Time to spock Wall-E.

[unbibium]

If the human race lived in space for 700 years on a cruise ship, they would not become progressively fatter.

First of all, if people are going on a cruise, and there are enough resources to keep people fat, then there are going to be at least a few people who work out and stay in shape. They'll have the same selection advantages they have on Earth, even if they have no survival advantage.

The economy of a cruise ship that's been in space for 700 years would probably dictate the evolutionary pressures. I can see many where the humans get weaker, but not necessarily larger, unless the ship consistently takes in more resources than it expends. I'd go as far as to say that, on any generational spaceship, people would get smaller over time.

amirite?

Comments

[templeemc.livejournal.com]

All I gotta say is Wall-E must be a damn good movie if it's occupying this much of your mental time.
I wanna see it too, but decided to wait until someone else had (it looked good, but could have gone in so many different places I wasn't sure of).

Maybe this weekend.

[jwgh]

Since people never touch each other IN THE FUTURE, I reckon that everyone's from a test tube, so no selection pressure. (I imagine the ship has to carefully control the population to avoid running out of room and resources. Probably there's contraceptives in all those food shakes everyone's eating all the time.)

I think that over the years everyone lost hope that they would ever return to Earth, eventually ever forgetting that was a goal, so apathy set in. Plus it's supposed to be a sort of luxury cruise, so people are predisposed to wanting to have everything taken care of for them, maybe.

Also, maybe they all have really cool-looking avatars on THE INTERNET.

[sanspoof.livejournal.com]

(Nod nod)
I wanted the utterly sedentary people to be rag-on-a-stick enormous, too. I mean, if you never ever move, and are constantly fed by robots, you are probably getting up there.

I don't think the ship can have possibly had no way of getting new matter for cup-based foods, although their profligate throwing-out of trash would seem extra stupid then. But it's that or be limited by the stores brought.

I don't think that a generally expanding population (mass, not number) would have any trouble bringing everyone's self-image along with it. People's level of fatness in regard to one another would be the only thing that mattered, soon enough, and that could allow for anything. Fatness is culturally regarded, and this culture is a bit predictable.

[motis.livejournal.com]

Being fat might make you die earlier, but it typically doesn't kill you until long after breeding age, so fat people only have a survival disadvantage as a phenotype, not as a genotype... and skinny people only get a selection advantage over fat people in cultures that value skinny over fat.