Reasonableness of the standard | X    | ?    |
| Fairness of the process | X    | X    |
| Autonomy     | X    | X    |
| Respect for humanity  | X    | ?    |
| Good outcomes   | X    | ?    |

Even seen this way, it still feels unsatisfactory. There does not seem to be a way to clearly distinguish wearing glasses as completely unproblematic and ethnic cleansing as wholly bad.

## Dichotomy vs. Difference in Degree

I think the problem lies not so much in the items listed above themselves as in the perspective that tries to evaluate each item as yes-or-no. Things like the reasonableness of a standard or autonomy are not matters of simply being present or absent, but matters of degree (see: [false dichotomy](https://wiki.g15e.com/pages/False%20dichotomy.txt)). Let us think of each item as a "difference in degree."

For example, instead of asking "Is the standard reasonable?" we should ask "How reasonable is the standard?" Another thought that comes to mind is that rather than treating a good score on a particular item as a "pass," it seems important to examine whether there are uniformly high scores across the whole set of items (<geometric mean> rather than <arithmetic mean>).

If we set things up this way and make the evaluation table again (omitted), eugenic ethnic cleansing comes out overwhelmingly more negative than wearing glasses on most items (that was my subjective assessment). The problems with eugenic ethnic cleansing are as follows.

- **Reasonableness of the standard**: The standard of "pure bloodline" was irrational and unscientific, and it also served as a convenient pretext to cover other political and economic aims (confiscation of property, forced labor, plunder of occupied territories, etc.).
- **Fairness/plurality of the process**: Even that absurd standard was set uniformly by state power, and no other standards were permitted. There was sometimes public support, but agitation driven by political aims played a large role.
- **Autonomy**: The standards thus established are forcibly "enforced" by the state.
- **Respect for humanity**: It not only reduces individual human beings to a bundle of certain characteristics, but also deprives them of personal autonomy and dignity.
- **Good outcomes**: Eugenic ethnic cleansing brought about some of the most grave and evil outcomes in human history.

It would be hard to say that wearing glasses scores highly on every item either, but it is no comparison to eugenics.

In the end, it seems there is no way to say "wearing glasses has no problem at all, and ethnic cleansing is completely bad" (because there clearly are problems with wearing glasses), but it does seem possible to say "both are bad, but there is an enormously large difference in how bad they are."

That level of conclusion seems to fit my subjective standards.

## The Reference Point: How Bad Must Something Be to "Fail"? 

The moment I think that "wearing glasses" cannot be perfectly rescued, the problem of the <slippery slope argument> immediately comes to mind. Someone might say, "If we allow wearing glasses, won't we eventually allow ethnic cleansing too?" Or they might make the argument in the opposite direction, trying either to push us into nihilism or to rescue eugenics.

But the claim that "there is a broad gray zone between a narrow white and a narrow black" does not thereby imply that "white or black do not exist," nor does it imply that "we cannot compare different grays as to which is closer to white or black."

Rather than "if it is not white, throw it away," it seems more useful to think, "What should we do to move a little closer to white than we are now?"

Of course, from the standpoint of someone designing institutions, one would somehow have to quantify things and establish artificial and discrete reference points (I honestly do not understand this very well either. I believe that if many institutions were made into appropriate continuous functions, a great many problems could be resolved much more rationally. That is a topic for another time), but that is not the context of the present discussion.

## Are Natural Means Good and Unnatural Means Bad?

Meanwhile, there is a tendency to distinguish interventions by means such as genetic engineering or implanting something in the brain from interventions by means such as wearing glasses or using a smartphone (the former being dangerous and the latter being acceptable), but this may be essentialism or the [naturalistic fallacy](https://wiki.g15e.com/pages/Naturalistic%20fallacy.txt), so we should be cautious about it. Criticism of <transhumanism> from this perspective is logically weak.

- **Essentialism**: The view that there is a difference between enhancing one's abilities by using paper, calculators, smartphones, and so on, and enhancing one's abilities by genetic engineering or neural chip implantation has an essentialist aspect, insofar as it regards what lies inside the boundary of the skull or skin as "something essential." (From the perspective of <extended cognition> or [embodied cognition](https://wiki.g15e.com/pages/Embodied%20cognition.txt))
- **Naturalistic fallacy**: After [drawing a dichotomy](https://wiki.g15e.com/en/pages/Dichotomy.txt) that treats relatively familiar and traditional tools such as paper, calculators, and smartphones as "natural," and relatively unfamiliar and new methods such as genetic engineering or neural chip implantation as "unnatural," thinking that "what is natural is good and what is unnatural is bad" is a logical fallacy because it derives a value proposition ("X is good") solely from a factual proposition ("X is natural").

Still, the direction of caution(?) matters. I would prefer not "let us be less wary of genetic engineering too, to the extent that we are of getting glasses fitted," but rather "we should not feel reassured uncritically just because something is a matter of getting glasses fitted."

I think the reason to examine precisely what is bad and why it is bad should be less about justifying some concept or attempt by saying, "After examining it, X is not bad, so it should be fine," and more about finding points of caution and improvement in some concept or attempt by saying, "I thought X was not dangerous, but after examining it, it seems we need to be wary." At least in the context of discussing [eugenics](https://wiki.g15e.com/pages/Eugenics.txt), that is so.

## Transhumanism

So then, how bad is transhumanism? If it is bad, why is it bad?

Since I know almost nothing about transhumanism, I am going to withhold judgment (see: [delaying opinion formation](https://wiki.g15e.com/pages/Be%20a%20slow%20opinionist.txt)). Just because it is an ideology derived from eugenics, one cannot conclude that it is bad (<fallacy of origins>), but I do think it is necessary to examine it critically with a sense of caution.

I hope that the criteria considered above will help when evaluating transhumanism. Thinking first about criteria of evaluation before knowing the topic has something in common with the practical method by which programmers prepare ways to verify a feature before implementing it ([test-driven development](https://wiki.g15e.com/pages/Test-driven%20development.txt)).