The Contrarian Gene

I read an interesting article over at BBC today: Human species 'may split in two'. It talks about the prediction of Dr. Oliver Curry, an evolutionary theorist over at the London School of Economics, that humanity will evenutally split into two strands-- the "tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative" upper class and the "dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like" underclass. The article mentions the similarity with H.G. Wells' The Time Machine-- I haven't read the book but I saw the 1960 movie adaptation one late sleepless night.

Curry's notions of "upper class" and "underclass" have nothing to do with income or race; rather, they refer to the selection of sexual mates. He posits that as people become choosier about their sexual partners, hot+smart people will only choose to mate with other hot+smart people, while those who are fugly+dumb are left to mate among themselves-- a separating equilibrium with looks as a signal of health and intelligence, to use game theoretic jargon. Browsing Curry's work it seems he applied game theory in his analysis of evolution, and I have to say his analysis is consistent with the framework. It is an evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) for the hot+smart set to mate with each other, leaving those not in the set (ergo fugly+dumb) to mate among themselves. One can argue that there are hot+dumb and fugly+smart people out there, but after eons of choosing mates the fugly+smart people will choose hot mates and hot+dumb ones will choose smart mates, eventually resulting in the separating equilibrium described by Curry.

I haven't seen Curry's paper on this theory (can't find it on the net), but I'd like to see how he tackles people who are "irrational" by ESS standards-- those that do not follow what reason tells them to do. While Darwinian natural selection is a slow but straightforward process, it is the contrarian mutations in a small percentage of people that makes the species leap and take sharp turns. These are the people who, from an ESS/rational standpoint throw all caution in the wind and think up or do new things. The contrarian gene that makes some people climb skyscrapers and jump out of planes is the same gene that led early man out of Africa and take to the seas. This contrarian gene is a wildcard-- it can either lead to destruction or greatness; the lack of it (i.e., doing the ESS all the time) leads to mediocrity.

Applying this to Curry's theory, if the hot+smart people are indeed the offspring of successful generations, I would guess that they will have a relatively higher proportion of people with the contrarian gene as they are descendants of geniuses and adventurers. Therefore, these hot+smart contrarians may not choose the ESS and instead mate with some of the fugly+dumb set. If this happens during the process of evolution, it will have implications on the separating equilibrium as described by Curry.

So this is the question that interests me in this and other economic theories-- how robust is it to "irrationality"? Will it stand if x% of people do not follow the ESS? How about x+1%? Theorists have to remember that in any situation where human behaviour is aggregated some proportion will not act according to the rules of rationality. There will always be contrarians in the mix-- those who go left when all reason says to go right-- who will mess up the outcome. We cannot simply assume away these contrarians because a lot of who we are today is an outcome of their "irrationality". After all, if everyone followed ESS we would all still be in Africa.