[ExI] Fermi Paradox and Transcension

[Keith Henson]

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 5:00 AM,  Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se>> wrote:

> (also relevant to Keith's new calibrating social models thread:)
> "Small family size increases the wealth of descendants but reduces
> evolutionary success"
> http://esciencenews.com/articles/2012/08/28/small.family.size.increases.wealth.descendants.reduces.evolutionary.success
> http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2012/08/27/rspb.2012.1415
> It turns out that people rationally have fewer children because it gives
> them a better life, despite this being long-term worse for their genes.

That's not entirely obvious.

There are events that are terribly important to human evolution such
as drought induced famines and extremely harsh winters.  Such filters
may happen only a few times a century but have large effects on gene
frequencies.  In such hard times the children of the wealthy are much
more likely to survive.

Of course, the very ability to accumulate wealth is evolutionarily recent.

Gregory Clark's work showed that the relatively well off in stable
agrarian societies genetically replaced the poor over a few centuries
by the higher survival of the well off.  Clark makes a case that the
average psychological profile of such selected societies is rather
different from those who have not been through the process.

> And of course, plenty of humans choose to be celibate, use
> contraceptives or have fewer children. A classic finding in modern
> demography is that introducing television soap operas showing rich
> families with few kids in Brazilian and Indian rural villages reduces
> fertility significantly. It turns out that the number of kids people
> have is very culturally and individually pliable: far more than if there
> were an innate drive to reproduce.

It's hard to imagine how an _abstract_ drive to reproduce would have
been selected.

> Over long spans of time pro-breeding memes or genes are likely to
> flourish, but they can express themselves in ways that actually
> population-limiting, like the above care for the future prospects of the
> children.

I can't see there being time remaining for genetic selection to come
about at all.

Keith