Re: Maladaptive breeding (Re: 'Face' cultures)


"William Morse" <wdmorse@xxxxxxxxxxxx> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
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"Sylvia Knörr" <Sylvia.Knoerr_NoSpam_@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
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"Aardvark J. Bandersnatch" <sumbuddy@xxxxxxxxxxxx> schrieb im
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It is maladaptive but only in a particular way. The adaptation is the
urge to breed, especially urgent when the population (or individual)
is under stress. In the extra-hominid condition, this refers mostly
to the physical environment, as in not enough food or rain, or
whatever. This is an attempt
to ensure continuation through multiple birth -- as ants, roaches,
turtles,
sharks, and opossums are highly fecund in order to circumvent high
levels of predation. For the most part, homids propagate through
devoted attention
to fewer off-spring. Under stress, however, hominids *tend* toward
higher levels of procreation. Since we are no longer quite so tied to
the physical
environment and its imperatives, we are now subject to "cultural" and
"intellectual" stressors. When individual members feel their
likelihood of successful propragation and continuation is stressed
beyond a certain degree, they will switch to fecundity as an ensurer.
It is counter-intuitive
and non-rational, but that's what the historic evidence tends to
demonstrate.

Indeed, and we can watch birth rates decline when people live in an
environment/ situation where the likelihood of long-term SURVIVAL of
offspring is very high - like it is among wealthy citizens of stable
societies.
It seems that the European population might go extinct because of a
LACK of stress. Isn't it ironic? :-)

An interesting observation. But taking a longer term view, the "European"
population has
had a significant increase in population, partly in the new world, and
largely at the
expense of native populations in both North and South America and
Australia. And many
ofthe recent immigrants to Europe are themselves related. In fact, Asian
Indians are
highly related, and they are one of the fastest growing populations.

The above aside, it is not clear whether the strategy of having a very few
children and
taking very good care of them will over the longer term result in fewer or
more
survivors than having a lot of children and relying on society to take
care of them. It
seems that current cultural policies may have changed the advantages of
the two
strategies, but it will take many generations to determine the net result.

This will be difficult to detect, because people can SWITCH their breeding
strategies due to environment conditions (with stress being just ONE of
them). It seems that ethnic groups to not follow one strategy always and for
all times.
I expect that those family lines which adapt fastest and best, will be the
winners of the race. I see no reason why natural and sexual selection should
get out of fashion within the next generations.

Looking longer into the future, it is entirely possible that current
humans will be
supplanted by robots or (more probably) cyborgs. What does extinction mean
in this case?

I hope that the cyborgs will be clever enough to keep a decent human zoo as
an emergency gene pool. Then, in case of any severe cyborg desaster, and if
all else fails, they can return to good old sexual breeding. :-)


.

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