Beat Your Genes Podcast 299:Eugenics & EvoPsych, Child threatens suicide, Bad child blaming good parents
1. I am curious about an unpopular subject: systematic eugenics. Has "random” selection in the mating market already produced the best possible human genes combinations? Could we generate humans with drastically higher IQ, strength, size, speed, athleticism, beauty, etc? What do you think is the hypothetical limit of human genetic potential for outlier individuals and for the average of a population? This kind of discussion is often obscured by the obvious practical and ethical problems, rather than what it could theoretically achieve.
2.My husband's daughter is extremely disagreeable, low conscientiousness, low IQ, highly introverted, open to drugs and alcohol and unstable. She is in constant crisis and is constantly threatening suicide. My husband and I have really tried to be there for her and never miss a call, but her constant cries for attention are draining and have taken years off our lives. I don't want to discount anything that she is feeling but my and my husband's mental health are really suffering and we don't know what to do.
3.How do you respond to a child who has no recognition of their limitations? i.e. on the verge of being fired because they constantly call in "sick," show up late, don't do their job. Or the child who barely passed chemistry but says they are going to med school? Even if we say "That's great, but I understand med school is a lot of work" she gets mad and tells us and all her friends that we told her that she was a loser and a failure and because of us, she isn't going to med school anymore and instead she's stuck in a minimum wage job. Then she gets depressed at what might have been if we hadn't held her back. But if we say nothing, then she tries and fails (or fails to try) and becomes depressed and that somehow becomes our fault too.
Copyright Beat Your Genes Podcast
Host: Nathan Gershfeld
Interviewee: Doug Lisle, Ph.D. and Jen Howk, Ph.D.
Podcast website: www.BeatYourGenes.org
True to Life seminars with Dr. Lisle and Dr. Howk : www.TrueToLife.us
Intro & outro song: City of Happy Ones · Ferenc Hegedus