Just to be well and truly fuckin clear. I am not now nor have I ever been nor will I ever be contemplating shagging a family member.
Just to be well and truly fuckin clear. I am not now nor have I ever been nor will I ever be contemplating shagging a family member.
Human genes only really “work as intended” when they are combined from very different sets.
So-called “recessive” genes are overruled by your partner’s different pile of genes. They are usually shit traits like soggy bones or hair growing backwards, but since they never dominate, they haven’t been naturally selected away. They’re just harmless baggage.
You can still get them because it’s all random, but the likelihood is generally low.
If you don’t have that difference in mating genes, more of these recessive genes get to have a say in building the human. This severely increases the likelihood of birth defects.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inbreeding
Fun fact: This is one of the reasons why - when we start colonies on the Moon or Mars or wherever - it’s important that we send a fuck ton of people.
Well, there’s a new insult: “You soggy-bones looking mother fucker.”
Drink milk
Can’t wait for next season
GenV wasn’t good enough.
That just reminded me of the only community I really miss from reddit, r/neverbrokeabone. Lemmy just doesn’t have the number of users to support such a niche community.
But yeah, there were all sorts of good insults there for when people broke a bone. “Soggy-bones mother fucker” would have fit right in.
It’s 4 in the morning and I’m sick, got them albuterol inhaler shakes, and “soggy bones” made me laugh so hard I went into a coughing fit.
It was backwards hair that did it for me.
Ok, but why are recessive genes necessarily bad?
Or, they probably aren’t, but it turns out when you activate them you get more bads than the goods. Why is that?
Good question!
They aren’t necessarily bad as such, just “random and unfiltered”.
Dominant genes get “battle tested” all the time, by definition. The harmful ones are likely to result in a human that can’t survive or have children, while the good ones remain.
For mars, they could do whole-genome sequencing and select for people with fewest deviations from the de facto wild-type human genome.
That sounds unsettlingly like eugenics.
Yea but Mars is not the right place to just wing it.
I don’t know that I agree. Or rather, I agree, but come to the opposite conclusion.
I think that as we take our first steps into the broader universe, we have to consider the ethics and morality that we’re stepping out with. If we choose people based on (let’s face it) arbitrary genetic variation, independent of their ability to perform the tasks assigned or their representative value to the human race as a whole, that means that as we plant our flag on the Martian soil, we’ll be taking eugenics with us.
The minimum viable population of a species is about 50. In order to prevent genetic drift over time you need closer to 500, but we’re sapient; we can implement genetic therapies when needed to help maintain allele frequency while the population is growing. And, in reality, operating a long-term Martian colony is probably going to need more than 50 people anyway; a recent NASA study suggested 25 would be enough, but previous research said 100+ would be necessary.
And keep in mind, an actual Martian colony doesn’t have to be self-sustaining in a complete vacuum (ha) for centuries. It will probably be only a generation or two before regular travel between the two planets will be possible. Plus, if we build and maintain a lunar colony first, the initial population of a Martian colony can be much larger.
In short, I think I’d rather work harder and send more people so that we can ensure we’re maintaining our values, than allow such a retrograde idea as eugenics to poison our first venture toward being a multi-planet species.