Would you date a girl/guy with a physical disability?

[Deimos]

Nice philosophy you got there, too bad it belongs back in the stone age.

I am not really sure but I think that some North European countries still have laws about sterilizing people who have genetic illnesses.

Denying someone the right to life or to the right to breed because they have bad genes is small mindedness of the highest level.

As an example for Eligre: technically, Stephen Hawkins should not be allowed to breed, but in reality having some people like that even disabled and with genetic flaws benefits mankind as a whole.

My preferences lie with the S&W Model 10, manufactured in the good old USA. One bullet in each firearm, sir. We duel at dawn.

I thought I could choose the weapons since I am the recipient of the challenge - or are the dueling rules on your continent that barbaric?

[bitpeg]

I thought I could choose the weapons since I am the recipient of the challenge - or are the dueling rules on your continent that barbaric?

Yes. They are.

[Deimos]

I thought I could choose the weapons since I am the recipient of the challenge - or are the dueling rules on your continent that barbaric?

Yes. They are.

That sums it up for me. Since I am now assuming that there won't be any other people at out duelling ground, tell me the doctor of your choice that has to treat your wounds after you've lost the duel.

[bitpeg]

I choose Doctor Kevorkian as the duel's doctor.

[Miroku]

With what weapons are you familiar, my dear fellow gentleman?

My preferences lie with the S&W Model 10, manufactured in the good old USA. One bullet in each firearm, sir. We duel at dawn.

This thread is well and truly derailed.

[SirMax]

With what weapons are you familiar, my dear fellow gentleman?

My preferences lie with the S&W Model 10, manufactured in the good old USA. One bullet in each firearm, sir. We duel at dawn.

This thread is well and truly derailed.

that post helped, thanks.

[abscess]

@Eligre
I find interesting your eugenic approach, yet I find it revolting to a certain extent. If that was the case, a lot of people wouldn't have been born. Taking Stephen Hawkins as an example, he is pretty much crippled, but his brain works perfectly fine. Not letting him breed would halt the income of potential geniuses just because of his physical state, that's not exactly harmful, but it could slowdown humanities growth. In time physical disabilities will become a thing of the past, as you've said, with he aid of prosthetics that would reproduce human movement to perfection, probably even make it better in some ways. Arguably eugenics can be considered an old tool now. Nonetheless, I find your honesty quite pleasant.

[Validus Razgriz]

@Eligre
I find interesting your eugenic approach, yet I find it revolting to a certain extent. If that was the case, a lot of people wouldn't have been born. Taking Stephen Hawkins as an example, he is pretty much crippled, but his brain works perfectly fine. Not letting him breed would halt the income of potential geniuses just because of his physical state, that's not exactly harmful, but it could slowdown humanities growth. In time physical disabilities will become a thing of the past, as you've said, with he aid of prosthetics that would reproduce human movement to perfection, probably even make it better in some ways. Arguably eugenics can be considered an old tool now. Nonetheless, I find your honesty quite pleasant.

What I also find interesting is that all of this argument is taking the Nature portion of the Nature vs. Nurture argument. Many facets of the human mind depend just as much on Nurture as it does on Nature. You can't simply 'breed' intelligence, it must be cultivated. There is a reason why we have schools, colleges, and universities.

In case you hadn't noticed most of us live in an age where we don't need to keep the gene pool "clean" to survive as a race. Where rather than killing off the unhealthy we support them and give them the chance to have the best life they can have with whatever condition they may have.

Human extinction (nay, that of all life in the universe for that matter) is inevitable at some point anyways, so there really is no point of keeping the gene pool "clean."

[Hypothermia]

What I also find interesting is that all of this argument is taking the Nature portion of the Nature vs. Nurture argument. Many facets of the human mind depend just as much on Nurture as it does on Nature. You can't simply 'breed' intelligence, it must be cultivated. There is a reason why we have schools, colleges, and universities.

You know, I have always sided with the Nurture side. My personality, knowledge, and other such things are all based on my life experience. Some things are inherited, but I've found that usually when a child shares a personality trait with a parent, it's because that is just what they're exposed to. They learn it from the parent, it's not genetic.

[Deimos]

What I also find interesting is that all of this argument is taking the Nature portion of the Nature vs. Nurture argument. Many facets of the human mind depend just as much on Nurture as it does on Nature. You can't simply 'breed' intelligence, it must be cultivated. There is a reason why we have schools, colleges, and universities.

You know, I have always sided with the Nurture side. My personality, knowledge, and other such things are all based on my life experience. Some things are inherited, but I've found that usually when a child shares a personality trait with a parent, it's because that is just what they're exposed to. They learn it from the parent, it's not genetic.

While I support a balance between the Nature and Nurture sides I lean slightly towards the Nature side. The reason is that although you can turn a genius into an idiot you can not turn an idiot into a genius (You'd have to make everybody else bigger idiots in order to accomplish it).
Nature is about potential, Nurture as far as I understand it is for setting any potential free and channeling and develloping it so that it ultimately aids society. WIthout nature all we reach is mediocracy at best and without nurture inherent talents and abilities could be wasted for humanity's loss.

[Bara]

If they cannot, however, nothing helps or they refuse things that may help, then as Darwin intended, they should not mate, not with me, nor anyone else.

Nice philosophy you got there, too bad it belongs back in the stone age.

In case you hadn't noticed most of us live in an age where we don't need to keep the gene pool "clean" to survive as a race. Where rather than killing off the unhealthy we support them and give them the chance to have the best life they can have with whatever condition they may have.

Denying someone the right to life or to the right to breed because they have bad genes is small mindedness of the highest level.

Heck, there is archeological evidence from the remains of Neandethals and other pre-Homo Sapiens types that that where it was possible for the group to support the gravely injured they did (sometimes anyway). Maybe this "attraction to cripples" thing goes back farther than we think?
If it looked like there was a consensus in the forum that the sky was most often blue; Eligre would post about cirrus and strato cumulus clouds, rainbows and the freakin aurora borealis just to be contrary.

[Hypothermia]

Where's that "There is no Talent - Everything is earned" Courage Wolf picture when I need it?

I don't know. There doesn't seem to be very many natural dumb asses. It seems, to me at least, to be a learned behavior. And by Nurture I mean a Tabula Rasa approach to personality development and such. As in, to use a KS reference, Hanako wasn't born shy, she developed that way because of burn scars and DEEEEAAAAD dad.






That's a half-assed example, but I do believe it shows my point.

[vermithrx]

I'm not going to quote anyone because I'd have to quote too many of you. Hopefully it will suffice to say that to understand the context of this post you must read Eligre's first post in this thread and everything that follows it. Now to my point:

Any reference to "Nature vs. Nurture" is specious. It is an intellectual conceit. There is scientific evidence within the fields of cognitive psychology, biology and medicine to support both sides and the only room for bickering anymore is to what degree each has a role in any particular instance. As far as I am aware no one here is qualified to comment on such particulars without being able to cite scientific studies to support their claims, but all of that becomes moot when one considers how the distinction between "Nature" and "Nurture" and our individual definitions thereof are fictions created by our poor biochemical attemts at modeling reality. While this consciousness has been a useful tool in the survival of our species, it has the unfortunate consequence of overpromoting its illusory system of "parts" at the expense of "the whole" and creating false Cartesian dualisms we must repeatedly overcome to truly understand anything about the world. Consciousness also overpromotes itself as the best or most important of our tools for survival, which makes sense if it is to survive as such a mechanism, but causes a false sense of separation between self and environment... but I digress... a lot.

Anyway, Eligre's admittedly cynical viewpoint is logical and could even be extended to include Cultural and even Technological darwinism (anyone here used a phonograph or eight-track tape recently?), but he starts from the false premise that darwinism means "survival of the fittest" in its crudest sense. Taken to it's ultimate conclusion darwinism, and the evolutionary model by proxy, is simply acknowledging the observation that, in this universe, repetition and variation are inseperable properties in the sense that anything that can happen, not only will happen, but inevitably must happen. As Envy correctly pointed out, our species has graduated from the evolutionary strategy of weeding out the weak so the strong flourish now that we no longer have any natural predators. Acting out that strategy is no longer necessary on either a global or individual level, so instead we breed and spread as fast and far as possible so that hopefully, no matter the calamity, some of us will live on. In essence, our "fitness" as a species is no longer dependant on the "fitness" of our individuals.

None of this is really important to the topic at hand though, and Eligre is free to rationalise his thinking in whatever way he likes.

As for my take on this topic, I don't "date" in the common sense of the word. I make friends, disabled or not. Sometimes, I form deeper emotional attachments with such a friend and, if they are mutual, that person graduates to girlfriend, etc. I do have friends that are disabled in various ways, but I have not formed such attachments with any of them and I don't know if I ever will; this is an unconscious process. I do know that the person in question has to smell good. (...and I mean the person, not their perfume. I hate perfume.)

Edit: Removed a couple of accidental non squiturs I managed to perpetrate in my tiredness at the time of posting.

[Eligre]

Okay! I have some really awesome responses here! Now for some Socratic Method to get to the Truth of things, regardless of the fact this is ALSO off-topic, but at least on topic of the forum in general.

Envy:
I said people who could not survive in the current environment with the aid of technology: Synthesizers, synthetic limbs, see-without-sight tongue-shock systems, et cetera, should not breed. Basically, human technology is to a point where this is really limited to spine and brain-related disorders. Most of the following arguments are based off of this misinterpretation (or maybe I underestimate you, dare I say a straw man?) made by yourself, implying me to be offing the entire cast of Katawa Shoujo like Kevorkian offing flu sufferers, when really everyone there falls under my category of "not disabled with technology", and I'm not offing them, just saying their gene sequence should not continue. [As most human evolution is now cybernetic and not deoxyribonucleic anyways, this sort of supports general society, if it can be currently fixed with a robot, it isn't currently broken, most genetic mutations are "fixed" at birth, like mermaid syndrome, conjoined twins, etc, and therefore aren't that important to evolution as a whole.]

...I'm not cleaning out the gene pool, just adding a little chlorine. Heck, I find my definition of "don't allow to mate" to be pretty open: A deaf-mute blind fire-scarred quadriplegic, in my terms, can in some cases be valid life, while most anyone else would say "too far, let them go".

[I'm reminded of my friend saying I could be on commercials, with young Japanese kids helping out disabled people, and the slogan "Youth-in-Asia, your choice for a better world", the pun said by myself with a big smile, with how strongly I can come across. And for that I apologize, I don't mean to come off that way, but I'm, as I said, a cynic.]

However, it is good to know you think that, while you disagree with me, I'm still on the highest level.

Razgriz: I am a Nature person in the debate. However, I also have worked out that it is impossible to test pure nature or pure nurture, and testing both at once will reveal nothing, but let me ask Nurture people this: Same Nurture, different nature: You have two kids. 4 years old each. One is a psychopath, one is not, but you don't know it yet. They both, somehow, manage to bite the head off a bluebird. You reprimand them once. One does not do it again, the other does. So you reprimand them again. They do more violence, different styles, so you reprimand them yet more. Suddenly you have one kid Nurtured once, and one Nurtured 100 times, in order to get them to the same level in society. But you see I do admit here Nurture does effect Nature after a long enough repetition of it. Sorry Hypo, I can't agree with you on this one.

Deimos and other Hawkers: I don't know Hawking's specific version of ALS, but if it is familial ALS, then yes, he should not mate. Looking at wikipedia, it looks like it was a quick onset, and so if he only got ALS due to heavy metal poisoning and spinal viruses (Virii?), I would, in fact, encourage women to mate with him, because IQ levels are partially genetic, and if the ALS is not due to chromosome 21, we can certainly use more smart people in this world. If it is Chromosome 21, and therefore has genetic origins, well, we could clone Marilyn vos Savant still, it is not like any given human's offspring are guaranteed to raise the average IQ, which is steadily dropping BECAUSE people don't think like I do.

Bara: Yes, I would interject like that about the sky. wouldn't I? Ever see Sola? It's an amazing anime about clouds. They're pretty, and can't be forgotten in that black sky that has vapourous molecules reflecting the light off our clear ocean to colour the black sky a blue shade. I like discourse, I can't help it, and when smart people gather (and I gather you're smart people), I like to play.

And Vermithrix: I've used a phonograph just this Sunday to listen to some music by the Renaissance's record "Turn of the Cards", that isn't on published CD. Also, I would debate the whole "spread out" theory, and say if we stop a few hundred million people from phoqueing anything that moves, if you'll pardon my French, it may in the end help our race because we expand beyond our resources and sustainability. Malthus was right, just he forgot to carry the one exponent, it may not help the gene pool, but reducing the surface population that way is good for our survival. Bloody and drawn-out wars are better, they help the economy as well as science, in addition to the population problem, since Humans are Humans only natural predator, but then everyone will gang up on me for suggesting it, saying "what if you, personally, were directly effected by your open, general, and historically true statement?" in such horrible logical fallacy that I will shrivel up a bit inside... Or would if I haven't worked a 4 month stint in a tax office working public relations a long time ago. You spend 8 hours a day listening to people moan and whine about the fact taxes exist and then conclude the world is better off with all of them hale, healthy, and breeding more little idiots who can't understand Keynes' most basic ideals. [Which is that the government taxes so that it can spend money. If anyone here did not know that the government must have money, or the prospect of future money, in order to spend it, I take back my comment about smart people.]

[russianspy1234]

I'm going to be what I am best, a profound cynic to the topic's question:

No.

Of course, my definition of Physical Disability differs from most. If they can act normal without third-person support, they aren't disabled. Electronic prosthetics, mechanical limbs, these eliminate, mostly, the disability in my eyes. Someone using the sensory-touch-sight shock system who is blind: not disabled, just a slow walker. A lip-reading deaf non-mute that has a synthesizer, not a problem. All of these exist, cures for everyone in this game. If one of these approached me, I'd have no problem with them, though maybe because (quothe Kaiba) I have a hard-on for technology, but if they can get past it, they're valid mating material. For amps, if they can perform normal functions normally, even without a false limb, still fine with me. (As an aside, if I were on cordial terms with a mute for a long time (over 2 years), I may master ASL completely and try to further the relationship, since then there would be no communication difficulties between us.)

If they cannot, however, nothing helps or they refuse things that may help, then as Darwin intended, they should not mate, not with me, nor anyone else. Doesn't stop them from having a full life otherwise, but a lot of physical disorders are genetic and can be bred out. I would also likely not be on more than polite terms with them either, since they would not be able to fit in most of my circles.

Disfigurement like Hanako... I have a standard for image, as most of us do, if it is as mild as Hanako's (25-30% or less), it is no issue, but a 50% or more scar tissue with no hope or desire for reconstructive surgery, I may be friends with them (since it isn't performance-hindering), but would not date them.

Such is the way of life: if something cannot thrive in the current environ, it dies along with its ilk. If it can evolve, even electronically, to meet or pass the rest of the population, its genus may continue in later generations.

you mention having no problem with cripples who get over their issues via technological means, and then quote darwin to support your desire to breed out those who dont? do i even need to point out the sheer stupidity of that? technology is not genetic. i wouldnt think i need to point that out, but from what you wrote it definitely seems like you think it is. the desire to use such is not as well. neither are missing limbs (in most cases) and as such, the child of an amputee would be normal, even if that amputee was missing all of their limbs and needed assistance for most things, there is no reason to wipe them from the genepool as you are suggesting. on the flip side, i more than pass your definition of non disabled, and yet my problems ARE genetic, and it is actually likely that my child would be worse off than i am.

as for nature vs nurture and its connection to intelligence, well we have about 1000 times more neural connections than we have genes, so a pure nature approach is extremely unlikely, especially given that around half the genes code our immune system. now, how much you want to call the connections that form during the first few years of our life nature is up to you, but it really does depend on the stimulus given during those years, whether or not that stimulus is intelligent.