Johns comments about

> Assuming that some eye-sight disabilities are of genetic origin, the
> marginal selective advantage would, in the "tooth and claw" scenario,
> lead to those with better eye-sight surviving and, crucially,
> reproducing more succesfully.
> Even in the Social Darwinists' world however, this does not happen -
> instead there is the provision of spectacles....

reminded me of an example Professor John Maynard Smith used to give to his 
students when teaching evolution theory (this was decades ago when I was a 
biology student!).  He argued that severely myopic men in the UK (like 
himself - his glasses were as thick as the bottoms of beer bottles) had 
been strongly selected for during the first half of the 20th Century as 
they did not have to go and fight in either the first or second world wars 
and therefore had a greater chance of passing on their genes (having babies 
to you and me) than young men who had 20:20 vision.

Maynard Smith used this example to illustrate the absurdity of Social 
Darwnist arguments.  Like many of the great Evolutionary theorists of his 
generation (e.g. Haldane) Maynard Smith was a socialist and would have 
laught out loud at the idea that 'natural selection' meant the 'rich' were 
economically necessary.

John asks
>Changes in the global economic environment last
> century led to financial crashes, long-lived slumps, two world wars as
> merely the most visible effects.  Have any statisticians calculated the
> cost of all these "structural adjustments"?

One statistical accounting of some of these costs is in a great powerpoint 
slide at

<http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/war-1900.htm>

which shows the death toll by year that resulted from the many atrocities 
in the 20th Century (including the first and second world wars)

Best wishes

Dave

--On 26 July 2007 11:52 +0100 "Taylor, John G LIS" 
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> John's comment is a concise summary of the absurdity of those correctly
> disparaged as Social Darwinists.
>
> But, further, the scientiific knowledge of these proponents is flawed -
> the conflating of the underlying genetic diversity and the selection
> from within that diversity by competition for limited resources to make
> the case for "inequality" or as might be said, more neutrally,
> "difference".
>
> The choice of the former word of course is to carry out the illegitimate
> extrapolation to the economic or social sphere.
>
> Assuming that some eye-sight disabilities are of genetic origin, the
> marginal selective advantage would, in the "tooth and claw" scenario,
> lead to those with better eye-sight surviving and, crucially,
> reproducing more succesfully.
> Even in the Social Darwinists' world however, this does not happen -
> instead there is the provision of spectacles....
>
> More obviously, social and economic differences belong to those domains
> not to this childish and inaccurate model of evolution.
>
> In the economic sphere, it is by no means obvious that change in the
> external environment is efficiently managed by an unequal,
> competion-driven system. Changes in the global economic environment last
> century led to financial crashes, long-lived slumps, two world wars as
> merely the most visible effects.  Have any statisticians calculated the
> cost of all these "structural adjustments"?
>
> John
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: email list for Radical Statistics [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> On Behalf Of John Whittington
> Sent: 26 July 2007 10:11
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: equality of income, and of opportunity: an opportunity?
>
>
>
> At 16:14 25/07/07 +0100, Martin Sewell wrote:
>
>> Note that due to natural selection inequality is inevitable; ....
>
> .......As for anyone's attempts to extrapolate from biodiversity to
> statements about matters sociological, economic or ethical, to my simple
> mind that is just plain silly!
>
> Kind Regards,
>
> John
>
>
>
>
> To view the terms under which this email is distributed, please go to
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----------------------
Dave Gordon
Townsend Centre for International Poverty Research
University of Bristol
8 Priory Road
Bristol BS8 1TZ, UK

E-Mail: [log in to unmask]
Tel: +44-(0)117-954 6761
Fax: +44-(0)117-954 6756

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