131–140 of 154 posts
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If it was advantageous for us to have lots of children, then women would have a dozen at a time, rather than one. There are plenty of mammals that do that. There’s clearly a tradeoff there and the selective pressures for humans tend to lean toward fewer. Not sure where we’ll end up, but time will tell.
The size of the human brain makes this physically impossible.
All of my grandparents come from big families. My grandmother on my father's side comes from a family of 12 children. Yet my grandmother only had 4 children and my father only 2, and now I only have 1. This is an anecdote, but I don't think heritabiliy has anything to do with it. Large families simply happen due to poverty. When poor, you want more children because there's strength in numbers. Plus the women are stay…
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Would you then also argue that two smart parents have a much higher chance of having a smart kid than two of average intelligence? If not, why not?
I think you might be misinterpreting the parent. When they refer to education reducing potential, they mean higher education levels generally correspond with a lower birth rate, for a variety of reasons. So smart parents having smart children does seem to fit with that. Or am I misunderstanding what you're getting at?
Hope that helps to clarify.
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I don't really understand how that is relevant for the discussion in this thread.
If anyone thinks the paper is wrong, they are stating that the measures of those values are wrong. The rest is inevitable.
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But your anecdote is exactly what is explained in the article: the new environment (such as contraceptives) which lead to your ancestors having less kids, will cause increased selection on fertility traits in the future. This will reverse the trend of decreased fertility. Traits that will be selected: a desire to have more kids, physiological changes that cause resistance against contraceptives, tendency to have twin…
That makes sense from an evolutionary/ biological perspective- it’s like contraceptives appear to nature like a filter - a global pandemic, an extinction event of sorts. So those who nevertheless have more children - ipso facto- pass down their trait of having larger families despite the availability of a baby pill. Fascinating hypothesis. My next question would be if there is a biological link to religion and fertil…
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7147-genes-contribute...
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2006/11/heritability-...
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>> There does seem to be darker political overtones that are exacerbated by commenters > Are we reading the same comments section? Which specific comments are you talking about? The comments section I read seemed quite apolitical, except for this particular sub-thread. Please. >> Low-IF journals are easier to publish to by definition. > (...) By definition, Low-IF journals are journals whose papers are less-cited (th…
>Please. No, you please. I'm genuinely trying to reach a better understanding of your side. What comment did you think was the most political, outside of this sub-thread? Was it the one by car12 [1] which pointed out a quantitative observation about Muslim fertility rates and imagined a future where Islamic parties gain a bigger voice in politics through demographics? If so, what is it about that that's so political?…
This is also a good one:
> If an antibiotic doesn't wipe out its target, then its target's numbers will be devastated in the short-term, but in the long-term, its target will evolve immunity to the antibiotic and ultimately recover.
> If you think about it, contraceptives are extremely similar to an antibiotic whose target is human beings. We're still living in the short-term when the antibiotic seems to be effective.
Without any further detail or reasoning, just by "thinking about it" (whatever the author meant by that, he did not elaborate), the author draws a pretty extreme conclusion. This seems to be a rather unscientific, political attempt to reply to the original question:
> If this is true, then how do they explain population stabilization in, e.g., Europe, and other developed areas? Why shouldn't what worked for Europe work for the rest of the world?
I'm sceptical of this result. Most previous research suggests that in countries where immigrants are able to assimilate, second-generation fertility levels converge with local social norms: https://paa2008.princeton.edu/papers/80042
Those immigrants haven’t started the evolutionary process in question, since they have, by definition, only been exposed to a modern developed economy for one or two generations.
The main factors currently in determining family size is not genetically heritable, but cultural. Culture appears to be heritable but that is just because culture tends to be passed down. Culture can change fast in either way, towards more children or less. This does not mean we will be stable but rather culture matters. For example soon as a member leaves a conservative religion stream and shifts to a more liberal s…
So is there any reason to believe that last "if" is true? Why would that be a problem anyway, as we can simply make sure schools are in good shape to educate those children, no matter the education level of their parents?
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If anyone thinks the paper is wrong, they are stating that the measures of those values are wrong. The rest is inevitable.
I do not really understand what you mean with "The rest is inevitable", for example I do not know what exactly you mean with "the rest".
Perhaps I over stated the case by saying inevitable. It's quite feasible that the consequences of highly fertile people overbreeding will be a reduction in civilizational complexity, which will lowerthe total population.