new start

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, Lucio de Souza Coelho
wrote:

> I used our shared expanded brain (aka the Internet :-) and then I
found this
> article:
>
http://www.biology.missouri.edu/courses/bio302_cocroft/bio302_cocroft
_protected/FarmFox.pdf

That was a very interesting paper. Thanks for digging it up and
bringing it to our attention.

I found it noteworthy that the researchers were actually able to
identify chemical physiological causes for behavior. This is a
variant on the genetics issue.

This leads me to ask, if chemicals in the physiology of foxes can
initiate behavior, why are we immune?

We've all heard of the fight or flight reflex. We are able to
conquer that reflex but only at the expense of inducing some other
physical response, i.e., stress.

How are we sure that our behavior has no biological cause and that
it is all the work of our free will which is derived from the
environmental influences that surround us, and not our biology
acting upon the influences and sending chemicals rushing through our
brains which lead us to think we're acting on free will?

>
> The article stressed something that specially worries me about
eugenics: when
> you obsessively selects a trait in your population, automatically
you loose
> the pressure in other traits, and then your population starts to
display a
> lot of unwanted "side effects" - they can be just curious details
like floppy
> ears, but there can be also creation and higher incidence of
genetic
> diseases/weaknesses.

Wouldn't the result of this process, the good and the bad, be the
creation of a new race? If you accept the "Out of Africa"
hypothesis, then as Homo Sapiens migrated across the world, and
splintered into clusters, and each cluster faced unique
environmental conditions, the result was Homo Sapiens adapted to the
varying conditions by developing traits that we now see as the races.

So, perhaps we will one day encoutner floppy eared "Homo Orionis."

As for unintended consequences I think that if a group embarks on
modifying their genome and discover these unintended results, they
how the power to correct the direction, whereas the fox doesn't. The
fox's evolution is resulting strictly from environmental forces,
with no genomic tinkering.

>
> So, my suspicion is that eugenics in humans, driven by seemingly
aesthetic and
> subjective concepts like "intelligence", may in fact produce
artificial human
> races that will be weaker in all aspects but the trait that they
were
> selected for.
>
> Lucio Coelho
> (who, like my cats, has no "defined race" either. :-)

I see we're both in agreement that a new race is probably the result
of the process. I don't think we can assign a moral value to its
creation anymore than we can to the myriad races that already exist.

I'm not sure it'll matter that it is *artificial.*

I'm also not sure that we can conclude that the race will be weaker
in all respects. In some aspects, I'm sure it will be, possibly by
design and also by accident.

But as you pointed out, perhaps they won't be a race at all, real or
artificial, anymore than the Brazilian mileau creates a race, or
Eurasians are a distinct race. Perhaps it becomes a question of
specific identifiable characteristics being a prerequisite in order
to be called a race.

Good link, thanks.

TangoMan