Court bans man with low IQ from having sex

First, I excluded any moral perspective in my posting already in my very first four words by which I opened my posting.

.......

You may not wanted to imply any morale here, but you did.

If Al sharpton started a comment with "I am not racist" but then launched into a racist rant his four words would be meaningless rubbish even if somehow he thought they were true.
The problem with the much discredited line of eugenics and racial purity is that it involves a moral issue and attempting to remove or exclude that moral angle simply makes it even more of a moral issue.

[CaptainHaplo]

Originally Posted by UnderseaLcpl

However, I'm resigned to my usual Lockean stance on this one. Anyone who has intercourse with this man is doing so out of their own free will and is therefore accepting the consequences. Unless he becomes a rapist or something, the court has no place restricting his rights on the grounds that it is necessary to protect others, for any reason.

The problem here is your making the assumption that the person or people involved are doing so not only with a free will, but also with a fairly reasonable understanding of the situation.

They may see a person mentally deficient, think he isn't getting any (or whatever reason they find), and without him cognitavly able to convey correct information, they may place themselves at risk without proper knowledge that he is obligated (but unable) to convey.

Given the man's mental inability to make proper decisions regarding sexuality, it is entirely possible that this is also an action designed to assist in protecting society. If he cannot figure out when and how it is safe to "do it", how can he be expected to be capable of understanding the repercussions of refusing a "no" from a partner - who upon saying no becomes a victim if he fails to stop?

Slippery slope? Perhaps - but tell that to the woman or man that is his first victim. Personal rights end when they infringe on another's rights. The question should be - is he a sufficient enough danger to himself and society to be limited - and if such then I agree - he should be a ward of the state or responsible adult.

[FIREWALL]

You all might want to look at this.... http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/IQBasics.aspx

[UnderseaLcpl]

Originally Posted by CaptainHaplo

The problem here is your making the assumption that the person or people involved are doing so not only with a free will, but also with a fairly reasonable understanding of the situation.

They may see a person mentally deficient, think he isn't getting any (or whatever reason they find), and without him cognitevly able to convey correct information, they may place themselves at risk without proper knowledge that he is obligated (but unable) to convey.

If that's your logic, then you must also necessarily include a ban on sex for all people who have failed to inform someone they have an STD, may cause (or not cause) parenthood, or profess love where there is none because they are either unwilling or unaware.

Given the man's mental inability to make proper decisions regarding sexuality, it is entirely possible that this is also an action designed to assist in protecting society. If he cannot figure out when and how it is safe to "do it", how can he be expected to be capable of understanding the repercussions of refusing a "no" from a partner - who upon saying no becomes a victim if he fails to stop?

In that case, why not jail people on suspicion of being capable of rape?

Slippery slope? Perhaps - but tell that to the woman or man that is his first victim. Personal rights end when they infringe on another's rights. The question should be - is he a sufficient enough danger to himself and society to be limited - and if such then I agree - he should be a ward of the state or responsible adult.

Other than the first sentence, we're in complete agreement. I hate to pull out the slippery slope argument, since it's often a logical fallacy, but one only needs to look at the number of slopes that have been slid upon to know that the argument carries some weight, especially in the case of civil liberties.

As far as telling it to the victims, I'd have no problem with it. Well, no moral problem anyway. If they're willing to blame the state for not restricting the rights of another law-abiding person in such a way as to prevent the incident from ever happening, I would suggest that they consider the fact that they want other people's rights to be violated in the same way theirs were. Previous offenders, on the other hand, are another case entirely.

[tater]

Amazing that anyone would think this assault on personal liberty is a good idea.

[FIREWALL]

Originally Posted by tater

Amazing that anyone would think this assault on personal liberty is a good idea.

Half of the posters didn't even read the whole article.

[Penguin]

Originally Posted by Skybird

First, I excluded any moral perspective in my posting already in my very first four words by which I opened my posting. If you know better what I did, then I cannot help it.

I am aware what you wrote, the thing is that you bring in morale in terms of judgement dressed as biologic facts. When one makes a decision what genetic defects are ok and what not, one makes a judgement call = morale.

Originally Posted by Skybird

Second, I wanted to draw attention to a medical conseqeunce of modern medical treatement, and that is that by doing so we reduce the evolutionary mechnaism of survival of the fittest. We indeed weaken our gene pool that way, whether we like to realise that or not is not the issue here: we nevertheless do. That is a problem that compares to the growing life expectancy due to modern mdeical treatement: it increases costs of the medical system, and sees eiother health system collapsing, or trewatement that is efféctive more and more only affordable for the rich, while the poor do not get it. Talking of 2- or 3-class medicine here. Also, with the share of old population becoming bigger and the share of payiong young population becoming smaller, there are financial problems to which so far nobody has an answer.
All these trhings are factual problems that nobody adresses and noboy can solve so far. Many diseases that are genetically transferred from generation to generation, withion families, thus are spreading, that is a fact. As a race, the homo sapiens in general that is, we become weaker and sicker. That has nothing to do with eugenics or rtace theory. It must be allowed to point out an implication that has a controversial reputation without getting accused of being a racist or in defense of eugenics. Again, I made that clear from all beginning on that I ignored the moral perspective on it all.

The mechanism you refer to is survival of the best adapted. Otherwise the human species wouldn't have survived this long: we have no biological features that are outstanding, the only thing we are good at is adaption.
Here you also bring in the aspect of weakening the gene pool, weakening = judgement. What makes the human genom weaker, especially when regarding the fact that most of us are not fighting anymore in a hostile environment all day long?

The overpopulation issue has many aspects:
With so many people on Earth like never before, genetic deficites are better absorved than in a tribe with 20 people.
The young population becomes smaller only in 1st world countries, in a global scale we never had this many young ones before. So what do do? infinite growth can't be the sollution, somewhere there must be a point when we have many old ones.
You refer later to Diamond, I would like to draw your attention to "Guns, Germs and Steel" ("Arm und Reich" in german), especially the things about pack immunity, he writes about it regarding domestic animals as well as regarding humans. The fact that we live so crowded together today, makes the human species in fact more immune to diseases. Even without modern medicine, an outbreak of the plague would certainly be outstanding in terms of losses, but nowhere as devestating in terms of percentages of the population which are affected as it was in medieval tuimes.
I'm not promoting overpopulation by this, btw, just bringing in some aspects.

Originally Posted by Skybird

And on the old being treated in earlier times. [...]

I am also aware of that, that's what I meant by that they were fed if possible

Originally Posted by Skybird

And then I recommend the chapter on the genocide in Ruanda, in the book "Collapse" by Jarred Diamond. There he shows a demographic analysis of the population age structure, and shows that there was a huge rivalry betweern the poseessing old generations qwho could live off their possessions,w hile the young oines had no place and ressources left for themselves to found families, and that this inner tension formed an inner dynamic of highly destructive energy that decisively contributed to the outbreak of the killing.

This sounds quite interesting, I have Collapse on my night table, didn't made it yet to read more than the chapter about the settlers in Greenland - but I hope that I'll have more time in the next weeks to read it.

Originally Posted by Skybird

So, wars also were a way by which demographic pressure was solved.

the war which set the European people most back, in terms of population (growth) was the 30 Years' War - even then there was a slight pop growth. The reason for it rooted certainly not in demographic pressure...

Originally Posted by Skybird

Your implication of the "edle Wilde" who does not do brutal things to the old and cared for them so much better than we do, is a bit one-sided, I would say. From all eras and continets you can find many examples illustrating the opposite.

lol, where did I imply that I have these hippie thoughts about the morally higher natives?

Originally Posted by Skybird

And when I look at the conditions in some of our contemporary "Pflegeheime", then I remember many examples from the media (and my own experience when I did my practicals at hospitals) that have taught me that my life may become of a kind that I may want to conclude that the price for living any longer may become too high and that it is better to make a certain decision by myself instead of leaving it to fate and random chance alone.

Regarding your previous facts, about the how old ones in history, cynically speaking, we could say that they can take one for the team
No, I get what you mean, but the treatment of old ones in our society has nothing to do with the gene pool.

Originally Posted by Skybird

Thinbking about my intial posting with a little bit more of sober mind and a little bit less of sentimentality, is of the essence. The implications I point at, are real, they are problematic, and so far they are unsolved.

Thanks, I am sober now! I'm sure you mean a rational mind, so no offence taken. I have no sentimentality for old times, I was pointing towards the fact that we have evolved and live in a society and not in the jungle anymore. (I'm not sure about the last sentence, now that I read it)


btw: I won't be able to answer you untill Sunday, so don't think that I back off from the discussion when I don't answer eventually...

[Hitman]

Ignoring any moral implication I just remind of a simple fact: diseases and defects that are genetically transported, will progressively effect the racial gene pool. So when you medically treat persons with such defects and now they survive until the age when they can multiply where before they would have died and nature would have run natural selection that way, this has, over generations, an effect of the general gene pool.

The number of people with bad eyes who need to wear glasses, is increasing for example. While short sight is not necessarily something that would doom the individual to die in the "wilderness" , it nevertheless illustrates how the presence of a genetic characteristic - bad eyes in this case - results in this characteristic spreading in the gene pool. That with too bad eyes you would die in the wilderness because you can no longer kill your prey or see where your field is, is minor in this example.

But the number of hemophiliac persons is increasing, too. This is because in modern times they have more often children carrying the genetic defect as well, where as in earlier times they simply died before they could have had children.

Just a reminder of biological facts, I do not make any moral judgment or moral comment here. Just want to remind you that nature is totally unsentimental and does not know man's ideas of morals and ethics.

It's an interesting point of view, but I would like to add two observations to that:

1) Evolution itself theoretically eliminates those unfit to live in certain environments and promotes the best adapted to survive and procrate, thus pushing their genes forward to the next generation. We should however bear in mind that today's environment for 99% of the humans is not the wilderness, but a civilization. Hence, those physical and health limitations are largely irrelevant, as they would tend to eliminate individuals that can actually be the fittest for today's environment (F.e. imagine a very talented engineer that is hemophiliac). In that sense, you can't say that we are acting against nature; nature just eliminates those unfit for an environment, and hemophiliacs and people with bad eyesight have no problem at all with our current environment.

2) That said, despite intelligence being the main or more relevant characteristic to succed in our modern environment, the people with lower IQ are not eliminated by nature, nor tend they at least to have less childs. In fact, it is quite the opposite, as low levels of culture are usually associated with bigger families in societies where children mortality is low (In those with high children mortality it's a different matter). Here is were we are supposedly acting against nature, if one follows your reasoning. We can solve the illnesses and physical limitations with technology and medicine, but we can't make an idiot be an Einstein. Does that also effect the racial gene pool in terms of average IQ of human kind?

[Armistead]

Just who is the guy having sex with? If he is so incapable that he's going after children or the mentally ill, then surely these women must have clue about his mental state. If women choose to sleep with him without worry of STD's, using protection, etc, they are at fault. Millions do this, why STD's are epidemic.
Don't blame him, he's just trying to get laid, blame the women that sleep with him.
Many civil suits have been won against people giving STD's...Not sure about the crime of it.

[tater]

This case is a pretty horrible assault on personal liberty. If the women were unable to give consent, then that would be rape, and illegal.

If they can say that he's too dumb to have sex, shall they test bimbos before they are allowed to put out? The inner city pregnancy rate out of wedlock is very high, so are they too dumb to understand as well? How about ugly people, don;t they realize that 2 ugly people are more likely to breed unattractive kids?

[Penguin]

Originally Posted by Hitman

Here is were we are supposedly acting against nature, if one follows your reasoning. We can solve the illnesses and physical limitations with technology and medicine, but we can't make an idiot be an Einstein.

Following that darwinistic logic, Stephen Hawking's parents would have aborted him, if they had checked out their baby's genes...

[Hitman]

Following that darwinistic logic, Stephen Hawking's parents would have aborted him, if they had checked out their baby's genes...

Actually the opposite: For a human nowadays it is more important to be intelligent than to be physically healthy. Our environment favours intelligent people, not healthy but stupid one ...

In any case I wanted to highlight that Skybird's reasoning was based in objective darwinism, but probably on the wrong characteristics -physical health, which is no longer the more relevant one to be adapated to our environment.

I could say that I do not share those darwinistic views, but in fact unlike you I don't see moral implications in Skybird's assertions. It's an objective fact that the human race has nowadays lots of individuals that would have died in other ages -and environments. Yet, I do not agree in that we are countering nature by that, in fact we have just adapted as a race to different conditions. Defects that earlier mattered, do not any longer, and other things are more important. In the intelligence matter we could eventually be doing against nature by helping mentally weak poeple to keep existing, but here is where moral matters step in, and we all accept that it must be this way. Moral is applied over darwinism, we all agree that it is right, so what's the problem? Not willing to realize that we have superceded darwinism due to our moral convictions, and that we must take care to implement the proper corrections via technology and medicine would be stupid. Morals tell you the right decision to do, but do not hide reality, do not mistake both aspects of the same question.

[tater]

Natural selection rewards reproductive fitness. Nothing else. Idiots making loads of baby are "fit" by definition.

[Ducimus]

What ever happened to natural selection? Survival of the fittest? The kid who swallows too many marbles doesn't grow up to have kids of his own. Simple stuff. Nature knows best!
- George Carlin

I kinda agree with that.

[Takeda Shingen]

Originally Posted by tater

Natural selection rewards reproductive fitness. Nothing else. Idiots making loads of baby are "fit" by definition.

No, that's not exactly true. Natural selection rewards overall fitness to survive. That is, the most adept in their environment are the ones that pass on their genes to the next generation. All, even those least able to thrive are physically capable of reproduction, epecially in the male sex, where the physical difficulties of gestation are not endured.