(09-04-2013, 12:09 PM)Crackpunch Wrote: Well the ones that we happen to see in freelancer are almost always pilots. Space however is not the only place one can go to avoid sunlight. Just look at gamers.
I'm afraid this is starting to get increasingly ridiculous. Gamers? All gamers I know do still get a decent enough amount of sunlight. The percentage of the population as a whole who are gamers that are so reclusive and barely see sunlight must be tiny.
And yes ok sure, that is just one example, you mean there are many possible professions and all these added up could equal lots of people barely getting any strong sunlight? Well that is still extremely unlikely. I don't believe that a significant percentage of people in Sirius don't have any free time and avoid sunlight in it's entirety. I believe that it takes just 30 minutes of sunlight a day to maintain your current melanin levels in your skin, however I might be mistaken. There are many many factors in skin pigmentation anyways, not just melanin.
So in conclusion, you are saying that it is very likely that a significant percentage of the population in Sirius who largly avoid strong sunlight in the warmer climates and they all interbreed with each other (I wonder how many super hardcore gamers that avoid sunlight actually do meet women and have children if they maintain it for their whole lives) and only each other and have lived this way for thousands of years. However in this underground society, they also lack the appropriate healthcare et cetra, which creates a strong sexual selective pressure for those who are able to survive such conditions, where skin pigmentation is key as it's effects on protein synthesis is the key difference between life and death, before you can have children and pass on your genes.
If such a community exists in Sirius, you could well be right, however I doubt it. I'm not sure in even the least advanced and most isolated communities in Sirius, they are at the level as cavemen.
(09-04-2013, 12:09 PM)Crackpunch Wrote: If your supply runs out, or you cannot afford your supplements, you have a problem. Not everyone in freelancer has access to top level healthcare.
No not everyone does have top level healthcare. But for extra melanin production to be such a disadvantage to your health that you are less likely to reproduce that people with less melanin production would be rare. And also even if many people didn't have said supplements, that doesn't matter! Sure it might for that individual person and their genes, however as long as there are sufficient people in the population whom share the same genetic code and do have the necessary healthcare, then they can pass on their genes.
You would need the vast majority of all black people across Sirius to be without these supplements AND for the majority to receive little sunlight AND for this situation to stay for thousands of years.
(09-04-2013, 12:09 PM)Crackpunch Wrote: I wouldn't consider it an advantage, except for maybe Malta, where slaves harvest cardamine (this being the exception regarding farming). I suppose the people of the hispania would maintain their darker complexion.
This I think is part of your misunderstanding, darker skin tone does not need to be advantageous for it to stay. But it might disappear if it is disadvantageous! Does that make sense? Dark skin tone is currently a pre-existing condition and yes it may not be advantageous, except for malta, kusari etc. But those places have environmental factors which would drive the likelihood of being black up (assuming they are warm climates etc, If you spend all your life farming in a cold climate with poor UV-radiation, that does little for your tan). However that does not mean that other places, where there is no advantage (if it really is, in this day of science) darker skin tone will decrease. As there is no pressure for the trait to disappear.
Here's an analogy for you: In the artic circle, Artic Hairs have a white coat do aid in camouflage. Now lets for argument sake say that it takes extra energy to make a white coat. Now if some Artic hairs migrated or were moved to a new habitat, where there isn't any snow and there is no predators. Their coat no longer gives them any advantage. But the producing the coat is still a drain on their energy reserves, so you might predict that over thousands of years, they lose the white colouring of their coat. However if they are in an environment where resources are a plenty and they can very easily get all the food that they require, then energy isn't a problem. And so there is no selective pressure to lose the coat colourings.
There could be mutations by chance which occur in the population which give said Hairs a different colour, which could spread throughout. But that is down to chance and it could possibly go the other way, whereby a Brown Hair has a mutation and now appears white.