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I started getting the idea while reading this: What if individual reproduction is NOT the norm? What if species survival is a combination of reproduction and
by chillingeffect 11y ago
I started getting the idea while reading this:
What if individual reproduction is NOT the norm? What if species survival is a combination of reproduction and survival (producing food, defense from predators, etc.). What if only a fraction of a species are required to be "breeders" and the rest perform survival duties? What if the apparent majority of sexual reproduction is only a temporary abberation and now that the species has reached a stepping stone, the "temperature" on sexual reproduction is turning down? Look at bees, for example. Only a minority of them reproduce while the rest perform survival functions.
- jccc 11y agoIn the early pages of Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, Lawrence tries to understand Alan Turing (who is a character in the novel): "From an evolution standpoint, what was the point of having people around who were not inclined to have offspring? There must be some good, and fairly subtle, reason for it. The only thing he could work out was that it was groups of people--societies--rather than individual creatures, who were now trying to out-reproduce and/or kill each other, and that, in a society, there was plenty of room for someone who didn't have kids as long as he was up to something useful."
- Chris2048 11y agoHistorically, people not inclined to sex with the opposite gender, still had children.