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Kaj_Sotala comments on Open Thread, March 1-15, 2013 - Less Wrong
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Can anyone tell me the name of this subject or direct me to information on it:
Basically, I'm wondering if anyone has studied recent human evolution - the influence of our own civilized lifestyle on human traits. For example: For birth control pills to be effective, you have to take one every day. Responsible people succeed at this. Irresponsible people may not. Therefore, if the types of contraceptives that one can forget to use are popular enough methods of birth control, the irresponsible people might outnumber responsible people in a very short period of time. (Currently about half the pregnancies in the USA are unintended, and probably 40% of those pregnancies go full term and result in a child being born. As you can imagine, it really wouldn't take very long for the people with genes that can cause irresponsibility to outnumber the others this way...)
Any search terms? Anyone know the name of this topic or recall book titles or other sources about it?
The 10,000 Year Explosion discusses the effects that civilization has had on human evolution in the last 10,000 years. (There's also this QA with its authors.) Not sure whether you'd count that as "recent".
Gregory Clark's work A Farewell to Alms discusses human micro-evolution taking place within the last few centuries, but is highly controversial (or so I hear).
To almost anyone who knows much about evolutionary biology its not controvertial but positively laughable.
Cites?
Yeah, that's like saying you could domesticate foxes in less than a human generation, or have adult lactose tolerance increase from 0% to 99.x% in some populations in under 4,000 years. Does this guy think we're completely credulous?
-Cellbioguy, elsewhere in thread.
I suspect you've misidentified his contention here; he clearly doesn't seem to think humans haven't evolved within the Holocene.
Does it look at possible effects of arranged marriages?
I don't remember it doing so, but it's two years since I read it and I did so practically in one sitting, so I don't remember much that I wouldn't have written down in the post.
The infamous Steve Sailer has written a lot about cousin marriage , which, in practice, seems to be correlated with arranged marriage in many cultures (including the European royals in past centuries). Perhaps a lot of arranged marriages in practice may lead to inbreeding, with the genetic dangers that follow.
I'm also wondering about the effects of anonymous sperm banks, where relatively well-off women may pay to choose a biological father on the basis of -- whatever available information they may choose to consider. What factors, in a man they will never meet, do they choose for their offspring?
Wow. The article was fascinating. I devoured the whole thing. Thanks, Kaj. Do you know of additional information sources on the neurological changes?
Not offhand, but if you get the book, it has a list of references.