[neetdeth]

One aspect of sexual selection is that a disadvantageous trait needn't kill to cause differential outcomes in reproduction. If a deficiency results lower hunting success, diminished fighting prowess, loss of mental acuity etc. the individual will be disfavored in mate selection. Iterated over generations, this eventually extinguishes some genes.

There's also the aesthetic aspect, where some traits seem to be favored simply because they are attractive to the opposite sex, which can be justified because offspring will have more favorable opportunities for reproduction, but only because the trait is well liked. A strange attractor in the genetic code, if you will. This happens across species, so I wouldn't call it artificial selection - artificial selection applied to humans is also known as eugenics.

[tchaffee]

> One aspect of sexual selection is that a disadvantageous trait needn't kill to cause differential outcomes in reproduction. If a deficiency results lower hunting success, diminished fighting prowess, loss of mental acuity etc. the individual will be disfavored in mate selection.

That makes sense, and it also supports my claim that skin cancer would likely not be a trait selected against, right? It's something that usually happens later in life and that would not be involved during mate selection.

> so I wouldn't call it artificial selection - artificial selection applied to humans is also known as eugenics.

Thanks for that distinction. If this attraction is happening naturally and unspoken, it's fair to include it as a part of natural selection. However, I do think some of it is cultural, is spoken, and goes beyond natural attraction. A common example might be the preference for lighter skin in mates that we unfortunately find in several cultures. Maybe we should start calling it eugenics instead of softening it to artificial selection.

[neetdeth]

For skin cancer narrowly, sure. I don't know what it's like to live with white skin near the equator with primitive or no clothing and no access to sunscreen, though. Losing melanin every winter, getting scorched every summer... It seems like you'd have an individual who is pretty useless for persistence hunting across the savannah. On the other side, a darker skinned individual may experience lethargy and malaise in winter at higher latitude. So we should broaden the considerations to include chronic, nonlethal conditions, and competitive sexual selection amplifies their effects. This was my only point.

> A common example might be the preference for lighter skin in mates that we unfortunately find in several cultures. Maybe we should start calling it eugenics instead of softening it to artificial selection.

You can do that if you want. People really like their mate preferences and this seems more likely to soften their perception of eugenics as a concept than the other way around.