All the great questions I had been asking myself are being answered one by one. The issue if natural selection is working on modern human populations is now clear: of course it is. What qualities are being selected for and against? As since Darwin, the British are far ahead of everybody in evolution. (How they succeed in keeping their advantage 150 years?) Daniel Nettle and Thomas Pollet, of Newcastle University (Nov.2008) set out to disentangle the effects of education and wealth on number of progeny for both men and women. The results are: there is a strong selection coefficient relating men’s wealth and the offspring they produce, meaning that the wealthier men do in fact have more children. This is despite a negative effect on (and therefore selection against) education, again in men. In other words, natural selection in contemporary British society is favoring wealthy but under-educated men (though the negative effect of education disappears at very high levels of wealth). The pattern for women is completely different. Instead of uneducated but rich, natural selection is favoring British girls who are uneducated and poor.
Education reduces fitness, and natural selection favors uneducated men who succeed in amassing wealth. Say, a plumber (pic).
Education reduces fitness, and natural selection favors uneducated men who succeed in amassing wealth. Say, a plumber (pic).
1 comment:
This reminds me of Steve Sailer's article stating that the majority of the British are descended from the middle class, not the poor or the rich.
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