Hugh Pickens writes "Yale University researchers believe that if evolutionary pressures of sexual selection and reproductive fitness continue for another 10 generations, the trends detected in their study may mean that the average woman in 2409 AD will be 2 cm shorter, 1 kg heavier, will bear her first child five months earlier, and enter menopause 10 months later. 'There is this idea that because medicine has been so good at reducing mortality rates, that means that natural selection is no longer operating in humans,' says Stephen Stearns of Yale University. 'That's just plain false.' Stearns and his team studied the medical histories of 14,000 residents of the Massachusetts town of Framingham, using medical data from a study going back to 1948 spanning three generations, and found that shorter, heavier women had more children than lighter, taller ones. Women with lower blood pressure and cholesterol were also more likely to have large families as were women who gave birth early or had a late menopause. More importantly, these traits are then passed on to their daughters, who also, on average, had more children. The study has not determined why these factors are linked to reproductive success, but it is likely that they indicate genetic, rather than environmental, effects. 'The evolution that's going on in the Framingham women is like average rates of evolution measured in other plants and animals,' says Stearns. 'These results place humans in the medium-to-slow end of the range of rates observed for other living things.'"
I"m not talking about unhealthy thin...but, fit and healthy thing...something like Jennifer Anniston, I mean that lady is 40 and STILL looking hot...or something along the body fitness of Adriana Lima (I think that's her name) of Victoria Secrets. These women are very healthy, no pudging bellies, no cottage cheese thighs...something that looks good with their midriffs showing.
There's a difference between being fit and being anorexic.
by Anonymous Coward
on Sunday November 01, @09:31AM (#29941485)
Tall, thin women also tend to be wealthy, either from having been born into wealth, or from having married into wealth (obviously, they have higher value on the meat market) or from having earned it themselves (if you don't think tall thin women make more than short fat ones, you are kidding yourself).
And, based on many studies I read about in college, wealthy people tend to have fewer children, if any at all. The average was something like 1.1 per family I think.
Poor people, on the other hand, breed like rabbits. The average I read was close to 6 per family. And here's the kicker: in western culture (not just America) the abundance of cheap fattening food combined with jobs that are not physically intensive means the poor can get fat. Once-upon-a-time the poor were all farmers and therefore got enough exercise to stay thin. Now the poor all work in retail (or similar) and can get quite fat.
So, yes, the trend will be for short-fat women. But the trend in rich families will still be for tall, thin women.
I wonder if our race will bifurcate into two separate species someday.
Poor people, on the other hand, breed like rabbits. The average I read was close to 6 per family.
You should consider reading something that actually quotes facts someday, instead of Rush Limbaugh, or whoever it is you get your made-up facts from.
So, yes, the trend will be for short-fat women. But the trend in rich families will still be for tall, thin women. I wonder if our race will bifurcate into two separate species someday.
No, by the logic you just quoted, the fat women are fat because they're poor-- you just told me that the fatness was because of "the abundance of cheap fattening food combined with jobs that are not physically intensive means the poor can get fat. " That's not hereditary.
In any case, the birth statistics you quoted imply that the "tall, thin, rich" women die
It's not universally true, but it is more or less an accepted fact.
Fertility rates are inversely proportional to income.
In the modern world there are a lot of reasons for this. The rich tend to have access to better education. therefore, they tend to try to start a career before a family (illustrated in comedic fashion by the Mike Judge movie Idiocracy). Then with their career dominating their lives, they usually only have a couple kids at the most.
More wealthy folks have better access to birth control. Again, better education plays into this. On the extreme end of the spectrum, you have folks who have superstitious beliefs. That doesn't help keep their fertility rates down any...
Economists and demographers have known about this correlation for centuries. And it's interesting because it goes across religions, across nationalities, race, and other factors. Poor Americans are just as likely to have a higher fertility rate as poor French, or Japanese. Poor Nigerians or Indians are even more likely because a poor American is fairly well off by Nigerian standards.
Side Rant: The Israelis in particular are worried about this effect because Israel is a democracy. And the Israeli Palestinians have a fertility rate several times that of Israeli Jews. Again, the average Israeli Palestinian is much poorer than the average Israeli Jew.
The Israelis are concerned because with the higher fertility rates of the Palestinian Israeli citizens, the Palestinians may become a majority in the "Jewish State" in a couple generations. This brings up all kinds of moral dilemmas for the Israeli government, who must try to balance it's commitment to a homeland for the Jews to it's commitment to democracy for all it's citizens.
Also, I have no idea why you brought Rush Limbaugh into this. I'm about as progressive a character as you're likely to meet. I don't know anyone that disputes this data.
Cause is another matter. Progressives would tend to contend that the reason is education, the nature of pre-industrialized societies, higher mortality rates among poor nations, the tempo of life in wealthy nations and classes.
And Rush would say they all want their welfare checks or something.
You're right about the lack of heredity for short-fatness though. It is environmental / cultural, not genetic.
Idiocracy is classist bullshit that comforts rich wankers who desperately want to believe that they're rich because of some inherent superiority
The part that I find most humorous about this fact is that our DNA doesn't care what we do for a living or how big our houses are. It doesn't care how intelligent we are either. The goal of our DNA is procreation. So if the rich have fewer children than the poor, then the rich are, by definition, genetically inferior to the poor, and it is natural selection that makes them a minority.
Funnier yet, it is the rich who can afford to have the most children, so the poor are beating them despite having a severe ha
Your facts are less correct than they were 50 years ago.
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/national/class/index.html [nytimes.com] "The movement of families up and down the economic ladder is the promise that lies at the heart of the American dream. But it does not seem to be happening quite as often as it used to."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4662456 [npr.org] Eighty percent of Americans still believe it's possible to pull yourself up by the proverbial bootstraps. That's according to a New York Times poll reported last week, but a recent mobility study suggests the American Dream may be more style than substance.
The wealthy own the media and push the "you could be wealthy!" idea hard. It helps keep the lower class folks voting against their own self interests. It's why the wizard of wall street pays a lower tax rate on his monumental earnings than his secretary pays on her salary.
There is a tiny chance you will break into the wealthy classes. But, for the most part, they pass the good jobs down to their own. Just look at the way hollywood has been taken over by 2nd and 3rd generation actors. CEO jobs are less obvious but essentially the same.
Any idiot can bankrupt themselves-- but it takes a lot more than simple hard work to get into the executive class.
Class is relatively fixed, do not confuse some dynamic movement in income as social mobility, most people behave like atoms in gas.
Are the atoms in a gas fixed? I'm sorry, but the article you've cited does a poor job of supporting that idea. On the other hand, according to this [wikipedia.org]
42 percent of those whose parents were in the bottom quintile ended up in the bottom quintile themselves, 23 percent of them ended in the second quintile, 19 percent in the middle quintile, 11 percent in the fourth quintile and 6 percent in the top quintile
Which means that children in the lowest 1/5 of households have an even shot at moving halfway across the class spectrum. It may not be a perfect meritocracy, but it's no caste system, either.
The logic is not sound. First, modern humans have been in our current form for something like ten thousand generations; ten generations is trivial. Second, Framingham MA is a far too small a portion the human ecological range to extrapolate from-- unless this trend holds equally well in Addis Ababa, Singapore, Kiev, Kyoto, and the Brazilian rainforest, it has no meaning to human evolution whatsoever.
Giving birth earlier and later menopause all sound like things that would improve selective fitness... but the question is, if they really are selected for, why weren't they selected for five thousand years ago? (Lower blood pressure and lower chloresterol are two that I can understand perhaps a little better-- the problems with heart trouble may have not been quite so much of a problem ten generations ago, when most humans did a lot more physical exercise just to stay alive).
The variations that are being discussed in the article are not all all outside the variations already observed in humans over that period of time. While our DNA has been reasonably set for ten thousand generations, as you say, the dominance of certain phenotypes varies with time and location. For instance many humans have dramatically different skin tones and facial structures. Variations similar to what is discussed in the article have occurred in a variety of places of the past 60 years (although mostly a
I was going to post a similar comment, but it occured to me that much of the observed height difference between different groups of humans (except pygmies?) arise from differences in nutrition. The average Caucasian height was about the same 300 years ago.
1) The children will take some characteristics from their dads as well. 2) A few generations of people doing what you say and you might have a breed of humans more likely to rape.
>>>If you don't like it, go rape some tall and skinny women into pregnancy, and ensure the children survive to perpetuate the cycle.
C'mon we're geeks No need for such crudities:
- Donate sperm to a bunch of banks (this should be easy for us) - Hack the computer and replace your specs with some hot-looking guy's specs - Unsuspecting women pick the man of their dreams, and instead get your sperm. - Eighteen years later these women will be wondering why their kids look like Bill Gates instead of Tom Cruise - ??? - Profit (genetically speaking)
Already done. I have something on the order of 5,000 children, who will be tall, skinny, and insanely intelligent. I've also created 3 biological children (the old fashion way). One girl, two boys. They're all tall, skinny, and intelligent. They'll all likely be hackers and/or megalomaniacs. The next world wars will be between my own children.:) As it continues, the biological children count should increase, as there are many tall skinny attractive intelligent women who are courting me to be their mate.:)
I've done my part to improve humanity through unnatural selection. It's up to the rest of you to do your parts. You short fat idiots need not attempt it.:)
I think evolutionary change is being stifled by both medicine and civilization. Reproductive "success" is not genetic anymore, its based on social factors. The goal of most humans is no longer to spawn the most progeny.
I come from a small backwoods town and women in these areas (e.g. low income, low education) have more children, and have them at a younger age. ( This is a generalization, no anecdotes please. And no I don't feel like looking up stats, maybe someone else can post some).
Also, regardless of the details, I hope TFA is wrong. Have you seen dwarven females?
I think the article argues that your 'impression' that evolutionary change is being stifled by both medicine and civilization is plain false. Also, it might be that the goal of most humans is to lead an fruitful and interesting lifes, but also that's irrelevant. Bottom line remains that whoever spawns most progeny will spread their genes. It is that simple.
You might want to think things through a bit more, as your preliminary paragraph displays a very incorrect view of how selection operates. Whoever make
Evolution's Path May Lead To Shorter, Heavier Women
Wow. I had no idea when I went to sleep last night that I would wake up against Evolution. Where's the ID/Creationism Kool-Aid? Comin' on board... make some room.
When I was young, an ongoing joke was the question 'Is fertility passed on by the parents." Now you could start asking that question. Also there is a trend of finding slimmer women more attractive. In the past this ment that those would be having more children.
However with the pill and other contraceptives, it looks as if the most attractive (in a biological way) females have LESS babies.
The result of this all will be that we have a lot of ugly kids. Perhaps the division becomes so great that we will separate as species and become two.
Also there is a trend of finding slimmer women more attractive. In the past this ment that those would be having more children. However with the pill and other contraceptives, it looks as if the most attractive (in a biological way) females have LESS babies.
It's not quite as simple as that. As I've grown older (my 30s) I've discovered (the perhaps obvious fact) that "slimness" is largely a function of age. It amazes me how easy it is for my early-20s colleagues to stay skinny while drinking corn syrup a
Except that is actually not at all the results they got. They studied weight, etc. *after* they had babies.
They did not find that slimmer women end up having more babies. To do that, they'd have to take all of these measures *before* women had children and compare that to their future success. Because of the way they measured, what they *actually* found was that women who have more children end up fatter.
I'm not convinced by these researchers' claims. Is there a trend towards people getting shorter? I thought the opposite was true. As for obesity, that's another story. But what I am convinced this reflects is not an evolutionary trend but rather a socioeconomic one. The better off people are the less likely they are to have children. So poorer people are the ones having children and unlike most of the rest of the world lower-class Americans are very likely to be obese. Do this study in parts of Asia or Africa and these researchers would be saying the trend was towards thinner humans. The US actually bucks the trend established by most developed nations in that many people still tend to have a few children, in Europe and Asia you're lucky if they have one. I'm not sure why there would be a shift towards bearing children sooner considering most people seem to be waiting longer to have kids. Again, it might simply be a reflection class.
That seems like a big assumption to me given how many variables exist. An interesting thing a gynecologist told me a couple of years ago was that obese women tend do deprive the fetus of nutrients more so than your average women, so they tend to have underweight babies far more frequently. So this evolutionary tend doesn't seem like a particularly good thing to me. But then there are so many variables affecting humanity that these findings are likely meaningless.
There are PLENTY of women here close to or over 2 meters. Do you know how hard it is to stare down at a woman's tits when they are above you? I got to carry a stepladder around JUST so I can I look down on women.
Symmetry plays a large role in physiology, so it would be very unlikely to see an evolutionary step that leads to 3 boobs. Lateral symmetry dictates that you'd be more likely to see 4 or 6 before that.
There is the possibility of radial symmetry kicking in and getting a non-even number of boobs, but that's just weird.
I doubt it. It probably reflects the fact that skinny women are less fit hosts for a fetus than heavier women. At some point, you run into high weight causing health issues that also make the woman a less fit incubator.
Earlier maturity and later menopause extend the fertility period (duh)... in times past women needed more time to build up a healthy body to have children, and there was no genetic point in delaying menopause since pregnancies towards the end of female fertility were less likely to be viabl
skinny women are less fit hosts for a fetus than heavier women
Maybe they've got cause and effect the wrong way round. Maybe after the first baby, the women in this study put on weight. Women who didn't have children didn't gain weight so skewed the samples and results?
Any GP or OB/GYN will tell you that there is a minimum percentage of body fat below which a woman won't even menstruate.
They'll also tell you a woman should gain some weight during pregnancy, and that generally speaking the outcome of the pregnancy is better if a certain amount of weight is gained (unless the woman is already overweight, of course).
Again, I don't think they're saying thinner = bad, I think they're saying the population is shifting towards the optimum range. Skinny women have less, and less healthy children on average, so the average weight is rising by a small amount as they're outbred by heavier women.
There will be an upper limit to this effect as well - morbid obesity is not a good thing for getting or being pregnant, either.
Framingham is not America and America is not the world. While this report might hold true for a statistically insignificant group in one country, it tells us nothing about human evolution over the whole planet.
The traits described probably have more to do with proximity to the local McDonalds, than anythiing about "survival of the fa^Hittest"
Only blame the summary. Stearns made no such generalization.
Reproductive selection will always operate, it is just that the ''selection criteria'' may change, physical fitness may no longer be so important, supplanted by taking advantage of social security/... to enable them to have more children than they can support by the ''sweat of their own brows'', the government picks up the bill.
To quote Monty Python: "Look at them bloody Catholics, filling up the bloody world with children they can't afford to bloody feed." At least, I assume that's what you were referring to.
But seriously, the idea of a "welfare queen" is a myth (and typically a racist one at that). The vast majority of welfare recipients are trying to work, are unable to, but find work within about 2 years. Among other things, the per-child benefit that is given via WIC, TANF, and food stamps doesn't completely cover the cost of
"Welfare queens" are not a myth, they are history. TANF was developed and passed in 1996 specifically to replace AFDC for this reason, after peaking in about the 1970s when some states began to tighten up their rules. Many bricks form the social net, also there are income credits (EIC), Social Security (for deceased/disabled spouses) and still various forms of charity.
Also careful shopping can reduce food cost far below average. I've been hiring 2-3 low wage earners/week this year and I notice they spe
Give that idiocracy shit a rest. It's not genetically dumber people who make more children, it's people lower on the social scale. As in, people in ghettos and immigrants. Poor education and poor nutrition (both which cause lower IQs) aren't genetically hereditary.
So-called smart people always confuse uneducated people with less intelligent people. Maybe they're not that smart after all.
One of the principal lacts of their evil is to sponsor a media-culture that gets ordinary schmucks like yourself to identify emotionally with them, aspire to their condition, and to assume an attack on the values of the truly rich to be a personal threat to your own status and mobility.
You are also trained to revile those perceived as less fortunate/gifted as yourself - never suspecting that to the real rich, the difference between you and the homeless doesn't amount to a rounding error.
It is also their job to go out of business, when they fail. But they have so many moles in your government (Geithner, Obama, etc.) that you will bail them out for the next 80 years - as they pay themselves bonuses off of your children's former college fund.
You need to look up the definition of "Stockholm Syndrome" - then look hard in the mirror at yourself.
There's also something wrong with spouting forth conclusions and condemning the opposing viewpoint as being idiotic without citing any evidence (which makes this [xkcd.com] somewhat ironic, I guess).
The Wikipedia article on the subject [wikipedia.org] is convoluted and doesn't really offer any strong conclusions, but at least some studies reported in the article have suggested a small negative correlation between intelligence and fertility (i.e., number of offspring), and another study showed a strong negative correlation between education and fertility (and education is sometimes used as a proxy for measuring intelligence). There's also a well-known negative correlation between economic well-being and fertility which may be related.
Note that the GP's fertility measures is just average number of offspring. This is probably just due to the well known fact that the better educated and the rich often choose to have fewer children. I seriously doubt awkwardness has anything to do with it.
What a headline (Score:4, Funny)
Evolution's Path May Lead To Shorter, Heavier Women
Well, shit. That sucks.
Preferences (Score:4, Insightful)
It could just be that the Menfolk of Framingham fancy short fat women. Perhaps they're all short and fat as well.
Parent
Re:Population trends and the direction of evolutio (Score:4, Funny)
(stops eating)
Alright. We gotta lick this problem right now. (puts milk back in fridge). Just think of all the money we'll save if we only eat half as much.
Parent
Re:Population trends and the direction of evolutio (Score:4, Informative)
I"m not talking about unhealthy thin...but, fit and healthy thing...something like Jennifer Anniston, I mean that lady is 40 and STILL looking hot...or something along the body fitness of Adriana Lima (I think that's her name) of Victoria Secrets. These women are very healthy, no pudging bellies, no cottage cheese thighs...something that looks good with their midriffs showing.
There's a difference between being fit and being anorexic.
Parent
Personally, I think it is a matter of social class (Score:4, Interesting)
Tall, thin women also tend to be wealthy, either from having been born into wealth, or from having married into wealth (obviously, they have higher value on the meat market) or from having earned it themselves (if you don't think tall thin women make more than short fat ones, you are kidding yourself).
And, based on many studies I read about in college, wealthy people tend to have fewer children, if any at all. The average was something like 1.1 per family I think.
Poor people, on the other hand, breed like rabbits. The average I read was close to 6 per family. And here's the kicker: in western culture (not just America) the abundance of cheap fattening food combined with jobs that are not physically intensive means the poor can get fat. Once-upon-a-time the poor were all farmers and therefore got enough exercise to stay thin. Now the poor all work in retail (or similar) and can get quite fat.
So, yes, the trend will be for short-fat women. But the trend in rich families will still be for tall, thin women.
I wonder if our race will bifurcate into two separate species someday.
Parent
Re:Personally, I think it is a matter of social cl (Score:3, Interesting)
Poor people, on the other hand, breed like rabbits. The average I read was close to 6 per family.
You should consider reading something that actually quotes facts someday, instead of Rush Limbaugh, or whoever it is you get your made-up facts from.
So, yes, the trend will be for short-fat women. But the trend in rich families will still be for tall, thin women. I wonder if our race will bifurcate into two separate species someday.
No, by the logic you just quoted, the fat women are fat because they're poor-- you just told me that the fatness was because of "the abundance of cheap fattening food combined with jobs that are not physically intensive means the poor can get fat. " That's not hereditary.
In any case, the birth statistics you quoted imply that the "tall, thin, rich" women die
Re:Personally, I think it is a matter of social cl (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no need to bring Rush Limbaugh into this.
It's not universally true, but it is more or less an accepted fact.
Fertility rates are inversely proportional to income.
In the modern world there are a lot of reasons for this. The rich tend to have access to better education. therefore, they tend to try to start a career before a family (illustrated in comedic fashion by the Mike Judge movie Idiocracy). Then with their career dominating their lives, they usually only have a couple kids at the most.
More wealthy folks have better access to birth control. Again, better education plays into this. On the extreme end of the spectrum, you have folks who have superstitious beliefs. That doesn't help keep their fertility rates down any...
Economists and demographers have known about this correlation for centuries. And it's interesting because it goes across religions, across nationalities, race, and other factors. Poor Americans are just as likely to have a higher fertility rate as poor French, or Japanese. Poor Nigerians or Indians are even more likely because a poor American is fairly well off by Nigerian standards.
Side Rant: The Israelis in particular are worried about this effect because Israel is a democracy. And the Israeli Palestinians have a fertility rate several times that of Israeli Jews. Again, the average Israeli Palestinian is much poorer than the average Israeli Jew.
The Israelis are concerned because with the higher fertility rates of the Palestinian Israeli citizens, the Palestinians may become a majority in the "Jewish State" in a couple generations. This brings up all kinds of moral dilemmas for the Israeli government, who must try to balance it's commitment to a homeland for the Jews to it's commitment to democracy for all it's citizens.
A few minutes of on the Google came up with these:
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14744915 [economist.com]
http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14164483 [economist.com]
http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/177/8/846/F19 [www.cmaj.ca]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility [wikipedia.org]
http://www.indexmundi.com/g/correlation.aspx?v1=67&v2=31&y=2004 [indexmundi.com]
Also, I have no idea why you brought Rush Limbaugh into this. I'm about as progressive a character as you're likely to meet. I don't know anyone that disputes this data.
Cause is another matter. Progressives would tend to contend that the reason is education, the nature of pre-industrialized societies, higher mortality rates among poor nations, the tempo of life in wealthy nations and classes.
And Rush would say they all want their welfare checks or something.
You're right about the lack of heredity for short-fatness though. It is environmental / cultural, not genetic.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Idiocracy is classist bullshit that comforts rich wankers who desperately want to believe that they're rich because of some inherent superiority
The part that I find most humorous about this fact is that our DNA doesn't care what we do for a living or how big our houses are. It doesn't care how intelligent we are either. The goal of our DNA is procreation. So if the rich have fewer children than the poor, then the rich are, by definition, genetically inferior to the poor, and it is natural selection that makes them a minority.
Funnier yet, it is the rich who can afford to have the most children, so the poor are beating them despite having a severe ha
Re:Idiocracy is classist bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
Your facts are less correct than they were 50 years ago.
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/national/class/index.html [nytimes.com]
"The movement of families up and down the economic ladder is the promise that lies at the heart of the American dream. But it does not seem to be happening quite as often as it used to."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4662456 [npr.org]
Eighty percent of Americans still believe it's possible to pull yourself up by the proverbial bootstraps. That's according to a New York Times poll reported last week, but a recent mobility study suggests the American Dream may be more style than substance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility [wikipedia.org]
Upper nonmanual occupations have the highest level of occupational inheritance. [3]
http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/27/news/companies/lashinsky_hurd.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009030310 [cnn.com]
As his father did before him, Hurd attended the Browning School - a prestigious all-boys school where classmate Jamie Dimon, now CEO of J.P. Morgan Chase, remembers seventh-grader Hurd as a good basketball player
The wealthy own the media and push the "you could be wealthy!" idea hard. It helps keep the lower class folks voting against their own self interests. It's why the wizard of wall street pays a lower tax rate on his monumental earnings than his secretary pays on her salary.
There is a tiny chance you will break into the wealthy classes. But, for the most part, they pass the good jobs down to their own. Just look at the way hollywood has been taken over by 2nd and 3rd generation actors. CEO jobs are less obvious but essentially the same.
Any idiot can bankrupt themselves-- but it takes a lot more than simple hard work to get into the executive class.
Parent
Re:Idiocracy is classist bullshit (Score:4, Interesting)
Class is relatively fixed, do not confuse some dynamic movement in income as social mobility, most people behave like atoms in gas.
Are the atoms in a gas fixed? I'm sorry, but the article you've cited does a poor job of supporting that idea. On the other hand, according to this [wikipedia.org]
Which means that children in the lowest 1/5 of households have an even shot at moving halfway across the class spectrum. It may not be a perfect meritocracy, but it's no caste system, either.
Parent
Unsound extrapolation (Score:5, Insightful)
Giving birth earlier and later menopause all sound like things that would improve selective fitness... but the question is, if they really are selected for, why weren't they selected for five thousand years ago? (Lower blood pressure and lower chloresterol are two that I can understand perhaps a little better-- the problems with heart trouble may have not been quite so much of a problem ten generations ago, when most humans did a lot more physical exercise just to stay alive).
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I was going to post a similar comment, but it occured to me that much of the observed height difference between different groups of humans (except pygmies?) arise from differences in nutrition.
The average Caucasian height was about the same 300 years ago.
Re:Population trends and the direction of evolutio (Score:4, Insightful)
2) A few generations of people doing what you say and you might have a breed of humans more likely to rape.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Don't feed shieldwolf when he's off his meds, it will only encourage him to continue not taking them.
Re:Population trends and the direction of evolutio (Score:5, Funny)
>>>If you don't like it, go rape some tall and skinny women into pregnancy, and ensure the children survive to perpetuate the cycle.
C'mon we're geeks No need for such crudities:
- Donate sperm to a bunch of banks (this should be easy for us)
- Hack the computer and replace your specs with some hot-looking guy's specs
- Unsuspecting women pick the man of their dreams, and instead get your sperm.
- Eighteen years later these women will be wondering why their kids look like Bill Gates instead of Tom Cruise
- ???
- Profit (genetically speaking)
Parent
Re:Population trends and the direction of evolutio (Score:5, Funny)
Already done. I have something on the order of 5,000 children, who will be tall, skinny, and insanely intelligent. I've also created 3 biological children (the old fashion way). One girl, two boys. They're all tall, skinny, and intelligent. They'll all likely be hackers and/or megalomaniacs. The next world wars will be between my own children. :) As it continues, the biological children count should increase, as there are many tall skinny attractive intelligent women who are courting me to be their mate. :)
I've done my part to improve humanity through unnatural selection. It's up to the rest of you to do your parts. You short fat idiots need not attempt it. :)
Parent
Re:What a headline (Score:4, Funny)
heavier overlords ;)
Heavier ? You do know you are dead now, right ?:P
Parent
Reproductive "success" is not genetic. (Score:3, Insightful)
I think evolutionary change is being stifled by both medicine and civilization. Reproductive "success" is not genetic anymore, its based on social factors. The goal of most humans is no longer to spawn the most progeny.
I come from a small backwoods town and women in these areas (e.g. low income, low education) have more children, and have them at a younger age. ( This is a generalization, no anecdotes please. And no I don't feel like looking up stats, maybe someone else can post some).
Also, regardless of the details, I hope TFA is wrong. Have you seen dwarven females?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You might want to think things through a bit more, as your preliminary paragraph displays a very incorrect view of how selection operates. Whoever make
Alrighty Then (Score:5, Funny)
Wow. I had no idea when I went to sleep last night that I would wake up against Evolution. Where's the ID/Creationism Kool-Aid? Comin' on board... make some room.
Soooo..... the typical American woman (Score:4, Funny)
Heavier.
And people say we americans are falling behind. We're just 500 years ahead and all the rest of ye are catching up. ;-)#
This is already happining in the Midwest. (Score:3, Funny)
Here in Illinois, we just call them "corn fed". I had just assumed it was the climate.
36-24-36? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I never thought I'd see the day when Sir Mix-a-Lot got a +5 Insightful on /.
What will be the impact of docters (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was young, an ongoing joke was the question 'Is fertility passed on by the parents." Now you could start asking that question. Also there is a trend of finding slimmer women more attractive. In the past this ment that those would be having more children.
However with the pill and other contraceptives, it looks as if the most attractive (in a biological way) females have LESS babies.
The result of this all will be that we have a lot of ugly kids. Perhaps the division becomes so great that we will separate as species and become two.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Also there is a trend of finding slimmer women more attractive. In the past this ment that those would be having more children. However with the pill and other contraceptives, it looks as if the most attractive (in a biological way) females have LESS babies.
It's not quite as simple as that. As I've grown older (my 30s) I've discovered (the perhaps obvious fact) that "slimness" is largely a function of age. It amazes me how easy it is for my early-20s colleagues to stay skinny while drinking corn syrup a
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What will be the impact of docters (Score:4, Interesting)
Except that is actually not at all the results they got. They studied weight, etc. *after* they had babies.
They did not find that slimmer women end up having more babies. To do that, they'd have to take all of these measures *before* women had children and compare that to their future success. Because of the way they measured, what they *actually* found was that women who have more children end up fatter.
That doesn't sell the papers, though.
Parent
Unconvincing. (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not convinced by these researchers' claims. Is there a trend towards people getting shorter? I thought the opposite was true. As for obesity, that's another story. But what I am convinced this reflects is not an evolutionary trend but rather a socioeconomic one. The better off people are the less likely they are to have children. So poorer people are the ones having children and unlike most of the rest of the world lower-class Americans are very likely to be obese. Do this study in parts of Asia or Africa and these researchers would be saying the trend was towards thinner humans. The US actually bucks the trend established by most developed nations in that many people still tend to have a few children, in Europe and Asia you're lucky if they have one. I'm not sure why there would be a shift towards bearing children sooner considering most people seem to be waiting longer to have kids. Again, it might simply be a reflection class.
That seems like a big assumption to me given how many variables exist. An interesting thing a gynecologist told me a couple of years ago was that obese women tend do deprive the fetus of nutrients more so than your average women, so they tend to have underweight babies far more frequently. So this evolutionary tend doesn't seem like a particularly good thing to me. But then there are so many variables affecting humanity that these findings are likely meaningless.
Nasty, brutish and short (Score:5, Funny)
Didn't Thomas Hobbes argue that in the state of nature "the wife of man is solitary, nasty, brutish, and short." Or have I misquoted somehow?
Shorter eh? Obviously never been to Holland (Score:5, Funny)
There are PLENTY of women here close to or over 2 meters. Do you know how hard it is to stare down at a woman's tits when they are above you? I got to carry a stepladder around JUST so I can I look down on women.
Troll (Score:3, Interesting)
Dear Sir/Madam,
Evolution doesn't work that way. You're talking about genetic drift, which is not the same.
Kthxbai
my wife (Score:5, Funny)
Shit. My wife comes from future!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
If anything ever needed to be posted anonymously...
Been nice knowing you.
Tee hee... (Score:5, Funny)
Yo mama is so evolved...
Re:Where is the evolution? (Score:4, Funny)
Symmetry plays a large role in physiology, so it would be very unlikely to see an evolutionary step that leads to 3 boobs. Lateral symmetry dictates that you'd be more likely to see 4 or 6 before that.
There is the possibility of radial symmetry kicking in and getting a non-even number of boobs, but that's just weird.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I doubt it. It probably reflects the fact that skinny women are less fit hosts for a fetus than heavier women. At some point, you run into high weight causing health issues that also make the woman a less fit incubator.
Earlier maturity and later menopause extend the fertility period (duh)... in times past women needed more time to build up a healthy body to have children, and there was no genetic point in delaying menopause since pregnancies towards the end of female fertility were less likely to be viabl
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
skinny women are less fit hosts for a fetus than heavier women
Maybe they've got cause and effect the wrong way round. Maybe after the first baby, the women in this study put on weight. Women who didn't have children didn't gain weight so skewed the samples and results?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The women who bore children also got shorter, apparently.
Re:Fat Americans Breed Fat Americans! Film at 11 (Score:5, Informative)
Any GP or OB/GYN will tell you that there is a minimum percentage of body fat below which a woman won't even menstruate.
They'll also tell you a woman should gain some weight during pregnancy, and that generally speaking the outcome of the pregnancy is better if a certain amount of weight is gained (unless the woman is already overweight, of course).
Again, I don't think they're saying thinner = bad, I think they're saying the population is shifting towards the optimum range. Skinny women have less, and less healthy children on average, so the average weight is rising by a small amount as they're outbred by heavier women.
There will be an upper limit to this effect as well - morbid obesity is not a good thing for getting or being pregnant, either.
Parent
Re:1 study in 1 small town? (Score:4, Informative)
Framingham is not America and America is not the world. While this report might hold true for a statistically insignificant group in one country, it tells us nothing about human evolution over the whole planet.
The traits described probably have more to do with proximity to the local McDonalds, than anythiing about "survival of the fa^Hittest"
Only blame the summary. Stearns made no such generalization.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Reproductive selection will always operate, it is just that the ''selection criteria'' may change, physical fitness may no longer be so important, supplanted by taking advantage of social security/... to enable them to have more children than they can support by the ''sweat of their own brows'', the government picks up the bill.
To quote Monty Python: "Look at them bloody Catholics, filling up the bloody world with children they can't afford to bloody feed." At least, I assume that's what you were referring to.
But seriously, the idea of a "welfare queen" is a myth (and typically a racist one at that). The vast majority of welfare recipients are trying to work, are unable to, but find work within about 2 years. Among other things, the per-child benefit that is given via WIC, TANF, and food stamps doesn't completely cover the cost of
history is not a myth (Score:3, Informative)
Also careful shopping can reduce food cost far below average. I've been hiring 2-3 low wage earners/week this year and I notice they spe
Re:Idocracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Give that idiocracy shit a rest. It's not genetically dumber people who make more children, it's people lower on the social scale. As in, people in ghettos and immigrants. Poor education and poor nutrition (both which cause lower IQs) aren't genetically hereditary.
So-called smart people always confuse uneducated people with less intelligent people. Maybe they're not that smart after all.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
One of the principal lacts of their evil is to sponsor a media-culture that gets ordinary schmucks like yourself to identify emotionally with them, aspire to their condition, and to assume an attack on the values of the truly rich to be a personal threat to your own status and mobility. You are also trained to revile those perceived as less fortunate/gifted as yourself - never suspecting that to the real rich, the difference between you and the homeless doesn't amount to a rounding error.
Hallelujah. Which
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It is also their job to go out of business, when they fail. But they have so many moles in your government (Geithner, Obama, etc.) that you will bail them out for the next 80 years - as they pay themselves bonuses off of your children's former college fund.
You need to look up the definition of "Stockholm Syndrome" - then look hard in the mirror at yourself.
Re:Idocracy (Score:5, Interesting)
There's also something wrong with spouting forth conclusions and condemning the opposing viewpoint as being idiotic without citing any evidence (which makes this [xkcd.com] somewhat ironic, I guess).
The Wikipedia article on the subject [wikipedia.org] is convoluted and doesn't really offer any strong conclusions, but at least some studies reported in the article have suggested a small negative correlation between intelligence and fertility (i.e., number of offspring), and another study showed a strong negative correlation between education and fertility (and education is sometimes used as a proxy for measuring intelligence). There's also a well-known negative correlation between economic well-being and fertility which may be related.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Note that the GP's fertility measures is just average number of offspring. This is probably just due to the well known fact that the better educated and the rich often choose to have fewer children. I seriously doubt awkwardness has anything to do with it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)