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DanArmak comments on When does heritable low fitness need to be explained? - Less Wrong Discussion
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This is a question that needs to be approached mathematically or not at all.
Given a phenotypical property P (supposed binary), currently present in a proportion X of the population, and having heritability H and selective disadvantage D, how will X vary over time, measured in units of a generation?
Solving this mathematical problem requires a mathematical definition of H and D, which I don't have, but this must be standard population genetics. Is there a population geneticist in the house?
One can also add various complications to the model, such as heterozygous advantage, spontaneous mutations that reintroduce P, etc.
The goal is to find a model whose parameters are as accurate as we can estimate them, which is consistent with whatever is known about the prevalence of P now and in the past.
Yes, exactly this: I would like very much to know if a quantitative model predicts homosexuality should not persist at current rates without positive selection.
Alternatively it could mean something in the environment has recently changed that causes some genotypes that wouldn't previously manifest phenotype P to do so.
For instance, the gene could cause homosexuality iff you eat soy products.
Or being exposed a some virus as westhunter hypothesizes. Or being exposed to pro-homosexual memes as the conservatives suspect.
A virus which we would not have been exposed to in our evolutionary environment? If this hypothetical virus was confined to a specific geographical location before being transmitted during the age of sail, then there could be a population with ancestory from that location who would have evolved natural immunity. Do you know of any such population? If so, it could be a way to prove the theory.
That's would certainly prove the theory, as well as helping pinpoint the virus. But many viruses appeared in historical times, either making the jump from other species or evolving. The rate at which new viruses evolve is greater than before due to the very large and connected human populations they evolve in.