Lumifer comments on Ephemeral correspondence - Less Wrong

21 Post author: So8res 10 April 2015 03:46AM

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Comment author: EphemeralNight 28 April 2015 06:47:30PM 0 points [-]

Consciousness is the most recent module, and that does mean that. I'm sorry, I thought this was one point that wasn't even in dispute. It was laid out pretty clearly in the Evolution Sequence:

Complex adaptations take a very long time to evolve. First comes allele A, which is advantageous of itself, and requires a thousand generations to fixate in the gene pool. Only then can another allele B, which depends on A, begin rising to fixation. A fur coat is not a strong advantage unless the environment has a statistically reliable tendency to throw cold weather at you. Well, genes form part of the environment of other genes, and if B depends on A, B will not have a strong advantage unless A is reliably present in the genetic environment

Evolutions Are Stupid (But Work Anyway)

Comment author: Lumifer 28 April 2015 08:30:09PM *  2 points [-]

First comes allele A, which is advantageous of itself, and requires a thousand generations to fixate in the gene pool. Only then can another allele B, which depends on A, begin rising to fixation.

That doesn't sound right to me.

First, fixation is much faster. The earliest known DNA sequence with the lactase tolerance gene is 4300 years old. That's less than 200 generations ago and the gene looks to me to be quite fixed in the Northern European populations.

Second, allele B can piggyback. Allele A spreads through children of allele A carriers. If some subpopulation of A carriers also has allele B, their children will also have both A and B and these children have even more of an evolutionary advantage than children of just A (but not B) carriers.

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