Re: genetic variation is purely random, right?



"Peter F" <19eimc_minus19@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

JE:-
De C Studdert wrote at least two books. The other is "The Desert Ape".

Studdert has always maintained that the data he collected over many
years
verifies a significant correlation between significantly distorted
Mendelian
common mouse coat color genes and an applied stress acting on either
parent.
Studdert experimentally applied contradictory stressors to mouse parents
using Han's Selye's pioneering concept of Eustress (too much of a good
thing) Vs Distress (too much of a bad thing).

From my point of view I am not sure that you are as right "as can be", or
that you have
optimally represented and not obscured the "potential virtue" of these two
concepts.
1. Too much of good (eu)stress => exhaustion ~= a detrimental stress that
if
not ceasing
will become as deadly as any distress caused by any distressor that does
not
desist; yet
it may OR MAY NOT become a subjectively painful, nor altogether
objectively
painful (or
typically distressing as evidenced as far as possible by physiological,
hormonal,
neurologically, and visibly emotional, signs or markers) experience.

JE:-
I would put it this way: while eustress produces physiological damage it
does no necessarily provide a negative emotional experience along with that
damage. The net result is you may fell good even while eustress is doing you
harm. I also argue that eustress provided by excessive group attention can
provide the emotional ammunition to allow for individual self sacrifice
where this effect is selected at the organism and not the group level.
This is not the case for distress which always feels bad while it does you
harm. Here is a current physiological/psychological example. Edibility is
emotionally indexed to sugars which are experienced psychologically as a
pleasant sweet taste via the taste buds on the tongue. These can only
discriminate sweet, salt and bitter. Biologically normal (unrefined) foods
almost always contain only a small quantity of sugars. Natural selection
employed this sugar trace as an effective psychologically based (emotional)
edibility index. If it is sweet then mostly, it is OK to eat. Because the
concentration of sugars within unrefined foods remained low, sugar over
consumption was almost impossible until the industrial revolution. Our
emotional urge to mostly look for the sweeter natural foods served us well
until then. After that point we suffered sugar eustress on mass. The net
physiological effect of this is to produce a damaging simple carbohydrate
addiction. This produces cycles of hyper (high) and hypo (low) glycemia
(blood sugar level) placing an abnormal and utterly exhaustive level of work
on the pancreases and related glands. Not only does consistent simple
carbohydrate excess negatively effect the body, it negatively effects the
mind producing cycles of elation and high energy levels which later reduce
to depression and low energy unless you reach for a Mars bar to start the
cycle all over again (producing the addiction). Psychologically, simple
carbohydrate eustress always provided a positive emotional experience.
Because we are mostly emotionally and not rationally based organisms the
terrible damage that consistent simple carbohydrate addiction can produce
still remains ignored. We LIKE this eustress experience so we will not be
told that simple carbohydrates damage our health. Every day millions if not
billions in health care could be saved if we paid more attention to just
this one problem.


2. [This comment contains a to me even more important call to be careful
about what we mean with these concepts.] Too much distress, is as you
describe it, too much of a bad thing.
However, "too much distress" is also a description of a maladaptive
reaction - by definition!

JE:-
Ok (refer to the example above).

And, as we all 'ought to' know, many adverse environmental challenges that
stimulate a sensory or motivational *overload* are handled *automatically*
[here i.e. independently of whatever the patterns of brain activity are
that generate, and that in principle can be used to define, our levels and
contents of "conscious awareness" - or, EPTly put, how we "pay and
transiently focus actention"] by highly specific synaptic hibernation
(i.e.
the neural "gating" of signals on their way to generate self-defeating
distress reactions).

JE:-
I think I agree but I AM NOT SURE :-(

Could you restate the above so it is simple to understand?

<snip>

Here is a short sample from Studdert's book that might (as I see it!)
provide a peek at one past source of your (John Edser's) ideological
inspiration:

From The Stress Theory of Evolution, by Richard de C Studdert:
SELECTION
It never ceases to amaze people what small margins of survival value
are sufficient to select the fittest. But for anyone conversant with
the exponential growth curve and the amount of
evolutionary time available, it should not amaze.
For instance, if one better adapted offspring born every 1,000 years
can be attributed to trait A over trait B, then trait B will disappear in
an evolutionary flash. Because of this elimination of
the ever-so-slightly less-fit species and the impossibility of two
species being and remaining exactly equal in survival value,
for any significant period we get the principle of
"one species only per niche." This is a basic rule of ecology
that we must always respect.

JE:-
I agree with Studdert that just tiny differences in "survival value" are
sufficient to produce evolutionary changes. Of course, I have always
maintained that individual genes can only have a non additive empirical
(epistatic) Darwinian fitness. I define fitness in an entirely refutable
way: the total number of just fertile forms reproduced into only one
population by each parent. Because evolution occurs per population, it
follows logically that each Darwinian selectee (each fertile form) can have
a different fitness per population.

The thing being selected is the trait, determined not usually
by a gene but more often by a combination of genes. Individuals
who possess adaptive traits are selected in, while individuals who
possess maladaptive traits are selected out -- that is, culled.
Except for preselection, selection occurs at the individual
level always, but selection is often much more severe in certain
groups within a species, thus constituting apparent group selection.

JE:-
I had discussions with De C Studdert about this when he was well. Initially
Studdert remained in two minds concerning group selection. Later on he came
to believe that group selection existed and it could override individual
selection. I believe that this was mostly because of his left leaning
politics (Balmain, where he lived most of his life was the working class
suburb of Sydney in which the Australian Labor Party was founded). I have
always maintained that political (or any) belief pollutes the sciences. One
of the most important _functional_ aspects of our unique adaptive group
response: trade, which is mutualised exchange, is almost 100% politicized.
It remains almost impossible to have a scientific discussion of trade, i.e.
mutualised exchange as an entirely _non_ politicized process.

With regards to group selection: It is easy to prove that if the fitness of
one group is just the simple addition of the fitness of each group member
then no group selection can possibly exist, no matter how you define
fitness.

Regards,

John Edser
Independent Researcher

edser@xxxxxxxxxx




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Relevant Pages

  • Re: genetic variation is purely random, right?
    ... Studdert has always maintained that the data he collected over many years ... thing) Vs Distress. ... the ever-so-slightly less-fit species and the impossibility of two ... Except for preselection, ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)
  • Re: genetic variation is purely random, right?
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    (sci.bio.evolution)
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