From: Charles Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Thu Apr 10 2003 - 20:35:30 MDT
Lee Corbin wrote:
>Charles writes
>
>
>
>>>What is germane to this discussion is which kind of life is more of
>>>an ESS (evolutionarily stable strategy). If a nation or a tribe or
>>>just a group of people is to have a group identity that lasts longer
>>>than a decade or two, or that outlasts the individual life times of
>>>its members, then I do not believe that what you call the "northern"
>>>or I'd call the more modern structures are ESS's. That is one reason
>>>why poorer peoples from around the world are demographically replacing
>>>more "modern" ones.
>>>
>>>
>>Possibly. But throughout history areas with dense populations have not
>>replaced, but depended on immigration. And areas with low density
>>population have been net exporters of population. This holds with many
>>different social systems, cultures, limits to sanitation, etc.
>>
>>
>
>That's extremely interesting. So a corollary would be that urban
>populations have a lower birth rate than rural populations. Do
>you know if this is indeed quite general? Happen to know of any
>references?
>
>
>
>>So there may be something more basic going on.
>>
>>
>
>It brings to mind the old theories about crowding (and group
>selection, which is an incorrect application of group selection
>by the way).
>
>Lee
>
>
>
>>It would be interesting to know the distribution of
>>China's population replacement ratios. But from
>>what I've heard [newspaper factoids] it's again
>>the country population that is growing and the city
>>population that is declining.)
>>
This is another one of those things I ran across decades ago, so you'd
have to dig up references yourself. Originally, though, the attribution
was to diseases, or poisoning or.... well, lots of things. The first
time I heard someone suppose that it was crowding itself was in a
Scientific American article on rats and mothering instincts in crowded
environments. That was probably in the 1970's. I've never seen a good
study that claimed the results on rats could be generalized, though many
people have suggested it in a non-scientific context. (I believe it was
the basis of a fact article and a couple of stories in Analog Science
Fact->Fiction. No date even to the decade for that though.)
The first time I ran across it was in reference to the Romans, and
people were blaming lead water pipes. Seems a bit unlikely as only the
aristocrats had the lead pipes. OTOH, having crazy aristocrats running
things made life in the big city ... exciting.
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