On 12/07/2006, at 10:44 PM, Alberto Monteiro wrote:
Many animal species have a disequilibrium.
Such as?
One way is by polygamy.
In mammals, that just leads to lots of unmated males, with fierce
competition. The overall ratio, if you're talking lions or deer or
something, is 50-50,
The other way is by polyandry, and a female that puts enough eggs
to compensate the small number of females. Since humans can
hardly change ourselves into that second group, the more likely
scenario is the first.
Mebbe.
Eusociality is one
way, where kin relations make sisters more important than daughters
(haploid creatures like bees, wasps and ants have this bias built
in). Manipulation of the breeding patterns, as in Glory Season, is
another. But even in the scenario in which you describe, the
selective advantage would be towards women who have sons, and as
homosexuality isn't genetic (although it may have a genetic
component) straight daughters would also have selective advantage.
Homosexuality is either genetic, cultural or a mix of both. In
either case, a lesbian mother in a lesbian society will eventually
have an influence in making the daughter lesbian too.
But those who fail will have more offspring, driving the ratio back
to parity.
And lesbians have a huge advantage in selection: they select the
father of their daughters based on logical criteria, while hetero
women chose based on "love" [or hormones, etc]. So, the daughters
of lesbians will have a competitive advantage over the daughters
of non-lesbians.
...but those who have more sons will have selective advantage....
Don't be so sure about this. Having babies is a huge investment
in a human's lifetime, so spending lots of money to have the
baby of your dreams is the most likely scenario. Gattaca comes
to mind - with the risk of being banned from the List, for
mentioning _two_ sf stories, one by Himself.
Even if it does become a common procedure, the selective balance
prevails. Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium models can be used to show how
this happens.
So please enlighten me about this. Intuition shows that genetic
manipulation and selection will converge to a mix of Glory Season
and Gattaca.
No it doesn't. Gattaca maybe. Glory Season, only on a new planet with
the geneering done at the time of colonisation.
Eugenics is evil when it's done by murder - but then it should
not be called Eugenics but simply Mass-Murder.
Therein lies the issue. Some among us regard discarding unimplanted
blastocysts as murder. I don't, and I'm guessing from your tone that
you don't either.
If/when medical techniques evolve, it's expected that not even
this kind of selection will be necessary. Selection at the level
of eggs may be what we will do - and then there's no reason
why both eggs can't come from two women.
Urm... maybe there's a way to combine two eggs. But why? Better to
substitute the DNA in a spermatozoa and let that do the job. The pain
involved in fusing two eggs to viability is just not worth it.
Males are doomed to extinction
Rubbish. Even aphids need males.
Charlie.
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