I just read a New York Times Article on how a lot of personality is likely genetic. It didn’t seem like much of a surprise to me. Smart parents have smart children, skinny parents have skinny children, risk-taking parents have risk-taking children, etc. etc. What I find interesting is that if personalites are inherited then that means they are selected through the evolutionary process just like the rest of our genes. What’s interesting is that the only thing that our genes are selected on is our ability to procreate. If you had the choice to control what criteria different genes are selected on (like in the design of genetic algorithms), I would think you would choose something better than simply the ability to find a mate and live long enough to procreate. Things like selecting non-violent personalities, creative personalites, etc, would seem like better choices.

It’s a little weird the way that natural selection has evolved. It used to be “survival of fittest” and those that could not find their own food or fend for themselves would die. Now that’s not as much as an issue but the natural selection still occurs in other ways. Single women are selecting sperm to have children from online databases, selecting the ones with the best test scores, athleticism, etc (New York Times: “Wanted: A Few Good Sperm”). People are already genetically screening their children and not having any that have significant diseases (New York Times: “A Wrongful Birth?”). Soon people will probably be genetically engineering their children to be more perfect before they are born.

At some point in this chain we have to have gone too far, right?