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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.'"
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!
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.
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.
< AOL > Me too! < /AOL >
I read the article a few hours before it was posted here.
It's a load of crap. Things have certainly changed, and many things that used to kill people no longer do, so evolution no longer selects on that basis. But Humans still reproduce mixing genes. Some people still have more children than others. Humans are still subject to evolution. It's just that there are different pressures than there used to be.
Human technology has chaged our envirnment radically. We live in heated homes. We work in offices. We die in car crashes. Eat processed food. Etc etc etc. If we assume that we don't start genetically engineering ourselves, this would eventually result in some signifigant (but unpredictable) changes to the human race.
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.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
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.
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.
Look at the height records, for example. Humans today tend to be much taller than their fifteenth century counterparts. Even taller than just the 1950s generation, in fact.
Um. That's not evolution. That's *food*.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
A) It is beyond me how you find anything racist in this. Allow me to clarify: Something isn't racist just because it deals with racial issues - it must also discriminate. Stating the obvious facts that people mix more today than they used to, and that this will create a more homogenous world population is in no way racist.
B) Correct - but not enough. In addition to a lucky combination of genes, there is one more requirement for any evolutionary effect: selection. The point of the article is *not* that there is less chance of lucky combinations of genes - the point is that these fortunate new humans have no advantage to everybody else. Therefore the race as a whole will only benefit extremely marginally from this contribution to the gene-pool. And for every beneficial mutation, there's a thousand harmful. But without any selection each of these thousands of disadvantaged individuals will contribute as much to the next generation as the single lucky one. This adds up to a general degeneration.
Selection is not completely forgotten in the post though:
No, no, no. As is widely known - and described in an earlier post - succes does *not* result in more kids. Quite the opposite actually. Those who don't win the nobel-prize or run a multi-billion company tend to produce more offspring instead, put bruntly. So we actually have a selection towards the lower end of the spectre.
Next up: Common colds second wind:
C) Let me get this straight: In Shanghai or Calcutta, a vicious variation of the common cold is contained completely from the rest of the world, and if it ever leaks out 99% of us are doomed because we have weakened resistances?
I suppose it's just dumb luck that none of the thousands of europeans and americans who visit these places every year, haven't caught this deadly flu yet? Of course not. When we go abroad, we get a stomach ache, because the local set of diseases are so unfamiliar to what we're used to, but thats it. The concept of any part of the world being isolated in respect to diseases is ludicrous. There are plenty of scary bio-hazardous scenarios to ponder about - but this is definitely not one of them.
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
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!?!?
Of course, the problem with this guy's (the article) opinions is that it does smak of segregation and other asty thoughts, but he should be given a fair consideration
To be perfectly fair, I don't believe he stated his opinions on whether evolutionary theory not applying to western civilization was good or bad. He may have opinions on this, but they weren't in the article. All that was in there was an observation that Darwin's basic rules don't seem to apply any longer due to a variety of reasons.
I may not agree with the conclusions personally, but I can't assign anything more sinister than a difference of opinion to the notion that evolution has effectively been turned off.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
You also need a "survival of the fittest" rule
I'd say they got it wrong due to poor spelling, since it's more like "survival of the fattest" from what I've seen in certain areas of the USA...
/max
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
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 was noticed by scientists in the 19th century, who postulated that in time, the world would be taken over by morons. My belief is that this actually happened, but we are now too stupid to realise.
"Well, put a stake in my heart and drag me into sunlight."
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!
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....
The problem with modern society is that evolution has no CHANCE to take its course. Let's use your Sickle-Cell gene as an example. In any other species on the planet, Sickle-Cell genes would be gradually phased out of the population, as people with them died at an earlier age, and thus having less offspring than those that don't. The same rings true for basiclly all genetic diseases; the reason evolution takes care of them IN THE FIRST PLACE is beacause they kill the animals with the defects off.
The same rings true for animals born with advantagous mutations. They have a greater chance of survival, and thus, for producing offspring. Over generations, the breed with the mutations is so much more likely to survive than those that won't, that it eventually takes over, and the inferior breed dies off.
Human's don't follow this trend any more. People with genetic diseases are given drug treatments and so forth to prolong their lives as long as possible, often far beyond what they would achieve otherwise. And they definitly mate as well, thus passing the defective gene along.
Without the threat of extinction, evolution falls apart. When a species becomes as dominant over its environment as humans have, how can its environment have any impact on it? It is totally illogical.
I think that, unless we move in with some other alien species and start cross-mating, physical evolution by humans has indeed come to an end. As for cultural evolution, that is a never ending process that has nothing to do with external environmental factors.
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 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