No I’m not a fascist (at least I hope not…)

I’m trying to understand why we’ve normalised the idea of eugenics in dogs (e.g. golden retrievers are friendly and smart, chihuahas are aggressive, etc.)¹ but find the idea of racial classification in humans abhorrent.

I can sort of see it from the idea that Nurture (culture and upbringing) would have a greater effect on a human’s characteristics than Nature would.

At the same time, my family tree has many twins and I’ve noticed that the identical ones have similar outcomes in life, whereas the fraternal ones (even the ones that look very similar) don’t really (N=3).

Maybe dog culture is not a thing, and that’s why people are happy to make these sweeping generalizations on dog characterics?

I’m lost a little

1: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/df/74/f7/df74f716c3a70f59aeb468152e4be927.png

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    8 months ago

    with the general idea that genetics can influence things like personality, intelligence etc. The latter is pretty much undisputed

    Actually, no.

    Personality isn’t very inheritable.

    There’s nature and nurture.

    And personality is almost all nurture.

    In dogs, and humans.

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        8 months ago

        That only makes sense if someone is completely ignorant of how much human variation there is and how many different things affect something as general as “personality”

        But I don’t think facts or logic will do much to change your mind about eugenics.

      • protist@mander.xyzEnglish
        0·
        8 months ago

        To be clear, personality is incredibly heritable, even beyond personality disorders. People arrive here with all sorts of proclivities related to mood, intelligence, empathy, and more, which is then filtered and changed through their experiences. Everyone has a different starting place related to personality. Twin studies have shown this over and over