Are you born with talent or do you adapt it over time? (Split from TOGS' thread)

[solecistic]

Evolution doesn't function in humans?

/facepalm

Every time someone chooses someone else to have children with, that is evolution functioning.

Medicine doesn't stop evolution. It allows people to live longer, which is only evolutionarily relevant if they reproduce (and in doing so, pass on defective genes). Allowing more defective genes into the population doesn't kill evolution at all.

Leisure time is actually a function of sexual selection. Leisure time exists in animals that are not humans, first of all. Beyond that, leisure time contributes to the sexual selection process because an organism with time to spend doing nothing related to survival is clearly genetically fit. This tells potential mates that their genes are worth combining with their own for reproduction. This is what's known as a fitness indicator. Other examples of fitness indicators are peacock tails, and in humans, other examples are intelligence, athletic prowess, artistic ability, and compassion.

There is no killing evolution. The best you can hope is to control it completely in a Gattaca-esque dystopian world. As long as we are reproducing, evolution is working.

[coqauvin]

Leisure time is actually a function of sexual selection. Leisure time exists in animals that are not humans, first of all. Beyond that, leisure time contributes to the sexual selection process because an organism with time to spend doing nothing related to survival is clearly genetically fit. This tells potential mates that their genes are worth combining with their own for reproduction. This is what's known as a fitness indicator. Other examples of fitness indicators are peacock tails, and in humans, other examples are intelligence, athletic prowess, artistic ability, and compassion.

There are plenty of people who manage to do a heck of a lot of nothing all the time, are chronically obese and their unemployment, but collection of cheques through various means grants them excessive leisure, most of which is wasted away on front of televisions or whatever.

I would not call these people genetically fit.

[no_brains_no_worries]

There are plenty of people who manage to do a heck of a lot of nothing all the time, are chronically obese and their unemployment, but collection of cheques through various means grants them excessive leisure, most of which is wasted away on front of televisions or whatever.

I would not call these people genetically fit.

I gotta disagree there. I mean, mankind fought for millions of years to reach the point that we are now. Even if lots of people are wastes of space, their ancestors were all survivors and thanks to mankind's supremacy, they are too.

I mean, what natural selection do we really have to fear nowadays thanks to modern medicine and security? If you want to split hairs you can point out how they might be inferior to others, but all in all every living creature that is still breathing should be considered genetically fit, right?

[solecistic]

I mean, what natural selection do we really have to fear nowadays thanks to modern medicine and security? If you want to split hairs you can point out how they might be inferior to others, but all in all every living creature that is still breathing should be considered genetically fit, right?

"Survival of the fittest" got a lot of attention, but it's a bit misleading. Natural selection is blind and can only hope to react passively against changing environmental factors through mutation. Sexual selection is the real driving force behind evolution - it's an active means of strengthening one's own species.

So, no. Being genetically fit isn't about just being fit enough to survive, it's about giving one's own genes a good chance to mix with high quality genes from another member of the species. To borrow a saying of Geoffrey Miller, bodies are sinking ships to our genes. They die with us. The only way to get off the ship is to reproduce with another organism's genes. Evolution is going on all the time. You could think of genetic fitness as being somewhat relative, in that people can and do fall in love with people whose genes are not of superior quality. But there are so many different fitness indicators - kindness and intelligence, for example. Person A may find Person B to be dumb but compassionate, and they end up having fifteen babies. It wasn't the best possible genetic match, but there was still a fitness indicator being responded to. Mate choice is where it's at, evolutionarily speaking.

[coqauvin]

I gotta disagree there. I mean, mankind fought for millions of years to reach the point that we are now. Even if lots of people are wastes of space, their ancestors were all survivors and thanks to mankind's supremacy, they are too.

I mean, what natural selection do we really have to fear nowadays thanks to modern medicine and security? If you want to split hairs you can point out how they might be inferior to others, but all in all every living creature that is still breathing should be considered genetically fit, right?

Essentially, measure is unceasing.

There is no point in the evolutionary chain where we can kick back and relax because we're finished with the job - it doesn't work like that. What this plateau signifies is more along the lines that we, instead of changing ourselves (figuratively) to fit our environment, are now shaping our environments to fit our needs. We then get a large number of people who wouldn't survive under more brutal circumstances thriving, because there is nothing threatening their survival - the environment is no longer hostile. This doesn't mean the game is done, simply that there is a change of phase in it.

[Atmosfear]

Evolution doesn't function in humans?

/facepalm

Every time someone chooses someone else to have children with, that is evolution functioning.

Medicine doesn't stop evolution. It allows people to live longer, which is only evolutionarily relevant if they reproduce (and in doing so, pass on defective genes). Allowing more defective genes into the population doesn't kill evolution at all.

Leisure time is actually a function of sexual selection. Leisure time exists in animals that are not humans, first of all. Beyond that, leisure time contributes to the sexual selection process because an organism with time to spend doing nothing related to survival is clearly genetically fit. This tells potential mates that their genes are worth combining with their own for reproduction. This is what's known as a fitness indicator. Other examples of fitness indicators are peacock tails, and in humans, other examples are intelligence, athletic prowess, artistic ability, and compassion.

There is no killing evolution. The best you can hope is to control it completely in a Gattaca-esque dystopian world. As long as we are reproducing, evolution is working.

The profound decrease in infant mortality takes that entire argument and shoves it straight out the door for the birds.

People aren't just living longer, they are living at all. More people are reaching the age of reproduction that ever before. More people who are genetically inferior. Rationality is eliminating itself from the gene pool.

Our selective pressures are no longer genetic but are instead technological. I recognize that these are the result of evolutionary forces from the past, but pertinent to the original discussion of this thread, evolution is not bettering humans through genetics.

You're reaching for too much from genetics because you want to believe that individual merit is important. It's disappointing to know that you cross the threshold for just about anything and aren't realizing your dreams. It's not your genes holding you back; it's your environment.

[Kozzle]

It's not your genes holding you back; it's your environment.

Seriously, it's foolish for anyone to argue that the determinant factor in anything is 100% genetics or 100% environment. There is always an interaction between the 2.

[solecistic]

The profound decrease in infant mortality takes that entire argument and shoves it straight out the door for the birds.

Not really.

People aren't just living longer, they are living at all. More people are reaching the age of reproduction that ever before. More people who are genetically inferior. Rationality is eliminating itself from the gene pool.

I get the distinct impression that you just don't understand what I'm saying. Because what you've just posted here in no way says that evolution is being killed. Evolution may not be working in the same obvious ways that it did for our ancestors, but that hardly means it isn't working at all. Sexual selection is still taking place every day. Furthermore, evolution has no sentience. It is blind and deaf, stone-hearted and it absolutely cannot plan for the future. Evolution doesn't just stop existing because a species goes backwards instead of forwards.

Our selective pressures are no longer genetic but are instead technological. I recognize that these are the result of evolutionary forces from the past, but pertinent to the original discussion of this thread, evolution is not bettering humans through genetics.

On this point, we'd both need proof to establish any kind of truly serious argument. Evopsych and genetic researchers - as far as I know - have come up with quite a few ways in which sexual selection has been and continues to improve us, even if it is on an individual scale. On average (and there are exceptions, of course), the prettiest marry the prettiest and they have beautiful children. The fat marry the fat because the fat can't often get a more attractive mate. If the weight of the parents is due to genetics, the offspring are also fat. The intelligent marry the intelligent and have intelligent babies, and so on. This means we are still selecting for certain traits all the time. We don't always get what we want, and primates are unique in that they conceal ovulation (which makes longterm fitness indicators based in consistent behavior vital) as well as the fact that males can be almost as choosy as females when picking a mate, but fitness indicators are at work in any human being on this planet that reproduces. This is why rape is considered such a social taboo across almost all societies - it defies sexual selection by removing mate choice from the equation.

You're reaching for too much from genetics because you want to believe that individual merit is important. It's disappointing to know that you cross the threshold for just about anything and aren't realizing your dreams. It's not your genes holding you back; it's your environment.

It's certainly possible that I'm just brainwashed by the idea of individual merit being important. I don't really think I feel that way, but it's possible. It's also possible that Gladwell and you are ignoring biology in favor of a rose-colored world in which every person can be anything they want to be, no matter what their genetic makeup is.

I have never tried to say that hard work doesn't contribute to success. Of course it does. There is overwhelming evidence. But the advanced behavioral sciences, including evopsych, are making progress every day in showing how much human behavior is based in genes. There are even genes for work ethic, you know.

[sycld]

We're tangling a whole bunch of issues up. First this thread was about nature vs. nuture, then it became something about how much financial success is determined by genetics vs. incidences in a person's life, and now it's about whether evolution is still functioning among humans or not. Even though these are somewhat related issues, they are not identical.

At any rate...

I get the distinct impression that you just don't understand what I'm saying. Because what you've just posted here in no way says that evolution is being killed. Evolution may not be working in the same obvious ways that it did for our ancestors, but that hardly means it isn't working at all. Sexual selection is still taking place every day. Furthermore, evolution has no sentience. It is blind and deaf, stone-hearted and it absolutely cannot plan for the future. Evolution doesn't just stop existing because a species goes backwards instead of forwards.

I think it's nonsense to say that evolution is working as it always has been. In these discussions, it seems like people forget how evolution works. It only works if fitter individuals have more offspring due to inheritable traits and if their offspring then have more reproductive success due to these traits. The fitter individuals' genes eventually flood the rest of the population.

So are you going to tell me that there is a correlation between wealth and number of offspring? Good luck with trying to support that proposition. If anything, it seems that the opposite is true.

On this point, we'd both need proof to establish any kind of truly serious argument. Evopsych and genetic researchers - as far as I know - have come up with quite a few ways in which sexual selection has been and continues to improve us, even if it is on an individual scale. On average (and there are exceptions, of course), the prettiest marry the prettiest and they have beautiful children. The fat marry the fat because the fat can't often get a more attractive mate. If the weight of the parents is due to genetics, the offspring are also fat. The intelligent marry the intelligent and have intelligent babies, and so on. This means we are still selecting for certain traits all the time. We don't always get what we want, and primates are unique in that they conceal ovulation (which makes longterm fitness indicators based in consistent behavior vital) as well as the fact that males can be almost as choosy as females when picking a mate, but fitness indicators are at work in any human being on this planet that reproduces.

IF this is true (which is a big "if"), then at most this means that those with inferior genes will form a separate population from those with superior genes. But is there any evidence that more intelligent people have more offspring and thus increase the frequency of their genes in the population than less intelligent people?

It's certainly possible that I'm just brainwashed by the idea of individual merit being important. I don't really think I feel that way, but it's possible. It's also possible that Gladwell and you are ignoring biology in favor of a rose-colored world in which every person can be anything they want to be, no matter what their genetic makeup is.

Nobody is claiming that anyone can be successful no matter what their genetic makeup is. Show me where we said that. Don't purposefully make our statements more extreme than they are in order to derail our arguments.

What we are claiming is that the baseline inherent ability that someone needs to posses to be successful is significantly lower than people might expect. The intelligence of an average college graduate is sufficient to make it to the highest levels of success. That's still above the population's average.

I have never tried to say that hard work doesn't contribute to success. Of course it does. There is overwhelming evidence. But the advanced behavioral sciences, including evopsych, are making progress every day in showing how much human behavior is based in genes. There are even genes for work ethic, you know.

I do have to concede that in these sorts of arguments, people never even admit the possibility that work ethic is or could be as genetically pre-determined as certain aspects of intelligence.

[solecistic]

I think it's nonsense to say that evolution is working as it always has been.

But I never said that, nor do I think so. I just think it's absolutely incorrect to say that evolution is dead or no longer relevant to our species. That's all.

In these discussions, it seems like people forget how evolution works. It only works if fitter individuals have more offspring due to inheritable traits and if their offspring then have more reproductive success due to these traits. The fitter individuals' genes eventually flood the rest of the population.

Well, saying that evolution "works" in a success/fail sense is a little shaky. It's really all about the species succeeding or failing at continuing itself indefinitely through the process of evolution. Sexual selection has a tendency to make big changes very quickly. Consider a species of bird whose females have evolved a taste for long tails. At first, almost all of the birds have short tails. Those who have slightly longer tails will produce more offspring because their long tails have become sexual ornaments. Those offspring will produce offspring with even longer tails. But eventually, if the tails become too long, they will impede the birds' ability to survive. If that species dies out due to this process, it doesn't mean evolution wasn't working. It just means that species failed to reign in its own sexual preferences. Evolution has also killed species by totally random and harmful mutation - that doesn't mean evolution didn't operate.

What I was responding to was the idea that evolution somehow has stopped functioning in humans. It hasn't.

So are you going to tell me that there is a correlation between wealth and number of offspring? Good luck with trying to support that proposition. If anything, it seems that the opposite is true.

No, of course not. I never said anything about financial success being linked to the number of one's offspring. What I was saying is that certain genes can help one to become successful (and when I say successful, I don't necessarily mean in a financial sense). Intelligence comes from your genes. None of these traits we've been talking about are black and white - there are varying degrees of intellect or athletic prowess. There are varying degrees of fitness among members of any species.

IF this is true (which is a big "if"), then at most this means that those with inferior genes will form a separate population from those with superior genes.

I don't think that's true. For one thing, there are plenty of ways for less fit organisms to "trick" mates into thinking they're more fit and gain access to better choices. As social creatures, we are capable of lies and manipulation. We have fancy technology that enhances our bodies to make them appear to have come from better stock: plastic surgery, makeup, hair dyes, tummy tucks, boob jobs, steroids, etc. Even some other species engage in this kind of tricky behavior in order to get better mates.

But is there any evidence that more intelligent people have more offspring and thus increase the frequency of their genes in the population than less intelligent people?

Not that I know of. But again - evolution isn't sentient. It seems to us, because we are logical and rational creatures, that evolution could do a much better job if only it would plan for X or start doing Y. Evolution doesn't make active decisions. It is a mindless process that can go in any direction at any time based upon any number of different factors. Just because we aren't seeing ourselves evolve into athletic geniuses doesn't mean that we aren't evolving at all.

Nobody is claiming that anyone can be successful no matter what their genetic makeup is. Show me where we said that. Don't purposefully make our statements more extreme than they are in order to derail our arguments.

That really isn't my intention. I'm responding based on having seen Atmosfear constantly downplay genetics in favor of hard work. That attitude seems to indicate, at least, to me, this idea that anyone can do anything if they are in the right place at the right time and they work for 10,000 hours. My whole point in bringing up genetics in response to that is to illustrate that without the right genes, no amount of work can make you into something you're not. His response to that is that evolution is dead anyway and 10,000 hours can definitely let you do anything. If I have misread that sentiment in him, then I'm not even sure what we're arguing about.

What we are claiming is that the baseline inherent ability that someone needs to posses to be successful is significantly lower than people might expect. The intelligence of an average college graduate is sufficient to make it to the highest levels of success. That's still above the population's average.

If Atmosfear had said this very thing to me in the beginning, I don't think this would have become such a long-winded string of arguments. It may have been my own error in jumping to a conclusion and anticipating his meaning without carefully reading, and if I've done that, I apologize. I was under the impression that his argument was that genetics are insignificant (except in extreme cases like disability) in comparison to hard work, which I just fundamentally disagree with. It seems to me that without the genetics in place to give you the ability to do that work and succeed at it, the work itself is meaningless. That is all I have ever really tried to get across on that front.

[Sion]

Consider a species of bird whose females have evolved a taste for long tails. At first, almost all of the birds have short tails. Those who have slightly longer tails will produce more offspring because their long tails have become sexual ornaments. Those offspring will produce offspring with even longer tails. But eventually, if the tails become too long, they will impede the birds' ability to survive. If that species dies out due to this process, it doesn't mean evolution wasn't working. It just means that species failed to reign in its own sexual preferences. Evolution has also killed species by totally random and harmful mutation - that doesn't mean evolution didn't operate.

I don't mean to nitpick.. but wouldn't it take many many years regardless to make long tails dominant?
Genes go back many generations, and skip many generations potentially.

[solecistic]

I don't mean to nitpick.. but wouldn't it take many many years regardless to make long tails dominant?
Genes go back many generations, and skip many generations potentially.

I'm not taking about how long it takes for a gene to become a dominant gene - that's a very specific area of genetics that I'm not very familiar with.

But the answer to whether it would take many, many years is no, it wouldn't take long for most of the birds to have longer tails. Sexual selection can work very quickly and so far, the evopsych community has attributed this to something called the runaway process. Runaway sexual selection can produce dramatic results in relatively short amounts of time because it is a positive feedback system. Geoffrey Miller gives a great explanation of what it is using the short tail -> long tail example in birds. I'm going to type it out of my copy of his book, because even though you could Wiki this, I think his explanation is really clear and easy to interpret:

Imagine a population of birds with short tails, in which the males contribute nothing to raising the offspring. Although this makes life hard for females after mating, it allows females to choose any male they want, even a male who has been chosen by many other females already. The most attractive male could mate with many females. He has no reason to turn down a sexual invitation from any female, because copulation costs so little time and energy.

Within the population, different males inevitably have different tail lengths, just as they have different wingspans, and different leg lengths. All biological traits show variation. Usually, much of that variation is heritable (that is, due to genetic differences between individuals), so longer-tailed males will tend to produce longer-tailed offspring. In other words, tail length varies and tail length is heritable, satisfying two out of Darwin's three requirements for evolution.

Now, suppose that some of the females become sexually attracted to tails that are longer than average. (It doesn't matter why they evolve this preference -- perhaps there was a mutation affecting their sexual preferences, or their vision happened to respond more positively to large than to small objects.) Once this female preference for long tails arises, we have the third requirement for evolution: selection. In this case, it is sexual selection through mate choice. The choosy females who prefer long tails will tend to mate with long-tailed males, who are happy to copulate with all their admirers. The non-choosy females mate randomly, usually ending up with an average-tailed male.

After mating, the choosy females start producing offspring. Their sons have longer-than-average tails that they inherited from their fathers. (Their daughters may also inherit longer tails -- a phenomenon we shall consider later.) The non-choosy females produce sons whose tails are about the same length as those of their fathers -- but these mediocre tails are no longer average. They are now below average, because the average tail length has been increased in this generation, due to sexual selection through mate choice. The genes for long tails have spread.

The question is, will they keep spreading? Fisher's [the man who came up with runaway theory] key insight was that the offspring of choosy females will inherit not just longer tails, but also the genes for the sexual preference -- the taste for long tails. Thus, the genes for the sexual preference tend to end up in the same offspring as the genes for the sexually selected trait. When genes for different traits consistently end up in the same bodies, biologists say the traits have become "genetically correlated." Fisher's runaway process is driven by this genetic correlation between sexual traits and sexual preferences in offspring, which arises through the sexual choices their parents made. This genetic correlation effect is subtle and counter-intuitive, which is one reason why biologists took fifty years to prove that Fisher's idea worked.

Of course, when the sons of choosy females inherit the genes underlying their mother's sexual attraction to long tails, they may not express this preference in their own mating decisions. But they can pass their mother's sexual preferences on to their own daughters. Since their long tails make them sexually attractive, they tend to produce not only more sons than average, but more daughters as well. In this way, the sexual preference for long tails can genetically piggyback on the very trait that it prefers. This gives the runaway process its positive-feedback power, its evolutionary momentum.

[Atmosfear]

If Atmosfear had said this very thing to me in the beginning, I don't think this would have become such a long-winded string of arguments. It may have been my own error in jumping to a conclusion and anticipating his meaning without carefully reading, and if I've done that, I apologize. I was under the impression that his argument was that genetics are insignificant (except in extreme cases like disability) in comparison to hard work, which I just fundamentally disagree with. It seems to me that without the genetics in place to give you the ability to do that work and succeed at it, the work itself is meaningless. That is all I have ever really tried to get across on that front.

My argument is a combination of both sycld's and this post.

I do think genetics are insignificant. I also agree that the threshold for success is at about the level of a college education.

I just don't see a college education as a particularly high threshold.

[Kozzle]

My argument is a combination of both sycld's and this post.

I do think genetics are insignificant. I also agree that the threshold for success is at about the level of a college education.

I just don't see a college education as a particularly high threshold.

I don't even see how someone could rationally argue that genetics are insignificant. Have you ever looked at any kind of Twin Studies? Twin Studies are a GREAT indicator of how genetics affect our development. It's almost proof (which is a pretty bold statement to make in the area of science) that genetics has a huge impact on our development. That isn't to say that environment doesn't have any impact. They both share roughly the same amount of impact on a person, some areas it is a bit greater and some areas it isn't. But to claim that either one is insignificant is a very ignorant statement to make if you have never looked into any twin studies.

You can be genetically predisposed to being lazy, which means you WON'T put in the necessary time to achieve high success or whatever it is you would use as an example. Now you COULD find the willpower to get over your own laziness and do it anyways, but guess what, genetics also determine to a lesser or greater extent how much willpower you also have. If you are predisposed to have terrible willpower then the chances are you will fail at whatever it is you want to achieve that requires effort. This isn't an all-or-nothing situation, it is an extremely gray area. Anyone who knows anything about genetics knows that it is ALL based on probability, just like environment is.

It's impossible to provide an absolute concrete argument for EITHER side because both are constantly mingling with each other. Ok, so you are born with predispositions but raised in an environment. That environment you are born in is typically created by your parents who have genetic predispositions for raising you in a particular way, most likely somewhat similar to the way they were raised because their parents were predisposed (genetically and environmentally) to raise them in a certain way (see the pattern here?). You can't say environment is the dominant reason because environment is shaped by the genetics of people because we are social beings and our genetics are shaped by our environment through evolution. The typical rule of genetics and environment is that genetics create the disposition and environments trigger the disposition to occur in full effect (such as schizophrenia or depression)

[Think]

Consider a species of bird whose females have evolved a taste for long tails. At first, almost all of the birds have short tails. Those who have slightly longer tails will produce more offspring because their long tails have become sexual ornaments. Those offspring will produce offspring with even longer tails. But eventually, if the tails become too long, they will impede the birds' ability to survive. If that species dies out due to this process, it doesn't mean evolution wasn't working. It just means that species failed to reign in its own sexual preferences.

I agree with this hypothetical scenario, but I think it's more likely that if the tails start impeding the birds' ability to survive, then those with these longer tails are going to start facing natural selection, and not only that, if there are any females in the population who are non choosy or even better select for shorter tails (and there is generally that much variation within a population), then the process will be reversed exactly. Longer tails stop being a fitness indicator. Sexual selection is fast, but it's generally not fast enough to cause extinction without accompanying rapid environmental changes that make the phenotype a huge liability. Also, traits such as longer tails generally accompany or are actually beneficial adaptations. For example, females in humans choose males for a strong jaw and the like because it indicates high testosterone levels, but this in itself is not the whole story; high testosterone levels suppress the immune system, so those that have them must have good immune systems to continue to survive. Peacocks would have simply died out if sexual selection wasn't tempered by the process of natural selection, for exactly the reason you describe. The sexual selection isn't totally blind.

[solecistic]

if the tails start impeding the birds' ability to survive, then those with these longer tails are going to start facing natural selection

Yep.

if there are any females in the population who are non choosy or even better select for shorter tails (and there is generally that much variation within a population), then the process will be reversed exactly. Longer tails stop being a fitness indicator.

Well, if this is purely in a case where the sexual ornament becomes too burdensome, then that's certainly a possibility. The runaway system is meant to explain how certain traits can rapidly become widespread within a species, and it can go into literally any direction at any time, because of its positive feedback power. It can (and has - though I don't have any examples specifically off the top of my head) wipe out a species faster than it can make a U-turn, but this isn't all that common. Sexual ornaments are all about displaying excess energy and correct (even superior) wiring, so to speak. If the long tail kills you, it may not kill you until you've already passed on the gene to make offspring. It's impossible to predict exactly. Anything can happen. That's what makes studying sexual selection so fascinating, at least to me.

The sexual selection isn't totally blind.

Sexual selection isn't blind at all. Natural selection is blind. The difference can be thought of this way: I choose my mate because he's smarter than other males, stronger than other males, kinder than other males, and more attractive than other males. We combine our genes to create strong, smart, kind, attractive babies. By contrast, natural selection kills off half a species because of a particularly nasty cold front. One is active, one is completely passive and dependent upon environment.