[FRIAM] semi-idle question

Sat Apr 24 15:31:01 EDT 2021

Well, as Sociobiologists are wont point  out, the best out come for a male is to sire many more offspring than he is burdened to raise.  I don’t know whether this accounts for the low but steady prevalence of psychopathy in human populations as an alternative reproductive strategy, but it might.  

Nick Thompson

 <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> On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp
Sent: Saturday, April 24, 2021 12:38 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] semi-idle question

Up to maybe hundred years ago, a rich man could sire and raise ten children or more and many poor men none or at the most a few. The key point is that genetic differences influenced the number of descendants a person had with the result that the conditions were there for natural selection and undoubtedly human beings evolved. 
Today however, genetic differences between people have very small influence on the number of their descendants so the conditions are very weak for natural selection. I conjure that if natural selection is happening today it is very small, maybe negligible? 
But if you look beyond natural selection and include gene editing, humans can of course evolve. I would be very surprised if there are not already some filthy rich people doing it in secret.   

On Sat, 24 Apr 2021 at 20:32, Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com <mailto:sasmyth at swcp.com> > wrote:

DaveW -

I think the eugenics movement(s) of the last century as well as the many clan structures in indigenous peoples and royal bloodlines throughout history have been structured with the aspiration of either inducing genetic drift in a desired direction, or (in the case of clan structures and incest taboos) perhaps mute it's worst outcomes.

The divergence of Neandertalis/Devonisis/Sapiens presumed to have happened hundreds of thousands of years ago and the reconvergence/subsumption roughly 40,000 years ago seem to represent the most *significant* evolution we know of among "modern" humans...    The time-scales I consider in your questoin are on the order of hundreds of years, not tens or hundreds of thousands.   That alone suggests to me that we will not see anything we can measure as "evolution".   The divergence of traits we identify as "race" seem to have happened over tens of thousands of years as well.   From our experience with domestic animal breeding, we probably have (refer to Eugenics literature) some sense of how many generations it would take us to "breed in" or "breed out" various traits.   

  <https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/42/Homo_lineage_2017update.svg/320px-Homo_lineage_2017update.svg.png> 

As Marcus and other technophile/posthumanist proponents have indicated, it seems that germline modification (e.g. CRISPR) is likely to become acutely more significant (for the first world?) than any natural "drift", much less evolution by natural selection.

And then all the ways we might entirely stunt/block evolution:

    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/texas-rancher-cloned-deer-lawmakers-want-legalize_n_607ef3e0e4b03c18bc29fdd2

Who knew we had come this far from Dolly <https://dolly.roslin.ed.ac.uk/facts/the-life-of-dolly/index.html> ?

Can species NOT involved in deliberate breeding programs (e.g. wild things) evolve quickly enough to stay ahead of the anthropogenic changes afoot?   I think the simple answer is "hell yes!" but the more interesting relevant answer is sadly more like "barely" or "probably not hardly" if we are talking about our favorite or photogenic species (large mammals, colorful birds, ...  in particular).

For better or worse, the large mammal strategies including high mass/surface ratios also yield longer dependency and reproductive lags, so while the bacteria might achieve population doubling in tens of minutes, Whales, Elephants, Polar Bears and Humans have reproductive periods on the order of decades. 

I think the Big Green Lie thread is asking if human *cultural* or *social* evolution can be quick enough to avert the disasters we think (some of us) we see looming on the near horizon.   A very specific (engineered?) pandemic might yield a very acute selection pressure. 

In the wild, maybe in the niche areas where conditions are going out of human survival range (e.g. dewpoint too high for human sweat-cooling to maintain a temperature below the threshold for breakdown of enzymes (and other metabolic macromolecules) will uncover/select-out those with metabolisms more able to skirt that hairy edge...  but how many generations of that kind of selection (without significant mixing with other populations) would be required to see a coherent gene pool reflecting that survival trait?   And with modern knowledge/travel/technology, the chances of humans staying put and enduring those conditions and NOT creating/importing some form of mechanical/chemical refrigeration (or just moving into pit-houses coupled to the much lower temperature earth?)

I'm definitely not going to depend on it!

- Steve

On 4/24/21 10:50 AM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com>  wrote:

Well, it’s obviously both/and with trade-offs between.  

Please see attached.  It’s short.   

Nick 

Nick Thompson

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

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

From: Friam  <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Friday, April 23, 2021 9:21 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group  <mailto:friam at redfish.com> <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] semi-idle question

Dave, I found this in Wikipedia:  "The social brain hypothesis was proposed by British anthropologist  <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Dunbar> Robin Dunbar, who argues that human intelligence did not evolve primarily as a means to solve ecological problems, but rather as a means of surviving and reproducing in large and complex social groups."

That might explain why we are now leading our species off the cliff. 

On Fri, Apr 23, 2021 at 7:12 AM Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm <mailto:profwest at fastmail.fm> > wrote:

Can human beings evolve?

Was reading about Pepper Moths in England during the Industrial Revolution. (population genetics)

Population was white with dark spots and the occasional dark colored moth was easy prey.
Pollution killed lichen and caused the trees (moth's habitat) to be covered in soot, turning them dark.
Population of black moths went from 2% in 1848 to 95% by 1895.

Is is possible for humans to evolve in response to climate change in a similar way? more general prevalence of melanin, craving for spicy hot food?

Of course moths used many generations to achieve their change and their lifespan is a fraction of a humans, so extinction is more likely than adaptation. But, is it at least possible in principle?

davew

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-- 

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org <http://emergentdiplomacy.org> 

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

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