From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Wed Aug 22 2001 - 20:25:01 MDT
Lee Corbin wrote:
>
> So since the mindless *always* win these fights, who can suggest
> a good two-word phrase for a voluntary movement of people who
> favor obtaining for their children the best natural sperm or eggs
> that they can?
"Normal humans." I know of definite technical terms for all kinds of
special cases of mate selection, including "assortative mating" and
"sexual selection" and so on, but I drew a blank when I tried to think of
the technical term for the general case of sexual attraction based on
observed characteristics which correlate to the expected genetic fitness
of the offspring. Maybe "mate selection" is the best term, albeit too
general(*).
If you're referring to people who use technological methods to obtain
their natural genetic material, such as sperm banks or egg banks, I would
suggest the term:
Technoparents.
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
(*) Any characteristic which is attractive to you, or which helps the mate
survive, is likely to be beneficial to the next generation for the same
reason it's beneficial now, so it's hard to distinguish between attraction
based on cues for offspring fitness and attraction based on partner
fitness; they're almost always the same cues. The only time I can recall
selection based on genetic material being discussed as a pure case was as
a director for female attraction in cases where no assistance in raising
the child would be expected.
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