[ExI] Recent human evolution repost

[Kelly Anderson]

On Sun, Apr 3, 2011 at 7:05 AM, Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:

Sorry for the late reply; I think this is still an important issue and
it has taken some time to get through Dr. Clark's paper.

> Yes, you can get serious population average shifts if
> the selection pressure is high enough.

Granted. But is that what happened to bring about the Industrial
Revolution in England? If it did, was it the major factor?

> Now Dr. Gregory Clark, in one of those huge efforts that lead to
> breakthroughs, has produced a study that makes a strong case for
> recent  (last few hundred years) and massive changes in population
> average psychological traits.
>
> http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/papers/Capitalism%20Genes.pdf
>
> "Genetically Capitalist? The Malthusian Era, Institutions and the
> Formation of Modern Preferences."

I finally read through this whole paper. It was a bit of a slog in
that it wasn't written in a very entertaining fashion. I haven't read
his entire book, and don't especially plan to. I did learn a lot of
things from reading this paper, and I am glad that I took the time. I
remain, however, unconvinced that genetics played a major role in the
Industrial Revolution. I also have reached the conclusion that Gregory
Clark himself is not concluding that this is a very strong thesis, but
only a small part of the overall story (which it could be, VERY
SMALL).

Dr. Clark does make a very strong argument that the rich reproduced
more successfully than the poor. He doesn't make as strong an argument
that the rich had genes that the poor lacked.

He starts out explaining and justifying his belief in the Malthusian
trap. I judge that he did a very good job of explaining the trap, and
showing that all pre-industrial societies were equally caught in the
trap. Point made and accepted.

He then goes through a rather tedious review of English wills. It does
make the point that the rich reproduced more successfully than the
poor. The graph labeled Figure 8 on page 22 says it all (and the rest
could have been left on the editing room floor for my tastes). I grant
this point as well, although I don't see how it supports his
conclusions all that well.

Finally, at the end of page 36, he gets on to more interesting points
about Interest Rates, Literacy and numeracy, Work hours, and
interpersonal violence.

He states that during the period of the Malthusian trap, that "Thrift,
prudence, negotiation and hard work were imbuing themselves into
communities that had been spendthrift, violent, impulsive and leisure
loving."

He then states,
  "A plausible source of this seeming evolution of human preferences
is the survival of the richest that is evident in pre-industrial
England. The arrival of institutionally stable agrarian economies with
the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution of as early as 6,000-7,000 BC,
gradually molded human behavior, probably mostly culturally, but also
potentially genetically."

  I will not be critical of this statement in that it is his
hypothesis. You are allowed in the scientific method to state a
hypothesis without proof, and that is what he is doing at this point
in the paper IMHO. Look at the soft words like plausible and
potentially. I don't think he's saying "This is the truth!" only that
"This is a hypothesis that is well worth looking into."

He further states,
"The exact date and trigger of the Industrial Revolution may remain a
mystery, but its probability was increasing over time in the
environment of institutionally stable Malthusian
economies."

This statement boggles my mind. Of course there is no exact date as it
was a process over a period of decades from the 1780s to the 1830s...
one major trigger was, I believe, the steam engine. I refer you to:
The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention
by William Rosen

Rosen's work is entertaining, informative and most of all persuasive,
at least to me. He makes the argument that the invention of invention
itself, with supporting legal, intellectual property concepts and
implementations (patents), led directly to the evolution of the steam
engine over a period of decades. The steam engine led to woolen mills,
and the need for coal, as well as coal mine water pumps and finally to
Rocket, the first workable steam locomotive that carried coal from the
mines to the woolen mills. I VERY highly recommend this book as I
believe it presents an extremely strong hypothesis, and convincing
evidence of that hypothesis.

Dr Clark then talks about "future beliefs" (Page 42) and continues
tediously about interest rates, then makes his best argument of the
entire paper...

"The Pirahã, a forager group in the Brazilian Amazon, are an extreme
example of this. They have only the number words “hói” (roughly one),
“hoí” (roughly two), and “aibaagi” (many). On tests they could not
reliably match number groups beyond 3. Once the number of objects
reached as large as 9, they could almost never match them.49 Yet the
Pirahã perform very well as hunters, and in tests of spatial and other
abilities. Similarly the number vocabulary of many surviving forager
societies encompasses only the numbers 1, 2 and many. So forager
society must thus have had no selective pressures towards the kinds of
attitudes and abilities that make an Industrial Revolution."

Here he makes the argument that there is a genetic basis for counting
beyond low numbers, and that this evolutionary change occurred around
the time of the agrarian revolution. That is a believable evolutionary
time period (10,000 years) and the selective pressure isn't hard to
imagine. If you can't count beyond 3, it would be hard to figure out
inventory, how much to plant and so forth. I can see that being
selected for. I can also see the case for future thinking having a
genetic component.

Then at the top of page 54, he states,
"Thus it is plausible that through the long agrarian passage leading
up to the Industrial Revolution man was becoming biologically more
adapted to the modern economic world."

Again with the soft words. Is this still just a hypothesis? I accept
that important genetic changes occurred between the Neolithic
Revolution and the Industrial Revolution. He hasn't made the case for
genetic changes being a big factor between 1250 and 1800. In fact, he
doesn't strongly claim it. (in the paper, maybe he does in the book)

If I had his facts, my thesis would be:
"Sufficient money increases your chances of surviving and reproducing
and keeping children safe into adulthood."

It does this by the reproduction of "success" memes. When a rich
literate father ensures that his son also becomes literate, he further
insures his "success". When a rich mother encourages thrift in her
daughter, she reproduces the "sacrifice today for success tomorrow"
meme which leads out of poverty. If these memes don't reproduce in a
Malthusian trap, then the next generation is more likely to become
poor.

His facts fit the memetic evolution much better in my mind than the
genetic evolution. He doesn't state what the rich traits are, except
in memetic terms. "Thrift, prudence, negotiation and hard work" are,
after all, primarily memetic.

So, in conclusion, I don't find the hypothesis of Dr. Clark to be
supported by his facts, because there is an alternative hypothesis
that fits his data even better. Again, I strongly encourage you to
read Rosen's book.

-Kelly