On Fri, Feb 1, 2013 at 2:03 PM, Alain Sepeda <alain.sep...@gmail.com> wrote:
anyway there is always selective pressure, like there is gaz pressure > whatever is the container... > > human, by losing many "natural" pressure (resuistance to disease, survival > to pregnancy), are today selected on strange factor like ability to find a > dress matchin the marketing standards, resistance to phone ring at night, > eye-thumb reactivity... > I think that selective pressures have changed in a meaningful sense. And they are not some of the ones above; consider, for example: 1. The ability to find a dress matching the marketing standards. This only holds for women who have good fashion. Fashion sense presumably falls on a gaussian distribution, and it is plausible that for every woman who chooses a man for his good fashion sense, there is a women who chooses a man despite, or for, his bad fashion sense. 2. The ability to resist a call late at night -- perhaps this is a reference to fidelity? It seems like infidelity would be where evolution would push people, but I haven't followed this question. 3. Hand-eye coordination goes back to the basic selection pressures. This is an interesting one, because it shows that even though selection pressures have surely changed for people in a meaningful sense, there are still the must-haves, so to speak. But I doubt that zoologists would say that people are under the pressure of natural selection in the same way the way that zebras or lions or inchworms are. Are there any zoologists here who can elaborate on this? Eric
