A speculative concept referring to the application of eugenic principles to cognition—the idea of selecting, engineering, or enhancing cognitive abilities to produce "superior" minds while eliminating "inferior" cognitive profiles. Cognitive eugenics encompasses everything from IQ-based reproductive selection to neural enhancement technologies to the hypothetical elimination of cognitive disability. The term forces recognition that the desire to "improve" human cognition shares logical structure with eugenics: the identification of desirable traits, the classification of some minds as deficient, and the project of engineering future populations. Critics argue that cognitive eugenics masks its normative assumptions—that certain cognitive styles are superior, that variation is defect, that some minds shouldn't exist—behind the language of enhancement and progress.
Example: "He advocated for cognitive enhancement as human progress. She called it cognitive eugenics—not to dismiss enhancement, but to ask: who decides which minds are worth having?"
by Abzugal March 22, 2026
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