Do you guys think its possible to be born with a talent or that you adapt it over time?
Do you guys think its possible to be born with a talent or that you adapt it over time?
i believe the distinction between talent and skill is that skill is something that can be built with practice but talent is inherent (is that the right word? i think it is the right word) and never goes up and downQuote:
Originally Posted by Infernus
Yes on all counts.Quote:
Originally Posted by gwahir
Although talent must first be discovered and honed.
After reading Malcolm Gladwell's new book Outliers I'm pretty convinced that talent has an increasingly minimal effect on the way things work, and that only skills developed over time get you where you want to go.Quote:
Originally Posted by gwahir
well skill is rather more tangible than talent, but the latter mostly determines the former. i mean if you are a talented musician you will likely pick up musical skills quicker than someone untalented. likewise, you'll be able to reach a higher level of skill. "talent" therefore becomes analogous to "potential".Quote:
Originally Posted by Atmosfear
talent has very little place in places where the mindset is one of "anyone can achieve anything with hard work", and if you think it's largely in-born then it probably doesn't have much of a place in a religious or spiritual society that doesn't believe in genetics affecting the personality
A talent is really just a genetic predisposition to excel in certain areas. It's why many very good musicians play more than one instrument, and also why painters are not always great sculptors but many great sculptors are also excellent carpenters.
And Mr. Gladwell and I would counter this statement with the fact that beyond a certain talent threshold, success at a task (skill, etc) is determined primarily by the amount time put in.Quote:
Originally Posted by gwahir
His book provides an interesting insight into the way we define success because we like to believe we are at least fundamentally meritocratic.
I would like to discuss this idea further with you in the new AI. Tomorrow. After my finals.
I haven't read Gladwell so my comments here are limited by a certain degree of ignorance, but based on your description, it sounds like this fellow has not accounted for evolutionary psychology whatsoever. Talents, if you want to call them that, are fitness indicators before they are anything else.
While it is certainly true that practice and determination and repetition can let someone become a painter/writer/dancer/scientist/etc, they have to be genetically fit enough to learn those things in the first place. Some people, however, are born with the genes to help them be much better at those things than someone born without them.
Let's say Person A is born with strong math and science genes, and Person B is born without them. And let's say that Person A and Person B put the same amount of work into becoming scientists. Person A will always be the better scientist. Person A has better reasoning skills because Person A was born with a strong predisposition towards it.
Of course, not everyone is born into situations where they can achieve their potential, and sometimes their interests just don't coincide with their natural genetic abilities. Person A and Person B will only show their real genetic predispositions if their situations are identical. Same opportunities, same socio-economic backgrounds, etc. But the science behind their genes is real, and the evidence for it has been piling up rapidly since the human genome was cracked almost six years ago.
I just don't buy this idea that "beyond a certain talent threshold, success is determined primarily by the amount of time put in". I've witnessed lazy, unmotivated genius standing beside driven mediocrity. I think work is required to reach your potential, certainly, but some people really don't have to do the work. They may be few and far between, but they exist because evolution requires them to.
Gladwell's Blink was so repetitive it makes me hesitant to pick up another book of his. The book could have easily been halved and remained interesting.
I'm a firm believer in nurture over nature. Genetics may play certain roles (Michael Jordon's height) but conditioning is more important (I mean, he sucked at basketball but trained until he was the best).Quote:
Originally Posted by solecistic
Sorry for a really watered down example but I haven't read anything about genetics or nature vs. nurture in years (unless you count the novel Next.)
Sociology tells us how culture plays its role in shaping our personalities, prejudices, and interests.Quote:
Originally Posted by no_brains_no_worries
Evopsych tells us why culture puts those pressures on us in the first place. Michael Jordan's height isn't the only thing that makes him a superior basketball player. He also has genes that give him better hand/eye coordination, better depth perception, faster speed, more agility, and so on. Michael Jordan wasn't born with a basketball gene, of course. That skill set may also have lent itself to him being a fantastic fighter pilot - except for the height, really. The point is that Michael Jordan is a great basketball player because of "nature" (DNA) and nurture (social pressure), but his high genetic fitness made it possible for the nurturing to have any effect. Many kids are "nurtured" into working at athletics or math or art by their parents or peers, but they cannot and will not excel if they aren't built for it.
editing to say that I'm not sure whether Michael Jordan actually has all of the aforementioned attributes, but a superior basketball player would need at least some of those things. The work and training he did to become a good player were instrumental, without doubt - my point is just that all the work in the world wouldn't have mattered if he didn't have the genes.
True, but in your opinion which one is more vital to success? Genetics and his psychical makeup set him on the path, but it was the pressure (I prefer the term nurture though, lol) that really allowed him to hone his skill.Quote:
Originally Posted by solecistic
My argument is that DNA lays the foundation for skill-honing. Without the genes, the work doesn't matter. If you want to make a value judgment based on that, that's fine, but it isn't very scientific. Both things contribute to success, but one literally relies on the other. For the average human being, work probably contributes more because you're talking about competition between relatively similar levels of talent. When a group of people all have similar levels of talent, their work is all they can rely upon to differentiate themselves. For people with better DNA, less work is required to achieve similar levels of success. A hardworking person with athlete genes can be just as successful as a lucky person with average DNA, but that's another argument altogether since we're not really discussing luck or game theory.
Realize here, for the most part, I'm giving you a Readers' Digest version of a book I just read, though I can certainly see the merits myself.
sole, I would have agreed with you completely not terribly long ago. However, that's because you are looking at success of these outliers (durr, book title!) through the lens of individual merit. You think there must be an individual reason for the success of (for simplicity) Michael Jordan. The most obvious source, then, would be genetics because we know that his genetics are guaranteed to vary from everyone else's. You look at the surface and see a guy who's 6'6" and assume that has something to do with it. The truth is that there are more people who are 6'6" and not playing basketball than there are people who are. What Michael Jordan's genes did was cross a (relatively short) threshold. In the NBA, that's about 6'1".
Likewise, his hand-eye coordination was good enough to get noticed at a young age. His natural athleticism made him good enough to get picked on the playground. His parents were middle class, so he could afford to use his time playing pick-up sports, playing on travel teams, etc, rather than working an 8 hour shift to make ends meet after school. His birthday is early in the year (February) which meant he was at the leading edge of the cut-off date for recreational leagues (January 1.) He was always older than the other kids, meaning as a child he was naturally more physically matured. This gets him noticed by coaches, which give him extra practice. His skill starts to separate him on the playground (he's the best on the court, so he gets the ball more... gaining him more practice that the worst guy on the court who rarely gets the ball.)
By the time Jordan was in high school, he was playing 3 sports (baseball, football, basketball.) Though he was obviously a competent athlete, he didn't make Varsity basketball his sophomore year because he was (you guessed it): TOO SHORT. He grew from 5'10" sophomore year to 6'2" his junior year, crossing the threshold, after which he became a star (he already had plenty of time devoted to basketball and general athletics; the skills were refined by that point.) He then went on to play for UNC and the NBA, where he was always a standout player (the best player on the court continues to get the ball most, remember?)
This is also a perfect example because Jordan did what most athletes do not: he switched sports mid-career. Remember, all of Jordan's time was dedicated to Basketball after high school (and, because baseball is more difficult to play casually or train for than basketball, likely his whole life.) What happened? Jordan was fine athletically, but lacked the skill for baseball that he had developed through hours (10,000 hours, to be exact) of training for basketball. He had the same set of DNA, but was only able to succeed at basketball, because basketball is what he was pushed into playing.
There's a similar story behind the success of Bill Joy (Sun Microsystems), Bill Gates (Microsoft), The Beatles, and many of the major Jewish law firms in New York. Your genetics get you to a threshold, and only 10,000 hours of training can make you a success. The only thing all of the outlier have in common, for the record, is a willingness to work hard honing their respective crafts.
The smartest men on earth aren't the most successful, but the smartest men on earth are all in the top 20%.
Again, my point isn't that genetics contribute less or more to success than hard work. My point is that no amount of hard work can allow a person without the right genes to become successful at certain things.
Michael Jordan sucked at baseball because he was trained for basketball, that's absolutely correct, but without having the right genes to become an athlete in the first place, he wouldn't have been playing basketball, either.
The genetic threshold is negligibly low. People who are only above average are just as capable (and indeed just as likely) to become outliers as those who are exceptionally above average genetically.
Obviously there are some things people just can't do. The point is that as long as you can do something and have the opportunity to train at it for about 10,000 hours, you too can be an outlier. For basketball, for example, about all that takes is height above 6'1". Six. Foot. One. The joke of our perception of success is that we attribute success to the individual's genetics or hardwork without giving any acknowledgment that the opportunity is usually utterly out of their hands (see: Michael Jordan, Bill Joy, Bill Gates, The Beatles, major Jewish law firms, etc)
What evidence does Gladwell invoke when he claims that the genetic threshold is "negligibly low"? He may be right - I'm no scientist, myself, but it seems at odds with certain biological realities that I've been exposed to by the likes of Geoffrey Miller and Richard Dawkins (Selfish Gene Dawkins, not God Delusion Dawkins).
The threshold for an NBA player is 6'1" (Wikipedia actually lists lower range for Guards at 6'0 but I'm going to ignore that) or 73".
http://books.google.com/books?id=nmQ...um=1&ct=result
The average male height in America is 69.5" with a standard deviation of about 2.00". The threshold for an NBA player is less than 2 standard deviations from the mean! 4% of the US population is over 6'1" and only 435 players are active in the NBA. Mind you, those are total players drawn from outside the US as well, meaning the number of Americans is even less; regardless, for simplicity you have 435 players drawn from a population of 12,000,000 (assuming 45% males) giving 5.4 million people to draw from.
435/5.4 million is 8.05E-5. This is sorted by height, which is easily measured. What other genes do you think it takes? Do you think these genes are that rare? Or is it coincidence that most American NBA players share similar backgrounds (lower middle class or upper lower class, started at an early age, played pick-up, joined church or rec leagues young, played in highschool, invited to various coaching clinics and camps as recruits, played in college.) Basketball, unlike other sports (baseball most notably in America, hockey in Canada), is a year-round sport that can be played just about anywhere, so it doesn't have as pronounced a cut-off age.
These players were sorted and selected from very young age, before any sort of talent was able to manifest. Nobody is born making free throws, but when you're bigger than the other kids and get the play more, you get more practice. When you get more practice, you get better. When you get better, you get invited to play more with better competition. You get more practice because you now play with your first team and your competition team. The extra practice continues giving you an edge and then you get to high school where a college scout sees you (with the practice-earned edge) and invites you to his school's camp. You go to his camp and get better, the next year a couple more scouts invite you. Before you know it, you're invited to play with the best of the best and none of it ever had to do with some God-given ability to judge your wrist-release. It had to do with the fact that you started playing more than your friends, so you stood out just a little bit. That stand out brought you more practice, so your edge got a little bigger. By the time you're a pro, you're fully-grown 6'3" and playing point guard.
10,000 hours of practice. That's the magic number. If you're good enough to get started on the road to 10,000 hours of practice, your God-given "talents" don't matter.
Gladwell's book is actually more about how society selects the people who can be successful by receiving 10,000 hours of practice, which is largely not merit-based. Bill Gates, for example, happened to go to a high school that had a remote terminal in the 60s before most Universities had them. Bill Joy happened to go to University of Michigan which had a modern mainframe and also had a loophole in its code to allow unlimited computing time. Most of the major Jewish law firms in New York began because traditional old row white law firms would not hire Jews and would not litigate hostile takeovers in the 50s and 60s. The Jews were willing to take any case that came before them and when hostile takeovers because popular in the 70s, the traditional firms didn't have the expertise the Jews did (there were a few other interesting effects that Jewish ethnicity had.) The Beatles were invited to play in Hamburg by a promoter who used them as 8-hour-a-night shows for weeks at a time because the promoter needed someone to play in a pinch. Steve Jobs had a similar story. Mozart began writing symphonies at age 7 but it wasn't till his 20s (say... 10,000 hours later) that he wrote any symphonies of note.
If genetics were so important, why isn't everyone on Forbes' Wealthiest list also in MENSA? Why isn't MENSA dominating every field they can touch? Success is like an amusement park ride: if you aren't 54" tall, you have no chance of having fun on the ride. If you're over 54" tall, there is no guarantee you'll like it, but at least you have a shot at it. Being 54.5" doesn't have any better odds of enjoyment than being 72".
Quote:
Originally Posted by Atmosfear
I agree with sole, while genetics are not the soley(lol) responsible for success in basketball or whatever you choose to persue, they are a contributing factor. I'm pretty sure that's all she is trying to say there. Yes hard work, practice, environmental and home factors all come into play. No one is arguing(I don't think) that genes are what determines your success in something. It just comes plays a factor in how easily you will be able to suceed in whatever more easily then someone who has worse genes.Quote:
Originally Posted by solecistic
And my point is that the role of genetics is less exceptional than you want to believe as a meritocratic society, and that genetics are largely a zero-sum game. There are haves and have-nots and there is no scaling. The most elite man alive has the same odds of success as someone who is just barely above average. If above average is all it takes, they're on level playing fields.
I never said they were that rare. The point is that you have to have the genetic makeup to be good at athletics before practicing at athletics means anything.Quote:
Originally Posted by Atmosfear
Being bigger than the other kids is your genetic predisposition. If you're smaller but someone notices that you're fast, that's a genetic predisposition. Clearly, training can make you faster and bigger (not so much height, but muscle mass), but if you start out being 5'4 and very slow, you're just not ever going to do as well as someone who is 6'1 and lightning fast from the get-go. If training brings out exceptional speeds, it doesn't mean it was just the training. It means that the training allowed your natural traits to come out. My whole point is that without the genes, the practice is meaningless. It doesn't mean that anyone who has the genes can succeed without practice. It just means that one is required for the other to have any meaning.Quote:
These players were sorted and selected from very young age, before any sort of talent was able to manifest. Nobody is born making free throws, but when you're bigger than the other kids and get the play more, you get more practice.
Of course it did. If you didn't have the genes, no amount of training would have allowed you to get that proficient. Period. Strip all the opportunity and luck out of it, and it just comes down to work and genes, right? Well, if you were never genetically predisposed to building certain skills, no amount of building will ever get you to the level of someone with those predispositions. Not everyone on earth can be a good basketball player. Even if every single human being worked 10,000 hours for it, there would still be bad players, mediocre players, and exceptional players. That's where the genes show themselves. If everything else is equal, disparity still exists. Genes are responsible for that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Atmosfear
Being "good enough to get started on the road" IS your natural ability.Quote:
Originally Posted by Atmosfear
They don't have to be in MENSA. They just have to be smart enough to do the work that lets them become successful. The people on Forbes' Wealthiest are not idiots. And any idiots who are on lists like that are products of luck. Winning the lottery and becoming a millionaire doesn't make you intelligent, but you do have to be intelligent to get a business into a position where it can make millions. Game theory and probability are separate issues.Quote:
If genetics were so important, why isn't everyone on Forbes' Wealthiest list also in MENSA?
If genetics weren't so important, why isn't everyone in the world on Forbes' Wealthiest list?
I don't know what to add except that I agree largely with Atmosfear's position vs. Sole's position.
I'll also add that, again in accordance with Gladwell's ideas, environment and "the times" play as great a role as anything else. Do you honestly think that a person who is genetically the same as Bach and had experienced similar hardships as well as a similar immersion in music would also become as great and recognized a composer today as he was at the turn of the 18th century? Of course not; Bach was Bach not only because of who he was "intrinsically" (if you can even consider a person's intrinsic qualities, which is dubious), but also because of where and when he was as well as the incidences of his life outside of himself or his control.
Again, as Atmosfear already said, we're not talking the top quintile of intelligence as "smart enough"; we're talking more like the top 45-35% of the population as being "smart enough." You have to be merely bright to get to the very top, not a genius; what most people studying this sort of stuff say is that having the intelligence of the average college educated person is completely sufficient.Quote:
Originally Posted by solecistic
As for why everyone isn't on Forbe's Wealthiest list, the simple unadorned answer is because there is very little room at the top...
Unfortunately, this isn't the case. Being bigger than the other kids isn't a genetic predisposition as much as it is a product of birthday. Since childhood groups are stratified by grade cutoff ages, those who are closest to the cutoff dates can have as much as a full year advantage of growth over another. If the cutoff is January 1, and you are born on January 2, you are almost a year older than all the kids born in December. By the time this is distilled through continual selection processes, the only kids left are the ones near the cutoff, not because they had any better talent but because they signed up with a good birthday.Quote:
Originally Posted by solecistic
If everyone had 10,000 hours of practice, then they would become average and good would be defined as some larger value.Quote:
Originally Posted by solecistic
What disparity exists between Steve Jobs, Bill Joy, and Bill Gates? One of them is going grey.
Or more likely it's your birthday (or year), your high school's Tech club, or happening to run into a promoter in a bind in a bar.Quote:
Originally Posted by solecistic
Genetics probably has more of a role in what you like. If Bill Gates hated fooling with computers, the advantage of his high school's remote terminal would've been lost. But again, it's a low genetic threshold.
By the way this has all sorts of implications for the education system and has been a fairly prominent critique of the Ivy selection process. Gifted programs, for example, are naturally biased towards older children.Quote:
Originally Posted by Atmosfear
On a side note of self-bragadoccio, I am not genetically predisposed to playing the instruments I do (piano, guitar, violion). Typically, people who excel at these have long, slender fingers making it easier for them to make the awkward stretches that always show up. In contrast, my own fingers are shorter and stubbier than most guitarists, yet the claim I made in the other thread still stands - Of all the non-professional (professionals being: jobbers, people you see on tv, etc.) musicians I've encountered, only 5 or 6 actually exceed my ability by a signifigant amount, and maybe twice as many are on equal footing with me.
And it's essentially as Atmosfear said - a whole shitload of practice. I've been playing (admittedly as a hobbyist) for 6 years now, and when I started, I was practicing a minimum of 3 hours a day (sometimes up to 5) for my first two, two and a half years. at (3 * 730 = 2190 hrs) minimum of practice within my first two years (the days i didn't practice vs. the days I practiced extra roughly balancing out) is a whole shitload of practice time that most people don't get.
Is that because I am genetically predisposed? Not especially. I've been involved with music since I was about 3 years old, and every year I was in school, I was always in a music course of one kind or another. When I dropped out of high school is around the time I picked up the guitar, and I've been playing since. I haven't been practicing as much now as I was before (minimum of an hour a day, sometimes up to three, some complete missed days), but the amount of practice I get is generally maintaining my ability and adding slight gains - nowhere near the leaps and bounds I was making years before.
The real reason I've devoted so much time to it has to do with exposure, standing out because I excelled at it, given more time and encouragement to practice on top of my own selfish love of what I was doing. I think it's kind of chicken/egg about whether my love for making music comes from the fact that I'm good at it, or whether I'm good at it because I devote the time to it based on how much I enjoy it.
So I am pretty much on Atmosfear's side on this. While genetic predisposition helps, it only really stands out in the extreme cases - guys like Shaq who develop to a massive 7'1" gain advantages from being so tall/strong, and tend to choose fields where those talents will excel. But that's only the extreme cases - the average person will become an outstanding success in any field they actually apply themselves to. There are preferences based on exposure and encouragement at a younger age, but inborn talent is less important than is being stated in this thread.
P.S.: I am not trying to be conceited saying I'm good at the guitar - there are plenty of people who are significantly more talented than I am. It provides an apt example of how practice and dedication to any skill set will cause a chain reaction that causes one to succeed there, but the key in the majority of these cases is the sheer amount of hours the practitioner devotes to that skill set that makes the real difference, not a genetic disposition. Genes cause subtle differences, but rarely make a big difference.
Your fingers may not be predisposed, but your brain is. :)
I'm going to come back this thread later when I've actually eaten and my mind is functioning properly. I think you guys are severely misunderstanding what genetic traits do and what their purpose is.
Not everyone is equal. They can't be, or evolution wouldn't function.
I never really noticed this - I was in a gifted program here, and the birthdays were split pretty evenly across the classroom. There were slightly fewer birthdays later in the year, but close enough to even (probably no more than 3 or 4 kids in a class of 25~) that there wasn't an exceptional difference.Quote:
Originally Posted by Atmosfear
Also, in all the classes I took there, there was no real notable difference in intelligence/capability levels of the olderish kids to the younger ones. I was one of the later ones, being born in late september, but my average was consistently in the top 5 every year.
You so gotta read the book Next by Michael Crichton. It's a fantastic satire about some people taking genetics too seriously (not saying you are, I'm just saying that this book takes your point of view to the extremes).Quote:
Originally Posted by solecistic
Next was a terrible book. I hated Crichton for writing it.
Evolution doesn't function in humans we killed it with medicine, specialization, and leisure time.Quote:
Originally Posted by solecistic
As soon as humans began granting rights based on genetic similarities rather than differences, we effectively ended evolution's major impact.
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.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by solecistic
I would not call these people genetically fit.
Right. I'm not talking about those people. :) I assumed Atmosfear simply meant that declining need to always be assuring one's own survival was the issue. Obesity is another issue altogether.
Are you serious?! I mean, the dry humor was kinda old after page 500 but I thought it was great! What didn't you like about it?Quote:
Originally Posted by coqauvin
It was poorly written. Crichton has always been a little heavy-handed in getting his point across, his characters are unidimensional and never develop and the ideas he expounds are woefully underdevelopped. This is mostly a generalization, because he has, on occasion, displayed some flashes of genius (Jurassic Park, Andromeda Strain). But his last two books (State of Fear, Next) were really disappointing - the writing was rushed and sloppy, the characters unmemorable, he has a couple good concepts but either fails to develop them satisfactory, or they get only the briefest mention.
Mostly, it was his writing technique that bothered me the most.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by coqauvin
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by no_brains_no_worries
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.
Essentially, measure is unceasing.Quote:
Originally Posted by no_brains_no_worries
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.
I never really thought of it that way Coq and Sole. I keep getting the song Evolution by Korn in my head when I read your posts. Do you really think that if enough of these "unfit" genetic are passed on, the human race could devolve over time?
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.
From when, 2005?Quote:
Originally Posted by Infernus
The profound decrease in infant mortality takes that entire argument and shoves it straight out the door for the birds.Quote:
Originally Posted by solecistic
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.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Atmosfear
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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.
Not really.Quote:
Originally Posted by Atmosfear
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Atmosfear
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Atmosfear
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Atmosfear
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 feel the same way as gwahir does, and elaborating on inherent, while it works, more precise would be: inherently accesible from birth.Quote:
Originally Posted by gwahir
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 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.Quote:
Originally Posted by solecistic
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.
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?Quote:
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.
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.Quote:
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.
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 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.Quote:
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 don't think the threshold for work ethic is any higher than any other genetic determinant.
It probably isn't, but it seems as though many people treat it as though it is purely determined by nurture in discussions like these.Quote:
Originally Posted by Atmosfear
I'm going to just state my view on this so that I don't get confused about what it is later. I think that everyone is born with a disposition to prefer a certain job or task for various elements, but this disposition to enjoy or even have a slight edge doesn't guarantee excellence. There are those who, through consistent effort to improve, over enough time (as a basis, let's go with the 10,000 hours, or roughly 5-6 years of full time work) will excel at their chosen field/task, but these will succeed regardless of their genetic preference or abilities. As long as they continue to apply themselves, even if they have a slight handicap in the field, they will become leaders in it, provided they continue to truly apply themselves.
Generally, people enjoy doing things they are good at, for any number of reasons. If there is a genetic preference for a task or field, people are much more likely to choose that and excel at it, partly because they enjoy that field (creative work vs. concrete, hands-on work as an example), and partly because they gain recognition, encouragement and support from their environment because they are good at it. Genetic preference is more of an impulse, a preference in a certain direction, but a person's own choices and amount of dedication (which, as Sole pointed out, can be genetic) to a field are what determines whether or not you succeed. Anyone who is slightly above average can reach to the greatest levels of success, either in terms of physical talent, financial success or academia, provided they apply themselves.
I would say generally people work harder and prefer work that they receive recognition and appreciation for, and would thus be more willing to apply themselves to that field. Environment plays a large role.
Evolution, as it affects us in these times, is more a matter of social preference and quality than who is more fit to survive. People generally make subconcious choices for their mates rather than conciously choosing (well, I want to have his babies because he has lovely blue eyes and a sense of compassion). Evolution still affects us, in a way easily compared to the movie Idiocracy, although I doubt it will ever reach that extreme. Essentially, whoever has more babies, wins, and generally the elite have fewer children on average.
Well, that's enough pretentious BS from me for today.
edit:
I would argue that nurture could override genetic disposition in this area.Quote:
Originally Posted by sycld
Based on what evidence?Quote:
Originally Posted by coqauvin
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by sycld
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by sycld
What I was responding to was the idea that evolution somehow has stopped functioning in humans. It hasn't.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by sycld
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by sycld
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by sycld
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by sycld
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by sycld
I don't mean to nitpick.. but wouldn't it take many many years regardless to make long tails dominant?Quote:
Originally Posted by solecistic
Genes go back many generations, and skip many generations potentially.
My argument is a combination of both sycld's and this post.Quote:
Originally Posted by solecistic
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'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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sion
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:
Quote:
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.
AI out of AI
Oh wait
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by solecistic
Also, although I'm not as hardline as Atmosfear on this one, I veer closer to him than to Sole (at least as far as mental abilities are concerned) for the following reason: Human genetics encode for plasticity. That is to say, a human child is capable of learning, for example, a whole language in it's infancy. This is not inherent, a child can adapt to whatever language it is born into, and whatever culture; grasp metaphysical notions, understand, for example, the connotations of a tie, this thing that you wear around your neck which has no reference to anything in the EEA. A human being can be scared of the most ridiculous things, because fear is not always an inherent thing (although it arguably can be with some things like spiders and snakes, if trials with monkeys are anything to go by), but something which can be LEARNED rapidly. In the face of this overwhelming capacity for plasticity that our genetics afford us, I would argue that nurture has by far the greatest say because the natural component is so open to learning, developing skills in ANYTHING. This is SLT and behaviourism's greatest lesson.
To clarify, though, I don't take Atmosfear's "Evolution is not applicable lol" line, nor am I stating that there can't be any degree of heritable ability in some areas. I am particularly not arguing that some physiological attributes cannot give us an advantage in some areas, particularly sports and practical work.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Atmosfear
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)
Yep.Quote:
Originally Posted by Think
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. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Think
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Think
Oh jesus fucking christ are you just trying to troll now? I didn't say genetics had absolutely no effect. I said the effect was insignificant because I don't think the threshold for success is particularly high. If you want to argue about where the threshold is or why it should be considered "high" then that's a discussion.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kozzle
It invariably is significant, this is my argument.Quote:
Originally Posted by Atmosfear
I suppose you would have to define what is your idea of success before anything went further. I would define success to be able to live without -any- financial worry. For this to occur you have to be relatively well placed. For this to happen you typically need to have a good education. To have a good education usually (except for certain fields) requires some form of graduate studies. Graduate studies (at least in Canada) require minimum 3.7 average GPA. A 3.7 is significantly higher than the average university student (which already have an average intelligence significantly higher than the average person, I believe it's 1 standard deviation, I may be wrong on this one). Not all university students will ever make it to graduate studies, the vast majority don't actually.
If I were to quantify IQ (whether it is relevant or not is debatable) with success I would say it is roughly 130 (this is the average IQ of university professors, doctors, lawyers etc.) which is 2 standard deviations higher than the average population.
As far as we know intelligence owes itself to a large portion to genetics (and environment, of course). I would hardly consider the average college student who gets out and starts at ~15$ an hour (I'm not sure how this works in the states, but this is what a typical college student will start at) and move up to maybe 25$ an hour by the time they retire, to be very successful, I would consider that to simply be an average standard of living.
I don't know why you get so emotionally involved in these arguments, obviously there needs to be some clarifications on terms such as success, but from my rough view on the term success it is a significantly higher threshold than a 2 year college course or 4 year university degree. I think it has been derailed sufficiently, but if you seriously want to debate these things I would suggest keeping swearing and such out of it (I don't see the point in getting angry over these things unless it is seriously provoked) - anger typically breeds even more anger.
Aha, ok, I don't think we disagree, but I'll just clarify. The whole tails example had me thinking that you were saying that sexual selection could become completely misguided (longer and longer tails on a whim, totally at the expense of the survival value of individuals), so by saying "sexual selection is not completely blind", I was pointing out that the tails would either be advantageous in and of themselves or come alongside an advantageous gene or characteristic and serve as a kind of flag for it. Admittedly, it could be argued that peacock's tails (for example) DO come at the expense of the survival value of individuals, but they come alongside other characteristics that actually increase the fitness of the individual. Also, whilst there are positive feedback mechanisms at work, there are other very strict guidelines for mate choice. For example, human beings may develop a facial characteristic that indicates resistance to infant-killing viruses (I mean that the two genes occur simultaneously in the population, and so are equivalent in a sense to prospective mates). Now, this gene will spread like wildfire eventually, when Fisher's effect, as discussed, kicks in, but it will have quite a while lingering in the background to start with because we're "programmed" right now to choose mates with average-looking (I mean literally average, not in terms of how attractive they are :)) faces. This means that the gene will be avoided by most prospective mates for a while, meaning that the population with it will only increase slightly for long enough to "prove" (through natural selection) that there's nothing totally adverse about it in terms of it's survival value until reproduction (at which point, you're right, the face could split from the body and eat it alive, and it wouldn't make much difference to the genes' survival value).Quote:
Originally Posted by solecistic
Now if you were indicating, (as I can see it's almost certain you were in hindsight) that your stuff happens ONCE all this has happened, i.e. the "flag" feature could become attractive in and of itself or become increasingly exaggerated until it's effects are totally negative (males with higher and higher testosterone levels until we have no immune systems), then yeah, I think we agree. The only way to stop that happening is good old natural selection, really, although I daresay there's probably a couple of other systems in sexual selection that stop this from happening in more than a couple of cases.
Think, I think it's important to note that a sexual ornament doesn't have to have any other purpose. There are certainly examples of traits that are both sexually ornamental and genetically beneficial in other ways, as you've clearly shown - and in those cases, it certainly makes sense for females to select for those traits. But many times - if not most times, sexual ornaments are just sexual ornaments. Instead of one trait (a large jaw) being about a very specific underlying other trait (high testosterone), a sexual ornament can exist as a window into the genome of another organism. A peacock's tail has absolutely no value except as a sexual ornament, but the fact that the peacock has a high enough energy budget to grow a magnificent tail shows that as an organism, he is genetically fit. The tail has no other use, no other purpose, and no specific underlying trait. It exists only to attract mates. The reason it works as a fitness indicator is that a very beautiful tail costs a lot of energy to grow, due to its complexity and size. A peahen who chooses a beautifully-tailed peacock as a mate is more likely to produce offspring of better quality in larger quantity, thus ensuring that her own genes will continue on for more generations.
I'm afraid I'm going to have to stop you there. No one knows why yet, but peacocks with superior tails are far less likely to be eaten by predators (research study by Petrie in 1992). It's not conclusive, sure, but it suggests to me it's another flag ornament, that there's a heritable trait accompanying it.Quote:
Originally Posted by solecistic
Ok, yeah, following you here. The handicap principle. I totally agree that this can be a large part of sexual ornamentation.Quote:
Originally Posted by solecistic
Now, here's my position: I can totally see where you're coming from, but I feel that for a phenotype to be attractive within a population, it needs to have some sort of utility, at least to start with. I would agree that sexual ornaments can just be sexual ornaments, but I would argue that they originated for a reason. The structure of the male face, preference for an hourglass figure in females, preference for childlike features in female faces, preference for averagely proportioned faces - all of these desirable physical features have some sort of original practical purpose, even if they're mostly just ornaments now.
EDIT: it's funny, the only thing we're really not in accord about is the bit completely glossed over in the quote from the book you provided: "(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.)"
:)
There are a few ways that regular traits can become fitness indicators. A trait always starts out being a regular trait, of course, and like anything else, they have a variety of uses or reasons for existing. To become a sexual ornament, the trait must be able to interact with another organism's senses. Many species have certain sensory biases for a variety of reasons - for example, primate color vision evolved in part to notice brightly colored fruits (incidentally, the fruit evolved brighter colors to display its ripeness to attract primates and birds because their vehicle for reproduction is to pass through the digestive tract of those animals). Primates develop the visual bias because eating the fruit is beneficial. If a mutation occurs that gives a primate a red face, females can become attracted to that trait due to their visual bias for bright colors. This could influence the direction of sexual selection in that species.
Of course, this is only a first step. A red face may be attractive to females because of their sensory bias, but that red face would be a fairly weak fitness indicator. Getting the attention of a potential mate is very important, but it is by no means a guarantee for access to reproduction. Primates are social creatures and live in large groups, so it's safe to say that finding a mate is not difficult. As Miller puts it, they're "spoiled for choice." It's not too useful for a species if a sexual ornament isn't a credible fitness indicator.
So I think you're right that a trait has to have a use in order to become an ornament. But be careful not to assume that a sexual ornament must evolve to be a survival trait first - it is just as likely that the peacock's tail is coincidentally linked to lower mortality rates. It serves a much greater purpose as a fitness indicator to mates than as an intimidating display for predators - there are far less costly ways for prey animals to avoid being mangled between a strong pair of jaws. ;)
I love you so much right now
If that's your argument, then you haven't shown it's invariably significant. You would need to show that even if the bar were exceptionally low (for example, the threshold necessary to breathe), genetics would still be of absolutely critical importance. Yeah, okay, great... you need genes that everyone has. Who gives a flying fuck? Not significant to me.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kozzle
If the threshold is the ability to get a college degree, then it's set at about 110-115, which includes a little over 16% of the population. 50 million people. Walk onto the subway and you can't throw a stick without hitting someone over the threshold. 1 in 6! The odds are too good, they aren't significant to me; everyone I know has a shot at it. Don't care.