During our Hamburg Meetup we discussed selection pressure on humans. We agreed that there is almost none on mutations affecting health in general due to medicine. But we agreed that there is tremendous pressure on contraception. We identified four ways evolution works around contraception. We discussed what effects this could have on the future of society. The movie Idiocracy was mentioned. This could be a long term (a few generations) existential risk.
The four ways evolution works around contraception:
Biological factors. Examples are hormones compensating the contraception effects of the pill or allergies against condoms. These are easily recognized, measured and countered by the much faster operating pharma industry. There are also little ethical issues with this.
Subconscious mental factors. Factors mostly leading to non- or mis-use of contraception. Examples are carelessness, impulsiveness, fear, and insufficient understanding of the contraceptives usage. These are what some fear leads to collective stultification. There are ethical injunctions to ‘cure’ these factors even if medically/therapeutically possible.
Conscious mental factors. Factors leading to explicit family planning e.g. children/family as terminal goals. These lead to a conscious use of contraception. The effect is less pronounced but likely leads to healthy and better educated children. These are actively encouraged but my personal impression is that this is less an area suspectible to education (because it depends on ones terminal goals).
Group selection factors. These are factors favoring groups which collectively have more children. The genetic effects are likely weak here but the memetic effects are strong. A culture with social norms against contraception or for large families are likely to out-birth other groups.
Any mistakes? Do you agree? Are we missing something?
Group selection factors. These are factors favoring groups which collectively have more children. The genetic effects are likely weak here but the memetic effects are strong. A culture with social norms against contraception or for large families are likely to out-birth other groups.
These will by far be the strongest. See for example the birth rates of religious people versus anyone else.
These discussions all have the same problem. They misapprehend how slow evolution is. - Long before any such selection can take place, the human genome is going to get rewritten end to end by deliberate technological intervention. Or heck, people will just stop dying—universal survival means no selection.
This means that the only thing that matters for the persistence of any human trait is how much they are valued. Uhm. Including how much they are valued by already-modified humans. A few rounds of iteration on that theme and I can guarantee at least one thing about future humanity: They will be one hundred percent satisfied with their physical incarnation. (because otherwise, it’d get changed.)
Think it through. How long do you think it will take before we master genetic engineering and decide to use it? 50 years? 500? 5000? Because at datum 5000, evolution will have done bugger-all to the genome. I mean, lactose tolerance might be a bit more common… but overall? Tech is fast. Social and legal change is slower, but compared to evolution? Blindingly fast.
And this is some weak-sauce selective pressures. Most people do have kids. Failing at contraception does not shift the lifetime number of children reliably upwards, it just fucks you over economically. And kids are expensive.
Evolution is slow. It takes generations. Depending on the selection pressure these may be quite few. Assume sexual drive were the only determining factor for reproductive fitness (which probably is a good approximation for some animals) and you introduce a 95% successful ‘contraception’ (e.g. a genetic modification to avoid reproduction—this has been done for mosquitoes) and guess how many generations it takes to work around it. Now humans use 95% reliable contraceptives—but their usage is regulated by complex processes so no simple analysis suffices (just think of the misinterpretaion of the baby-bust/pill-gap).
Additionally we don’t have to limit us to genetic evolution. We could also consider memetic evolution—the one invoked somewhat imprecisely in point 4. Memes evolve faster. It could happen that meme-complexes joining birth-control and anti-science out-breed progress within few generations.
Sure after 500 years we’d likely have the technological means—if anyone is still interested in technology then. And for some 500 may be a more likely date than 50.
It takes many generations. Human generations are quite long.
Without a technological civilization, the oldtime pressures of hunger and violence will dominate everything else—Which in some ways favors various means of birth control. Because having 6 kids and having all of them die due to splitting available resources to many ways is not a successful strategy. Therefore, your projection only makes sense in a continuing technological civilization, in which case engineering happens.
And again. Most people have kids. Successful use of birth control allows you to control time and number of said kids, the mosquito analogy holds no water whatsoever, if you want to model the selective advantages / disadvantages of this, you are going to need extensive real world data over generations- and a computing model projecting forward, and you would still be making stuff up.
Therefore, your projection only makes sense in a continuing technological civilization, in which case engineering happens.
Agreed. But the speed of technology is estimated quite variably. And at least currently there are already ethical (read: memetic) constraints on applying technology to reproduction. So one could argue that the selection pressure is already doing its work.
you are going to need extensive real world data [for] projecting forward.
Agreed. What do you propose? Assuming it too complicate to contemplate?
.… Yes. I mean, if you want to do a phd’s worth of work, there are existing datasets one could mine—but the time horizon (since the legalization of birth control) is so short and the social context regarding reproduction has been shifting so heavily during this period that any predictions you make would end up being barely guesses. Fortunately, the subset of plausible futures in which this matters is absurdly small. The world would essentially have to enter into technological and social stasis for many thousands of years, and well. Uhm. No.
The marching morons has a lot to answer for, really, since variations on this is an idea that crops up like weed, and it is a pretty absurd scenario.
The marching morons has a lot to answer for, really, since variations on this is an idea that crops up like weed,
This is kind of an relevant argument because it means this—despite my non-political phrasing—is really a political topic because the opinion coalition effects are possibly much stronger than any solid predictions to be had. Or to rephrase this: Any actual biological effect is outweight by memetic effects.
During our Hamburg Meetup we discussed selection pressure on humans. We agreed that there is almost none on mutations affecting health in general due to medicine. But we agreed that there is tremendous pressure on contraception. We identified four ways evolution works around contraception. We discussed what effects this could have on the future of society. The movie Idiocracy was mentioned. This could be a long term (a few generations) existential risk.
The four ways evolution works around contraception:
Biological factors. Examples are hormones compensating the contraception effects of the pill or allergies against condoms. These are easily recognized, measured and countered by the much faster operating pharma industry. There are also little ethical issues with this.
Subconscious mental factors. Factors mostly leading to non- or mis-use of contraception. Examples are carelessness, impulsiveness, fear, and insufficient understanding of the contraceptives usage. These are what some fear leads to collective stultification. There are ethical injunctions to ‘cure’ these factors even if medically/therapeutically possible.
Conscious mental factors. Factors leading to explicit family planning e.g. children/family as terminal goals. These lead to a conscious use of contraception. The effect is less pronounced but likely leads to healthy and better educated children. These are actively encouraged but my personal impression is that this is less an area suspectible to education (because it depends on ones terminal goals).
Group selection factors. These are factors favoring groups which collectively have more children. The genetic effects are likely weak here but the memetic effects are strong. A culture with social norms against contraception or for large families are likely to out-birth other groups.
Any mistakes? Do you agree? Are we missing something?
EDIT: Fixed link, typos
These will by far be the strongest. See for example the birth rates of religious people versus anyone else.
These discussions all have the same problem. They misapprehend how slow evolution is. - Long before any such selection can take place, the human genome is going to get rewritten end to end by deliberate technological intervention. Or heck, people will just stop dying—universal survival means no selection.
This means that the only thing that matters for the persistence of any human trait is how much they are valued. Uhm. Including how much they are valued by already-modified humans. A few rounds of iteration on that theme and I can guarantee at least one thing about future humanity: They will be one hundred percent satisfied with their physical incarnation. (because otherwise, it’d get changed.)
Think it through. How long do you think it will take before we master genetic engineering and decide to use it? 50 years? 500? 5000? Because at datum 5000, evolution will have done bugger-all to the genome. I mean, lactose tolerance might be a bit more common… but overall? Tech is fast. Social and legal change is slower, but compared to evolution? Blindingly fast. And this is some weak-sauce selective pressures. Most people do have kids. Failing at contraception does not shift the lifetime number of children reliably upwards, it just fucks you over economically. And kids are expensive.
Small changes to genotype don’t imply small changes to phenotype.
Evolution is slow. It takes generations. Depending on the selection pressure these may be quite few. Assume sexual drive were the only determining factor for reproductive fitness (which probably is a good approximation for some animals) and you introduce a 95% successful ‘contraception’ (e.g. a genetic modification to avoid reproduction—this has been done for mosquitoes) and guess how many generations it takes to work around it. Now humans use 95% reliable contraceptives—but their usage is regulated by complex processes so no simple analysis suffices (just think of the misinterpretaion of the baby-bust/pill-gap).
Additionally we don’t have to limit us to genetic evolution. We could also consider memetic evolution—the one invoked somewhat imprecisely in point 4. Memes evolve faster. It could happen that meme-complexes joining birth-control and anti-science out-breed progress within few generations.
Sure after 500 years we’d likely have the technological means—if anyone is still interested in technology then. And for some 500 may be a more likely date than 50.
It takes many generations. Human generations are quite long.
Without a technological civilization, the oldtime pressures of hunger and violence will dominate everything else—Which in some ways favors various means of birth control. Because having 6 kids and having all of them die due to splitting available resources to many ways is not a successful strategy. Therefore, your projection only makes sense in a continuing technological civilization, in which case engineering happens.
And again. Most people have kids. Successful use of birth control allows you to control time and number of said kids, the mosquito analogy holds no water whatsoever, if you want to model the selective advantages / disadvantages of this, you are going to need extensive real world data over generations- and a computing model projecting forward, and you would still be making stuff up.
Agreed. But the speed of technology is estimated quite variably. And at least currently there are already ethical (read: memetic) constraints on applying technology to reproduction. So one could argue that the selection pressure is already doing its work.
Agreed. What do you propose? Assuming it too complicate to contemplate?
.… Yes. I mean, if you want to do a phd’s worth of work, there are existing datasets one could mine—but the time horizon (since the legalization of birth control) is so short and the social context regarding reproduction has been shifting so heavily during this period that any predictions you make would end up being barely guesses. Fortunately, the subset of plausible futures in which this matters is absurdly small. The world would essentially have to enter into technological and social stasis for many thousands of years, and well. Uhm. No.
The marching morons has a lot to answer for, really, since variations on this is an idea that crops up like weed, and it is a pretty absurd scenario.
This is kind of an relevant argument because it means this—despite my non-political phrasing—is really a political topic because the opinion coalition effects are possibly much stronger than any solid predictions to be had. Or to rephrase this: Any actual biological effect is outweight by memetic effects.
I beg to differ.