Criteria for Natural Selection
Thursday, June 15th, 2006I 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.