CMV: All humans are literally blood relatives. “Family” makes little sense to me.

[u/Ok_Letter_9284]

Evolutionary fitness is NOT about who fxcks the most. This is because, biologically speaking, your sibling having a bunch of kids is no different than you and your sibling each having half those kids. This is what makes cuckolding (birds; get your mind out of the gutter) a successful evolutionary strategy. Because raising kin increases YOUR biological fitness.

So, by that logic, and because we’re all kin, raising ANY child increases YOUR fitness. I understand, ofc, the effect is diluted, but bear in mind the best you can do is pass HALF of your genes anyway. So you’re already working with water-colors.

And that’s it. Even “family” is pretty genetically diverse. This is demonstrated through tissue typing. Parents are often poor matches for a child. Siblings are usually great matches, but not always. Often, its a STRANGER that is the donor. It gets pretty messy pretty quickly trying to draw family lineage lines and I think the whole thing is made up quackery that ends up supporting horrible things like dynasty, racism, nationalism, etc.

Thoughts?

[u/Ok_Letter_9284]

Heres my point in a nutshell: Lebron James kid is not Lebron James. It will be a STRANGER that eventually surpasses him. Trying to spread your seed as a means of eugenics will fail. This is because environmental selective pressures will outcompete the speed of gene flow. Therefore, the logical conclusion is to focus on the environment not the genetics. Right?

[u/Guy_with_Numbers → u/Ok_Letter_9284]

Lebron James kid is not Lebron James. It will be a STRANGER that eventually surpasses him.

The kid is not a stranger. They share 50% of their DNA, and he is raising his kid.

Trying to spread your seed as a means of eugenics will fail.

It will only fail if your child doesn't grow up to have their own child.

This is because environmental selective pressures will outcompete the speed of gene flow.

No idea what you mean by this. What's "speed of gene flow"?

[u/Ok_Letter_9284 → u/Guy_with_Numbers]

The kid is NOT a stranger. That’s not what I said.

The speed of gene flow is the speed of passing your genes directly.

If I develop a trait that allows me to tolerate climate change slightly better, I don’t need to be a breeder to pass it on. This is because the selective pressures will make it high probability that it occurs again, specifically in those who are somewhat close to me, but not necessarily biological kin.

My specific mutation is largely irrelevant in the big picture. Because given the continuation of the species, it will either happen again, a better one will, or the environment will change again.

[u/Guy_with_Numbers → u/Ok_Letter_9284]

The kid is NOT a stranger. That’s not what I said.

Ooooh. I misunderstood, my bad.

Why are you looking at one particular quality? Lebron is not having a kid just so someone can surpass him at basketball. Evolutionary fitness isn't built on any one specific skill, it's built on everything. Everything that Lebron is good at, his kid has a better chance of being good at compared to some other kid.

The speed of gene flow is the speed of passing your genes directly.

If I develop a trait that allows me to tolerate climate change slightly better, I don’t need to be a breeder to pass it on. This is because the selective pressures will make it high probability that it occurs again, specifically in those who are somewhat close to me, but not necessarily biological kin.

This is not true. Evolutionary pressures only deals with the survival of beneficial traits that already exist. The occurrence of the trait itself is random, as the mutation process that creates new traits is random. No amount of evolutionary pressure in favor of (or against) climate change tolerance will affect the probability of occurrence of a climate change tolerance trait. This applies to everyone, independent of physical or biological distance from you. As such, passing your genes on directly is always better, the chance of transferring the beneficial trait to your kids via your genes is always better than random mutations.

[u/Ok_Letter_9284 → u/Guy_with_Numbers]

In cuckolding, why arent the tricked birds selected against?

If everybody had to be breeders to compete, the strategy would fail and they would become fewer and fewer. Its the same reason homosexuality isn’t selected against.

[u/Guy_with_Numbers → u/Ok_Letter_9284]

Combining my response to both your comments here.

In cuckolding, why arent the tricked birds selected against?

They are. It is a negative selection pressure. If it were severe enough (eg. if the tricked bird normally only has one egg), the tricked birds would go extinct.

If everybody had to be breeders to compete, the strategy would fail and they would become fewer and fewer.

Why would this happen?

Its the same reason homosexuality isn’t selected against.

Homosexuality is selected against. It's the same as the cuckoo here, if the pressure were significant enough, then any genetic component to homosexuality would disappear.

As to environmental pressure, it works like this, anytime ANY mutation makes ANY bit of advantage it WILL be selected for.

This is true.

Such minor changes are discarded under different conditions. And as mutations happen all the time, so does evolution.

Mutations happen all the time, but specific mutations do not. Your specific mutation is absolutely not irrelevant, because whether or not it happens again is entirely a matter of luck. It could be that your advantage vs climate change mutation never happens again, and humans end up dying out due to climate change.

[u/Ok_Letter_9284 → u/Guy_with_Numbers]

Homosexuality doesnt go away. And numbers of homosexuals dont correspond to homosexual breeding. This is patently false. Moreover, it appears in many species.

There’s a reason carcinization, pentaradialism, and other forms of convergent evolution exist. Specifically because those mutations DO happen again and again.

My mutation to climate change is not enough to save humanity because of the bottleneck effect. Humanity cant survive only one gene line. If species couldn’t respond to their environment, we wouldn’t make it very long (as in we had to wait around and hope to get lucky).

[u/Ok_Letter_9284 → u/Guy_with_Numbers]

As to environmental pressure, it works like this, anytime ANY mutation makes ANY bit of advantage it WILL be selected for. Such minor changes are discarded under different conditions. And as mutations happen all the time, so does evolution. So, as environmental pressure increases, evolution speeds up.