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[GoblinCookie]

The fitness of the race. What is that ? I'm genuinly puzzled. Natural selection doesn't deal with races, it deals with genes.

That is a politically correct way of saying races (that is teaching darwin's actual theory in a disguised way, Dawkins is cunning).  As I said, we basically corrupted the theory of evolution because it was ideologically abhorrant to our societies consensus ideology.  Ironically this was for opposite reasons, it was opposed to the ideology of Individualism which came from the right and it was also opposed to the ideology of Anti-Racism that came from the left. 

Tho local extinctions do exist, I can still find ducks if I take a walk in the forest and I live very far from that pond. I fail to see how this is relevant

Because all ducks everywhere are doing the same thing!  What happens is just that, those duck races which bred uncontrollably starved to death, leaving only duck races that did not do so.  To put it in the coded way you are used to, the genes of ducks that bred uncontrollably perished in the long run even if they initially did well.  Hence paradoxically the majority of ducks end up 'choosing' not to breed, because that is best for the duck race (and also duck genes) even if it does not increase fitness of the individual duck.

The reason your idea is a coded version of mine (not the reverse) is that without the *cleverly unacknowledged* existence of separate duck races none of that happens.  Without dividing up the duck species into races, the super-fertile duck genes end up taking over everywhere and then all ducks everywhere starve to death.  No ducks, no evolution of ducks. 

Depends. If a 20% smaller size give you, let's say, a 0.5% increase in your survival rate, it will translate into more reproductive success and your gene will spread faster than the other genes in the pool.

But yeah if you drop an atomic bomb that kills everything natural selection is irrelevant ok

That does not solve the problem.  Even if you can somehow evolve fast enough (you generally can't) to avoid the initial mass starvation of everyone else, then you simply start all over again, provided that you actually have enough survivors to even produce a viable population.  That is to say your super-ducks continue to breed exponentially until even their special hunger-proofing cannot avail them, which won't take long and we simply end up with a larger number of super-ducks starving than there were the original ducks.

The problem here is that all races must ensure they do not simply breed uncontrollably, until everyone ends up starving to death.  But natural selection continues to operate at the individual level as well, which seemingly makes it impossible to control the population, since whoever produces the largest number of surviving offspring ends up becoming the uniform standard of the entire race. 

The solution is to pick individuals randomly to reproduce and to establish this randomness as a function of genetic fact.  Then we have basically crushed the individual level of selection completely, whoever wins did so solely because they were lucky, but you cannot inherit luck.  Natural selection continues to operate at a racial level though, since if any race gets the probability wrong then it dies out, one way or the other.  Whatever race makes which individuals reproduce other than random, ends up going extinct as soon as whatever non-random element it is that determines who gets to reproduce proliferates sufficiently. 

[Cathar]

That is a politically correct way of saying races
 it was opposed to the ideology of Individualism
it was also opposed to the ideology of Anti-Racism

Yeah I understand now where that concept of "fitness of the race" comes from, lol. You can have the ideology you want, but be very assured this has nothing to do with darwinism.

I urge you for the second time to read the litterature because that kind of myths about darwinism hurt you as much as it hurts people that actually have an understanding of how it works, as well as the cause you are championning.

The reason your idea is a coded version of mine (not the reverse) is that without the *cleverly unacknowledged* existence of separate duck races none of that happens.  Without dividing up the duck species into races, the super-fertile duck genes end up taking over everywhere and then all ducks everywhere starve to death.  No ducks, no evolution of ducks. 

And again, you are talking as if ducks were free to breed without nature imposed limits. There are endogeneous limits (how much ressources are available), but the most important limits to reproduction are exogeneous (predators).
Super fertile duckies will be an absolutely meat orgy for any kind of predator that would have evolved to hunt them. An overpopulation of ducks would generate (by mechanisms I will not explain but you can figure out) a large population of duck hunting predators that will feast over them.


The rest is just a restatement of your previous argument.

So again : it's statistics. Genes give you +% or -% on your genetic fitness, which is your ability to produce as much offspring as you can before dying. Energy consumption, survival vs elements or vs predators are a factor. Attracting mates is a factor. Producing viable offspring is of course a factor. Genes that give you +% will spread faster than the other genes, and will make a specy evolve. This is litterally how it works.

There. Trust me it will save you a lot of time and energy

[SixOfSpades]

Let me know if you guys are OK with getting back on topic.

[Cathar]

Oh yeah, don't mind me, carry on

[SixOfSpades]

I think it's best to define all sex-related behaviors in terms of four distinct desires: Reproduction, Sex, Marriage/Monogamy, and Love. It is possible, although unlikely, to experience even closely-related desires independently: A person can want children while feeling nothing but distaste for the act required to make them. One can be in love with another person, but still not want their love to be exclusive to just that one person. Etc. Friendship is its own separate desire, arguably distinct from the others, although they can intersect in terms of things like "friends with benefits" or a "monogamous friendship," wherein you suspect that someone is trying to steal YOUR best friend. Some of these desires already have associated in-game traits: Love_Propensity, Lust_Propensity, and Friendliness, but traits like Wants_Children and Exclusivity are absent.

If all of these traits existed in-game, and were implemented at the Racial, Civilization, and Individual levels, that would create a broad mix of realistic behaviors. Goblins could be all about rapidly spawning offspring & not give a damn about monogamy, while elves could express a great deal of love for everyone & everything, but only rarely let that take the form of actual sex. One society could place a high value on monogamy (cultures who also have at least average regard for Law and Tradition would turn monogamy into actual marriage), while another is far more polygamous. At both the Racial and Civ levels, there would have to be two variables for each trait (one for the average & one for the deviation), but they would only be editable by the player at the Racial level, because the Civ level values are generated during worldgen.

On the individual level, some traits will have to checked to make sure they're in proportion to certain others: It doesn't make sense for an individual to desire monogamy but not love, sex, or children. (Although they can experience family or societal pressure to marry.) It should also be possible for traits to change in response to certain stimuli--for instance, if a dwarf learns that she is among the last survivors of a clan, of a fort, of a civilization, or even of the entire dwarven species itself, her personal Wants_Children trait should increase proportionally (and perhaps gradually), probably affecting her related traits in a similar fashion. Also, parents should expect their kids to reproduce, to the extent that an individual's Wants_Children trait should be modified by the number of their siblings that already have living children of their own. Hetero-/Homo-/Bi-/A- sexuality should be determined at the individual level only, randomized directly from the racial values present in the raws: Civilizations may have different attitudes toward the alternative sexualities, but no effect whatsoever on their actual occurrence.

[GoblinCookie]

Yeah I understand now where that concept of "fitness of the race" comes from, lol. You can have the ideology you want, but be very assured this has nothing to do with darwinism.

I urge you for the second time to read the litterature because that kind of myths about darwinism hurt you as much as it hurts people that actually have an understanding of how it works, as well as the cause you are championning.

I have already have a very strong idea about how it works; I am also not sure what cause you think I am championing.  It just happens to be that if we think about evolution as being primarily about the selection of whatever traits make the individual fitter, we end up with everyone starving to death.

Simply pointing out that things don't work, is not spreading myths about anything.  It just happens to be that the only way to solve those problems is to understand natural selection as primarily about the selection of races rather than individuals.  That ironically also happens to be how Darwin understood it. 

And again, you are talking as if ducks were free to breed without nature imposed limits. There are endogeneous limits (how much ressources are available), but the most important limits to reproduction are exogeneous (predators).
Super fertile duckies will be an absolutely meat orgy for any kind of predator that would have evolved to hunt them. An overpopulation of ducks would generate (by mechanisms I will not explain but you can figure out) a large population of duck hunting predators that will feast over them.


The rest is just a restatement of your previous argument.

So again : it's statistics. Genes give you +% or -% on your genetic fitness, which is your ability to produce as much offspring as you can before dying. Energy consumption, survival vs elements or vs predators are a factor. Attracting mates is a factor. Producing viable offspring is of course a factor. Genes that give you +% will spread faster than the other genes, and will make a specy evolve. This is litterally how it works.

There. Trust me it will save you a lot of time and energy

That audiobook goes on for 7 hours!

What you are saying does not work, individual ducks that are better are not being eaten by predators are favoured by natural selection over those who are not.  Individual predators who are better at catching ducks are favoured by natural selection over those who are worse at catching ducks.  That sounds like a good solution and promotes the pointless slaughter of animals in the realworld in 'culls' to substitute for the missing predators, but it actually flat out does not work for multiple reasons.

The first reason is that the prey will always evolve faster than the predators.  That is because the number of predators is always greater than that of the prey.  A larger number of creatures means a larger number of mutations, which means the prey will evolve faster than the predators, meaning the predators will always be outevolved by their prey. 

The second reason is that population increase should be (but isn't) exponential.  Predators only kill a proportion of the *present* population, but the future population is a multiple of the current population.  For instance let us assume that we have 30 to begin with ducks, the area can support 100 ducks and the duck population multiplies by 3X every generation.  Half the ducks get eaten every generation before they can reproduce. 

30- 50% = 15
15 X 3 = 45
45 - 50% = 22
22 X 3 = 66
66 - 50% 33
33 X 3 = 99
99 - 50% = 49
49 X 3 = 135
135 - 50% = 67
67 X 3 = 201
201 - 50% = 100
100 X 3 = 300
300 - 50% = 150
(carrying capacity is 100 ducks and there are now 150 ducks)
ALL DUCKS STARVE AS DO ALL DUCKEATERS

All the introduction of duckeaters into the equation did was slow down the rate of exponential increase, but none of that makes any difference in the evolutionary time scale.  As exponential increase is the problem, the only way to solve the problem is to end exponential population increase.  Yet individual selection will always result in exponential increase in population, which is why it does cannot work as the primary evolutionary level. 

Let me know if you guys are OK with getting back on topic.

This was all about how it was a problem with only a few of dwarves reproducing but having lots of babies originally. 

I think it's best to define all sex-related behaviors in terms of four distinct desires: Reproduction, Sex, Marriage/Monogamy, and Love. It is possible, although unlikely, to experience even closely-related desires independently: A person can want children while feeling nothing but distaste for the act required to make them. One can be in love with another person, but still not want their love to be exclusive to just that one person. Etc. Friendship is its own separate desire, arguably distinct from the others, although they can intersect in terms of things like "friends with benefits" or a "monogamous friendship," wherein you suspect that someone is trying to steal YOUR best friend. Some of these desires already have associated in-game traits: Love_Propensity, Lust_Propensity, and Friendliness, but traits like Wants_Children and Exclusivity are absent.

If all of these traits existed in-game, and were implemented at the Racial, Civilization, and Individual levels, that would create a broad mix of realistic behaviors. Goblins could be all about rapidly spawning offspring & not give a damn about monogamy, while elves could express a great deal of love for everyone & everything, but only rarely let that take the form of actual sex. One society could place a high value on monogamy (cultures who also have at least average regard for Law and Tradition would turn monogamy into actual marriage), while another is far more polygamous. At both the Racial and Civ levels, there would have to be two variables for each trait (one for the average & one for the deviation), but they would only be editable by the player at the Racial level, because the Civ level values are generated during worldgen.

On the individual level, some traits will have to checked to make sure they're in proportion to certain others: It doesn't make sense for an individual to desire monogamy but not love, sex, or children. (Although they can experience family or societal pressure to marry.) It should also be possible for traits to change in response to certain stimuli--for instance, if a dwarf learns that she is among the last survivors of a clan, of a fort, of a civilization, or even of the entire dwarven species itself, her personal Wants_Children trait should increase proportionally (and perhaps gradually), probably affecting her related traits in a similar fashion. Also, parents should expect their kids to reproduce, to the extent that an individual's Wants_Children trait should be modified by the number of their siblings that already have living children of their own. Hetero-/Homo-/Bi-/A- sexuality should be determined at the individual level only, randomized directly from the racial values present in the raws: Civilizations may have different attitudes toward the alternative sexualities, but no effect whatsoever on their actual occurrence.

Those ideas seem rather complicated.  The idea of having the desire to have children increase as the population is reduced makes sense, but it will only really result in a larger number of beings having fewer children each rather than the reverse.  Those who still happen to want to have children will just end up having an awful lot of children and breeding for everyone else. 

[SixOfSpades]

I have already have a very strong idea about how it works

Yes, you obviously do. And that, just as obviously, is the problem. This is far from the first time you have authoritatively argued your opinions on a matter about which you actually know rather little; your clear ignorance of such basic factors as dominant/recessive traits, predator/prey ratios, and resource consumption is ample confirmation of this. Cathar has already shown himself to have a much firmer grasp on biology and evolution than you, and so for as long as he is willing to humor you, I will save my own time and simply assume that he's right.

That audiobook goes on for 7 hours!

Part 1 of that audiobook is over 7 hours. Listen to it anyway. It might not have the strongest relevance to what we're discussing (I, personally, feel that DF evolution would best be handled at the macroscopic scale, if indeed it should be modeled at all), but you will at least have learned something, which is never bad.

This was all about how it was a problem with only a few of dwarves reproducing but having lots of babies originally.

It started as that, yeah, before someone changed the channel. DuckTales was a pretty good show, but I never watched it for its keen attention to scientific detail.

I think it's best to define all sex-related behaviors in terms of four distinct desires: Reproduction, Sex, Marriage/Monogamy, and Love. . . . Friendship is its own separate desire, arguably distinct from the others . . .

Those ideas seem rather complicated.

Only marginally. I feel that in most individuals, the Reproduction/Sex/Love triad of desires will all be roughly the same (and thus represent an overall "sex drive" in general), but I think there's value in keeping them distinct because it allows for modeling different behaviors. For example, suppose a dwarf has high Love_Propensity, but relatively low Lust_Propensity and urge for Reproduction. She falls in love and gets married, willingly engages in sex as an expression of her love, and pops out a couple of kids. Her urge to Reproduce is now satisfied, she now has three people to fulfill her desire to love, and her wish to express her love physically can now take the form of parenting, rather than sex. So she's happy. But say her husband, meanwhile, has the opposite arrangement, and married primarily out of lust and the desire for children. His wife and kids satisfy his wish for love, but if his stronger desires aren't also met, he might just check his Exclusivity trait and try his hand at philandering. Depending on the wife's Exclusivity trait, she might just have some strong opinions about that. And depending on how their civilization feels about monogamy, a non-nuclear family relationship might develop--perhaps progressing towards polygamy, perhaps towards divorce.
Yeah, DF can model traditional families, again and again and again and again. Or, it can model traditional families with customizable tendencies for telling more interesting stories.
Besides, as I said earlier, breaking the system up into separate traits allows the races, and the various civs of each race, to behave in different ways.

The idea of having the desire to have children increase as the population is reduced makes sense, but it will only really result in a larger number of beings having fewer children each rather than the reverse.  Those who still happen to want to have children will just end up having an awful lot of children and breeding for everyone else.

If it truly does result in more breeding couples but fewer average children per couple as the only change, then I will still count that as a significant improvement. You have a point about the "NEED!" to reproduce also affecting dwarves that were already reproducing, but as all traits have a maximum, and breeding dwarves presumably started closer to the cap than non-breeders, I'm confident that it will still result in a net decrease in disparity.

[scourge728]

PTW

[Dorsidwarf]

Goblin, I feel that it’s important to remember that babies are not “free” to make, and when there are serious food shortages, animals often choose to/naturally don’t/ are unable to dedicate resources to/ (whatever I’m not a terminology sort of person )having more offspring.

Evolution also acts over a much longer and slower  period than short-term population booms and busts, so it’s not an invisible hand instantly acting to yank the prey out of the mouths of the increased number of predators.

Additionally, positive traits in a species can easily be conflicting and impossible to have both of precluding the inevitability of the creation of a min-maxed “super-prey”. For example being small and agile might make you better at avoiding predators, but being larger and fatter will make you more easily able to survive a harsh winter.



——

I apologise for any misconceptions, it’s been a while since I did anything in evolution.

[KittyTac]

Here we see a wild GoblinCookie in its natural habitat, the suggestion board. This one is derailing a thread, natural for a GoblinCookie.

[Thundercraft]

Evolution also acts over a much longer and slower  period than short-term population booms and busts, so it’s not an invisible hand instantly acting to yank the prey out of the mouths of the increased number of predators.

While I don't disagree with the gist of what you were saying...
I just wanted to point out that, technically, this statement is not exactly correct. For one thing, you're forgetting about epigenetics. It is the study of heritable changes in gene function that do not involve changes in the DNA sequence. It's about changes that can determine whether or even how genes get expressed or repressed. And these changes can be permanent or semi-permanent. Significant epigenetic changes can occur to an organism in a single generation from strong environmental factors, such as a severe food shortage.

Several years ago, I watched a PBS program about epigenetics. It talked about a scientific study which showed how a severe famine in a village (in Russia, as I recall) resulted in the decedents suffering from a trend towards obesity and certain ailments.

Another example would be a long-term scientific study (as mentioned in the video below) that showed a connection with food shortages and the significant enlargement of beaks of certain birds on an isolated island, allowing the survivors of the food shortage to better consume different food and, thus, survive better and have more offspring. This change occurred rapidly, as in only a generation or two, with the larger beaks becoming more prevalent for a few years after the famine before becoming small again.

Further, this study (as mentioned below) observed a breeding pair of a different (never before seen on this island), but closely related bird species arriving on this island (blown in on a hurricane) and interbred with the local population. Against all odds, the resulting hybrid bred true and literally became a new species in a matter of years. Apparently, this new species exists to this day.

Yes, changes to DNA sequence takes a long, long time. But, at least to a limited extent, evolution can happen over a comparatively very short time span.

YouTube : Rapid Evolution

Finally, consider how vastly different wild wolves are from domesticated dogs. Judging by looks alone, it seems a bit hard to imagine that the Chihuahua, Mexican Hairless, Komondor, Mastiff, English Bull Terrier and wild wolves all have nearly identical DNA sequences. The fact that the vast majority of these differences is due to gene expression is incredible. Imagine the implications...

[Cathar]

That audiobook goes on for 7 hours!

It is the price you got to pay to have a modicum of idea of what you're talking about I'm afraid. Not only it's only part one, but it is also a very basic vulgarization of the Origins of the Species. If you don't have that absolute base level of knowledge I fear discussing that topic is pointless.

I mean I'm sorry for dismissing you but seriously...

That is because the number of predators is always greater than that of the prey.

In reality this is the opposite for basic conservation of energy laws.

A larger number of creatures means a larger number of mutations

In reality this is the opposite. The larger the pool the slower the mutations, because the successeful genes have a longer area to spread in before they become the majority.

which means the prey will evolve faster than the predators

Predators and prey coevolve as a base principle of the evolution of the species. Successful predators reproduce faster than unsuccessful predators, living preys reproduce faster than the one who gets eaten, and omg predators don't wait for preys to evolve, what the hell.

[tussock]

Um, so.

Evolution is about genes, and their prevalence in a population.

Genes travel in sets called chromosomes, so your positive traits that tend to set are all also negative traits that tend to go extinct. Great complexity is added due to the way chromosomes combine in pairs with variable switching between them, and also with genes having near-copies of themselves on other chromosomes.

It's quite normal to set traits that, for instance, completely prevent breeding in anything up to 20% of a population without any positive association at all, there's just no way for selection to make them extinct because they hide a bit, so randomly they become set across the species and all it's descendants. Even mildly negative traits that express 100% are only less likely to become set in a population, and mildly positive traits only more likely, evolution totally plays dice. There's math for it, but it's wicked complicated.

Variation within a species in general is not evolution, almost all variation is environmentally triggered rather than genetically.

Epigenetics is not evolution. When you get fit, your epigenetics change, red cell count up, heart rate down, blood pressure down, how you process food changes, and when you get unfit again, they mostly change back (some epigenetic changes can make permanent changes to your body, like puberty does, but yeah, that happened already). There's a handful can be partly passed one (or two, not both) generations, under rare conditions, but it's still not evolution.

Social norms are not evolution. Just, no. We're a social animal, almost everything is massively influenced by social norms, including our environmental triggers for variation.

Concentrated genetic variation like redheads in Ireland/Scotland. That was evolution. It's not particularly interesting, because the gene is universal to primates and can't go extinct due to being recessive and mostly harmless, but it being more concentrated where it worked better for reproductive fitness in reasonably stable primitive societies across hundreds of generations of humans, that was evolution. Now it's not any more because social structures have massively overwhelmed the potential benefit of the gene, but in ancient times.

Fortress Dorfs, like Hill Dorfs, are social animals, and far from primitive. Their subtle genetic biases around respecting the leader and such, are irrelevant in comparison to their social norms. What matters for dorfy survival of the species is a lack broken candy, and that's not evolution either.

[Thundercraft]

Evolution is about genes, and their prevalence in a population.

Can you cite a reputable source to back up this definition?

Epigenetics is not evolution.

Again, can you cite a source?

There's a handful can be partly passed one (or two, not both) generations, under rare conditions, but it's still not evolution.

From what I've read, this is incorrect, on both accounts. Under certain circumstances, epigenetic alterations can not only become permanent to the organism, but can become a hard-coded and permanent part of heritable traits in offspring. Also, the Merriam-Webster definition of the word "evolution" allows for more than just natural selection, genetic mutation and drift.

Evolution 2.0 (evo2.org) > Do Epigenetic Changes Become Hard-Coded?

So… can this temporary graying-out of genes (which happens all the time, in response to external threats – things like callouses, temperature swings and a thousand other things) become hard-coded and permanent? Is epigenetics a powerful force for long-term evolution?

From correspondence with James Shapiro of the University of Chicago:

You are describing the fascinating but mysterious phenomenon discovered by Waddington known as “genetic assimilation.” Waddington treated Drosophila embryos to induce epigenetic changes producing flies with two pairs of wings (Bithorax).

After doing this for a few generations and mating the phenotypically altered flies, he discovered he no longer needed to treat the embryos. They had acquired Bithorax mutations in their genomes!

I’m not sure this has been replicated, and I’m not aware whether the mutations were ever subjected to detailed analysis. Nonetheless, Waddington’s observations have been widely cited and gained broad credibility from his status as the father of modern epigenetics.

Epigenetics is the interface between the organism and its environment.

University of Utah > Genetic Science Learning Center > Epigenetics & Inheritance

We used to think that a new embryo's epigenome was completely erased and rebuilt from scratch. But this isn't completely true. Some epigenetic tags remain in place as genetic information passes from generation to generation, a process called epigenetic inheritance.

Epigenetic inheritance is an unconventional finding. It goes against the idea that inheritance happens only through the DNA code that passes from parent to offspring. It means that a parent's experiences, in the form of epigenetic tags, can be passed down to future generations.

As unconventional as it may be, there is little doubt that epigenetic inheritance is real. In fact, it explains some strange patterns of inheritance geneticists have been puzzling over for decades.

And here is Merriam-Webster's definition:

merriam-webster.com > evolution
noun evo·lu·tion \ ˌe-və-ˈlü-shən , ˌē-və- \

Definition of evolution

1 a : descent with modification from preexisting species : cumulative inherited change in a population of organisms through time leading to the appearance of new forms : the process by which new species or populations of living things develop from preexisting forms through successive generations

also : the scientific theory explaining the appearance of new species and varieties through the action of various biological mechanisms (such as natural selection, genetic mutation or drift, and hybridization)

I added the yellow for emphasis. I emphasized hybridization because, as I mentioned in my previous post, there was a long-term scientific study which documented the apparance of a new species of bird through hybridization. Environmental factors played little (direct) role in this evolution, aside from how a hurricane helped to transport a different, related species to this isolated island, leading to the first hybrids of what stabilized to become a unique, never-before-seen species.

Look up Merriam-Webster's definition of evolution, yourself, and you'll find no mention of DNA, genes or the phrase "genetic structure". The definition of the word is not dependent on such. As long as modifications to an organism stem from natural biological mechanisms (as opposed to artificial means; i.e., genetic engineering) and as long as they are passed from one generation to the next, how can that not be considered evolution?

[GoblinCookie]

Only marginally. I feel that in most individuals, the Reproduction/Sex/Love triad of desires will all be roughly the same (and thus represent an overall "sex drive" in general), but I think there's value in keeping them distinct because it allows for modeling different behaviors. For example, suppose a dwarf has high Love_Propensity, but relatively low Lust_Propensity and urge for Reproduction. She falls in love and gets married, willingly engages in sex as an expression of her love, and pops out a couple of kids. Her urge to Reproduce is now satisfied, she now has three people to fulfill her desire to love, and her wish to express her love physically can now take the form of parenting, rather than sex. So she's happy. But say her husband, meanwhile, has the opposite arrangement, and married primarily out of lust and the desire for children. His wife and kids satisfy his wish for love, but if his stronger desires aren't also met, he might just check his Exclusivity trait and try his hand at philandering. Depending on the wife's Exclusivity trait, she might just have some strong opinions about that. And depending on how their civilization feels about monogamy, a non-nuclear family relationship might develop--perhaps progressing towards polygamy, perhaps towards divorce.
Yeah, DF can model traditional families, again and again and again and again. Or, it can model traditional families with customizable tendencies for telling more interesting stories.
Besides, as I said earlier, breaking the system up into separate traits allows the races, and the various civs of each race, to behave in different ways.

At the end of the day a creature has a basic nature in relationship to these things.  Societies tend to vary little, they really tend to be either monogamous or polygamous as far as the vast majority of RL human societies and monogamy seems to be on the 'winning' side.  We need to start with the creature raws first, before we move on to how they interact with societies. 

If it truly does result in more breeding couples but fewer average children per couple as the only change, then I will still count that as a significant improvement. You have a point about the "NEED!" to reproduce also affecting dwarves that were already reproducing, but as all traits have a maximum, and breeding dwarves presumably started closer to the cap than non-breeders, I'm confident that it will still result in a net decrease in disparity.

The desires are not here being controlled by the population cap? 

It is the price you got to pay to have a modicum of idea of what you're talking about I'm afraid. Not only it's only part one, but it is also a very basic vulgarization of the Origins of the Species. If you don't have that absolute base level of knowledge I fear discussing that topic is pointless.

I mean I'm sorry for dismissing you but seriously...

I've read the Origin of Species.  I have not read Dawkin's Selfish Gene, I have only read his anti-religious books and one of them (the blind watchmaker?) that is kind of in the middle between science and religion.  You (and Six of Spades) should know that it is not good manners to presume the ignorance of other people; it is not my fault that Darwin's theory has more holes in it than a sieve but I was only trying to patch up one of the holes here.   

In reality this is the opposite for basic conservation of energy laws.

  Indeed, that was a typo and exactly what I was saying. 

In reality this is the opposite. The larger the pool the slower the mutations, because the successful genes have a longer area to spread in before they become the majority.

The successful genes spread exponentially; meaning it will make only a little difference how big the area is.  The increase in the probability of the arrival on the scene of new beneficial mutation however is linear, the larger the population the larger the probability that a new such mutation will emerge, since there are a greater number of individuals to mutate.  That means that in general (not absolutely, since this is probability) the prey will evolve first since they are more numerous than their predators. 

Predators and prey coevolve as a base principle of the evolution of the species. Successful predators reproduce faster than unsuccessful predators, living preys reproduce faster than the one who gets eaten, and omg predators don't wait for preys to evolve, what the hell.

No, for reasons already explained, generally the prey will evolve first and the predators will respond to the prey evolving.

The problem here is that always and every-ways, natural selection will favor individuals that produce the larger number of surviving offspring.  That is a problem because the population 'naturally' increases exponentially but the carrying capacity of the environment is finite.  The larger the existing population happens to be, the greater the increase and that means that the creature won't just exceed the carrying capacity of the environment a little bit, it will do so A LOT.  This results in the entire population starving to death, which means that everyone is dead so no more evolution for said creature. 

Social norms are not evolution. Just, no. We're a social animal, almost everything is massively influenced by social norms, including our environmental triggers for variation.

Not literally.  However they certainly evolve in a fashion that is fairly similar to how creatures evolve, the successful societies propagate more societies that are also successful in the same fashion while the failed societies die out.