human evolution

i'm curious about this statement.
the only thing that eugenics can "work on" is heritable characteristics. The only other class of characteristics are acquired, and eugenics doesn't talk about these at all.

but perhaps you mean that eugenics will work on diseases first, that is look at eliminating the negatives before it accentuates the positives (music plays). that is, eliminate genetically based disease and then work on selection for more intelligence.

the reason i am saying something is that i had a really interesting class years back, where there was a class assignment to practice eugenics on paper.

the first part was to simulate eliminating the lower 5 then 10 then 15% of a given trait. ie, your disease eugenics. Then after so many generations see where the mean and SD changed for this trait.

likewise the reverse, increase the top 5, then 10 then 15% of the trait. and do the same thing, compare mean and SD for the trait.

if i remember the solution right, there was no noticable effect at 5% a bit at 10% and statistically significant effect if you manipulated 15% of the population. the point was that eugenics requires rather strenuous and very significant changes to really accomplish anything.

the issues are going to be political and social, as they are already, not really scientific.

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I'm curious as to exactly what simulation of genetic and environmental effects your on-paper simulation used.

Also, how many generations was it meant to be over?

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it was not a specific trait. the trait was assumed to form a continuous gaussian curve. what we did was eliminate the bottom 5, 10, 15% of the population* and see how the mean and SD changed. we had a formula(it was given, a function of mean, SD, number of individuals, and a variation parameter, if i remember correctly, again) that reflected regression to the mean principle and the creation of new variation both to higher and lower sides. then run the given equation with the truncated population. those that did it by hand did 10 generations i think, i programed it in qbasic (yes it was that long ago) and printed out 50 or 75 generations.

the surprising effect was that eugenics is not really any good unless it is really robust and involves a significant % or the population. it is not sufficient simply to stop people with IQ's under 60 from breeding (for an example that we discussed at length) it is more like stopping all breeding under 90 to have an effect that is really measurable and significant. this was the take home message of the exercise. eugenics to work scientifically will be too invasion socially and politically. a lesser program is not scientifically justifiable.

i looked online and didn't see anything like this program and equation. i suspect it was a common thing to do about 10 years (+) ago and there ought to be universities still using the problem. but i didn't find them googling.

hope that helps.

btw.
the issue was also the time element, it took generations for any significant change, it was a tradeoff between time and robustness of the eugenics program.

notes:
* we did the same thing by doubling the top 5, 10, 15% of the population to see if positive eugenics was any better than negative. i think positive was better, i think it showed a pull was of greater value versus a push one, but i don't remember why.

__________________
i got a warning for flaming.
i find myself unable to participate here as a result.
this being the first of it's kind since i signed into FidoNet 20 years ago.
and am no longer posting to CF.

thanks to everyone who i have encountered over the years i spent here.

But eugenics is by definition enforced. What some people have been calling eugenics (my prefference of brunettes over blondes, etc.) is just sexual selection.

it depends on how you wish to define eugenics.

the difference in average IQ between Jews and Europeans is the result of the difference in mating patterns over 1000 years.

the Jews typically married within their community, mating the richest man's daughter to the boy who finished best in Hebrew school. often making the rabbi in a community the most educated and brightest man, and his wife the scion of the most prosperous family. the best of nature and nuture.

otoh, the medieval church practiced celibacy for the priests who also were the best educated and often were the only people who could read. even the upper classes, which btw, were military not intellectually based, often could not read and used priest as their instruments to communicate and write.

the opposite happened in China where for 2500 years (off and on, mostly on) the mandarian system rewarded intelligence with roles of responsibility, power, prestige and material wealth. grafted into a system built on military conquest, just like in Europe. but the intellectuals in China were not celibate.

this is eugenics in action. rules that restrict some or encourage other specific non-random behavior over time in mating and reproductive areas.


btw.
if this is substantially right, you should find that Europeans are selected for military advantages like size, strength, endurance and that both Jews and Chinese are selected more for intellectual things, because of their different societies emphasis over the centuries.

__________________
i got a warning for flaming.
i find myself unable to participate here as a result.
this being the first of it's kind since i signed into FidoNet 20 years ago.
and am no longer posting to CF.

thanks to everyone who i have encountered over the years i spent here.