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deschutron comments on Open thread, Feb. 23 - Mar. 1, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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People have had this idea before. It's called "eugenics".
It has a bad reputation from its implementation by the Nazis, who might have corrupted it a bit for their other political goals.
But I think even a pure implementation of eugenics is not as good as the other options we have for improving the lives of future humans.
Very little of eugenics's bad reputation dates from the Nazis. Some of it dates from before and some from long after. In particular, the winners continued their pre-war programs for decades after the war. Eugenics became unfashionable around 1960, a bit late to blame on the Nazis. And I think the emphasis on Nazi associations is even later (maybe 1970 or 1980), after eugenics was clearly losing.
Not quite: eugenics is a set of techniques that isn't certainly limited to sexual selection. Plus only humans could practice eugenics. Instead, anything with a brain and sex can practice sexual selection.
BTW, ferns have feromons, they might be able to choose their partners. At least, we don't know yet if they do. Would you call it sexual selection, if it leads to preferential inbreeding/outbreeding/between-species breeding?