Thursday, June 9, 2011

Is Online Match Making Benign Eugenics?



One just needs to watch enough TV or listen to the radio long enough to hear an ad for eharmony or match.com. We are told about "degrees of compatibility" and how a complicated computer algorithm will pair you with you perfect match.
On an evolutionary basis where does this put us. For eons people have been pairing up based upon much more than just "personality traits". Scent plays a large role, science is beginning to find out. It has been shown that not only can your olfactory system determine a potential mates immune systems characteristics, but also that "better smelling" BO is a trait of people with better facial symmetry (read attractiveness). The evolutionary basis for determining a mates immune system is to find one different than your own so your offspring have a broader immunity.

More found here: Scent and Attraction

Scent and deepness in a man's voice have also shown signs of fertility. With a computer tabulating multiple choice answers of your personality, one has to wonder after how many generations of swimming in only one part of the gene pool will it take to change fertility rates, personalities, and even appearance.

Physical traits such as appearance have been linked to personality. In a famous case Dmitry Konstantinovich Belyaev, a Russian biologist in Siberia undertook a culling and selective breeding program for the Silver fox. Aggressive foxes were slaughtered while the more tame foxes where spared. This went on for several generations until not only were the foxes no longer feral but actually lost physical traits such as pointy ears - which after selective breeding now lay flat on their heads.

Just the simple act of selecting for tameness destabilized the genetic make up of these animals in such a way that all sorts of stuff that you would never normally see in a wild population suddenly appeared.


Since the beginning of civilization guys have been scratching their heads why some hot girl loves them "like a brother" but only seems to date assholes, and why their buddies put up with their high maintenance bitches who don't even put out much. Sometimes biology might may be filling in traits where the rational mind appears to be lacking logic.

Several generations of computer selection could easily have negative outcomes. It may be health, fertility or even physical traits. We've got this far as a species without computer match making, why start now?








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