Modern reflief for evolutionary pressures.

[RIPP_n_WIPE]

I recently had an interesting discussion with a philosophy professor at my school. He was talking about some wierd idea of "human cyborgs". Human beings, who are addicted to internet sex have allowed their machines to become apart of them. It got me to thinking, what other types of behaviors that normally would have been repressed or an alternative would have been forced on a person in the past presently exsists outlets for what might have been an evolutionary pressure that under older conditions would usually reduce fecundity.

For example, my friends mother is allergic to wheat gluten. Now there are many substitutes for wheat based food. However, 100 or 200 years ago, unless she was very rich and her family knew what was wrong with her, she probably would have died soon after weaning since she couldn't consume bread and other wheat staples, at the very minimum she would have been ill most of her life and had difficulty buying food since her selection would have been limited.

In the reverse a trait that might have in the past,not mattered when it came to fecundity, now because of relief which now allows a trait to be expressed instead reduces fecundity. For example, if an individual has difficulty forming relationships with other people and relishes in fantasy relationships from literature or pornagraphy, might have 100 or 200 years ago had been forced to form relationships because there was no alternative or an alternative was not available to them (being unable to read escapist literature due to illiteracy). Or someone who was homosexual might have in the past, in order to make up for their inablity (due to societal pressure) in the past to enjoy a mate of their sexual preference, might have married someone of the opposite sex anyway since social pressure would have made an open homosexual relationship impossible. Today some of that pressure is largely not present and someone who might have reproduced naturally may not (note this does not account for artifical inseminations).

Any thoughts on this?

[Darth Wong]

It's ridiculously obvious that our cultural conditions have a significant impact on evolutionary pressures, particularly on sexual selection pressures; it seems almost silly to go to any length to explain why.

[Mobiboros]

Maybe the conversation was much more fascinating in person but some of the "points" seem really undeveloped and lacking in follow through. Take the porn example. Is he seriously implying that people enjoying porn is a phenomenon limited to the modern day internet? And that porn somehow lowers a persons chances of marrying and reproducing?

I'm thinking this professor might want to pop over the one of the social science departments, or even one of the philosophy professors involved in cognition studies and have a chat with them because a lot of the topics there wre things that have been studied for a very long time.

[Darth Wong]

Maybe the conversation was much more fascinating in person but some of the "points" seem really undeveloped and lacking in follow through. Take the porn example. Is he seriously implying that people enjoying porn is a phenomenon limited to the modern day internet? And that porn somehow lowers a persons chances of marrying and reproducing?

I'm thinking that this professor has a lot of psychological baggage, possible from religious culture or a religious upbringing. Fundies often believe that porn is a replacement for conventional relationships and sexuality, rather than being the peppercorn that you sprinkle on your steak. Nobody actually replaces the steak with the peppercorn, but religious people tend to think that way.

[Mobiboros]

I'm thinking that this professor has a lot of psychological baggage, possible from religious culture or a religious upbringing. Fundies often believe that porn is a replacement for conventional relationships and sexuality, rather than being the peppercorn that you sprinkle on your steak. Nobody actually replaces the steak with the peppercorn, but religious people tend to think that way.

It's just weird given how widespread and ancient porn is. How prevalent and old porn is denies that it hampers reproduction. Even moreso given the Song of Solomon in the bible is basically porn (discounting the apologetic "It's about love for god!" crap).

Incidentally, I like the peppercorn analogy.

[RIPP_n_WIPE]

No she was citing examples of his colleagues mentioning individuals who use internet pornography and relationships to the exclusion of real life human ones. It wasn't his "idea". He was actually talking about examples that his colleagues had presented to him and how they had formulated it into a theory.

But that's not entirely what I was shooting for. I was just thinking how society and technology have removed elements which in the past would have been evolutionary stresses which may or may not have killed a person or in the case of a mental pathology, have given one the opportunity to "express" what for them was a portion of their personality, however due to a societal hang up or something else, an individual would have chosen to not express this portion of themselves.

I was also standing next to his wife who, incidentally is a Sociology PhD student. She cited examples of similary group behavior from her colleagues which is how we got in to the discuss. It was MY idea however, that such behaviors that in the past may not have been expressed now have outlets in addition to other ideas about evolutionary pressures that do not result from societal pressure. Like the idea that people can have weaker immune systems nowadays as compared to the past since medication is available. I was just thinking about how (barring our own genetic engineering) technologically and socially we might be reducing our natural evolutionary potential since we're taking problems that our genes would have normally solved and instead solving them with technology (or a intellectual enlightenment). Of course if we can remove a pressure via technology who's to say we would need to evolve around it anyway?

That, I think, is a bit better wording of what I ended up thinking of.

[Mobiboros]

That, I think, is a bit better wording of what I ended up thinking of.

That's... odd.

You could make the statement "Through technology humans have managed to overcome things that would have killed them without technology", but that really has nothing to do with stopping or slowing evolution. Evolution is just heritable transmission of genes. It's not some magical thing that drives change, it IS the change. Technology has allowed us to remove some obstacles to survival, and some of what would have been considered "Natural Selection". But all our technology does is change what drives the changes.