Subject:
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Re: what do you think of editorals regarding the environment?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Sun, 3 Jun 2001 15:19:07 GMT
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Viewed:
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322 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Christopher L. Weeks writes:
> I can imagine a scenario involving a rich and powerful woman who has several
> brothers, but depends on her sight to maintain her power base -- we could
> say she is a tribal leader or corporate pilot. She may well have more
> ability to bend the future gene pool more in line with her own genotype, by
> keeping her sight and manipulating things to maximize the reproduction of
> her brothers than by giving up her site and poping out the nine or so
> children that she could before dying. Right?
> Given that I can devise a possible (and not even too far fetched) scenario
> by which the odds are in reverse order of what we agree is most likely,
> _and_ the fact that even if we couldn't think of some such scenario the
> difference is finite, I think that you are overestimating the discreppency
> of the roles between the two afflictions on future genes.
We're differing on a definition (as always seems to be the case between us!)
If a creature passes down its own genes directly to its offspring, I see that
as fundamentally different from allowing the passage of genes in which that
creature shares a la nieces and nephews. I understand your point about
familial gene propogation, but that's not what we're discussing.
Since we're discussing theoretical gene propogation, why don't we posit that
some major cataclysm prevents a creature from identifying those individuals
whose genetic structure sufficiently resembles the creature's own to qualify as
effectively passing on of the creature's genes. In that case, since there's no
way to verify that the creature's genes will pass on through a close relative
(since no such relative can be verified to exist), it is in the creature's
greater interest to propogate his own genes, since no one else can be relied on
to do so.
This situation is likewise not without precedent in the modern world, since
families were often split up for profit just a century and a half in our past.
After just a generation or two, it is conceivable that individuals so dispersed
would have been unable to verify their close kinship with other individuals, so
the priority of genetic propogation returns to the individual rather than to
others closely related to that individual.
So "infintely" may have been an overstatement, but it depends upon how widely
we're willing to extend our definition of "one's own genes."
-Dave!
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