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

  • dariusj18@lemmy.world
    0·
    7 months ago

    Firstly, there are plenty of peoyeho believe that humans have made terrible mistakes when selectively breeding dogs. See the oft-reposted “dog breeds then be now” image. Which leads into the primary technical reason eugenics doesn’t work, the fallibility of human decision making combined with the lack of perfect information.

    Some traits may seem undesirable, however biodiversity is very important for survivability, and we are already very non-diverse genetically. Consider sickle cell anemia, a blood disease caused by a genetic trait. However part of the trait that causes it also offers protection from malaria.

    Second is the controversial aspect. Who gets to decide which traits are desirable? If left up to individuals we would be awash with poorly informed trends, but if some central authority were given control, it could never be apolitical and would certainly devolve from any scientific basis into ideology.