The Journal of Half-Baked Ideas

My friend Hagop once came up with the idea for a “Journal of Half-Baked Ideas.” I wasn’t actually there to witness it, so I don’t know any of the details wanted to include in it, but I’ve decided to run away with the idea and take it as my own.
I have lots of ideas. Usually when people are talking to me about boring things. Often I consider speaking up, but decide not to.
About half the time I realize after a few seconds that my idea was stupid and I was right to keep my mouth shut. ((“Wait, so why don’t we just throw babies into the bonfire to keep it going? … Oh, yeah. They’re not flammable.”))
The other half of the time someone else usually speaks up and says my idea for me… and is praised for his originality and intellect.

So from now on, every time I have a half-baked idea, I’m going to post it here. That way I won’t feel bad if they’re stupid (because nobody will read them) and will feel great if they’re not.

Okay. Here’s idea no. 1:
Given a character trait, why should its heritability be one single number? Couldn’t it be divided in many ways? Shouldn’t we expect certain responses to selection to be easier to maintain than others– even if they’re on the same spectrum?
Consider two populations of fruit flies. Say you only allow the ones with the longest wings to breed for 10 generations. Furthermore, say wing-length is 50% heritable, so that after 10 generations, the population has moved pretty darn close (or past) the limit of wing length.
Now say you start over with the same population and only allow the ones with short wings to breed. Why should you expect that the heritability will be the same in this direction?

I’m thinking about underlying allelic differences, but the environment could also be a huge factor. What if nutrition really mattered for increasing wing length, but not so much for decreasing it? So the heritability for bigger wings would be less than that of smaller wings.
Or what if the mechanical limit of the function of wings prevented them from getting too small so that the heritability for decreased wing length was bounded but that for increasing it was not?

… Just a half-baked idea. Rip it apart if you have the inclination.

My friend Hagop once came up with the idea for a “Journal of Half-Baked Ideas.” I wasn’t actually there to witness it, so I don’t know any of the details wanted to include in it, but I’ve decided to run away with the idea and take it as my own. I have lots of ideas.…