Slashdot Mirror
Is Evolution Over In Humans?
BrianGa writes: "Is evolution over? Are current humans the final version? This
article presents a number of interesting theories, including the theory that
'Our species has reached its biological pinnacle and is no longer capable
of changing.' Professor Steve Jones believes this, in part, because
'human populations are now being constantly mixed, again producing a
blending that blocks evolutionary change.'"
Odd, I thought it was blending, and the subsequent mixing of genes (variation) that was the basis of evolution.
--My purpose set, my will defined. Caress the air, embrace the skies.
I think with modern medicine, only *really* bad gene combinations get selected out. The only way for humans to really evolve is through genetic engineering. It's the natural progression of evolution! It is our density!
-If
Run a pencil-and-paper RPG campaign with your far-off friends: Gametable!
Biological evolution is probably over; after all, we are quite well adapted to our environment; there might be some genetic drift, but it won't be noticed in a couple million years.
However, humankind is being used as a vehicle for memetic evolution; ideas evolve, reproduce, and flow from one mind to another; and it does not seem like this is going to stop. Ever.
It's just a BloJJ
And sentient beings have lots of room to evolve. We don't even use a power of 2 as a radix even yet!
-- Hexadecimal.
That I've ever heard of.
Variation is the subject for Human Change and Progression. Why doesn't "Professor" Jones look at something like, say, Malaria in relation to Sickle-Cell genes, or other diseases or climates and how they effect populations?
Since the entire world doesn't operate on a level where we can completely control our environment, there's no way to be sure if evolution is truly over. Then again, in Biology and Psychology classes, it HAS been noted that we are the only species on the planet that currently effects its own evolutionary change.
I just hope we can all come to the better conclusion that evolution isn't nearly over. We're still a changing species - but we're looking at ourselves in a relatively small time window. Modern society in comparison to evolution is a silly idea. The window isn't large enough to fit 'evolution' in.
Since this century already seems to be the bad-anime-cliche century, I am assuming that sometime around the year of 2015, humanity will go through a forced evoloution planned by an old German man, and involving angels, genetic engineering, nuclear explosions and gigantic biorobots dropping out of 500 foot wide stealth bombers.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
I've always thought that things like evolution and nature will always be around, kinda like friction (where that came from, I don't know). So, no matter what the human race does, we'll always "evolve" or move forward in accordance to the rules of nature. Maybe our longer life spans *are* a part of our evolution.
And as for a little bit on nature... I don't think technological advances are unnatural. I mean, look at it this way, what isn't natural? Everything under the sun is somehow derived from nature, so, in the end, it really doesn't matter what we do... If it's any consolation, let's say technology gets the better of us and we die off somehow. We go back into the ground and become "natural" again...
Why won't anyone comment about being a conscious being? Isn't it obvious that we only need evolve around our consciousness to get ahead? There's much more to do. Stop ignoring me.
-- Hexadecimal.
My theory has always been that in order to grow as a race, we need to keep humping until we're all the same color. This would, in theory, allow us to take the best from all races and cultures.
This article confuses me a bit and seems to border on bigotry for the sake of genealogy. I think MTV, with it's cultural influence and the reason for it's popularity, is a bigger threat to our evolution than the color of our skin.
We want to evolve don't we?
We certainly can't evolve anymore now that we have a cure for nearly every disease...
Cancer is probably the most dangerous thing to our current evolutionary status, but it doesn't seem like it will be much of a threat for long.
AIDS is disappearing, smallpox is dead, anthrax is nothing to worry about, ebola - isolated, bubonic plague - gone, etc.
The only way we can evolve now is mentally; and unfortunately this will not happen on a large scale..just look at the world around you.
[[upon deeper thought]]
I suppose its also possible that people with slower metabolisms will have a greater chance of survival in the coming years, once food becomes scarce and the world is similar to the movie Soylent Green.
Thought I wouldn't consider this -evolution-, just adaptation to one minor problem.
How many of us would be around if it weren't for modern technology/medicine? Personally, I'm blind as a bat without my glasses, have plastic teeth as my real ones never came in and I was born with my umbilical cord wrapped around my neck. If we were still under the evolutionary pressures that were normal for most of our specie's history, I'd be toast.
Look around sometime and notice how many people are wearing glasses or contacts. I'd bet that as little as 200 years ago the numbers were less than 10% of what we have now. I always picture this as the distribution of eyesight in the population widening as the evolutionary pressure to keep eyesight good is taken away. I.e., you don't die any more if you need glasses.
Whether this means we've stopped evolving or not is a bit of a semantic game. Even the word "devolving" is a loaded term, as it implies that there is some upward path that evolution is following. Sharks have been stable for millions of years and haven't really evolved in that time. However, this doesn't mean that evolution has stopped for them. They've just reached a "local minimum" in the evolutionary fitness phase space. You can bet that if something drastic changed they would start changing again right away.
I'll stop rambling after one more thought. As Richard Dawkins has said so well and so often, evolution is a subtle process and it's very easy to make the mistake of anthropomorphizing it into something with a goal. It seems to me that that's what the authors of this article have done.
Either that or they've just stated the obvious.
Brant
The reason people aren't changing to adapt to their environment anymore is becuase they are adapting their environment to themselves. Can't learn to live somewhere? Pull out all those pesky trees, dig up all the rocks, plow the ground, add some fertilizer and you may just get by...
All a coder really wants, are fast cars, fast women and fast algorithms.
Simply put, where do you want to evolve to today?
no, sorry, wrong thread.
I have no doubt humanity is still evolving, the question it, in what direction? remember, evolution is driven by changes that extend breeding probability (not intelligence or lifespan, etc..), so what increases our chances of breeding??
Interesting question, I think. A little scary if you think about it too much.
I know it's hard to imagine evolutionary time, where things require a few hundred thousand years to be relevant, but really this assertion that we have stopped evolving is so much crap.
Modern medicine and sanitation are pretty much developments of the last two thousand years (the Romans had pretty elaborate sewer and aqueduct systems), while speedy air and land travel has only been around for a hundred years. These really only register as a blip on the scale of evolutionary time. During this blip, we are doing well and reunited as a species (reproductively speaking). This by itself is not significant enough to alter our rate of evolution. Subpopulations of many species go through these cycles and are still "actively evolving". More significantly, the incredible technological changes we are generating in such short order will have an unpredictable impact on the environment around us and thus our own survival. We may think that our lives are becoming more stable, but this does not come without alteration to the world around us.
While it may seem that we are conquering nature, we are doing nothing less than ensuring the struggle of nature continues.
-- "Sucks to your ass-mar"
Humans could change over thousands or millions of years to be to be smallpox resistant... Or we could apply our own intelligence to wipe out smallpox with vaccines. The former is clearly evolution. Is the latter? Is species improvment still evolution when changes directed by the evolved intelligence dominate the random mutations?
For a while I was worried that humans were defeating evolution. Diseases like diabetes can't be cured, but we can treat them, thereby increasing the number of kids born to people with diabetes. The natural selection against childhood diabetes is defeated. On the other hand, we may one day cure diabetes with gene therapy. Maybe that is how humans will evolve in the future.
Evolution is dynamic process, where those most adapted to the environment tend to have more offrspirng than those less adapted. I'm sad to see that many people (including most journalists) still seem to think about evolution as a linear process, where a species becomes more and more adapted striving for perfection.
Has our environment changed? Well, humans are still adapted to live on the savannah. We are adapted to socially depend on a large extended family.
In genetic time, humans recently started farming, and even more recently started living in citites. We are subjected to an entire new environment: the indoors. We are living very close to lots of strangers. Still, we react to modern life as hunters/gatherers. Think of stress, road rage, people being burned out by 30.
Evolution works on all living organisms all the time. Maybe other factors are more important than genetics, in determining the number of offspring a human has. It is easier to imagine that those less (genetically) adapted tend to have fewer children. Those burned out from work by the time they're 30 probably have less energy for having a family than those who have the genetics (and social life) to cope with stress.
And for a good read about evolution that clears up a lot of popular misunderstandings about what evolution is and isn't I can really recommend Richard Dawkins.
I read the article just becase I don't like to reply without giving the benefit of the doubt.. but in this case it was a waste of time.
QUOTE: 'Things have simply stopped getting better, or worse, for our species.'
Then the Atomic Scientists wouldn't have a Doomsday Clock. And we wouldn't be worried about destroying our coastal cities with rising tides.
The article is only saved by Stringer who says the obvious, that 'Evolution goes on all the time. You don't have to intervene. It is just that it is highly unpredictable.'
I'd say that any mind that thinks evolution is over, is destined to become roadkill due to 'evolutionary' causes.
In our near future we have the prospect of mutations spreading which fight against aids, tropical diseases spreading north, and resistance to biowarefare or radiation. Somewhere along the way we will likely have changes in populations due to great artificial genes which can be passed on. Robotics and other technologies will enhance humans at some pace or another, there seems little doubt of that or you can read Hans Moravec if you are still unsure about that. We will have plenty of stresses on our populations and our genes, no worries about that. Homo Sap's going to have to advance a heck of a lot more for that.
The problem with a guy like Jones is that when people start to base strategies or policies on such delusions, we all lose out. Do you think we are losing no great artistic or scientific minds in the African tragedy of AIDS? Does it really matter if the makeup of populations change by one outliving the other, or being more procreative, or eating better, or what if they just ethnically cleanse, water war, bomb, poison, or otherwise do each other in? And are we all so homogenous now? I'd rather not consider myself as the least common denominator.
I think the battles of evolution require a lot of creative thinking to elucidate if you are thinking about your own time, and even then all bets are off. If anything evolution will accelerate as we become able to modify/improve our genes more quickly than the natural rate. And lots more people in the world will gain the means to exterminate those with genes they dislike. Finally, Natural Selection is always in operation. You can't turn it off just because increased mobility makes it difficult to measure.
Evolution is sort of like a saying of Buckaroo Banzai's: Just remember, wherever you go, there you are.
One difference in today's humans is that there are fewer negetive traits that will be eliminated through natural selection, simply because more disabilities can be overcome by scientific developments. This allows people to reproduce, when they would not otherwise be able produce offspring. (something like a hearing disability would render most animals unable to eat, let alone reproduce)
(Deus) Human beings may not evolve any longer. Human's incidence of cancer is by far lower than other animal. There is a theory that human being is already a neoteny, and never evolve more. If it is true, what a stupid animal they became. They forgot the force which operate themselves, and they are only satisfying their desire. Don't you think they are worthless? Human being is only so much. But, You don't have to remain such a miserable human being. Now, human beings only created the exit.
(Lain) What is it?
(Deus) Network. It's wired, Lain.
(Lain) Who are you?
(Deus) I'm God.
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
The other day a hobo asked me for money. Of course I gave him nothing. You see, there are those who are less fortunate, and there are those who are just lazy. I beleive the latter is most often the case. And hence, I'd like to propose that we kill the weak.
Its worse than all that. Evolution has turned a complete 180. The least fit reproduce the most, and the smartest, strongest, and most capable reproduce very little, or not at all. I can see the human race evolving into gelatainous blobs of crap if the trend continues.
"640K should be enough"
The real problem here is a lack of natural selection. Stupid people just don't get eaten by predators, because we invent means to defend them (and for them to defend themselves).
As such, I advocate a campaign of thinning the herd every once in a while.
According to Darwin himself, natural selection only occurs when there is a "struggle for existence." If there is a scarcity of resources (or other obstacle) that makes it impossible for every member of a species to survive, those with certain "fitter" genetic traits will have a distinct advantage. On the other hand, if nearly every member can survive and reproduce as it is, there is no reason for those traits to be favored.
Humans are not presently in a "struggle for existence" -- most people can survive and procreate without much trouble, irrespective of their genetics. (Those who do struggle mostly do so because of political, social, and economic factors, not genetic disadvantages.) However, this could change quite quickly if some massively disruptive event (drought, famine, epidemic, intergalactic war, etc.) were to make it difficult for humans to survive without superior genetics.
In fact, Stephen Jay Gould's theory of Punctuated Equilibrium suggests that most species evolve this way: long periods of stasis, occasionally "punctuated" by rapid change over a small number of generations.
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
It has stopped. just look at George W Bush..
:) booyeah!
First of all, evolution comes about when we are forced to adapt, albiet slowly, to a change in our environment. It is pretty likely that if we were all to smoke, over a few thousand years, while many would die, mankind would eventually develop a resistance to cigarette smoke - perhaps through a mutation in the lungs that filtered out the damaging impurities. And/or, our bodies may learn to simply absorb and 'wash away' such impurities in the same way we do with excessive vitamin C. Just as giraffes developed long necks because they were forced to eat from tall trees (that is the reason), and other lifeforms have also adapted - to survive - so shall we, even if we cannot always predict what will happen to cause such changes. Evolution of the human spieces will only end when we wipe our selves out. I stand by this comment and am shocked to read that someone believes otherwise. Such arrogance will be our undoing. We haven't even started! Hear's to Version 1.0, the metaphysical. Through the wall we go. One day...
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
From the article
"For example, brain size has decreased over the past 10,000 years. "
Yup...thousands of years of what today would be Jerry Springer guests, outbreeding the rest. THAT IS OUR HERITAGE, EVERY ONE OF US.
I took a look around. Here's some evidence for the statement google turned up: an (extremist?) article from Earth Policy Institute.
Too big to fail? Does that make me to small to succeed?
Who cares if we're not evolving? For the most part, we've moved past evolution. Evolution cures diseases in a population over hundreds of years. Humanity has cured many of the diseases that it has set its sights on in less than a tenth of the time. The same goes for physical abilities. The fastest mammal on Earth isn't the cheetah, it's the human, which rides in cars at much faster speeds and rides in planes at even faster speeds than that. The same goes for the most physically powerful. Large felines may have sharp claws, but we have nuclear weaponry. An armadillo has a thick hide, but we have kevlar, ceramic, and now artificial spider silk. Humanity has moved past evolution and into something new and unique. This is something that all of those scientists fail to realize. We've evolved to the point where we are, in many ways, the masters of our destinies.
Damn!
Does this mean there's no hope of girls evolving into seeing geeks as sex-y during my lifetime?
If you think we have a cure for every disease you need to lay off the crack. For every disease we know about I'll bet that 5 are still in the wild and have yet to be discovered. Eventually we'll find them all after we saturate areas that have had low numbers of people. Or look into things that were consided to be "physclogical instead of physiological".
Cancer is yes very dangerous and still extreamly prevelant but the question is...is it natural, or is it due to enviromental factors. I feel that it's due to the enviromental factors aka toxins in the enviroment.
AIDS is still on the upswing, they still find a couple of new mutated strains every year, small pox is no longer "wild" but is still exists, yeah anthrax is pretty common...go and stick your hands in a patch of dirt. Ebola is semi-isolated but all it needs is someone to get on a jet before infection sets in to bring is somewhere else.
Bubonic plage/pnunomic plauge is around now as much as it always has been, actually there is an outbreak in california with the squrrils in the mountains right now. There are also atleast TWO strains that immune to all antibiotics, probbly more due to stupid people and their inabiltiy to "take all of the antibiotics prescribed". Just remeber that for every strain that is antibiotic immune it's due to some stupid human that decided they knew better.
That I will somewhat agree with, though disease is still a major impact on us as a species that and in general old age. Though we are living longer and what not...that has more to do with our enviroment and standard of living.
Ahh...I know more then a few people who have eaten people...but...it's not something that I'll dance to very easily they were doing some stuff over in africa during one of those civil wars, they ate without knowing what it was.
Anyway...there is alot of stuff that we still need to evolve over.
Om, nomnomnom...
William S Burroughs once said, "Evolution did not come to a reverent halt with homo sapiens." He believed that the human species as is was doomed, and that to survive at all we needed to get into space. His vision of space-faring was different from the popular one - he imagined that humans would undergo radical biological alterations, to become creatures more adapted to the environment of space travel.
This is a pretty common theme in science fiction, from Brave New World forward (perhaps even before) - specialized "models" of human for specific tasks.
Frank Herbert (e.g. in Destination Void) imagined that space travel would first be done by clones. Herbert's future got around the knotty personal identity issues with clones by simply declaring them non-human. Clones were literally chunks of flesh owned by humans or corporations, and there were few restrictions on how they were treated. (Note that Herbert was not at all advocating this attitude, just speculating that it might become dominant.) So the first space travellers were clones, but only because they were disposable.
I agree with Burroughs (and so many others) that we need to get off this rock if we're to have any long-term future. The biologic alteration route is an interesting one - purposeful evolution. This is an exciting time to be alive.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
While I haven't actually read the article, I've thought about this question before and I too believe human evolution is over. Or to be more precise, evolution for the better is over.
The mechanism of evolution, natural selection, no longer work on the human population. You no longer have to count on good genes to ensure lots of offsprings. In fact, there is a universal phenomenum where the likely number of offsprings you have is inversely proportional to your level of education.
The more successful you are, the less offsprings you'll have! That is working completely against evolution.
From a more physical point of view, with modern medicine, you can have otherwise crippling hereditary problems and still live to adulthood and have children. This works against evolution too.
Before people start flaming me, I just want to say that I'm not suggesting we should let people with treatable genetic diseases die instead, or that we should not allow them to have offsprings! I'm merely stating that these things work against evolution and that is why I believe human evolution is over.
Take myself for example. I was brought into this world by c-section. There was no way my mother who weighed under 100 lbs before she got pregnant could have delivered a 10-lb baby naturally. Thanks to modern medicine, my mother and I survived. My mother had my sister 4 years later, also with assistance (vacuum). Now the chances that I'll give my wife a big baby maybe higher than normal. There, an example of a bad physical trait that survived due to technology.
This is not only total nonsense, it is state sponsored racism.
....
Take this for example
In addition, human populations are now being constantly mixed, again producing a blending that blocks evolutionary change. This increased mixing can be gauged by calculating the number of miles between a person's birthplace and his or her partner's, then between their parents' birthplaces, and finally, between their grandparents'.
In virtually every case, you will find that the number of miles drops dramatically the more that you head back into the past. Now people are going to universities and colleges where they meet and marry people from other continents. A generation ago, men and women rarely mated with anyone from a different town or city. Hence, the blending of our genes which will soon produce a uniformly brown-skinned population. Apart from that, there will be little change in the species.
Not only is this totally racist and white supremist horseshit, it is completely wrong.
Whatever qualification Prof. Steve Jones holds, he should probably take down his degree and wipe his arse with it, as it has turned out that is all it's good for.
Evolution works by trying combinations. When one particular combination hits exactly right for the current conditions at the current moment in time the result is a sudden and exponential success.
For example, let's imagine, that a certain blend of genes, from mixing certain groups of people who individually have strong immunity to different types of disease, produces children with an immune system that is 1-3 orders of magnitude stronger than anyone else.
These children will almost never get sick. Their brain development will be on average, much better, because they are never weakened by childhood diseases.
As they get older, they never visit conventional doctors, work harder and longer than the rest of the population without succumbing to the hundreds of different bacteria and virii that puts the rest of the population out of productive work 1-4 weeks of the year.
They will be less of a drain on society, as people in modern society are a much greater burden on the public purse at the end of their life (in Western Socialist countries, up to 50% of public health care is spent on the last 5 years of people's lives).
They will be productive for longer, creating wealth to a much greater age.
And with all this greater health, and wealth, and energy, they will produce A LOT MORE CHILDREN than the average person.
Modern medicine knows no cure for the COMMON COLD!! How many more diseases are we completely at a loss to stop right now?? Can you imagine a cold strain escaping from Shanghai, or Calcutta?
The people living in those cities are the survivors. Every year simple diseases kill people in the developing world. The local population builds a resistance. The disease mutates and kills again. The local population builds more resistance. And so on and so forth.
Westerners, living in their sterile and hygenic conditions, eating denatured food full of salt, fat and sugar, won't have any resistance to these viscious new cold strains.
This is an evolutionary event just waiting to happen.
>>
I am the director, and this is my movie
Thinks about it:
:P ) that humankind doesn't become MORE intelligent, but LESS intelligent.
animals improve themselves through evolution, because the stronger (prittier, tougher, taller, whatever) mate with other stronger (prittier, tougher, taller, whatever) and therefore get stronger (etc.) offspring. The weak animals get less or no offspring. Survival of the fittest.
Now humans:
People like to think that the brain is the most valuable human assett. But look at this: highly educated people in the West, get LESS children! People persue careers, work hard, don't want children. Sometimes they don't even "mate". Humans with less "brainy assetts", get MORE children however, therefore it would be logical (I think
(Note: I DO NOT value other "assets" (like craftmanship, strength etc.) in humans to be of less value. I meant to say that in our science fiction stories and the picture we make of our future we see ourselves as extremely intelligent beings. We might want to alter those pictures a little....)
Given the limited amount of resources, I would expect that this will not happen until we are ready to go offplanet. Nature will find a way to keep us in check until then...
It would make sense to have colonists be more durable (without turning them into Greys), since the ability to train offspring to their level is not their immediate concern. Once adequate facilities are established, the ability to have more offspring later in their life increases the size of the (now) native gene pool, not to mention the labor pool.
Until then, "blend" like there's no tomorrow !Blame the Beer, Evolution stops once stupid/inferior people can get drunk and have babies.
Face it, the human race is too high tech for evolution. We can no longer evolve naturally (allthough I am not ruling out evolution through genetic engineering or other such means) because we are able to remedy nearly all of our faults.
You see, if a fish was born in the ocean with a negative genetic defect, there is nothing to save it. It will soon be killed by a predator. We all know Darwin's Theory, so I'll move on. What differentiates us from that fish (or rather, species of fish), is we have been able to learn about, and treat, most any problem that affects our race. When a baby is sick or born with a disorder (assuming proper healthcare is available), we are able to do quite a bit to help her. We have created various medicines and treatments for most and disease. Even people with mental retardation can live a fairly normal life because care is available to them. If an ape was born mentally retarded, most likely it would die within a short period of time because it simply can't take care of itself. Since we as humans can overcome these obstacles, no longer does the "survival of the fittest" axiom apply.
Our gene codebase will still contain errors, and now there is virtually no natural way to wipe them out. And because of the immense population, a positive genetic defect (say, one that would make us 10x smarter) would take centuries, if not millennia to propagate.
Sure we will all be different in most respects, but radical changes are no longer possible. Also, as sick as it sounds to us Americans (well, most Americans), incest is a primary method of diversifying and strenghtening the gene pool. Dog breeders take advantage of this, but most of the world does not (including me). So basically, our natural evolution has run out, and it is up to us to continue it through science. It might be hard for some people to swallow, but genetic engineering and gene replacement is probably the only way to keep our species evolving.
These are just my thoughs, and I'm sure I may be wrong about something. Any comments? I sure would like to hear what others have to think.
--- At my sig, unleash hell.
They seem to have 20 or 30 kids. So i think we're going to evelove untill we're all on welfare, living in the projecrs, drinking malt liquer on the stoop, and yelling: "Hey baby, baby, yeah, yeah baby." at every woman that walks by.
Ray Kurzweil's "Age of Spiritual Machines"
... biological evolution as we know it is over. We are on the virge of reverse-engineering it's creation. We will reprogram it to suit our needs. Just like the transistor took over from the vacuum tube, improvement (evolution) doesn not stop, it just uses different materials goes in different directions.
Remembering your name in the morning is already a good start...
Evolution envolves billions of years, and the evolution theory still needs to explain _how_ do the evolution is done (cf Lamarck vs Darwin or another). It would be mandatory to find out how it works prior to yell "it stopped! it stopped!"
:
By the way the article itself finishes discreting its main thesis
'Evolution goes on all the time. You don't have to intervene. It is just that it is highly unpredictable. For example, brain size has decreased over the past 10,000 years
Evolutionary forces will continue to act on the human population. If the human population does not have to change in order to meet those challenges, that simply means we are already well enough adapted to continue in an unchanged form. The process continues, it simply doesn't change anything. So no, evolution is not "over."
"Stagnation" isn't necessarily a bad thing. Look at the shark. The basic template hasn't changed in thousands of eons -- lot 'o sharp teeth at one end, tail at the other. Cockroaches haven't changed all that much recently either. Why? Because they've hit on something that works, and has kept on working. Humans are similar in that respect. (On an aside, there are some that might argue that we humans incorporate the worst features of both sharks and roaches -- but I digress.)
Furthermore, this conclusion that evolution is "over" and we are "stagnating" is based on the prevailing conditions in western society. Evolution works in terms of millions and billions of years. I don't think I agree that our society is so stable that it will endure long enough to have a measurable effect in terms of the biological makeup of the species as a whole.
There are any number of ways we could be reintroduced to evolutionary change. Hitherto unknown diseases could sweep through the population, rendering large numbers of people dead or sterile. We could get hit by an asteroid and go the way of the dinosaurs. Well-meaning aliens might "adopt" us and alter us beyond recognizeability. Heck, WE might alter OURSELVES beyond recognizeability. The bunny rabbits of the world might get tired of their pacifist reputation and rise up against us in innumerable hordes!
To conclude that evolution is at an end and that we are immune to nature simply because we've had about 150 years of a stable society in which everybody can reproduce is shortsighted and arrogant.
After only a few hundred years of thorough genetic mixing, I think it's a little early to call the game.
There's always genetic engineering, resistances to potential new diseases and environmental changes. Let's not forget the potential for speciation via space travel. If it takes 7 years, at light speed, to get from Star System A to Star System B, you can bet there won't be a lot of intermixing between those populations.
And even if humans are slowly reaching the point where the weaker don't get killed off. We are still selecting who we mate with using criteria like Looks, Intelligence, Success, Looks, Sense of Humor, and Looks. So who's to say this kind of social selection won't be a major evolutionary force?
Evolution did not happen in the first place :)
There's a story, which caps evolution quite nicely: two homo sapiens are sitting on the African Savannah long ago, when a lion approaches. Both of them start running towards the trees. The one who makes the correlation between climbing the tree and safety becomes our ancestor. The one who doesn't... well, he doesn't.
But seriously, the evolutionary factors that have shaped our biological being are no longer in effect - i.e. If there were some natural factor in our environment that destroyed people with weak vision (I'm legally blind, myself), then the human race would quickly find itself with 20/20 vision as a whole. If we proceeded to start killing off everyone with an unfavorable trait, that trait would quickly disappear from our species, or at the very least, become dormant.
Indeed, we may have come to a dead end because we value the individual too much, and often we have the medical technology to carry an "unfavorable" individual to survive to sexual maturity, as it were. Traditionally, nature would simply weed out everyone with those traits. If you start picking at it too much, all those proponents of Eugenics almost start to make sense. Scary, isn't it? Personally, I have no problem with thinking we've reached a plateau in our evolution.
Okay, that covers the Death part. Now, we look at suffering as a necessary part of our improvement as a race...
It is a well known fact that if you have an island where resources are plentiful and people's needs are few, then that particular culture will never develop a significant economy, much less develop any appreciable technology. Fire was invented because people were cold. The bow and arrow was invented because people needed to catch food with less effort. Hell, the cotton gin was invented because free slave labor was in noticeable decline. Slashdot gets built up because Hemos doesn't want to work as a grocery clerk for the rest of his life. Human Suffering begets innovation. As the old saying goes, Necessity is the Mother of Invention.
Along these lines, it is impossible for the economy of Star Trek to ever come into existence, where all money is eliminated, and everyone contributes to society for only the joy of self improvement.
I therefore posit the following: the End of Human Evolution/Improvement actually comes if we eliminate Poverty, Suffering, and Mortality. In Complacency, the human race dies off as a whole.
Solomon Chang
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
Sex appeal is the only force left with respect to the evolution of human beings. We're far too smart to be influenced by anything less barring a catastrophic environmental change.
Rubbish. This is utterly rubbish. Sure, we're not growing a third arm within the lifetime of this person, but evolution is most certainly occuring. It just takes a long time and it's something we would never notice without historical data.
I will tell you one interesting fact though - we have this old house - built around 1829 and the handrails around the landing with the stairs are really low. People back then were generally smaller. There's one thing I can think of.
Now, I asked this question once of someone too. But his answer was just the opposite. He thought we were evolving faster than normal because we could better our own environment to that point ourselves. Medicine, more or less our discoveries, are prolonging our "natural" course of life and life-events right now. That that has changed.
I was under the impression that it was the commonly held theory among anthropologists et al. that the advent of civilisation in a species would bring about the halting of evolution for said species, as the society acts to defend all members thereof, not just the 'fittest' (note how eugenics is regarded as a most disgusting topic for many/most, for example). Or is this something that I'm just completely wrong on? :-)
James F.
After all, look at all us computer geeks who seem to ultimately be the lifeblood at the heart of our modern economy. Now, look at all the women who don't want to breed with us (almost all of them). Ah, so the human race is doomed.
Solomon Chang
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
You need all of these things for evolution (defined as changing frequencies of alleles) to stop:
(an allele is one varient of a gene, like some people have the blue eye allele, some have brown eye allele, while almost all of us have the genes for eye).
1. random mating (i.e. people will randoming mate with any other person)
2. constant sized society (no one leaves or enter, everytime someone is born, someone dies)
3. large society (a group of 50 people, even isolated, will still evolve, while a group of 5000, if the rest of these condistions are met, wont)
4. No selective pressure (favoring one type of allele vs. another)
These were all learned in a basic biology class, btw.
Only dead fish swim with the stream...
The scientists who suggest this are just being impatient and have forgoten the basic fact that evolution takes a long time. It seems that what they set out to do was view visible changes that can be called evolution and then found none. In order to make their work seem justified they decided to come to the conclusion that evolution has stopped and they are no longer failures for not finding anything but heroes for discovering this "fact".
Lest this newsbyte starts another great flame-war of evilution vs. theo-crap, I'll avoid giving an opinion.
We are now evolving our species (Homo Sapiens Sapiens) by using pre-birth DNA screening and genetic reengineering. Ova can be frozen, analyzed and modified before implantation (assuming in-vitro fertilization). Sounds like a Brave New World don't it?
I suggest everyone, of whatever viewpoint, read this fine Cal Berkeley site.
Btw, I suggest you read the book Ever Since Darwin by Stephen Jay Gould.
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
there is no way to thwart evolution.... well there is ONE way... a Completely an utterly static environment... the entire universe (and possibly universes) would have to remain static which requires a solid state 4th dimension... time stops... otherwise evolution is constant and present in all environments... including dark matter and empty space... the only requiremnt of true evolution is change... remember, the RNA strands "bereft of life" evolved from random amino acids... It is a very ignorant scientist who contends any environment is unchanging, or any LIVING species is not evolving.
on a more defined level, humans are evolving
As a Group species (see bee's, Ant's, etc...)
Socialy (see social darwinism)
inteligently --- as time proceeds the minimum requiremtns for survival and reproduction in our environmanets will be to be able to read, to comprehend and manipulate information based objects (such as touchscreens, etc...) those who are inable will be eliminated.
physicaly -- as time proceeds the physical requirements for the above will change and eliminate those inable manipulate their environments accordingly... the harder it is for you to touch a touchscreen... the less likely you will be a sucess overall..
As far as the whole "everyone gets a screw... and a child" theory, that only produces more geneticly variated contenders into the gene pool.... true evolution actualy doesnt need "selective" reproduction... only selective elimination... meaning... anybody who scores and has a child has passed the evolutionary test... they are suited for their environment... Humans have indeed created their own environments and we think we have "cheated" evolution... but truth is... we now have to evolve to our evolving environments... those who dont... will be left on the wayside...
as long as time is two-dimensional, evolution is constant.
--VISION
I feel compelled to put my $1.99+TAX in on this. We have reached an evolutionary slow down in humans, especially in first world countries. There are a couple reasons.
/.'ers wear glasses? *sheepishly raises hand* Quite a few, eh? Now just imagine if there was no technology to correct bad vision. Nature would select against those with poor eyesight and eventually new generations wouldn't have so many eyesight woes.
One is hospitals. Instead of people dying from ailments that used to be life threatening, now they are living to have children. Things that would have been eliminated by genetics are being passed on.
Another factor is technology. How many of my fellow
The last factor I can think of right now would be welfare programs. Some (some being the operative word) of the people receiving aid may have undesirable genetic traits that put them in the position they are in (mental instability, drug problems, etc).
Once again, just my $2.79+TAX.
Everytime you look at porn a devil gets their horns.
After all with the way we are destroying this planet and each other we will not have time to evolve.
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
On Wednesday I became a father for the first time. It's a great feeling to have our new daughter Sarah, but to keep on topic with this thread as a process I have to say that birth is rubbish. Anything that causes that much pain for the mother is just plain wrong, and humans could do with a fair amount of evolving to try and get that bit right.
For those who don't know, the reason that childbirth is even worse in humans than for most other creatures is that our brains have out evolved our bodies. A human baby essentially comes out of the womb a year too early - it is incapable of doing anything for itself, whereas if you look at the young of many other creatures they're up and walking in about in a few hours.
The reason ours arrive early is because any later and the head would be unable to fit through the pelvic area. The head is so large in order to contain our brain, which is freakishly large compared to the rest of nature (Yes - even in RIAA employees).
The upshot? Our bodies can no longer cope with the enlarged brain, and so we have to deliver early. Now, some really useful evolution would be if we could evolve to cope better with this. I imagine that eventually we will.
Of course, an interesting counter-argument would be that we already have evolved to cope better - we evolved to the level where we devised painkillers...
Cheers,
Ian
For any American who has lived in the UK, they will be able to spot immediately that this is a trait of the British. Thier mantra is: "The best times have gone" "It was better in my day", "Its not like it used to be". The only difference between this man and a "dinner lady" is that people take him seriously because he is a professor.
This same attitude is what stopped the Brits from having a space programme. Tony Benn stopped the British space programme because he said that the rockets that were used to launch sats could also be used to launch missiles.
The British culture has a strong thread of negativity running through it; just look at thier TV commercials, read their science magazines and art journals. The place is weighted down with gray cloud pessimism. Note the number of recent asteroid extinction stories, trotted out with glee.
Great science has come out of Britain. The problem is, like with the inventor of Public Key Crypto, who was British, the society actively works to crush any bright light.
This article is classic brit newspaper science journalism. Negative, short on facts, near, hysterical and designed to "make your bones shake, and busy your mind".
Could medicine be keeping evolution from occuring; keeping individuals alive who could not otherwise? Does this mean that only the wealthy are assured evolutionary dominance? Since, in the "wild," every animal has to be essentially perfect, to run, hunt, reproduce, etc.
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
Introducing Genetics
The Language of the Genes
Almost Like a Whale
Hyperspace is just a gear shift away
Yes all of Africa's 2 billion will die. But then again so do we all. In 150 years every single person alive now will be dead.
But aids and evolution is a different subject. Evolution works through reproduction, so a disease that strikes after reproduction is very hard to get out of a population. There are two ways to speed up the evolution of aids resistance.
1) Increase the average age of reproduction.
2) Increase the proportion of children with the disease who die defore reproduction.
Actually, when you think about it, 1) and 2) are kind of the same thing. I suspect things are going to get worse before they get better, i.e. I think 2) is going to happen. Not very nice, no, but evolution isn't very nice...
Doug Eleveld
IANAB(iologist), but the claim that evolution is over is rubbish. Natural selection occurs wherever there are differences between individuals, and I don't see us all looking alike, acting alike and thinking alike.
Here's an example that probably affects a large section of slashdot: have you noticed your eyesight getting worse, especially right after the college years? (no discrimination intended). If you spend a lot of time staring at a computer screen, or reading books, your eyes adapt to the fact that you don't look at many objects far away. For many slashdot readers, probably the only time they need to focus on something at a distance is when driving. If you wear glasses, you loose the disadvantages of myopia, and your eyes can concentrate on focusing on things that are close.
Now if your eyes (genetically) tend to focus on things that are close, chances are that you live a life which is at least as safe, if not more so than those who are farsighted, as an outdoor lifestyle (more dangerous) favours farsightedness. So over time, those who spend less time outdoors (and are more myopic) will tend to dominate. Boom - evolution! Modern western society becomes more myopic.
I wonder if health statistics support this scenario.
The simple fact that we can argue this on a world wide basis from the comfort of our respective homes tells me that, in a tangental way, we have become a sort of evolution ourselves.
No, it is not. Evolution defines success very differently than you are. Evoloutionary success means reproduction and nothing else.
Success meaning money/power is only important IF it helps reproduction.
Evolution is not over, it is just going in a different direction than you first expected.
Doug Eleveld
Evolution is under way every single moment. It does change the direction and speed, but it's constantly all around us.
It's effects may be microscopic in short intervals, but still - there it is.
Now, for example, those AIDS resistant has a slight advantage aver those, who aren't. It should be already noticeable in some parts of the world.
We have hundreds or thousands of those evolution pressures, many more important than AIDS resistance.
But to see the changes with a naked eye, thousand generations should past first.
In a time of a generation the random mechanism of evolution will be most likely replaced with a rational design. And will drive us much faster to a less random goals, as now is the case.
Is this still evolution - it's a semantic.
Evolution (as we know it) is set out of effect in the "rich" parts of
... are
the world, where medicine and social security now are much more
important than traditional evolutionary "virtues" like strength, resilience
and other stuff like that.
Many rich countries help those of their inhabitants unable to
reproduce themselves via various medical techniques, people who are
sick are personally cured by medicine, allowing them to breed
offspring that is more susceptible to disease.
This is altering the forces which evolution operate under to be more
about money and knowing good doctors,... , than about genetically transferred individual
abilities to survive.
To some extent these values: money and good doctors,
individually transferable, via heritage and social bonds (family), and
thus somewhat relate to genes.
We may just see another kind of evolution, based much more on social
position, than on genetically transferred capabilities, making an
impact over the next 50-100 years.
I'm not saying this is the way I would like it to be, just that might
be possible.
As I don't have much actual knowledge in these fields, don't take the
predictions to serious, but I wanted to share them anyway, so that I
can discuss them and learn.
SLOGEN [ http://ungdomshus.nu : Sebastian cover music]
Wouldn't a constant blending and mixing create new genetic mutations which would eventually due to dominant and common alleles lead to new species and sub-species? I think that claiming that we have reached our 'evolutional pinacle' is also kind of an elitist thing to say... It's almost like your saying your better than everybody else, and that you are the creation of millions of years of evolution and that nothing is above you...
Odd, in the end you'll still end up being worm food...
The author also says that if you want to see a utopia, look around, this is it... The idea of a utopian society is one that's perfect. Saying that we have reached a utopia based on species isn't that great an idea. A utopida is multi-faceted. My idea of a utopia is different than yours. Personally I would feel very very scared in a utopia, a place where everyone shared the same ideas as me. It might be nice for a while, but it would get old REAL fast... Humans thrive on conflict... We need it...
The article also states that humans should have logically constantly become larger and stronger, however this is not logical. Think about it, if you go from being a hunter-gather to being a farmer and start and agri-society where you grow your food and raise your meat then you don't need the same muscles you used to. Eventually those muscles begin to deteriorate over generations and they become useless.... They become non-existent, or non-functional...
This author seems to factor that evolution is only created through 'selective breeding'. I guess he has not accepted the fact that even though humans don't ALL mate for life, that many do, and that people do look for certain TRAITS or should I say SELECTIVE traits that they find important in their 'mates'. These traits that someone looks for tend to be instilled in ones offspring, hence that offspring looks for similar traits in their spouse... A selective breeding process...
I think that we are not at all at a standstill in evolution, no, as long as the physical enviroment that we live in continues to evolve, and as well as the social enviroment continues to change, the human race will continue to evolve... Perhaps not at an incredibly fast rate, and surely not enough that a single person would notice in their lifetime, but certainly, we will continue to evolve, even if it is eventually into something that is more vulnerable to one form of death then another...
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
I would say that evolution is a mechanism by which adaptations more suitable to the changing environment are propogated through a species/sub-species. However my opinion is that because mankind has the ability to alter its surroundings to suit itself.. that evolution is pretty much prevented from occuring. This does not mean that humanity has reached some ideal pinnacle.. just that we are preventing our own evolution. Afterall evolution would require the deaths of those unable to survive.. which contradicts most current morality by which we attempt to aid the most unfortunate. If evolution would occur via the deaths of thousands of unfortunates less able to compete ... would we really regard ourselves as 'better' for just standing idly by and allowing that?
Perhaps evolution should now refer to the advancement of morality in humanity - and how we take better care of our fellow humans.. but we're not yet there.. maybe we can evolve..
Disclaimer: I can't back this up with any scientific testing. This is simply the way I see things based on intelligent deduction.
We've reach a point in medicine that genetic diseases that would normally render a human dead "before his time" now allow that person to live a normal life. Humans help humans live, even when they should, by nature's standards, die. We have effectively shallowed out the gene pool to such a degree that it would take several generations to work out the errors.
If a deer mutates so that it can hear better, and, therefore, avoid predators better, it will survive longer and spread it's mutated gene more, and his offspring will do the same. If a deer mutates so that it doesn't hear as well, it will get killed sooner and procreate far less. It's called natural selection. Survival of the fittest, if you will.
Humans don't follow this anymore. If we have a gene that should render us dead, we are able to live either through the spirit of humanitarianism, or by modern medicine. We can't evolve because good mutations aren't rewarded and bad mutations aren't weeded out.
As for humans being the most perfect beings we can be, I somehow don't see that this is the best we can be.
Evolution is alive, and it favors:
1. horny
2. too stupid to use birth control
3. likes to get drunk at parties
4. lazy (no job) -- more time to reproduce
5. likely to rape, or not resist rape
6. can't see consequences of actions
7. too passive, fearful, or religous to abort
8. physically attractive
9. those who can convince someone into bed
Social programs ensure that the offspring
survive. Bimbos and jocks will multiply,
while nerds and career-addicts will die out.
Let's see; Evolution in mammals being such a fast-moving process (dogs: no speciation in a thousand+ years of breeding) and humans being such obviously speciable (if that's a word) individuals; I think it's pretty safe to say I can bank my academic career on such an outlandish statement! In fact, if I'm a relatively schmuck-ass do-nothing in my field, I can probably get some attention by making such proclamations as this one in a public forum, and hence make myself seem more worthy of future research grants and faculty recruitment programs! People like this guy and his comrades are why academia gets such a bad rap. Frankly he's spouting shit with very little research behind it just so he and a few other jackasses can get a little undeserved attention. The idea that evolution has come to a close re: the human race has been bandied about in bars for years, at least in any bar that's less than 50 yards from a college with an anthropology program, and doesn't need a Phud to give it credence- basically because it has none! You don't see a lot of physics profs making premature conclusions about the behavior of quarks on a two-dimenisonal plane. So why do those in other fields feel the urge to make the same kind of far-reaching proclamations concerning the future of the human race? Simply because the research to disprove them is extremely difficult. All the same, it's utterly ridiculous to assume that evolution has ceased for Homo Sapiens because of medtech and transportation- We still breed according to superficial ideas of healthiness and attractiveness, and these primitive ideas of what makes a good baby-factory will continue to guide our decisions about whom to fuck for a few centuries at the very least. People for the great majority are still disgusting drool-buckets and anybody who's been turned down for a date (certainly none of the Slashdot audience, ha, right) will know this for a fact. What the fuck is up with this planet?
sig-free as of 28 July 02!
Anyone seen Neon Genesis Evangelion? The theory in this anime is that humans has nearly stopped evolution. They only need one last step to reach the end of evolution. Anyone who has seen the movies know what that step is. Well, basically, they all end up being a part of the planet's source of energi (or something spiritually like that, heh). And no, I didn't bother read the article ;)
I also believe that humans have outgrown evolution, but not for the reasons listed in the article.
The problem with evolution is that not only must a genetically advanced human be born, but all us "normal" humans must be unable to compete with this superhuman for the most basic of needs: food, shelter, and mates. To put it simply, and superhuman's genes will eventually be bred back into the generic human stock until those changes are virtually undectable.
Because genetic mutation is random, only small groups (as relative to the lifespan of a creature) can produce effective genetic changes in species in a method that can survive more than a single generation.
A basic interview at Imperial College, London is here.
Then again, his father invented Jif! (It's in the text of the interview.)
Funny thing is, he catapulted to fame by trying to update Darwin, not argue the theories were bollocks.
Self-promoting twat.
========================================
Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
There can be only one factory owner, but many factory workers may work at the same factory with little or no contention.
It seems to me we're just breeding towards a large ratio of proletariate to owners.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
This is the kind of stupid drivel that comes out of academia in between successful funding grants. Evolution is not a ladder of progress. Gould has devoted most of his life to debunking this myth and you still find educated people who can't figure this out.
Given the explosive changes in homonid culture over the last million, hundred thousand, ten thousand years, we're due for about a million years of breathing space while the rest of the planet adapts to new and extreme selective pressures created by the explosive growth in human population.
If we manage to extinguish 90% of the existing ecology, we'll enjoy some exciting new selective pressures to help drive our next catastrophic genetic change forward. Stay tuned for the next million years, it should be a doozy.
Overall, I'd say we're de-evolving as we move away from the physical struggle to survive, but hopefully we'll get a few more geniuses in the process. Now that smart people can make a better living and score more often by being intelligent than their caveman counterparts, their numbers should start going up. Unfortunately, for every new Ramanujan that we generate, there will be dozens of "Jerry's kids" to offset him.
I don't mean to start an argument here but some people have been saying things like "when we start changing our own genes evolution would INCREASE" blah blah. What nonsense is this? In fact the truth would be almost the opposite. When we start changing our own genes manually we totally thwart the very concept of evolution. Evolution is quite simply a dumbed down way to say that order exists in chaos. Why should we even worry about whether or not its stopped when in 100 years the things we will be capable of doing manually will blow evolutionary change out of the water. Not to mention why should we restrict our genes to things that improve survival? Suppose we do all end up with uniform skin color, engineer skin thats vibrant purple or something. Would that help our survival? Unlikely unless we start growing polen stems and need some bugs to pass on our seed. Would it look cool though? HECK YA! Maybe Im weird but there could deffinetly be something sexy about pale blue skin for instance.
So why even worry? Id rather worry about this quote "If people start to live to 150, and are capable of producing children for more than 100 of those years, the effects could be dramatic, he says. "People will start to produce dozens of children in their lifetimes, and that will certainly start to skew our evolution." Where the heck would we put all those people! Heres to hoping that increased standards of living drives down the birth rate even more.
Jartan
First I would be dishonerd if I did not state at this point that I am numb from the fremented liqueds of at least 3 differant plant matters.
Second evolution in humans is going backwords. Not just standing still.
In nature those with the strongest traits toward survivel bread an move on. In humans it is now ver y differant as will be seen in my followintg argument.
How many of you wear glasses?
How many of you have bread with a person who does not cut the evolutionary mustard, ie some one on prozac. How many of you have traits that you feel are not a benifit to mankind long turm like a slow matabilism or some other imbalance in the body or mine?
There are many. And the mumbers only get higher our side of the geek comunity where people bread almost indascrimanitly with people who are _the_weakest_link_.
The human body is known to contain 3000 to 5000 ganetic disorders and illnesses. The adverage indavidual holds the genes for about 3 of them. Most of these are not known to the holder and they will bread with someone else who holds the same ill gene. The child of such a union will be positive for and manifest the illness. Will this stop them from breading? No. I have seen people breading with all sorts of undisirable types with blatant genetic errors only to produce progany that are even more unequiped to contribute to the forward movement of the human gene pool.
Submitted with out spell checking or homonym checking for the reason stated at top and in conjunction with using a broweser that does not suport an external editor, ie links.
Ascii artist &
It's just a stupid comparasion, but
look at the effect breeding had on domestic
animals, and that in about a century. This won't happen to humanity, but some cases like the number of olympic champion relatives some athletes have at least suggests that we will continue to see improvements in olympic records.
Whatever would be the perfect human is not even worth discussing.
If a population advances to the point where their culture, technology and economy allow for sufficient health care for all, regardless of strength, intelligence, education, wealth, political power, or new evolutionary advantage X, what determines whether an individual reproduces or not is more personal preference than evolutionary pressure. Actually, I believe the trend that has been developing, in the West at least, is that the more educated/wealthy/successful an individual, the smaller the family, which seems like a de-evolutionary factor. I would argue, at least for "Western Civilization", that the author has a valid point and that in the current environment, evolution is probably stalled. For how long is another question.
The obvious things that could jump-start evolution would be:
- catastophies (asteroids, large scale nuclear war, climate change, plage)
- overpopulation (food/health care resources become scarce again)
- political/moral changes (segregation, genocide, policy imposed abortions, etc)
If a population fails to evolve because they have managed to conquer the nastiness that the universe and their own natures can throw at them, than is it really much of a loss? Certainly, as humans move into new environments, harsher environments, such as space or other planets, evolutionary pressures will exert themselves again.It the vein of the great yogi: it ain't over till it's over and you can observe alot just by watching... don't ya think being the first known species able to comment on its evolution is de facto evolution?
heuristic algorithm seeks stochastic relationship
does schooling prevents learning? or *grasp* does open-sourcing prevents innovation?
I've no idea how to rank these in terms of strength, but all of these have a non-negligible effect on the number of children of a human in this day and age.
:-). I'd give excellent odds that humans a mere 1,000 years from now would be measurably different (due to the genetic engineering wild card).
These factors simply prevent (or drastically reduce) the number of children. Note that these only apply until the age of 35 or so. After that one probably had enough children so evolutionary pressure is negligible.
In the "advanced" parts of the world:
- Avoiding a career ruling out children.
- Avoiding traffic accidents.
- Avoiding the use of drugs.
- Avoiding being sent to jail.
Note *these don't necessarily kill you*, they just make you have *less or no children*, a point missed by the article. The first reason is especially strong in this regard. People in the western world tend to have less children due to it... Many careers seems to give one increased income and a lower tendency to have 10 kids. The human race seems to be selecting against being "too successful" - there are many interesting implications here.
There is one wild card reason which is to the advantage of the "too successful" people:
- Access to expensive medical treatments.
(Yes, a 15 year old doesn't make enough money to make a difference, but his parent do and we are looking for genetic factors, so it counts).
Today money for medical treatments is almost a non-issue when it comes to evolutionary considerations. But in the future, if genetic enhancement of children becomes available, the few childrens which richer people do have may be artifically improved... which is another big issue the article is ignoring.
In the (very) long range this may be our only hope as a species... and, as usual, the greatest danger it has ever faced.
In the "not that advanced" parts of the world, the good old evolutionary pressures keep on going:
- Starvation.
- Disease.
- Violence.
It is interesting that the evolutionary pressure is so different in different parts of the world. People have been known to make a great deal of it, especially given the very real possibility of the genetic enhancement "wild card" being used by one part of the world while diseases still rule the other.
In short, I'd bet anything that humans 10,000 years from now would be significantly different than humans today (of course, they may all be dead
Okay, that's flamebait.
Anyhow, the term evolution isn't exactly correct - it implies some sort of direction. The truth is that 'evolution' is entirely random. 99.9% of the time it produces unviable offspring. Imagine randomly changing one character in code, and expecting it to compile successfully - sufficiently laugable odds. Then imagine the odds of that piece of code being sufficiently better than it's parent code that it can be recognized as different enough in order to encourage selection - equally laughable odds. Also, imagine that new, uh, features in the code make the old parent code obsolete and unusable. Again, odds so small that they are laughable.
***(Of course, the assumes "intelligent" creation of life) Even so, the odds of any species evolving in the first place are incredibly small. Only the fact the they are able to propagate themselves over millions of years allows any sort of change in genetic code of species
I have come to the conclusion that evolution is impossible.
Before people start modding this down or claiming I am an idiot, first hear me out a little.
Natural selection does occur - this cannot be denied because it is observable and verifiable. Genetic mutations occur - this also is observable and verifiable.
The creationist understanding of evolution splits it into two areas:
1. Micro-evolution - variation within species. This is where natural selection plays a role - bears born in icy area, one has brown fur one has white. The one with white hair survives, so eventually the gene pool becomes small and only white furred bears are around
2. Macro-evolution - this is the fairy tale that claims that enough genetic mutations will eventually lead to the creation of a new species (whatever this may mean, since those who have faith in macro-evolution have a blurry line between micro and macro-evolution)
I have considered the method by which evolutionists (by this title I mean those who have placed faith in macro-evolution) claim that life arose, and that variation and new species arrived, and it seems to not only contradict available data - is also logically impossible.
Since this post will get rather long, I will also point to a link that can help explain it more adequately. This is an article by the Institute for Creation Research (http://www.icr.org) http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-089.htm
When you read these please keep an open mind. Many people have not heard a reasonable or rational description of creation science, and there are bound to be misinterpretations and misunderstandings. Please try to understand it first.
I have considered the theory of evolution and the reasons it gives for how this process works: variation through genetic mutation, with natural selection eliminating the disadvantages.
Natural selection does work in regards to eliminating disadvantageous mutations. However, it fails when we consider recessive genes.
Fact 1: We have beneficial recessive genes.
Fact 2: Harmful mutations far outnumber beneficial mutations
Fact 3: Natural selection requires a genetic mutation to express itself in order for the selection to work
Some may have already guessed the problem, but I will explain it in more detail. Imagine two elephants have a child, and this child possesses a disadvantageous mutation - this recessive mutation, when dominant, causes the elephant to have no tail. This child with the mutated recessive gene has a tail because the gene is recessive so doesn't express itself - thus natural selection is unable to work. This happens for a few generations until one day two partners have a child with no tail - these partners were distant relatives from the elephant child with the initial mutation. Here is the problem: for the recessive mutation to express itself, the partners must both possess the gene. This is only going to happen among relatives.
Now comes the problem for evolution: Imagine that the elephant has a beneficial mutation of a recessive gene - it can launch acidic spit from it's mouth to render an attacker unconscious (this of course is not realistic, and would require a number of successive extremely lucky mutations - impossible). This elephant though, like the one with the missing tail gene does not express it, and natural selection does not come into play. 5 generations down the track, two close relatives have a child with this super spit power. Unfortunately, because of the second fact I listed above, this child also has a missing tail, one leg that can't move properly, a reduced brain size, and a bad back meaning it has difficulty feeding in hard to reach places. The problem here is that along with the beneficial mutation there came a host of harmful mutations. Such is the nature of recessive genes - it won't express itself until close relatives with the same recessive gene mate with each other.
To summarise:
For a beneficial mutation of a recessive gene to enter the gene pool as a useful component, close relatives must mate with each other to make it dominant and allow natural selection to play it's part. Problem: when this happens a host of harmful mutations carry out their effect on the creature, rendering it cumulatively worse off than the beneficial mutation offsets. Conclusion: evolution is impossible as beneficial recessive mutations could never have arisen.
We have evidence that close relations have cumulatively worse of children than average partners. The data fits perfectly.
Evolution is illogical and impossible.
Evolution is defined (by biologists) as "a change in the gene pool of a population over time" (*)
According to this, the only way one can state with certainty that evolution "stopped" is when the population drops to zero, i.e., the species becomes extinct.
The most one can say is that there is less selection pressure now than there was a few centuries ago. This can (and most probably will) change. When that happens, you can bet that we'll continue to evolve! (or go extinct)
(*) See the talk.origins FAQ for a fine introduction to evolutionary biology.
Ubi dubium ibi libertas: Where there is doubt, there is freedom.
Really, it is apparent we haven't just ceased to evolve, we are now de-evolving. Our own medicine will make us frail, and be our downfall.
Things that kept the gene pool pure in the past are no longer problems. A man with a low sperm count and a woman who would be considered infertile thirty years ago are now able to have quituplets. A child who manifests cancer at the age of eight can receive treatment, then pass on his genes later in life.
Our own medicine - which we like to think makes us strong - is making us weak. The process of natural selection can no longer take place. We have, to a certain extent, defeated death.
But death has a surprise for us. It's still there, stronger than ever. It's just biding its time.
± 29 dB
While I don't agree that Evolution has stopped for us, it has certainly slowed down. But it might be rather interesting to see what happens if, one day, Humanity starts leaving Earth and inhabiting other planets. Only then might evolution return in a bigger style, since then human beings will be more or less separated into different groups again and have to live under rather different circumstances. (kinda reminds me of White Mars by Brian Aldiss)
Similar processes led to the evolution of mankind, but this has now
stopped because virtually everybody's genes are making it to the next generation, not only those who are best adapted to their environment
Horsefeathers. Even if very few people succumb to disease these days, that doesn't mean that everybody's genes make it to the next generation. The fact is that some people have traits that make them more likely to successfully reproduce, while other people's traits make them less likely to (hi, Slashdotters
On the plus side, this means that the future will likely have fewer geeks, and more promiscuous women....
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I think people will always be in some sort of evolution.
:)
`
Maybe the next step of evolution is the fact that we alter ourselves to get to a level of higher fitness. (autopoeisis or what's it called?).
Or with other words: "Oh no! The borg are coming"
Blending stops change? Ok i assume hes talking about races mixing? However our race has nothing to do with how evolved a person is, thats just silly.
Second, to even think that humans are the most evolved lifeform that can ever exsist, thats pure ignorance.
That whole article is BS
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
whether evolution does happen or not. I do not like scientific creationsm, but also a major part of what we call evolution seems like wishful thinking big time.
-- Look to the Rose that blows about us--"Lo, Laughing," she says, "into the World I blow..."
First of I'd like to say that the human design defies evolution entirely.
Evolution does not produce creatures like humans in the first place. They are always perfected to inhabit a particular environment. However, humans are designed such that they are just as adept swinging from trees as they are walking on the ground. Humans can be carnivores or herbivores, predator ar prey, etc. In fact, we have the eyes of a predator, but no claws or other weapon to take advantage of those instincts.
I could think of a million more examples of our contradictory design, as can you as well.
All this doesn't even mention the fact that there has never been a single bit of evidence in favor of evolution, and there is acutally enough solid evidence to shoot down the theory. But in current fasion, the worldd is getting dumber and more cattle-like all the time, so very few individuals think of the obvious, and here we are with stagnating ideas, and societies of people all living in the world they've created in their own minds.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
What does it matter whether evolution in humans is 'over' or not?
Our technology is moving us about a million times faster than evolution, or even 'genetically engineering augmented' evolution ever will.
Whether it's pure machine intelligence, machine animal hybrid intelligence, or machine augmented human intelligence, the ramifications of inevitable super-intelligence will make biological evolution moot.
So, define evolution as you think it is still taking place. One good example might be the malaria /sickle cell anemia case, but as the article states, most supportes of the therory say that it does not (yet) apply to third world countries.
In Europe or the US, there are no examples like that, or at least none that would shift the chances of individuals to have children toward those with a resistance gene.
Another point is the social evolution that is mentioned in a few comments. Does that really count as evolution, since it still is highly controversial if character and intellect are really genetically determined traits, to say the least.
Even inherited diseases will soon be gone, but not because of natural selection / evolution, but because of man-mande pre implantation diagnostics and family tree analysis.
I read about half way down the comments so if someone has mentioned this I appoligize. I have often wondered if perhaps Transvestites(sp?) were not the next step in the evolutionary process. Considering they have both organs they are more adaptable. However typically both of the organs fail to work properly; however, every so often we see one who actually has full use and is able to reproduce, but this trait is rarely passed on to the child in these rare circumstances (recessive trait). Granted they can't self reproduce, but since (the rare few) are able to become pregnant or be the one to make a female (or perhaps another fully working Trans) pregnant. Just a thought.
Am I lying when I tell you that im telling the truth? Or am I telling the truth when I say that Im lying?
Humans will eventually take evolution into their own hands through the use of psychadelics, cybernetics, and Gene Mutation. I'm actually excited about this as I think it will happen over the next 80 years at an accelerated rate. Evolution often happens with "points of critical mass" ..or something like that in which all is still untill some disaster stikes or a turning point is reached. Personally I think telepathy will be the next major evolutionary leap. Who would want to mate with someone that couldn't use telepathy? -- I think it is comming sooner than later too. -- Yea... going out a bit on the line I am... but it is my truth. :)
I am Jack's HTTP Server
on the bottom of
http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-089.htm
you'll find the following text.
We believe God has raised up ICR to spearhead
Biblical Christianity's defense against the
godless dogma of evolutionary humanism. Only by
showing the scientific bankruptcy of evolution,
while exalting Christ and the Bible, will
Christians be successful in "the pulling down of
strongholds; casting down imaginations, and every
high thing that exalteth itself against the
knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity
every thought to the obedience of Christ" (II
Corinthians10:4,5).
I'm not saying this makes any of the text's claims
false, but I'll certainly reread with many grains
of salt.
b
What f*ing box!?!?
>> So yes, there will be change there all right
>> - but only where the forces of evolution
>>are not being suppressed.'
Does this mean I have to abandon city life and go live in the woods?
just to make my children more agile or smart?
>>If people start to live to 150
I certainly don't want to live for 150 years. because once you get to
50+ years, you lose your youth, strength, beauty, etc...
So am I supposed to live for an additional 100 years being and old man?
What we want is a prolonged youth.
I think they meant a "hypothesis".
This isn't a theory.
...why people keep talking about evolution as if it happened magically.
Except for eliminating deadly genetic traits, in places of moderate to high standards of living, mortality rates are so low that evolution by natural selection simply can't work for any deterministic, beneficial goals. The number of children people have is certainly not related to any specific beneficial hereditary features. I've seen ridiculous claims like that evolution will prefer wealthy and good-looking people; the last time I looked, huge families were generally the poorest...
Fear mongering. That's what I think when hearing a "sky is falling" remark such as "human evolution has halted". Evolution is a word used to describe the change of a species of lifeform over time. It describes how inefficient species can be driven to extinction by climate change, competition and many other natural pressures. For humans, society (read: other humans) must be considered when charting our evolution. We are social animals, our individual survival is intertwined with the survival of our fellow humans. We will continue to adapt to what best suits both natural and human-made external problems; food, pollution, adequate clean water, disease, over prescribed medication, etc. We will also adapt to the social structures we have created.
That covers the basic reasons evolution will continue. The real question is how will our evolution change us? Answer, no one knows. We can only continue to study ourselves and analyze past data. That's one of the reasons mapping the human genome is interesting, it's ability to give us a basic outline which can be filled in as time passes.
I am curious about one part of our evolution. Will improving our medicine and health services weaken individual people? If you are never exposed to a disease or germs of any kind, how can you develop immunities? If we save all those people that it is possible to save with modern medicine, are we weakening our species?
Note: The fact that our current civilization has existed for less than a second of human evolution and it's questionable longevity not discussed.
If you believe in evolution (and you're entitled not to - it's not a concrete thing), then humans have seriously tampered with it!
:)
When you think about it, there are all kinds of social and technological catch-alls in place that allow someone to survive who isn't "fit" - mentally or physically - to do so on their own. I'm pretty sure that if you dumped most any average Slashdot visitor into the woods, they'd starve to death... likely because they forgot to eat while looking for an Ethernet jack for their laptop.
We also have a view of medicine that tries to actively "correct" bodies, even when the abnormality isn't necessarily a detriment. For example, quite a few people in the past have had six fingers on each hand - and some of those are genuinely functional. However, we often have the extra fingers removed anyways, simply because "it isn't normal." Obviously, we still respect changes such as height and strength, but anything else is viewed as "freakish."
Basically, we allow or encourage a halt in any biological advancement through all our innovations. I'm not necessarily saying that we should just toss out our technology and start hunting again - just that we shouldn't be surprised if it turns out that humans remain unchanged for a longer than usual (such as it is) time.
Yeah and very human at the same time.
This might be a bit off-topic, but personally I'm sick of the people who try to scare people into health nazism (ban smoking, fat tax, war on drugs etc.) on the pretext that "they could/should be more healthy" and "our taxes would be lower if all people took care of their health".
So friggin' what? One of the requirements for a free society is that people are free to be stupid and harm their own bodies in any way they can. Secondly the tax argument, which is more insidious and apparently reasonable, is also bollocks. I could argue that I'd rather have my tax money go to health care than into building a health nazi society where decisions concerning your health are made pre-emptively for you.
The owls are not what they seem
'There is a premium on sharpness of mind and the ability to accumulate money. Such people tend to have more children and have a better chance of survival,' he says. In other words, intellect - the defining characteristic of our species - is still driving our evolution.
Is this true ?, I thought that in modern western society it is the less well educated and poorer families that tend to have the larger families (maybe this is just a stereotype).
Surely we could work out the course of our evolution by looking at which parts of society have the most kids (and therefore pass on their genes and dominate the genepool). We need some kind of definitive study on modern reproduction to tell us for sure where we are going.
Also there are still people who don't pass on their genes at all, their genes are removed from the genepool. Surely this means we are still evolving, just a hell of a lot slower than in times gone past (considering that evolution is pretty slow anyway this might neglible).
Here is the short version: Evolution is impossible to stop.
I can't believe a Professor at a reputable institution would even argue such a thing (though note the article never says the man arguing that evolution has ceased in the Western world is a Biology professor).
All that is needed for evolution to occur is differential success in reproduction (and even without that neutral evolution can occur, as evolution is merely the change in the frequency of alleles in a population). The professor mentions that AIDs resistence in Africa allows for increased reproductive success and thus he can understand that evolution may be occuring in Africa, but in the Western world, of course not, we are above that here. Not that it occured to him that the Western world also has pathogens, albiet different ones, that also effect reproductive success.
One of the scientists at the end of the article mentions brain size as something that has changed over the past 10,000 years, but I could name a few more. For example 10,000 years ago most people could not consume milk over the age of 4 or 5. The ability to digest lactose products cropped up in the Western world around then and spread as the additional food source increased the inclusive fitness of offspring. Still today, because the adaptation began in Europe, people with European blood are much more lactose-tolerant then people from, say, China.
Quotes like this one are very misleading: "Now, children's chances of reaching the age of 25 have reached 98 per cent. Nothing is changing. We have reached stagnation." This quote implies that evolution is about survival, and we often hear the trite phase "survival of the fittest" when talking about the subject (note, Darwin never even used that term). But evolution is not about survival, it is about reproductive success. I can live to 100 but if I have no children it does nothing to increase my share in the gene pool. Conversely a man who lives to 30 but has two kids has bested me in that regard, and will have a larger share of the gene pool. Survival is only part of the story.
Today we have different selection pressures on us than our ancestors did, but selection pressures remain, and will remain, nomatter how the Western world may want to believe we are somehow above and apart from the natural world.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
While I think there is some point to the article I think the conclusions reached by Prof. Jones are a bit off. The whole survival of the fittest concept comes from an uncivilized and untamed natural world. You survived because you ran fast or had poisonous fangs or defensive quills or the ability to hunt in groups. Civilization puts an end to much of the struggle of the human condition (as the article mentions by quoting Peter Ward). You don't need to run fast or be strong in order to eat. With developments in medicine you don't need to be particularly strong in order to survive illness, genetic or otherwise. I'd even say modern people have more immunities than all of our forebearers combined. I think in many ways we have stopped developing as a species. Maybe in a million years we'll have fewer toes and longer fingers (our fingers will tend towards dexterity and we don't need the number of toes we have to walk upright as we do) but we are pretty stagnant.
The conclusion doctor Jones comes up with is we are the best result of natural selection. That is complete crap. We've got far too many genetic problems to be considered the best result of natural selection. Pick any detrimental attribute you can think of and picture a hunter gatherer with that trait. Do you think he'd survive long enough to have kids? It is highly doubtful. All of us four eyed slashdotters would be a mid-afternoon snack if it weren't for a civilized society. Concluding we've reached evolutionary stagnation because there are less adolecent and pre-adolecent deaths in London is pretty dumb. Our kids haven't become any better since 1890, we just no longer put them in factories and actually have cures for childhood diseases besides heavy prayer sessions and burning incense. Monkeys carrying HIV and not being affected by it is a similarly bad conclusion drawn from a dumb case. Chimpanzees don't have an anti-HIV gene, they have enough genetic descrepancy not to be affect by the HUMAN imunodeficiency virus. Humans in Africa in a thousand years won't have a anti-HIV gene any more than Chimpanzees have one today. Anyone left alive in Africa will be those who learned from the mistakes of the peers and practiced safe sex even if their religion or tradition forbode it.
I think this also brings into question: where do biologists learn math? If you look at statistics or studies done by any number of biologists you see REALLY fuzzy conclusions based on some really fuzzy logic and even fuzzier math. To put it into slashdot perspective, imagine somebody does benchmarking of Linux and Windows. They run web server tests using Linux 2.0 on a single processor serving 100 client machines connected to the server with a second hand D-Link hub serving out dynamically generated pages while comparing it to a Windows2k Advanced Server box with four processors connected to 25 client machines connected to the server by a cost-equals-the-GNP-of-a-small-nation router using gold plated Cat-5 cabling serving static web pages. The Windows computer beats the shit out of the Linux system (like...Netcraft) and it is concluded that Windows is superior in every way to Linux. Slashdotters would blow a collective gasket. That is the accuracy with which most biological studies are conducted. If you think I'm full of shit, you can pass a sugar pill through clinical trials and sell it as a anti-anything pill.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
When you look at slashdot editors....
-Shaunak.
Human evolution is an ongoing process, although the source has recently been partially opened, it's not all GPL'ed, and probably never will be. Currently we are all *(most of us, anyway) using the 87192371934172346.15.2.8.xxxxx.xx -RELEASE which is a snapshot from the -STABLE branch, approximately 15,000 years ago.
,18 Ways To Make a Baby. (Use cut and paste, I can't seem to get the hlink to work right. Sorry...)
We have recently figured out how to use CVS and have been trying to apply certain patches directly to the binaries, (amazing stuff, really). Scientists are making strides also in the area of patching sources before compiling & making them, but the builds are not always successful.
PBS recently aired a decent look at problems some people have using #include chromosomes_23_fm_father to get a complete working source for the next generation, on compilation, and the 18 most commonly used workarounds. Check http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/baby
DNA-kernel-hackers (or geneticists, as they prefer to be called) are also playing with the sources for smaller organisms, and working on the process of taking a pre-compiled (read: tried and true) binary to work in an install where only the shared libs are, and the binaries that were originally there are removed, a process refered to as cloning.
But seriously, folks... human evolution will continue as long as there are humans. This is just my two cents worth, I didn't read the article. We have however, assumed responsibility for our own evolution, to an extent, allowing to survive and propagate, strands of what amounts to essentially defective DNA.
There are people who don't see any DNA as defective... of course, there are people who will tell you "true beauty is on the inside". Usually these are unattractive people. Likewise, people can now survive, thanks to modern medicine, a whole range of problems resulting from DNA that in nature would not cut the mustard. If the survival or success of any part of our species were to fall on these congenitally deformed shoulders, we might find we wished we were still adhering to the old, admittedly appalling, Roman tradition of exposing defective babies at birth.
The neat thing about survival of the fittest is that all these defectives running around will be culled by mother nature whenever emergency hits. All the mental midgets, for instance, when lightening starts arcing from the sky, will stay out on the golf-course, and "finish the round". Yay. One less stupid "safe" Volvo doing 35 in a 55 I have to dodge with my Camero.
Okay, enough of that. Wouldn't want all the AC's karma to drop for a fb post.
This was intended to be funny. Laugh or don't, it's now your problem.
You're dreaming! The vast majority of the world is still struggling with life and death on a daily basis.
Even in our minority privileged 1st world, there is still evolutionary selection. Overtake on a blind corner, walk down a dark street at night, talk back to a mobster, argue with a lawyer.
These are all summary offences in the game of life. The offences in the 1st world may no longer be famine et al, but there are still evolutionary pressures.
Someone should take this 'perfesser' idiot out back and put him out of his misery.
:wq
Evolution has not stopped. Certainly the enviornment, or fitness plane, that human's inhabit has changed, and changed radically, but this merely changes the constraints that determine who dies and who lives.
For example. Modern science now allows women with unnaturally narrow hips to survive child birth (Cesaerian Section). This allows a new set of genetic material to be passed down through the generations - perhaps there are some other beneficial adaptations that are associated with narrow hips.
There are many other examples. Just because modern science allows some new sets of genes to replicate themselves - does not mean evolution has stopped - merely that different selective pressures can now come into play.
Think about it. Evolution (sorry to anthropomorphize here) is now free to play with a lot more vairables than it had before. For example. Since we can deliver almost any baby now, will there be a trend towards bigger babies, since the added drain on resources will no longer hurt the mother's chances of survival - even a 16lbs could be delivered via C section. Will bigger babies have a head start - start talking early, have bigger brains?
There are myriad other examples of this line of thinking.
Evolution CAN'T stop.
-josh
with medicine advancing, people become more disabled all the time. everybody needs glasses, a lot of people suffer from diseases like asthma and from overweight.
all these are changes which would normally be erased by evolution, however, with our current medical situation you don't have any real disadvantages.
eventually the whole human race will be suffering from all those "disabilities" because evolution won't eliminate them. and this is where we need to take action.
we should be able to remove those "you are almost blind", "you can hardly breathe" and "you get fat" genes in order to compensate evolution. this will be the only way to survive in the long term without going back to "kill the weak" which would be terrible (and, i guess, a lot of us would be among the "weak").
http://www.greatdreams.com/indigo.htm
The above is one of many links and documents online about the so called "Indigo Children". These children have above average intelligence, enhanced sensory & ESP-esque tendancies, and what is imho, amazing, immunity to aids and other emerging diseases.
It seems a little weird, I know...but if this all is true, we are seeing an evolution in progress.
Call on God, but row AWAY from the rocks!
I think one of the key points in our own "evolution" was the awareness of evolution as constant change, and more importantly the ability for us to consciously choose what features we wanted to encourage or discourage.
:)
This is a double-edged sword, as evolution now is no longer the realm of instinct, but of consciuous decision, but at the same time its effect is diluted, by the ability to "mimic" what is seen as desirable, evolutionary or otherwise. For instance, an evolutionary instinct to encourage males mating with blond-haired, blue-eyed large-breasted women is diluted in a practical sense by hair dye, coloured contacts and silicon implants.
People who alter themselves to fit our instinct are promoting "false" or "substandard" genes, which in turn means less[1] people for the next generation with desirable features.
Fross
[1] or, at least on average the same, which would be an evolutionary step of zero
You think life on Earth requires an explanation? Then this "God" requires a thousand times as much explaining. And you simply assume its existence, as if that was sufficient? And you accuse evolutionists of resting on faith??
Go and climb a tree.
Evolution IS possible. From their website:
"Darwin Awards commemorate those who improve our gene pool... by removing themselves from it in really stupid ways."
http://www.darwinawards.com/
[]'s
Leucos
Reading the comments in this thread is a little like reading an MSCE's comments on the latest kernel changes. Great swathes of ignorance coated with a veneer of superficial knowledge.
Humanity is not immune from natural selection. True, we no longer have predators to worry about, but we do have a number of other factors in our environment which act differently on different individual members of our species.
In the developed world, there's pollution, random violence (from gang shootings in the inner city to kids with psychological problems in the suburbs), affordability of medical care (how many folks who make $18K/year can afford in vitro fertilization?) - all of these might select for cerain traits (mostly for sociability and intelligence). In the developing world, there're still the old standbys, famine, disease, warfare, natural disaster. And in the interactions between the two there are factors (war, affordability of medical care, etc.).
Others in this thread have a few bright ideas about evolution: for instance, should we colonize other planets (or even more so, other planetary systems), the colony effect will almost certainly apply. (Look to the genetic variation on Galapagos for examples; small island colonies in the Americas shown interesting genetic variations from the main population).
At the heart of this argument is a little something called the anthropic fallacy - the idea that things are the way they are because they should be, when the reality is that thing are the way they are because if they weren't, we wouldn't be in a position to wonder about why things are the way they are. Writers who assume that evolution has ended do so because they see themselves as the pinnacle of evolution, and cannot imagine a being superior to themselves.
One imagines that the queen bee feels the same way.
Whatever qualification Prof. Steve Jones holds, he should probably take down his degree and wipe his arse with it, as it has turned out that is all it's good for.
/. shouting down the efforts of someone they disagree with with an infantile remark.
Yet another example of someone on
For your information Professor Steve Jones is arguably the world's top geneticist. He's spent practically his entire career on the subject and is perhaps to genetics what Albert Einstein is to
relativity.
To say that his opinions are highly respected in the scientific community is an understatement - you'd have more luck finding a kid that hates candy than you would a serious scientist that was as dismissive of Prof. Jones's arguments as you appear to be.
Perhaps you have a professional interest in genetics yourself? A doctorate then? A degree perhaps? No, I didn't think so.
Yours seems to be a typical knee-jerk reaction. "Hey, I don't understand/like the idea of what this guy is saying so I'll bash/ridicule him." Very mature.
Perhaps, just perhaps, Prof. Jones, being a sensible scientist - the kind that looks at all avenues and approaches, accepting of all ideas and dismissive of none - looks at all the arguments before reaching his conclusions, whatever they may be.
Who knows, perhaps he looked at all the evidence - even the stuff you've put forward - before commiting his ideas to the scrutiny of the scientific community via a paper or a journal.
Perhaps he's right. Perhaps he's wrong. Scientists aren't always as arrogant as you seem to be - they don't claim to have all the answers but they damn well try to look for some.
It seems to me that Prof. Jones isn't defining some set-in-stone law here. He's only putting forward a theory.
Perhaps you'd be more confortable if scientist's didn't theorise? If Newton hadn't thought about gravity, Darwin about evolution or Einstein about the speed of light?
Science (and mankind in general) is progressed as much by taking an idea, working with it and finding out that it's wrong, coming up with a new idea that matches new emperical data, working with that, etc, as it is by someone pulling the right answers out of a hat first time.
Prof. Jones might be wrong. He might be right. Or, he might be somewhere in between. But if we take your approach to science we'll never find out.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Evolution is due to things that kill us before we reproduce, so we're all evolving into better drivers.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
We are effectively selecting against being sucessfull. Wierd.
As long as we keep paying fat, ugly gimme girls to have babies we'll evolve to be fatter and uglier.
If a troll posts that "evolution is over", especially for slashdot readers,
then he gets modded down as flamebait or "ignorant" or whatever.
I guess only officially sanctioned parties can troll.
Well, slashdot readers won't be reproducing any time soon.
Sorry-- social darwinism was proved wrong long ago. The idea that our social "success" equates with biological "success" is the one of the most arrogant bastardisations of science in the last two hundred years, right up with the idea that blacks are inferior to whites. (Oddly enough, the two ideas are linked-- that was social darwinism before there was darwinism, and the arguments used to "prove" that were similar the the ones you just used to "prove" poor people are somehow inferior to rich people.)
Just because someone is poor does not make them genetically stupid, or genetically less-likely to survive.
Remember, biological success has to do with living long enough to breed a replacement population. It doesn't have anything to do with the size of your paycheck. The more times you pass on your genes, the more successful those genes are.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Breathless gloomy statements like "bad news: this is the best it is going to get" may get this piece linked to from slash-dot but it sure gets in the way of a good article. The speciesist statement "Our species has reached its biological pinnacle" should raise a red flag for /. readers. It looks like the author as fallen victim to the common fallacy that evolution is a ladder of perfection. It's too bad really. This topic could have been an interesting in more skillful hands.
As best as I can figure, the argument the author is putting forward is this: Because of week selection pressure on the human species therefore evolution has stopped. If this is what the author is trying to say, then (s)he is wrong. Evolution comes in two parts, one is random mutation and non-random selection. When selection pressure is week then a species as a whole experiences "good times". mortality rates are low, life is easier and a large growing population soon results. When you have a large population you have lots of random mutations happening there are more possibilities going into the gene pool. Just because selection pressure weaker doesn't mean that the whole process has stopped. The very nature of exponential growth usualy meens that week selection pressure can only exist temporarily . It could be back with a vengence later.
Evolution would be finaly over as the title of the article suggests when we somehow could magic away selection pressures foever. This applies to sex selction pressures as well, make sure that everyone had exactly the same number of offspring by a mate chosen compleatly at random.
I'm sorry, I think your post, while well meaning, fails to express clearly your argument about evolution. I'll quote your summary for reference
After reading it, the question is "why should we care about recessive genes in the first place?". Your post doesn't give any reason at all in fact (I had to dig in the article you quote, paragraph 6, sentence 2, according to which "Most mutations are recessive".) So the obvious conclusion from your post is "recessive genes are not favoured by evolution, so not important factor to explain mutations.
Now let's look at what the quoted article says. First it points out that some recessive genes are found in "most" mutations. Hence I guess they think that recessive genes cause these mutations. But in paragraph 3, they claim that sometimes, only a single gene is responsible for a variation, and sometimes "some traits, like color, weight, and intelligence, depend on the cumulative effect of genes at two or more loci". So a lot of genes are involved. Isn't it probable that most mutations contain recessive genes because recessive genes occur commonly in conjunction with any other random genetic changes, some of which lead to the mutation?
Another problem I have with the article is that they focus on so called beneficial mutations, meaning a mutation which benefits the carrier relative to the whole population. But natural selection only requires a relative change for better adaptability. To take an analogy: natural selection selects you if you're one step ahead of the others. This either means that you have taken an actual step forward and all others haven't, or the others have all taken a step back, and you haven't moved. Suppose the population experiences "background genetic decay" (their words, paragraph 9), and some individuals decay more slowly. Fewer diseases and malformations that warrant a quick demise. Natural selection prefers those individuals and the resulting population's rate of decay is slowed.
I'm sorry, I stopped reading after that.
Just one example: when the europeans started invading the american continent, they brought with them a deadly disease, TB (tuberculosis). Native americans were much less resistant to it than europeans, so they died in scores. And even today, TB is much more of a killer for native americans than it is for "white men".
And why is that? Obviously, thousands of years of exposure to TB -has- resluted in natural selection, making europeans more resistant to this particular bacteria.
However, in the future I see more and more an evolution on a larger scale than just individuals. I see evolution on country/geographic zone-level. Let me explain: you as an individual are less important than the large group of people in the geographic area you live in. For example, if indonesians continue deforestations, they get killed in the floods (lack of forests=>soil degradation=>desertification=>unrestrained flood-waters), it doesn't matter whether a single individual in INdonesia gets it, it's the whole country to suffer from the consequences of the majority's action.
It gets even more interesting: human-induced global warming creates a favourable climate for tropical diseases and bugs, more up north. It also creates an unstable environment with very dry intervals interspersed with harsh storms. This will eliminate most of the species (harsh conditions ALWAYS result in in homogenization -lack of diversification) and promote the more resistant ones: rats and roaches. Humans will be hit hard, too. Survival will be based on their geographic location more than on their individual characteristics.
Sigged!
Every once in a while some scientist likes to say something like "Ok, that's it, we know pretty much all there is to know, the rest is just a matter of filling in the details." Looks like some biologists got jealous, and decided to jump on that bandwagon but in terms of evolution.
I'd say that modern humans have certainly reduced evolutionary forces, by insulating themselves from some aspects of their environment (by setting up artificial climates, via long-range transportation of food, and through modern medicine). But we haven't removed evolutionary pressures completely. And it only takes a very little bit of selection to affect things over long periods of time. We do still have mutation, we do still have genetic variation (and in fact, I'd say genetic variation at any particular location is increasing, because there is more mixing), and we do still have some selection. Those are the requirements of evolution. (OK, mutation isn't even strictly necessary, but it prevents things from getting fixed for a particular allele due to genetic drift, so it's nice to have around.)
The mixing may reduce the amount of adaptation to local conditions that happens, but I don't think that's too big a problem.
The December 2001 Scientific American (www.sciam.com) had an interesting article on page 56 (sorry if I don't have a link, I actually pay for this stuff :P) titled "How We Came to be Human," excerpted from the book titled The Monkey in the Mirror: Essays on the Science of What Makes Us Human, by Ian Tattersall. Here is a paragraph excerpted from the article that pretty much gets the gist of the relevant bit of the article:
"Let's look again, for a moment, at what our knowledge of the evolutionary process suggests may have occurred. First, it's important to remember that new structures do not arise for anything. They simply come about spontaneously, as byproducts of copying errors that routinely occur as genetic information is passed from one generation to the next. Natural selection is most certainly not a generative force that calls new structures into existence; it can only work on variations that are presented to it, whether to eliminate unfavorable variants or to promote successful ones. We like to speak in terms of "adaptations," since this helps us to make up stories about how and why particular innovations have arisen, or have been successful, in the course of evolution; but in reality, all new genetic variants must come into being as exaptations. The difference is that while adaptations are features that fulfill specific, identifiable functions (which they cannot do, of course, until they are in place), exaptations are simply features that have arisen and are potentially available to be co-opted into some new function. This is routine stuff, for many new structures stay around for no better reason that that they just don't get in the way."
So, basically, it is impossible for humans, as a whole, to evolve right now because there is not pressure from natural selection. What we are doing, however, is building up exaptations that may become useful if we ever come under the pressure of natural selection again. If you think of various genetic traits as a bell curve, as indeed they must be, right now the bell curve is widening out. This is a good thing (tm) because it means that the species has a better shot at surviving unexpected events.
To the article at hand. "According to Darwin's theory, individual animals best suited to their environments live longer and have more children, and so spread their genes through populations. This produces evolutionary changes." If the SciAm article is right, then this is wrong. Exaptation produces changes/differences within the species, natural selection only shifts the mean of the distribution by killing off a biased part of it.
"In addition, human populations are now being constantly mixed, again producing a blending that blocks evolutionary change." This quote right here, assuming that evolution is a good thing, borders on being racist about interracial marriages. I wonder if this was intentional or not?
I suppose that they're complaining about a lack of a change in the mean? The problem is that long distance breeding doesn't effect this, it only insures that there is still one mean (well, there are actually several, but inter-breeding prevents those means from growing so far apart that speciation occurs).
One thing I learned about from one of my high school teachers (ironically, he was using it as an argument against evolution, heh) is that the fossil record shows that species will arrive on the scene, change a bit, but then disappear, replaced by a similar, but not quite the same species. If the theory about exaptation is correct, however, this is exactly what should happen. Consider this possible narrative: take some specie that has been around for a while, long enough for exaptations to build up, now something in the environment suddenly changes so that different individuals are selected for (i.e. a change in climate, some prey species goes extinct, etc.), as long is it is still possible for some breeding population to survive (even if it means inbreeding), then some of the exaptations will become adaptations (simply meaning that they're useful now), and the adaptations will become prominent in as little as two or three generations, depending on the kill of rate for those who don't have the adaptations. The population will drop dramatically in size, if the kill off rate is even decently high, making the old specie seem to disappear. As time goes by, the mean will settle in to a more perfectly adapted place as the population grows and stabilizes and what was formerly considered to be how evolution worked takes over. This may explain why we have been unable to find a missing link for humans, since 50 or 60 years is literally instantaneous on a geologic time scale.
BlackGriffen
The Human Instrumentality Project! Heh, anyone who's seen Neon Genesis Evangelion 'll get this.
If I wasn't so lazy, I'd have a sig.
I remember reading in New Scientist (a few years ago now) that actually evolution might be speeding up. Both prospective parents now work in a society where work takes up a large chunk of your life, and contraception reduces unwanted pregnancies. We pick and choose when we want children.
The theory was that only the parents who had the skill or time-management abilities to get their work done sufficentely would try for a child. Therefore, the children produced will be smarter and have better time-management and ability to cope with stress.
I don't think it mentioned actual physical evolution though. I'm still waiting on those wings.
Evolution is an emergent property of reproduction. It is unstoppable, unless you stop sexual reproduction. Neither society nor mixing will stop exolution, you merely change the environment and the rates of sharing genetic material. New traits will emerge in the long term, those may have nothing to do with fitness in the classic sense.
Spiritually/socially/memetically, (i think its all the same... evolution of the way we think/act/treat others) still has alot of evolving to do. I think we'll only be truly evolved when we realize that all humans are worth protecting, not just our friends/neighbors.
Memes are interesting and they appear to be viral - easily transfered from one to the other, constantly evolving and changing and becoming more complex. Just like there is a technique to remove viruses (eat healthy, have strong immune system) there is a technique that can be used to remove memes from your mind. Intellectually it is very simple - do not react to them. Actually it is hard to implement.
Thats why 10 day course have been established throughout the world that can give an opportunity to practice not responding to your memes. Check out Vipassana Meditation for more details.
Vipasanna meditation "aims for the total eradication of mental impurities and the resultant highest happiness of full liberation."
Need a website host? Try out http://WebQualityHost.net
I lost any respect for Steve Jones, when I saw him on TV flogging cars in an advert. The science of evolution has been badly explained/understood by much of academia ever since Darwin. It is said evolution arises from natural selection, fair enough, problem is, to get natural selection you need variation. It is the source of that variation where the problems start. The model for variation that is usually propounded, is mutation, ie radiation and mutagenic chemicals, accidental causality in other words, like saying an elephant evolved its trunk by accident. I beg your pardon, an elephants trunk is some kind of mutation? Bwhuahoohoohaawhaa.
Genetesists have been breeding fruitflies for many years, they have never managed to breed a different species yet, no matter what they do, they still end up with fruitflies.
There are three kinds of evolution, y chromosome evolution, mitrochondrial dna evolution, and normal chromosomal evolution. The first two are driven by mutation and subseqently evolve extremely slowly, mutations that are advantageous occur extremely rarely. Hence the metaphor of throwing a junk yard in air and it landing as a 747.
Normal chromosomal evolution happens by a process called recombination, basically males produce so many sperms, because each sperm is a different combination of the male's inherited genes ie some bits from mum and the other bits from dad. The females ova are made during the growth of the female feotus, but roughly the same process occurs, ie each ova is slightly different, because each ova is a slightly different combination of the females inherited chromosomes. The point of all this is, one couple can have approx 70 trillion different babies. This is the source of the variation that gives rise to natural selection.
Never trust a car salesman even if they are selling BMWs. Better health care means more combinations survive, even mutational variations. Diversity produces more evolution not less.
Possibly the only sad thing is, our evolution seems to be driven by a fat wallet and empty bollocks.
They call it an elephants trunk, where it is in fact an elephants nose. A nose by an other name would smell as sweetly.
Quoth the article
'human populations are now being constantly mixed, again producing a blending that blocks evolutionary change.'
I'm curious if the person who said this is racist. When I read this, I translated it into meaning: '''Those blacks/asians/(fill in non-caucasian race here)are polluting our White Pride.''' He's just trying to justify racism by blaming it on evolution. My opinion, he's no better than the KKK idiots. Hell, kkk'ers know they're idiots... Even THEY wear dunce caps.
Just think about it, what's wrong with racial blending? There's good and bad genetic material in each parent. Both the good and the bad are increased in strength. If the kid doesn't cut it, he fails (in the human race, due to evolution).
Josh Crawley
"Hence, the blending of our genes which will soon produce a uniformly brown-skinned population."
The end of white supremacism - I love it.
--- Foam weapons, real sparring: buyjin.com/diamondsword
that's right. in mesopotamia or sumeria. the first guy who took a couple of sticks and bound them together in such a way that he was able to plow his field and his neighbors' fields all in one day - his was the last generation (at least, of sumerians) to be influenced exclusively by natural selection.
ever since, evolution has been tempered by scientific advancement.
why? food surplus. when you have a better way to plow your fields, you can take some extra time to work out how to store food, to build better houses against the elements, lord your power over your neighbors, build better weapons, and find all kinds of new ways to kill your starving enemies.
our species is certainly still evolving, which is to say changing genetically, but not by natural selection alone. natural selection would tend towards people who are better at surviving famines and the elements, resistant to diseases and all the other natural forces that tend to kill people before they can reproduce.
there's no direction to our evolution now, as there was when our species was young, and intelligence was the most important - but not the only - selective factor. then, it was important to be able to recognize danger, potential food, potential shelter, etc. those people got to reproduce, because they survived long enough to and could supply their offspring with food.
today, everyone gets to reproduce, even the people i would argue shouldn't be allowed to - because they can't provide for their own children to the age where they can reproduce. these are people who give up their children to adoption, have them taken away by social services for just that reason, or rely exclusively upon handouts from others to get by. the intelligence test for survival these days is in finding the generous people (or filling out the government forms) to hit up for money.
in fact, our most intelligent and genetically viable people are the same ones who tend not to have children, or who have only the one or two they know they can sustain. careers and full-time obligations make it possible to provide for more children, but also make it very difficult to actually raise them. such in the irony of modern evolutionary forces.
and then there are those people who nature and selection have denied children. infertile couples, sterile men and women who have children despite nature and the lot they were given at birth, because they can afford to pay a doctor to pump them full of drugs and inject their artificially fertilized eggs. natural selection denies them a chance to reproduce, but technology smacks nature in the face with a petri dish full of zygotes.
so, it's not toward a more intelligent species that we're still evolving, but toward a more technologically dependent, more socially dependent species. it may be, eventually, that here in the "west" we can't reproduce without technology's assistance. it's getting to that point - partly because people see it as their right and privelege to reproduce if they can afford to (which it is, to some extent) - mostly because of the modern technology we already rely on, which is the very thing making them infertile or allowing them to survive longer than nature would have, but with the inability to reproduce.
i wonder how much longer it will be that we in the west, dependent as we are on technology even to get erections (yes, viagra, too, is to blame) won't be able to reproduce with the indigenous peoples, like those in australia, africa and south america, who have had no contact with the technodependent west. we are on our way to becoming a new human species, if that is the eventual outcome. don't tell me evolution is finished, just say nature's done with us what she will, and we are guiding our own evolution - for good or for ill.
quite a ramble, but it's how i feel, and have felt for a long time. we stopped really evolving as soon as we could feed those of us that would otherwise have starved.
more on evolution (moron evolution).
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
How dogs evolved from wolfs.
Why the AIDS virus has mutated in some many different strains.
Even the Pope has recognized that evolution is "more than a theory".
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
TB didn't kill most native americans, smallpox did.
Ok people, come back to reality here. If humanity is incapable of evolution, it will die out whenever a pressure on the population kills it off. If some kind of science is the catalyst for improving the stock, that does not invalidate the idea that evolution overcame the pressure. Given that we are all still living and reproducing, evolution of some sort must occur when needed. If it is not needed for the survival of the species, then it will not occur except as random chance.
The argument that we are somehow evolving backwards is also facile. You can not undo what is done. A resurgence of disease will insure that from time to time.
No X-men?? No way..
I sometimes think about this and come up with the conclusion of "No, that is probably not true..."
First off, look at how long we have been running about on the earth - a couple hundred thousand years maybe? Those large dinosaur things lived 65 million years ago, and it took that long for us to come about. I am sure in another 65 million years something more can happen to us. Just because the human perception of time is so slow doesn't mean change doesn't happen.
This can be compared to technological evolution too. Every once and a while I think "What more could we possibly come up with technology-wise? It seems like we have come up with everything." However, I doubt people in the 1500s could have thought "Oh, I bet some day people will be using transistors to build 'computers' that will be used to run data bases holding lots and lots of email addresses to be used for mass-mailing!" No, I am going to guess that at that time people could have looked around and thought "Yup, this is as far as we can get. Everything has been figured out."
So I am going to guess that there is plenty more evolving we can do. If nothing else, we can at least get rid of wisdom teeth and apendices. Of course, I won't be around in 500,000 years when that has happened, though, so it doesn't really concern me in the end...
Posted from the wireless couch.
evolution is never over. But it works a lot faster in small isolated populations.
When we get into space we will have far flung colonies spread out over the entire solar system, with small groups of people who are going to have very limited contact with the rest of humanity for generations. The radiation levels will be much higher than normal. Gravity is going to be much lower. Foods will be different than on Earth.
We are going to see some very strange cults, and strange mutations as we move into space. It would be interesting to explore the possiblities in a story about someone who has to take supplies off to a lot of remote outposts.
And as far as machines replacing humans, hardly. This reminds me a lot of the outlandish claims that we would be able to predict the weather for years in advance back in the 1950's. We are still lucky to have an accurate 5 day forcast. And just this winter they failed to forcast a storm that put down 6 inches of snow across the entire NW of the US.
I predict that we will be lucky to have machines as smart as a rat in my lifetime and that my great grand children will not meet an artificial intelligence as smart as they are. We will see expert systems being used in things like medicine and law and other narrowly defined areas of human knowledge, but those will be idiot savants that are totally useless outside their area of expertise.
We will move to a new economy that is totally alien to what we have now. Capitalism and communism are rapidly becoming as meaningless as talking about things in terms of divine right and fiefal duties. It can either be a paradise, or a new dark age, I am not sure which will happen yet.
The simple fact is that most peoples in the world live pretty much the same way that they have lived since history began to be recorded. They use animals to farm for food. I doubt that this will change in the next 1000 years.
Sadly the overlords of these peasants _do_ have access to the most advanced technologies... How much chance does a farmer have against a MiG23? Or against a squad of soldiers armed with AK 47's? Not much. And even if we do have AI robots, those robots will answer to the overlords too.
-- Never make a general statement.
Then why are you trying so hard to propagate this "internal/external thinker" meme?
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
God created man the way he is now since Adam and Eve. This Evolution crap is nothing but CRAP.
>Professor Steve Jones believes this, in part, >because 'human populations are now being >constantly mixed, again producing a blending >that blocks evolutionary change.'"
I think Professor Jones missed one salient point; who exactly says that human populations are mingling as much as he thinks? This may be happening in the developed West, and indeed perhaps only in parts there. It's certainly not a hallmark of developing world anthropology, this intermingling. Intermingling requires a fairly advnaced degree of civilisation to breed tolerance of cultural differences. Most of the world lacks this brand of civilisation.
I really don't think New York alone, Professor Jones, or London, can halt the pace of evolution.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
ive never read up on evolution. but ive thought about it to myself from time to time. i would think that evolution would need massive death to work properly, that or a very very small group. if mutant genes spring up, the best way for them to stay on top is where this group is in danger and dying and somehow this mutation is an advantage and keeps them alive. the closer to extinction a species is the faster it will evolve in other words. humans are only at risk from themselves. if (when?) we start killing large numbers of ourselves we may see some evolution happening again, but as it stands now, large numbers, lots of intermingling, theres no chance.
As far as I can see, this is a virtually self-evident outcome of any technological civilization that refuses to admit the social importance of genes. People must recognize and compensate for the fact that that naive technological civilization selects for those who are most adept at taking control -- not creating control. Such compensation means establishing a meta-technology in three basic forms:
- Suppressing the control takers.
- Hiding control creators from control takers.
- Creating faster than the takers can take from the creators.
I believe there to be no other alternatives consistent with the survival of technological animals.Seastead this.
http://riceinfo.rice.edu/armadillo/Sciacademy/rigg ins/things.htm#toe
We have developed abilities that allow more of us to live longer. Prolonged, more frequent survival and reproduction are hallmarks of evolutionary success, yet you think that makes us weaker. According to your reasoning, increasing our survival has made us weaker. Doesn't it work the other way around? As I recall, it is when individuals are less fit for survival that they are supposed to survive less. What, precisely, would make us stronger?
by allowing natural selection. We keep saving the lives of those who are "not fit". Yes it would be absolutely horrible if we didn't, and I'm not saying we should let everyone in the hospital die. But if you want evolution to continue, we have to have to have natural selection. Medical technology defeats natural selection.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Not only is this totally racist and white supremist horseshit, it is completely wrong. Whatever qualification Prof. Steve Jones holds, he should probably take down his degree and wipe his arse with it, as it has turned out that is all it's good for.
To guage his qualifications, perhaps we can read what other say about him or his work.
"I like Steve Jones' work. I've read most of his scientific papers. I work on pulmonate snails, and he's one of the best in this little field. I don't know him very well. He's a very good scientist. He's followed the path of a media person, but in my professional world -- snail biology -- his science is very good." -Stephen Jay Gould
And, regarding his racism, another reviewer of his work says the following:
"I've enjoyed Steve Jones' recent book The Language of the Genes. He's a little bit too eager to bend over backwards to be politically respectable, because of the unsavory history of genetics, and he rather goes out of his way to disown those aspects of genetics that are politically disrespectable. I feel that that's over and done with now, and we can forget about it and get on, and I feel he's still a little bit unnecessarily eager to distance himself from the bad aspects of the history of genetics. But I have a lot of time for him;I greatly respect him." -Richard Dawkins
"Microsoft has made computing accessible to a population who would otherwise not be able to use computers" - B. Kernigha
I agree with the article, that in under-developed countries, where the infant mortality rate is still very high, evolution is still a force.
This has very interesting possibibilities. It might mean a better human will come from the 3rd world. After all, competition for resources, at a primitive level, still goes on there. A mutation that would allow for an edge in that competition would certainly be interesting!
The question is, how long will there be a 3rd world? My guess is for some time, but probably not enough time for evolution to have a great effect. Capitalist 1st world societies will continue to elevate 3rd world countries MERELY for their cheap labor. Over time, these countries will accumulate wealth and thus leave the 3rd world. Then, the next 3rd world will be sought for their cheap labor... round and round we go.
Let us think about our altered food. It is a change that has allowed us to survive at higher rates. The information for making it is passed down through generations. It sounds suspiciously similar to evolution.
the only place on earth that's not happenning is in alabama. it's basically the same genes over and over -- no mixin'. therefore the only place that's evolving is alabama. what a crock. i thought evolution took place *because* of the blending.
The author is leaving out technology. We are on the road to taking control of our evolution. Why wait for thounds of years to change our genes when we can do it in a few hours.
See the movie GATTACA and get a hint of this future.
As things remain static in our environment, humans will change very little. This is normal and expected across all populations of life. The tiny variance that does come into play is rarely and barely noticable. No large changes, like specialization, will occur until something relatively horrible happens, be it a nuclear holocaust, asteroid from above, new Madonna videos, mega-volcanic cataclysm, the coming of a random diety, or otherwise. This will put pressure on the species, and a great many will die in horrible pain (especially over the Madonna videos,) forcing the minor variance to play a roll in the nasty and unfair game of advantages and disadvantages (and no, you can't Antitrust this one away.) Add geographic isolation, as huge populations die, and eventually you have several new species of humans.
Oooooh ohhhhhh Ahhhhhhhhh ahhhhh!
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I agree, half of evolution is based upon "those that survive". Those that survive in theory have adaptation to certain conditions that allow their progeny to continue. However, the other half is "who gives birth" and "how many births". Those that grant the greatest number of offspring that survive to have offspring of their own, determine the overall fate of the species. I think it's impossible to say evolution has stopped, I don't think it ever can.
The question, is evolution helping us, or hurting us? Think now about where the highest birthrates are. Most educated established people rarely have more than 2-3 kids, they have a lot to lose for screwing up in that regard. Elsewhere on Jerry Springer, the other half lives. They have a knack for staying alive and "breeding early, breeeding often".
ph33r
Evolution occurs because of DNA mutation--which happens all the time--but that mutation must be viable and offer some benefit for the recipient.
For example, humanoid bipeds that were born with less hair didn't get as hot on the savannah, and were (presumably) able to run further and longer. This would indirectly mean that those beasts could get more food and survive easier. More food = more babies and the trait is passed to future generations.
Another example of something that we are losing is the appendix (burst appendix = death; no appendix = no burst appendix = no death from that cause). The process happens so slowly because those with the evolutionary trait (in this case an absent appendix) must outbreed those who don't have the trait.
In the case of the appendix, modern science is messing with the evolutionary machine, but there are some things that will continue to evolve:
- Cancer resistance
- Virus (AIDS) resistance
- Ability to function in more stressful environment
- SIDS resistance
- Pollution resistance
So the bottom line is that any crackpot can say evolution is dead, but without understanding the thousands and possibly millions of years required for evolution to do its work, we can pretend the crackpots of the world, who rage against the windmills, are correct. It doesn't matter; we'll be long since turned to dust by the time we humans evolve again. And we will.Yeah, right.
No further need for improvement. Top of the world, ma!
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
There can be only one way for human evolution to really be "over": the natural selection won't work anymore. In other words, everybody survive and can have equal chance to give offsprings, regardness of the shortcoming of the individual. The gene pool will no longer be able to benefit from natural selection.
Unluckily, the current medical advances are really leading us to this sequel.
Sure we're still evolving - the only way we'd STOP evolving would be is every group of humans on the planet we're reproducing at the same rate, which is untrue now, and surely will be untrue for ever.
Remember that evolution doesn't mean advance or get better, but simply change, and that the evolutionary winners are simply those that leave behind more offspring.
Currently the segements of the global population that are outbreeding the others are the poorer ones like India (or even the welfare segment in more developed countries), so it seems that at an evolutionary level the ability to accumulate wealth is a bad thing, and that the genetics of poorer countries and maybe even lower IQ welfare segment are the current evolutionary direction.
Idiot, you will drop carrier now. +++ ath Jerk.
It is also noticeable that those who meet this criteria of social success have a higher mean IQ than those who do not. Anecdotally, I would observe that they also tend to have fewer congenital health problems.
So is the higher IQ a cause or an effect of having money?
There are a number of things that need to happen in the first several years of a child's life for that child to develop 'optimally' (note scare quotes, as optimally is not defined).
First during pregnancy no alcohol, no smoking, no drugs are allowed and good medical care as well as a balanced and sufficient diet are required.
Second during the first several years the child needs proper diet and medical care and a loving and stimulating environment.
Third during the years leading up to adolescence the child needs a proper diet, good medical care, a supportive and stimulating environment, and a proper learning environment (examples: good schools, libraries, access to a computer, etc.).
There is some component of IQ that is genetic. But even if IQ is 100% genetic if the child doesn't have the proper environment the genes will not have a chance to express themselves fully. As an extreme example of this, consider a plant seed. The seed holds all the genetic potential for a full grown plant. But if that seed falls on a concrete parking lot then none of that genetic potential will be expressed.
It is the same with humans. Unless the proper requirements for development are made available to the child it will not develop optimally.
Is it any wonder then that socially sucessful people tend to have socially successful children? Or that the socially successful have higher IQs?
Also note that having money means having regular access to heath care. For most successful people visiting a doctor is not an issue. For people with out medical insurance (i.e. the non successful) visits to a doctor can be very expensive. If the choice is between feeding the kids and visiting a doctor the kids usually win. Thus any real problems are not diagnosed promptly. And prompt diagnosis is usually crucial to successful treatment. So agian, is it any surprise that the successful have fewer health problems?
Steve M
This is one of the worst scientific assertions I have ever read. Africans will keep evolving because they have AIDS? Last time I checked, AIDS was doing a pretty good job of killing Westerners, too. What about cancer? Western populations are being decimated by cancer, which is largely being caused by environments we created. And most importantly, what about disease, viruses, and other events that we just haven't encountered? If something like the Ebola virus goes airborn, I think you'll see some pretty hasty natural selection in South Dakota, Brighton, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong and ever other corner of the globe, regardless of how "western" they are. Evolution is about breeding only in that those that are left alive get to breed, and just because we've had a good run over the last few decades doesn't mean we're invincable. Evolution is not a species getting bigger or stronger or smarter, scaling some sort of ladder to reach an ultimate goal of perfection. If being dumb as a rock assists in our survival, thats evolution. Anyone interested should check out Galapagos, by Kurt Vonnegut. Hummanity is wiped out except for a bunch of idiots stuck on the Galapagos Islands, where a new race of humans continues.
Quantitatively, I've heard that IQ tests have had to be recentered about 3 points per decade, for about the last 100 years.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Perhaps that's the future of evolution, a world of people genetically predisposed towards Catholicism...
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
There's a high demand for watching basketball, and a low supply of 7'8" genetic freaks to play. If we started tampering with our genes to all become basketball players, the situation would reverse.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Remember... 'Survial of the Fittest' doesn't mean survial of the smartest, or survival of the pleasent. That welfare family down the streat with eight bastard children is more 'fitted' to it's environemnt than the nice couple with two well behaved children.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Either that or we'll all start devolving into lawyers and politicians (Greyfox's theory of devolution.)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Our own medicine - which we like to think makes us strong - is making us weak. The process of natural selection can no longer take place.
By your logic, you could say that the teeth and claws of tigers whch we think makes them strong actually makes them weak. Our medicine is our strength and it will not suddenly vanish some day. Our medicine is the very thing that will help us control our own evolution.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Although the parent is somewhat tongue in cheek, several of these are valid points.
In addition, realize that our immune systems are constantly under very strong selective pressure to be better able to respond to pandemic infectious diseases.
For example, we are all descended from those people whose immune systems were better able to cope with influenza. Remember, more people died in the 1919 Flu pandemic than in all the battles of World War I.
There are, or course, other examples. We are currently under strong selective pressure that favors those whose T cells do not have binding sites for HIV.
So, evolution most definitely continues, it's just that it isn't usually selecting for traits that are visible to the naked eye.
Not to make a political statement, but I think this is the first time in human history (well, for the last couple hundred years - small scale historically) that the smartest humans aren't rewarded with great numbers of children.
While clearly, in animals, pure strength of physical body can greatly effect the ability to reproduce, it seems humans leave the job of reproduction largely in the hands of the dumbest and least fit of our species. In the past this wasn't true - not as neanderthals (sp?), not as early humans. But now, if you were to take an IQ and physical fitness survey of people with more than 1 or 2 children I'd wager that the results are much lower than those with small numbers, or no children. This is more obvious in the United States, but now other countries are throwing off the rules too. China keeps everyone from having lots of children, effectively evening things out.
Not saying the social policies are "wrong" politically or anything - its just hard to imagine that the species will get smarter when there are simply more of us being produced by the lesser intelligent of us. When a crocodile or hippo or whatever wild animal fights for the right to copulate, that ensures the stronger will make babies. We ensure the weaker will populate through social rules.
Tim T.
Evolution is going towards genes that favour a large amount of children.
Close but not quite that simple.
Evolution is about differential genetic success. That is, it is about getting your genes into future generations.
There are two main strategies for this. One is to have as many offspring as possible and invest minimal care in any one of them. You flood the world with offspring in the hope that some will survive. But the loss of any particular offspring is no big deal. Think salmon spawning.
The second main strategy is to have fewer offspring but to invest highly in their successful maturation to child bearing age. Think humans.
Now the key to success in the second model is getting your few children to the point where they can have children. For most of humankind's existance bringing up kids was a perilous endevour, with many children dieing well before reaching child bearing age. Thus an effective evolutionary strategy would be to have large families, increasing the odds that one or more children would make it to child bearing age.
Note that the parents didn't thnk in these terms. But the families that had a lot of kids left more offspring then the ones that didn't.
But there is a second pressure on these families. That is the ability to raise all these kids. It takes money to raise a kid. So the optimal family size is the one where you not only have kids that survive to have grand kids, but where you also provide that kids with the best chance of future economic success. (Survival of the fittest and struggle for existance are economic statements. The individuals struggle for limited resources (food, mates, etc.), they do not engage in combat against each other.)
In times when life didn't offer many career choices, most people were born on a farm and died on a farm, as long as you were strong and healthy you had the same chance as anyone else to succeed.
But in times where career choices are myraid the economic calculations become somewhat more involved. One example, those with a college degree tend to make more money (they are more economically successful) then those without. College can be expensive. Thus there is pressure to have fewer children.
Combine this with the fact that in the developed nations it is no longer difficult to raise a child to child bearing age. Thus a successful evolutionary strategy is to have a minimal number of childern and invest heavily in them. Which is what we are seeing today.
Steve M
"For example, brain size has decreased over the past 10,000 years.
Damn. Gonna have to cut back on my Simpsons intake....
One of the biggest problems with human evolution is that we aren't getting any more viable as a long lives species. This is because genes are almost invariable passed on while people are you, so how well people age has nothing to do with evolution. Thus, I propose tax breaks for anybody over 50 who fathers/gives birth to a child. By encouraging people to pass genes on later in life, only the healty old people will pass on their genes, making a government sponsored evolution program to make longer lived people over time... I think it's a good idea.
My theory is that human beings have evolved to a point where our purpose is to create new technologies. It is through these technologies that we then evolve by ways of integration and extention of our abilities. Let me elaborate.
/. about 2 years ago of a psychologist who believed we would eventually become fully mental beings, placing our bodies in containers that only supported life functions as a back up.
Human existence has been saturated with invention. We invent technologies for the purpose of accomplishing various tasks (as some other animals have evolved to do). From the very first drum to the human genome project, we have been dedicated to creating things to enhance our lives.
As technology increases, we will slowly integrate it more and more with ourselves. We've already begun to witness this trend. Computers, once placed in huge rooms are now held in our back pockets. Now we're looking towards wearable computers and systems that act as personal assistants. Our media looks to a future where technology is actually a part of a human being. Brain jacks? Cybernetic enhancements? These things are shown with cons, obviously, but also with pros (brain augmentation in GitS, mass storage in Johny Mnemonic, instantenous learning in the Matrix, etc...).
In light of this, I would not say that human evolution has ceased. On the contrary, I would say it is rapidly increasing. We've been slowly abandoning biological evolution in favor of something that we can control and manipulate. We have been evolving through our technology and this pace will only increase. Probably in a manor very similar to Clarke's vision in the 2001-3001 series (eventually evolving our minds away from physical bodies) and probably not unlike the Borg (note we already replace human parts with mechanical parts - hips, hearts...). I remember even a story posted on
Thoughts? Ideas? Disagreements?
Why bother.
i believe that it's because of machines that humans stopped evolving. instead of having to adapt physically, we use machines / computers to adapt the world FOR us.
Most people seem to have forgotten that many things can drive evolution. Survival skills are obviously the most important, but once a population is stable then sexual selection can dominate.
If it's under control, you'll get lucky with makeup and hairpieces. (E.g., one experiment involved clipping the tail feathers of one male (loser) and taping the clipped feathers to the end of another male's tail (stud))
If it's out of control you get peacocks.
And if it's been taken over by humans with nothing better to do, you get show animals - pidgeons and dogs seem to have it worst. Natural selection would never breed large canine species guaranteed to have hip problems, and the things done to pidgeons are unmentionable.
Historically, much of the recent difference in first-world reproductive rates were due to social issues - specifically the willingness to use birth control, which in turn is related to whether the couple were observant Catholics.
But now this may be changing - the breeders are the ones who start early. If you get knocked up for the first time by the age of 15, you'll have lots of kids. And if you wait until after 25, you'll rarely have 3 or more kids.
And that means we would be selecting our species according to whatever young teen girls find sexually attractive. Scary - almost Karmic revenge for what we've done to other species.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Wow, this guy must be good!
Steve M
we never did evolve, this guy is correct.
One poster has mentioned that we have prgressed to the point where we are not evolving through creating new technologies.
This is, in part, quite correct.
Moreover, the original author has missed the blatantly obvious: we have evolved to the point where we now have our fingertips on the very keys of evolution itself.
No other species is able to alter itself on a genetic level by choice.
Natural selection may have become increasingly marginalized as an evolutionary mechanism. It is quite another thing to say that evolution itself has sopped. Au contraire, we are on the precipice of a new mode of evolution.
.Robert
Reading the article and the discussion, it seems to me most people don't understand one fact about evolution. The driving force behind evolution need not be death, or premature death.
Selection can and does occur in many "softer" ways.
Selection is having one offspring instead of two.
Selection is having an offspring at 30 instead of 29 years of age.
Selection is providing better resources for your offspring; for example more/better food; more/better knowledge.
And selection is providing these three evolutionary advantages or disadvantages to your relations as well as to your offspring.
Not one single individual has to die childless for selection to occur.
Perhaps it does in Saudi, but I have not observed such here. Welfare mothers still crank 'em out by the dozens, and taxpayers flip the bill.
The most prominent influence seems to be a liking of children. People who like crying snivling dripping brats are more likely to have more of them. Thus, there is selection pressure for kid lovers. (This pressure did not exist much before because horney people had no other real choice but to make babies.)
Besides, I think society changes too fast for many factors to make any difference. Evolution rarely turns on a dime, but society and technology does.
(BTW, my son is a *cute* slimey brat, unlike the other slimey brats.)
Table-ized A.I.
I guess it isn't just a joke band name anymore. At least we still have the Darwin Award winners giving their lives for the valiant cause of elevating our species, even against its own apparent downward momentum... I guess the Darwin Award is a dubious honor, and not a completely negative one as I had previously suspected...
Oh, was that my outside voice?
That is funny, and scary at the same time. I wonder if scientists will identify the Mormon Gene or the Cathlic gene(s).
A whole generation of popes knocking on your door during your dinner. Joy!
Table-ized A.I.
One disturbing trend is an inverse relationship between wealth(social success) and number of children. Sucessful families with 1.2 children (below the replacement level, their genes are effectively selected against). Poverty level people having 3.6 children (geneticaly sucessfull).
We are effectively selecting against being sucessfull. Wierd.
What a Lamarckian sounding statement. Where is this social success gene located? Are you aware that Albert Einstein lived in a trailer park? He must not have had 'successful' genes. God, I hope HE didn't have 3.6 children.
Seriously, when society embraces your ideas it is not a long leap to 'enforced sterilization' from there it is a short trip to the gas chambers. Read your words and read some Hitler speeches circa 1939. Chilling.
Another thought I came upon as I pondered the popularization of evolution by Darwin, is this:
Are we sure that "survival of the fittest" and similar evolution is really improvement. I mean I look at the case of Darwin's finches, and yes I see a "change over time" trend (evolution), but in the direction of specialization. The question that this does not answer though, it are those many very specialised variety of birds necessarily superiour to their proto-species. It is entriely possible and actually likely that the origin of that species was actually better adapted to survive as a whole, than any subsequent subspecies. Look at specialisation as a thought.. specialised species are less able to adapt to changes in environment, much as those who became professional punch card punchers became when PCs came out. Just because as humans, we have reached a pinnacle of DEVELOPEMENT, does not mean we are at the peak of surviveability. Quite the contrast, without our technology, most humans are far too specialised to survive this planet anymore. The species of the Galapogos are similarly too suited to their environment to survive if moved or the islands suddenly changed environmentally.
Evolution also assumes that other more entropic abilities are superior to creative ones, such as the concept of the Neanderthals being wiped out by other homo varieties. Humans have become more and more specialised such that our survival depends on a frail network of interdependence. We think that interdepence somehow makes the world stronger, and yet it produces obsolensence, and complacentcy... look at how closely the world watches each other for economic falls that create domino effects of failure.
Also, much of evolution thought is based on early assumtions that have proven false, such as linking intelligence directly with brain pan sizes... much like phenology and other such witch doctoring.
We do not see unemployment and intentional self destruction among ants and cockroaches of this world, do we?
The concept of evolution can be reduced fairly easily to the change in the frequency of heritable traits in a breeding population. This can happen through multiple avenues. One is the random insertion of mutations into the genome. These are generally lethal and tend to vanish pretty much as they appear, but some survive, increasing population genetic variability. A second avenue is selection which can winnow traits out of a population or encourage exageration of traits (like the peacock's tail). This process reduces genetic variability. A third avenue is to alter the geographic parameters defining the population. Inserting a physical (or even a cultural) boundary will produce two populations that are evolving separately to some degree due to isolation. This tends to yield divergent genomes within the populations (founder's effects) each carrying a subset of the parent population's genome. Endogamous societies artificially isolate their gene pool by restriciting allowable marriages and sometimes by exluding or executing individuals who violate cultural mores. Arab Muslim, Jewish, Gypsy, and Hindu casts come to mind here as preferentially endogamous societies, as well as the European aristocracy to a degree (the increased incidence of blood clotting disorders among the descendants of Britain's Queen Victoria comes to mind). All of these processes satisfy the basic ideas of evolutionary change. Changing the parameters of the breeding population by opening geographic boundaries is no more than another evolutionary change, increasing population genetic diversity.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
Well, I haven't read the article, and I probably should, but there is one main reason why I think humans are done evolving. We have reached a stage where we identify and correct even the slightest anomalies in our offspring; this will become even more of a factor as we delve into genetic engineering even more. This really breaks Darwin's model for evolution because we are eliminating the ability for our offspring to surpass us.
Now, if there is some global event that drastically changes the lifestyle of humans, maybe then evolution would take place, or something more subtle could probably happen as well.
Suppose there is some really bad virus out there that wipes out 90% of the human race, the 10% left just so happened to have a mutation that allowed them to fend off that virus, well that would be evolution, just not anything people would notice by looking at these new humans.
In general, unless something drastic happens, we are done.
The authors of the article totally miss the point of evolution. They operate under the mistaken conceit that the purpose of evolution and all existence is to create the "perfect" organism, i.e. man. It is not. The universe doesn't give a crap about us, and that's reality. Evolution is our word for a process that we observe in nature whereby a multitude of species appear and disappear over time. They differentiate themselves from each other and the ones that are better matched to the current conditions or better able to adapt to changing conditions survive while others don't. The mistake that people always make is to assume that their is some intelligent motive behind this process, that their is some "end goal" in view from the beginning. There is not.
Humans are not exempt from the "laws" of nature. Just because we have the hubris to believe that we can "control" our environment, we are not exempt from the laws of survival no more than we are exempt from the laws of gravity, aerodynamics, and thermodynamics.
The real danger is not that we become exempt from evolution, because we will not. The real danger is that we drive our species into extinction by spreading our "Western" lifestyle throughout the world.
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
You make the erroneous assumption - common in the 19th Century and among Christian findamentalists - that evolution is progressive and "going somewhere." This is an essential fallacy. Evolutionary processes are immediate, effecting birth rates among the carriers of traits effected by any of many selective processes. Evolution does not progress and the successful breeders in one generation may be the failures in a another genration as fitness landscapes alter through time. The giant panda is a good example of a species isolated on a fitness peak from which it is unlikely to move without becoming extinct. The presence of these "weaknesses" that you say modern medicine is causing means that selective effects have a broader canvas and more traits with which to work. Far from becoming "weak" this fact increases potential human evolutionary adaptibility.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
The ignorant should stick to something useful like making pottery. Using the ICR as an authority is equivalent to invoking the National Enquirer(sp?). The ICR violates logic and scientific method in an attempt to support a hypothesis for which it has no empirical support.
Darwin's theory was an attempt to explain the fact that selective processes result in changes to new generations of populations like finches, selectively bred dogs, and wheat. This is true regardless of whether the selection is from natural or cultural causes. It is a simple fact that needs an explanation.
The other problem with your ICR is that they assume, like Darwin did, that species are neat, isolated, definable packages. The ICR also assumes species are equivalent to the biblical "kind." One untested assumption follows another. Do some reading somewhere else than on the ICR site before forming an opinion about biology. College texts are a good start.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
I see the error in your thinking.
"they ARE inferior because they rely on a roundabout method for their propagation"
What is inferior about the reliance? If fertility clinics and old-fashioned sex are both available and effective, what difference does it make which one someone chooses? Either way, offspring are produced, and the offspring carry the genes. Evolution is about offspring and inheritance, not about your ideas of what is natural.
If both genetic conditions allow one to reproduce, what is the evolotionary difference? How does it impact survival? We don't live a hundred years ago, so don't worry about who would have survived and reproduced a hundred years ago. Evolutionary pressures change with time. It's inherent. You have some claim about the disadvantage to survival and reproduction, yet you admit that these people can survive and reproduce. Survival and reproduction are the keys, not your ideas about what is inferior. If one method works about as well as the other, how is one so vastly superior to the other?
Shed your ideas about what is better than what. Look at what is and what works.
Well, after skimming the comments there are some common assumptions made by /. posters.
Firstly, most are assuming 'fittest' means fit like 'six-pack abs like on infomercials' or 'smart like Einstein'. 'Fittest' in evolution is prettly literal, that which fits its niche best, hence can compete with less effort. Just think how bad some fit brawny dumb guy would be as an design engineer, or cryptographer. Think how good Einstein was at getting his University Math papers in on time. Niether fitted. Think of how well Rain-Man fitted in a Casino.
Another assumption is that evolution applies only to the meat packet that our consiousness wanders around in, or an even narrower view of just the genetic code describing them. Evolution applies to the memes in our head, the tasks we do, and the massive neural network that is your central nervous system. Dawkins (Blind Watchmaker) and Dennet (Darwins Dangerous Idea) both agree that evolution applies to any natural system as a reductionist process that will eventually optimise the system to its minimal effort/maximium competitiveness.
Man may not be evolving in the flesh, but our minds will always find better, 'fitter' ways to do things. Nor is evolution limited to us, we are also causing the information, techniques and technology that we use to improve. Humankind's judgement is the selection criteria that is molding the information we use, the machines, techniques and algorithms in our technologies, and even the thoughts and memes in our heads.
i am endorsed for the carrying of dangerous goods, please be giving me your depleted uranium
... of this salt, fat, and sugar bashing. Now go to your room.
I want to be alone with the sandwich
Someone above suggested that he didn't understand why successful people only have 1.? number of children, while poor people have 3.? number children - and this seemed like the "less-fit" genes were being replaced while the "more-fit" genes weren't even high enough to replace the parents (statistically speaking). One thing we must realize is that this view is not showing an apparent flaw in naturall selection, but in our thinking of "fitness". Mother nature doesn't care how good a job you have or how big your house is - all she cares about is survival, and to her its always been a numbers game. Success, as defined by natural selection, is how many children reach maturity and reproduce - end of story(not how many end up driving a Lexus). I was raised in a poor area and those people are totally unselfish - they know they'll never have many "material" posessions, and their family becomes everything to them - and their family will always be larger - and this is exactly the way mother nature wants it. Put another way - all your causes (global over population, protecting the world's resources, etc) combined with your desire for material "things" runs perfectly contradictory to natural selection. Put yet another way, beating someone in promotions or becoming a CEO doesn't make you any more "fit" for survival then the poor person down the street. It may make your life more comfortable, but natural selection coundn't care less about comfort.
we fight each other. Although there are wars going on, the majority of the people are living in peaceful times. Every time you help somebody, you are countering evolution. If people don't have to think because those few smart people always helped them out, this would, by Darwin's law, create more idiots.
It's not over, but it might as well be. Between modern medicine, coddling societies, and essentially predator-free living conditions, all the mutations that would have weeded the losers out throughout the rest of history are allowed to succeed. And given the above conditions there is no need to strive to breed with 'the best' of society. Let's face it, the rich and successful don't often have large families, but the poor and unemployed certainly breed like bunnies.
And no apologies if you don't like the tone. It's reality. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Cathlolics and White Trash/Hicks that don't know how to use birth contol or think it is there god given duty to overpopulate the world are breeding like crazy while the intelligent ones tend to hold back and only have one or two children if any.
So as the population grows the majority of those new people have less intelligence and someday one of those idiots will get into power and nuke the whole world, oh never mind one already is in the USA. Bye bye world, it was fun while it lastest.
Since there is virtually no evidence to support the claim that macro-evolution has occured in the past (and despite popular myth, there isn't), then it only makes sense that there is no evidence to support the idea that macro-evolution will occur in the future. Every paper I've ever read on the subject of evolution has been very long on speculation and very short on fact.
Just look at the fact that each generation of humans are still getting taller every year, and have been as far back as we can trace. That is what is known as evolution. Just because we havent sprung a seprate branch of poeple with 3 arms and 2 heads does not mean the process is not there.
And here all this time I thought we were created. Geez, where have I been? Maybe the rest of you were born from monkeys but I sure as hell was created directly from God. I'm about the only one in the IT community who views it that way too I'm sure. Maybe I should change professions.
Troll me if you want, i know you will.
First of all, it is incorrect to think of the process of adaptation as approaching a static optimum (or "pinnacle"). The optimum changes with the environment; over geological scales of time, there can be novel demands imposed on the human species. This could take the form of microbial plague or global climatic change, for example.
Second, it is important to note that most other species are also at, or very close to meeting the current demands of the environment. The house fly is at its pinnacle of evolution to the same extent that one could make the statement of human evolution.
Finally, natural selection is part of, but not the entirety of, evolutionary change. Mutation and drift also constitute evolution. Thus, human evolution can never cease, regardless of whatever comforts technology may provide. Indeed, our own technology arguably presents another selective pressure on our species. The human enviroment is not necessarily natural.
"Geology has stopped", says University of Gwondonaland scientists.
It's too bad, but the scientific case for creation is just as strong and viable as the scientific case for evolution. It's *all* in how you interpret the evidence.
Evolution is purely inductive reasoning, first there was the theory, then came the search for the evidence to prove it. Creation is also inductive. The differences between the two are purely a matter of how the evidence is interpreted.
For instance, how do we know that the fossil record we discover of the dinosaurs is not the evidential remains of the Creator's various stages of experimentation in creating human life (and otherwise) in all of antiquity? It's speculated that an asteroid caused most if not all major extinctions of life in that period. An asteroid or planetoid striking the earth is itself an extraterrestrial event. Is it so farfetched to imagine that a power and intelligence capapble of creating biology on the scale that we see around us deliberately caused that extinction in that manner--so as to proceed to "phase II", if you will, of the Creator's plan for human life on earth?
Personally, I see nothing in the fossil record, or otherwise, which contradicts direct creation of life on this planet by a superior intelligence and power. Others view the same exact evidence and see it as direct contradiction to Creationism. Again, it's all in how you interpret the record and the evidence--NOT in the record or the evidence itself.
I heard this once and have never forgotten it (as it isn't original to me):
"How likely in your mind is it that you could turn your back on a junkyard and walk away, only to return four billion years later to find a fully fueled 747 jet aircraft sitting on a runway, it's engines throttled up and ready for take off?"
This pretty much exactly explains the theory of chance evolution--that "time" does all things, including the creation of human life out of inert and dead materials. The amazing thing is is that one human being is infinitely more complex than a 747 (which is actually fairly crude by comparison) yet the same scientists who "believe" in the chance evolution of human life would scoff at the notion of an evolved 747.
So what I really think is this: the scientist who rejects the idea of intelligent creation is simply trying to create his own religion in which he himself is God. A truely objective agnostic will say: "The evidence can be interpreted either way." A man of faith will say: "The record for Creation is as clear as a bell."
It's all in how you interpret the evidence.
Technology is the new form of evolutions. In today's modern world it costs to have a child. It costs money to procreate. The poor cannot afford to have children, there for the wealthy procreate and the wealthy are mentally able. The largest strongest males are not the genetic superiors. The smartest most mentally adaptable are the ones who are able to get the best jobs get the best pay and afford to have children. How can evolution be over when genetic engineering is just coming of age? We are on the verge of the ability to control our development down to the genomic level. This technology came through the procreation of the smartest and not the fittest that gave us the great minds to be able to do this. We are only at the dawn of our evolution, not the dusk. The dinosaurs where here for millions of years, humans have been around for 50-60,000 years, who's to say we have stopped evolving. I certainly don't believe this, do you really?
Evolution does not have to be result of a purely natural or biological event..
:-)
With the work currently being done in genetic engineering and the potential applications of nano-technology, our next stage of evolution will be to merge ourselves with technology on the cellular and molecular level. I anticipate this will probably occur in about 200 years.
Our bodies' ability to regenerate various tissues and immune systems will be enhanced with the aid of nano-bots, which will travel through our bodies searching for problem areas, and will make repairs where necessary.
These nano-bots could also be used to modify the genes of our reproductive cells to match a specific pattern instead of the randomness we see now. The nano-bots could even become a part of the reproductive process by sharing "code" with foreign nano-bots to create new "child" nano-bots. These child nano-bots would become the primary nano-bots of the fetus itself, while leaving both the mother and father's nano-bots unaffected.
Just a thought though.
8==8 Bones 8==8
it is a constant process that happens both in the natural selection process of reproduction and in the chaos related impact the smallest of changes and choices and situations in our everyday lives have on ourselves, our entire lives, and on everyone else on a macro level (think systems theory). these sad excuses for evolutionary biologists just dont know where to look and are letting their own narrow social exposure create a subjective scientific result...
as usual, garbage in = garbage out.
you are absolutely right. you also can include in those evolutionary pressures, like global climate change and disease, the impact we as a species have on ourselves and how much our own social change impacts our biological change... there are many people who would divide these because they see evolution, biology, and science as some seperate thing from ourselves and our lives. but it is just really stupid to not see how social change can impact the way a person lives their lives and by direct extention their environment which is exactly what most influences biological evolution... whoever thinks weve stopped changing socially, biologically, or in any other way is both blind and very unimaginative.
To grossly oversimply the idea, you've got males with good eyesight who go off and hunt the deer, and bring food back to the village. You've got a certain percentage of guys who can't see as well, and don't make good hunters, so they stick around in the village and do other things (like metalwork, or pottery or something like that) that doesn't require great long-range sight or perfect short-range site. Now, the guys who can see well are gone for long periods of time every day, and the women seek entertainment that's close...
OK, so it's not a perfect (nor original) theory, but one that I always enjoy springing on people that bring up the subject.
Random Musings at Rum Smuggler
Perhaps evolution as biologists know it is finished. Doesn't mean that "cultural" evolution isn't.
Even in our minority privileged 1st world, there is still evolutionary selection. Overtake on a blind corner, walk down a dark street at night, talk back to a mobster, argue with a lawyer.
In the first world, actually being rich and intelligent does not really lead to passing on more genes. In fact, being rich and intelligent is an evolutionary disadvantage. If you think about it, rich, intelligent people tend to have less kids than less intelligent trailer trash. Often, the poor will have a kid when they are a teengager, then have a few more later on. They may end up with four kids. Usualy, intelligent, well educated people will have only one or two kids.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
I suspect you are correct.
Did you even read the SciAm article???
Yes, I looked through it back when people were talking about it as a way around the second law (which it isn't). I'd rate it "-1 pointless handwaving" (but then, I pretty much gave up on SciAm's reporting years ago. They still haven't fallen to the Discover/Omni level, but they're far from what I'd consider quality science news).
-- MarkusQ
Since I am illogical and irrational, I fully believe that someone else within the lifespan of my children (and within mating range and socially 'approved' age ranges) will not only spontaneously mutate (or give birth to one that does), but that it will be the opposite sex and genetically compatable. I disregard all that is known about the complexity of DNA, chromosome pairing, protein sequencing and protein ID (who cares about immune system rejections anyway). I FULLY believe that this match is possible, and if you disagree I will taunt you with hypocritical rantings that you must be some religous nut or alien seeding cultist, so BACK OFF.
My child is superior to you or yours (unless you happen to be the parent of the inevidable paired mutation, then in that case CONGRATS!)
I think I will go rest now, I believe that the black helicopters are after me again. Plus, I have tons of other nonsense theories and ideas that I must 'prove' with sheer emotional creativity and selective facts (I gotta work hard to cover up those that are fabricated and misrepresented this time) in and effort to provide a nice scenario where I justify after reaching conclusions instead of providing myself with a non biased and logical approach to REASON what the answers might be. Those fools that try to do that should be shot. (hey, maybe if I get in group that is large enough we will do that because then it would seem 'right') Those fools... they will eventually give up on finding the truth and simply let their impatience lead them to fabricate an easy 'answer' that will let them rest at night feeling like they accomplished something.
On a side note, my dog has recently given birth to a completely mutated and genetically incompatable offspring herself. I know that the reason her body did not reject it, nor did she destroy it after birth herself was because she knew in her cute little doggie brain (like me :) that her offspring was superior. What a great system this is!
Now if you'll excuse me, I have a whole stack of papers I use as criteria to judge other people, ideas and institutions (which I conveniently set aside when I am dealing with people, ideas or institutions that I have emotionally made conclusions about. (and of course I _NEVER_ judge myself by those criteria)
God created us all.
And that's it...
maybe so - but a blob of crap that may be able to leave this rock before the next big disaster, be it from space or otherwise, or prevent the end in some fasion.
Cats, which are faster, can see better, have more stamina, are probably overall much better mothers, take care of their own and have many traits we may find admirable will be burnt to a crisp when the next big one hits.
We may evolve into fat blobs, but if we are on Mars or some near earth asteroid, at least will be around to remember the cats in all of their grace.
I don't mean this to sound like a troll, but if I have an idea about some process, say a natural process like an explanation for life on earth, I cannot simply make something up and call it a theory.
Via the scientific method, for something to be a theory, certain requirements must be met.
Alas for you, sir, there is no, let me repeat, there just is no, nor is there EVER likely to be, a 'scientific' theory of creationism. It simply does not exist.
This is a fact - you may quit reading here, or go on to hear my opinion.
My opinion is that creationism is what you get when you have someone holding on to faith-inspired beliefs, with a peppering of science. For example, biology majors big into religion, perhaps, or similar. What I don't get, is, why??
I mean, I am an athiest, but I don't see how evolution harms believers, in and of itself! Many christians take the bible to be merely a book of fables - I grew up catholic and my own confirmation teacher had a chemistry degree; this is what she herself believed. She claimed that the truth of the bible is truth by fable.
The pope himself, also, said that evolution is an acceptable explanation as well. Given these facts, why even bother with creation!? After all, if I want to attack religion there is plenty of evidence - I don't need evolution.
Daniel Quinn's "Ishmael".
Evolution did not 'lead up' to us. We are not the end of the process, we are merely taking notes.
Nice weaving, but you didn't answer anything.
Vestigial is defined as "Refers to an organ or part (for example, the human appendix) which is greatly reduced from the original ancestral form and is no longer functional" in a medical dictionary.
And since you admit there is a function to the cases you cited, that means they are not vestigial. BTW the dictionary cites the appendix, now known to be integral to the immune system. For example if your spleen is knocked down or out (by radiation, let's say) then the appendix takes over a good bit of its function.
What would satisfy you to say something was created instead of evolved? Or is that beyond your consideration?
I don't believe in jesus, try again.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"98% of fat people have no medical cause for their obesity, just lousy selfcontrol."
Don't be so sure of that. Why don't you examine the eating habits of thin and average people sometime? There are lots of people like me who eat everything they want and their bodies maintain the same equlibrium weight. People like that would be disadvantaged in starvation conditions, but they're the lucky ones with our abundance of food. So if you think it's normal for bodies to store every excess calorie, and people like me are just lucky, then yes, obesity is the person's own fault.
I quite agree with his comments insofar as saying that biological evolution via DNA/RNA as a reproductive mechanism is no longer seeking an optimum. However, people are getting far too used to thinking about evolution purely in these terms.
Someone's already mentioned memes, so I'll leave them alone. But a few thoughts along the lines of silicon evolution would not go astray. Selection pressure in our environment no longer has anything to do with purely physical abilities or characteristics. Instead, survival of an entity and it's beliefs / structures is what we look at.
And in that respect, machines are evolving far faster than we are.
mick
Evolution comes in many forms. I think most of us identify with the process of natural selection. Today's society strongly discourages the blatant natural selection that has driven evolution in the past. Natural selection is not pretty and it's certainly not politacally correct, therefore in the developed parts of the World the theory of natural selection will be replaced by the process of biotechnical enhancement. Could this lead to a divergence in the evolutionary tree for the human race?
All about extinction.
A lot of the time, I think I prefer the latter more than the former.
As long as we interact with an environment that is continously changing, we ourselves will continue to evolve to suit it.
Evolution cannot be stopped, slowed or reversed. It simply exists and will continue to exist as long as continue to procreate as we do.
Genetic engineering could be thought of as an artificial evolution and maybe it is. However evolution is not just about an individual species but about the entire ecosystem. Changing one species to allow better protection again disease for example will just result in stronger, more resilliant diseases appearing. Virus's, such as HIV mutate at unbelievable speeds and forming a resistance to a single or group of strains will just force other strains to because dominant, or evolve to suit the change.
Where will it all end? . . . It wont.
Ryan
Let's do a test:
*gets out scrabble bag*
whatdoyougetwhenyoumultiplyfourbynine
hmm... decide for yourself!
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
Or will modern medicine and modern human culture prevent this, by viewing the improvement as a monstrosity, and trying to eradicate it? If you thought racism was bad, think about speciesism. Wars between the 10-digits and 16-digits, etc etc. "You don't have to treat them with human dignity; they aren't even human!"
Will we allow ourselves to evolve? Seeing how badly humanity has dealt with other stressful events in history, I really think not.
(I'm not claiming that having 16 fingers is an improvement -- it's just an example)
There are plenty of things to criticize in this article-but I was stuck by the point about mate selection. The article implies that we're becoming more homogenous, the implication being that genetic drift and isolation don't come into play. But thing about-if a brilliant pianist from Senegal marries a brilliant pianist from Minneapolis after meeting at Julliard, this is assortive mating. The resulting child might be racially mixed-but they will probably also be very musical and different then their elementary school peers. I once saw a statistic that 70% of female Physics Ph.D.s are married to other physics Ph.D.s (do to a big shortage of females of course). This sort of thing works against the homogenization implied by the article. There'll still be mixing back and forth-but we have to start looking beyond race toward other criteria that people use to pick mates with.
NO gods, NO governments, NO [OPTION]....
Evolution has as its central tenant that variations in individuals of a particular population (owing to, perhaps, mutation) cause some to be better adapted for a particular environment than others. Those better adapted will on the average have more offspring, and the beneficial genes will be present in these offspring at a higher rate than in the average population. Thus the general tendency of the population, to become better adapted to an environment.
What happens, though, when the population gets smart enough to alter their environment? Air conditioning and heating systems remove the need for individuals to worry about temperature extremes. Antibiotics mean that individuals with weaker immune systems are not at a disadvantage when competing with more hardy individuals. People born with degenerative diseases can go on to have productive lives and offspring.
We have a long way to go before we are complete masters of our environment and selves, but the trend is there. Evolution is a natural process. Tweaking our genes to eliminate genetic disease, or increase longevity or have blue-eyed children or whatever is NOT evolution - it is directed and deliberate change, the opposite of evolution. Maybe not necessarily wise change,, but natural selection plays no part in it. People are animals, still, but I think of it being sort of a graduation day when we learn how to remove ourselves completely from the evolutionary fray.
Attention Scientists:
I'm not a biologist, but I do know that "survival of the fittest" is one of the most incorrectly used terms in science.
Darwin's phrase does not refer to survival of the "strongest", as in physically or mentally "fit".
It refers to a "fit" like "fit" into a niche. In other words, an animals trait is considered beneficial because it "fits" the profile of a trait that is charactistically beneficial.
Not to bust on anybody for using the phrase incorrectly, but I just had to vent. (pet peeve of mine)
Say that in the future people will do better with 6 fingers on each hand (5+thumb?). What happens when a child is born with 6 fingers? 1 is cut off! My friend in high school said they were born with 6 fingers and had 1 cut off. OK, they may have been lying...
Lots of people die in wars. Ppl able to participate in wars have to be fit (to a certain standard).
Same for firefighters and other rescue workers.
They risk their lives more than the rest of us.
So wouldn't it be true that the strong take risky jobs, and are more likely to be killed overall?
I used to be a strong proponent of individual responsibility as the answer to all things, until I saw somebody make some seemingly small changes at work that eliminated long-standing problems.
Suddenly I saw the same pattern everywhere. When "most people" have a problem adhering to some rule or behavior, it's almost always because there's something in the environment or the rules that make compliance difficult or impossible.
We definitely see this pattern here. It's easy to say that adults should eat better and get more exercise. It becomes a bit more problematic when you hit the fact that the amount of free time available is much less today than a generation ago - far more hours at work, more hours doing household chores (larger houses and more possessions more than offseting labor-saving devices), etc. It becomes impossible when you hit the practical difficulties of arranging childcare, etc.
The situation is even worse with kids. A generation ago schools offered nutritional, albeit instititutional, cooking. Soda and candy machines were rare. PE classes mandatory, extracurricular sports and scouting common. Today schools have junk food in and outside of cafeterias. Many are eliminating all sports, and even PE class.
Some kids have external resources available... but anyone who expects more than a handful of teenagers to get up 30 minutes early every day so they can run through a calesthenics program before school (assuming they can get time in the shower, etc.) is crazy. This is a program that has to be solved as a society, not wagging a finger at the individual.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
'human populations are now being constantly mixed, again producing a blending that blocks evolutionary change.' This is probably against everything I know about evolution as defined by Darwin (meaning the guy, not any software project). Genetic evolution is very much based and effected by variety. It's not a coinsidence that mixing races produces beautifull people (and women with legs that are above my head).
"You laugh at me because I am different. I laugh at you because you're all the same." --Vick Imbornoni
I think one of the most fundamentally missed points that hasn't been brought up by any posters i've seen yet is evolution acting on humans through infertility. To say, as the article does, that people are all able to breed therefore all people have a chance to be equally represented in future generations totally ignores possible traits that cause malformed zygotes (sperm meets egg, forms zygote...zygote dies from exposure to chemicals in the womb or from mutation causing deformation at the developmental level).
We can know of extreme cases of infertility where no child can develop, since these people will seek treatment, but a carrier of a recessive trait that would kill a zygote in the first 1-20 divisions wouldn't even be something the woman would realize. Since these people have a trait which is being slowly removed from the gene pool, its evolution baby! It seems like an amazing amount of hubris on the part of the article's author to think that our feeble medicine fully bypasses the system in which we all exist. This system doesn't care about curing cancer or heart disease or even malaria...the only thing that defines it is a change in the occurances of every gene we have in our entire populations pool over time, and we've still got that no matter what our medicine does for us.
The way i see it, the article, and a considerable number of comments below, regards evolution as only being the continous improvement of one single species. However, evolutionary development may also be reached by cross-breeding (no lame jokes, please!) and hybridisation between what we consider "species". The result? An individual with different properties than any of the two others.
Any species that are alive today and capable of reproduction must, to some extent, be said to be successful. However, some of the species on eartyh are more exposed to selection forces (e.g. early death of weaker individuals) than others, which would actually accelerate their evolution relative to our.
So theoretically, we haven't reached the pinnacle, we've slowed down.... Since there's no current need for different properties than the ones we posses, evolution will slow down for a a couple of seconds (in evolutionary time). However, once humans have destroyed heir surrounding sufficiently to face new challenges, certaon traits may become more favourable again (e.g. be able to drink polluted water and biologically filter it).
Maybe it is an evolutionary trait in humanoids to dilute their gene pool at some stage. In essence that is what we're doing today by introducing lots of medicine and lowering infant mortality (not that it is a bad thing in my eyes).
Evolution will keep rolling whether we like it or not. It is quite typical human arrogance to assume that we're the pinnacle of creation!
-.sig sauer-
And since you admit there is a function to the cases you cited, that means they are not vestigial
The definition of vestigial applies exactly to every one of my example of vestigial organs or parts. The fact that each has some function, as I said, does not mean it still has its original function. The coccyx is greatly reduced from the original ancestral form and is no longer functional as a tail. The suggestion that vestigial wings in flightless birds are for defense is particularly absurd. Vestigial wings have feathers and hollow bones. Like a wing.
What would satisfy you to say something was created instead of evolved?
If the human body was created instead of evolved it was created by one cruel and miserable engineer. One need only look at genetic diseases, birth defects like spinal bifida, the high rate of death in child birth before the invention of antiseptics, and hundreds of other examples, to see that that any first year medical student could have done a better of job of designing the human body.
The appendix you cite is a typical example of the incompetence of a creator. If it becomes infected it leads to appendicitis. Without surgical removal it may burst, allowing the contents of the gut to come in contact with the lining of the body cavity, a potentially fatal event. Is that any way to design an immune system?
For example, hoofed animals with longer necks could reach the juiciest leaves on tall trees and therefore tended to eat well, live longer, and have more offspring. Eventually, they evolved into giraffes. Those with shorter necks died out.
Oh! I guess those aren't zebras and horses and springboks I see running around.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Yep: evolution is utterly blind to the future of a given environment. It's not on it's way anywhere, at least in the sense of thoughtfully preparing for it.
Dinosaurs represented an incredible dominant strategy... until the climate changed. Suddenly whole lines of reptiles were unfit to survive, leaving room in their niches for mammals.
But even this doesn't mean that mammals were "less" fit before they started to dominate the globe: they got on fine in their respective niches even with the dinosaurs.
I agree that we of course will have minor mutations that have the potential to change us as a race. But, we have gotten to a point in the last several hundred or so years where if we have mutant children (defect as it's called) and it's different then the majority it has VERY little chance of breeding or even making it out of it's justation cycle. We have an image of perfect and will only vary to a slight degree I have a feeling, any changes from here on out are going to be VERY slow.
The first fact is that the rate of gene mutation is a constant. Sexual reproduction makes the effects of the mutations less prominent over a given period of time, but there is intermixing which leads to the second concept.
Genetic diversity is very important for a stable population. When environments change which cause members of a population to die off, this is natural selection. When mutations occur which do not fit the environment, members die off, which is also natural selection.
Because of our stable and safe environments, we are seeing more of the effect of evolution which is to increase genetic diversity. People can live now which could not live in the recent past because they could not function in the environment.
Despite having an environment which supports greater diversity, we are always under the influence of natural selection. Although environmental constraints are relaxed, constraints still exist and genetic possibilities are being culled all the time.
Greater genetic diversity allows for greater deviation from our ancestry, which leads to new forms of humans. But evolution in general is a very slow and subtle process. People aren't going to grow extra heads (except as conjoined twins), and they aren't going to be able to breathe under water any time soon, but every change in our environment has a long-term effect on human evolution.
The technology that we use today and will continue to use in the future changes the way our environment favors different genetic possibilities and thus culls our genetic diversity. People who cannot function will suffer and their presence in the population will dwindle.
The big idea that people seem to often miss about evolution is that it is not a forward process with any specific goals. Evolution is a RESULT of our environment. Random genetic mutation is just that... random. It is not directed in any way. It doesn't play favorites. It happens at a constant rate, and there's nothing we can do about it. Natural selection does play favorites and eliminates those who don't fit. But it has no goals either; what is left is not necessarily superior, just more adapted. The environment is constantly changing, and thus, we are constantly being affected by it.
Humans are evolving no less than we or any other species have in the past.
Of course you, having grown up in a family of obese people, having been obese yourself, having successfully lost all of your excess fat and kept it off for five years, would know all about it. You must be an authority on metabollism, muscle building, fat loss, and health.
Please point me to the literature you've read, because I've encountered some contradictory points of view. More than one study has shown between 95% and 99% of all dieters regain all the weight they've lost within five years, and one third regain more. In fact, some studies also show that healthy eating and regular exercise are more important than weight.
People that work long hours often don't have the time to prepare a healthy meal. They are also often forced to eat supper late, a big (but to them, unavoidable) no-no for efficient digestion. I've known an anorexic that ate normal meals every two or three days. When her fainting spells started taking place in public, her mom forced her to eat regular meals every day. She gained over a hundred pounds in two years.
Personal responsibility is admirable. But when you're being marketed deadly supplements (fen/phen), contradictory diet information (the Zone vs Atkins vs Richard Simmons vs Natural Hygiene, etc...), contradictory exercise information (Spinning, Pilates, Tae Bo, etc...), contradictory strength training (machines vs free weights, HIT vs Weider, Heavy Duty, Super Slow, etc...). Plus, you have to deal with the extreme emphasis on thinness in popular fashion and entertainment.
Being healthy is great. But this unnatural emphasis on thinness over health in general and in the face of the evidence, is crazy. When size eight women (smaller than Marilyn Monroe) are featured in fat-women clothing magazines, you've got a problem.
I couldn't agree more.
In the past "few" years we have learned to fly, to survive deep underwater, in outer space, to move faster than any other animal...
As a species, we have evolved technology and will continue to do so. Besides (or including?) classical genetic evolution, that is...
Sure evolution may end with respect to each other. That is to say, the European does not evolve traits that the African does not, and vice versa. However, this does not change the fact that we all are part of the Earth population and will continue to grow more specialized in dealing with our common Earth environment. As we destroy our environment world wide, those humans best capable of dealing with the hostile environment will slowly emerge over the long term. Thus, we will "evolve." Yes the article is off basis because until we spread universe wide, we will always continue to grow more specialized to the areas in which we all habitate collectively.
What might happen is the Singularity.
;-)
Quick overview, lightly re-arranged so it's easier to understand:
It's said that computer's (for lack of better word) 'power' doubles every 2 years. But that's when humans are developing the new technologies. Artificial Intelligence and bio-implants will allow us to discover and improve technologies faster. Instead of 2 years, it will take 18 months. Then we improve our brain with these new techs and it will take 12 months.
From 12, to 10, 6, 3, 1 month. Then to every week. Then to everyday, every hour, every minute. Then singularity will come, probaly when a computer's power doubles every second.
Imagine the speed of the changes. Nanotech will allow us to redefine reality, uploading (store your brain on a computer) will make us immortals, every sci-fi dream might come true.
I highly recommed to read a few sites from the link on this message. It might come or not, but if it does, a whole new society will emerge. So at least do it to get ready, or to have something new to discuss while having a beer with your friends
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
they might eventually have to raise the rim another foot or so.
According to lots of "old-timers" they should have raised the rim about 10 years ago. The sport itself evolves along with our expectations of it. Sports are not played the same way they used to be. The tactics and techniques that a player from 20 years ago would utilize would be useless in a modern game.
Another thing about basketball that evolves: their shorts. Initially it seems like the old style shorts would be less restrictive and hence more effective. Perhaps longer shorts are more evolutionarily fit. Perhaps they mask the players leg movements better or distract the eye of opponents. Or perhaps they are more intimidating to opponents because they are wearing a style reminiscent of urban street wear. In another 20 years the players will all be wearing wide legged pants.
The truth is more important than the facts.
-Frank Lloyd Wright
Wow... I usually come to /. in search of intelligent discourse. Usually I get it. Some days, like today, I get this sort of stuff instead.
I hope to hell evolution isn't over, so we can grow past our primitive Alpha-male worship and move on to something more constructive. If you want to see primates pandering to the mythical power of their alpha-male leader, watch the Discovery channel... and while you are watching it, flip back and forth between it and the all-the-prayer-all-the-time channel... you'll see such little difference between the behavior of the two groups that you will come to believe that evolution is a fact- and that it apparently stopped a couple of thousand years ago.
SHOOT! By "this post" I meant not my post, but one I tried to link to (and failed). The post was here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=27378&cid=2945 958
So, since the topic is brought up, evolution is a bunch of crock. Why did this one cell amoeba transform into so many varied life forms? It's a load of crap that any human evolved from some monkey. Just because monkeys are similar to some of us, and they have arms and legs like most of us, that has absolutely no bearing on where we came from. All those evolutionists out there - Eat rocks - go back to the slime from whence you think you came - And stay there!
S
Again, lets get the religous debate out of it, as it is irrellevant. Some day we will look back at this time and laugh at how stupid those talking monkeys where that claimed to use logical and scientific approaches to reasoning out conclusions, but yet where only a bunch of chattering monkeys throwing their feces at each other. It is embarrasing to see how so many will so eagerly jump on the evolution bandwagon on the merits that 'some scientist proved it', yet ironically fall into generalizing cliche of saying that 'those religous fundamentalists are believing a 2000 year old document... how do we know that really happened?'.
Well, I for one never met Einstein... but that is a joke for another time. It is like a game. If you cheat or take shortcuts you could win, but you will only hurt others and yourself. Even if it is a video game that only you play, if you use cheat codes and walkthroughs you will only deny yourself much of the immersion and interaction of the game. If curiosity is the only reason that we wish to discover the answers to the universe, then so be it (I for one am a VERY curious person). However if we claim to have a desire for an accomplishment of good from that knowledge (like medicine) then logically we must stick to that course and not be diverted by emotion or self justification (which are really just emotional excuses to delude ourselves). one other thing... I fail to understand how you or anyone (and this is real lack of understanding not an attack, despite the 'read between the lines' wording) can say that biblical theory (or any other creation theory) is 'not scientific because no aspect of the assertation can be scrutinized by experimentation'... yet would then put stock into theories that defy the very mathmatics and scientific principle that they claim to be based upon. If someone actually discovered (via the Hubble or similar long range visual or other type of sensor) images of Angels or somesuch one day... even if all 'scientific' study pretty much proved, for lack of a better word, that they where indeed what are described by angels, then I fully believe that these charlatans that call themselves scientists would fall all over themselves trying to disprove it. Why don't they have such zeal (word chosen on purpose) in disproving their own theories? Why do they not approach it from a logical (the REAL definition of logic) perspective of discovery and attempts to answer questions through research and observation? Why does "God, the Creator" sound kooky, yet a theory that all matter and time itself came from some object that is really not an object and is outside yet inside and all of the universe NOT sound kooky? (BTW, you remember that old dogma about the Earth being the center of the Universe? That was actually a bastardization of wording, that ironically spoke more about the actual universe being created from a central point expanding outward... just look at ancient (from various cultures) pictures and sketches... it shows the universe expanding outwards from a central point. SOme put God in there, others show angels pouring out the universe (I assume from God)) Either way, it is amusing watching the hypocricy. Scientifically... evolution is nothing but a foolish attempt to provide an emotional blanket of justification for the weak that cannot accept and work within reality.
Here's some problems with the theory of evolution:
u ments.htm for more reasons
1. There is no physical evidence
2. It doesn't explain the origin of dimensions
3. The Big Bang theory doesn't explain the origin of the large mass of exploding matter
4. None of the measurement methods are anywhere near accurate
5. Why would creatures evolve to sexually reproduce instead of just copying themselves?
6. If the big bang sent matter flying in all directions, then the formation of planets and solar systems would not work because of the inability for the matter to slow down in space and generate orbital patterns. If other bodies became attracted by gravity to other bodies, then a thrust force would be needed to create an orbit; instead they would collide.
7. Since the moon is slowly moving away from the Earth, then 3 billion years ago the moon would have been inside the earth.
8. How did the sun start a massive fusion reaction all by itself and why didn't the other planets start their own also?
9. Darwin was originally a Christian, who became too analytical and fell away from his faith, thus creating his own 'creationist' theory. But, before he died, he declared his theory as false and went back to his original Christian faith.
10. If humans evolved from monkeys, then why do monkeys still exist?
11. Why haven't scientists been able to pinpoint where the human subconscious is located in the brain? (the reason is that it's not in the brain, it's in the spirit, which is a 4-dimensional object)
12. Something cannot be created out of nothing
13. Where did the explosive compounds come from that made the large amount of matter from the big bang explode? What ignited them?
14. Anybody knows that when you burn paper that you end up with carbon soot. Explosions cannot create things; they destroy things.
15. Why are there many languages? If people evolved, wouldn't they all communicate the same? Why would they want segregation?
16. What's the purpose of life if people just die and then that's it?
17. Life itself is not a physical object; if people evolved they would be able to create life with their bare hands.
18. Who or what created mathematics?
19. Who or what created the laws of physics?
Some easy facts:
The world is approximately 7000 years old
Dinosaurs never existed; the fossils found are from animals that died from the flood
Evolution. The ignorant's excuse for everything.
Visit a site I found, http://www.geocities.com/evononsense/creation_arg
I am a born again Christian who has seen and read proof that God created the world and all the people in it. Not just from the Bible, but even in modern science such as physics. The truth and facts are all layed out plain as day, but since the majority of the world, including the US is not Christian, that makes most people ignorant fools.
Ignorance is bliss.
#Secret Windows Source Code, in MS C% - if (uptime >= "24 hours") then bsod() else print "Windows License Violation!"
Medicine isn't everything. A recent NYTimes article on the AIDS virus suggests that similar viruses have evolved with their hosts so that the virus itself is less virulent. Human evolution due to viruses, which are generally untreatable, will continue.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
We're still evolving of course. All that is needed is to look around; our height has increased, even over last couple decades. The Darwin Awards prove that some people at least are having major issues with fitness and are leaving the party early. These are just the overt signs.
And please do not be too hard on the scientists, for they too are still evolving in body and thought. Remember this one? I Proclaim the Earth flat and here is my proof! They've been wrong about almost everything at one time or another. And it will not surprise me if over the next hundreds years we find out that most of what we know now is false as well. That is ok with me because I am one of those who are "so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea"
If you're not making mistakes, you're not working on hard enough problems. And that's a big mistake. -Frank Wilczek, Par
As seen in an earlier article, there's evidence that evolution is alive and kicking, for better or for worse.
Insert witty
So what is a vestigial organ? So far it's been any part of the body that is essential but you seem to think resembles some prehistory that may or may not have happened, that you cannot prove, but might possibly provide you some evidence. By demonstrating that every vestigial organ has a function it can be argued equally convincingly that it was originally designed to be used for just such a purpose, and that resemblance to some unproved hypothetical mythical history is pure chance.
-
hundreds of other examples, to see that that any first year medical student could have done a better of job of designing the human body.
-
Sure a first year student. I have also heard more qualified people claim that the human body is so perfect that it could not be improved. I wish we could test this and see if a first year student really could improve the human body. Would you be willing to place bets if we could?
The ICR does not violate logic, but it is certainly not scientific. Neither is evolution scientific - please look up what is science somewhere (not a dictionary, it's too brief), and you will see what I mean.
Also, I don't consider a college text a good start for matters of evolution where people's basis for their existence is questioned - bias is inevitable and is present. Much better is to understand the arguments yourself to analyse it.
By demonstrating that every vestigial organ has a function it can be argued equally convincingly that it was originally designed to be used for just such a purpose.
I can be so argued but not equally convincingly because you have to ignore the evidence that the organ or part is vestigial. For instance, in the coccyx you are ignoring the fused vestigial vertebrates and in whales you are ignoring the way the vestigial limbs are larger in older fossils. In the case of vestigial wings in flightless birds you have to ignore the evidence of your own eyes.
I have also heard more qualified people claim that the human body is so perfect that it could not be improved.
Despite the existence of birth defects. Despite the existence of genetic illnesses. Despite the high rate death in childbirth before the discovery of antiseptics.
That's some notion of perfection you've got there.
Would you be willing to place bets if we could?
I find it significant that you resort to a wager to demonstrate that appendicitis is good feature to include in the immune system. I bet any medical student would have excluded it from his design.
Evolution is the process of passing information encoded in DNA from generation to generation of lifeforms. As humans, we have nice things like books and computers that allow us to pass on information to the next generation, not just from parent to child, but from every single human being (conceivably) to a child. Even if our biological information is passing at a decelerated rate, our information technology allows us to overcome what you might call the "data bottleneck" of DNA.
-Darius
Organisms evolve in response to the pressures on the population that reduce survival for individuals with certain traits, or enhance survival (ok reproduction) for others. In the current human population there are enormouse selective pressures from microorganisms. HIV, malaria, TB, cholera etc. If you think they are not changing the survival rates of certain populations, you need to do some research.
To hear the gods laugh tell them your plans.
As soon as human beings became aware of their ability to affect the future by actions taken at the present time, humans removed themselves from the preditor-prey and therefore natural-selection bias. Most people would not intentionally put themselves in a position to be eaten. So based solely on that, yes we have stopped progressing, but that is not the case. Our selection is no longer "natural". We have almost removed ourselves entirely from Natural-Selection because we can control our instincts and we select mates based mostly on preference and not fecudity or fitness.
As the gap grows between people who have many children and not enough money to support their education and those people who have fewer children and can afford education; we will see a shift in groups of people much like the people in "Brave New World".
First of all, I'm not following the "longer lifespan" logic. You've labeled a group who favors physical health more to die first? I don't really think that the age of puberty really determines the age of death.
Also you're saying all the cheerleaders and jocks are stupid, or all of the geeks aren't horny, and none of them are stupid, and that none of them are going to act upon their desires to mate? Its a difficult conclusion to draw.
I've personally seen it go all ways. There was a girl in all of my gifted classes in high school who was quite a knock-out, and a cheerleader to boot. Another similarly beutiful, intelligent girl was on the track team. She became saludictorian. Knowing both of their personalities from having been in most of their classes for four years, I know they place more importance on brains than braun.
There where a few guys who fell into the third category, but not as many. What happened more often was a dichotomy in a single family. I have a friend who is going into computer engineering right now, and is quite a scholar, while his brother is a weight lifter, it seems, first and foremost. My family is another perfect example of this - one of my siblings has great physical skill, but not as much mental, I'm the true geek, and a third sibling is sort of in between.
Many people favor a balance of intelligence and physical skill. Perhaps there are other things that are genetically dichotomized, but I don't really think this is one of them. For myself, I don't see marrying (mating) with someone who can't sing, but otherwise, I wouldn't really mind marrying an idiot.
Musical intelligence is what I value in others, though I have other intelligences myself.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
IMHO the articel might have got the facts quite right - knowing Kant or C++ or earning a lot of money does not not really help to spread your genes. But the conclusion - help, we have a problem - relys on a very selfish point of view: Evolution does not go into a direction I like, therefore it does not go on at all. Maybe the blind watchmakers (thanks to R. Dawkins) point of view is more helpful: Better genes are defined as genes which stayed around for a long time. Any other objective - humans should get smarter, richer etc. - is wishful thinking. If you like any other special optimization goal, you have to use something else but evolution. Or, better, forget about finding something else - things might be O.K. just the way they are... Oh, by the way, mankind might have enough room for improvement in the phenotype :-)
IQ is a very narrow definition of intelligence. It is highly biased towards visually-oriented processing.
You will notice the world has been going in the same direction. Kids now have access to TV and computers.
Coincidence?
Dave.
I am a professional scientist and have been for 20 years. The ICR platform commits the common logical error of attempting to prove a prior asumption. They selectively present facts and bogus assumptions (such as the peculiar idea that evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics). As for evolution being scientific, it is a functional hypothesis addressing a common set of empirical facts. Darwin and Wallace both recognized the empirical facts and then came to a common explanation of what the facts meant. The evolutionary hypothesis was signally successful even from a predictive view point because it required a mechanism of inheritance that was not "blood" and had to be variable between siblings and other closely related individuals. As regarding texts, college texts are a good place to start because they delineate the actual facts and hypotheses. The ICR sets up straw man arguments and then knocks them down. The ICR doesn't address science or evolution Darwinian or otherwise. It uses its own rules, argues with its own redactions and comes to ultimately empirically meaningless conclusions. You DO need understand the argument first. You simply won't find that understanding in anything presented by the ICR.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
But even this doesn't mean that mammals were "less" fit before they started to dominate the globe: they got on fine in their respective niches even with the dinosaurs.
That is pretty much the whole point. Fitness is something that operates from moment to moment. I always liked Charles Fort's humourous rendition: "survival of the survivors". It is tautological, but then any feedback system has to be to some extent.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.