You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

Elo comments on When does heritable low fitness need to be explained? - Less Wrong Discussion

15 Post author: DanArmak 10 June 2015 12:05AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (146)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 10 June 2015 03:09:20PM *  4 points [-]

Your original post does not talk about heritability. So my answer was: heritability. But then I noticed that it was in the post title and I was confused and did not change my answer.


I posted a calculation on SSC. Let’s say that there is a mutation that is spontaneously created in 1 in 10,000, that it has a 10% chance of producing a homosexual phenotype and that the phenotype has 0.9 fitness, that is, yields an average of 1.8 children. Then the fitness of the gene in 0.99. So in equilibrium, the gene only reproduces itself 99%, so the remaining 1% must be made up by the spontaneous mutation. That is, the prevalence is 100x the spontaneous mutation rate. The prevalence is 1% of the population, of which 0.99% inherit the gene and 0.01% spontaneously acquire it. That’s a genotypic prevalence of 1%. The phenotypic prevalence is 0.1%.

I think 1 in 10,000 is the standard rule of thumb mutation rate. For example, achondroplasia (dwarfism) has a spontaneous mutation rate of 3 in 100,000 and an inherited rate of 1 in 100,000. Apparently dwarfs have about 1/4 of replacement fertility. (The fatality of homozygous achondroplasia complicates the situation. The gene definitely has a fitness of 1/4, but if dwarfs only marry dwarfs, the fitness of the people would be 3/8, I think.)

Also, the approach to equilibrium is exponential with base the fitness.

Comment author: Elo 10 June 2015 10:49:44PM *  0 points [-]

3/8

punnet square: Aa x Aa

..................A...........a

. A...........AA.........Aa

. a............Aa..........aa

AA = death or infertile

Aa = like the parents

aa = normal

looks like 3/4 to me. not sure where you got 3/8. (also where two dwarves can have a normal child).

If you selectively look at the living (of which there are 3 options - Aa, Aa or aa) the gene has a 2/3 chance of being passed on. Assuming no other pressures apply.

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 10 June 2015 11:33:29PM 1 point [-]

First of all, you should distinguish between the fitness of the gene and the fitness of the people. Second, I am using as input the empirical observation that the fitness of the achondroplasia gene is 1/4. Third, and tangentially, you should distinguish between the fitness of the children and parents.

(1 gene vs parents) Let us consider the 3 surviving children. Out of the 6 copies of the gene, 4 are wild type and 2 are achondroplasia. But in the parents, half of the genes are achondroplasia. Thus, regardless of how many children the parents have, the fitness of the gene is 2/3 the fitness of the parents.

(2) Empirically, 1/4 of achondroplasia births are inherited and 3/4 are de novo. Assuming equilibrium, the gene is producing 1/4 of replacement fertility, so it has a fitness of 1/4. If dwarfs only reproduce with non-dwarfs, they, too, have a fitness of 1/4. But if they only reproduce with dwarfs, they have a fitness 3/2 of the gene, thus 3/8.


(3 parents vs children) The 3/4 you compute is the reduction in the proportion of pregnancies yield children. This is a kind of infertility, though more emotionally difficult. It is only relevant if the parents are trying to reproduce as fast as possible. In the modern world, parents usually target a small fixed number of children and infertility has little effect. In both farmer and forager societies, children were probably modulated to available food supply. Such a wasted pregnancy does not reduce the number of children by 1, but probably delays future children by a year. If the usual interval is 4, this might reduce fitness by 1/4. But the effect is probably significantly smaller. If people are reproducing at the optimal speed, taking into account risk of famine, a small perturbation probably has little effect.

Comment author: Elo 11 June 2015 12:39:02AM *  0 points [-]

(2) Empirically, 1/4 of achondroplasia births are inherited and 3/4 are de novo.

sorry; point 2 again, (Aa x aa should product a 1/2 not a 1/4)

acondroplasia X normal

............A.............a

...a.......Aa..........aa

...a......Aa...........aa

50%Aa acondroplasia

50%aa normal

or am I confused somewhere? Is that not the punnet square?

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 11 June 2015 12:51:16AM 0 points [-]

Sure, that's the punnet square. You should stop drawing punnet squares and ask yourself why you are drawing them and ask what role they play.

The number 1/4 is the empirical fitness. It is mainly about how many children dwarfs have. You cannot guess that number by looking at punnet squares.