[HN Gopher] The invention of selective breeding was unbelievably...
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The invention of selective breeding was unbelievably late (2019)
Author : barry-cotter
Score : 44 points
Date : 2023-04-30 06:58 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (gwern.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (gwern.net)
| jvanderbot wrote:
| There's two themes of comments here. First is the observation of
| earlier evidence of selective pressure on plants and animals that
| humans used (arguably domesticated) long before TFA claims
| selective breeding was "invented". Second is the (I guess)
| counter claim that selection can happen without intent by human
| farmers.
|
| Both are obviously true, so I don't see the need for back and
| forth about that.
|
| And whatever side you fall on I think the claim by TFA is almost
| certainly false because it posits that the first definitive
| evidence we have of a theory and practice of selective breeding
| is in fact the first instance. Its crazy to think that's true.
| taion wrote:
| The premise of the argument seems wrong. Even in just Europe,
| there's evidence for an increase in animal size during the Roman
| period, a decrease during the early middle ages, and then an
| increase into the high middle ages, e.g.
| https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12520-021-01426-w
|
| These correspond to economic changes which made different sizes
| of animal more appropriate. Size and productivity aren't the only
| criteria anyway - disease resistance, hardiness, or ease of
| feeding seem like they'd be just as important to subsistence
| farmers.
|
| Earlier techniques may have been less good than modern ones, but
| they quite evidently worked to some extent. Specialized horse
| breeds had gotten to the point where they needed to be specially
| fed way before the start of the period in the book reviewed here!
|
| Instead of positing a lack of understanding, the observed
| phenomenon is likely more a factor of limitations in documentary
| evidence (how many people engaged in stockbreeding were actually
| writing books anyway?) and in the actual goals of the people
| involved around optimizing for robustness and practicality over
| pure productiveness.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > (how many people engaged in stockbreeding were actually
| writing books anyway?)
|
| Yeah, I was thinking that a lot of this knowledge would have
| been kept secret as proprietary trade information.
| taion wrote:
| Or less kept secret than not written down, especially before
| the early modern period, especially outside of things like
| war horses, just based on who was engaged in that activity.
|
| In fact a quick glance at the Wikipedia page for medieval
| horse breeding shows documentation for quite deliberate,
| centralized, and successful operations quite far back!
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses_in_the_Middle_Ages
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Artificial selection can and does happen without being
| intentional.
| mncharity wrote:
| I'm not sure what's bothering me about this article. Maybe...
| When was common-thing first done with X during the last 15 ky?
| Given that X was obvious once understood, and not hard to note?
| When the first existent written record mentions X. That... seems
| a fraught triple? I guess if "humanity [...] discover" has a
| scale or continuity requirement, that's clearly kept in mind. Eg,
| "the first _clinical_ use of antibiotics was in the 1890 's", the
| "first _existent record_ of external cephalic version is from
| Hellenistic Greece ".
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| The focus on animals also ignores the obvious evidence of
| selective breeding in food plants for 10k+ years.
|
| Specialized breeds of dogs have also existed for a very long
| time.
|
| This may be an accurate critique of the written science of
| animal breeding, and gives good examples of the reification of
| bad practices, but some techniques were obviously working over
| long periods of times whether they were recorded, or not.
|
| What ultimately bothers me about it is the same things about
| the "discovery" of America. Ignorance that plant cultivation
| and ecosystem engineering was prevalent in the Americas (it
| wasn't a savage, untamed, wild land at all, but had been
| carefully cultivated).
|
| And, in general, the idea that things didn't exist until
| written down by those in power.
|
| > Inventors who lived in a neighborhood with a high per capita
| patent rate are themselves more likely to file a patent. Future
| inventors might correspond with their heroes (shades of the
| 'college of letters') and, if they then meet them in person,
| they are more likely to go on to innovate, even if it was only
| a single short meeting and the hero was in an entirely
| different field and so it is difficult to see what key fact,
| skill, or wealth/object they could have transmitted which might
| make any difference.
|
| Conflating the credential with the skill (or here, the patent
| with the inventiveness).
| Robotbeat wrote:
| You're missing a critical insight: Artificial selection can
| and does occur unintentionally, ie without methodical intent.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Rather, both can be true.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I would expect selective breeding of animals to coincide with
| domestication with no lag. Ancestral humans were innately
| familiar with animal breeding because they practiced it with
| humans first. They would understand that strong parents give
| rise to strong children and weak parents often give rise to
| weak children.
|
| On the other hand, the reproductive interactions of plants
| are less apparent.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| I think the article is not saying "selective breeding" in
| general was late, but that actually selecting for
| characteristics which correlate highly with ultimate yield,
| rather than for merely subjectively* impressive
| characteristics, occurred very late in the whole "selective"
| breeding fancy.
|
| * eg, here bulls were evaluated on (among other things)
| muscling until very recently, whereas in the States bulls of
| the same race were already being evaluated solely upon how many
| litres their daughters produced. Moneyball with straws.
|
| Edit: of course, if one is far from a (local) optimum, just
| about any breeding program will tend to produce improvements.
| It's only when one is so near to an optimum that most changes
| make things worse that one needs to get properly (statistically
| vs. optically?) selective...
| [deleted]
| jmount wrote:
| American hemisphere corn, tomatoes, potatoes, and peppers were
| clearly selectively bread very far away from their wild cultivars
| a very long time ago.
| neovialogistics wrote:
| The article is about the selective breeding of animals
| specifically, but there seems to be an issue here where at
| least four different strategy/theory combinations are all
| referred to as selective breeding. I don't see why there
| shouldn't be more precise terminology to help clear things up.
| vajrabum wrote:
| Can you give those four strategy/theory combinations referred
| to as selective breeding? I read the linked doc but didn't
| see it in there.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| This article features some of the longest sentences I've read
| since _Meditations_.
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