Re: Harvard's president apologizes
From: Noone Inparticular (unreve89_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 01/23/05
- Next message: George: "Re: Proof of Subduction"
- Previous message: Jo Schaper: "Re: Harvard's president apologizes"
- In reply to: Friar Broccoli: "Re: Harvard's president apologizes"
- Next in thread: Friar Broccoli: "Re: Harvard's president apologizes"
- Reply: Friar Broccoli: "Re: Harvard's president apologizes"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ]
Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2005 09:59:01 -0800
Friar Broccoli wrote:
> Hi Inparticular;
>
>
>>>Beneficial mutations can occur in many different family lineages.
>>>Each of these beneficial mutations can then be shared with the whole
>>>population. Competing "alleles" are part of this process.
>
> Obviously
>
>>>this sharing cannot occur via asexual reproduction, which is what
>
> you
>
>>>have without males. Where did I go wrong?
>>
>>Are you suggesting that females play no role in spreading alleles
>>through a population? That IS odd.
>
>
> I believe it would help if you considered my comments in their context.
Perhaps I misread you. Or perhaps you were not as clear as you think you
were.
> I did not say, or mean to imply that females play NO roll in spreading
> alleles. However, through much of our evolutionary history since the
> advent of sexual reproduction, a large fraction of females have
> reproduced, while many or most males have been eliminated from the gene
> pool via various selective processes. Until recently, only a few
> males,
> in each generation, were permitted to pass on their characteristics.
>
> In this context, it is obvious that males, who are under much stronger
> selective pressure, are much more responsible for spreading positive
> alleles and removing negative ones.
How is that so, if as you attest above females reproduce more often than
males? You may have a case with alleles which impact male reproductive
success.
>
> I then went on to say that this differential selective pressure on
> males
> has had physiological (asymmetric brains) as well a behaviorial
> consequences (80 hour work weeks).
Eighty hour work weeks are a biological adaptation? You've got to be
kidding. Look, Brother Vegetable, it seems to me that you are falling
into the trap that so many adaptationists fall into; believing that all
behaviors are adaptations. You seem to want to take things like
differential brain architecture and cultural phenomena as an indication
that there is an evolutionary explanation for differences in academic
achievements between men and women. While the former may play a role,
the latter seems out in left field.
I think it would be profitable to discover if there is a real difference
in intellectual capacities between the sexes (as someone else pointed
out that difference, if it exists, may be in the variance rather than
the mean) and what those causes might be. But to suggest that sexual
selection is tied to innate intellectual differences via things like a
forty hour work week stretches credulity. Further, you seem to believe
that the results of sexual selection forces acting on all vertebrates
are necessarily the same as for humans.
>
> I do not yet understand how it is that I am "seriously confused".
> Since
> my intelligence is limited,
I seriously doubt that.
>I need clear examples.
>
> Cordially;
>
- Next message: George: "Re: Proof of Subduction"
- Previous message: Jo Schaper: "Re: Harvard's president apologizes"
- In reply to: Friar Broccoli: "Re: Harvard's president apologizes"
- Next in thread: Friar Broccoli: "Re: Harvard's president apologizes"
- Reply: Friar Broccoli: "Re: Harvard's president apologizes"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ]
Relevant Pages
|
