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, this is a form of [00:03:00] speciation that most people are familiar with if you're studying evolution at like a child's level, like this is how it's often explained.

But then you also have behavioral isolation, which is, maybe even more common as a form of speciation. Behavioral isolation happens when one of the mutations ends up isolating the portion of the population that has it from the rest of the population at a breeding level. So let me give an example here that's very easy to understand.

Suppose you have a nocturnal species and then some behavioral trait like mutation causes a portion of that species to become only active during the day. These two populations can be living in the same area, but essentially They're no longer interbreeding. Yeah, completely genetically isolated from each other.

And this, this happens more common where, where we're actually, or like you have a change that causes a change in what some of the females look like in a species. And it turns out that some of the males in that species still like [00:04:00] this and some of the males don't still like this. I mean, so then you have sort of sexual behavioral isolation, right?

What behavioral isolation looks like, or it might be instead of nocturnal versus day, it might be that, it's a species of turtles, right? And this species of turtles would always go to this one little island or, or place to breed and have sex, right? And lay eggs. But then this other faction within the turtles is okay with having eggs anywhere!

Then you have Isolation of those two groups, right? Or they have slightly different navigational prospects coded into them due to a mutation and that causes them to breed on a different beach. Now you have behavioral isolation, which is also sort of geographic isolation and an interesting way because they're not actually geographically isolated.

So. What behavioral isolation looks like classically within a population cluster is you have some genetically linked trait, and then you have a sort of U curve on a graph. So what that means is for individuals who have a lot of The trait on this side, they're having a lot of kids [00:05:00] for individuals have a middling amount of this genetically linked trait.

They have very few kids for people on the other side. They have a lot of kids. That is what behavioral isolation looks like. That is the graph we see. With IQ or well, not IQ, but earning potential, at least yeah, wealth and fertility and wealth has a high correlation with things like IQ, things like educational attainment things like all sorts of genetically linked traits and interestingly, it doesn't just go to that, it goes to the other genetically linked traits so you see this in things like weight, for example the people who have the most kids aren't just, the least wealthy kids are also the most obese people.

And this is obesity, not just at like the accidental obesity level, but at the polygenic risk score. So at the, my genetics, obesity level, the polygenic risk score is a track with obesity. Now keep in mind this is not due to some sort of difference in metabolic rate humans, even within like two standard deviations of the standard [00:06:00] metabolic rate only really differ by like, 200 calories a day.

This is due to self control reasons.

Simone Collins: Well, yeah, or, or when exposed to highly processed food, people with a certain collection of genes appear to have less ability to not overindulge,

Malcolm Collins: right? Yeah. And I, I say this as somebody who believes that I have a genetic predilection for a specific susceptibility to types of alcohol addiction.

So I am not saying that, like, I am above this, but this is a different type of addictive process, which is not discorrelated with Wells, which is an interesting thing. Like, if you look at most of the most impactful people in human history they drink a ton.