John Cuthber

As I said, it's imperfect, but it's the best we can do- of course, in principle you can seek to measure "attractiveness" and allow for it using multivariate stats. What you are talking about is the extent to which society treats pairs of identical and pairs of non identical twins differently from each other. Now there's clearly some degree of "novelty value" in being an identical twin, but it's hard to see it making a huge difference to overall behaviour.

Wold you like to expand on that. For example would you like to cite something I have said which is actually wrong?

Yes, and that's likely to affect fraternal twins as much as it affects identical ones. It's not perfect. It's the simplified version for Sammy's benefit. if you look at things that are non genetically determined (like car accident rates and lottery wins) you can get an estimate of the excess correlation which is due to factors you mention. It's complicated, and imperfect, but you can show that there's a genetic component, even for things where there's a large environmental component. Sammy, Do you have problems with reading comprehension? I ask because you posted this in response to this

Are you pretending that the quote function doesn't work? He said what I quoted him as saying. What you seem not to grasp is that saying is not the same as asking Do you understand the difference? Also, I said "If the IQ's of same-sex fraternal twins are less correlated than the IQs of identical twins then the difference must be due to heritability." and you tried to ridicule it. Well, if the difference isn't heritability, what is it? (the point of these sorts of tests is you choose twins who live in the same home, go to the same school etc). What's the difference between fraternal and identical twins, if it's not heritability?

How fortunate, then, that he didn't say it. He asked And the answer to that's simple- albeit a pain in the neck experimentally. You look at, for example, the correlations of the IQs of twins. If the IQ's of same-sex fraternal twins are less correlated than the IQs of identical twins then the difference must be due to heritability.

non sequitur. Nor did I. I just pointed out that I'd hoped you might behave better. You didn't (and continue not to) but I did still answer your question You must really love that word; what do you think it means?

What art? Pot: kettle.

Would you like to add anything useful to that rant? I ask because all it seemed to do was call me rude names (you seem to be good at that) and say things that are plainly wrong like No, but the mods do. You should probably either go and read the rules or just go.

It's true that the stuff about incest was irrelevant; that was my point. Perhaps you now recognise that you shouldn't have introduced the issue. Especially, given that the biggest supporters of incest were the eugenicists. It's not me who noticed that referring to someone by their problems is insulting. If you can't fathom it, at least check the dictionary. "...the term retard (which originated as a neutral substitute for the terms had previously designated those with disabilities, namely idiot, imbecile, and moron) has come to be considered offensive" from https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/retard You seem to be lining yourself up for a "Half our workforce are below average" joke.

You can fix your system by copying someone else. You can borrow ours if you like. We still have the original adverts.

It depends. If you use the word in a narrow sense then obviously marriage doesn't affect heritabillity. If you deduce from that observation that I can't have been using it in that strict sense then you recognise that I'm just being a bit coy. Perhaps I should spell it out for you. Marrying your sister isn't a problem. Even screwing your sister isn't the problem. Getting her pregnant is the point where eugenics might be involved. If you recognised that, from society's point of view, procreation and marriage are closely related, then you would understand that a ban on marriage is, practically, elimination from the gene pool. But you are arguing against yourself. Eugenics- by almost any definition- is the attempt (however doomed) to remove bad genes (however defined) from the gene pool. If a ban on marrying your sister doesn't do that, then it's not eugenics, so you shouldn't have brought it up. If you were saying only the royal family are allowed to engage in incest, because they are somehow special and we don't want to dilute their "royalness", then that might be eugenics. It might just be daft- it's hard to tell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paragraph Please learn to write sentences, a properly constructed one has a verb in it. It seems, from a quick web search, that you just invented the term. Which bits didn't you understand? You are debating eugenics; you are debating it with people. I was ignoring it and hoping you would phrase it less offensively. The answer is obvious; it depends.

OK, so every mate selection is eugenics. It's always happened. It always will. There's no way to stop it. So there's nothing to talk about. You can stop now + go away. On the basis of your definition of the word you have won the argument- because it's practically tautology. Congratulations and goodbye! The rest of us can now get back to the discussion on the basis of what the word usually means. Incidentally, when you go you might want to look into the links between the kennel club and the eugenics moment and the views that the dog breeders had on within-family mating. You might be interested to know that the practical eugenicists- with their casual disregard for science- were quite enthusiastic about incest. Marrying your sister isn't strictly a eugenics issue. There's nothing wrong with your genes or hers so the eugenicists wouldn't want to eliminate either of you from the gene pool. The problem is when you get together. Eugenics (/juːˈdʒɛnɪks/; from Greek εὐγενής eugenes "well-born" from εὖ eu, "good, well" and γένος genos, "race, stock, kin") From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics Obstetrics is more about good pregnancy.

OK, what's that? Is it that people choose mates that-in the vernacular- they fancy? Do you accept that people have always done that- and most animals do the same. So people always choose what they consider to be "good" mates. You seem to think that's eugenics. Well, unless you can show me the people who choose mates whom they consider to be a bad model for the next generation, then you have labelled everyone as e eugenicist (and the word means "good birth", BTW- not "good breeding").

What the hell use is an instruction that says "wear gloves" without specifying what sort? The answer to that tells you how able the legal dept at Leeds was. It's unrealistic to assume that their legal crew is better than the one which wrote the regulations. Why cite a poor interpretation of the rules, rather tan the rules themselves? So, once again. What were the thought process that led you, rather than saying "the regulations are" and linking to the regs; to write "the regulations are..." and linking to a not very robust interpretation of them? I didn't ask what it was, or who wrote it, or what people they might have on staff. I asked why you posted it; mislabelled as the regulations. You have not yet answered that.

Did you see the bit where I said "otherwise the word has no meaning."? If you take every instance of mate choice as being eugenics- because the choice is made that "this mate is what I want and is therefore 'good' in some way" then the word lacks meaning. You do make a judgement- every parent does. It's not meaningful to describe it as "eugenics".

No, just once will be fine. Why did you post something that says "wear gloves" without saying what sort of gloves? Also why did you label it as the regulations when it wasn't?

And, as I already pointed out, if they are- in your view- good enough to marry they should be good enough to breed. The degree of impairment isn't really important, since it would be a personal judgement in each case. Now, what was that about strawmen?

No; I wouldn't. It sounds like the sort of thing we did all the time in high school chemistry. Did you not have bottles like these when you studied science at school, 250 ml or so ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagent_bottle

Not really, no. By the time you get round to having kids you will know well enough that your partner isn't perfect. Does the fear that any children might also forget to put the top back on the toothpaste tube stop you having kids? No- it doesn't. In selecting partners we are pretty good at ignoring exactly the kind of traits that the eugenics movement would seek to eradicate. Left handed people still get married. Also, there's a massive difference between an individual decision and a societal one; it's only when society get to decide that it's eugenics- otherwise the word has no meaning.

LOL You might want to get a better spell checker. Breading fish is what you do shortly before frying them. Breeding is something else. http://tailandfur.com/unhealthy-dog-breeds/ That's an exceptionally weird question. Logically, from most people's point of view the answer is "no". If my partner has done well enough in life to be settled, "married" and in a position to have kids then whatever their condition, it's sufficiently mild that a child with the same condition (assuming it's heritable) wouldn't be severely disadvantaged. What point did you think you were making? I'm pretty sure that the reason why most people wouldn't have sex with someone with mental retardation isn't that any offspring would also be retarded. It's not eugenics; it's more to do with informed consent- unless the degree of impairment isn't significant in which case the "problem" goes away. Swap "retarded" for "short sighted" and you will see what I mean.

Yes, I did. And you are right, they do tell you that gloves should be suitable. That's why I posted them. Why did you post something that doesn't say that gloves must be suitable? Also it seems that they think the way to deal with almost everything is the same "In a fumehood dilute with water and flush down sink". Well, my point was that there's no call for a fume hood for dilute sulphuric acid; which might suggest that, rather than think about it, they have just copied + pasted the same conditions. Personally, I'd not wear gloves for use with dilute sulphuric acid. Other people might choose to do so. I would expect a school to err on the side of caution and tell kids to wear them. However it might be that the school is seeking to avoid spreading "chemophobia".

There are a number of possibilities concerning who doesn't understand things here. We don't increase morons because doing so would be eugenics.You are the one who pretended that I had said we would. Really? You were responding to "somebody else". Who? Your first post in the thread - the one where you said this, started by quoting me. I don't see that upsetting many of us. You have no idea what my name is. As I said, there are several possibilities for which of us doesn't understand things

Those are not the regulations; these are http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2002/2677/regulation/7/made What you have posted is someone's interpretation of the regs. Specifically you posted an interpretation that says you should use sulphuric acid (which isn't volatile) in a fume cupboard. It also says that you should wear gloves, but doesn't say what sort of gloves- would the ones my granny knitted for me do? And it doesn't say you should use eye protection. Now you might or might not agree with my assessment that intact skin is not troubled by 10% sulphuric acid over a period of a few minutes; but I'm sure you would accept that it's going to damage eyes a lot faster than it will damage skin. What should have happened is that someone should have assessed the risk (It's the management of health + safety regs 1996 (as amended) I think, but feel free to look it up). They could then have made a reasoned judgement on what level of protection was appropriate and other things such as whether or not the irritation caused by wearing gloves all lesson exceeded the risk from the acid.

If you increase the variety of one group; say Sammy boys, then you reduce the diversity of other groups- like Johns because we only have finite resources. That's why we don't seek to increase the number of morons, but we tolerate them. And, since that's what I said earlier (even if you didn't understand it) and it differed from what you criticised, your critique was a straw man attack. Also, as I pointed out If you cherry pick part of a nuanced argument and attack it in isolation, you are straw-manning the argument as a whole. Were you hoping people wouldn't notice?

Strawman. It didn't. Like I said; your claim is a straw-man. You entirely missed the point that we don't, and can't, know what "good" is.