[lbo-talk] Bonobo you don't

ravi ravi at platosbeard.org
Mon Apr 30 08:36:04 PDT 2007


On 30 Apr, 2007, at 2:54 AM, James Heartfield wrote:
> Miles throws a big hissy fit about a phrase 'survival of the
> fittest' to
> avoid the central point. If there is no natural selection taking
> place then
> there can be no natural evolution. Socialised human beings do not
> choose
> their mates according to ruddy good health, but acording to social
> class,
> dress sense etc. nor are they directly exposed to natural pressures on
> population, but protect themselves through human industry. From
> here on in
> the only evolution taking place among humans will be evolution of
> social
> organisation.

Ah, its good to be back on l-bio. ;-)

The idea of selection pressure for a trait is generic and does not impose preferred notions of successful traits. So "ruddy good health" might seem like a great trait for selection advantage to you, but it may not be at all, from a natural selection front. Those of [recent] African origin have sickle shaped blood cells, which leaves them in less ruddy good health than others, but nonetheless provided them selection advantages at some point. This is not merely a point about physiological trait either, nor is it confined to human beings.

Note that selection of a mate is a slightly different thing than "natural selection". Going down that path: a reductionist or even parsimonious biologist would argue that mate selection by social class, dress sense, etc are no different than a female bird selecting her mate by the varied sounds he can produce.

Some X million children under the age of 10 die every year. There is nothing, it seems, that their parents can do to "protect them through human industry". Insofar as there is nothing but nature (including human nature(s)), there are always natural selection pressures.

It may be quite true that genetic inheritance is not a significant contributing factor to one's survival. Whether human beings will overcome the behaviour encoded in them to favour acting on the basis of such inheritance, is to me an open question (to which my own pessimistic answer is 'no').

--ravi



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