Dynamics Of Humanities

Attatched in 'Autism & Human Evolution'
written by sam_handelman
[ #128123 ] 2006.02.04 2:37

Very interesting reading stuff.

Heh. I got a 14. -sam_handelman

By the way, what's this?

Firstly, autism is not a real trait. It is a classification we use when discussing a family of (probably completely unrelated) traits with similar outcomes in terms of making people behave like Rainman. Even Asperger Syndrome is classified exclusively on the basis of behavior - if there is a syndrome there, we don't have a fraction of the depth of understanding needed to know what it is.

Interesting. I myself used to have a misunderstanding as to the usage of the words. I correct.

Now, you can still make an argument that this class of autistic traits has been, or will be, selected for in the human population. In both cases, we can only speculate.

I am not autistic at all, then I always assume this type of claim made by autistic people is merely self-righteous.

I maintain that human beings have been selected for intellectual diversity. A tribe of humans would survive best if it had some members who were cautious, some who were bold, some who were more capable of abstract thought, some who were more sociable, and so forth. In some cases there is a tradeoff, due to the engineering limitations of the human nervous system.

It is dubious for us to exaggerate the role of some particular group in a human tribe.

It is also possible - as is the case with Cystic Fibrosis, for example - that there are genes associated with autistic traits that have some beneficial effect when present in single copy. This is total speculation, however - our understanding of the relationship between human genetics and human intellectual diversity is shallow, at best. It is entirely possible that the spectrum of autism-like disorders are very rarely caused by genetics and mostly by environmental factors - the fact that they show some indications of heritability not withstanding (see child rearing practices below).

Good point. I entirely agree to your opinion.

At present, the majority of selective pressure on human beings is cultural. Will we wipe ourselves out as a species? That's a big one, not a genetic question.

For individual humans, the question is becoming not "am I fit to reproduce?", or "am I rich enough to reproduce?", but "do I *want* to reproduce?"

The obvious effect of the wide availability of birth control is that people who just want to have sex without having children are now absolutely free to do so, and they will. This may have some impact on the frequency of genes that impact, for example, the strength of parent-child bonding one way or the other.

This is very true. Retrogression will occur in the organism that stopped being used frequently. Genes related to this practice are not the exclusion.

However, the overwhelming effect is going to be on child-rearing practices. If you have child-rearing practices that give you children who do not, in turn, want to have children - those child-rearing practices will die out. This is another form of cultural selection.

This is the very reason of our human dynamism. It is correct to grasp the nature of humans as this.