Charlie Bell wrote: > >> Unless there's a way to eliminate the need of one gender for >> reproduction. If a large enough number of lesbians chose to >> have girls by this method, the population could drift towards >> the "Glory Season" equilibrium: a huge majority of lesbians >> with a minority of males. > > You can only maintain that disequilibrium through a serious > manipulation of the way diploid organisms breed. > Many animal species have a disequilibrium. One way is by polygamy. The other way is by polyandry, and a female that puts enough eggs to compensate the small number of females. Since humans can hardly change ourselves into that second group, the more likely scenario is the first.
> Eusociality is one > way, where kin relations make sisters more important than daughters > (haploid creatures like bees, wasps and ants have this bias built > in). Manipulation of the breeding patterns, as in Glory Season, is > another. But even in the scenario in which you describe, the > selective advantage would be towards women who have sons, and as > homosexuality isn't genetic (although it may have a genetic > component) straight daughters would also have selective advantage. > Homosexuality is either genetic, cultural or a mix of both. In either case, a lesbian mother in a lesbian society will eventually have an influence in making the daughter lesbian too. And lesbians have a huge advantage in selection: they select the father of their daughters based on logical criteria, while hetero women chose based on "love" [or hormones, etc]. So, the daughters of lesbians will have a competitive advantage over the daughters of non-lesbians. >> Don't be so sure about this. Having babies is a huge investment >> in a human's lifetime, so spending lots of money to have the >> baby of your dreams is the most likely scenario. Gattaca comes >> to mind - with the risk of being banned from the List, for >> mentioning _two_ sf stories, one by Himself. > > Even if it does become a common procedure, the selective balance > prevails. Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium models can be used to show how > this happens. > So please enlighten me about this. Intuition shows that genetic manipulation and selection will converge to a mix of Glory Season and Gattaca. >> Eugenics is evil when it's done by murder - but then it should >> not be called Eugenics but simply Mass-Murder. > > Therein lies the issue. Some among us regard discarding unimplanted > blastocysts as murder. I don't, and I'm guessing from your tone that > you don't either. > If/when medical techniques evolve, it's expected that not even this kind of selection will be necessary. Selection at the level of eggs may be what we will do - and then there's no reason why both eggs can't come from two women. Males are doomed to extinction - but we will die happily. Alberto Monteiro _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
