One of the worst 'Dodgy Technology' hoaxes of all time: "Lysenkoism"

[cdev]

And it keeps coming back in various forms again and again.

Lysenkoism is really almost identical to "Social darwinism". I don't know how much people know about history, specifically the history of Social darwinism, but its truly horrible. between the two of them, Lysenkoism/Social Darwinism together are responsible for the deaths of at least 100 million people in the 20th century and I have strong reason to believe that is a very very conservative estimate.  This disaster spanned the globe, cropping up again and again in different forms in at least five different countries, and causing unspeakable problems, literally the most horrific and evil events of the 20th century in really almost all of them.

Now I have to defend my argument. I would like others to help me out, or shoot me down. Google will bring you there to the underlying story.

get ready to delve into some horrible things because thats where this story which is rooted in the most evil pseudoscientific claptrap ever, will bring you, but its the ultimate dodgy technology story, and it will make you aware of certain elements in these schemes that seem to be common to most of them.

Basically, the concept led to various extreme stupidities that turned into real life nightmares - the biggest mistakes made by humans - that you can breed "master plants" or a "Master Race" or plow really deep and grow more food, or create steel from pig iron in backyard furnaces, and get around doing the hard work to get there -avoiding innumerable facts in science.

[Deodand2014]

For what it's worth, here are two videos discussing Lysenkoism, the first covers the original version from Stalinist Russia



The second deals with the latest incarnation, which seems to be an offshoot of post-modernism.

[Crazy_Pete]

I dunno what this has to do with EE but i'll risk an Off Topic Demerit because i think it is important enough given the world today.    I met Dr.  Raisa Goldfarb (one of the famous proponents of Lysenkoism and a really smart and kind lady, i think she wanted to get  this off her chest with me.)   But she told me the story of how she "signed off" on Lysenkoism.     A guy showed up in her Lab about 18 months after the end of WWII and began a conversation with:

"Dear  Dr. Goldfarb.   I am so sorry the Nazi's killed your entire family.    You are the only surviving member of your line.   It is astonishing how shocked the Americans were at the clean efficient death camps the Nazis were running.    I don't know what the surprise, the Germans are decades ahead of us in technology.   I would expect their death camps to be cleaner and more efficient than ours.    Dr. Goldfarb, i hate my life and i will hate myself for what i do for the rest of my life.    If you don't sign these papers i will shake my head and walk away.    Then a few men not as nice as me will come and talk to you but when they leave, they will take YOU with them.   Dr. Goldfarb, you are young and can have children.    You also have a choice.  You can sign this paper now, and hate me for 5 minutes as i walk away with them.   Or you can NOT sign the papers, and you will join me in hating ME for the rest of YOUR life after those men take you away.   Look, my father fell off horse and mangle his arm before i  was born.  Do i have mangled arm?   Of course not, nobody believe this stupid!   But Beria [Head of the Soviet Secret Service] will kill us all if we do not pretend!"
That's why she signed the papers.


Thanks for reading

Crazy Pete

[T3sl4co1l]

What?

Regarding ideology, it doesn't matter much.  Look behind the rhetoric.  Look for the motive.  Why did Stalin promote Lysenkoism?  (I just glanced at the Wikipedia notes on this, feel free to chime in with an authoritative source.)  Better question, why did Stalin purge so many people?  And how might that be accomplished?

When you're the leader of a modern country -- not just a tribe, or village, but millions of people -- you don't have the courtesy to deal with individual actors, for better or for worse as the case may be.  If a lot of your opponents are coming out of one geographical area, say, you'll be more than willing to sacrifice a few of your supporters -- they'll go quietly, in support of your cause, after all -- by, say, changing a few convenient rules affecting that area, or its demographics or zoning or what have you.

This is well outside the domain of ethics, or psychology.  This is just pure, cold, hard power dynamics.

The only thing the ideology does is make people easier to manage.

We might wish that the values give rise to the actions, and we might wish that those values in turn arose from a moral or theological system: something better than ourselves, that we can trust, and which facilitates participation in a society: a system of common traditions.  But in fact, it works the opposite way.  Value systems themselves may arise in a natural way (evolving through incremental changes, mashing up different ideas, and original creation), but their promotion and legitimization only follows the distribution of power.

This is why the "values-actions gap" is a thing.

I wonder if any polisci people have quantified the values-actions gap.  I would be willing to bet, if you plot it versus wealth inequality, the correlation is quite strong.

Tim

[Crazy_Pete]

Don't ask me, i am a diagnosed Psychopath.   :-)    I deal with ethics not values or morals ;-)     Oh and it isn't that psychopaths don't know they are psychopaths.   That is silly, do you really think we don't know that we feel no remorse?    We just think you are deluding yourselves when you claim you do.   My actual point re. the Raisa Goldfarb story was to point out how people can be forced into actions against their will.     I dunno when somebody tells me about "Values" i tell her to save it for her women's circle.   :-)    I do think it is funny that all descriptions of psychopaths on youtube  involve a woman with a degree in psychology and a weight problem claiming  that her ex boyfriend is a psychopath because he feels no guilt for having dumped her.  :-)

Seriously i honestly believe you are correct, and i do honestly believe that is why psychopaths are so common.   Our values and  theology are reflective of evolution.    Look how much of religion actually deals with Sanitation.   However that simply breaks down and you need more scientific system of ethics.   I did have a psych professor who believed that is why psychopaths evolved in the first place.   So at least you have college professors who believe you are correct instead of just me.  :-)

Thanks
Crazy Pete

[Nominal Animal]

There is also the fact that leaders tend to be charismatic rather than intelligent.

Value systems themselves may arise in a natural way (evolving through incremental changes, mashing up different ideas, and original creation), but their promotion and legitimization only follows the distribution of power.

This.

It is also why competition is such a powerful driver in everything humans do. (There are many aspects of capitalism I personally don't like, but the fact that it basically requires competitive markets to function, makes it way better than any of the other economic systems I know of.)

Competition itself proves Lysenkoism wrong in just a few seasons.

that you can breed "master plants" or a "Master Race"

Well, not exactly; it's even stupider than that. At the core, it (Lamarckism, which Lysenkoism adopted) claims that if you can modify/force one plant or human to become what you want (via splicing, surgery, punishment, indoctrination, et cetera), its offspring will inherit all of those features.

While considered ethically horrible now, there is nothing that would stop humans from breeding a "master race" by carefully selecting for desired traits over a few dozen generations. You'd need a much larger breeding base to weed out inheritable diseases, and it'd take a long, long time, but there is nothing that says it cannot be done.  How "masterful" traits you can get, is of course up to debate.  I believe intelligence (or certain measurable facets of it) you could select for, and maybe some physical properties (skin, eye, and hair color, average muscle mass), but in the end, they wouldn't be any kind of supermen, just much more likely to have the same advantages that a lot of humans already have, and a lot less likely to have any of the inherited genetic risk factors.

[Crazy_Pete]

I don't know about leader's not being intelligent.   I think that is a strange phenom of the pom.    Honestly that seems to be the case in the UK and USA (ok not poms the latter ;-)  But in the USA and the UK leaders tend to be really stupid yet charismatic.      Hitler had terrific charisma.   He also had an incredible, Einstein like IQ.  (Imagine where the world would be now if he had been the product of a more positive environment.)

I read a book by one of the psychologists at the Nuremberg trials.    He said that as soon as he tested the defendants and found that the LOWEST IQ of the defendants was higher than that of anyone on the Allied staff:    "I knew that as soon as the superior officers saw that these men were more intelligent than they were, they would hang.  The trial was just for show."

I  think the whole intelligence thing got laid to rest by John Lennon in "Working Class Hero":

"They hate you if yer clever but despise a fool, 'till yer so f**ken crazy you can't follow their rules" 

H.L. Mencken wrote about the effects of democracy in the USA and the US tendency to elect leaders who are complete idiots.    I thought it was pretty funny that back in the 1930s he predicted that "By the year 2000 the american people will have so perfected their electoral process that they will finally have been able to elect a complete moron into office."    Many a witty wag has pointed out that was the year Bush was elected.   :-)

Re. intelligence and "values" i spend a lot of time lamenting the lack of women in science.   (Not because i am a "feminist" but because it was women who taught me science in the first place.)  I guess that is why that Raisa Goldfarb story came to mind when you mentioned Lysenkoism.   She was a very brilliant biochemist whose international reputation was stained against her will when she was forced to sign off on Lysenkoism knowing it was all B.S.


Thanks
Crazy Pete

[Crazy_Pete]

How is Lysenkoism like Social Darwinism?     

Thanks

Crazy Pete

[Simon]

cdev, not sure what you are smoking but maybe you need to find another forum that is dedicated to this nonsense. I tire of having to remind you that this is not relevant on this forum and politics etc are best not discussed here.