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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Chuzzlewit who wrote (33297)	3/24/1999 8:53:00 PM
From: Jacques Chitte	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

>And so, in the process, we defeat the effects of natural selection.< I believe this is a temporary setback. Within a century (barring a natural or artificial disaster of global magnitude) we will have come through this interregnum. We are on the cusp of something awesome. As we gain insight into the genetic code we will amass the knowledge to write that code as easily as today's endomorphic teenagers massage digital code. This is as big as that event a 600 million years ago when unicells banded together and divided the labor of living. We enter a time when direct conscious feedback into our physical nature is possible on timespans shorter than a generation. We are not nearly there yet. Editing living genes in anything bigger than a bacterium is still science fiction - if you discount hit-and-miss strategies like site-directed mutagenesis. We will have the power to remake ourselves as individuals and societies. The potential will be there for a deliberate radiation of species all springing from H. Sapiens, a radiation of dazzling richness like nothing the planet has seen since the early Cambrian. We can debate whether this is good or evil. We can stop this process by bringing down the nuclear curtain. But absent such a disaster - no king and no God can keep us from grabbing the keys off the mantelpiece. It will be terrible and glorious.

To: Chuzzlewit who wrote (33297)	3/24/1999 9:13:00 PM
From: nihil	Respond to of 108807

I enjoy these speculations about early human evolution. Here are some of mine. As the Homo sapiens ("man") tribes radiated from Africa on the last great expulsion, more than 300,000 years each tribe had to find a homeland, and yet many of the good lands were occupied by our distant cousins -- other descendents of Homo erectus (e.g. Neanderthal). Man had one great advantage -- speech far more advanced than any other breed. As a result, men could cooperate far better than anyone else. I doubt that men were interfertile with the others (or man would not have emerged as a separate species). So in territorial conflicts he simply drove the others off, or killed (and ate) them if necessary. Man had another advantage -- a decisive one -- domesticated wolves. The dogs lent their hunting skills to their human friends, and alerted and defended their encampments when enemies crept up. Everyone had fire, but dried and cured meat (jerky) easily provided these master hunters with portable food. These migrating human tribes were led by warriors, often a single warrior, whose many wives and sons provided a loyal cadre to protect his rule so he could concentrate on foreign policy. Successful, smart leaders found that treating people decently paid political dividends, but fierce warrior skills and courage were essential to eating and survival. This conflict between soft to the insiders and harsh to the outsiders made loyal membership in a clan or tribe very rewarding. Since everyone was fed, everyone must have some useful function in the tribe. Chipping flints was easy, and one quickly learned to become a master by watching a master chip. The tribe with many arrow and spear heads (to throw and break (as they do) got more food and could support more people. (I used to collect the cornfields and creek beds northwest of Atlanta and never failed to pick up two pounds or more a day of arrowheads, 5" long finely worked spearheads. hand-mill stones, and even beautiful handaxes. They cannot all be gone, for every rain or storm turned up new beds. My father collected all his life, and could almost smell a site. He used to stop the car by a bridge and drop down into the creek bed and come up with some prize). The tribes that imitated the wolf-pack in breeding (read Elizabeth Marshall Thomas's book on the !Kung or her book The Secret Life of Dogs tended to survive. The non-breeding males (homosexuals? near-sighted tool-makers (but they hung around the women -- I bet they got to breed -- while the hunters were off playing their man-gang games). Selection for inventiveness, guile, hunting ability (long-twitch muscle, athleticism), fighting ability (cruelty, short-twitch muscle), must have been powerful. I have no doubt that beauty -- women's conception of beauty -- played a role, and men's conception of beauty played an even bigger part. In fact, in combining peoples into larger, more comprehensive nations, the common lust of men for women from other tribes (and practice of raping and kidnapping women from the conquered, played a major part in grouping small tribes and clans into bigger groups. Consider Solomon's imperial plans, and even David (a Judean) marrying Saul's daughter (a Benjaminite) -- intertribal marriage not that common among the Hebrews of the time.

To: Chuzzlewit who wrote (33297)	3/26/1999 7:40:00 AM
From: PiMac	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Chuzz says, <<But look at how human intelligence can be perverse. It is a fact that intelligent people tend to have less children than less intelligent people. The reason ought to be self-evident. It is also true that a significant component of the trait we call intelligence is inherited. So, through diminished fecundity, intelligence is selected out. So much for wisdom. If you can't out-think 'em out-breed 'em.>. This is so common an outlook among the bright. I think it mostly flawed and overly compensatable with appropriate methods. First the difference that breeding has made, while we have monitored it, on intelligence is eclipsed by the breeding over the millinia past. Even with a decline in average intelligence attributable in modern times to breeding, the similarities within the species far outway the differences. We are not turning a motor scooter here, but a double trailer rig. Second, the methods of genetics point to using a large selection, not a few. More genius will result from a 100,000 births of average parents than from the coupling of 10,000 genius pairs. [ok, substitute more accurate figures] The way to raise desireable traits and diminsh the lesser is to make all repoductions healthy, and all children max their potential. 1/4, 3/4? of our race is evnironmentally gelded for this purpose. When the bright are happy they will not suffer a dearth of children; and when the dull are happy, they will not suffer an excess. The organism knows its business, don't shortchange it for optimum results.