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comment by caelum19
caelum19  ·  3523 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Religion's use.

Interesting, but what if someone only had one gay child?

Is it possible you'd only have gay children if evolution was certain you'd have more?





galen  ·  3523 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I'm not sure I understand, why does someone having just one gay child preclude the effect?

Evolution isn't certain of anything. It's not like a conscious entity that decides what happens, it's just the combined effect of natural selection and random genetic anomalies on a population. It's certainly possible you'd only have gay children, but the more children you have, the greater the chance that that "streak", as it were, disappears.

rob05c  ·  3523 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Evolution isn't certain of anything. It's not like a conscious entity that decides what happens

Are you sure about that? Minsky said

    Speed is what distinguishes intelligence

    No bird discovers how to fly: evolution used a trillion bird-years to 'discover' that–where merely hundreds of person-years sufficed

Is there really anything concrete that distinguishes intelligence from evolution, other than speed? Evolution certainly acts like a languid form of intelligence. Perhaps even consciousness?

</meta-tangent>

galen  ·  3523 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I think the distinguishing factor there is that evolution works exclusively through random chance and essentially trial-and-error, whereas intelligence generally involves the use of reason to determine what will probably be effective. But you're right, there's certainly a comparison to be made, and one could argue that intelligence just works through theoretical trial and error, making it sort of a small-scale evolution.

caelum19  ·  3523 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Sorry, I wasn't very clear.

What I mean is, if a father with the gene had one gay child, and then fell out a tree and died, the gay child wouldn't reproduce and the gene would die.

So that gene would be more succesful if all the other genes insured pre-mature deaths didn't happen, perhaps suggesting it originated from well-off tribes.

b_b  ·  3523 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Gayness is a cultural phenomenon, and quite a young one. It's impact on the spread of genes probably has had zero effect on the gene pool. Until recently, homosexual sex didn't preclude one from having a family. Nobody identified as "gay" until very recently in evolutionary terms, even though males have been having sex with males since long before the dawn of man. For a measurable effect on inheritance, we'll have to wait a lot longer than a handful of generations.

galen  ·  3523 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Oh, sure. It's less of a "this happened every time that gene developed" and more of a "that gene developed once or twice and then this happened, which eventually led to how things are today".

kleinbl00  ·  3523 days ago  ·  link  ·