This is a make up blog for the discussion section on intelligence that I missed.
One thing that really caught my attention in the intelligence chapter and in one lecture was the concept of eugenics. I actually didn't used to know what eugenics was. The eugenics movement was found by Francis Galton, and it was a movement that encouraged people with "good genes" to have more children than the ones carrying bad genes, such as people who score low on IQ tests or people who are a race that at the time was unwanted in some ways. Eugenics, although favored by many great scholars and psychologists, was a very ethically bad movement. Surgeons would tell people with bad genes that they had to have emergency appendices removal, and would sterilize them instead. This is ethically wrong in so many levels. Without any knowledge to the person who was undergoing surgery, surgeons sterilized them, thus stopping them from reproducing more. People thought that reducing the reproduction of people with lower IQs would increase a population's quality. The eugenics movement was very unethical and it is unbelievable and disturbing that it actually went on for a while.
Eugenics- Make up blog for the discussion section on Intelligence
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The section on the eugenics movement in the book also caught my attention because of how completely ridiculous it was. It's hard to wrap my head around the fact that this happened here in the U.S. and lasted for almost 30 years. It sounds like the theme of a creepy sci-fi novel. While I can see random people being influenced into thinking this was a no so terrible idea, it's really weird to think that there were laws requiring the sterilization of low IQ people in 33 states. Not only does this seem extremely unethical but it also seems like common sense would prevent this idea from spreading. Perhaps someone should have sterilized Galton.