The virtue of excellence
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Evolutionary rapidity
This bit on silver foxes calls out the necessary timeframes for evolution to occur (how long it ACTUALLY took). 30 generations to move from normal skittish aggressive foxes to fully domesticated. Of course, given the source, there's some HBD content at the bottom....but think about it. In the Evolutionarily Stable Environment, the human generation-length is about 15-20 years. 450 years, then, to massively impact a pyschological/emotional trait. This even puts Gregory Clark in his Englander evolution from 1200 to 1800 in highly credible territory. Perhaps we didn't get 5-sigma differences in time-preference, IQ and merchant behaviors like they did with the foxes in 30 generations (100% eugenics), but even a 2-sigma shift due to a substantial advantage in rich-folks breeding would be substantial.
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