The European Tribune is a forum for thoughtful dialogue of European and international issues. You are invited to post comments and your own articles.
Please REGISTER to post.
What are the findings, exactly? That's the issue here, it's pure speculation based on extrapolating numbers of genes and mutation rates. I distribute. You re-distribute. He gives your hard-earned money to lazy scroungers. -- JakeS
It's hardly an original idea. I've wondered about it myself, and I doubt I'm alone in that. Is it possible or likely that modern science and technology have made it possible for members of our species who are less robust from a survivability standpoint -- however you choose to define or measure that -- to survive and propagate, and in doing so move the overall numbers downward?
Purely anecdotal and so conclusive of nothing, I am a walking example of the question. I carry not one but two genetic defects that, probably before the industrial revolution and almost certainly before the agricultural revolution, would have severely curtailed my expected life span. And in so doing, substantially lessened the likelihood that I would have produced offspring, and if I had that I would have lived long enough to ensure that they got a good start in life and so lived to reproduce themselves.
For me the question is not academic. I have wrestled with the ethics of possibly passing on those defects to my two sons. In my case the question is not lessening of intelligence -- we all seem to score a smidge above average on the typical mental aptitude tests -- but on the issue of physical robustness. I wouldn't have made it through adolescence as a paleo bison hunter. Probably not much past it as a neolithic agriculturist. So, am I contributing, not to the dumbing down but maybe to the wimping down, of the human gene pool? Now where are we going and what's with the handbasket?
No, it does matter what you call them. You can make up an infinite number of self-consistent hypotheses, but you first need to confront them with reality to take them seriously. Your own estimation that the trend "very likely does" exist needs a basis, too.
less robust from a survivability standpoint -- however you choose to define or measure that
Again, it matters very much how you choose to define that. Especially if we consider what Darwinian fitness means: it's not some innate quality, as in the imagination of Social Darwinists, but a function of the environment (in the widest sense of the word; one could also use "niche"), which in our case has been and is being modified heavily by culture.
I carry not one but two genetic defects that, probably before the industrial revolution and almost certainly before the agricultural revolution, would have severely curtailed my expected life span.
But we are not before the industrial and agricultural revolutions, so you are speaking about an imaginary "survivability". You then build an ethical dilemma atop this imaginary fitness. If physical robustness is not a trait with a greater value of fitness now, then why do you want it? (In fact, already our pre-agricultural-revolution ancestors were less robust than Neanderthals.) *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
I'll shut up now. Now where are we going and what's with the handbasket?
Now I'll shut up. Now where are we going and what's with the handbasket?
Google Scholar is nice in that it allows people to search academic papers quickly, but it seems sort of clumsy.
How nice would it be to have a website that cataloged articles by independent and dependent variables, methodology, and the like?
I was thinking about the relationship between population density and political leanings, which I think would be hard to locate an article on using Google scholar as it stands now. And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
by Frank Schnittger - Jan 14 12 comments
by IdiotSavant - Jan 15 14 comments
by Oui - Jan 16 4 comments
by Oui - Jan 13 60 comments
by Oui - Jan 17 1 comment
by gmoke - Jan 16
by Frank Schnittger - Jan 8 77 comments
by Oui - Jan 14 25 comments
by Oui - Jan 171 comment
by Oui - Jan 164 comments
by IdiotSavant - Jan 1514 comments
by Oui - Jan 1425 comments
by Frank Schnittger - Jan 1412 comments
by Oui - Jan 1360 comments
by Oui - Jan 1177 comments
by Oui - Jan 1046 comments
by Frank Schnittger - Jan 877 comments
by Oui - Jan 772 comments
by Frank Schnittger - Jan 710 comments
by Frank Schnittger - Jan 668 comments
by Frank Schnittger - Jan 611 comments
by Oui - Jan 659 comments
by Frank Schnittger - Jan 229 comments
by Frank Schnittger - Dec 3151 comments
by Oui - Dec 3122 comments
by Oui - Dec 2834 comments
by gmoke - Dec 28