Re: poly: Missing Sperm Donors

Curt Adams writes:
At 10:13 PM 1/12/98 EST, you wrote:
>Not too surprising, though, when you consider that knowledge
>of the effects of sperm are recent and the opportunity to
>spread sperm without sex essentially nil until this century.
>It does indicate that high-level cognitive choice for
>reproduction hasn't been highly selected for; but current
>conventional wisdom is that details of cognitive function
>like that aren't strongly affected by genes. So selection
>has had no good way to make men intellectually decide
>genetic dispersal is a benefit.

Many women I've known have seemed to have strong drive to have
and hold a baby of their own. They then use their cognitive
abilities to figure out how to get such a baby. I think many
men similarly have drives for kids of their own, which they
then use their cognitive abilities to figure out how to get.

So I don't think its that evolution hasn't adjusted to the
fact that we have brains and can use them to get what we want.
It's more that the particular things we are driven to want
are not as abstract as the things our genes actually want.
So there are cases left out, cases which once were negligible,
but are now important.

Robin Hanson
hanson@econ.berkeley.edu http://hanson.berkeley.edu/
RWJF Health Policy Scholar, Sch. of Public Health 510-643-1884
140 Warren Hall, UC Berkeley, CA 94720-7360 FAX: 510-643-8614
Received on Tue Jan 13 17:50:53 1998