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The Role of Human Culture In Natural Selection
gollum123 writes with this excerpt from the NY Times: "... for the last 20,000 years or so, people have inadvertently been shaping their own evolution. The force is human culture, broadly defined as any learned behavior, including technology. The evidence of its activity is the more surprising because culture has long seemed to play just the opposite role. Biologists have seen it as a shield that protects people from the full force of other selective pressures, since clothes and shelter dull the bite of cold and farming helps build surpluses to ride out famine. Because of this buffering action, culture was thought to have blunted the rate of human evolution, or even brought it to a halt, in the distant past. Many biologists are now seeing the role of culture in a quite different light. Although it does shield people from other forces, culture itself seems to be a powerful force of natural selection. People adapt genetically to sustained cultural changes, like new diets. And this interaction works more quickly than other selective forces, 'leading some practitioners to argue that gene-culture co-evolution could be the dominant mode of human evolution.'"
The people conducting that study were completely confused:
The study takes the American view of liberal vs. conservative. It defines "liberal" in terms of concern for genetically nonrelated people and support for private resources that help those people
Liberals in America think *public* resources should be used to help others. Conservatives think that private resources should be used.
No offense, but I'm in the position to know the financial dealings of some tens of thousands of wealthy individuals, and I can tell you flatly and honestly that the primary purpose of the vast majority of those "donations" is to dodge taxes. The majority of such donations are to "foundations" which are run by agents who answer directly to the person who "donated" their funds. Such foundations need only use a small fraction of their donations on actual charitable work. In most cases, the work done is very questionably charitable to begin with.
Don't let actual charitable individuals like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet fool you. Wealthy people by and large donate because there is a net gain in it for them.
I would urge you to especially look into information about Charitable Remainder Trusts.