Fitness

"The fear mongering about China is one aspect of [Geoffrey Miller's Edge.org essay, Chinese Eugenics], although to be fair there are some sentences in the end that suggest Miller’s fear mongering is more like an idealisation of what he fancies to be the Chinese state and culture. I thought the strangest part of his piece is he takes it for a given that eugenics work, and the only reason it is not done in the west is some kind of backward political correctness. The man is a proper nazi. That would be my main problem with him. By the way, selective breeding on livestock did produce more milk producing cows and more obedient dogs, but all these races are hopelessly unadapted to the changing natural environment and would not stand competition with their natural counterparts outside their human protected enclave. I think it would be the same if some people played with selecting people’s genes to maximise one trait at the expense of other traits."—Anonymous (link)

"As with all fine-tuning stories, however, an unresolved question lurks in these and other examples: why does variety persist? […] no matter how much a potential mate might admire your intelligence, for example, he or she might think twice about you if you lack bodily coordination or adequate social skills. We choose whole individuals to mate with, warts and all, and we also have no reliable way of predicting how our genetically unique offspring will turn out. Further, every individual belongs to a population, and that population to a species. Those species and populations are also out there competing in nature with similar entities; and the excellence of your adaptations as an individual will count for little if your population as a whole is being edged out."—Ian Tattersall (link)

"Dear obese PhD applicants: if you didn't have the willpower to stop eating carbs, you won't have the willpower to do a dissertation. #truth."—Geoffrey Miller (link) *by way of Le Show