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JoeShipley comments on Bioconservative and biomoderate singularitarian positions - Less Wrong
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I feel as though if you are hoping to preserve the specific biological scope of humanity you have some significant roadblocks on the way. Our species was generated in millions of years of shifting genes with selection factors blatant to subtle, and more recently we've stripped as many selection factors out as we can. (For good reason, natural selection is a harsh mistress...)
Malaria etc still is a selecting factor as has been documented but they're greatly reduced. In Dawkin's 'The Ancestor's Tale', he tells the story of the Russian Silver Fox breeding experiment in which wild foxes were selected for tame characteristics, resulting in foxes that behaved like border collies.
He hypothesizes that if humans were subject to a similar non-natural sexual selection, picking for the 'tamest' humans (adult male chimpanzees will kill each other and definitely don't work well with groups, while adolescent chimps can work together in large groups no problem -- this is another suggestion w/ the skeleton and other claims for the whole idea of species right after the human-chimpanzee concestor being pushed toward neoteny in order to work in larger groups.)
The border-collie-foxes ended up having floppy ears, liked being pet, yipped and enjoyed playing with humans. If Dawkins is correct, we're a bunch of domesticated humans in a similar fashion. When you throw a wrench into natural selection like that, things start to go out of whack instantly like the constant birth problems Pugs have, bloat in Bassett hounds to back problems in daschunds. It's difficult to predict -- a part of the naturally selected whole that had one purpose, modified to another, can have all kinds of unexpected repercussions. Anything that can 'loves' to do double or triple duty in the body.
So unless you snapshot the human genome the way it is and keep people from randomly reproducing as they like to do, you don't get to maintain a 'pristine' human condition.
Is it preferable to slowly wreck and junk up your genome and species via a more or less unguided (at least in the center of the curve) process, or attempt to steer it in a humane way without eugenics by genetic engineering even though the consequences could be drastic?
The bottom line is that our species will change no matter what we do. I don't know for sure, but I would prefer thought going into it over neglect and leaving the whole thing up to chaos.
This is true, I didn't think of this. A superintelligent sheperd. Interesting idea. It just seems so stagnant to me, but I don't have the value meme for it.
I don't understand how you can relate health problems in pure bred dogs usually attributed to in-breeding, to a theory of degeneration of current humans. Mongrels ('Mutts' in US English?) have a reputation for being healthier, smarter, and longer-lived than most pure breds, and most of them come about due to random stray boy dogs impregnating random stray girl dogs.
I think it's simply false that human reproduction now selects for the 'tamest' humans, whatever that means. Now, as always, human reproduction selects for those who are most able to reproduce.
Did Dawkins actually articulate an argument like the one you present?
Well, yes, on Pg. 31 of 'The Ancestor's Tale',
For what its worth....
Cheers for that. I might just look it up when I have some time. Still skeptical but it seems more plausible after reading those quotes. The hypothesis of selection for lactose tolerance seems a good place to start.
It does not make sense to say that human reproduction does not select for the 'tamest' humans because it really selects for those most able to reproduce. Those are different levels of abstraction. The question is: are the 'tamest' humans the ones most able to reproduce, and therefore selected for by evolution?
Agreed. One of the interesting points in that Dawkin's book is how sexual selection can result in the enhancement of traits that neither increase survivability or produce more offspring. He talks about 'fashions' spreading within a species, in his personal theory of how humans started walking upright.
Basically, the females or the males start selecting for a particular rare behavior as indicative of something desirable over their lessers, which leads to that male or female exhibiting that trait reproducing and the trait being reinforced for as long as it is in 'fashion'. Several cases of the way that can run away are presented in the book; Testicle size in chimpanzees due to sperm competition and the incredible sexual dimorphism in elephant seals which has driven the male to up to 8 times the size of the female. (Only one male in any given group reproduces.)
There's always a reason for any selection, but when you deal with creatures with any kind of mindfulness, sometimes the reasons stem from the minds rather than perfectly from the biology.
I don't understand your point about levels of abstraction.
Are the most rockin' humans the ones most able to reproduce? In the absence of any visible evidence, my answer to both questions is most likely not. Evidence would require a clear definition of tame (or rockin'). We can mostly agree on what a tame fox is but what is a tame human?
It seems to me that essentially random copulation, with some selection/treatment for serious genetic diseases is just fine for maintaining biological humans pretty much as-is. I don't know enough about mathematical biology to articulate a quantitative argument for this, but I'd like to hear it, for or against.
Imagine if someone said "This shape is not a rectangle. It is a quadrilateral." You would probably think, "Well, some quadrilaterals are rectangles, so the shape being a quadrilateral does not mean it is not a rectangle." "Quadrilateral" represents a higher level of abstraction than "rectangle" in that it specifies the shape less. Generally, the fact that something is accurately described in a vague manner does not mean it cannot also be accurately described in a more precise manner.
That evolution selects for the most reproductively fit is tautological, it is practically the definition of "reproductively fit". The reason this tautology is useful is that it gets us to ask the question: what more concrete properties must an organism have to be reproductively fit? Here the property of "tameness" has been proposed as such a property, and represents a lower level of abstraction. Though, not much lower, you correctly point out that "Evidence would require a clear definition of tame".
In this case, tame might mean: "Able to co-exist with other males in your species". Our concestor with chimpanzees probably wasn't, but we had to adapt.