Dear Chris
>Selection occurs, all the time, for almost every species,
> even humans. For example, my own genes will almost
> certainly be selected out, because I do
>not plan ever to have children.
In the bad old days social line were tightly draw. There was no marrying
primarially across religious, political, racial and even tribal
boundries. Being that health and smarts wasn't origionally doled out on
the basis of race or religion each major human division had a large gene
pool to start with it was only very small subdivisions like the royal
families that had a genetic problem because of social self-sorting. Yet
marriage within each religion or race wasn't random, it was sorted with
respect to what? Financial standing? That wasn't to bad, both rich
families and poor families had an assortment of healthy and sickly,
smart and stupid people.
These days there doesn't seem to be any color or religious bar or any
other bar to marriage and no one takes their parent's advise. (We didn't
<G>) Yet marriage isn't random. On what basis are people sorting
themselves? Just by looking at the newspapers and common sense, I'd say
that people are sorting themselves by intelligence and apperance. The
ugly, stupid, lazy guy usually doesn't get the beautiful, intelligent,
and ambitious girl. Why would a person who wishes to spend spare time
enjoying the fine arts marry a person who prefers watching mud wrestling
on TV?
But statistically educated people have less children than uneducated
people and economically successful countries have a lower birth rate than
poor countries. So in the next few hundred years natural selection should
produce a "Brave New World" effect. On the other hand, in genetic terms
stupid and ugly is superior to smart and beautiful.
billwald@juno.com
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