[FRIAM] Population regulation by mayhem

[Prof David West]

Nick,

Last I looked, head was still on shoulders. I took your comment as just another caution with regard my tendency to make casual generalizations / over simplifications. (But now that I think about it, maybe I was a bee and you were a Murder Wasp? But no, we aren't in Washington state or Canada.)

But I would point out a flaw in generalizing from one kind of animal species to another — the male human animal encounters all kinds of constraints that inhibit (not prevent, just inhibit) the insemination of multiple women that males of other animal species usually do not.

davew


On Sun, May 3, 2020, at 1:38 PM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
> 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_Reintroducing_group_selection_to_the_human_behavioral_sciences_to_BBS_readers_-_Commentary>

> 

> 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

> 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 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

> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

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

> 

> 

> 

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

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

> *To:* 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 “birth control” <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/238356686_A_Utopian_perspective_on_ecology_and_development> 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

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

> 

> 

> 

> *From:* Friam <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 <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

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

> 

> 

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