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Next Step in Human Evolution
PrivateDonut writes "Where is evolution taking our species? MSNBC has up an article that examines where evolution could take the human race. The gist of it is that no further evolution will occur unless humans can be separated into isolated groups." From the article: "Such ideas may sound like little more than science-fiction plot lines. But trend-watchers point out that we're already wrestling with real-world aspects of future human development, ranging from stem-cell research to the implantation of biocompatible computer chips. The debates are likely to become increasingly divisive once all the scientific implications sink in." Class, please read Transmetropolitan for homework.
"The gist of it is that no further evolution will occur unless humans can be separated into isolated groups." Well, if we are seperated into seperate environments that would probably have the same effect as being seperated into seperate groups. That probably means that we will evolve in space. It makes sense as well, we could still evolve to "work better" in microgravity... we could still evolve to run better on different air, maybe purer or less pure oxygen. And since we're in smaller gruops in space, according to this, we are going to have an even greater chance of evolution. So, is space travel going to bring on the next stage of human evolution?
There will be no further naturally occurring evolution of the human race. Since medical science can overcome just about any malady, disfigurement, or defect--allowing anyone to procreate--there is no opportunity for nature to weed out anything. For example, 5000 years ago a man who had a faulty liver would most likely die and his genetic line might die with him. Today, a man with a faulty liver spends a coule of days in a hospital and is able to continue his genetic line. So in essence, science has outsmarted evolution. Survival of the fittest doesn't apply when everyone survives.
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Evolution is driven by selection pressure. Selection occurs because some individuals die or otherwise fail to breed. Their heritable traits tend not to be found in the next generation.
So, ask yourself, what consistent selection pressures are acting on us now? Note that things that would have killed us in the past are now regularly taken care of by medical science. In just a couple of generations we have a significant subpopulation that can't breed at all without medical intervention. Some of these traits are heritable, such as difficulties in childbirth or needing IVF techniques to overcome fertility problems.
Other traits which seem to universally pop up in domestic animals are also showing up in humans. The modern urban environment is just as alien and stressful to us as modern farms are to the animals we keep there. So we are seeing hypersexuality, earlier and earlier puberty, obesity, and a lot of neurosis. THAT is the evolutionary future of the human race, and it's already well on its way.
The only way out of this situation is to start applying deliberate selective pressure. Given that this would essentially mean giving up the right of individuals to reproduce at will, I don't see it happening any time soon. Plus, I would imagine that a lot of effort would be thrown at hot-button traits like homosexuality or intelligence which probably aren't even heritable. (I know there are a lot of people who say otherwise; there are good reasons for doubting them, starting with their very eagerness.)
The world's population is already effectively split into two major groups, those who can afford radical medical intervention and those who can't. For another idea on how that might work out check out H.G. Wells' The Time Machine. Some things are so basic that they're easier to call before you're well into the trend.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
I'll probably get flamed for this but I have to say it anyway...
Why does anyone still expect evolution in our society? With the social system and the way our economy works there is no reason for evolution anymore. If you take a pack of lions... The top is the strongest animal, then the second tier is the ones that are almost as strong and so on. Now I look at where I work - the richest and most powerful guy has his job cause he started almost at the top and had the right backing... The next level down are all his friends - most of them completly incompetent idiots. Evolution? No thanks!
Now the other side - and that's the really scary one - since when do we weed out bad genes? Today most people die a natural death, no matter if they were stupid, disabled or had any other issues. In the past, those would have been the first to get killed by lack of food, deciese or wild animals. That kept the gene pool cleaner. Today, they have kids just like everyone else - and that has severe negative impact on the human race.
I'm not saying that there is any ethical way of changing that or that it even should be changed, but if the topic of evolution comes up, most people just silently ignore these two facts most of the time...
Peter.
I agree.
Another limitation is that humans in the industrialized nations have more or less driven out natural selection. For example, stupid people are protected, if anything, it is someone else's fault that a stupid person did something that could have killed them. Sometimes the brain dead are allowed to live for fifteen years.
The highly intellectual people become either smart enough to not reproduce (contraceptives), reproduce less by choice or don't reproduce often because of social factors. Stupid people reproduce like rabbits, some of them start before they leave highschool.
Evolution will continue to happen - and it won't be the sci-fi kind. Just plain old Darwinism.
Between air pollution, climate changes, the continual population shift from rural to urban, other environmental factors, and even random error.
Evolution won't stop because it is a journey not a place. All the variables that effect are lives are not tightly controlled enough to even come close to an end.
Anytime someone says how a scientific phenomenom is going to halt, I raise an eyebrow. Maybe you should too.
Another limitation is that humans in the industrialized nations have more or less driven out natural selection.
You are confusing biological evolution with social systems. The removal of "natural" (what is that anyway, should we deny all medicines, housing, and civilisation to a few generations just to clear out the gene pool? And in this society, who do you think will triumph and propagate their genes, the brutes or the intellectuals?) selection does not harm humanity; if anything it broadens the gene pool and increases the chance of beneficial mutations which might lead to any one of a number of positive effects.
Also your sweeping characterisation of the stupid as being born that way smacks very much of a particularily nasty type of eugenics, as does your pinning of "highly intellectual" people. I am aware that there are more than a few people of low intelligence who are genetically built that way, but I would say these are in the vast minority. Much of this has to do with environment rather than their genes.
don't reproduce often because of social factors
And what is this? Did you ever stop to think that the same social factors might inversely apply to the less fortunate among us? It is well known that in times of war, plague, or other stressful times, the rate of population growth increases. By applying this on the micro- or individual scale, you can easily see why those who feel pressured or are in fact most pressured would "breed" first and faster.
Although it would make life very simple for a certain type of mindset to identify a "stupid" gene and assign lesser rights to these lesser beings, things just aren't that easy.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
Isolation is required for speciation (the creation of a new species distinct from the original species) it is not required for evolution to change an existing species.
Evolution is driven by the environment and selective pressures. If the environment changes, the species must adapt or die out.
In the abstract, each species inhabits a 'fitness landscape', think of it as a mountainous landscape - those poorly adapted inhabit the low lands, those well adapted inhabit the summits.
A particular species is ever changing, exploring other peaks, and sometimes getting lost in the valleys. The landscape can change as well, thrusting up the lowlands and making previously ill-adapted specimins quite well adapted (think of the tiny little rodents that did so well after the climate change that killed off the dynosaurs).
So, to the people who claim that human evolution has ended because of our technology's ability to compensate for suboptimal genetic mutations and variation - you couldn't be more wrong. Techonology has merely become integrated into our fitness landscape, like fire and tools have been for millenia.
There are many examples of where technology has massively altered the fitness landscape. The valley of near-sightedness is no longer so deep, and the summit of intelligence has lost a couple thousand feet. This dramatically changing fitness itself will drive evolution. The nature of the changes doesn't matter. Evolution isn't 'trying' to make us smarter. It isn't trying to make us stronger, faster, or more attractive.
Think about it this way. Yes, technology allows women who have narrow hips or large babies to give birth, when in the past they would have died in child birth. The result, there is less selective pressure on the width of hips in women and the size of babies. We can expect to see more variation in hip with, more narrow hips, and larger babies. In the future it might be exceedingly rare for women to give brth without a C-section.
Is this good or bad? Who knows, it allows our genome to explore previously unexplored territory - women with smaller hips, or who have larger babies in utero. What will be the result? Who knows. Perhaps there is some hidden adaptive benefit in these traits. Perhaps not. Maybe the genes that cause mutations or disease that used to kill before reproductive age have hidden benefits that are revealed when techology allows these people to survive and reproduce. Or perhaps they just open the path to a different peak in the fitness landscape.
As for those who point to the developed world's most successful reproducers, the poor, as evidence of our devolution - I ask you why you assume these people to be inferior? Sure, many are not self-supporting, but many are - raising large families on their own incomes. Seems these people are quite successful at making and raising babies. Their genes will have proportionally higher representation in the coming generations than will those of us who choose to have one or two children.
Don't fall into the trap of assuming that just because these people are poor they are somehow less intelligent or in some way inferior. Less educated certainly. But less intelligent? Remember that current human intelligence evolved in pre-literate societies.
Even the worst of the trailer trash functions at a relatively high level compared to our neolithic progenitors. Jim Bob knows how to operate a complex machine called a pick-up truck, even at high speeds. He can read, has a vocabulary well north of 5,000 words, can do basic math, and is mostly likely required to have highly developed hand-eye coordination in whatever work he does (if it is manual labor). These tax human intelligence far beyond the selective pressures that lead to the evolution of our current level of intelligence. Even the poorest among us need all our vaunted human intelligence just to survive.
As for the argument that having a more diverse popultion means more room for mutations -- I'm not arguing against diversity, so long as some kind of reasonable fitness function -- such as that provided by making food/housing/etc available strictly via a market economy -- is being applied. If a fitness function is so limiting as to substantially reduce the number of variations which don't directly impact one's ability to tend to one's own survival, that fitness function is broken. To put it bluntly: A society of six-foot, blonde-haired, blue-eyed caucasians is the last thing I would want -- and if relying on a pure market economy in our present society would cause a trend towards that norm, our society needs to be fixed.
That said, it wouldn't be a Good Thing to apply this whole pure-market-economy worldwide. Just doing it in some significant (reasonably diverse) region should cause it to succeed (inasmuch as that region, over the course of a few generations, generates individuals more fit than the population median) or fail (obviously, the inverse) without eliminating gene lines surviving elsewhere in the world which might be falsely targeted by the fitness function in question. In short: I might be wrong, and I don't want to take over the world; a US state or two (allowing folks who don't like it to easily leave, and folks who do like the idea to emigrate in) would be more than enough.
If having good genes is less important than having good memes (and the nature/nurture debate is far from decided), how does that actually change anything once we consider that memes are typically passed on through one's family? Yes, it does -- which isn't to say that it's wrong. (Devil's advocate aside, I honestly do think that voluntary, temporary sterilization as a precondition for accepting welfare funds makes quite a lot of sense. The moral argument against has always been presented as self-evident, which to me it isn't. Anything much beyond that [ie. anything that involves using force of government to compell actions which would not be taken voluntarily] I'm unlikely to support. As for my motivation for taking this view -- I grew up around far too many welfare mothers having more kids so they'd get a bigger check from the government each month. And just to go back to the race thing briefly -- said welfare mothers were almost execlusively caucasian).Okay, let's give you a quick lesson in ethics and morality.
First, imagine that you will be reincarnated as a random individual in a society. You have no way of knowing what skill sets and ability you will wake up with. Now, what kind of social organisation would you want to apply given that there is a distinct risk that you will be 'reborn' without your current level of ability to take care of yourself? Do you really want an undiluted survival market to apply? Is your ability to survive in such a situation the only measure of the worth of your next life? If you were doomed from the start by the nature of that society, but that nature could be changed so as you would not be doomed, would you not want it changed?
Consider then whether humans have intrinsic worth or are just a means to some ends. Are you the means to someone else's ends, or do you make your own decisions? Are your decisions to be treated seriously as intrinsic to your being, or brushed aside as aberrations in the mass march to a predetermined or naturally selected ends?
It is an ethical imperative that humans be treated as ends in themselves, otherwise a mechanistic world view results, and all nature of opressions follow from this. What this means is that if we have the means to help each other survive, then we are compelled to make use of them, and cope with the consequences. If a man is born crippled, we give crutches, if he is stupid we teach him patiently, if he is diseased we search for a cure. That we have now begun to grasp genetics offers a way to ameliorate the consequences of a lack of natural selection, but even in its absence we are compelled to defy natural selection; the alternative being the death of humanity as a collection of sentient beings. Sentience is inefficient, you know.
I agree. The problem with the parent's idea is that 1) he believes every single life is worth preserving, at all costs, and 2) the cost of "helping out" the highly disadvantaged is not that great to the rest of society.
In other less-individualistic cultures, the society is the most important thing, not the individual. If the society is functioning optimally, then most people will be fairly happy. Now this certainly doesn't mean the society should eliminate all but the top 5%; however, if society expends too many resources trying to support a very small minority that can't pull its own weight, and is in fact a parasite, it can doom the entire society.
The problem we have with this welfare mothers scenario is that society has allowed itself to be taken advantage of by these people, and the society is doing little or nothing to protect itself from this abuse of its social systems. Somehow, we've badly merged the idea of helping the underpriveleged with protecting individual liberties, such that people are provided help from the government, but that help isn't allowed to have any strings attached because this is somehow oppressive to them. This really needs to change. If someone wants help, they should have to meet certain requirements and conditions, designed so that these people can become productive members of society again eventually. This means no more extra children for welfare mothers; if this means they have to be sterilized if they choose to accept government assistance, then so be it (many of these procedures are reversible now, so it's not like they'd never be allowed to have children again).