Evolution is Cruel to Nerds

By Camoron

I’m a devout atheist, and as prepared as the next man to argue the case of evolution. But have you ever stopped to think about what makes evolution work? Basically, the traits which allow you to have as much sex as possible are the ones that pass on, and as a nerd more interested in reading about evolution than making it happen (if you know what I mean) my genes are going to be getting a bit lonely.

A common misconception is that the genes you get are about 50/50 from mother and father and completely random as to whom you receive them from. Any Year Ten student could very quickly debunk this; it’s all about which gene is dominant over the other one. But this is wrong as well. As evolution would have it, some genes know whether they came from a mother or a father.

The gene that controls the limbic system in all cases comes from the father. For those of you who don’t know what the hell a limbic system is (I didn’t either until a couple of days ago), it controls your emotional reactions. Why would you get this from your father? Because when we were basically monkeys, wore no clothes, and smelled way, way worse, whoever was willing to get in a fight was more likely to get the girl, and evolution thought that if the angry guy was winning, his children should be angry as well! Basically, the way evolution saw it, the respectable, smart and fight-avoiding monkey-man in the corner had no chance of getting into a relationship.

So what about female genes? Well, as well as always getting the angry gene from your father, your mother gives you your neocortex gene. Ring any bells? No, I didn’t think so. This is another confusing one, but I’ll do my best. The neocortex is related very closely to social skills, the idea being the females who had a strong social group would be more appealing to the guys, and have more support from friends. Once again, evolution is picking on the nerds, and deciding that the annoying, gossipy girls with over five hundred Facebook friends are far more likely to get a partner. By the way, I hope nobody reading this has over 500 Facebook friends, because the human brain only has the capacity to support 150 friends, and that has been constant throughout history.

I know that this hasn’t really gone anywhere, hasn’t really proved anything, and probably isn’t technically a rant. But hey, I guess what I’m trying to say is, Evolution if you are listening, give nerds a chance!

For more information about evolutionary psychology and other riveting stuff, read How Many Friends Does One Person Need by Robin Dunbar.