[FRIAM] Population regulation by mayhem

Sun May 3 15:38:23 EDT 2020

Dave, 

Didn't mean to bite your head off.  You touched an old sore.  There was a
huge literature leading up to the sixties (Wynne-edwards, 1962, Animal
dispersion in relation to Social Behavior, inter alia) which argued that
population regulation was the function of social arrangements and that
selection was at the level of the species.  This was all abruptly ended in
1966 by George C. Williams's scathing screed, Adaptation and Natural
Selection: A critique of some current evolutionary thought. Williams argued
that most of our recent thinking about evolutionary causation at that time
had been tainted by a confusion between consequences of behavior and its
function, and that just because population regulation was a consequence of
much social behavior was no reason to believe that that was its function.
The species itself is NOT an object of selection, but its consequence.
Consequences to the species, as such, are not an evolutionary cause.
Williams's book led to an appalling over correction which continues today
and may be reflected in some of the libertarian-ish themes in FRIAM  -- the
idea that selection occurs ONLY at the gene or the individual level .
Trying to claw out some middle ground between these two absurd extremes has
been one of the stories of my life. See this brief commentary.
<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231784422_Reintroducing_Reintroduc
ing_group_selection_to_the_human_behavioral_sciences_to_BBS_readers_-_Commen
tary>  

One of the points that Williams made is that in a species such as humans,
killing off males cannot be seriously considered as a method for regulating
population since, more or less, it takes a only single male to inseminate a
virtually infinite number of females. Yeh, I know.  "In my wildest dreams."
But still. 

Nick 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> 

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Sunday, May 3, 2020 7:43 AM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] ill-conceived question

Nick,

No one made any claim about effectiveness. Just an observation that if you
do year-by-year plot of birthrate in a given population you will see an
annual increase leading to the onset of a war, an obvious decrease during
the war, and a surge immediately after the war ends.  The surge more than
compensates for the drop during the war years, so effectiveness is out the
window.

I think - haven't checked recently - that there was a gradual increase in
birth rate between WWI and the onset of WWII, a 2-4 percent decrease during
the war years, and a huge baby boom immediately after.  Father Smith had
similar statistical measures for dozens of other conflicts.

Population pressure / "birth control" are but one of a multitude of factors
that lead to war. All kinds of arguments can be made about the "validity" of
Father Smith's statistics - few pre-modern peoples kept comprehensive public
health records, ...

davew

On Sat, May 2, 2020, at 11:21 PM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com
<mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com>  wrote:

David,

Basic fact of demography.  Killing men is not a particularly effective means
of population control. 

You want war to serve in that capacity, you have to get women in the
military. 

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

 <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/>
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> >
On Behalf Of Steven A Smith

Sent: Saturday, May 2, 2020 8:00 PM

To: friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com> 

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] ill-conceived question

Dave -

I once taught an honors course, with Father Smith at St. Thomas on the
Anthropology and Theology of War. One of the prime forces behind war - since
prehistory - had been nothing more than birth control.

Do you meant literally *birth* and *control*, or rather *population* and
*reduction*?

The more literal usage works well too.  Controlling Births.  I think much
warfare culminates (or did before modernish times) in the victors killing
the men and raping/impregnating and enslaving the women either in-place,
inhabiting the conquered lands or taking them back to their homeland.
Children alternatively would have been killed or enslaved.   Thus the
genetic heritage of Genghis Khan...

One step more sophisticated than the rats?

I don't think we have to go there, no matter how much the gun hoarders want
their chance at being unequivocally "on top" at least for one round of the
grande iterated prisoner's dilemma that is human civilization.

- Steve

Well, in a sense that's correct.  But their method of
<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/238356686_A_Utopian_perspective_on
_ecology_and_development> "birth control" is not one that I am prepared to
take as a model.  Just imagine the worst sort of dystopian post apocalyptic
novel.  See the description of the Calhoun experiment on p 224.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> 

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam  <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> <friam-bounces at redfish.com>
On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels

Sent: Saturday, May 2, 2020 12:15 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
<mailto:friam at redfish.com> <friam at redfish.com>

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] ill-conceived question

< You recall that I invoked as a model that experiment in which 24 rats were
put in a quarter acre enclosure in Baltimore and fed and watered and
protected to see how the population would develop.  They never got above two
hundred.  >

Maybe the rats were right?

Marcus

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Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> 

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

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