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How Child Support Laws Could Cause Human Speciation
We discuss how child support laws may be contributing to a form of human speciation by enforcing reproductive isolation between high and low income groups. We explore the two main reproduction strategies - having lots of kids due to lack of contraception/impulse control vs having resources to support kids. Historically, some genetic drift occurred between the strategies but child support laws now punish the wealthy from straying, preventing gene flow. We cover how you see a U-curve in fertility by income, touch on ethical considerations, and the damage from affirmative action.
Simone Collins: [00:00:00] I almost feel like there's been speciation culturally, like even within generations. So there's not like a genetic incompatibility, but we've reached a point at which like some groups are now so culturally and like.
Um, worldview incompatible that they're almost like different species. Like each of them will view the other, like an animal that they cannot comprehend and that cannot possibly have a soul because they're so different. And they don't make any sense. And they cannot empathize with them and they, they will not see them as human.
And that really scares me because when you get that level of. A, a lack of ability to empathize or relate to other groups. That's when you start seeing atrocities, that's when you start seeing violence. And I, I very much worry about it.
Would you like to know more?
Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone.
Simone Collins: Hello, gorgeous. Okay, so remember that day where you gave me this tweet to edit and I edited it and I had no idea what you're talking about and then I I I tweeted it and then Subsequently deleted it because you're like you [00:01:00] completely ruined my point and I didn't understand your point at all because your point Then I find this very intriguing is that child support could cause human speciation.
Walk me through this,
Malcolm Collins: Malcolm. Okay, so, and not child care, which she changed it to, which is a nonsensical statement. Child care could not cause human speciation. None of this made sense to
Simone Collins: me, though. So, help.
Malcolm Collins: Help. So, this involves understanding how speciation happens in animals and how humans bred in a historical context.
So, first, let's talk about speciation in animals. There are two core types of speciation. You could either have something called geographic isolation or something called behavioral isolation. Geographic isolation happens when something like you have a population of deer and then a stream starts to form between them and then the stream gets bigger and bigger and bigger and eventually becomes a river or like two continents drift apart or something like that or an animal gets stuck on an island in the middle of nowhere.
What you're [00:02:00] having in all of these instances is two populations of the same species have become genetically isolated from each other. So mutations that are happening in one part of the species are no longer drifting to the other part of the species. So typically if you have a population of animals and they're all interbreeding with each other, any beneficial mutation is going to increase within the species as a whole.
Right? You know, it will begin to spread throughout all members of the species and then in, in, in, you know, help the species as a whole. But if it's isolated with two populations, you might have some beneficial mutations spreading within this group and other beneficial mutations spreading within this group.
And now, these two groups end up having sort of a new optimal state in which different types of beneficial mutations are benefiting each group because they are, Utilizing different ecological niches are utilizing different strategies to take advantage of their ecological niche. Now
Published on 1 year, 10 months ago