From: CurtAdams@aol.com
Date: Thu Apr 04 2002 - 19:44:34 MST
In a message dated 4/4/02 15:52:35, weidai@eskimo.com writes:
>I think what's relevant here is not the relative frequencies of the
>alleles, but the relative amounts of resources they have access to. Today
>having more babies gives you more offsprings that survive into maturity,
>but it's not clear that it increases the total wealth/power of your
>offsprings compared to having fewer babies (because it causes you to
>invest less in each offspring and the return on that investment is
>increasing up to a point). If it doesn't then increased fecundity is going
>to be a losing strategy in the long run.
Evolution of genes is affected solely by the number of people produced.
Quite possibly wealth and and power won't increase with the number of
people, but the people will still be there. If the high reproducers
don't interbreed with low reproducers you eventually end up with
a dystopic situation of a small wealth, powerful elite and a large,
dispossed majority. Ick. More likely, though, they will interbreed and
the new genes will spread through the entire population. You'll have
some lagging groups who behave more like current developed world people,
with small number of educated, supported children, but they'll follow
along in a few generations. Selective pressures will be operational
within each such group, along with interbreeding.
If low wealth and power eventually blocked reproduction then, yes,
your restriction would take hold. And, through most of history, that
*has* been true, but today it's been nixed.
>Any guesses what genes are casuing the lower reproduction?
Specific genes, no; we're not that far along in understanding the human
genome. I speculated a few years ago that operational genes were those
that caused humans to delay reproduction until they've picked up the
skills available in their groups. So, if you encounter somebody more
knowledgeable than you, or new fun things to do (useful for sexual selection)
you delay reproduction until you learn that stuff. In a tribe, you're
going to catch up with everybody you know before too long. In modern
society, you're never satisfied - there's always something to learn and
something to do, so reproduction gets delayed indefinitely.
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