Re: Stem cells and Human evolution

From: Tim Tyler (tim_at_tt1lock.org)
Date: 07/27/04

  • Next message: Peter F.: "Re: "It's uncertain whether intelligence has any long term" 
    Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 15:39:47 +0000 (UTC)

    Malcolm <malcolm@55bank.freeserve.co.uk> wrote or quoted:
    > "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?

    Nature's usual metric involves the chances of genes being ancestral.

    If the female head of a university faculty has sacrificed her role
    as a mother to get there, then her genes are probably not doing very
    well in nature's eyes - unless perhaps she is contributing generously
    to the welfare of her sisters.

    However the "welfare queen" might not be doing much better. She
    may be supporting several kids - but will any of them become long-term
    ancestors? Nature is not interested in how many kids someone has -
    but in whether there are great-great-grandchildren - and having lots
    of kids and investing only a little in each one may not necessarily
    be the best way of doing that.

    The woman on welfare has one thing going for her, though - she has
    got the government to sponsor her kids. Quite why the government
    would do that seems rather mysterious, but - in my country at least -
    the government often seems prepared to sponsor individual children -
    and pay for their education out of everyone's taxes.

    It's a bit like the genetic equivalent of an anti-robin hood -
    they forcefully extract resources from those with no kids - and
    give the proceeds to those who already have plenty of offspring.

    I understand that - in America - that sort of thing does not go on. 

    -- 
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  • Next message: Peter F.: "Re: "It's uncertain whether intelligence has any long term"

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