Re: Stem cells and Human evolution

From: Malcolm (malcolm_at_55bank.freeserve.co.uk)
Date: 07/23/04 

Date: Fri, 23 Jul 2004 22:11:49 +0000 (UTC)

"CurtAdams" <curtadams@aol.com> wrote in message
>
> All creatures are baby machines, for the contexts in which they evolve.
> Humans have survived difficult circumstances for many millenia, and in
> order to do so, and produce babies, they have had to learn, to cooperate,
> and to keep others interested through sexual selection and proxies like
> music and art. Now, those nice things are less useful or even
> unnecessary and may get thrown to the wayside, to our detriment.
> Notably, being educated and living la dolce vita - two things I really
like
> in my neighbors- are currently associated with smaller families.
>
You have a temporary situation, created by technology moving much faster
than evolution, where proximate goals such as eating nice food, having high
status jobs, and doing interesting things tend to conflict with reproductive
success. In evolutionary terms, the welfare queen niche is much more
lucrative than the head of university faculty niche. Can we say that, in
some objective sense, the (female) head of a university faculty is better
than the welfare claimant with five kids?