PolyHedral
Superabacus Mystic
I've seen people use similar arguments as a serious objection to gay marriage.
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Social Darwinism
- Thread starter uberrobonomicon4000
- Start date
painted wolf
Grey Muzzle
I have a question for you learned folks:
It seems to me, and the theory of evolution, that, until recent times, the fittest humans that survived best, passed on more of their genetic material to the human gene pool. Fitness would include such things as health and intelligence.
In recent times, biological survival for all, is much easier. So, in this day of family planning, it seems to me the humans most likely to contribute more to the future gene pool are simply those that procreate the most.
Now, we all see statistics showing, in general, the higher social and intellectual achievers have lower birth rates than average. I am making the assumption that two high acheiving parents are more likely to have a higher acheiving child than two low acheiving parents for reasons that are both genetic and environmental.
So, should I be concerned that the future of the human gene pool will be towards a decline in average intelligence as that trait is no longer important for biological survival..
It seems to me, and the theory of evolution, that, until recent times, the fittest humans that survived best, passed on more of their genetic material to the human gene pool. Fitness would include such things as health and intelligence.
In recent times, biological survival for all, is much easier. So, in this day of family planning, it seems to me the humans most likely to contribute more to the future gene pool are simply those that procreate the most.
Now, we all see statistics showing, in general, the higher social and intellectual achievers have lower birth rates than average. I am making the assumption that two high acheiving parents are more likely to have a higher acheiving child than two low acheiving parents for reasons that are both genetic and environmental.
So, should I be concerned that the future of the human gene pool will be towards a decline in average intelligence as that trait is no longer important for biological survival..
Allow me to pitch in while we wait for them.
Who truly knows?
Evolution as a biological concept does not really have much to do with humans specifically, and in fact many of the particularities of humans as a species do circunvent it to an extent.
A popular point of view is that humans, alone among animals for the time being, have in fact brought their own dispute of the fittest to a somewhat separate arena.
We can and to some degree do plan our lives present and future. Under specific yet real circunstances our goals do in fact transcend simple survival and reproduction and become more cooperative, collective or even transgerational. In a nutshell, humans aim and sometimes succeed at being cultural and social animais as opposed to only biological beings.
That said, we are still very much biological beings, and the frequency of certain genetic characteristics in our successive generations is certainly going to vary due to adaptability, fitness, and even conscious choice. But at this point human realizations (and even its survival as a species) have very little to do with its capability to reproduce efficiently or survive to a certain age; those challenges are essentially solved already, to the point that attempting to improve them may be counter-productive from a purely demographical perspective. IMO there are already more humans alive than we would really want to exist in order to maximize the perspectives for the future.
What I expect to happen is that the gap in quality of living between the most gifted people and the less fortunate will become more noticeable and tragic in the next few decades, eventually making an overturn of some sort unavoidable. And yes, odds are that there will be larger number of less-fortunate children, and at some point we will have to decide that we have to decide how moral it is to allow that to happen. One possible solution is to lessen social and educational differences; another is to make efforts at demographical planning.
painted wolf
Grey Muzzle
No, you are making a basic mistake. In evolution fitness is the ability to pass on ones genes to the next generation.
Your fitness is determined by how many descendants you have. Right now my sister is more "fit" than I am. But if my son has an advantageous mutation then who knows... over the next few centuries I may turn out to be more "fit" than she is.
That's the way it has always been. Humans have always engaged in some sort of family planning.
Plus, simply procreating more isn't necessarily going to do the trick... you need to have your offspring be healthy enough to procreate and so on.
False assumption. Plenty of "high achieving" people have risen up from "low achieving" backgrounds, including some of the biggest names in science and technology.
No.
The average high school student can perform higher mathematics than the average person could just a century ago let alone a few centuries ago.
wa:do
I agree with the second sentence and I don't see the basic mistake I'm making.
　
I agree.
　
Not a false assumption. Two highly intelligent parents are more likely than two dull parents to have a highly intelligent child. Of course, you can find exceptions.
　
　
This statement is not clear to me. Are saying people have become naturally smarter or are you saying education has improved?
　
So as far as my original question,
"So, should I be concerned that the future of the human gene pool will be towards a decline in average intelligence as that trait is no longer important for biological survival.." Since I noted that there is an inverse relationship between intellectual and academic sucess and birth-rate.
I don't see where anything you said lessens my concern.
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painted wolf
Grey Muzzle
Being smart or strong does not make you "fit"... reproducing successfully makes you "fit".　
The error is in assuming that intelligence is genetic.
Smart parents also produce dull children.
　
I'm saying that the claim that somehow that average intelligence is decreasing is demonstrably false.
　
I can't lessen a concern that isn't based on or responsive to facts.
There is also an inverse relationship between poverty and birth-rate... relationships between religious affiliation and birth-rates and so on. Correlation does not equal causation.
wa:do
Are women part of a "weeding out" process? It seems that women are more attracted to smart, powerful & successful men than men who don't do well competing in today's labor force.
painted wolf
Grey Muzzle
I think that's a generalization rather than a scientifically supportable statement.
But yes... female choice is a major part of sexual selection in evolution.
wa:do
The above statements make two different claims. The first can be understood as defining fitness in one's capacity/ability to survive such that one is capable in principle of passing on genes.
The second (if I'm understanding it correctly) defines fitness explicitly in terms of descendants, rather than the potential of descendants. Apart from my understanding of definition(s) of biological fitness (which, admittedly, consists far more on computational models and applications than of biological research) and how it contrasts with the one you give, it seems to me that the second statement is sort of useless for evolutionary theory. For example:
How can one usefully apply to a level greater than that of the individual? If a particular species tends to survive long enough to produce offspring relative to some competitor (or if some mutation within a species produces offspring which increase their probability of having offspring), the definition you give seems to suggest that no matter how "adapted" an individual is to a particular environment, if some abnormal or unlikely event (e.g., being crushed by a falling object) results in death, the dead individual has a "fitness" of 0.
I have no disagreement with those statements.
Whoa, Red Flag. Are you saying intelligence is not a product of heredity and environment but that it's only a product of environment? If what you say is true, then my concerns would go away but I couldn't more strongly disagree with you assertion.
I'm still awaiting that demonstration. And secondly, my point was more about future generations.
But you haven't shown what facts I have wrong.
OK, but so......? How does this apply to the discussion we're having?
wa:do
painted wolf
Grey Muzzle
I'm saying that "intelligence" isn't a singular trait that can be traced to a single gene or even a set of genes.
Intelligence isn't even a concept that is fully defined.
You seriously think that a medieval peasant is going to be as intelligent as a modern high school graduate?
Why exactly would "intelligence" be selected against? In this modern world of high technology and the need for rapid adaptation to it... why would humans ever loose intelligence?
You haven't presented any actual facts... just suppositions and opinions.
You are drawing a conclusion without looking at all of the evidence. You claiming that one correlation is a cause - effect relationship while ignoring all the other correlations and evidence.
wa:do
I think we all will agree on that.
Heredity and environment effect intelligence. The modern high school graduate had the better environment. But who had the better hereditary capability to learn? That's what's being debated.
I never said "intelligence' would be selected against. I said "high intelligence" is no longer favored because in our modern world people of below average intelligence can easily survive to their reproductive years and their children can easily survive to their reproductive years, etc.. In the distant past when mere survival was more challenging, the higher intelligence people were more like to have successful next generations. The higher intelligence people would have greater input to the gene pool; this no longer happens.
As people of higher intellectual and academic success have lower birth-rates, this bodes ill for the future of the gene pool.
Again, you need to explain how this applies to the conversation we're having.
I don't believe there was ever a time when above adverage intelligence was required for survival or reproduction. People of below adverage intelligence have always been able to survive and reproduce.
fantôme profane;3149020 said:
I was talking about, for example, thousands of years ago, in a competitive environment, where reliable heat,food, shelter and requisite planning were required. Smarter individuals and smarter groups were more likely to survive harsh conditions.
painted wolf
Grey Muzzle
How would you determine who has the better hereditary capability?
What genes are you looking for?
So now "high intelligence" is a different trait from regular "intelligence"?
How do you identify "high intelligence" and quantify it?
How do you know this no longer happens?
Please produce some data to back your supposition up... otherwise it's just empty conjecture of no scientific merit.
You realize that IQ scores have been increasing in the population since standardized testing began in the 1930's? This means that rather than going down our intelligence is going up. This is called the Flynn effect and you can explore it more here: Human Intelligence: The Flynn Effect
Please provide evidence that "higher intellectual" people ever had higher reproductive rates than the average or "below average" population.
This is a scientific discussion area... The standards of evidence are a bit more rigorous.
That includes the fact that you can't just assume that correlation = causation... it's a fundamental error in logic.
You are implying that being "above average intelligence" means that you will have a lower rate of reproduction and thus you won't contribute as much to the gene pool.
However you are forgetting about several other important facts including child mortality, child spacing/timing and economic factors. (among other things)
wa:do
painted wolf
Grey Muzzle
Sorry it took so long to get back to you on this. 
There are two measures used to study fitness over generations... absolute and relative.
Absolute fitness is the ratio of individuals with your genotype in a population before vs. after a selective event. Say a drought or disease.
Greater than one and you are "fit"... less than one and you are not.
Relative fitness is taken by comparing the average number of individuals in a population with your genotype with the average numbers of competing genotypes, from one generation to the next.
You can track both of these from one generation to the next, to get an idea of long term fitness. Your long term fitness is not a single steady measure.
Most of us will end up with a "fitness" of 0... as most of us will not have any long term descendants.
For example, except for "Mitochondrial Eve" and "Y-chromosome Adam"... all prehistoric humans that lived at the same time essentially have a fitness of 0. They have no living descendants no matter if they had one or twenty children during their lives.
However, if you take into account inclusive fitness... then you can still be "fit" even if you never reproduce. So long as you make sure that your kin pass on shared alleles into future generations. From that perspective, the kin of mtDNA Eve and Y-chromosome Adam are "fit" in the sense that many of the alleles that they shared with those two are still present in the human population even though their full genotypes have not persisted.
It's important to remember that in evolution... fitness is not a measure between species, but between individuals. The lion is no more fit than the impala for killing it.
The lion is more fit than his brother for having many descendants and the impala is more or less fit than the other bucks from that season depending on how many offspring he had before he died.
wa:do
In evolution the only measure of fitness is how many of your genes spread in the population. You can die of old age, but if you don't reproduce you are not truly "fit" from an evolutionary perspective. (unless one counts kin selection)
The only way to measure total fitness is long term over single or several generations.
There are two measures used to study fitness over generations... absolute and relative.
Absolute fitness is the ratio of individuals with your genotype in a population before vs. after a selective event. Say a drought or disease.
Greater than one and you are "fit"... less than one and you are not.
Relative fitness is taken by comparing the average number of individuals in a population with your genotype with the average numbers of competing genotypes, from one generation to the next.
You can track both of these from one generation to the next, to get an idea of long term fitness. Your long term fitness is not a single steady measure.
Only if they do not spread their genes into the population.
Most of us will end up with a "fitness" of 0... as most of us will not have any long term descendants.
For example, except for "Mitochondrial Eve" and "Y-chromosome Adam"... all prehistoric humans that lived at the same time essentially have a fitness of 0. They have no living descendants no matter if they had one or twenty children during their lives.
However, if you take into account inclusive fitness... then you can still be "fit" even if you never reproduce. So long as you make sure that your kin pass on shared alleles into future generations. From that perspective, the kin of mtDNA Eve and Y-chromosome Adam are "fit" in the sense that many of the alleles that they shared with those two are still present in the human population even though their full genotypes have not persisted.
It's important to remember that in evolution... fitness is not a measure between species, but between individuals. The lion is no more fit than the impala for killing it.
The lion is more fit than his brother for having many descendants and the impala is more or less fit than the other bucks from that season depending on how many offspring he had before he died.
wa:do
No big deal. Sure, I thought that you were ignoring me, which meant increasing my therapy sessions to a daily, rather than weekly, basis, but with that and with the helpful, support provided by the voiced in my head, I was able to avoid spiraling down into the pit of despair. And not the one in The Princess Bride.Sorry it took so long to get back to you on this.
I asked mainly because evolutionary algorithms talk about fitness and optimization in ways that I suspected differed from biologists. But it was also papers like the following:
"These definitions of fitness in terms of actual survival and reproductive success are straightforward and initially intuitively satisfying. However, such definitions lead to justifiable charges that certain explanations invoking fitness differences are circular." [and later on in the paper]
"The identical twins [mentioned earlier in the paper, in a hypothetical situation when one is crushed by lightning] are equally capable of leaving offspring. And the camouflaged butterfly is more capable of leaving offspring than is the noncamouflaged butterfly.
Thus, we suggest that fitness be regarded as a complex dispositional property of organisms. Roughly speaking, the fitness of an organism is its propensity to survive and reproduce in a particularly specified environment and population."
from "The Propensity Interpretation of Fitness" by Mills & Beatty (a paper from the volume Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology 3rd ed.; MIT Press 2006). The next paper in that volume is by Sober, and although he has more detailed stuff going back decades, his comment (or rhetorical question) in his contribution is short and to the point: "The definition of fitness as expected number of offspring has a one-generation time scale. Why think of fitness in this way rather than as having a longer time horizon?" (p. 28)
Second, it isn't clear to me how the use of the term "fitness" computational biology and computational intelligence techniques like evolutionary algorithms (things I am more familiar with) compared to evolutionary biology. Sometimes it seems as if biologists use the term to refer to an organism's "fitness" or "fitness traits" in ways more or less identical to the use in texts which talk about fitness functions (even those which have nothing to do with actual evolution or organisms). For example, "Any phenotypic change, before being fixed as an evolutionary change, goes through two stages. First, it is generated, and then it must undergo a process of selection, in which useful changes, those that improve the fitness of the organism to the environment, or at least do not reduce it, will be conserved and propagated to the progeny." (from the intro to Cabej's Epigenetic Principles of Evolution (Elseviar, 2012).
And in 10.3 of Systems Biology in Practice: Concepts, Implementation and Application (Wiley, 2005) entitled "Prediction of Biological Systems from Optimality Principles" the authors state "Evolution is considered to be without aim or direction, but it forces development of species towards maximizing fitness. The formulation of a function that measures fitness is not straightforward. Several optimality criteria have been proposed."
Which (like the book itself) is an approach to fitness as a function of optimal traits, whether in an organisms or species, but not a measure of progeny nor the number of progeny.
However, this is in contrast to descriptions like yours, also found in numerous other places such as biology textbooks: "Unfortunately, fitness is also commonly used to denote the survival-enhancing qualities of individuals, such as size, speed or strength (survival of the fittest), or individual reproductive success (reproductive fitness)...we shall use fitness to refer to the spread of alleles rather than any quality of individuals." (from p. 64 of Barnard's Animal Behaviour: Mechanism, Development, Function and Evolution).
Here Barnard talks about the use of "fitness" as I am more used to the term, but calls it unfortunate compared using the spread of alleles as a definition.
I understand (I think) the idea behind frequency approaches (absolute or relative), but it seems as if (and again, prior to this thread my knowledge of biological fitness was quite limited, and although I've done a fair amount of reading since, I'm clearly not in any way capable of knowing what the state of research is here) there are a number of studies which show that frequency of direct or indirect offspring are inadequate. The most scathing evaluation of this approach comes from a fairly recent book in The Vienna Series in Theoretical Biology, Robert Reid's Biological Emergences: Evolution by Natural Experiment (MIT Press, 2007):
"neo-Darwinists had no qualms about establishing a precedent when they redefined it as differential survival and reproduction. While this addressed the effects of the process, it left putative causal agents such as competition, predation, and the literal choices that are made in reproductive pairing, and co-evolution, to be tacitly implied. Natural selection is not simply the effect of evolutionary change, but a syndrome of secondary causes and effects. As such, it is a real phenomenon, based in some part on the participation of genes, and not to be abandoned for its creaky logic.
To make matters worse, without a murmur of dissent from the orthodox, evolution itself was re-invented as changes in the distribution of alleles in populations, for the sole purpose of making it match the new definition of natural selection. What cloud of unknowing allowed, and still allows, this to pass without protest?
You can track both of these from one generation to the next, to get an idea of long term fitness. Your long term fitness is not a single steady measure. " (p. 9-10; italics in original)
In computational appoaches to evolution and fitness "fitness" is based on solutions given the environment in question (which, for my work anyway, rarely has anything to do with an actual physical environment). But wouldn't at least some computational/algorithmic measures of fitness be useable in biological evolution, especially given their use in mathematatical/computational biology and systems biology. See, for example, the edited volume Information Processing and Biological Systems (Intelligent Systems Reference Library,Volume 11; Springer, 2011). Also, as far back as 1998, Auyang's Foundations of Complex-system Theories: In Economics, Evolutionary Biology, and Statistical Physics, Auyang talks about the implicit yet idealized individualism within frequency approaches to fitness in biology, and notes the problems here:
"Does the statistical averaging preserve most important causal mechanisms? Is the correlation among various character types of organisms really negligible? To these controversial questions, genie selectionism not only answers with a blanket yes but asserts that the allele distribution is the correct way to represent evolution. Its opponents counter that although some factorization is inevitable, usually we must retain the correlation among some character types because their functions are biologically inseparable. The indiscriminate use of allele distributions in evolution theory obscures and distorts the causal mechanisms of evolution." (p. 142; emphasis added).
Additionally, using evolutionary algorithms, graph theory, gene expression, and similar adapative algorithms has produced at least some evidence (I say "some" because I can only speak to the fact that I've read some work on this, but have no idea how accepted it is within evolutionary biology or biology as a whole) that emergent genetic networks tend to diverge from the original "parent" patterns, and thus (among other things) frequency approaches to fitness are missing a lot of the actual dynamics in genetic expression by defining fitness based on mutation and its role in the number of heritable genetic traits an organism passes on. The entirety of epigenetics and the ways in which a single organism can produce characteristics which are not the result of inherited genes or of mutations, but rather selectional expression of the organism itself (particularly in development).
And I spent all that time typing about inclusive fitness which is now wasted and not because I should have read your post in its entirety before starting to reply (because that would make it my fault, which clearly can't be the case, for reasons that are...um..too technical. And classified).
That much I am aware of relative to what I know about biological evolution in general, because in programs and algorithms it's far more readily apparent. But what I am less sure about is why fitness is defined so differently, i.e., in terms of actual rather than a function of likely reproductive success.
painted wolf
Grey Muzzle
Let me get to this bit right now... I'll need to digest the rest to give a proper answer.
No matter how well adapted a particular individual is to it's environment it can still die before reproducing. We can't look at a nest of baby birds and predict which ones are more likely to reproduce. We can count how many offspring an adult bird has that actually survive from season to season.
wa:do
Mostly I think we use actual rather than likely because we are dealing with living systems as they function in real time.
No matter how well adapted a particular individual is to it's environment it can still die before reproducing. We can't look at a nest of baby birds and predict which ones are more likely to reproduce. We can count how many offspring an adult bird has that actually survive from season to season.
wa:do
