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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.'"
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
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"
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.
this really isn't that silly of an article.
Its not unimaginable that the 3rd world of today, in a century or so, will have the same benefits of medical technology that developed countries have today. It starts with simple things--cheap glasses mean you don't die if your eyesight is very poor, thats one less test of fitness for passing on your genes. If we slowly but surely remove all tests of fitness (even infertility!) then there is no particular direction the species is going, which would be the same as the end of evolution.
The only sort of thing that will return us to an evolutionary path is something that reintroduces live-or-die tests of genetic fitness. This would be something like a natural disaster of extinction level proportions, or some global plague with a bit more bite than AIDs (ebola?). Some people have mentioned possible evolution in isolated space colonies, call me a pessimist, but i think something like the 2 possibilities i mentioned are more likely...
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
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".
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 think people will always be in some sort of evolution.
:)
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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"
Actually, you could make a case based on this that the human race is reproducing in such ways as to cause a genetic split. The "horny/stupid/jock" gene pool will increase in size much faster, but those that put off reproduction in favor of education, career, what have you will tend to reproduce with others who do the same. This second group will experience effects of late in life reproduction such as a postponed age of menarche (making the off spring even less likely to become jocks or cheerleader types) and a longer lifespan. Similarly, the "horny/stupid/jock" group will have earlier onset of puberty and aging. In the end though, this would depend on thousands of years of a society with a social structure similar to our own which I am too timid to predict one way or the other.
The state is the great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everybody else. ~F. Bastiat
But this is also a problem. Educated and intelligent people have few children. Stupid people breed like mad. They not only pass along stupid in their genes, their environment sucks (no decent home fostering of learning so the kids have double strikes against them).
This actually argues for the statement that evolution is still in progress. (BTW, I think the article that started all this is as silly as saying "gravity doesn't apply to us now that we have rockets.")
The thing to note is that optimal reproduction is having as many offspring as you can afford to rear into your ecological niche. Flies can lay lots of eggs, because raising a baby fly is very, very cheap. Lions have orders of magnitude fewer cubs because raising baby lions (who must be defended, fed, taught to hunt, etc.) is a prolonged and time consuming enterprise. (Just try it some time if you doubt this.)
So the observed birth ratios are perfectly consistent with the notion that there is a lot more competition to be "wealthy" and "successful" than there is to be "poor"--and as a consequence, it takes disproportionately more effort to raise a successful child that to raise a luser.
Not only have we not "escaped evolution" we haven't even escaped this simple definition of "optimal" family size; Bill Gates could certainly afford to follow the "fly" strategy produce an army of tens of thousands ill educated brats that would assure his success in the gene pool, but instead (as we all do, on average) he follows the logic of optimal family size and chooses the "lion" strategy. Likewise, I had my first child at 40. I could have started at eighteen at had dozens of "I can count to twenty 'cause I ain't go no shoes!" kids, but I preferred to raise one that will be more likely to someday explain the zeta function.
-- MarkusQ
OK, let's reword this. Warning - there really isn't a PC way to say this, no matter how hard I try. I'm not being prejudiced here, REALLY, but the asbestos modem is out.
:-)
Defining success purely on the basis of bank balances is, indeed, daft. However, the poster was observing that those who are socially successful - the managers, the top people in their domains and so on - have fewer children, on average, than those who are less socially successful - the mediocre, those who do not stand out at all or those who only stand out by being worse at what they do than most others.
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.
To put it in purely scientific terms, the mean quality of the breeding stock amongst the socially successful is higher than amongst the socially unsuccessful, yet it is the unsuccessful who product more young.
The interesting question is what effect this has. The likely supposition would be that humanity as a whole would devolve because our current system was almost producting 'survival of the weakest'. However, I'm told that point scores on US military IQ tests have been consistently rising for some time. The distribution remains the same and the IQ scores don't change because they're generated fromt he distribution, but the raw scores on the graph are apparently rising...
All in all it's interesting, and the original poster certainly wasn't talking bunk, but I'm not sure what the end result is
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
There never was a "particular direction the species was going"--we are here because it is the vector sum of the set [{all the random and often stupid things our ancestors did} minus {the things that were uber-dumb enough to earn them a darwin award}] . There isn't any "grand plan" to it at all.
So while we may not be selecting for "can see without artificial lenses", every technology we add creates myriad opportunities to toast yourself in new and interesting ways, and we are selecting for things like "smart enough not to bungey jump with a cord that's longer than the drop" (yes, several people used to think this was a good idea, but the number of them in the gene pool is declining).
We're like fish who have moved into a cave (or onto land)--just because the selective pressures have changed does not mean they've stopped.
-- MarkusQ
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
A few thoughts that I haven't seen posted yet (sorry if I missed them):
In the small redneck town where I grew up, retarded people are allowed to breed unchecked. These folks can't take care of themselves, but social workers step in to make sure that everyone makes it to sexual maturity so that the next generation can repeat the process.
Then, of course there are the trailer park folks who churn out new children like baby factories. Some are actually not smart. I know poeple who teach these kids. In some cases, the parents just lacked education, but the children at least seem fully capable of learning.
Another observation: People with supermodel-like genetics often pair off to breed. Physically unattractive people usually do the same (can't improve those genetics unless an unattractive person happens to be rich). There is a good chance that nerds do the same, or at least that intelligent people seek out other intelligent people. As a nerd myself, I have a harder time finding volunteers outside of the unattractive part of the spectrum because of my innate lack of smoothness with women. A lot of quality athletes hook up, so you should have a line of super athletes. That's more of a common interest thing though, they probably aren't as concerned about having offspring who are world class athletes.
Anyway, I can still seem the potential for change within the species, it will just not be a survival of the fittest rule. Pretty much everyone will survive, unless a horrible plague comes through that only certain folks are immune to (as was suggested in other posts).
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.
How do they "retard the progression of the species?" I do not see evolution as a teleological process. It concerns what works now against current threats to survival. What is this progress you claim exists? Where is it leading?
If their genes are so inferior, how do they manage to reproduce? Genes that allow an individual to reproduce successfully are good genes. They worked. The proof is the offspring. Genes are not inferior because somebody thinks so or because they were not good a thousand years ago. Evolution is about survival and reproduction. If an individual with a certain genetic composition survives and reproduces, the individual is successful. His or her genes are successful.
Evolution is descriptive, not prescriptive. It does not tell us what to become or what is good. It tells us that populations have varied individuals and that some individuals will prosper and multiply while others whither and die. We may have changed the selection pressures on us. I can guarantee you, however, that we have not changed or stopped evolution. Why? Evolution is simply what happens when individuals try to survive and reproduce. If the environment changes, the sets of successful individuals and genes will change. Evolution will happen. Evolution is an encompassing idea of what happens in biological populations.
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.
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.
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.
----As I guessed people have misunderstood and misinterpreted what I have said. Later, if it's worth it, I'll come respond to some of what has been said.---
Some of them are pretty over the top. But this post does a pretty fair job of responding to you, so I'll hold off on that score.
---Anyone who says that creation is unscientific has not considered the issues properly.---
You just got through saying that it WASN'T science... But anyway, I think I have. Creationism rarely tries to present any actual evidence in accordance with its own theory: mostly it simply tries to knock down evolution. Which is fine, but the problem is that evolutionary scientists seem to do a much better job at pointing out (and correcting) flaws in evolution than do creationists, whose arguments generally seem based on misconceptions, either willful or deliberate, and a whole host of just plain bad science. Evolution is science: it does all the things science is supposed to do. I don't know what else we could say on the subject: your position is just so left field from what any philosophy of science person would tell you that I doubt it will do any good to argue with it.
Creationism COULD be a science, but there seems to be only a pitful lack of evidence to support it's wildly diverse theories and predictions, so it would have a hard time of things.
---We all know that in a computer program a small random change is far more likely to cause an error than it is to improve a program.---
Unfortunately, genetic code is not like program code. Program code is more like a blueprint, while genetic code is more like a recipe. Changing a line of program code could break your program, since that directly affects its functioning. But this is not quite so in genetics, where DNA codes for more general and redudant _mechanisms_ to construct an organism, not piece by piece the actual organism itself.
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!"