jaymz wrote:Shark_Force wrote:eugenics is a social movement that involves such practices as forcibly sterilizing "undesirable" elements of society, including but not limited to: people not of your race, promiscuous women (oh yeah, how scientific that they determined *that* was an inherited trait), the poor, and so forth. eugenics is about as scientific as the guy who persuaded one of my aunts that a special rock would purify the water *in* her water pipes by simply being *near* the water pipes.
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No offense SF but I'll take the Oxford definition over yours
eugenics(eu|gen¦ics)
Pronunciation:/juːˈdʒɛnɪks/plural noun
the science of improving a population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics.
and here is the actual link
http://oxforddictionaries.com/view/entr ... _gb0275890I see nothing there about social engineering, do you? Nope didn't think so and that is the only definition it gives. That could be considered a form of genetic engineering through breeding thus applying the word to genetic engineering is in fact more correct than applying it to racism or social engineering.
Oddly, the genetic engineering aspect is in fact the context it is being used here not the "definition" you give it.
sure. and why don't we have a look at what other definitions might be around. a very basic web search brings up:
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&biw=1 ... d=0CBgQkAEvery few of which deal with genetic engineering in any way, almost none of them even leave wiggle room to think of genetic engineering as being part of it, and none of which contradict the expanded information you will find on it if you check an encyclopedia dealing with the fact that it is a social movement from the early 20th century. and again, this is the supposed "science" that determined that the way to improve humanity was by "maintaining racial purity", forcibly sterilising "unfit" people, and committing genocide against other races of humanity. it's about as scientific as palm reading. the oxford definition (and indeed, all dictionary definitions) is simply trying to compress an extremely large amount of information down to one or two sentences - information will be lost as a result, and nothing about that definition mentions genetic engineering. if you look up the definition of "
role-playing" in the oxford dictionary, it doesn't mention anything about dice, or rulebooks, or making up a character. it doesn't mention palladium, or white wolf, or even wizards of the coast, and it doesn't mention rifts, vampire, or D&D. this does not mean that roleplaying doesn't encompass these things, it simply means that they weren't important enough to make it into the very short definition that oxford provides.
and again, for those of you who can't seem to grasp this, i have no problem with eugenics being in a book. that's fine. i get it. that book can even be applied to rifts, fine. it's a similar system (albeit not quite the same one), and in some vague way it can be argued that because it's part of the palladium line, it is therefore somehow a rifts book (although interestingly, palladium certainly doesn't think so; they don't have it in the rifts section of their store. shockingly, it can be found in the separate *heroes unlimited* section of the store, much like there are separate forums for those two product lines). apparently, it can even be argued that since they're the same "engine", i can just automatically assume that when i walk into a heroes unlimited game that shifter or cosmo-knight or hatchling dragon or veritech pilot are standard OCCs in the game and that the GM is apparently just being an ass if he doesn't let me play one of those because it's all the same game, even the stuff that says it's from a different game. but that is STILL BESIDE THE POINT.
my point has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not it exists also in a powers unlimited book. it has to do with the fact that it's a confusing choice of words. now, i'm going to try to explain this again: imagine you don't own the powers unlimited book. yes, it still exists, but you don't own it. you haven't read it. you don't know what's in it. i'm confused why this is so hard for you to do; as people who supposedly role-play fairly often, it stands to reason you should be able to imagine yourself in other situations, no? so imagine you're unaware of powers unlimited 2, and someone tells you "Splicers is kinda like eugenics". now, is your first assumption "oh, i bet that's in the powers unlimited book that i have never read and probably don't even know exists", or is your first assumption "ok, it's probably got something to do with real life eugenics."
it's confusing, it's unclear, and it is a bad choice of words, because the vast majority of people who hear the word "eugenics" are going to think about things like hitler, nazi germany, the holocaust, genocide, racial purity, etc. they are not going to think "oh, that's just a slightly different form of super powers", because real life eugenics has nothing to do with making people run at supersonic speeds or punching a tank so hard it crumples into scrap metal. it doesn't matter that those things are in a book, and it doesn't even matter that you have read that book. that makes it clear for you, and only you. unless you happen to have the super power of beaming your personal knowledge into the head of every person who ever reads these forums, in which case, your super power isn't working because i didn't have access to that knowledge when i first read it, and neither will many others, who will also be confused if you don't make it clear what you're talking about.
case in point, several people apparently can't grasp that i'm talking about real life eugenics, and that i'm not trying to disprove the existence of rules by such a name in a palladium product, nor am i trying to argue that those rules could not in any way be applied to rifts. presumably, they must think when i'm talking about the standard definition of eugenics, i'm actually trying to discuss palladium's game rules for eugenics (either that or they've got their heads stuck so far up their ass that they can see their lunch, it's hard to tell sometimes). because they sure as hang aren't actually addressing my point...
you some might think you're a 
but you're cool in book 
: palm-forehead:
