I was watching My Side of the Mountain with my son when "Sam", the boy in the movie, mentioned something. He was commenting on how the deer were to sure footed in the snow and if he knew that his family would be living in the mountains a million years from now that he'd marry a slender footed wife and begin breeding a new line of people with hooves.

Which started the Rabban-o-Wonder. What if we were engaged in a selective breeding process with people, choosing the best qualities and charactistics to pass on to the next generation based on genetics and survival, not love and personal compatibility?

I find the notion rather interesting. Sure, it makes for a very Orwellian world, but I find the idea facinating. Instead of worrying about advanced gene manipulation, you'll just need a license to procreate (after medical testing) in order to produce the best child possible for the species.

I wonder how many generations it would take to really start seeing some results. I'm also curious how our species would change and how society would change with it. Would there be a "breeder" class? Manditory sterilizations? A true comglomeration of all races?

Sure, its kinda like Gattaca , but in a more natural way.

I wonder...

Isn't that what happens naturally? I thought 'love' WAS selective breeding, it's to make sure two people who are compatible for advancing their babies genetically do so.
Like, you wouldn't marry someone you thought was ill, ugly and stupid.
is personal compatibility not to do with genes anyway?

What you're suggesting is exactly the same... Just with more conscious though involved... And with other-people's ideas influencing the process too.

*neuter the proles!!*

Ok... I guess it only makes sense in a creationists mind...

But Rabban... North Korea...

I formally announce my willingness to "selectively breed" with Michelle Pfeiffer and Aishwarya Rai. I do this not for personal gain or enrichment, but for the betterment of Mankind.

Hmm Rabban we did not know you were into dating girls with hooves. 8o

I guess for TT we could breed with those with a 'patience' gene , or those form the geek pool.

@ Bloop - I don't think so, at least not all the way. Many a man or woman has fallen for the wrong sort of person or married someone who's disease prone, so that's not the best choice to make based on genetics. That's more of what I'm talking about. Say, we really, really want to win Men's Basketball in the 2108 Olympics. We should start pairing up couples who are tall, strong, quick, and smart and repeat until their great-grand children are ready to play. ;) Maybe we should move towards people who can stand extreme weather conditions or survive on very little food and water. Maybe every woman needs Mariah Carey's figure while the guys need to have Lance Armstrongs'.

@ Jesus Freak - I don't really understand where you're coming from. I would think an evolutionist could see the logic in such a program. And what's North Korea got to do with it? Are they already breeding certain traits in their people?

Who's in control of all this breeding anyway? Its just too haphazard. I think we need a Ministry of Family Planning, immediately!

Last edited: Thursday, April 27, 2006 at 1:16:49 PM

Hitler was kinda on that track.

^ For once I agree with you :P. This would just be scary. I sincerely hope Rabban is joking.

Rabban, Bloop wasnt seeing your point and it seemed he was looking at it in a evolutionistic way.

Yes North Korea is kinda breeding... You can marry whoever you like but people who have dieases(i.e. The lame, deaf, dumb, HIV people etc.) can't "breed"

Last edited: Thursday, April 27, 2006 at 1:52:55 PM

It would probably be an easier path if we choose to provide minimal standards of living, heath-care, education, good parenting, and leadership by example for all our citizens.

^ wouldn't exist.

Sorry, I thought this was like that "Describe the person above you" diddy.

Last edited: Thursday, April 27, 2006 at 4:16:00 PM

^ Definitely "snip-em"

Umm... Here's a heads up. Selective breeding is currently being induced on humans right now--- mostly unintentially.

Examples.

U.S. Test scores are consistantly dropping indicating a decrease in the average intellegence.
Those with higher IQ's are having less children (Professional, College Educated, Gifted artisans etc) while those with lower IQ's are having more (welfare, immigrants, druggies etc.)
_{No... I am not saying that all individuals in either group are more or less intelligent just the average is}
i.e. Bush is President for a reason.

Modern Medicine has made it so that individuals with debilitating genetic diseases, or beyond the age of normal reproduction able to reproduce.
A dramatic increase in many genetic diseases is occuring as a result.

So basically we are selecting against healthy intelligent individuals at this point.

So in conclusion.......... We're screwed. :S

Last edited: Thursday, April 27, 2006 at 9:04:33 PM

It all goes back to Adam and eve
when their own thoughts had deceived them
into taking the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil
which god had never told then to eat from...
and the devil told it would make the as wise as god...

Didn't "Jimmy the Greek" get fired from network t.v. For saying similar things about the Black athelete?
How come Rabba-Dabba-Doo doesn't have a cool set of Mod-stars?
^What? No it doesn't.

The screwed part....

I think V's getting where I'm coming from a bit. I'm just curious about the subject. Since we usually breed animals so that we have the best, strongest, meatest, healthiest animals for our use and consumption, it just seemed like a logical progression to think about it as applied to people. We're already starting to tinker with ourselves through genetic manipulation and I'm sure the more we learn, the more we'll try and the more we'll have to deal with the ethical issues surrounding the topic. I wonder if it would be more acceptable to match mates based on their genes rather than letting love do the picking and use genetic engineering to fix any problems. So take V's thought a step farther, those who breed the most are least able to care for their young. It always seems strange to me when I see 3rd world families having several kids, many sick and malnourished. I don't know.

I also I thought this might be a little fun too, thinking about what characterists we'd want to see passed down.

Kind of rambling up there Rabban.

Lets see if I can put this in a logical manner....

Natural selection is the causitive agent of evolution.

Domesticated species have over time been change based upon strong selection presure "Artificially" applied by human beings. This is in contrast to "Natural" selection where the environment is the selecting force and animals that are more fit for the enviroment reproduce. Humans have great prejudices when it comes to the breeding of humans (slavery, is very stongly associated, and this directly conflicts with many religious dogmas) so I doubt there will ever be any "breeding" of humans.

Next topic

Individuals that are less equiped to take care of their young must have more children to gaurentee that a few will survive. This is a very common strategy in the reproductive efforts of almost all species. The massive growth in the human population currently is a direct result from medicine and agricultural technology.

Humans like think of themselves as superior beings (god-like... See J-Freak above). The thought of tampering with ourselves the same way that we do with other species is very abhorent. It means that we would taking into our hands the responsibilities of the divine creator (playing God). For many strongly religious people they cannot even think about this in fun because it so drastically conflicts with their core ideology.

Besides the only way to do it would be to sterilize any individual that had undesirable traits and control the reproduction of the select few. Kind of brutal. XD

Now I really need to try to go get some sleep so I can get back to causing "artificial" selection on a whole bunch of melons in the morning.

Last edited: Friday, April 28, 2006 at 8:56:24 PM

India used to be on the right track: Arranged marriages and a caste system. The only thing we would have to add is some sort of mass sterilization added to the food supply...

Or maybe we could start colonizing other planets, only allowing the top genetic canidates to go, thus producing a planetary brain drain. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_drain

Sure, earth would be screwed. But think how cool the moon people would be. Then later they could return and enslave us inferior earthlings to do their bidding. I for one welcome our genetically superior moon man overlords.

Is your namesake showing through, Rabban? Been reading too much Dune, thinking the Bene Gesserit got it right? ;)

Actually, you'd want to avoid narrowing the gene pool down too much. One of the reasons that highly contagious plagues in the past didn't wipe out entire populations is the diversity of the gene pool: a wide-enough variety helps the odds that some people survive.

The harsh realization that messes this sort of scheme up is when you realize that genetically, you are pretty average and would not be in on the breeding.

Hmmmmm, so let's correlate "Rural vs. Urban" to "2004 Presidential Voting By County": (red/blue=Bush/Kerry, but on a purple spectrum continuum based on percentage, not winner-take-all red or blue)

This, and more interesting graphics related to this topic can be found here:
url=http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/JAVA/election2004/

Last edited: Friday, April 28, 2006 at 11:20:03 PM

^ now re-ask your question about why GW may have sounded smarter before the presidential run...

Upon futher pondering, while it makes for a good snipe, it isn't completely fair, as many other factors would have to be considered. One example, there are existing population already in the urban areas that isn't part of the "brain" shift, which gets left behind. Breeding in these areas continues and the net urban brain trust gets watered down (for lack of a better term).

The problem with this type of stuff is that the conversation starts to sound elitist and discounts the value of a large segment of the population...

I have a feeling that the urban/rural party split has a lot more to do with the differences of perception on issue than "brains." For example, preserving the enviroment feels like a much bigger issue to someone living in a smog filled city. Likewise welfare systems don't seem important in a small town that doesn't have a big homeless problem. (Which is why I'm all for decentralized governements that can address the needs on a more local scale. Too bad most people can't name their city level representives...)

Now I've fully digressed from the topic......

Last edited: Saturday, April 29, 2006 at 4:17:19 AM

Hey, maybe match.com should add "breedable genetic attributes" to it's match making variables.

Does eHarmony.com's personality profile system constitue a form of selective breeding? Traditionaly matches were based primarily on geographic proximity and chance encounters, with these new site making matches based on specific attributes, it gets you a step closer.

Maybe if we made it manditory we could get Rabby's new era of genetic supremicy underway.

Last edited: Saturday, April 29, 2006 at 4:18:29 AM

All right Rabban your question has got my mad scientist juices working so here it goes. XD

How to selectively breed humans.
^{A brief introduction for E.T.}

First, is to pick some breeding goals.
Suggestions
1) High intelligence
2) High Musculature
3) Endurance to extreme climates (living on different planets, etc.)
4) Visual Appeal
5) Artistic ability
6) Dexterity
7) Leadership ability
8) Enjoyment of the anal probe that LGM is so fond of. :)
Plus many more as the need requires.

Next is to establish the methodology by which you will use.

In order to receive the most rapid results the creation of inbred lines will be required. I suggest a reasonable number would be about 1000 unique pedigrees. Selecting for the most diverse genetic differences and unique alleles would create these pedigrees. These pedigrees would need to be made as isogenic as possible by sibling breeding or perhaps by double haploid techniques on the female. The heterozygosity presented by the male would take some time to neutralize but a few generations would take care of it. In each of these pedigrees I recommend at least 100 breeding pairs. This would give a large enough size for the emergence of unique mutations. I would recommend a goal of 10 offspring for each breeding pair 15 would be better but is not necessarily obtainable with human biology. This will give you adequate numbers of individuals to select the next generation. I would also recommend that you also allow room for a fairly large number of wild types to reproduce to create new mutations.

Early generation material will be full of debilitating recessive alleles and careful work will need to be done to eliminate these from the gene pool. Some backcrossing programs will probably have to be done. This however, will allow you completely map the human genome and sequence the DNA.

As humans also are fairly slow to reach sexual maturity at least 200 Earth years (12-15 generations) will probably be required until you have reach a adequate level of isogenicity. During these generations selection for desirable traits should be highly emphasized while being very careful that you do not loose genetic diversity.

At this point you can begin doing many, many crosses and then sib's to see if you can stack multiple desirable traits into 10 or 15 new pedigrees. You can speed up this process by sequencing the entire genome of the parentals and following generations.

Finally, from this point the only limitations to what you can create are time and the genetic restrictions of the species.

Last edited: Saturday, April 29, 2006 at 3:17:31 PM

I'm sure selective breeding is quite effective. Considering the stereotypical "perfect" female in most men's eyes, it would be fun to see just how much the IQ has dropped and breast-size has increased in the last 200 years. :P

Of course, then I think of what women consider to be the "perfect man".....I guess all of us computer-geeks are just random mutations or something....

- Bomb...James Bomb

Anyone read the 'alduous huxley' book; 'a brave new world'?

Think 1984... Only more to do with the selective breeding and indoctrination of the proletariat.

...good read

If you want to make humans better find a way to do so that doesn't put us in at tight spot whenever the climate changes or a disease spreads through the species.

Suprisingly, we are currently in an Ice Age. No seriously, we're just in one of the interrupting warm spots. On average these warm spots last only 20,000 years, we know this from the layers in Antartica's glaciers. The current warm spell has been around for just about 20,00 years, we should plung into a glacial cycle very soon.

The glacial records, specifically the Vostok Ice Core, have shown that switches between the glacial and interglacial stages are very fast, because they have positive feedback. Once it is cool enough that ice can remain one the ground year round at somewhat lower latitudes, they will reflect sunlight causing further cooling and more accumulation of snow.

Fortunately, our Earth doesn't get totally frozen over very often and usually it stops well short of that.

But the point is, if the change to the glacial cycle occurs in a matter of decades, which it has done, having everyone almost the same will be very bad.

When a species is in an easy time, it will not suffer the burden of natural selection as much and will develop mutations, some of which are some what problematic, will not be erased. But if the diversity is there when things change, that minor setback may turn into a huge advantage, allowing the species to survive.

Thus you should only make super-humans a small part of the population.

"Civilization exists by geologic consent, subject to change without notice."
-Will Durant

What if we introduced selective breeding?

Do we really want someone on this forum with stars like that?!?!
Think of the consequences! :P B)

Last edited: Thursday, May 11, 2006 at 9:30:15 AM

I get Scarlet Johansen.

Hitler without genocide

Selective breeding has been going on for a long time.
England, Royalty, for example.
Brothers and sisters breeding to keep the royalty pure.
LOL

You would have never been born

I want this to go away now. Bad title and didn't really pan out the way I had hoped.