Seconding Artician. The brain evolved by natural selection, just like the rest of the body. It has built in biases and modules that vary genetically. Look at the wide variety of personalities in dog breeds, for example. In humans, the big five personality traits are estimated to be about 50% heritable based on twin studies.

Gattaca is a good movie and Brave New World is a good book, but they should not be taken as the ends of some slippery slope that any eugenic policy inevitably leads to. I think it's unfortunate that so much fear of eugenics is propagated by dystopian fictions like those. Eugenics can be done in a humane way that respects all individual rights. For instance:

1. a system of incentives for highly successful people to have more children or donate to sperm banks.

2. Universal single-payer healthcare, providing among other things free condoms and birth control pills to all, so that the use of contraception will not be so much inversely correlated with income as it has been from 1850 to the present when the poor often couldn't afford it (and it's a demonstrable fact that on average the poor tend to have lower intelligence partly due to genetics)

Even such modest, individual rights respecting policies, if phrased in terms of benefiting the gene pool, are political suicide because people are still afraid of imaginary slippery slopes leading to Hitler. Most of the US is still in denial of the implications of biological science, for reasons that speak well of them, but it's time to grow up and get over that habit of Godwinizing any attempt to improve the gene pool regardless of whether it infringes individual rights.

Or maybe lots of people people don't actually believe that, but are reluctant to say otherwise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0W9sSqeJnA

It's a clever rationalization of hypocrisy. If it's going to be taboo to observe patterns in groups of people demarcated by visible characteristics they were born with, be consistent about it. But I'd argue against that taboo.

What makes racism bad is treating people as specimens of a group rather than unique individuals. Group averages may differ slightly but there's tons of overlap. Common usage of the word "racism" unfortunately conflates a moral aspect (how to treat people) with an epistemological aspect (dogma that all groups are created exactly equal in every way). Epistemology shouldn't be moralized. I could give you lots of examples of sociological and psychological research getting muddled on account of an inflexible dogma that there couldn't be any heritable differences between groups other than the obvious superficial ones. I'd rather conceive of the word racism as a verb describing harmful actions towards people due to their group membership, not a noun denoting a thoughtcrime or speechcrime. Like church and state, or science and religion, epistemology and morality don't go together.

A priori based on generation times and mutation rates you should expect there could be 1/10 as much variation between historically isolated groups of humans as there is between breeds of dogs, since the most recent common ancestor of all domestic dogs is half as far back as humans' most recent common ancestor is (or rather was before 16th and 17th century explorers spread their sperm across the globe) but dogs breed a lot faster. Breeds of dogs demonstrably vary in many behavioral and psychological traits. It's not far fetched to suppose that a variety of environments over the past 100,000 years of humanity pushed population means of behavioral traits in various directions.

yea beacause condoms are a 100 percent.

fuck off ya jack weiner.

the only 100 percent way not to get a vagina seeded is to not fuck a vagina.

ABSTINENCE AND GOD. That is all ALL walking baby incubators need to know. HOW CAN A WOMAN BE SO DAMN IRRESPONSIBLE AS TO SPILL SPERM INTO HER INSIDES. DAMN WOMEN, IT IS ALL THEIR FAULTS.

FUCK THOSE BASTARD FUCKERS, they are better off dead than to have parents that would kill them. Who else would take care of them ? the shitty slut that fucked her way into this position ?? or the sperm Donor who let this Scarlett whore achieve her goal ??

Maybe that young man is depressed? Stops going to church, going outside, withdraws from society, and wants nothing more than to blatantly masturbate in front of his peers. The solution is what, to talk about his porn? Is this not more likely a symptom of a bigger problem perhaps?

Anyway, I had this playing in the background looking at other stuff, and my selective hearing told me the soldier he needed to get out was his sperm, and he was in a desperate struggle to release them from their confinement. Talk to your bishop to help relieve this bitter struggle from your pants. I thought maybe they were talking about a new masturbatory video game. Help your friend get off today! Stop watching porn, and participate! Coming to your jock today, multiplayer action in your pants!
/sarcasm

The comparison isn't that sperm = abortion, but rather that sperm is just alive as a fertilized egg. So if an egg is 'life' that must be protected, than so is the jizz you just shot in a sock.

But that point is moot when you consider that if a fertilized egg is a human, and destroying that egg is murder.. then all sexually active women are mass murderers because as many as 65% of fertilized eggs never attach to the uterus and are thus flushed out by the menstrual cycle.

WTF people. This is a SPERM whale. Where's the ejaculation jokes?

Who are you and what have you done with the Sifters?

The whole time I was watching this, I was thinking of sperm.

In what sense exactly, in that they disagree with you on something?

Abortion isn't simply a yes/no type of black and white issue. Not many pro-life folks are the every sperm is sacred, bomb a clinic type. Not many pro-choice folks support ultra late term abortions or abortion as birth control or based on the child's gender.

Trying to turn the debate into a simplistic with us or against cause puts you on the nutter side IMHO.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Every sperm is sacred!

"until now": Hasn't evidence for the effects of female orgasm existed for years?
Also, the whole 'absolutely no evidence for female orgasm reducing fertility' comment seems off. Wasn't there at least one study that demonstrated that if female orgasm occurred prior to male ejaculation, sperm would suffer due to the lowing of vaginal pH (and of course not receive any benefit from vaginal contractions)?
..my memory could be off, but it seems like their expert is more interested in promoting one line of research than in painting a complete picture.

I don't know how I'd feel sitting in one of those small immersibles face-to-face with a creature big and strong enough to take on most of the fish in the sea and has the intelligence to evade and outsmart man so well.

There is only one creture that can best this Squid - the Sperm Whale. (occationaly teams of sharks)

When he says they have a right to a mother and a father what he really means is that they MUST have a mother and father. To have a right to something is to be able to claim something. A newborn child does not have the capacity to claim anything. At best Romney's argument supports having only the mother listed. However, advances in reproductive technology allow for an egg to be fertilised by non-sperm cells meaning that a child can legitimately have two mothers in every sense of the word. In fact, a woman can technically fertilise her own egg. Furthermore, it is technically possible for a man to do the same but with a donated egg. With this egg the DNA can be extracted and replaced meaning that the child, if born through a surrogate, can have two fathers and no DNA related mother. Further furthermore, it is theoritically possible for a man to be able to carry a child to term though it would require drastic intervention. The future debates in experimental reproductive ethics is whether humans can be born to surrogate non-humans such as pigs thereby eliminating the risks and potential burdens of gestation for the mother (or father-mother).

Romney, the times they are a changing.

Every sperm is sacred, every sperm is good. Every sperm is needed in your neighborhood.
>> ^bobknight33:

GOD or no GOD. Its murder plain and simple.

No Invitro fertilization, must carry a rape pregnancy to term.

That's going to fundamentally change the nature of sperm donation.

"Welcome to the IVF clinic, now take this test tube and walk down that dark alley."