In the comments below Phillip Lemky observes:
Hi Razib. I find disturbing all this talk of assortative mating and biological castes, as it sounds eerily similar to eugenics. Please correct me if I’m mistaken to be making this connection.
This is a common response to some of the things mooted on this weblog. Freddie deBoer even sent me a peculiar email last year expressing how appalled he was at some of the topics and comments in these parts (if you know Freddie’s internet reputation, this is not surprising behavior). First, I don’t know what people mean by “eugenics.” Here is the first sentence in Wikipedia for the eugenics entry:
Eugenics is the “applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population”, usually referring to human populations….
Wikipedia isn’t authoritative, and colloquial definitions can deviate from “official” definitions. As a rule I don’t generally talk much about state coercion or manipulation of the reproduction of the citizenry, so I don’t see that I’m talking about classical eugenics. But, it does seem that there are eugenical implications in the mass action of human behavior and the flexibility of choices which …