3 ms·
> That said, I don't know whether they're part of the "intended" human condition. I'm not going to give my full "eugenics is a short-sighted, moronic evolution
by saalweachter 8y ago
> That said, I don't know whether they're part of the "intended" human condition.
I'm not going to give my full "eugenics is a short-sighted, moronic evolutionary strategy" semi-annual rant at this time, and I want to add the HUGE caveat that I'm only talking about humans as a population of evolving animals, and not as individuals with rights, worthy of moral consideration. That's a whole different can of worms I am not prepared to open.
With that giant caveat, from the standpoint amoral evolution, Down syndrome is the non-fatal duplication of a large number of genes, which can be extremely advantageous long-term, despite short-term disadvantages. The extra copies of the duplicated genes can mutate freely to take on new functions, while one copy maintains the original form and function. Evolution is the process of variation and selection, and while everyone gets hung up on the selection end of things, the variation is also important. You want your population to support as much variation as possible, so that it can explore as much of the evolutionary search space as possible.
So from that evolutionary standpoint, Down syndrome is an "intended" part of the human condition.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ouid 8y agojust because you want down syndrome to be possible, doesn't mean that it makes sense to bring a down syndrome baby to term.
- ben_w 8y agoShort term/long term; local minima/global minima — of course, now we are developing gene engineering tech we don’t need to rely on natural evolution, but before that was invented, the possibility of stuff like that is the only reason we got multiple chromosomes in the first place.
- saalweachter 8y agoYeah, the point I'm making is not that all mutations are special and natural, which isn't particularly useful: it's that we almost certainly have mutations similar to those that cause Down syndrome in our genetic history, and ancestors who suffered comparable (although presumably different) disadvantages relative to baseline mammals/apes/humans of the day.
- appleflaxen 8y ago> which can be extremely advantageous long-term, despite short-term disadvantages What long term are you talking about? Until you include individuals with trisomy 21 having families and passing on this trait, your line of reasoning makes no sense.