[hablog]

This would have some extremely interesting population-level genetic consequences if it was accompanied by some sort of social change to allow polygyny. In particular, it would reduce the correlation that exists across all adaptive traits due to assortative monogamous mating patterns. Right now, all "desirable" traits like health/intelligence/strength/etc are strongly correlated, but when you reduce the strength of assortative effects, the correlation weakens significantly.

[aaronblohowiak]

> Right now, all "desirable" traits like health/intelligence/strength/etc are strongly correlated

Oh?

[hablog]

Yeah, for an illustrative example of assortative mating effects, consider the stereotype of the rich nerd with the hot wife. Kids are smart and attractive. This plays out at every pareto level in the sexual marketplace.

Basically, monogamy breaks the ability of sexual selection to "dilute" bad genes with good ones. I'm not anti-monogamy, but it's a social technology which has tradeoffs (this being one of them).