Re: Bi-racial people are more attractive

Sima Desai (sd9236@ehibm5.cen.uiuc.edu)
3 Feb 1995 01:38:45 GMT

Background: This thread started when I made the comment that I beleive
bi-racial people are more attractive because various genetic forces
prefer out-breeding and accessing a wider genepool. For example,
mutts are healthier than purebreds.
-------

lither@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (litherland kathryn j) writes:

>Population genetics is definitely not my area of expertise, but I'll try to
>remember to bring up the issue with some physical anthropologists at happy
>hour tonight (they're always happy to talk shop with us sociocults). Some

Hey, thanks for not flaming.
1) Can I get in on this discussion?
2) Where's the happy hour?

>One thing to consider is that a smaller, more inbreed population, while more
>likely to suffer the deleterious effects of bad gene mutations, is also more
>likely to get some adaptive advantage from good gene mutations--in a larger

I was of the feeling that the propagation of the 'good' gene depended more
heavily on the strenght of its adaptive advantage than its 'dilutabilty'
due to out-breeding. Acquiring the chance at as many good gene as possible
into the local pool would be ideal, and let the yukky fooey genes fall out
over time.

>The effect breeding population for almost any species is much smaller than
>the total population, and therefore you get subspeciation rather than
>homogenization through more wide-spread gene mixing. Through time these

Uhm.. I think we're drifting over my head, but I'll try to stay on.

>survive and others die off. If, however, from the very beginning the entire
>population of the original species were able to interbreed, tossing those
>genes into a species-wdie waring blender and ensuring complete random mixing,
>the whole species might die off during the subsequent environmental change.

This is all true and possible, but isn't it also possible the entire species
might survive becasue they all had access to the 'good' gene? Besides,
it would seem to me the low-gene-mixing-and-subspeciation-can-be-good
statements you make immediately above apply solely in the case of
environment shift. Given a stable envivironement such a benefit would not
be realized.

Ooooo.. now that's a whole new can of worms. Assuming that changing
environment would favor inbreeding, and stable environment would favor
out-breeding (big assumption since your basis for that assumption would be
what I said above, and I really dont know this material inside and out), the
next question is: Is the human race under changing environmental conditions
enough to warrant preference for outbreeding or inbreeding? I bet people
are going to get really mad that I asked that publicly.

Adding sci.anthropology to the Newsgroups line.

-- 

\|/                                                               \|/

-0-     The power of love is stronger than any force of hate.     -0-

/|\                                                               /|\