Re: lack of evolutionary pressures (was Re: An end to "court appointed attorneys")

[Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk>]

Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com> writes:
> > "The children" is a war cry which will ensure the continuance of state
> > funded negative evolutionary pressures.
> 
> In general, I would say that you are describing a remarkably
> simplistic view of evolution.  Off the top, two things I think you are
> missing:
> 
>     - first, you make the common mistake of assuming that evolution 
>     has a purpose somehow aligned with your moral view of things

No.  Evolution is blind.  Evolution is just a word to describe the
fact that genes which result in an increased likelihood of death prior
to breeding tend to not to be passed on.

I was arguing that I think current evolutionary pressures tend to work
against the criteria for increasing intelligence.  This claim is
complicated by the fact that intelligence is hard to measure.  Lets
say we choose IQ tests for the sake of argument.  Then I'm not even
sure how secure the claim that ability to pass IQ test has a large
hereditary correlation, So I don't know whether children of parents
who both had IQ measured at > 200 necessarily have children with
higher IQ than where one parent was > 200 and the other < 200.

There are also difficulties in isolating inherited factors from
environmental factors.

Modern medicine tends I think to work against the criteria of
producing healthy specimens.  (People who would have died as children
due to hereditary defects, living on to have children thanks to
medicine.  Also people who can't breed, having medical assistance to
have children.  Caesarian sections for females with too narrow hips to
easily give birth.  Lots of other examples).

Similarly difficult to influence medical evolutionary pressures --
what're you going to do?  Give our breeding permits based on
government decided criteria?

Adam
-- 
Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/

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