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Comment by neverywhere | Hacker News Reader

Conservatives currently out reproduce liberals for whatever reason, for example:

https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-conservative-fertility-advant...

I wonder if it is purely cultural or is there a genetic component? If there is low fertility because of a genetic component, that is likely going to targeted hard by evolution now.

(Will evolution select against women getting higher education like Masters or PhD? Because that is one of the biggest predictors of reduced fertility.)

What does this mean for liberal views? Are they destined to become more conservative over time if there is a genetic component which is being selected against?

So interesting. I wish we could track genetic changes along with political changes over time. I bet there is more happening there than we think.

EDIT: Here is a large meta analysis paper that seems to indicate that genetics influences political ideology: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4038932/pdf/nih...

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>(Will evolution select against women getting higher education like Masters or PhD? Because that is one of the biggest predictors of reduced fertility.)

Generally speaking evolution does not work on these time scales. Importantly, there is nothing that would make someone "genetically liberal" or "genetically conservative." You might be able to point to higher order traits which may indicate someone being conservative vs. liberal. ie, openness to experience, religiosity, etc. But, it's not clear that these traits are static throughout a lifetime. (eg, "openness to experience" is generally much higher in the young than the old.) Furthermore, the idea of what it means to be "liberal" or "conservative" changes over time as well. Someone describing themselves as "liberal" in 1950 wouldn't bear much resemblance to someone describing themselves as liberal in 2021. According to historians, the conservative movement as we understand it really only began in the 1950s, and prior to that people would not have described themselves as either "liberal or conservative." (and in fact, "liberal" was not previously synonymous with "left," and therefore many people on the "right" would have previously described themselves as liberal.

The point is that political movements have short life spans. Perhaps in the tens or hundreds of years, which is not nearly enough for evolution to make any meaningful impact.

Religions have a longer time span and correlate with conservatives. Many religions actually shed their members who have liberal views. Thus religions tend to conserve conservatives leaning individuals.

So if religion was not part of the conservative-liberal divide I would buy your argument but it is part of it and it is long running.

200 years ago nearly the entire country was Christian, but the entire country did not hold the same political beliefs. Protestant vs. Catholic may have been a more pressing divide back then. And how would your argument fare in say ... 2,000-4,000 BC middle east? Each city has its own deity, perhaps part of a pantheon, perhaps not? Are the followers of Chemosh more or less conservative than the followers of Anat? Who are the irreligious liberals in this time period?

I'm pretty sure the followers of Ninkasi (Sumerian goddess of beer) knew how to have a good time.

I would argue that time and again liberals have not reproduced at the level of conservatives/religious. This is why we still have the conservative/religious as the backbone of society.

This is why there is probably some genetics underlying religious belief: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7147-genes-contribute...

It may also explain why so many people are illogical about things like Covid in religious/conservative circles. They have genetics that incline them towards illogical religious beliefs in part because it allows them to ensure they reproduce the next generation, and some of the downsides of this illogical religious inclination is that they believe crap about things and are impervious to evidence to the contrary -- e.g. faith.

I'd absolutely agree that there is likely a genetic component underlying propensity for religious belief. But "atheist" is not synonymous with "liberal," I suppose that's the crux of what I'm saying.

Actually there do appear to be some genes that tend to make people liberal or conservative. (Obviously genes aren't the only factor.)

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-genes-of-left...

Likely the genes don't make you a liberal or conservative directly. Rather they do it in an indirect way. For instance if someone has a genetic disease that requires costly medical care then they will likely vote for socialized medical care. And of course having a dark skin color will also cause politcal leaning in an indirect way.

>The point is that political movements have short life spans. Perhaps in the tens or hundreds of years, which is not nearly enough for evolution to make any meaningful impact.

Evolution can work on any time scale, including instantly. Look no further than a large asteroid turning into a meteorite, it is evolution done in hours, where everything larger than a cat dies.

For politics: the Nazi party for example had a definite impact on human evolution in Europe as it murdered rather a lot of people who were not blond enough or too blond. The same way the British Empire had a rather profound impact on evolution in the US, Canada and Australia.

>Evolution can work on any time scale, including instantly. Look no further than a large asteroid turning into a meteorite, it is evolution done in hours, where everything larger than a cat dies.

A large asteroid will not make me grow a new sensory organ, it will simply kill me. Not all genetic changes take an equivalent amount of time, or are equally feasible.

- Growing taller or shorter can happen rapidly because genes for these traits already exist and must simply be selected from the environment.

- Moving away from a bifurcated body plan is probably impossible, as it is too fundamental to many other systems in the body.

Obviously there's a wide area in between those two examples, but we're discussing whether or not certain traits that people have are 1) genetic in origin, and 2) liable to drift much over time.

Given that religion has been a constant for all known human history (and pre-history, depending on how you interpret artifacts) I would suggest that it's likely to be strongly wrapped up in the same things which build human psychology and human social structure. I want to admit here this is just my view on the topic, and I'm not suggesting that this established scientific fact. In any case, I'm a firm believer in the argument that many who identify as "liberal" and definitely-not-Christian nonetheless have many beliefs which could otherwise be categorized as religious. I want to make it clear I'm not attacking or praising these beliefs, but simply suggesting that parts of the mind which lead people toward religion are a bit more fundamental to humanity, and are not something such as hair color which can be easily or capriciously changed.

X -> doubt

Education is correlated with both low birth rates and liberal political views, and culture surrounding politics and reproduction changes a lot faster than population genetics.

Conservative parents don't necessarily produce conservative children.

But papers do indicate that there is a genetic component to political ideology: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4038932/pdf/nih...

Your argument is akin to a global warming denier saying that yeah, but some days are still cold. Yes, there will always be variation.

That's not really analogous. I'm just pointing out that there is an underlying assumption in your argument that may or may not be true.

Conservatives live in less expensive areas and often have less wealth, two things that often drive reproduction rates up higher. I feel comfortable Occam’s Razoring that up as the explanation

We cannot afford a mine shaft gap!

But more seriously: the furthest left people I know are the ones who grew up around conservatives, particularly in privation (usually one of the strongest signals for high birth rates). These things have a tendency to balance each other by nurture; assuming that people are genetically predestined to be conservative (or liberal) is both silly and incompatible with our observed history as communal animals.

> assuming that people are genetically predestined to be conservative (or liberal) is both silly and incompatible

But there is evidence of that. I linked to some of these papers in my previous comments.

> But there is evidence of that. I linked to some of these papers in my previous comments.

The IFS is not a credible source. Their previous claim to fame was publishing bogus research on same-sex parenting, presumably because it doesn't align with their values[1].

The other link is a meta-analysis that shows a correlation between family political alignments (quelle surprise!). It doesn't support the more ridiculous claim that the arc of human reproduction bends towards conservativism.

[1]: https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Institute_for_Family_S...

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