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You may think that you are discussing genetic evolution in a macro sense but the reality is that your proposal is microcosmic in nature and practice. Because as you have agreed that genetic inheritance can be both a bane and a blessing for individuals your arbitrary selection has no effect on the macro evolution of a population as a hold. In short encouraging more "middle class people" to have more children without any control for environmental factors is a fools errand.
Actually I never did make any "proposal". I was just describing the degradation of the gene pool that is resulting from the least successful people having the most children, or to look at it from the other end, the most intelligent people having the least children.
Since the world is already grossly overpopulated, I would never encourage any social class of people to "have more children". I wish there were some way to encourage the lower class people to have fewer children, but I remain pessimistic about that.
I don't believe that we will meaningfully "degrade" the genome within a handful of generations. You won't undo hundreds of thousands of years in a single century.
My understanding of genetics is not strong enough to make an educated guess on how long it would take to do real damage.
I don't believe that we will meaningfully "degrade" the genome within a handful of generations. You won't undo hundreds of thousands of years in a single century.
My understanding of genetics is not strong enough to make an educated guess on how long it would take to do real damage.
Good point, and I agree on all counts. It's just that I see us starting down that road and it concerns me. Let us hope that no "real damage" has been done yet in this short amount of time.
I heard once though that the average Y chromosome has been shortened over time because not all of it has copied and that eventually problems could arise from this.
Any thoughts on this?
I don't believe that we will meaningfully "degrade" the genome within a handful of generations. You won't undo hundreds of thousands of years in a single century.
My understanding of genetics is not strong enough to make an educated guess on how long it would take to do real damage.
I'm not sure about this. A dog breeder would tell you that he can manipulate traits in a line of dogs in just a few generations. They aren't necessarily superior or inferior traits, but manipulations such that some traits (longer legs for example) can be made either rare or prevalent in the offspring after say, 6 generations.
I'm sure there are people alive who never would have been because you don't have to win the self immunity prize to grow up now. But this just means that if we took away the medicine and vaccines and other advantages, a lot would die off and it would go back to the way it was before. One of the falicies of the 'average life span' is that in by gone times, people didn't live as long. This turns out not to be true. It is the average of numbers born to total lifespans, so if huge amounts of children died very young, it seems like nobody made it to fifty. However those who won the childhood lottery often did live far longer than we think. But to get there you had to be one of those with a superior immune system, and thus more were born with one.
It's like the gene mutation which saved a great many people from the black plague, the mutation centered in one village in England. It has no effect on other medical situations. But it was discovered when doing statistical research on AIDS. The modern people of that same area, still fairly stable a population, had a drastically lower incidence of AIDS, with no discernable reason. Thus they went looking and found some 'junk dna' which isn't always.
There is a pbs special called What Darwin Didn't Know about the latest mind boggling research on the human genome and its methods and makeup which suggests there is no 'bad' or 'junk' dna, but more failure of it to work properly. But I reccomend it to all interested in the subject.
I'm not sure about this. A dog breeder would tell you that he can manipulate traits in a line of dogs in just a few generations. They aren't necessarily superior or inferior traits, but manipulations such that some traits (longer legs for example) can be made either rare or prevalent in the offspring after say, 6 generations.
There was an experiment done in Russia on wild foxes. They are not good pet material. The babies are more docile, but as they mature they grow more agressive. You wouldn't want one for a pet.
But they picked the most docile of each generation, and bred them together. Then being careful not to in breed them, they bred the most docile of the off spring.
In some five or six generations, they produced a tame fox. It is really a fox, looks like one, sounds like one, but the researchers have started keeping them as pets and describe them as like dogs. Its been suggested that dogs went from their wild ancestors to the modern generic dog in the same process, since people dumped trash and it would be a source of food, but the most wild and wary animals wouldn't approach a human area. The best fed would breed the most.
Interesting idea, but it was fascinating with the foxes. They have begun to sell the tame offspring as house pets as well. So behavior is one of the things which is genetically wired to some degree.
I'm not sure about this. A dog breeder would tell you that he can manipulate traits in a line of dogs in just a few generations.
That is because the physical characteristics of domestic dogs are controlled by on 50 genetic switches so altering a dogs appearance only requires changes in six or seven areas of a doges genome. By comparison a human's height alone is controlled by some 200 genetic regions.
Evolution is the survival of the luckiest. Dinosaurs had the finest DNA to dominate the Earth and then BAM and dinosaurs no more. Usually evolutionary losers (like mammals) are put on the top of the world by one catastrophe or another. DNA prepares a specie to survive and dominate the world as it is, finely tuned DNA cannot save a specie from the future cataclysms. Evolutionary dead ends and oddities have always a chance to capitalize on their DNA in the world to come. Same with humans.
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