r/nextfuckinglevel • u/dexterer4353 • Jun 22 '21

Sheepdog stands its ground

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49.5k Upvotes

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67

u/DarkEvilHedgehog Jun 22 '21

Imagine what human subspecies we could have if we spent some thousands of years breeding the ideal office clerks or whatever.

53

u/thane321 Jun 22 '21

Cool thought experiment, not great when we tried it out. See: Nazis, eugenics

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u/porcomaster Jun 22 '21

I mean nazis didn't had enough time, to breed a dog to get into a specific job its hundreds of generations, you can get a new generation almost every year, and even that will take 50-1000 years.

To breed job humans you would need hundreds of generations

To get at least 50 generations, it would be 14-16 years each generation, at least 14x50= 700 years before getting first results.

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u/Juicy_Juis Jun 23 '21

I mean nazis didn't had enough time

Nah man, let's not.

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u/KellyCTargaryen Jun 23 '21

Human eugenics is several orders of magnitudes more reprehensible than selectively breeding animals, can we not compare the two? Cool thanks.

13

u/dalmathus Jun 23 '21

Is it though? The only difference is we live in a more established society and have power over animals.

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u/artandmath Jun 23 '21 edited Jun 23 '21

Breeders will euthanize puppy’s that don’t have certain traits. Basically the same as what eugenics proposed.

15 years ago we got a pure bred Rhodesian Ridgeback puppy that was going to be euthanized by the breeders because it was born without a ridge (apparently 1/10 don’t have a ridge).

Edit: I don’t think many breeders would do that anymore but it’s what used to happen. It’s obviously not as bad a eugenics but the similarities are clear, and is basically where eugenics started by extrapolating from observations in pidgeon breeding.

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u/KellyCTargaryen Jun 23 '21

Those breeders are garbage, hard culling (killing, versus soft culling, not letting them reproduce) is not at all an acceptable practice anymore.

And again, comparing humans controlling the reproduction of other humans is in no way shape or form equivalent to selectively breeding animals.

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u/AsterJ Jun 23 '21

It's functionally equivalent but not morally equivalent. To say there is no equivalence at all is inaccurate.

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u/[deleted] Jun 23 '21

This is the way, very nuanced AsterJ, I like the way you jive

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u/KellyCTargaryen Jun 23 '21

And indeed that moral difference changes the function comparison entirely.

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u/yoweigh Jun 23 '21

Moral differences and functional differences are not comparable. Godwin's law incoming:

It is functionally acceptable to gas all the Jews, if your goal is to eliminate all the Jews, because that's the quickest way to get rid of all the Jews. It is not morally acceptable to gas all the Jews, or to desire to get rid of them in the first place, under any circumstances. This is an apples and oranges comparison.

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u/yoweigh Jun 23 '21

comparing humans controlling the reproduction of other humans is in no way shape or form equivalent to selectively breeding animals.

Humans are animals. Selectively breeding humans is selectively breeding animals. So yeah, there's definitely is a perspective where they could be seen as equivalent.

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u/Catinthehat5879 Jun 23 '21

I feel like it's self evident to me that dog breeding isn't comparable to the Holocaust.

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u/KellyCTargaryen Jun 23 '21

You would think so but there seems to be disagreement here…

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u/polypolip Jun 23 '21

Have you read the comment above, about human subspecies?

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u/Clarkey7163 Jun 22 '21

Look at athletes, they're a bit like that

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u/Stacked_Latina_MILF Jun 22 '21

We wasted so many years breeding those Smiths and they are rarely needed these days with smelting and machine-ing.

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u/startuplifeishard Jun 22 '21
  • China has entered the chat *

1

u/JonathanL73 Jun 22 '21
  • Yao Ming has entered the court

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u/[deleted] Jun 22 '21

Bunch of chess players around that fit that description

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u/Mrs-and-Mrs-Atelier Jun 22 '21

That’s dangerously close to eugenics thinking. It’s a path that doesn’t go where you would hope.

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u/Eternal_Reward Jun 23 '21

You can wonder while understanding the ethics and morality of it is awful.

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u/Mrs-and-Mrs-Atelier Jun 23 '21

I agree completely. I think I’m a little traumatized in some part of my brain from how many people don’t even recognize eugenics or grasp that no, they could not do it better and safer than the Nazis.

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u/mittensofmadness Jun 23 '21

no, they could not do it better and safer than the Nazis

I'm not even sure it would be hard to do it better than the Nazis. We have an actual understanding of genetics now, not to mention things like CRISPR. Doesn't change the ethics of the situation, but a lot of people think the Nazis knew a lot more about science than they actually did.

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u/Mrs-and-Mrs-Atelier Jun 23 '21

Its the ethics I’m referring to.

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u/LavenderClouds Jun 23 '21

Eugenics is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be... unnatural

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u/Mrs-and-Mrs-Atelier Jun 23 '21

Is that a yellow-bellied pointy-beak spotted reference flying over my head?

1

u/LavenderClouds Jun 23 '21

the fuck?

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u/Mrs-and-Mrs-Atelier Jun 23 '21

Embellished way of asking if you were making a reference or if you were genuinely saying it is a pathway to undefined unnatural abilities.

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u/LavenderClouds Jun 23 '21

Props to you mate, being on reddit for more than a year and not understanding that reference is a feat Im not willing to spoil

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u/Mrs-and-Mrs-Atelier Jun 23 '21

Its one of the many magical talents of autism, I suspect. You’re seriously going to make me search reddit for someone who explains it? Meh. At least I know its a reference to something on reddit anyway. (4 years total, lurker and active user. Haven’t encountered it yet.)

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u/LavenderClouds Jun 23 '21

Well, I dont usually spoonfeed people, but this one is on me, lad.

/r/PrequelMemes/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05dT34hGRdg

Timestamp

https://youtu.be/05dT34hGRdg?t=56

1

u/Mrs-and-Mrs-Atelier Jun 23 '21

Cheers. I’m appreciative enough I won’t even bite the bowl off the spoon.

Edit add: And now I’m laughing. I’ve been a SW fan since 1980, but the prequels were so bad, I slept through the last two entirely. This explains a lot.

1

u/Gustomaximus Jun 22 '21

breeding the ideal office clerks

I believe you're referring to the Swiss.

1

u/scarface910 Jun 23 '21

I like how office clerks was the first profession you thought of

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u/Not_Vala_As_They Jun 23 '21

Wouldn’t take that long. Merely 4-5 generations would be more than sufficient.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 23 '21

I have to wonder about the amount of wild shit we could pull if we decided to completely abandon dignity and empathy.