[FRIAM] semi-idle question
Prof David West
profwest at fastmail.fm
Sun Apr 25 10:20:07 EDT 2021
Pieter is exposing the 'hidden' premise behind my question.
Natural evolution is veerrrrry slooowwwww when it comes to long lived creatures such as ourselves. But culture provides a much quicker form of "evolution" allowing our species to adapt and thrive in all kinds of niches: e.g. wearing the pelts of animals instead of growing our own in order to survive in the Arctic.
Then, our tech gives us the ability to shape the niches, creating new ones and destroying old ones. It seems that what was always a kind of co-evolution of environment and entity, with the entity"s adapting to the environment being more obvious, has or will become non-evolution of the entity and solely alteration of the environment.
Humans will no longer evolve.
So the future is extinction or some kind of "space parasol" to ameliorate the climate crisis?
davew
On Sun, Apr 25, 2021, at 6:42 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> I wonder how birth control methods play into this. Are the strong (e.g. affluent) more likely to use them?
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
> On Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 11:15 PM Pieter Steenekamp <pieters at randcontrols.co.za> wrote:
>> Let me rephrase it so that the point I wanted to make is maybe more clear.
>>
>> I conjure that today in the developed world evolution by means of natural selection is at most very weak. Although I don't think it's zero I only argue for the case that it is at least significantly weaker than a long time ago.
>>
>> Why?
>> In the developed world today the conditions are not very conducive for natural selection. If there is a mutation making an individual slightly more fit for the environment, there is no mechanism for that person to have more descendents, so a crucial component of natural selection is missing. There is no correlation between having genes making you more fit for the environment and the number of descendants you have, so the genes making a person more fit for the environment do not spread through the population. I'm excluding the harm we do to the environment, but humanity is kind towards those with traits making them less fit for the environment. We care for the weak, we allow them to have as many descendents as the strong. I think this is unique for all species since life began.
>>
>>
>> On Sat, 24 Apr 2021 at 23:46, Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:
>>> I'm not sure I did much better in finding (with trivial effort) relevant data but:
>>>> https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033027/fertility-rate-us-1800-2020/
>>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility
>>> provide some framing. It seems in the present/industrial societies, the correlation is inverse
>>>> *"Development is the best **contraceptive <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraceptive>**." - *Karan Singh**
>>> I was shocked that our (USA) Rnaught had dropped to 2.06 in 1940. My father was 1 of 2 but my mother was 1 of 5 (all born in the 20s). I was skooled by my betters in the equal rights movement that it was not until oral contraception (circa 1960) that fertility/reproduction rates dropped. The chart above suggests (acutely) otherwise. I'm assuming my grandparents must have relied on (male) barrier methods *or* they had just enough Calvinist in them (which they did by my 60's ideals) to rely on abstinence?
>>> In all cases, I think the number of generations implied even by the last 2000 years might not be enough to obtain significant change? Or is speciation more of a punctuated equilibrium event with abrupt environmental changes (including migration to new landscapes) are what drive rapid change by selection? Or gradualism? Or both:
>>> https://necsi.edu/gradualism-and-punctuated-equilibrium
>>> - Steve **
>>> On 4/24/21 3:10 PM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
>>>> *" Why would a poor man sire significantly fewer children than a rich man? "
*
>>>> Good question, maybe my assumption is wrong?
>>>>
>>>> It's not so much about the siring of the children as about the successful raising of many children in the past.
>>>> My assumption is based on the fact that food was scarce and relatively expensive. Poor families' children were malnutritioned and died more easily from many types of illnesses. I'd love to find numbers to see if this is true or false. I did a quick google search and found nothing.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, 24 Apr 2021 at 21:43, Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> On 4/24/21 12:37 PM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
>>>>>> 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.
>>>>> Why would a poor man sire significantly fewer children than a rich man? Polygamy might have tipped the balance of available mates in favor of the rich and powerful, but otherwise war and other violence was tipping the balance toward every man having an opportunity to mate (assuming significant levels of monogamy). Nutrition and health care (and stressors) might reduce the number of children a woman could (live) birth and raise to reproductive age, but I don't think the bias is less than 2:1 on average?
>>>>>> 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.
>>>>> Does this mean you believe that wealth was a direct correlation to some genetic feature? Within strict class and even more acutely, blue-blood nobility/caste reproductive contexts, there is *some* correlation, but I think the unrecognized effects of over-inbreeding did more harm than good?
>>>>> I am willing to believe that high aggression may still have been selected for reproductively up into the industrial age, but I think that got sublimated into wealth and power collection more than reproductive fecundity (though I grant up to 2:1 advantage *through* acquired wealth). e.g Genghis hisself <http://malyarchuk-bor.narod.ru/olderfiles/1/RJG_3_07.pdf>
>>>>>> 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.
>>>>> With the ?8.6B? people on this planet, I suspect "if we can, someone is/has/will". The previously linked article on Texas Ranchers cloning prize Bucks suggests to me that up to the practical challenges imposed by broad ethical concerns that human cloning has to be (nearly) as easy.
>>>>>> https://www.deerassociation.com/action-alert-texas-captive-deer-cloning-h-b-1781/
>>>>>> https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Deer-Clone-4542735.php
>>>>> and we DO have the Raëlians <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ra%C3%ABlism> and Clonaid. <http://www.clonaid.com/>
>>>>>> https://www.statnews.com/2016/07/05/dolly-cloning-sheep-anniversary/
>>>>>> https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/21/human-reproductive-cloning-curious-incident-of-the-dog-in-the-night-time/
>>>>> my kids are too much like me already, we can barely get along as it is!
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Sat, 24 Apr 2021 at 20:32, Steve Smith <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.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> 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 wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Well, it’s obviously both/and with trade-offs between.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Please see attached. It’s short.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Nick
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Nick Thompson
>>>>>>>> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
>>>>>>>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> *From:* Friam <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 <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 Robin Dunbar <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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> 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
>>>>>>>> Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> mobile: (303) 859-5609
>>>>>>>> skype: merle.lelfkoff2
>>>>>>>> twitter: @merle110
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
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