[extropy-chat] 'History' and the fulcrum of 1945

[Keith Henson]

At 08:23 PM 09/02/05 -0800, you wrote:

>--- Keith Henson <hkhenson at rogers.com> wrote:
>
> > At 03:53 PM 09/02/05 +0100, Eugen Leitl wrote:
> >
> >  >Grim indeed, but it's also our past. As long as we have an
> > operating system
> >  >for societies which contains our neolithic firmware, we're safe.
> > Problems
> >  >being when it breaks down, and we fall back to feral mode.
> >
> > You are going to have to tell me what you mean by such terms as
> > "firmware" and "neolithic."
> >
> > The standard measure of neolithic starts about 8000 BC.  That's not
> > nearly enough time to have induced changes in the genetic based
> > psychological traits if that's what you call "firmware." Everything
> > since farming is cultural, software.
>
>Not necessarily, Keith. The tendency of ethnic groups to certain blood
>types, combined with evidence that certain blood types prefer certain
>types of farming-related diet, as well as ethnic specific genetic
>diseases, indicates that there has been some divergence since farming
>showed up, particularly as different plants and animals were
>domesticated in different areas.

I agree.  You should have cited the lactose tolerance that developed in 
dairy farming cultures.

There is an even more spectacular bunch of diabetes related fat 
accumulating genes that were largely weeded out of Europeans when famines 
became much less common a few hundred years ago.  Jarrad Diamond did a good 
article on this recently.

But those were psychological traits,  not psychological traits.  They were 
also under considerable selection pressure, if you could not drink cow's 
milk and that's all that was available, you starved.  And there is 
historical evidence there was an epidemic of diabetes that killed people in 
droves.

The *psychological* traits people have could have been under equally strong 
selection.  I find it possible that *some* of them have been, particularly 
ones related to having to work like beavers in the growing season to store 
up food and fodder for winter (if you ran out of food before spring you 
died).  But the one I am most concerned about, the trait for a population 
to make war on neighbors when they see a bleak future, I don't see where 
that trait would have been strongly anti selected post agriculture.

Then there is the sheer span of time involved.  Our hominid ancestors spent 
a minimum of 5 million years as hunter gatherers.  Even at the slow rate of 
evolution that's enough time to become well adapted.  10,000 years is one 
part in 500.  Unless there is available variation (probably) and a whacking 
lot of survival advantage (probably not) to a different psychological 
response to anticipated hard times we are stuck with the way hunter 
gatherers ultimately limited their populations.

If you can make and support a more hopeful case, please do.   The problem 
is that limiting births to keep the population under the ecological limits 
takes 30 years, and it is one of the least likely things to be supported by 
US politics.  It is the most depressing subject I ever worked on.

Keith Henson