If there was overpopulation of the planet, could it be possible that “nature” would make more people gay/lesbians in order to decrease the population? (I guess bi would help too but not necessarily much)
Not sure if this is clear but it is a question I have often wondered about but I could not find an evolutionary reason why it would be so and this lots of you know much more than I do, I’m asking! Hope I’m not too late though
I think one of the things to consider with this hypothesis is what is the signal that indicates an area is “overpopulated”, and how should members of the species respond to that signal? And how can this signal be distinguished from other causes? For instance, an organism that has offspring that are unable to reproduce because they had limited resources will likely be outcompeted by an organism that produces fertile offspring regardless of the availability of resources.
If you open up a variable that determines how likely your offspring are to reproduce, it also could become an attack vector for other competing species to trigger. Imagine a species that sends out the signal for your species that you are overpopulated, but ignores that signal itself. I think you will quickly find your species going extinct in such a scenario.
Personally I think a more compelling reason for species who sometimes can’t or won’t have biological offspring is that it frees up their time and energy to focus on things other than child rearing in the larger community. If instead of having a variable that determines how likely your offspring want to naturally reproduce based on the currently available resources, you have a fixed percentage, then the communities that descend from you might outperform communities that focus more on child rearing at the expense of other activities (research, sentries, hunting, protecting relatives etc).
Consider that if the fixed percentage hypothesis is correct, then a natural consequence of population growth is a growing number of LGBTQ+ members of the population.
Not necessarily, but true as well. Good points, but gays, transgenders, and lesbians can now adopt children so they no longer have to produce their own offspring, which is the culprit to over population. I think the LGBTQ community is a much more humane response to over population then how we treat animals when they are over populated. I do think we are more over populated then the animals we try to “Control”. Competing for more resources or having children compete for resources, there is no need to worry about extinction at the time because people have children each year. It isn’t the only reason alone, but Bo Burnham makes a joke about God Sending gays to fix over population, but boy did that go well, and what would be the point of responding that way if it wasn’t a response to something we may not be aware of. Simply saying people are born gay, is putting people in boxes in predetermined molds that no one wants to be put into, much like the articles pushing that sex offenders run in the genes, but that’s not true. I think, why we treat them so poorly, nothing adds up, nature vs nurture, its complex and its more then just genetics. Maybe more feminine men are designed to produce girl offspring. Feminine men have a place in life, and masculine women have a place, that shouldnt have to determine their life or who they are going to be. We are over populated and there as too be some response to it.
Personally I think a more compelling reason for species who sometimes can’t or won’t have biological offspring is that it frees up their time and energy to focus on things other than child rearing in the larger community. If instead of having a variable that determines how likely your offspring want to naturally reproduce based on the currently available resources, you have a fixed percentage, then the communities that descend from you might outperform communities that focus more on child rearing at the expense of other activities (research, sentries, hunting, protecting relatives etc).
This is implausible, see the posts about group selection.
Not everyone who is not having kids is doing it to free up time. Lots of children need homes and some of these communities have dreams to still have kids, which is given foster and adoptable children, places to go. Choices based on culture is not always obvious. Most people who are gay aren’t thinking, oh the worlds over populated lets put our focus in something else, most people are discouraged from children due to experiences in life. For me, over population bothers me because I had a bad experience in life period, especially as a women growing up with women stereotypes as a homosexual culture emerges. A kind of disgust exists for the people that suffer and animals that suffer at the expense of too many humans but not enough people trying to better these humans or animals.
No, this is extremely impossible, see the posts about group selection.
A more specific way to put it is, if there actually was some sort of genetic strategy for LGBTQ as a density-dependent response to overpopulation pressures (rather than some simpler default explanation like ‘sex is a large mutational target’ or ‘antagonistic pleiotropy’ or ‘mutation load probably related to evolutionary-recent demographics’), that implies that overpopulation pressures + subsequent LGBTQ response have happened so many times before that a genetic strategy could be repeatedly selected for and refined and blindly evolved. The strategy has to come from somewhere. But the current human population & peak densities are unprecedented and have never happened before. There have not been thousands of cycles of human civilizations arising, developing or failing to develop large LGBTQ subpopulations, and then conquering or being conquered by other civilizations and their fitness decreasing/increasing and subsequent cycles being more likely to have a LGBTQ response. That is just not a thing, and in particular, it is not a thing we see now: LGBTQ percentages are not even positively correlated with country population growth. So such a group selection proposal really does not work.
(One can make a similar observation about the idea of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance having any meaningful impact on human complex traits: …why? Why would evolution build such a complex mechanism to convey a tiny bit of information in a hardwired form instead of relying on the usual within-lifetime learning and adaptation and gene expression? How could any tobacco-specific epigenetic mechanism have arisen? Why would there be a famine/obesity program, since famines arrive frequently and short-term predictably long-term unpredictably, and not without warning once every 30 years like clockwork?)
Thanks for the answer and the link ! I’ll go read group selection tomorrow.
Update : I didn’t completely get your (gwern) answer at first but after I read eliezer’s post it made more sense, I think I was missing basic information about the topic to fully get it. Your explanation really added something to the original post since it was tailored to the subject I was wondering about.
Thanks!
I don’t agree necessarily. People just blindly listen to what people say, I disagree, I don’t think people are born gay. I do think overpopulation is a cause for potential for diverted stereotypes. If we are over populated why keep breeding at the same rate, seeing all the kids without homes is enough reason to make me want to be homosexual just saying. I think nothing is predefined completely. I think free will is at the end of the day stronger then any “Genetic Aspect”, to the choices we made in life. I don’t just blindly believe something, I ask questions, where there is smoke isn’t fire a person once said. No , where there is smoke is questions waiting to be answered and a path never followed before. That is love and attraction. Its a vague term, I don’t want anyone genes or not, science, culture, stereotypes, to tell me who I can love and who I can be attracted too. I am attracted to and love a gay guy, I have never found a guy more attractive, trans now. What is the definition of love, science can only explain so much. I am not confused, I know who I love and I chose to love that person because I have a free mind, where love is free.