Nitpick arguments about how you define this specifically are irrelevant and uninteresting.
Excuse me, what? This is not evolution’s utility function. It’s not optimizing for gene count. It does one thing, one thing only, and it does it well: it promotes genes that increase their RELATIVE FREQUENCY in the reproducing population.
I don’t see how this detail is relevant. The fact remains that humans are, in evolutionary terms, much more successful than most other mammals.
The failure of alignment is witnessed by the fact that humans very very obviously fail to maximize the relative frequency of their genes in the next generation, given the opportunities available to them; and they are often aware of this; and they often choose to do so anyway. The whole argument in this post is totally invalid.
Currently the world fertility rate is 2.3 children per woman. This is more than the often quoted 2.1 for a stable population. It is true that many developed countries are currently below that value. But this only means that these subpopulations will go extinct, while other subpopulations with higher fertility inherit the world. E.g. in Africa, Muslim countries, the Amish etc.
For example, in women high fertility is associated with, and likely caused by, low IQ and low education. The popular theory is that smart well-educated women have profitable and satisfying careers and consequently see much higher opportunity cost for having children instead, so they have fewer or none. And people with cognitive properties that cause them to have more children likely are currently getting more frequent in the population. Same as men who tend to forget to use condoms etc. These outlooks are not rosy from an ethical perspective, since properties like low intelligence and low conscientiousness are associated with a lot of human hardship such as poverty and violence, but they are totally in line with what evolution optimizes for.
Good question. I think a good approximation is total body mass of the population. By this measure, only cattle are more successful than humans, and obviously only because we deliberately breed them for food: https://xkcd.com/1338/
In other words, you’re pointing out that the people who have the most ability to choose how many children to have, choose on average to have fewer and therefore to reduce their genes’ relative frequencies in the next generation. They also have longer generation times, amplifying the effect. This is equivalent to “humans defect against evolution’s goals as soon as they have the opportunity to do so.”
Subpopulations which do this are expected to disappear relatively quickly in evolutionary time scales. Natural selection is error correcting. This can mean people get less intelligent again, or they start to really love getting children rather than enjoying sex.
Correct. In a few handfuls of generations the population shifts in those directions. This holds as long as evolutionary timescales are the important ones, but it it not at all clear to me that this is what matters today. If the subpopulations that do this move faster than even short evolutionary timescales, then the selection pressure is light enough that they can oppose it.
I have no problem with a world where people evolve towards wanting more children or caring less about sex itself. I think if it were easy for evolution to achieve that it would have happened a long time ago, which means I think in practice we’re selecting among subpopulations for cultural factors more than biological ones. That, in turn, means those subpopulations are susceptible to outside influence… which is mostly what we’ve been seeing for the whole timeline of fertility dropping as nations develop economically. Some communities are more resistant because they start with stronger beliefs on this front, but none are immune. And frankly I think the only way they could be immune is by enforcing kinds of rigidity that the larger world won’t want to permit, seeing as they’d be seen as abusive, especially to children.
As far as intelligence goes: a world where the average person gets dumber while a small elite becomes smarter and more powerful and wealthier (by starting companies, inventing technologies, controlling policy making, and adopting things like life extension and genetic screening as they become available and viable) is an unstable powder keg. Eventually there’s conflict. Who wins? That depends on how big the gap is. Today, the smart people would probably lose, overwhelmed by numbers and lack of coordination ability. In the future, when the boundaries between populations are stark and stable cultural divides? Well by then the smarter subpopulation has all sorts of options. Like a custom virus that targets genetic characteristics of the low-intelligence subpopulation and causes infertility. Or armies of robots to supplement their numbers. Or radically longer lives so that they at least increase in absolute numbers over time and can have more children per lifetime (just slower) if they want to (note: this would enable people who love having kids to have even more of them!). Or carefully targeted propaganda campaigns (memetic warfare) to break down the cultural wall that’s sustaining the differences.
I don’t see how this detail is relevant. The fact remains that humans are, in evolutionary terms, much more successful than most other mammals.
Currently the world fertility rate is 2.3 children per woman. This is more than the often quoted 2.1 for a stable population. It is true that many developed countries are currently below that value. But this only means that these subpopulations will go extinct, while other subpopulations with higher fertility inherit the world. E.g. in Africa, Muslim countries, the Amish etc.
For example, in women high fertility is associated with, and likely caused by, low IQ and low education. The popular theory is that smart well-educated women have profitable and satisfying careers and consequently see much higher opportunity cost for having children instead, so they have fewer or none. And people with cognitive properties that cause them to have more children likely are currently getting more frequent in the population. Same as men who tend to forget to use condoms etc. These outlooks are not rosy from an ethical perspective, since properties like low intelligence and low conscientiousness are associated with a lot of human hardship such as poverty and violence, but they are totally in line with what evolution optimizes for.
What do you mean by “in evolutionary terms, much more successful”?
Good question. I think a good approximation is total body mass of the population. By this measure, only cattle are more successful than humans, and obviously only because we deliberately breed them for food: https://xkcd.com/1338/
In other words, you’re pointing out that the people who have the most ability to choose how many children to have, choose on average to have fewer and therefore to reduce their genes’ relative frequencies in the next generation. They also have longer generation times, amplifying the effect. This is equivalent to “humans defect against evolution’s goals as soon as they have the opportunity to do so.”
Subpopulations which do this are expected to disappear relatively quickly in evolutionary time scales. Natural selection is error correcting. This can mean people get less intelligent again, or they start to really love getting children rather than enjoying sex.
Correct. In a few handfuls of generations the population shifts in those directions. This holds as long as evolutionary timescales are the important ones, but it it not at all clear to me that this is what matters today. If the subpopulations that do this move faster than even short evolutionary timescales, then the selection pressure is light enough that they can oppose it.
I have no problem with a world where people evolve towards wanting more children or caring less about sex itself. I think if it were easy for evolution to achieve that it would have happened a long time ago, which means I think in practice we’re selecting among subpopulations for cultural factors more than biological ones. That, in turn, means those subpopulations are susceptible to outside influence… which is mostly what we’ve been seeing for the whole timeline of fertility dropping as nations develop economically. Some communities are more resistant because they start with stronger beliefs on this front, but none are immune. And frankly I think the only way they could be immune is by enforcing kinds of rigidity that the larger world won’t want to permit, seeing as they’d be seen as abusive, especially to children.
As far as intelligence goes: a world where the average person gets dumber while a small elite becomes smarter and more powerful and wealthier (by starting companies, inventing technologies, controlling policy making, and adopting things like life extension and genetic screening as they become available and viable) is an unstable powder keg. Eventually there’s conflict. Who wins? That depends on how big the gap is. Today, the smart people would probably lose, overwhelmed by numbers and lack of coordination ability. In the future, when the boundaries between populations are stark and stable cultural divides? Well by then the smarter subpopulation has all sorts of options. Like a custom virus that targets genetic characteristics of the low-intelligence subpopulation and causes infertility. Or armies of robots to supplement their numbers. Or radically longer lives so that they at least increase in absolute numbers over time and can have more children per lifetime (just slower) if they want to (note: this would enable people who love having kids to have even more of them!). Or carefully targeted propaganda campaigns (memetic warfare) to break down the cultural wall that’s sustaining the differences.