4 ms·

>What makes you think that this not so common (as you yourself call it) drive will become more widespread? The graph in the article suggest a very strong correl

by xiaoma 17y ago

>What makes you think that this not so common (as you yourself call it) drive will become more widespread? The graph in the article suggest a very strong correlation between wealth and low fertility. Evolution. Right now, most people aren't that well adapted (in a Darwinian sense) to life in an affluent society. There's no reason to assume this will always be the case. The current speed of human evolution is over 100 times what it was in prehistoric times. Extreme environmental changes invariably lead to evolutionary changes.

mseebach 17y ago
> Evolution What biological advantage does a large family have over a small family in an affluent society?
- Freebytes 17y ago
  The large family will have more offspring which will result in more offspring. If this is a biologically motivated desire to have more children, there will be more children with that desire to produce more offspring, and the cycle will continue.
  - mseebach 17y ago
    That's true, but that's a pretty big assumption. In past agrarian cultures, a large family wasn't just an advantage, it was required due to high mortality. My girlfriends mother is one of eight, all girls. None of her aunts, and none of their children have an above-average number of children, and between them I think they're below average. On the other hand, my sister and I are out of a ridiculously small family, and she just had her third baby. Plans for more are uncertain, but not ruled out. It's a sample of two, but if nothing else, it shows that if it's a biological trait, it's pretty weak.
- fh 17y ago
  For the species or society, likely none. But consider the individual gene. Assume there's a gene X, that causes a desire to have many children. Let's say people with gene X have twice as many children on average as people without it. The society is affluent, so all of those children survive and spread the gene further. Eventually gene X will become dominant in the gene pool. (The fate of such a gene is quite different if food is scarce and there's a danger of starvation, which has been the case for most of human history.)
- Retric 17y ago
  If some bit of your DNA says have more children than normal, and that’s the major factor in the number of children that live to have more children, then in time everyone will have that chunk of DNA. The engine of evolution is the ability of your decedents to continue to have children. If at any point all your decedents fail to have children then you fail. But, if your decedents have more children than the replacement rate over time, your DNA gets mixed with everyone else in that species. Once you become an ancestor 5,000 times removed from of 90+% of the population, most living people will have a random slice of the useful bits of your DNA and the harmful stuff should be less common. Edit: DNA can also evolve odd stratagies. EX: Say each person has say a 23% chance of wanting a large number of children, which let's family's build resurces over time, and then have lot's of children and then repeat. With longer streaks of accumulators, and breaders possible even with the same DNA.
- jerf 17y ago
  "What biological advantage does a large family have over a small family in an affluent society?" The definition of biological advantage is having a large number of offspring rather than a small one! (Simplifying a bit; said offspring should also reproduce, recursively, but it's a decent approximation to just consider offspring.) What kind of weird question is that? Also, to bundle a reply to another of your concerns, of course you don't observe changes yet. If you have one population averaging 3 children per couple and another of equal size averaging 1, in the first generation it may not look like that big a deal, but by the fourth or fifth generation the 1-child-per-couple group has been effectively eliminated as a significant part of the population. Surprisingly small differences magnify surprisingly rapidly across generations; evolutionists have observed species going extinct because of far smaller differences than that. I just used large numbers to make the point more understandable, it applies equally to 2.1 children vs 2.15, it just takes a few more generations in that case... and not even all that many.
  - 10ren 17y ago
    Just to follow up: it's compounding. Like compound interest, it gets big surprisingly fast. Another example is that story of placing one grain of rice on the first square of a chess board, and doubling it for each square, so 2 grains on the second, 4 on the third, 8 on the fourth and so on. You end up with 2 64 (2 to the power of 16), or about 16 million million million grains of rice.
    - geebee 17y ago
      I agree with your math... though I think there's probably still a question as to whether the sub-group can maintain the factors that have caused this higher birthrate as the population of the sub-group explodes.
  - mseebach 17y ago
    > The definition of biological advantage is having a large number of offspring rather than a small one! (Simplifying a bit; said offspring should also reproduce, recursively, but it's a decent approximation to just consider offspring.) What kind of weird question is that? In animals, yes. Humans, especially in affluent societies have more sophisticated goals. Obviously, reproduction is important, but we will also pursue irrational goals, such as self-realization, quality of life, love, ethics and so on. The idea that we consider it a virtue to raise a child with Asbergers syndrome or other genetic defects is evidence to that, and in an evolutionary context decidedly self-destructive. In fact, I feel queasy even writing this, so strong is our opposition to applying our intelligence to raising the quality of our gene pool = eugenics. My point is, although ill-articulated in a biological context, how does having a large family further any of the goals that a affluent individual in a wealthy society has? I'm not talking material wealth, even though that applies as well, but also the "soft" goals of contributing great ideas, science, arts, all the jazz, to the greater good of humanity. My point is; is a family with 10 kids more likely to foster a Miles Davis, Ernest Hemingway, Obama, Reagan, whatever floats your boat, than a family with one or two?
aswanson 17y ago
"Extreme environmental changes invariably lead to evolutionary changes." Absent mechanized farming, medicine, hospitals, and everything else modern civilization affords most of us, this is approximately correct.
- xiaoma 17y ago
  Mechanized farming, medicine, hospitals, and everything else modern civilization affords most of us are the extreme change in our environment.
cwp 17y ago
> The current speed of human evolution is over 100 times what it was in prehistoric times. Citation?
- jobu 17y ago
  There has been at least one article recently posted here about human evolution speeding up. Easier than finding that article is a quick google search which turns up a number of articles, including this one from 2 years ago: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/12/071211-human-evolution.html http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/12/071211-human...
donaldc 17y ago
There is undoubtedly some genetic evolution going on, but cultural evolution is much faster than genetic evolution, and will have a bigger impact much sooner. Reclusive groups, such as the Amish, that avoid modern society and maintain high birthrates and cultural integrity, are increasing their numbers very quickly. There's no reason to suppose that this will suddenly stop, though due to the nature of exponential growth it may be a while before this begins to have much effect on average birth rates.

by xiaoma 17y ago

mseebach 17y ago

> Evolution What biological advantage does a large family have over a small family in an affluent society?

Freebytes 17y ago
The large family will have more offspring which will result in more offspring. If this is a biologically motivated desire to have more children, there will be more children with that desire to produce more offspring, and the cycle will continue.
- mseebach 17y ago
  That's true, but that's a pretty big assumption. In past agrarian cultures, a large family wasn't just an advantage, it was required due to high mortality. My girlfriends mother is one of eight, all girls. None of her aunts, and none of their children have an above-average number of children, and between them I think they're below average. On the other hand, my sister and I are out of a ridiculously small family, and she just had her third baby. Plans for more are uncertain, but not ruled out. It's a sample of two, but if nothing else, it shows that if it's a biological trait, it's pretty weak.
fh 17y ago
For the species or society, likely none. But consider the individual gene. Assume there's a gene X, that causes a desire to have many children. Let's say people with gene X have twice as many children on average as people without it. The society is affluent, so all of those children survive and spread the gene further. Eventually gene X will become dominant in the gene pool. (The fate of such a gene is quite different if food is scarce and there's a danger of starvation, which has been the case for most of human history.)
Retric 17y ago
If some bit of your DNA says have more children than normal, and that’s the major factor in the number of children that live to have more children, then in time everyone will have that chunk of DNA. The engine of evolution is the ability of your decedents to continue to have children. If at any point all your decedents fail to have children then you fail. But, if your decedents have more children than the replacement rate over time, your DNA gets mixed with everyone else in that species. Once you become an ancestor 5,000 times removed from of 90+% of the population, most living people will have a random slice of the useful bits of your DNA and the harmful stuff should be less common. Edit: DNA can also evolve odd stratagies. EX: Say each person has say a 23% chance of wanting a large number of children, which let's family's build resurces over time, and then have lot's of children and then repeat. With longer streaks of accumulators, and breaders possible even with the same DNA.
jerf 17y ago
"What biological advantage does a large family have over a small family in an affluent society?" The definition of biological advantage is having a large number of offspring rather than a small one! (Simplifying a bit; said offspring should also reproduce, recursively, but it's a decent approximation to just consider offspring.) What kind of weird question is that? Also, to bundle a reply to another of your concerns, of course you don't observe changes yet. If you have one population averaging 3 children per couple and another of equal size averaging 1, in the first generation it may not look like that big a deal, but by the fourth or fifth generation the 1-child-per-couple group has been effectively eliminated as a significant part of the population. Surprisingly small differences magnify surprisingly rapidly across generations; evolutionists have observed species going extinct because of far smaller differences than that. I just used large numbers to make the point more understandable, it applies equally to 2.1 children vs 2.15, it just takes a few more generations in that case... and not even all that many.
- 10ren 17y ago
  Just to follow up: it's compounding. Like compound interest, it gets big surprisingly fast. Another example is that story of placing one grain of rice on the first square of a chess board, and doubling it for each square, so 2 grains on the second, 4 on the third, 8 on the fourth and so on. You end up with 2 64 (2 to the power of 16), or about 16 million million million grains of rice.
  - geebee 17y ago
    I agree with your math... though I think there's probably still a question as to whether the sub-group can maintain the factors that have caused this higher birthrate as the population of the sub-group explodes.
- mseebach 17y ago
  > The definition of biological advantage is having a large number of offspring rather than a small one! (Simplifying a bit; said offspring should also reproduce, recursively, but it's a decent approximation to just consider offspring.) What kind of weird question is that? In animals, yes. Humans, especially in affluent societies have more sophisticated goals. Obviously, reproduction is important, but we will also pursue irrational goals, such as self-realization, quality of life, love, ethics and so on. The idea that we consider it a virtue to raise a child with Asbergers syndrome or other genetic defects is evidence to that, and in an evolutionary context decidedly self-destructive. In fact, I feel queasy even writing this, so strong is our opposition to applying our intelligence to raising the quality of our gene pool = eugenics. My point is, although ill-articulated in a biological context, how does having a large family further any of the goals that a affluent individual in a wealthy society has? I'm not talking material wealth, even though that applies as well, but also the "soft" goals of contributing great ideas, science, arts, all the jazz, to the greater good of humanity. My point is; is a family with 10 kids more likely to foster a Miles Davis, Ernest Hemingway, Obama, Reagan, whatever floats your boat, than a family with one or two?

aswanson 17y ago

"Extreme environmental changes invariably lead to evolutionary changes." Absent mechanized farming, medicine, hospitals, and everything else modern civilization affords most of us, this is approximately correct.

xiaoma 17y ago
Mechanized farming, medicine, hospitals, and everything else modern civilization affords most of us are the extreme change in our environment.

cwp 17y ago

> The current speed of human evolution is over 100 times what it was in prehistoric times. Citation?

jobu 17y ago
There has been at least one article recently posted here about human evolution speeding up. Easier than finding that article is a quick google search which turns up a number of articles, including this one from 2 years ago: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/12/071211-human-evolution.html http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/12/071211-human...

donaldc 17y ago

There is undoubtedly some genetic evolution going on, but cultural evolution is much faster than genetic evolution, and will have a bigger impact much sooner. Reclusive groups, such as the Amish, that avoid modern society and maintain high birthrates and cultural integrity, are increasing their numbers very quickly. There's no reason to suppose that this will suddenly stop, though due to the nature of exponential growth it may be a while before this begins to have much effect on average birth rates.