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Shock! Darwinism does not explain why old women exist

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Not even the “Grandma looks after the kids” pop sci filler buys this one. From Steve Fleischfresser at Cosmos:

Jacob Moorad and Craig Walling from the Institute of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Edinburgh in the UK drew on one of the world’s most extensive sources of genealogical information: the Utah Population Database (UPDB), housed at the University of Utah, and drawn from the family records of Mormon settlers to the state. The database contains information on more than eight million people.

Moorad and Walling, using a subset of the UPDB for the first empirical test of the models, sought to discover if there is positive genetic correlation between “late-age lifespan and fitness” which is assumed in all three models. Such evidence would be, the authors write in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, “‘the smoking gun’ necessary to demonstrate the true efficacy of an evolutionary pathway to maintain post-reproductive survival.”

In fact, they found no indications at all of that supported the contentions of any of the three leading theories. The evolutionary reason why old women exist remains unknown. More.

The article is unusual in that it makes clear that the conventional pop Darwin explanations don’t work without proposing another one. The most we hear is that one or other of the gimcrack models might have been “disrupted over time.”

But it’s not clear, on reflection, that an evolutionary explanation for human female longevity is even needed.

<em>Teapot</em> Cobalt Blue One difference between old women and old cows is that women are aware of death and can think of means of avoiding it. Such means might include establishing moral and legal rules against killing one’s parents and inheritance systems that give power to seniors over juniors.  And making kindness toward the aged seem as virtuous as kindness to children. These systems have been around for a long time.

Consciousness, however it came to exist, drives them, not evolutionary fitness. The grandmother-established systems could be less evolutionarily fit but nonetheless more likely to prevail.

See also: Evolutionary medicine: Insomnia in the elderly is due to evolution?

The Grandmother Hypothesis, yet again

and

Menopause caused by guys staying home

Comments
Seversky @ 4 Well done. You have come up with a 4th explanation for post-menopausal survival. You will get your name on that theory. And there will be severskyism and severskyites. Telomeres in women are junk?Belfast
October 14, 2017
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If naturalism is true, then all causes are non-rational; including, of course, the cause for knowledge.Origenes
October 14, 2017
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Rationality falls apart if ‘knowledge’ stems from a nonrational source.
That's a mighty big "if" Origenes. Do you have a rational argument as to how that might work, in practice?critical rationalist
October 14, 2017
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Rationality falls apart if ‘knowledge’ stems from a nonrational source.Origenes
October 13, 2017
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This sounds like another example of the flaw in panadaptationist thinking
Evolution has no further use for us once we lose the capacity to reproduce. Theory tells us, in fact, that we should expect to shuffle off quite promptly once we’re out of the parenting game. So, how then do we understand the fact that women live for many decades beyond menopause?
I would argue that, no, the theory does not tell us that "we should expect to shuffle off quite promptly once we’re out of the parenting game." The theory should say that once we are past parenting age, if we are not in some way detrimental or beneficial to the survival of our kind, we become invisible to selection. It doesn't matter one way or the other to evolution whether we live for a long period after the parenting phase or not.Seversky
October 13, 2017
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Fleischfresser is the PERFECT aptronym for a Darwinian. Nature red in tooth and claw, etc.polistra
October 13, 2017
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Memes are Knowledge that plays a causal role in being retained when embedded in a storage medium of human brains.critical rationalist
October 13, 2017
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Shock? What does it explain?Dionisio
October 13, 2017
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