From: CurtAdams@aol.com
Date: Mon Apr 08 2002 - 18:34:08 MDT
In a message dated 4/8/02 14:13:01, jacques@dtext.com writes:
>Simply because it didn't have to be in the ancestral environment due
>to the link sex -> procreation. I don't know about you, but personaly
>my sexual fantasies and desires don't focus on procreating and having
>babies...
No; you want sex because that produced babies for the genes; no need
for you to know why. But, if most people are given a baby, they want
to watch out for it, take care of it, play with it, etc., and this is
particularly
true for people involved with gestation or birth. So you have additional,
nonsexual, desires for children. If those become overwhelming enough,
the genes can count on your mind to figure out ways around contraception,
etc. Potentially the desire for sex per se could go out the window and
the genes could rely on concious intent to procreate to serve that purpose.
More likely, the old way will stick around as a backup plan.
>You argued elsewhere that as our environment had changed and we were
>not adapted to it, that meant we would keep evolving. But you're
>turning things upside down. What it shows is precisely the opposite:
>it shows that we didn't catch up with cultural change, that we didn't
>evolve (fast enough). The fact that cultural change not only
>continues, but continues to accelerate (and possibly to accelerate its
>acceleration) means that we can discard biological evolution for all
>practical matters.
Genes can evolve quite rapidly if there's selection pressure. There's not
much selection pressure for them to make us happy, so they don't much
bother. Heart attacks at 60 carry small reproductive losses, so
we're not heading away from apolipoprotien E4 (linked to heart disease,
alzheimer's and stroke, yet predomimant in human populations) very
quickly. But if something affects reproduction, things can change rather
fast - you could get a noticeable effect in one human lifetime. If we
have a Singularity in 2020, of course it's moot, but I don't believe
in counting unhatched chickens. Further, one thing relevant to future
transhuman development is restraining the renunciationists, and I think
pointing out their goal (stasis, basically) is impossible will help control
them.
We can see some specific human genetic adaptations in skin color, adult
lactose tolerance, and body shape variation. It does happen when it
matters.
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