NationStates Jolt Archive

I may still be misreading your intents, and if so I apologize, but if you are saying that multiple hybrid paretnering increases the effects of hybrid vigour, increasing the chance of benifits and decreasing the chance of detriments over those of a single hybrid father, that's where we disagree: it doesn't. It only manifests a curve that displays average chances for such traits. A single hybrid child might be high on that curve or it might be low, but prior to the winning swimmer getting to the egg it has just the same chances as any other guy's sperm, who is also not of the mother's race and all else being equal.

That all else being equal, it really seems to me, is where your logic is stumbling. You seem to be saying that multiple hybrid partners increase the effects of hybrid vigour because having only one hybrid father might saddle a woman with a single father for all of her children who, despite hybrid vigor, is simply a below-the-curve sample of his own people's hereditary benifits and detriments. He might be, but he might not. He might be the paragon of his people's genetically dominant hereditary advantages who possesses relatively few recessive detrimental genes in common with the woman. My point is, all else being equal, we should treat him as if he were average. And when we do that, it should be clear that having multiple hybrid partners does not cause results to skew either towards the beneficial or away from the detrimental, when we look at it as an average.

I saw that I'd misunderstood you again, in one of my quotes of you, so I came here to apologize, and decided to encapsulate what appears to me to be the core of our differences. :) Enjoy.

And I very much appreciate the gesture.

I think what we are coming down to might be that evry issue of averages you mention... but there are no actual average people.

This is kind of how I see it, let's see if I can explain it.

One partner. Most likely from a fairly close genetic stock, because, let's face it, that's how most people combine. The offspring is a combination of both parents, and may be 'good' or'bad' as offspring. The closer the genetic pairing, the 'weaker' the offspring are LIKELY to be, although you could still produce great offspring - but, the odds are working against you.

One partner. Plus a diversity factor, i.e. girl picks partner from very diverse origin. The couple are less LIKELY to produce the 'weaker' offspring caused by the combinations of recessive genes, since the parents are less likely to share the SAME recessives. So, overall, the chances of producing 'stronger' offspring are a little higher.

But, it's still one partner, and that partner might be 'average'... i.e. a POOR donor for his/her diversity group... in that he/she is genetically unusually similar to the original group. (He/she could also be much MORE diverse than usual for their 'diversity' group... but that just magnifies the positive effect of the diversity... unless you get to a point where the genes are no longer compatibile... like, where the partner is a monkey!)

Multiple partners. Assuming fairly close range, so little diversity. The NUMBER of partners is a form of diversity... yes, one of the partners might increase the potential for weakness, but the volume of partners favours diversity... unless ALL of the partners have similar levels of 'diversity' from the original parent. In which case, your 'multiple partners' are statistically much the same as 'one partner'... but the multiplicity FAVOURS more of a mix.

Multiple partners... with some diversity (which is KIND OF what you are looking at in the assumption of multiple partners, anyway - to my thinking). This combination has the lowest chance of throwing REPEATEDLY weaker offspring, due to the greater probability that divergent gene combinations will be present, as for the single diverse partner, but ALSO covers the possibility that the diverse partner may be a BAD example of diversity, by giving greater access to a cross-sampling of diversity.

I'm basically looking at it as a fairly simple genetic puzzle, and looking at which situation gives the greatest STATISTICAL liability for strong offspring. Although, obviously, ANY of the combinations could produce an atypically strong or weak offspring... but, which scenario increases the PROBABILITY of strong offspring most, and which covers the most PROBABILITIES for 'weak' offspring.

Am I making any sense? I don't know.... do you see where I am coming from?

And I very much appreciate the gesture.

I think what we are coming down to might be that evry issue of averages you mention... but there are no actual average people.

This is kind of how I see it, let's see if I can explain it.

One partner. Most likely from a fairly close genetic stock, because, let's face it, that's how most people combine. The offspring is a combination of both parents, and may be 'good' or'bad' as offspring. The closer the genetic pairing, the 'weaker' the offspring are LIKELY to be, although you could still produce great offspring - but, the odds are working against you.

One partner. Plus a diversity factor, i.e. girl picks partner from very diverse origin. The couple are less LIKELY to produce the 'weaker' offspring caused by the combinations of recessive genes, since the parents are less likely to share the SAME recessives. So, overall, the chances of producing 'stronger' offspring are a little higher.

But, it's still one partner, and that partner might be 'average'... i.e. a POOR donor for his/her diversity group... in that he/she is genetically unusually similar to the original group. (He/she could also be much MORE diverse than usual for their 'diversity' group... but that just magnifies the positive effect of the diversity... unless you get to a point where the genes are no longer compatibile... like, where the partner is a monkey!)

Multiple partners. Assuming fairly close range, so little diversity. The NUMBER of partners is a form of diversity... yes, one of the partners might increase the potential for weakness, but the volume of partners favours diversity... unless ALL of the partners have similar levels of 'diversity' from the original parent. In which case, your 'multiple partners' are statistically much the same as 'one partner'... but the multiplicity FAVOURS more of a mix.

Multiple partners... with some diversity (which is KIND OF what you are looking at in the assumption of multiple partners, anyway - to my thinking). This combination has the lowest chance of throwing REPEATEDLY weaker offspring, due to the greater probability that divergent gene combinations will be present, as for the single diverse partner, but ALSO covers the possibility that the diverse partner may be a BAD example of diversity, by giving greater access to a cross-sampling of diversity.

I'm basically looking at it as a fairly simple genetic puzzle, and looking at which situation gives the greatest STATISTICAL liability for strong offspring. Although, obviously, ANY of the combinations could produce an atypically strong or weak offspring... but, which scenario increases the PROBABILITY of strong offspring most, and which covers the most PROBABILITIES for 'weak' offspring.

Am I making any sense? I don't know.... do you see where I am coming from?

Your sense starts to break down at the end. Your logic, somewhat before that. Here, precisely:

But, it's still one partner, and that partner might be 'average'... i.e. a POOR donor for his/her diversity group... in that he/she is genetically unusually similar to the original group. (He/she could also be much MORE diverse than usual for their 'diversity' group... but that just magnifies the positive effect of the diversity... unless you get to a point where the genes are no longer compatibile... like, where the partner is a monkey!)

Firstly, you equate "average" with "poor". Why? To me it seems that it should mean neither particularly strong nor particularly weak within his own herditary group's genetic paradigm, and therefor, if he is average, he manifests the mean average of his group in terms of the genetic benefits and detriments that they can provide to the mother's children.

Second, you repeat the word that I have emphasized, "might", but without the understanding that I had hoped to convey. You follow it up by stating that the obverse situation, one of the father's genetics being above average (w/o regard for the unclarity of your meaning of "average"), "just magnifies the positive effects of the diversity." The word "just" seems to me to either be an excluder or a deminisher, and context strongly favours the latter. So, why "just"? Why deminish the effects of an above-average father in comparison to those of a below-average, or "poor", father?

BTW this appears to be a new side-point to the debate of whether multiplicity of fathers increases the effects of hybrid vigour.

The thing about your central argument is that you seem to be summing the powers of the (basically) exponential (MFFTC*) increase in hybrid vigour, found in hereditary distance from the mother's group, prior to applying them in their relation to increased likelihood of benificial traits and decreased likelihood of detrimental traits in the individual offspring. You simply cannot do that. Each child is only effected paternally by the genetic materials of its own father. Each child has only the levels of benifits and detriments, of which, if that child itself is an average sample, all things being equal, the offspring of any average sample from his father's group would have when mating with that mother. Only AFTER having calculated the hybrid advantage for EACH of the multiple offspring of multiple hybrid fathers can you properly average them, by counting the manifestations of various strong and weak traits in each offspring and by perhaps assigning them relative positive and negative values ... some method of statistics beyond my training but still just an averaging method, based ultimately on a basis of summation followed by division.

Now... it's occured to me that you may have somewhere heard that multiple partners increases the positive effects of hybrid vigour, and filled in your own imperfect logic, probably subconsciously, to explain how. I know I've held illogical beliefs based on such fallecies. Well it actually does, but not in the first generation as you (or perhaps it was Bottle) have as much as said. Over the generations the benifit can increase as the offspring's genes spread through the community with less of a chance to interact negatively with eachother. This is actually not totally an increase in the effects of hybrid vigour per se but also a decrease in the chance of incestuous deformity coming from a single hybrid father's recessive detrimental traits spreading through the breeding pool.



* [ FFTCM = Feel Free To Correct Me (physics being my field, but I am fairly sure it is more complex than simple exponents). ]