So why exactly is the idea of the ends justifying the means considered a bad thing? Do people in real life actually think of it as a bad thing? I know people in TV land only say it if they're the Misguided Extremists, villains, or did something wrong but don't want to admit it.

Does it make it better if you call it "operating under a consequential ethical system", or "teleologically"? Is it just the phrase that sounds bad, or is it the sentiment itself?

I would say the sentiment is dangerous. Humanity's capacity for rationalization could make any means justify any end.

EDIT: Removed an unnecessary adverb.

But what about the other view, that the actions should be good ones, and the consequences should be subservient to the former? How is that any less dangerous?

I'm a big believer that extremes in philosophy are dumb, and should be avoided in favor of thinking things out in a case by case basis. To refuse to adapt to the real world is insanity.

I believe the ends do justify the means, that said though the problem becomes we don't know the end, so we can't justify the means. Meaning if someone could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that killing one man would save a 100, I'd say go right ahead, but very few things are that simple in reality, while theory might suggest a 100 would get saved, a 100 more might die.

I know that sounds weird but I hope it makes some sense.

Alpha, what you're saying is:

The ends justify the means.

But the ends are unknown.

If the ends are unknown, how can they be used to justify the means. And if you don't know the ends when making your actions, then how can you take an evil action claiming that the ends will justify it?

As for the reverse, the means justify the end, I disagree that either should be true.

Though, what I think should be isn't necessarily what is. The ends always justify or condemn the means. If it is a bad end, then the intentions and the good means are forgotten by people judging the actor. It's only when the ends are good and the means are bad that there is conflict.

"Only a Sith Lord deals in absolutes."

Read my mind.

Ok, so, consequentialist ethical systems "can be dangerous", deontological ethical systems are "too extreme" to bother discussing. So that leaves virtue ethics, or are people here not fans of ethical systems in general?

Because "Systems" are oppressive, man! And you can't keep me pinned down! I gotta fly free, or something!

But if had to choose a specific system, Virtue Ethics would seem the best. Deontological systems and Teleological systems justify evil acts as "Necessary in the long run" or "Unbreakable duty" where as a Virtue systems seeks to impress good values in a person (Kindness, forgiveness, generosity, courage, the like) and then believe they'll make the right choices based on this knowledge.

So why are bad acts that are better in the end not to your taste?

Because evil begets evil. Because if we as a society allow ourselves to benefit on the backs of vile deeds, what have we gained?

Imagine, if you will, we could cure AIDS. This year. But they only way to do so would be to take ten thousand perfectly healthy, random people, infect them with the disease, control their environment to make sure foods or activities aren't altering the effects, and then observe them until they die horrible deaths. This is unimaginably cruel and horrible, but it would cure AIDS, now and forever. Would that really be okay? The rest of the world would benefit, but what about the test subjects? What about their rights as human beings to not have to undergo this sort of torment?

You wouldn't? Millions will die deaths just as horrible if you do not do this action. 3 million this year, over half a million of which are children. Countless millions will be saved from deaths they would have been doomed to die later if you make this cure. If you truly had this option, all those millions of deaths and the suffering would be on your hands; you would be responsible through your inaction.

You do realise the "toss the one guy in front of the train to save five guys" is used as an argument for Utilitarianism (the primary form of consequentialist ethics), right?

I can see how it could be used that way.

But I also disagree. It would have the effect, AIDS would be stopped. And what then? The value of life has been devalued, so let's go further. Harvesting homeless people for organs to help in hospitals. Imagine how fast the organ donor program would work if we went looking for them!

What if we developed a process that siphoned the life from children, and was able to transfer that youth to the old, killing the children? It could grant immortality to our greatest leaders and wisest researchers so they could inspire us eternally!

Imagine the golden age a chosen few could live, surviving on the backs of the tormented!

I don't see that as a golden age. That's a nightmare. Would people suffer without the cure, yes, but there are things we can do to reduce the suffering and limit it. But condemning innocents to death is not the basis of any just society. You cannot sacrifice the minority to appease the majority.

In war, we send people off to die (often without any input on their part) for the greater good. Does this devalue life so much that we turn babies into politician food?

But how do you decide to do that? Push one man in front of a train to save 5, is the one man a judge and the 5 criminals he'd sentence to death, or the one a killer and 5 his future victims? Morals don't boil down to math, not like that at least.

The way I see it, the world has evil. That's part of being human, you do evil; if there exists some evil we don't do, we never made a word for it. We will do evil by action or inaction, and it's impossible to find the less evil path in each case without looking into the future, let alone come up with a rule to do in each case.

Aids is a bad example here, it doesn't outright kill. An infected someone can survive indefinitely in a controlled environment. Cancer would be a better example. If people volunteered to have cancer implanted in them to find a cure, if that's how we sentenced people to death to make executions meaningful, if any number of rationalizations that I haven't even thought of yet was explained to me, sure, go for it. But it's still a rationalization, and as I explained I a mere ratio won't convince me. Then it's just the majority abusing a minority, even if the minority is chosen randomly.

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas is the perfect, extreme, example of my point I've ever read.

Edit: Only baron'd twice... FZ, that's an awful steep slippery slope. GJ, I only agree with the draft insofar as it's an attack on the homeland.

Yes, yes, and every life we save could be a Stalin and every person we end up letting go could be an Einstein. The one we push in the way could be a chef and the five coulud be teachers. Does any of this matter? Why not think of them simply as people?

Why not? As an example, how would you handle a triage if you decided not to use survival calculus?

Yes, it's true you'll never know EXACTLY what will happen, but are you saying you cannot even predict? Yes, mistakes will be made, but you'll at least have a good chance of being right.

And smoking doesn't directly kill and smokers can live past 100. We went over this like a few weeks ago.

Why does it matter if it's a "rationalisation"? Is it wrong to have good reasons for things?

And, again, if the possibility exists to save the others, the majority is, by inaction, abusing a LARGER minority by doing nothing. Remember, those people mostly didn't choose their AIDS/Cancer/whatever, either.

Care to summarise, or is it something I'm going to have to read?

I'm not saying don't try to predict. I'm saying everyone will have a side they'd rather err on... and I don't think you'll do any good telling me I'm wrong with the choice I've come up with after many nights of insomnia thinking about it.

Omelas is a question of the needs of the many vs. the few, taken to an incredible extreme with barely enough detail to be vivid. It's a good read, if you've got the time.

And death is too extreme to fit most moral problems; when was the last time you took someones life in your hands? You don't even know what decision you'd make with it staring you in the face, and neither do I. I think painful consequences should be a burden everyone shares, though.

I admit that I don't know if I'd be able to do the right thing, but that doesn't mean I can't say what I (or anyone) should do. Personal weakness doesn't invalidate morality.

Depends on the scenario. The Vietnam War was a case where this was done, and the Majority backlash stopped it for future conflicts (And don't mention stuff like Iraq which is done with volunteers. It's a different case if you know what you're getting into). I disagreed with the draft in Vietnam.

However, in the case of World War 2, it was stopping an even bigger disaster from happening. Stuff like Cancer and AIDS is passive, there is no malevolent intent, and they don't try to make things worse, they just exist, and can already be treated and contained to a degree with current methods and knowledge. In the case of dictators like Hitler, who want to actively spread their destruction and hate, I think sometimes it is a necessary evil that if not enough people are willing to volunteer, then we need to draft the unwilling.

It's an even older philosophical scenario then the train one, of "Is it a truly good society if they live in perfect bliss, yet one child must suffer unbelievable agony for it to exist". I would be disgusted by this society, and I would be one of the ones that leaves, but it is an interesting read.

If no one is willing to do a deed, is it really the moral thing to do, or the logical thing to do? Those two words are not interchangeable.

How does it depend? If they're going to war to provide the king with purple feathers or if they're going off to war to prevent the slaughter of millions, either way you're sending people off to die. And yet society still hasn't collapsed into barbarism, as you say it would if we sent people off to die to cure AIDS.

First off, why does it matter if the harm to society is malicious or not? It's still harming society. A small-time leader who wants to spread and conquer is probably going to cause less damage and deaths than, say, an epic conflagration. Why would you consider the former a higher priority than the latter?

Second, I assure that AIDS wants to spread very, very much. It may be microscopic, but it's trying its darndest to spread its conquest. And since it spreads by appropriating your cells as factories, well, it wants to kill you, too.

Of course it's still moral! If there's perfectly good food left over and one person's starving, but none of the others are willing to give it to the starving man 'cause they're lazy or mean or members of the Democratic party or anything, it's still the right thing to do to feed the man, right?

And again, "the logical thing to do" doesn't make any sense. Logic is a system for determining cause and effect. It's not what Spock says it is.

It IS different. The soldiers, or the police, or the firefighters, or anyone else that goes into a high risk job with a high chance of death knows what they're going in to. If they don't agree, then they should quit, otherwise they're doing their job. If you could get 10,000 volunteers willing to die for AIDS research for the good of humanity, then go for it, because those people know exactly what they're getting themselves into and know what will come of it. In the train scenario, if you don't push the man, but he willingly jumps in front of the train to save five people, that's different then forcing him to do it. Once you grant the choice to the people as to their fate, then it's a different case.

Because sometimes you have to look at the big picture. A threat to humanity is on a different scale then a regional threat. And even then, sometimes it is alright to send soldiers and such to deal with regional threats. However, it's a matter of sending in soldiers, not the unwilling or the innocent.

Well, alright, you have a point there. It's not really a threat on the same scale however, since it's mostly spread by ignorance or stupidity. That doesn't mean everyone with it did something stupid to get it (Children born to mothers with AIDS did nothing to deserve it), but that also means that if people were educated on the matter, we wouldn't NEED to sacrifice 10,000 people to stop it. In nations with proper education and medicine, AIDS is a small time problem, and even the infected can typically get some form of treatment to help them.

Of course, but there is no downside to that argument. It makes sense and is moral at the same time. It literally requires an immoral decision, and an unreasonable decision, in that scenario to decide not to feed the person.

According to Merriam-Webster, Logic is:

And if you can't trust a dictionary, who can you trust?

Reasoning is how you decide what makes the most sense, and science seeks to do so objectively. In a lot of the previous examples, it is massively more effective to go the quick way, and kill the 10,000, or throw the guy in front of the train, or torture the kid, or whatever scenario comes up. For a tiny portion of people that are unhappy or dead, you get a massive number of people that are happy or alive. It seems like a scenario that you can't lose!

And what about the people? How would you feel if you were walking down the street, and suddenly a van pulled up and grabbed you. You were told, "We're going to implant a malignant form of cancer into your system and study you until you die." Would you feel that is fair, or just, or right? Wouldn't you think they're crazy? Would you think what will happen to your family and friends? Would it seem moral as they let it twist through your system, damaging organs and inflicting hideous, endless pain while they kept you alive as long as possible to observe it? As you lay there trapped in one long, painful death, would you happily think that you're helping mankind?

I was obviously talking about a war involving conscription. Many of those have happened, again, ranging from the fancy of the leader to saving the country. Where's our baby-oil youth serum and free hobo livers, 'cause I could use some right now... :P

You'll find that threats to humanity tend not to come in the form of military leaders, even Hitler (The History Channel lies; Germany never could have won even if we stayed out of the war). And no man is going to be comic-book villain and destroy mankind. But diseases can wipe out whole continents. Much of Eurasia died from the Black Death. 90% of the Americas was killed from European diseases. Africa is rotting from the south up from AIDS (which has so far killed more than Hitler, by the way).
You seem to think that being a bad guy is necessary to be a big threat. Why?

On a related note, here's a question. A massive fire has hit, say, the Midwest and is spreading faster than evacuation can proceed. If all that was needed was more manpower, would you see pressganging the population into fire control to save the people in front of the fire as a better idea than not doing so and leaving most of them to die? Many of the people drafted are going to die, but less than would if they were just left to run away.

Damn right it's not a threat on the same scale. AIDS has killed 30 million and HIV is going to infect 90 million in Africa alone over the next few years. The only dictator who ever came close was Mao, and that was because of an engineered famine in his own country, not from any war.
And it's not as simple as saying "oh, let's just go to Africa and educate the natives and build some hospitals". We've been doing that for years. HIV still spreads there at a very alarming rate.
Also, AIDS isn't the only problem caused by ignorance or stupidity. The Germans elected Hitler to power. But since that could've been solved by making sure people know not to elect crazy people promising revenge, no need to send 418,500 Americans off to die, right?

A dictionary and someone who reads the definition right? :P
Arguments are logical or illogical depending on whether or not they show a valid connection between cause and effect. Actions may be rational or not, depending on whether or not the reasoning behind them is logically sound (i.e. whether or not the arguments involved in the reasoning are logical).
See the nuances now?

If I knew what I was dying for, and I knew that for some reason they had to randomly draft 10,000 people and not just get volunteers, well, I'd hate being one chosen, but I'd understand that it was right. But just because I'd sincerely wish they'd picked the annoying guy in class or the state of Alabama instead doesn't mean I wouldn't see the overall choice as a better one than leaving Cancer untreated.

The conscriptions themselves were so condemned that the people showed they don't agree with that thinking. Or the technology wasn't up to the needs of the day (During the crusades, transplant technology couldn't do much with those witch and hobo livers).

Because humanity is a much greater threat to itself then anything the Earth has ever thrown at it. We've always sprung back from diseases and plagues and whatever nasty disease of the century humanity has dug up and been inflicted with. Meanwhile, I think Humanity would fare much less well against designed diseases, or hell, even nukes if we ever start throwing them around.

And considering the stacks of journals and reports and books on the subject of World War 2 my father goes through regularly (I can look just to my right and see a bookcase full of nothing but WW2 and military books), I'm much more likely to be convinced by him on whether or not WW2 Germany was a threat. Germany pretty much almost had it, and actually made some decisions that were at the same time boneheaded and smart (Like attacking the Russians, who were at the time mobilizing to attack the Germans, and the Germans caught them off guard before they were fully ready. If the Russians had been fully mobilized, Germany would have been in a much worse position to fight them off. On the more boneheaded side was Hitler's decision that their jet fighters, which were actually ready years in advance, had to be fighter/bombers or else they were useless, setting them back to just about the end of the war when they were too few in number to be any good. A number of small issues here and there were what really decided the war, and without US intervention they might have had more time to complete some of the stuff they were working on)

No. It's an unfortunate event, but we can't be sure press ganging will even save that many lives. I'm not going to throw untrained people who just escaped the fire back into it to possibly save other lives.

AIDS keeps spreading like wildfire there because their efforts are underfunded and undersized to deal with the staggering lack of any forces that would mitigate the situation. Some new stuff recently has been announced on that end, but that money is just going to start trickling down now so stuff won't be in motion for another year, minimum. Africa tends to get the short end of the global community aid stick because the whole place is one giant, backwards mess that is exceptionally difficult and expensive to develop.

And Axis Germany was the fault of the Allied powers that were greedy at the end of WWI. They basically ruined the nation, and then were shocked when a rebellious element was able to sway the starving and poor people to want to kick the ass of the nations that had bankrupted and ruined them. He swayed them because he offered them a chance to become strong again, strong enough to take revenge on the nations that had ruined the country. They would have been crazy NOT to take him up on his offers, especially since he pretty much delivered in spades. I don't think anyone knew the true madness of Hitler until after the whole mess was over (Well, his military leaders probably knew to a degree, but they were riding the tiger and knew that if he went down, they were going with him). If Germany hadn't been ruined by reparations payments, the government would have stayed stable enough that Hitler wouldn't have been anything more then some random crackpot, possibly a footnote in Germany's history. It's easy to convince desperate people to do things if it offers them a chance to get out of their situation.

Yes.
... Sorta.
... I dunno, I'm losing my grip on word comprehension at this point from exhaustion. Tomorrow I might look at this and say "Oh, now I get it," and smack myself for interpreting it wrong the first time.

I have a feeling like many moral decisions, you might feel differently once they strap you down. However, that's not something I can really argue with. I can only argue that I don't think you should ever have to be put in that position (Nor should the annoying guy in class or the state of Alabama).

Going to bed soon, so I'll try to write up a full reply tomorrow.

The small issues weren't what decided it. Germany couldn't knock Britain out of the war so they were busy with a country roughly their size at their back when they went up against a country three times their size. Oh, also, 50% of the world's industry was concentrated in a country safe across an ocean and much of it was devoted to supplying Germany's enemies even before the US entered. Germany's defeat was inevitable after it decided to attack France and Britain instead of ally with them against the Soviet Union.

As I said, I'd hate it ever so much. I'm selfish and rather like living. But I would still agree that it was a more ethical choice than leaving Cancer untreated.

MORE PENDING MAYBE

I think the difference is that GJ is looking at the issue from the perspective of an omniscient 3rd person deity or from the combined perspective of every single human being on the planet, whereas FZ and I are looking at it from a personal perspective.

GJ is fine with the idea of ethics that damn an minority for the majority's sake, because she looks at the big picture, and knows that even if it harms her personally, it would help the human race as a whole.

FZ is looking at it from the perspective of all the people that will be used by the process, and the gross violation of civil rights and liberties involved in even considering such a choice. Sure, using absolute logic he dosn't have much of a point, but all those people who are getting fucked over by AIDS-curing scientists would sure disagree.

As much as I would like to cure cancer and AIDS myself, I can't help but think that the same type of logic used in curing either like that could be extended to justify another holocaust. I can't support those tactics, and thus am in FZ's camp.

(Not of jews, but let's say that I decided that curing AIDS would be easier if we just rounded up everyone who hads either HIV or AIDS and and shot them, thus having a 100% liklihood of curing it.

Hell, it would even have the avantage of being faster, and if hospitals denied AIDS patients medical care, then the ones I couldn't round up would probably die in 5 or so years anyway, which is far shorter then the amount of time a cross-sectional study of 10,000 people we intentionally infected with AIDS would be, thus would probably resulting in the deaths of less people; as the current AIDS generation would be less able to infect people.)

EDIT: Hell, let's extend this logic further, and castrate everyone with debilitating genetic diseases. Imagine a world free of Cancer, most strokes, type one diabetes, drasticly reduced heart attack numbers, and many score other serious, harmful diseases. After the 10% (or so) of fertile people repopulated the earth, we would have far more resiliant, far more able people in general, with fewer deaths per year, and thus, in several thousand years, would probably make the world a far better place.

Keeping in line with the other hypothetical situations in this thread, castrating those diseased masses would leave 10% of the world left, which would repopulate to current rates in 500 years, and would be totally free of all disease which might even remotely be linked to genetics.

Before GJ attacks me for misrepresenting her position, I'm not saying that the two are good analogies for one another. I'm saying that the logic used to justify one would also justify the other.

I think at a certain point, it's not a debate of whether the ends justify the means, but rather because the outcome has to do more harm then good, the argument becomes does the end outweigh the means, which I guess some could say is the same argument but I see them as different. One is deciding on whether harsh actions justify better results and the other is deciding whether the results truly outweigh the actions in the first place, since there's more to life then just numbers like FZ saying. At what point do we decide that world that seems favorable on the surface, is not worth the loss of who we are. In the end both decisions can leave a bitter taste in your mouth.

If sacrificing few for the many is going to start a slippery slope of descent into heartless Nazidom as FZ and RTM appear to think it invariably will, why haven't wartime conscription or triages or strategic bombing or quarantines caused it? Please answer this, or concede that your prediction is wrong.

It has. On many occasions. Look into all the genocides and other human atrocities in history, especially during wartime.

And your evidence that these are the result of conscription, triages, strategic bombing, quarantines, or other such actions justified by consequential ethics is..?

I know of no way I could prove that. It is my personal belief that things like that are large part of it, but I cannot logically prove it to the extent required to put up a serious argument. I will concede that point.

When is the ratio OK for you, GJ?
1. Would you sentence 50 to death to save 51?

2. Is the answer different depending on the quality of death, slow torture or in quiet sleep?

3. Back to the just kill 1 to save 5 question, would you kill one toddler to save 5 old men with less time alive left combined than the youth?

4. Would you torture one for 10 years (or cut one person's life 10 years short) to give 2 people 10 years longer life?

5. Would have one person tortured for 10 years if you could guarantee it would make them live 20 years longer? Keep in mind that this will scar the soul.
5.1 If you think it's be up to the one person in question for #5, then how can you make the same choice in #4, when it involves more people?
6. How do you define the greater good? Lives counted, time lived, or quality of life?

7. What if I disagree with someone making ethical choices for my own good? Is there a way for me to get justice for that, ethically?

8. Do you enjoy these debates? ;)

Can you honestly say though that there is no difference between killing the innocent in war, to end a conflict between two free willed groups, and say giving people AIDs purposely to end the disease (a previous example) .

I mean I can understand why you would say there's no difference, I just personally feel there is a difference in the situations of stopping willfull conflict, and stopping circumstancal tragedies. I mean for the most part I agree with your point, I just feel the examples doesn't fit the type of discussions we're having.

Since the alternative is to sentence the 51 to death to keep the 50 alive, yes.

Somewhat. The primary factor is life and death itself, but yes, this matters.

I've been thinking about this, and all I've been able to determine is "needs more information". The old people are able to, ignoring variables, experience five times the "quality of life" than the infant over any length of time. However, I assume you mean they're old enough to be retired, and have thus given almost all of their contribution to society, whereas the kid SHOULD be able to make a net contribution if it lives a full life.

This is simply the "kill one to save two" thing but with knowledge that they're all going to die in 10 years. So, yes?

If they wanted to, sure. If they don't want it, then it's not helping anyone.

So, uh, why is this -7? To try to trick me?

Anyways, it's different with #5 because it's assumed that the two want it. Life isn't much of a bonus to people who don't want it, ignoring stuff like contributing to/leeching from society.

Quality of life is the best descriptor given. But think of it not as, um, velocity, but rather as, um, distance? Like, take the integral of it. If it makes sense.

So people being alive is important, because you can't have any quality of life if you're dead. Potential people don't matter individually, as they don't exist, so I'm not saying have as many babies as possible for extra action. However, the good of society must not simply include the present but also the future.

What?

They're certainly more interesting than the "should I shave my beard" or "game discussion #252" threads that fill much of this subforum.

Honestly, the contextless X vs Y kind of things don't have much relevance to application of the ethics, at least mine. I subscribe roughly to Rule Utilitarianism, which takes into account what would happen if you did the action as a general rule. Thus, no harvesting organs from living people undergoing surgery to save more, 'cause then people don't go to hospitals and hey, you've just caused a lot more harm than you solved.

Triages and quarantines. In the former you withhold medical aid to people (a bad means) to save more people from the "circumstantial tragedy" of being wounded or ill (a good end). In a quarantine you revoke many freedoms and materials, and even services from people (a bad means) to prevent the "circumstantial tragedy" of the spread of disease (a good end).

There's a difference between withholding medical aid, or quarantining and purposely giving someone a disease just to study them, which is what the question is about, the latter not the former.

Honestly though, using your logic, I can't figure out why we would oppose either the AIDS holocaust, or the genetic castrations. Considering the high spreadability of AIDS, and the amount of new people it infects each year, doing this would pretty much stop it cold leading to the salvation of many peoples lives at the expense of people who are already pretty much screwed. as I even pointed out in the first post, it has the advantage of being quicker as well, thus saving even more people then curing it would.

Sure, the genetic castrations would lower the quality of life for one or two generations, but after we get back to current population levels, the improved gene pool would increase the quality and longness of life by exponentially more people every year. The number of lives saved and/or bettered is almost infinite.

EDIT: To clarify, I'm not asking to you to prove these wouldn't happen, which is impossible, I'm asking you if you personally would object to these, and if so, why.

The AIDS slaughter wouldn't work for several reasons.
First: You'd have to have a magical Kill All AIDS People button, or else you'd leave survivors, thus letting the disease start all over again.
Second: It's not even the best solution within the bounds given. If we can Kill 'Em All, we can also Quarantine 'Em All. That way they get to live relatively normal lives while stopping the spread of the disease.
Third: Kill or quarantine, either way you've just removed over 40 million people from the world. That's going to cause a lot of harm, especially in regions where the infected population is a sizable proportion of the total population (much of Africa, Russia, southern Asia).

Point it out all you want, it's still wrong. The cure for AIDS would have to be over 13 years in the making in order to kill more than the instant Kill All solution.

If eugenics grants such a benefit, you will of course provide evidence that the eugenics programs of the early XX century provided notable benefit, correct?

It certainly would be impossible for me to prove that, however if you want to have your claims taken seriously, you need to provide evidence that they do.

Me personally, or the ethics system I subscribe to? 'cause as I've said to FZ, I can want things to be one way and know that the more ethical way is something else.

The whole Eugenics argument is pointless, there are no good relevant examples to prove on way or another if it's worthwhile to do now, all the examples against are from nearly a century ago, where technology and understanding of the body was quite limited compared to today. But also you have no examples to support it. The only thing you can say is our understanding of the genome of a person is still quite limited (though quite ahead of what it use to be) and that any attempts at it would be pointless.

Though I guess you could have an argument about if we could choose which traits live on and which one become extinct so to say, if we should. For example, some are trying to eliminate autism from the country, if we could make sure that autism would stop happening should we?