5 ms·

a long time? You probably need at least 7-9 generations to select "strong pinky shelf" as desirable and I'm not sure any culture is yet?

• coldtea 3y ago
  >You probably need at least 7-9 generations to select "strong pinky shelf" as desirable It not only has to be convenient, but also to be sexually selected (partners with that seen as more attractive) or helping with survivability (partners with that live longer and get to reproduce more), which ain't really applicable anyway. Which is the reason we don't have traits for any other minor "convenience" attribute either, but instead for long standing evolutionary benefits.
  • msm_ 3y ago
    Even in case something helps with survivability, the benefit must be strong enough to be selected for. Even today people are dying because of appendicitis, can't imagine the death rate in the pre-modern era.
  • jeromegv 3y ago
    It’s fascinating that most people don’t get that about evolution. It needs to be a matter of life and death, if it doesn’t, then it has no impact.
    • ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
      Surely it's more to do with the chances of raising viable offspring. A change that makes a person more desirable to the opposite sex is very likely to be selected for even if it makes the person more likely to die in their 50s.
      • lazide 3y ago
        ‘It’s complicated’. Blue eyes, for example.
        • ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
          Don't blue eyes support the "sexual selection" over "life or death" view of evolution though? Blue eyes don't provide any benefits to the owner other than possible sexual selection and surprisingly, they evolved before fair skin (which does provide a benefit for people in northern latitudes to produce enough vitamin D).
          • coldtea 3y ago
            >Don't blue eyes support the "sexual selection" over "life or death" view of evolution though? Is it a choice? Evolution has both "life and death" and "sexual selection" aspects. And "sexual selection" itself is tied to "life and death" - it just concerns the life and death (or rather: existence or non-existence) of the offspring and not the person. So, in any case, it has to be big enough to affect whether the person gets an advantage in living more themselves, or gets an advantage for having children come to life.
            • ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
              Well yes, it's both. I was replying to jeromegv's earlier comment of: > It’s fascinating that most people don’t get that about evolution. It needs to be a matter of life and death, if it doesn’t, then it has no impact.
              • lazide 3y ago
                I'd even generalize it to 'it's about passing on ones genes'. Death before one has had a chance to do so (or before any necessary utility towards one's offspring has passed) is evolutionarily 'bad'. Things that help reproduction and success for one's offspring? Evolutionarily 'good'. The tricky part is that a large portion of ANY human population is, near as I can tell, 'excess'/'hedging' population, and so will be 'doing poorly' in any given set of circumstances. Think of it as 'build time attribute randomization' when there is a random situation picked that people couldn't predict in advance. That means that population wide, when circumstances change, the portion that is doing poorly vs doing very well can shift appropriately so the overall population survives. It is quite expensive, but seems necessary for us to have survived so long overall with the sheer number of apocalypses we know of (from plagues to invading armies), and the undoubtably countless ones we have forgotten. This is true of any group or subgroup.