3 ms·

I'm opposed to polygamy for the obvious humanitarian concerns, and other issues raised in the article. But at the same time, I'm curious about the long-term gen

by whack 9y ago

I'm opposed to polygamy for the obvious humanitarian concerns, and other issues raised in the article. But at the same time, I'm curious about the long-term genetic impact of monogamy vs polygamy. IQ and many personality traits have been shown to be correlated significantly with genes (many of these studies are based on adopted children, for whom genes and upbringing are decoupled). In monogamous societies like in America, someone who's highly smart and industrious, will likely end up with the same number of children as someone on the opposite end of the spectrum. In polygamous societies, someone who's smart and industrious can easily end up with 2-10x the number of children as the average man. In terms of natural selection, this clearly puts significantly more selective pressure on intelligence and personality-traits. Over a few decades, I doubt this will amount to much. But over a couple centuries/millenia, I wonder if polygamous societies would wind up as a race of smart-hard-working-competitive-assholes, in comparison to us monogamous dolts.

betterunix2 9y ago
"I'm curious about the long-term genetic impact of monogamy vs polygamy." I think you might be overlooking the fact that women can and do have sex with other men than their husbands.
- zzzzzzzza 9y ago
  It's a complicated issue certainly, however as far as I'm aware cuckoldry (where children are product of adultery) is relatively rare, under 2%, don't have a source offhand but that's the hearsay as it were.
  - BearGoesChirp 9y ago
    I think the implications were about sex before marriage, not just actual cases of having another persons child. Rates of births out of wedlock has been steadily increasing and is nearing 50% (may already be passed it).
pitt1980 9y ago
Its an interesting thought - couple thoughts, its assumes a cream rises to the top, such that your mating success will correlate with whether you're smart and industrious I suspect that there might be a tendency in polygamous societies for there to be a lot of effort put into setting up structural barriers to prevent mating competition from smart and industrious competitors. Such that you actually weed out a lot of smart/industrious genes. --------- Its not the case that history doesn't have examples of monogamous societies competing with polygamous societies over the time span of centuries/millennia. And from a back of the envelope scorekeeping, it doesn't appear that the results are polygamous smart-hard-working-competitive-assholes outcompeting monogamous dolts.
- whack 9y ago
  Regarding the historical analysis, we do seem to be in a provably unique point in history. For most of human history, population was constrained by the availability of resources. Ie, the Malthusian trap. The number of healthy children one can raise, was constrained by the amount of material resources one had at his disposal. Not to mention that even in monogamous societies, birth-control was rare, and mistresses/children-born-out-of-wedlock were prevalent. It's only in the past 100-200 years that the nature of population-control has changed so dramatically. Due to the widespread availability of birth-control, the increasing taboo against mistresses, and the abundance of food/shelter/medical-care, the number of children one sires is no longer well-correlated with financial prosperity. Luckily, the effects of improved education and nutrition have drowned out any potential genetic effects from the above. But I suspect any potential consequences in natural-selection will take several centuries to fully pan out.
  - soundwave106 9y ago
    This might end up as a "nature vs. nurture" question. The flip side of this argument, is that in modern monogamous societies (especially with birth control enabling easy family planning), the smart and industrious couple will probably have the ability to devote more time and resources to the relatively small amount of children they have. Whereas, the smart and industrious polygamous male (traditional polygamy tends to almost always be patriarchal)'s resources will be spread more thinly among their X wives and Y babies. At present, I'm not aware of a current polygamous society that is known for technological or intellectual sophistication. In addition to the above, the overall social structure in polygamous society seems to be negatively impacted, owing to the large quantity of unmarried, potentially violent, men that need to be dealt with somehow (as alluded to in The Economist article). Consequently, I'm also not aware of a polygamous society which embraces liberal values politically, or embraces democratic style political structures. In other words, from the evidence I see, it seems likely to me that the negative consequences of polygamy wipes out any potential genetic benefit.
ryanx435 9y ago
> But over a couple centuries/millenia, I wonder if polygamous societies would wind up as a race of smart-hard-working-competitive-assholes, in comparison to us monogamous dolts. this has already been happening, if you compare western monogomous societies to islamic polygymous societies. there are plenty of smart-hard-working-competitive-assholes in both western and islamic society, and there are plenty of dumb-lazy-nice-guys in both islamic and western society as well.
perl4ever 9y ago
In a monogamous society the variance in the number of children may be lower, but the variance in number of grandchildren or great-grandchildren can be large. And as the article mentioned, if children are less likely to live to grow up under polygamy, then that effect is magnified over multiple generations. Another point is that material success is not completely genetic, and therefore if it is too strongly selected for, good genes will be selected out that would otherwise result in later generations being successful. So I think it is not at all clear that it is evolutionarily beneficial.
BearGoesChirp 9y ago
What about a society that is polygamous without contract? Many of the issues of polygamy seem to happen not because of the actual marriage contracts, but because of the relationships formed. Even if you remove the contracts, if we allow those relationships, don't we still have an issue? Does a society where polygamous relationships are allowed suffer some of the same core problems that a society which allows polygamy suffers?
nitwit005 9y ago
You don't need polygamy to produce an enormous number of offspring. You just have to chose to produce as many children as possible, across more than one generation: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/nyregion/21yitta.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/nyregion/21yitta.html

by whack 9y ago

betterunix2 9y ago

"I'm curious about the long-term genetic impact of monogamy vs polygamy." I think you might be overlooking the fact that women can and do have sex with other men than their husbands.

zzzzzzzza 9y ago
It's a complicated issue certainly, however as far as I'm aware cuckoldry (where children are product of adultery) is relatively rare, under 2%, don't have a source offhand but that's the hearsay as it were.
- BearGoesChirp 9y ago
  I think the implications were about sex before marriage, not just actual cases of having another persons child. Rates of births out of wedlock has been steadily increasing and is nearing 50% (may already be passed it).

pitt1980 9y ago

Its an interesting thought - couple thoughts, its assumes a cream rises to the top, such that your mating success will correlate with whether you're smart and industrious I suspect that there might be a tendency in polygamous societies for there to be a lot of effort put into setting up structural barriers to prevent mating competition from smart and industrious competitors. Such that you actually weed out a lot of smart/industrious genes. --------- Its not the case that history doesn't have examples of monogamous societies competing with polygamous societies over the time span of centuries/millennia. And from a back of the envelope scorekeeping, it doesn't appear that the results are polygamous smart-hard-working-competitive-assholes outcompeting monogamous dolts.

whack 9y ago
Regarding the historical analysis, we do seem to be in a provably unique point in history. For most of human history, population was constrained by the availability of resources. Ie, the Malthusian trap. The number of healthy children one can raise, was constrained by the amount of material resources one had at his disposal. Not to mention that even in monogamous societies, birth-control was rare, and mistresses/children-born-out-of-wedlock were prevalent. It's only in the past 100-200 years that the nature of population-control has changed so dramatically. Due to the widespread availability of birth-control, the increasing taboo against mistresses, and the abundance of food/shelter/medical-care, the number of children one sires is no longer well-correlated with financial prosperity. Luckily, the effects of improved education and nutrition have drowned out any potential genetic effects from the above. But I suspect any potential consequences in natural-selection will take several centuries to fully pan out.
- soundwave106 9y ago
  This might end up as a "nature vs. nurture" question. The flip side of this argument, is that in modern monogamous societies (especially with birth control enabling easy family planning), the smart and industrious couple will probably have the ability to devote more time and resources to the relatively small amount of children they have. Whereas, the smart and industrious polygamous male (traditional polygamy tends to almost always be patriarchal)'s resources will be spread more thinly among their X wives and Y babies. At present, I'm not aware of a current polygamous society that is known for technological or intellectual sophistication. In addition to the above, the overall social structure in polygamous society seems to be negatively impacted, owing to the large quantity of unmarried, potentially violent, men that need to be dealt with somehow (as alluded to in The Economist article). Consequently, I'm also not aware of a polygamous society which embraces liberal values politically, or embraces democratic style political structures. In other words, from the evidence I see, it seems likely to me that the negative consequences of polygamy wipes out any potential genetic benefit.

ryanx435 9y ago

> But over a couple centuries/millenia, I wonder if polygamous societies would wind up as a race of smart-hard-working-competitive-assholes, in comparison to us monogamous dolts. this has already been happening, if you compare western monogomous societies to islamic polygymous societies. there are plenty of smart-hard-working-competitive-assholes in both western and islamic society, and there are plenty of dumb-lazy-nice-guys in both islamic and western society as well.

perl4ever 9y ago

In a monogamous society the variance in the number of children may be lower, but the variance in number of grandchildren or great-grandchildren can be large. And as the article mentioned, if children are less likely to live to grow up under polygamy, then that effect is magnified over multiple generations. Another point is that material success is not completely genetic, and therefore if it is too strongly selected for, good genes will be selected out that would otherwise result in later generations being successful. So I think it is not at all clear that it is evolutionarily beneficial.

BearGoesChirp 9y ago

What about a society that is polygamous without contract? Many of the issues of polygamy seem to happen not because of the actual marriage contracts, but because of the relationships formed. Even if you remove the contracts, if we allow those relationships, don't we still have an issue? Does a society where polygamous relationships are allowed suffer some of the same core problems that a society which allows polygamy suffers?

nitwit005 9y ago

You don't need polygamy to produce an enormous number of offspring. You just have to chose to produce as many children as possible, across more than one generation: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/nyregion/21yitta.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/nyregion/21yitta.html