The Right Gets It Wrong On Genetics #3

I had no intention of firing off two salvos of the fledgling Right Get It Wrong series so quickly, but the references to bad biology keep showing up in the bloglist. Keep in mind that these are not arguments made by people I want to dismiss as inept, but by writers I've added to my own daily reading list. There would be little use in a Left Gets It Wrong or Center Gets It Wrong, as they are too willfully ignorant on such matters to even concede basic observations about the domain. In this case, unfortunately, the battle line against materialist dogma cuts right through our own camp. Most, I imagine, have not taken time to see for themselves that the scientific evidence weighs heavily against neo-Darwinism, despite all claims made to the contrary. Still, these guys are far too smart to be repeating such easily disproven falsehoods.

Spandrell

We'll start with Spandrell, who has come off hiatus to express his pessimism for the demographic outlook of the West. Perhaps he is correct - there is certainly room for pessimism - but he rests his argument on some faulty assumptions about genetics.

“Oh come on”, you may say. It’s never going to get that bad. At some point demographic trends self-correct, right? Evolution will run its course. Leftists aren’t having children, eventually the differential fertility of conservative people will make sure everyone is based and redpilled.

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard that, I’d be the pope. Yes, Catholics love this argument. Christians, more widely. They have sacrificed a lot to have children and stable families in this society which does everything it can to promote unhappiness and dysfunctional lifestyles. If there is a God, surely at least their sacrifices will win them the future of the species? History will talk about them as ancestors of the next stage of humanity. Right??

Wrong. I’m sorry guys, but evolution doesn’t work like that. Yes, sure, evolution is about differential reproduction. Whatever genes make you have more babies in a given environment, spread in the genepool. And whatever genes do the opposite, make it marginally harder for you to reproduce, disappear from the genepool. So yes, on the face of it, “genes that make you want children” are by definition being promoted by natural selection. The argument, as explained by promoters such as Anatoly Karlin, is that humans until now have been fruitful and multiplied perfectly well through a basic motivation: seeking sexual pleasure. But that motivation doesn’t work anymore in an environment with easy contraception, so the future belongs to people with psychological traits that make them enjoy family life.

Does it work like that, though? Are there any genes that “make you want children”? Does the brain work like that? The human brain is complicated, you see, but it is also an evolution of the more basic mammal brain, and its circuitry must follow roughly the same pathways. And last time I checked all mammals reproduce exactly the same way. The male produce quadrillions of sperm every minute, and are at the hunt of every ovulating female. The moment they find one they jump onto her, copulate semi-forcibly, and babies ensue. Yeah, this pretty much includes humans.

The idea that humans are going to single-handedly evolve, over single-digit generations, a completely different pattern of reproduction to replace one which has been functional for 60 million years strikes me as pretty wild wishful thinking.

The Anatoly Karlin article referenced is Breeder's Revenge, and was previously discussed in the first installment of this series this past January. Karlin makes the argument that the current environment is culling out those with low propensity to parenthood, leaving behind a core of heavy breeders who will push the fertility numbers back up. He shares some evidence that we may already be past the inflection point.

Spandrell rebuts by arguing that genes for breeding could not change significantly in such a short time spans. More generally, that the observed complex trait could not have evolved in the given timeframe. Welcome to the theory of evolution, Mr. Spandrell, I hope you enjoy your stay. If you'd be so kind, please tell me which complex human trait did evolve in the time allotted by anthropologists.

Spandrell sort of stumbles into one of the two major arguments against neo-Darwinism: space & time. Here, we normally rebut the theory by pointing out the lack of genetic space: there is only a pittance of genes that are particular to human beings. Another argument is about time, and is the one Vox Day uses by simply taking the assumptions used by geneticists and showing that they are impossible. Most people don't realize the process that must occur for a trait to evolve by random mutations. There must be some proposed series of mutations that must occur - more or less in order - to get from the pre-trait to post-trait species. Each individual mutation must spread throughout the species (fixate) before the next step is viable. That means each step must be accompanied by a significant survival advantage. The number of generations required for a genetic fixation depends on the size of the population and its dispersement, but an average given is 1600 generations. For humans with generations at about 20 years spaced (historically), that is 32,000 years per mutation. However, that assumes that each new mutation comes right when needed. Experiments with bacteria suggest about 1000 generations for each beneficial mutation (we'll take them at their word for sake of argument). That pushes us back to over 50,000 years per mutation. Suddenly the few million years separating man from chimpanzee doesn't look very long to accommodate the many millions of mutations that are said to separate the two.

 He almost starts to get the right picture.

Does it work like that, though? Are there any genes that “make you want children”?

But then veers back into the genetic weeds. No, there are no genes that promote parenthood, but that doesn't mean the desire to do so isn't a heritable trait. Most biological traits are not transmitted by genetics. Which means the daunting limits incurred by the actual mechanics of random gene mutation are not actually relevant. We can't know right now if Anatoly's theory is correct, but if the fertility rate really does start to turn back upwards, it will be strong evidence in his favor.

Zman

Z makes the list again, in Ethics and Authority. He says,

This connection between ethics and authority is what has always haunted atheism, which denies the most common source of moral authority. In fact, atheism is mostly a negative identity, so the atheist invests heavily in attacking the moral authority of Christianity. Oddly, they suffer the same defect in logic as evolution deniers.

I would invite Z to specify what defect in logic I make in my scientific arguments against the neo-Darwinian hypothesis of evolution. It's certainly not a "negative identity." I always assumed I was an evolutionist, until I realized that the evidence clearly contradicts it. Z is himself a self-described dissident - an inherently negative identity - but that doesn't mean it invalidates all the insightful social commentary he makes.