# Population growth is good because it reduces inbreeding **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 27, 2020, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-is-good-because-it-reduces-inbreeding/913331 "2020-06-27T03:08:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![PlaceboTarget](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/placebotarget/32/1073_2.png) [@PlaceboTarget](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlaceboTarget)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2020, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-is-good-because-it-reduces-inbreeding/913331/61 "2020-06-28T14:12:53Z")
> [@madsircool](#): > > You are reading way to much into it and I understand that English isnt your first language. We’re in **Great** Debates. ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2020, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-is-good-because-it-reduces-inbreeding/913331/62 "2020-06-28T14:14:20Z")
Have you not read this thread? No one is really debating. They are joking. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2020, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-is-good-because-it-reduces-inbreeding/913331/63 "2020-06-28T14:15:02Z")
Seriously? Of all the foolishness in the world, do you really think _this_ is a problem that lacks sufficient public opprobrium? ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2020, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-is-good-because-it-reduces-inbreeding/913331/64 "2020-06-28T14:18:41Z")
This thread is MPSIMS and the OP is already being pitted. Surprised it hasn’t been moved yet. ---
**Author:** ![PlaceboTarget](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/placebotarget/32/1073_2.png) [@PlaceboTarget](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlaceboTarget)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2020, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-is-good-because-it-reduces-inbreeding/913331/65 "2020-06-28T14:25:39Z")
Meantime it is here and it should be approached accordingly. But that’s just me, of course. ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2020, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-is-good-because-it-reduces-inbreeding/913331/66 "2020-06-28T14:30:21Z")
To be honest and not joking, I am not sure I understand what the OP is debating. If anyone can help… ---
**Author:** ![Obama](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7bcc69/32.png) [@Obama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Obama)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2020, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-is-good-because-it-reduces-inbreeding/913331/67 "2020-06-28T16:06:32Z")
Simply close the thread and I’ll start a new one about Societal collapse ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2020, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-is-good-because-it-reduces-inbreeding/913331/68 "2020-06-28T19:40:56Z")
Do you honestly think it will go better than this one? ---
**Author:** ![Obama](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7bcc69/32.png) [@Obama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Obama)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2020, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-is-good-because-it-reduces-inbreeding/913331/69 "2020-06-28T19:47:55Z")
No. When society glorifies incompetence, the competent people become… Trolls ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2020, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-is-good-because-it-reduces-inbreeding/913331/70 "2020-06-28T19:55:44Z")
So when people respond to your gish gallop by asking for cites or a more thorough exploration and justification of your ideas, they are all trolling you? I get the sense that this happens to you more often than not. Is that a fair observation? ---
**Author:** ![Obama](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7bcc69/32.png) [@Obama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Obama)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2020, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-is-good-because-it-reduces-inbreeding/913331/71 "2020-06-28T20:10:55Z")
What citation do you need specifically. Most of this stuff isnt controversial. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2020, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-is-good-because-it-reduces-inbreeding/913331/72 "2020-06-28T20:26:00Z")
Nothing in addition to the cite requests made throughout the thread by people you appear to claim are trolling you. ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2020, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-is-good-because-it-reduces-inbreeding/913331/73 "2020-06-28T20:27:15Z")
Lack of genetic diversity in humans is not a problem even with massive population drop. For the vast majority of human history, people lived in small isolated villages and rarely traveled far. The effective breeding population was probably in the hundreds at best. Yet, the human race thrived. With a population of 7 billion and travel frequent travel across the country and around the world, people rarely find mates even within their own home town. Inbreeding is the least of our worries. Finally, I can’t quite follow your math but it seems wrong. For determining the likelihood of matching deleterious alleles you need to know the prevalence of that specific allele within the human population. This value is glaringly absent from your calculation. If you have a deleterious mutation that occurs in 1% of the breeding population then the chance that an individual will obtain two copies of it is 1/10,000 regardless of what the population is. If you double to population, you will still have 1/100 people having a single copy and 1/10000 having two copies. The place where inbreeding fits in is that if you have a small population, say 50 people, that are constantly inbreeding, then all deleterious mutation any one of those people happen to have even if it is very rare in the world population, will have an prevalence within this breeding population of 2%, and over time with random mating, this within group prevalence can increase, such that a large proportion are carriers making it fairly probable that offspring will have two copies. ---
**Author:** ![Obama](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7bcc69/32.png) [@Obama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Obama)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2020, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-is-good-because-it-reduces-inbreeding/913331/74 "2020-06-28T20:28:13Z")
Theres only one cite request and its unanswerable. > **[COVID-19: Potential Implications for Individuals with Substance Use Disorders...](https://nida.nih.gov/about-nida/noras-blog/2020/04/covid-19-potential-implications-individuals-substance-use-disorders)** > > As people across the U.S. and the rest of the world contend with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the research community should be alert to the possibility that it could hit some populations with substance use disorders particularly hard. Because... ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2020, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-is-good-because-it-reduces-inbreeding/913331/75 "2020-06-28T20:28:40Z")
> [@Obama](#): > > What citation do you need specifically. Most of this stuff isnt controversial. I have asked for citations multiple times in this thread, and have yet to receive a single one. The questions I have asked you have been ignored. You’re also meandering all over the place: Russian support for Serbia had nothing to do with nonexistent Soviet oil subsidies for Yugoslavia; while federal infrastructure spending in 1877 was pretty much nonexistent (and certainly not aimed at the South, which wasn’t “red” or Republican for most of the next century). ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2020, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-is-good-because-it-reduces-inbreeding/913331/76 "2020-06-28T20:34:15Z")
> [@Obama](#): > > I think the one clear thing we disagree on is that there is no excuse for output to keep falling in july and august if everything is reopen- and if coroanvrius cases continue to increase that’s because of the poverty and starvation due to peak oil. It’s extremely logical that total social collapse would have epidemiologic consequences. You can perhaps spend some time parsing and addressing this. Whatever this is. ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2020, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-is-good-because-it-reduces-inbreeding/913331/77 "2020-06-28T20:34:29Z")
> [@Obama](#): > > Theres only one cite request and its unanswerable. That wasn’t the only cite requested. Beyond that, how do you get from “We need to consider the possibility that people with substance abuse disorders might be more susceptible to COVID, but we really don’t know” to “it’s definitely due to drug use and low vitamin D”? Your cite does not support your argument AT ALL. ---
**Author:** ![Obama](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7bcc69/32.png) [@Obama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Obama)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2020, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-is-good-because-it-reduces-inbreeding/913331/78 "2020-06-28T20:46:08Z")
The point of the hardy weinberg equation error term Alpha is that the mixing you are talking about becomes non deterministic at smaller population size. That is, if 10% of the population has the mutation when in hardy weinberg equilibrium, then two populations of 100 people may have one with 20 heterozygous and 5% homozygous, while the other has 0 cases. This averages to a 2.5% homozygous rate even though it would be 1% in an infinite population. In reality mutations are much more common and nearly everyone has deleterious mutations. ---
**Author:** ![Obama](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7bcc69/32.png) [@Obama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Obama)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2020, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-is-good-because-it-reduces-inbreeding/913331/79 "2020-06-28T20:47:13Z")
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Yugoslavia became more dependent on Soviet oil, as hostilities in the Persian Gulf cut off its supply of Iraqi oil. In addition, from 1970 well into the 1980s actual trade with the Soviet Union exceeded planned trade volumes. Thus, in 1983 the Yugoslav government informed Soviet Prime Minister [Nikolai Tikhonov](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Tikhonov) of its desire to decrease trade with the Soviet Union in the mid-to-late 1980s. Because of the huge foreign currency debt accumulated by Yugoslavia from 1981 to 1985, however, the Soviet Union remained its most important trade partner in the late 1980s. In fact, for some Yugoslav products, such as shoes, the Soviet Union was the sole foreign buyer.[[1]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_trade_of_the_Soviet_Union#cite_note-LOCCSussr-1) ---
**Author:** ![Obama](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7bcc69/32.png) [@Obama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Obama)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2020, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-is-good-because-it-reduces-inbreeding/913331/80 "2020-06-28T20:48:19Z")
The European members of Comecon have looked to the Soviet Union for oil; in turn, they have provided machinery, equipment, agricultural goods, industrial goods, and consumer goods to the Soviet Union. Because of the peculiarities of the Comecon pricing system, throughout the 1970s and early 1980s Comecon prices for Soviet oil were lower than world oil prices. Western specialists have debated the political motivation of this implicit price subsidy to Comecon members. The cohesiveness within Comecon members seemed remarkable when in 1985 the fall in the world price left Comecon members paying above-market prices for Soviet oil.[[1]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_trade_of_the_Soviet_Union#cite_note-LOCCSussr-1) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-is-good-because-it-reduces-inbreeding/913331.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-is-good-because-it-reduces-inbreeding/913331.md?page=5)