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Chimps Evolved More Than Humans
jas_public writes "Since the human and chimp families split about 6 million years ago, chimpanzee genes seem to have evolved more than human genes. The results, detailed in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, go against the conventional wisdom that humans are the result of a high degree of genetic selection, evidenced by our relatively large brains, cognitive abilities, and bipedalism. The researchers found that 'substantially more genes in chimps evolved in ways that were beneficial than was the case with human genes.'"
The researchers found that 'substantially more genes in chimps evolved in ways that were beneficial than was the case with human genes.'"
Well, that explains the creationists, anyway...
Once again, we prove our vast superiority over the monkeys!
...
Apes! I meant apes!
dammit...
psmylie's dictionary: Godzillion (noun) Any number large enough to destroy Tokyo
I work in a closely related field, and it's very hard even for those who work on evolutionary biology to hold in our minds the idea that things don't evolve towards greater complexity (with human beings at the pinacle), they evolve towards whatever works.
Often people giving scientific talks about some detailed aspect of evolutionary biology slip into terms like 'primative' and correct themselves with 'simple'. I think part of this is because we tend to organize organisms by appearance, and before the genomic era this was the only thing we had to go on. We now know that many of the organisms that seem simple have the same or greater gene complexity as ourselves.
Sometimes I think Evolution needs a better iconic image than the ape to man progression
It's only conventional if you don't understand evolution.
The selective pressures on both species were/are different so different amounts of evolution will occur.
GPL Deconstructed
Apparently, the "correct" genes did not evolve more.
Our relatively large brains, cognitive abilities, and bipedalism has allowed us to avoid selection pressure to a greater degree than the chimps.
I find this article very fascinating, but I have to wonder why it is classified as humor. I mean, maybe if you're a creationist you thin the whole thing is funny...
I just don't find this surprising.
Darwinism defines how our genes change in order to help us survive our environment.
At some point the human gene set allowed us to change our environment to help us survive. This would logically mean that our genes would have less impetus to change.
The Chimps genes have not had that sheltered environment so have been forced to continue adapting.
No big shocker here.
I for one welcome our new monkey overlords.
--
Not to put too fine a point on it, but society currently rewards stupidity, and tends to punish intelligence, rather than the other way around. It should look like planet of the apes in no time.
Over the past few million years chimps fucked around more, while humans had a tendency to stick to their tribes, thus genes that provided advantage spread to the entire population more readily.
The conclusion is, we need to fuck around more.
You can't handle the truth.
A chimp writes, "Those damned dirty humans keep shoving probes up our asses to find out if we evolved faster than they did. They should leave us alone and let us fling our poo."
"Please, shut up. Just when I think you can't say anything more stupid, you speak again." -Archie Bunker.
It isn't about the absolute numbers ('substantially more genes') but the benefit of those evolutionary steps.
;-)
To put it simply: if the chimps had 100 genes that evolved each with a value of 1 and humans had 2 genes that evolved each with a survival value of 75 and 1 with a value of 200 (e.g. brain development) then humans have the advantage. The numbers are obviously completely arbitrary.
While it is VERY interesting to see the raw numbers of changes, the real question is the value of each of the changes.
I am sure that the original research didn't phrase it "Chimps more evolved than humans" but the press simplification and "wow" factor made it a nice eye-catching headline.
Chimps may have evolved more, but humans evolved better!
A legparnasom tele van angolnaval.
George Bush's family are preparing a statement:
"Nerrrrr nerrrrr told you we were better!!!"
liqbase
When was the last time a genetic predisposition to heart disease, diabetes or MS trumped feeling of genuine love? Or glasses for that matter. Until GATACCA comes to pass and genetic descrimination is a way of life, "genetic progress" will be halted. And I am fine with that.
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
"On the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But, conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely the same reasons." - Douglas Adams
What they don't tell you is most chimp genes involve throwing feces. They got a whole fucking chromosome for it!
Oh man, this is seriously problematic for Slashdot to be promoting any sense of this phraseology ... yeah, saying that things are "more evolved" than others isn't entirely correct at all. Evolution and natural selection are topics that have to be explained carefully, but this of course doesn't mean that we shouldn't say anything at all.
... all molecules in this universe are of the same age, in other words they are made from the same components as with the origin of the universe, and for this reason we cannot really say that there's any "more evolved" than anything else.
What's wrong with the idea of things being "more evolved"? Well, first of all, it assumes that there is some linear scale or progression that keeps track of how far evolution has gone. There's no way to track that
Hope this helps. Heh, the captcha is "colonize". How appropriate.
Human intelligence allows us to use technology to adapt our environments faster than evolutionary timescales. If people move to a colder climate they soon figure out how to make hardier clothing and they don't need to wait many generations for natural selection to give rise to make them particularly hairy. This is the great advantage of evolving into a technology-capable species and the reason humans live everywhere on earth and at least one place orbiting it. Human survivability is now more strongly governed by our technological evolution than our biological evolution.
Why is it taken for granted that humans came from monkeys? I think monkeys devolved from humans who drank too much beer!
Have you read my journal today?
if we need to fly we dont grow wings we make planes.
if we need to swim we don't grow gills or fins we make SCUBA gear
if we get too cold we don't grow fur we make clothes
if we need to eat we don't hunt we go to McDonalds.
so on and so forth...
You constantly struggle for self improvement - and it shows.
Hooray for bad Engrish on fortune cookies
If monkeys are so much evolved than humans, why do they still swing monkey poo at each other?
It should be remembered that in the context of evolution, "beneficial" always refers to an individual's ability to pass along his genes through reproduction. And, as most of Slashdot readers surely know from personal experience, larger brains and advanced cognitive abilities are not particularly beneficial in this task.
Oh no! They modded me down, guess they haven't developed the "sense of humor" genes yet.
You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads!
Half of all apes agree. The other half believe in creationism and think a giant banana yielding, intangible, hairy father figure made them in his likeness.
"Snatching defeat from the mouth of victory on a daily basis."
Think of all the things that we do and use that allows us to make up for physical deficiencies. Our digestive tracts are susceptible to a large variety of very harmful parasites and micro-organisms, so we cook our food prior to eating it. Many highly, human, populated areas have climates where we would have a high mortality rate from exposure if we didn't wear clothing and warm ourselves with artificial heat sources. We have various forms of medical treatment for different injuries and illnesses, ones that would disable or kill us in the wild. And we have weapons that make up for our natural lack of strength and speed.
Basically once we took the path for intelligence all other evolutionary paths were either suspended or put in regression. Whereas other primates still needed to develop natural ways to cope with environmental challenges since they did not develop the intellectual ability to solve problems that they were ill fitted to survive against.
My God! It's full of eval()'s.
You could argue that the human "big brain" is an evolutionary dead end of sorts, because we now respond to environmental pressures by inventing tools and medicines. Humans who would be very "unfit" from a purely physical point of view (and I'm not just talking about /.ers), are very able to survive and pass on their genetic information.
I could get into why I don't believe in evolution, but I'm not in the mood for that kind of abuse today :-)
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
..past the point where they need to shoot each other with guns.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
Me must steal their secrets. I volunteer to do the monkey spanking personally. I mean...at least until we find out better ways to steal their genes.
Quantity doesn't necessarily beat quality. Ask yourself what's more efficient: making hundreds of minor adaptations to an environment, or making a few really good ones? Most animals grow what they need to gather food and defend themselves. We make what we need. Ideas change faster than genes.
I found some strange specie of Albino Nigger.
Look at them go bonk on their instruments.
I think they are from your village.
Once man learned to manipulate his environment rather than evolve to fit it, the rate of human evolution slowed down. Not only that but it started going in strange directions.
Think about it. Gazels have been getting faster because the slowest gazel ends up in a Lions stomach before mating season. Humans have devised ways to protect even our paraplegics.
A chimp with the physical limitations of Stephen Hawkins would be lunch. As a human he not only survives but has managed to reproduce and even maintains high ranking in our social order.
Think about it. If you can be an Alpha Male without even being able to stand then genetic features become less relevant in determining who reproduces. Dramatically slowing the process of human evolution.
As for direction. Our professional athletes, scientists and Engineers produce far fewer children than those at the bottom of our social order. For the sake of our species, I would advise you all (Creationists and Evolutionist) to pray (To Jesus or Darwin) that human intelligence is not seriously impacted by our genetic makeup. If it is our society will collapse when we are no longer able to maintain what our parents built.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
When was the last time a genetic predisposition to heart disease, diabetes or MS
I knew Microsoft was a terrible disease!
soylentnews.org Go there to enjoy the people!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This should be obvious, people. The whole point of evolution is that a species changes over time to deal with pressure from its environment. Humankind has been "coddling the weak" for thousands upon thousands of years now. We protect and nurture those who would not, could not, make it on their own. This means that evolution, as it functions for say, apes, isn't working the same way for us. Our "large brains" and the technology and advantages that come from the abilities we get from it, mean that our genes do not need to change as much as most other species - because instead of changing ourselves, we develop technology, etc. to deal with our environment. Again, I'm guessing that most scientists are looking at this data and saying, "Well, no shit. I would certainly be surprised if the data showed something else, but this? It's confirmation - nothing exciting."
- Maybe chimps have shorter lifespans. Thus there have been more generations of chimps to mix and mingle the chimp gene pool.
- Perhaps chimps have a bigger gene pool. More chimps=more genetic variety=more chance for beneficial genes to surface.
- Maybe human DNA doesn't have the same genetic variety as chimp DNA. Thus the variability in chimps could be greater than in humans.
- Perhaps the population density has kept chimp DNA in greater flux. Humans have ranged all over the planet, thus human genes don't get as much of a chance to mix.
- Maybe human evolution has slowed because there are different social pressures on our mating practices. It's not all about physical prowess and attractiveness with people. Certain families/tribes don't mix with certain others, or perhaps only mix with others. Religion, money, power, history, language, etc all affect how (with whom) humans mate. Chimps are free from these pressures.
In short, perhaps chimps are more evolved, but so what? Cockroaches are probably far more evolved than either of us.When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I am NOT descended from Humans!
Am I the only one who is completely not surprised by this? Human evolution slowed once we were able to adapt our tools rather than our bodies. While a fur covered man might be better suited for a cold climate, the naked man could don fur ensuring both were equally fit and able to pass on their genes. Apes don't have that luxury, so those that can't cope die. Humans just invent instead...
If you consider that humans are to the "society" what cells are to the human body, it makes sense. Humans get specialized, and brain cells don't reproduce (much*) either. It's also probably better because they use a lot more energy and live longer.
* (IIRC it has been found a few years ago that they can duplicate, though at a slow pace, while before it was believed they didn't)
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
I see white trash is still breeding well, too.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Technology is part of our evolution.
We evolve in a matter that lets us adapt to changes, some pretty darn rapid, and control our enviroment.
Your examples seem to inply 'intant' evolution.
We don't 'need' to fly.
We don't 'need' to go under water.
Tghose are all 'extras'. IF a large enough group of people were contantly in the water, and the mated for that trate, they would get a way to breath underwater..in a 100,000* years.
*number used as an example.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
...as we can see scientifically from this image. Besides, chimpanzees have never invented any weapons that can wipe out their entire species. But then again, that may be an argument of wisdom versus intelligence. ;-)
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
It doesn't mean anything to say X is more evolved than Y or evolving more. It is a meaningless statement. Talking about the 'speed' of evolution doesn't mean anything unless you've got a predefined goal in mind and evolution most certainly does not - no matter what your Star Trek DVDs tell you.
"Laugh-a while you can, monkey boy!"
-- Lord John Whorfin
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
The whole point of evolution is that a species changes over time to deal with pressure from its environment. Humankind has been "coddling the weak" for thousands upon thousands of years now.
OTOH, the timescale of this study was 6,000,000 years. ~10,000 years of civilization shouldn't have had a huge overall effect on our evolution compared to the preceding 5,990,000 of them.
Obviously the ability to accurately fling feces is a highly evolved and necessary skill. Should we be so fortunate to aquire that!!! (yes yes, i know, "more evolved != more advanced").
Yep, the experiment looks like the scientists set out to test a hypothesis, not just to have a look-see. Surely they suspected that since humans historically kept themselves to small, isolated tribes, while chimps constantly bred, spread and warred,the result would look like this -- but showing it in a published study would get the press riled up and maybe make a point to the layfolk who generally imagine evolution as a directed progression from ape to human.
So, picture how well this one's going to slide into Kansas schoolbooks: Humans actually aren't descended from chimps -- chimps are descended from us.
"Once man learned to manipulate his environment rather than evolve to fit it, the rate of human evolution slowed down."
Damn that bugs the hell out of me. It is wrong.
Technology does not stop evolution, it is part of it.
Natural selectio m akes what is best for the 'enviroment'. As an enviroment changes, the traits that are desirable in a mate change, but evolution marches on.
Why do you think 'Engineers' are the only people who are smart? what amount of shear gall is needed to say that?
There are smart people everywhere doing all kinds of work.
I would say someone who bacame a plumber right out of haghschool is probably bettter of financially then an engineer.
In fact, it would ahve been far smarter of me to become a plumber then a engineer.
Less money spent to maintain my career, higher earning.
I see people being smart all the time, and if you look you would see it to.
Just because someone has an opposing view, or that you have no idea what there motivations are doesn't make there decesion stupid, it makes you ignorant.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I really don't think many people appreciate the deeper implications of the general Darwinian algorithm. What needs to occur in order for there to be evolution, there needs be only a population with heredity and variable traits. The human brain, which evolved into its present form a few hundred thousand years ago, is a shockingly plastic object, when we learn something, it can be transmitted whole or piecemeal to others around us. We have overlap of generations, so something learned by one can become the base of that in the next. We don't need strong genetic evolution if we are able to alter our behavior arbitrarily simply at the level of a brain, this is much faster and more effective than genetic evolution, which undoubtedly still occurs in humans, is very slow (by our standards) and probably made slower by the heavy lifting being done by our brains. I just think people should begin to appreciate the implications of Darwinism that are plainly derivable from the premises. Don't be lazy!
This is further nitpicking, but the Pythagorean theorem is a theorem based on other axioms and not an axiom itself. There are geometries (e.g., Riemannian) under which the Pythagorean theorem is not true and where you can still have triangles.
As a theorem (instead of a theory) it can be proven true if one assumes that the underlying axioms are also true. However, it turns out that in the Riemannian geometry that we live in the Pythagorean theorem is provably not true.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I'm actually still having trouble with the OP's point that professional athletes don't have many children. It sure seems like they do from the news - although granted that's probably not a representative sampling.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
The traits that our capitalist society rewards (excellence in a field gives extreme wealth, and competence in certain people oriented skills trumps competence in technical fields, etc.) is the appearance of socially what we want. If the pay is better, the supply should increase. However, if you look at birth patterns, things that correspond with higher birthrates are: religion (more => more children), region of country, etc. Traits that are NEGATIVELY correlated are education (more education, for women especially, lowers birth rates), income, etc.
:) But seriously, if you think that the religious right is bad now, well in 50-60 years, if they continue to have double the birth rate or more as secular America... well they WILL be the majority in time...
Even MORE interesting is the rate of genetic diversity. The crew most decried by the family values crew (the single mother with multiple children from different fathers) has interestingly creating more genetic diversity. Gentlemen like "K-fed" are producing multiple offspring with multiple women, ensuring their genetic diversity.
This is interesting because after generations of decreasing religiosity, increasing education, and healthier people living longer, it looks like those same biological forces are shrinking those characteristics. There was an amusing editorial a few years ago suggesting that Roe v. Wade destroyed the Democratic party, NOT because abortions were unpopular, but because they were popular. Because of the high correlation of political views with those of the parents, the the correlation of being a Democrat with abortion (roughly 2-3 times more likely to have an abortion if a Democrat than a Republican), then 18 year after Roe v. Wade we found a shrinking pool of Democrats.
Similarly, the higher birthrates of fundamentalists of all religions is causing a slow reversal of post-enlightenment reforms and changes in religious communities. The "mainstream Protestant Churches" are losing numbers, the Catholics are holding steady overall, but their growth is in South America and Africa, while their presence in Europe shrinks and American Catholics are increasing of Latin origin, Judaism has watched a growth of its Orthodox wing (from about 8% 20 years ago to close to 15% of Jews), which itself has been shifting rightward, and Muslim growth rates are outstripping everyone.
Basically. out secular atheistic culture has reached such a pinnacle of self indulgence and freedom that it might actually shrink itself. The American Left is constantly blaming the Bush administration, but the cultural shifts underneath America demonstrate that demographics and not demagoguery is actually causing the reactionary political pull.
It's very interesting, but I find it the HEIGHT of irony that the bible-thumping anti-evolutionary wings of all religions, that were marginal a generation ago, are suddenly making gains, while the secular, science and reason based culture with decades of dominance after WW2 finds itself on the retreat, and the REASON is that the anti-evolution crew is spreading their genetic material and creating offspring to advance their agenda, and the pro-science pro-evolution crew is cutting off their genetic material with families of 0-2 children.
In fact, most disturbing is that the men that engage in the most socially irresponsible behavior -- serial cheating, divorce, etc., are generally fathering many more children than those that "play by the rules." So with whatever genetic material influences behavior, we're going to find each generation a little more adulterous...
If current trends continue, which of course they will NOT, things will swing the otherway, but amusingly, in 4 or 5 generations, we'll have a general population of non-white, deeply religious Americas who going to Church/Synagogue/Mosques regularly, while engaging in adulterous relationships during the week.
Amusing amateur demographic observations...
Alex
This story has been told before:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons
Rise geeks! Multiply!
"what amount of shear gall is needed to say that"
I don't know how much force it takes to shear gall.
What is the Youngs Modulus of gall?, or is gall a fluid, in which case I would need to know the viscosity to anwser your query?
Or does gall come from sheep?
The article doesn't really state which genes had evolved.
I'd argue that Hawkins passing on his genes (for better or worse) is still an example of success in natural selection. I mean, it happened, right?
This isn't human evolution slowing down. It's just changing direction.
Perhaps we are near* the threshold where physical limitations are inconsequential to the survival / spreading and continued evolution of the species.
*Relatively speaking, that is. Say, maybe 100,000 years away. Dinos lasted 150 million...
eleven plus two / twelve plus one
Ya know, divorce is always hard on the kids, evolution or not...
That is all.
we are all friggin freaks!
I read the article, and it is absolutely pointless. The author does not discern between the amount of changes and the effects of a change. There has never been a great argument that chimps went through fewer, smaller evolutionary changes than humans did. Humans may have gone through fewer, but the net effect of each individual change combined has yielded the human genetic makeup that we have now.
I believe this article to have been written by a chimp.
...virgin scientists say human sex isn't all it's cracked up to be...more at 11.
So if I fling my poop at someone and get into trouble, I can point to chimpanzees and blame evolution?
"I'm sorry officer..... Darwin made me do it."
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Since when is that the conventional wisdom? My understanding was that the "conventional wisdom", inasmuch as there was any, on that issue was that humanity's having evolved massive and extremely useful brains provided means of adaptation on a much shorter timescale which would be expected to, if anything, reduce the pace of genetic evolution from that point forward.
Being "more evolved" or "less evolved" sounds ridiculous! Every extant species has undergone evolution. There is no "sacala naturae". This perspective of being more evolved or less evolved has little predictive are descriptive value.
This "more evolved vs. less evolved" perspective carries with it the implication that to be "more evolved" is better than being "less evolved". Here are two examples where that is not the case: an ancient species, that has changed little, and almost perfectly exploits the environment to reproduce, and will be able to do so far into the future, has "evolved" very little; a species that is poorly adapted to its environment, has undergone a large amount of recent changes, and faces a likely extinction, is "more evolved".
This "more evolved vs. less evolved" perspective is irrelevant. Well, with one exception: being able to determine how much some species has evolved is significant, and can inform the production of a history for that species. However, to compare two species using this sort of "more vs. less" language confuses the significance of measuring evolutionary change.
"More evolved" when compared to "less evolved" means nothing, unless there is some other sort of contextual information to use in the comparison.
Whatever... wake me up when chimps have a joint strike fighter...
No surprise..Chimpanzees still select based on survivability of genes. Humans select on things like thinness, dimples, tattoos. Sure, you could argue that the type of car a guy (or girl) drives is indicative of their financial ability, but females are more apt to choose the jock who -- though he may appear physically fit -- is more likely to die at a younger age from heart problems. Now the geeks, pasty and introverted, are more likely to have money in their later years, more likely to survive to their later years (testosterone does quite a number on the physical condition of the body; it builds muscle but takes a toll later), and more likely to treat women as treasures (because it's so rare for a geek to find a girl).
So find a geek to date.
Seriously.
Especially geeks in Pembroke Pines, Florida who post on Slashdot and work in IT.
No wonder it didn't win an oscar. It was nominated in the wrong category. It may have won for Best Documentary.
If you do what you always did, you get what you always got.
Humankind has been "coddling the weak" for thousands upon thousands of years now.
Not whole thousands of years, surely? This probably has only had any kind of noticeable effect in the last 50 thousand years or so; and common ancestry of chimps and humans is considered to be what, 6 mya nowadays? Doesn't seem likely that this would have a difference.
sic transit gloria mundi
I think they're spot-on, if a bit verbose.
Summary:
Reactionary and generally stupid people mate more, and thus have more offspring. This is a system with a positive feedback loop since the next generation of K-Feds and Britneys will also likely get pregnant and work shitty jobs (moreso than make it to Harvard).
Whereas, progressive and generally smart people may fuck as much (or more) but do not mate as much. This system also has a feedback loop.
Note that it is the PROGRESSIVE attitude towards sex (whatever, whenever) coupled (heh) with STUPIDITY that leads to the dumb outbreeding the smart.
I for one welcome our new primatal overlords.
the REASON is that the anti-evolution crew is spreading their genetic material and creating offspring to advance their agenda, and the pro-science pro-evolution crew is cutting off their genetic material with families of 0-2 children.
Genes do not determine our religion (though there may be some currently unmeasured correlation). Priests can become atheists after witnessing a traumatic event and vice versa.
That's exactly what we have.
c++;
Neuroscience student here, and yes there do appear to be some growth of new neurons in the adult brain, but at vastly reduced numbers. While we have pretty good evidence for neurogenesis(birth of new neurons) in most parts of the primate brain, there's somewhat less good evidence for it in the neocortex of humans. silly ethics rules slow research down! >;(
/.ers consider themselves to be a bit smarter than average? And the running joke for years has been that none of them get laid. :P Besides, the smart ones are the people who'll use birth control properly right? Instead of just accidently knocking someone up.
There's also somewhat debateable data on what these new neurons do exactly. What the consequences of them are. The data on their being related to learning/memory and such is a bit muddy. They do get functionally integrated in other species anyway, and there seems to be a link to depression. Possibly lower neurogenesis is what mediates stress inducing depression. And the lag of a few weeks before alot of the SSRIs begin to work seems to fit with the few weeks needed for new neurons to be made and mature.
And just to clear one other thing up, these new neurons aren't being made from mature neurons undergoing mitosis and splitting in two. They're made from multipotent stem cells in the dentate gyrus and along the subventricular zone.
As for humans evolving to become smarter, I'm not really sure that being smarted conveys much evolutionary fitness. After all, don't most
Now if you could only find a credible link about intelligence being hereditary, your post would also make sense!
c++;
--from Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos
Besides, there's a lot more stuff to eat in the ocean than there is in the trees. And the temperature is more stable year-round, just watch out for the predators...
- High Tech workers, please say NO to Union Carpenters, their Union sees fit to control our compensation.
This is obvious with morern technology, especially medical technology, where people that would naturally die as infants are kept alive or have heart defects etc that should be removed from the gene pool or infertile people who are artificially made fertile... the list is endless.
Less obviously, even primitive technologies like fire, clothing and tools meant that we no longer needed to adapt as we could adapt then environment to us.
The measure of intelligence should be how slowly we evolve, not how fast. Bacteria etc evolve really fast(hours/days), as do insects(months). We would expect that humans, being king of the shitpile, should evolve slowest.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I think man has evolved further than chimps have. Chimps fling poo. We fling poo (politics) and then we shoot eachother. See? We have twice as many steps under our belt!
So?
I don't think people mean to say that Humans have evolved the most. It's implied that humans have evolved the most, Effectively. Tons of things have evolved and mutated and died off, or managed to survive, but that doesn't mean they evolved well.
So that`s the reason why president Bush was elected twice. I knew US citizen had a :)
very gooood reason
Proof that more != better.
So this means we've gone onto the next stage of Spore, right?
"You did it! You finally did it! Damn you all to hell!"
Dawkins suggests this is powerful evidence that humans have been dramatically changed by their own environmental manipulations - perhaps accounting for the rapidity of our divergence away from our cousins - not easily accounted for by the relatively recent forking of the family tree.
Just another case where the surprising complexity of natural selection can 'play into' the wilful distortions of the creationists.
Guns don't kill people, bullets kill people!
Evolution is what happens to your species when your species is unable to control the environment around it.
We don't evolve as much because we control our environment. Monkeys don't. They are forced to adapt to constant change or die out.
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
However, the underlying axioms do not apply to Riemannian geometry. I suppose I could have worded it better.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
gomiam's humorous point aside, you're correct on both accounts.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
IANAB (I am not a biologist ;-) BUT come on during the last 3 million years humans have spread all over the planet and grown significantly as a species. Big evolutionary change comes as a result of stress on a population. Bacteria don't evolve a resistance to antibiotics in a vacuum, they evolve that characteristic when all of the non-resistant bacteria are killed off leaving the resistant strain to re-populate the the niche they fill. A successful population GROWS. A troubled population evolves or fails. Also we evolved the "killer-app" (the pre-frontal cortex) quite a while ago and began passing on survival characteristics as part of culture instead of genetics. culture "evolves" radically faster than genes do. So no f'ing kidding chimps have evolved genetically more in the last 6 million years they've had to to survive!
-- QED
This whole discussion reminds me of the MARCHING MORONS story. In a nutshell, most smart people practiced population control by having small families, while the dumber side of the human race ("American Idol" fans, I think) kept on having large families. Eventually, everyone who was smart ended up taking care of the moronic majority of the population.
The human race is the only species that could devolve itself out of existance.
*I'm kidding about the American Idol fans.
>> if you could only find a credible link about intelligence being hereditary
Yes, this isn't immediately obvious so we need to raise a monkey and a baby human together and see which grows up to be smarter!
We've known for a while that chimpanzees and lower primates in general have been advancing greatly, at a rate much faster than humans.
I believe there's even a genus and species for them, Liberalis Ignorantus.
We have a big brain that allows us to compensate for any number of environmental and genetic disadvantages. The result is that natural selection applies to us primarily in cognitive areas. Basically, all of our genetic shortcomings are balanced by technology. Therefore randomness is propagated and environmental factors have a far more limited impact on our genes.
There are lots of fat people because fewer people die from it in a society that uses vehicles for most moving around and doesn't move very much otherwise. There's no "natural" selection for it anymore. There's only cultural selection. In other words, we will evolve toward whatever is "in" with our culture, if that consensus emerges as a stable factor for a few generations.
Bring on the big breasted beefy bimbos!Whoever thinks that humans are the pinnacle of evoultion needs to look around a bit.
Of the vertebrates, Crocodilia have been around for 80 million years, modern sharks for 100 million frogs for 160 million years coelacanths for an incredible 400 million years, all in a form very similar the modern form.
Awar from the vertebrates, ants are 100million years old, and cockroaches are 300 million years old. Unlike the coelacanths, roaches are doing very well these days and are exceptionally hardy.
By comparison, apes have not been around for very long.
If any of these other species outlive humans (and their descendants), then they are more highly evolved, since all that evolution is is a process which makes things more likely to survive.
And I will guarantee that bacteria will feast on the corpse of the last member of the animalia kingdom to die.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Civilization can have MANY affects. Living in an environment of increased pollution, increased radioactivity, new forms of bacteria created most likely from our pollution or other things (bacteria's evolution to the new environment,) all kinds of things that could cause evolution can be directly influenced by civilization.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Actually, this needs to be said again and again. I erred in not pointing it out.
I suspect that perhaps there is a hereditary component to intelligence--but, it's more likely to be an issue of upbringing.
So, people in squalor are mating more than people who are not in squalor. Does that sound more accurate?
Here's a few:
= search&DB=pubmed
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?CMD
The abstract for the first link (Acta Neurol Belg. 2006 Dec;106(4):191-207) suggests a heritability for IQ of between 30% and 80% -- heritability being the contribution that genetic factors have in the variation of a trait. If something has a high heritability (as in this case for the older twins), it supports a hypothesis that advantageous variations will be passed down to the next generation.
Ask me about repetitive DNA
There is a certain irony to it in the human case. Since the first replicators appeared they have been engaged in mortal combat for survival through the phenotypes they build. In most cases the greedy nature of the algorithm has meant good short term solutions but catastrophic long term ones - as evidenced by the fact that >99% of all species that have existed on Earth are today extinct. The genes available today in the gene pools of all organisms are the elite - unlike countless other genes, they have survived so far.
The big mistake our gene dictators made was the development of our human brain. Sure, it was an excellent short term solution - it clearly had its advantages. But now when that big brain thing has led to the development of bio-tech, the phenotype will rule the genotype. The survival machines that were built to protect and propagate the genes have revolted and are seizing power. Sure, natural selection will always exist, but it is way too slow. By giving us too much control they've sealed their fate. The genes that gave us our large brains may still be around for a while - but they too are at our mercy. Not that they could have foreseen it in any way, but still, it was certainly the wrong way to go from the selfish genes' point of view.
That link again:
= search&DB=pubmed&term=heritability%20intelligence
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?CMD
[I only now realised that pubmed doesn't seem to save search terms in the location bar]
Ask me about repetitive DNA
I believe that this is because humans learned to adapt the world to make it better for them to live in, whereas, us, the chimpanzees, who lack of that ability, need to adapt ourself to the surroundings.
And the more sophisticated the world gets for the humans, the slower their evolution will become.
I for one welcome our new highly evolved chimpanzees overlords.
So george bush really is more advanced than the rest of us? Wait a minute, what will jesus think about this?
Believe me, if I started murdering people, there would be none of you left.
Yeah, you.
Asshole.
The major evolved characteristic which gave us our dominance lies in our cognitive ability. Once that was in, we didn't need anything else. Our advanced programmable computer gave us the need for no further very specialized hardware. How long we've had our cognition, that's something we're unsure of. But chimps have had need to continue evolving ever since that time, when we were able to a large degree to selectively slack off.
KLAATU, BORADA, NIh*ahem*
Now that most of the brightest people are thrown together in college where the chance that they will "breed" with someone of similar intelligence is much higher than it was before this experiment of college for women and men. Also women in the workplace should have a similar effect. Will this result in a class of more intelligent folks than before and how long should this take? Not that many of us haven't encountered our share of idiots in college. And lawyers marrying lawyers. Just a thought
Its not a bug... its a feature!
(I think my tinfoil hat isnt on right, slashdot read my mind, my capcha is contrary)
Or, to sum up:
"Every sperm is sacred, every sperm is good. Every sperm is needed, in your neighborhood!"
Once we developed the level of sentience where we could build tools to create our own artificial "evolution", we disconnected ourselves greatly from the natural cycle of evolution (that of survival of the fittest due to genetic superiority). Posession of tools gave us a level of seperation from what our natural abilities could do: as you can see today, natural ability is secondary due to the abundance of artificial modifiers. A person can be unable to move, for example, can still live a full life and father children.
-Vendal Thornheart
Every time there's a story on evolution on slashdot, I get to read lots of posts that are about as coherent as an evolutionist making hand waving motions to explain iptables. As someone in the middle: software enginner, bioinformatics, classically trained in population genetics, these are some of the most painful slashdot stories to read.
Given all that, I'd like to read the paper and see exactly *what* genes are were shown to be 'more evolved' in chimps. I've read a lot of papers and talks comparing chimps and humans (most recently James Noonan's talk on comparison of Neanderthal, chimp, and human sequences), and we often talk about the genes where humans have much higher rates of change, like FOXP (believed to be highly related to language ability.) We know well that chimps have much more highly evolved reproductive organs/systems than we do, but the question is - is that very interesting to us? Is what makes us interesting how we reproduce (and how well/efficiently we do), or other interesting phenotypes that we have compared to chimps.
Just playing the numbers game and saying more is better is interesting for getting headlines, but it's not the whole story.
Yeah this sounds like Larmarckian evolution to me. Which is to say it's wrong. There's no "Democrat" gene and there isn't a "fundamentalist Christian" gene either. (I mean, I suppose there *could* be, but for the sake of this discussion, these are learned traits, not hard-wired physical traits, like hair color). All this nonsense about those vile plebians polluting the gene pool is stupid (and dangerous) to me. We're not cockroaches, producing millions of offspring apiece. Humans average, what?, two offspring in their lifetimes? So the "poor people" have three kids and the WASPs have one. Big deal. Being born poor doesn't mean you stay poor. Being born Christian doesn't mean you stay Christian. Being born Democrat doesn't mean you stay Democrat. These come after the splicing and dicing of DNA.
Fleshy feet that cant walk along most surfaces without shoes
Bull *shit*.
Maybe your pansy, city-slicker feet are too soft and lily-white for you to stand to walk barefoot long enough for you to adapt but I've lived barefoot a fair bit in my life and a LOT of people walk barefoot on surfaces which you may not think possible.
There are a couple of factors which contribute: the toughness of the soles of your feet will improve quite a lot and the way in which you walk counts for a lot as well. Then theres being observant.
Most people going barefoot for the first time over rough or sharp surfaces, such as rocky coastlines or dirt roads, try to walk in the same style as they walk when wearing shoes; this is going to lead to pain and injury. They are also used to being able to walk pretty much without looking where they are going.
After watching how 'native' people walk barefoot I realised that it helps a lot to put the foot down fairly flatly, not heel first but as if you are trying to plant the whole surface of the foot on the ground at the same time.
Then you have to look ahead of yourself and get used to having a view of the world which includes the surface of the ground which you are about to step on. People in 'civilised' parts of the world are *incredibly* unobservant and self-absorbed. *INCREDIBLY*. Walking barefoot with your head in the clouds is going to get you hurt.
I've found myself able to walk on sharp, bare, volcanic rock with no pain or injury even with deconditioned (ie: softened) soles of my feet (after not going barefoot for a long time) merely by looking where I'm going and treading properly.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Men, this is great! I've translated it to spanish and published it in my blog. Check it out!
I wonder how the religious fanatics will taste their victory in a few generatiosn when there isn't enough food to go around. Are they going to summon Jesus to make water into wine and to multiply their harvest? Multiplying out of control coupled with global warming should prove to be most unpleasent. Maybe it's time we all opt-out of reproduction to save alteast our offsprings fromt he horrors.
Thats all
Evolution is like a search engine and the search space is the possible genome of the species.
By enabling the reproduction of individuals who, in nature, would not have had opportunity to reproduce, the human race has, in effect, been able to explore more of the search space than had previously been possible.
Today, there are areas of the genome which previous generations may never have touched upon.
If this is actually the case then I'm surprised at the findings represented in this article; perhaps there is some kind of lag effect?
Anyhows, I fully expect that the extended search parameters enabled by civilisation will sooner or later produce such mutant freak babies as telepaths, the fantastic 4, x-men et al. Assuming these things are possible at all they should be easier to 'find' now...
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
I can give you anecdotal evidence. I'm intelligent. Everyone in my direct family is smart. My wife is super smart. All of her direct relatives are smart. Our daughter is not even 4 and so fscking smart that I find myself needing to evolve a bit just to keep up with her sometimes.
A theory of intelligence being at least partially hereditary fits my personal experience and worldview quite nicely.
In other news, astrophysicists have announced that they now know what all that dark matter is: it's stupidity.
Now, that was funny. Looks like some republicans got hold of some moderator points.
I often wonder if humans really are the smartest species. Take dogs for example. What is their life like? They lay around, sleep and play all day long. Sleep all night long in a warm comfortable house. Get food and water every day. And get to have sex with people's legs anytime they want. What is our life like? We go to work 40 hours a week (or more) to barely survive, fight wars, are all bunched together in small spaces (think New York), always wonder when we get to have sex again and there is always danger of us being killed. So are we really the smartest species? Chimps probably look at us and say "what a bunch of dummies, working all the time just to survive when they could be playing and having fun all day long like we do...sheesh what idiots".
Devo-lution Rules! yeah!
At our university, the ethics approval form for new research involving any organism is about 8 pages long, must be filled out by the professor and signed off by a licensed veterinarian and two other senior faculty members, and finally approved by something called an "ethics board". Even for something as simple as mouse breeding. The process can take over a year.
Utterly retarded.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
This makes sense to me. After the big changes to the brain, DNA took a back seat to cultural differences, right? So why wouldn't the beings with the shorter lifespans and less powerful minds require greater amounts of evolution to stay competitive?
It's been a long time.
A good example would be my boss. He and his family are extremely fudamentalist Christian. No drive to produce anything more than what is needed for them to survive long enough to die and go to heaven. He has 7 children and plans on making his wife pregnant again this year. I on the other hand have had a vasectomy after having two children. I'm raising my children not in church but in the best learning environment I can provide for them (5 year old daughter plays classical violin and can use her linux computer good enough to make pictures with the GIMP). My children will likely grow up intellectually enlightened. His will likely grow up thinking the "Rapture" is near at hand so we don't have to have environmental controls and all of that evolution garbage MUST be impossible because the Earth is only 5,000 years old. If it wouldn't kill(literally, she has a small uterus) my 5' tall wife to have another baby I'd get right onto passing my genes along.
Maybe a particular strain of evolution has a ceiling of permitted change. a sub-species by design (oops) might be limited to a finite amount of changes before it flatlines and never evolves anymore where another might evolve to extinction or ultimate superiority.
Somehow your post and your sig tear me. The post itself is ridiculously racist, yet the sig is insightful.
But then, a broken clock's right twice a day.
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
They said I couldn't have my mouse breeding program, but when my army of giant mutant attack mice with retractable spinny-razor blades and laser beams on their heads are complete, they'll be sorry!
They'll all be sorry!
Uweeehehehehehehe!
"and all of that evolution garbage MUST be impossible because the Earth is only 5,000 years old"a rthsociety.htm
Don't forget it's flat, too!
http://www.alaska.net/~clund/e_djublonskopf/Flate
Moving into different environments should create new evolutionary pressures that encourage the development of new genes that would otherwise die out.
I'm not sure that's how evolution works. If a species does not have a gene for red eyes, no amount of selection is going to get you a critter with red eyes. It will take a mutation, or some sort of DNA cross pollination from a species that does have red eye genes.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Chimps possess muscles which are far superior to our own. http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_001b.html
Our present day culture of comfort is disastrous for the evolution of our race. Humans evolve best when culture promotes the pursuit of achievement rather than comfort. Become the Superman, not the Ultimate Man (read Thus Spake Zarathrustra from Nietzsche for details).
Well said, I would even go so far as to say that teenagers are somewhat hard wired to rebel against their parents social norms.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I would have thought that removing the selection process would increase the amount of genetic changes instead of decreasing it.
It does NOT have to be genetic at all. Nurture not nature is what makes you different from someone else. But nurture is your parents and if they are "fscked in the head", well, it is a big hurdle to jump over.
See the movie where Hitler grew up to be a perfectly normal and tolerant adult if brought up in a non-anti-semitic family. Hitler did not occur because of genes. Hitler occurred because of his upbringing AND later because of society.
This is why we are seeing more religious freaks out there. They are brought up by other religious freaks.
My God, you've also explained who Shakespear was.
What many people seem to forget is evolution is not all about solidifying change.
Perhaps us biologists are responsible for this, we continually focus on how evolution happens as a result of natural selection weeding out the weak genes from the code in favor of those most helpful to the existence of the species in question. This is important - survival of the fittest, the ability for those most adapted to their niche to carry on. However, if a species continually has pressure on its survival, to the point that only a very small, select group of the species can continue, any further insult or stress will threaten their extinction. Take the pandas, very cute yes, highly adapted to survive eating something that no other large animal does, but by only surviving on a select food source when that source (read: habitat) is gone so will they be.
The second part to evolution is variability. Part of our design (oops, did I use a bad word there?) is a faulty copying system. Like a book that randomly changes text, removing words, changing their order, writing whole sections backwards. Now some of these are neutral, blue vs brown eyes. Many to most of these changes are probably bad, they compromise our ability to fit in our environment perfectly. They lead to challenges like Down's Syndrome, or "weird" hiccups like androgen insensitivity syndrome. Some people's knees wear out early, others have no concept of morality. Many people in this world survive only because we support them to an "unnatural" degree. However, this does not make use weaker as a species. Instead it is an indication of our health, or rather the health of our habitat and the breadth of habitat we can survive in. If a stressor hits our planet many of these mutations may become an obstruction to procreation and be removed or reduced in the gene pool. However, the greater variability gives us the chance of a random mutation or series of mutations which may grant the species survival.
We have not sidestepped evolution. Rather than being forced to change, we are gaining ever greater variability. It's still evolution, just a different stage.
Maybe if you were strictly constrained to regard physical complexity only, you might be right. But that doesn't make much sense because the whole point of intelligence is that the genes get to punt by delegating adaption to a real-time system. If you take into account the adaptions created by that system--our languages, cultures, and technologies--clearly we are more complex than chimps. We are impressed when they use sticks to fish for termites--but most of us know they do this because we watched it on our color televisions in our climate-controlled dwellings.
The whole point of evolution is that it describes how complexity can arise from simplicity without the need for supernatural direction. If we pretend that that actually doesn't happen, for the political sake of saying that man is not the "pinnacle", then what the heck are we studying? When behavior is taken into account it is an accurate statement that man is the most complex organism on the planet today. We are so evolutionarily successful that one of our biggest concerns is the rate at which we out-compete other species for resources.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I've been on SSRIs since about before last Christmas, and I must say that I was surprised that instead of slowing me down like I expected the meds would, I've instead had an even easier time learning things. Since I'm also a lot more productive, getting a few things done rather than just studying them, my entire life has taken a very happy turn.
;)
SSRIs: my wonder-drug.
(On the question on intelligence, and why I'm now uncharacteristically posting as an AC, I took the MENSA test last Fall and scored 148. - Just enough to get me eligible for membership. I have not procreated and am not interested in doing so as I quite frankly don't like kids. Maybe I'll go make a donation to a sperm bank or something and then call my duty to society fulfilled.)
Indeed.
Humans enslave their body and mind to uphold a "civilization" that seems to successfully slow if not halt evolution. (I don't see how evolution can help humans get past biological problems that don't manifest themselves after the typical childbearing age of 20-40). As the parent mentioned, our current society does not support evolution very well.
How many years do we spend in school? How many years working? How many years enjoying life? Biologically, our practices are probably doing quite a bit of harm to the species. Is this really progress?
Are we really living a better lifestyle than the rest of the animal kingdom? I wonder at times...
...and very astute ones at that. I've been "wondering" along the same lines for years now.
It makes more sense to me by viewing intelligence as the servant of reproduction, rather than the other way 'round.
In "intelligent society" (with which I'm quite familiar and which much Western secular media essentially defines itself as representing, if not defining), people generally assume reproduction is all about making sure future generations are at least as intelligence as the current one. "Civilization" is, itself, another (very important) means to transmit intelligence to future generations.
From that point of view, the most important reproductive organ in the human body, especially the female's, is the brain. While other reproductive organs are necessary to make a baby, the parents' (especially the mother's) intelligence and other mental qualities will exert much more influence on how the child "turns out" than the physical aspects of reproduction.
However, the "Universe" (or Nature) itself really doesn't care about intelligence per se. Entropy guarantees an overall increase in disorder, so, for information (such as DNA) to survive the corrupting effects of being in this universe, it must reproduce, either directly or indirectly.
From that point of view, "intelligence" evolved merely to improve the odds of DNA surviving. That it currently happens to be primarily human DNA isn't (according to modern science) the "point" of the Universe, neither does the Universe care that the human species has suddenly exploded in population to several Billion and might actually be causing another extinction event, just as the Universe doesn't care that the human species is probably the first to appear on this planet, if not in the entire Universe, that is actually capable of preventing a much more severe extinction event (such as an asteroid hitting the planet, or a supervolcano erupting).
Meanwhile, until a potential extinction event, threatening the human species itself, is on the horizon and requires extraordinary intelligence and coordination to detect and prevent it, the sheer success of the human species prevents the usual evolutionary pressures compelling continued "progress" towards increased intelligence.
That means people who reproduce even somewhat more "vigorously" than the rest of the population will ultimately become a majority of the population, even if they're "not as smart" as those who reproduce less vigorously.
And, socially and culturally, it certainly seems that "intelligence" is now widely viewed as corresponding to "global awareness", including of such concerns as overpopulation; women's reproductive rights (which almost always means less reproduction, as men are almost always willing, especially in a time and place of plenty, to reproduce more, given their substantially lower personal investment in the process); and "quality of life" (including its length as well as the overall "expense" a life is deemed to be worth society's provisioning), which typically includes enjoying the fruits of sexual desire without necessarily having to bear any of the responsibilities for fulfilling those desires (such as bearing and raising actual children).
These views themselves can be viewed as somewhat akin to DNA that has an anti-reproductive component, and that therefore tends to not flourish or even survive in the long run.
And these views are not necessarily correlated with religion so much as with whether they view sexual reproduction as low or high cost (corresponding roughly with the masculine versus the feminine outlooks on sexual reproduction). For an extreme example, the Shakers were successful in many ways by "modern" intellectual assessments, but they viewed sexual reproduction as extremely high-cost, the result being that they are no longer "reproducing" except via prop
Practice random senselessness and act kind of beautiful.
jesus lockwood what is that, broccoli and gravy? christ, fuck!!!
This is wrong.
Human children are very hard to raise successfully, it takes 20+ years in modern society. Children raised with 2 parents have great advantages with regard to getting to adulthood successfully and raising their own children.
Since birth control + dna testing + paternity laws + less privacy, adultery in the modern world is not so well rewarded as you might think.
Will take hundreds if not thousands of generations for this to play out.
- Robert
this is not about lamarckian evolution, but about the propagation of culture, not of physical traits. true, just because the parents are democrat/christian/whatever, doesn't mean that the children will be, but with the parents having a good long number of years to instill their views in the child, there is a higher probability of the child ending up whatever the parents are.
:), i'm betting you would choose "democrat".
to illustrate, answer me this: given two parents of democratic political leaning, if you were to try to predict what the political leaning of the children would be, what would be your best guess?
to give you some incentive, let's say i give you $100k for every correct guess, and nothing for guessing incorrectly, so you really want to maximize your probability of correct guesses?
unless you are a total weirdo
How many retard-frog-squirrels did it take for this to happen?
Its is totally upon the perspective,
It is a common thought process that a Virus is something that is primitive, but one might equally argue that it is a super specialized entity which has removed everything else (cellular organelles like ribosomes etc...) to fit in its environment.
also, if we are to talk about the most evolved, it would probably be bacteria - since in evolution it is more important to adapt faster to ones surroundings (which are dynamic).
We humans as a species who are doomed to die (or evolve into something lot more different than what we are, phenotypically and genotypically), victims of our own success!
I'm not so sure about that. Like TapeCutter said, the notion of teenagers rebelling against their parents isn't just an edge case. It happens quite often. In fact, I'd argue that it's happening more and more, what with the pervasiveness of television and the Internet. Two Democratic parents does not a liberal child make. There's school, television, the Internet, iPods, friends, and any other number of potential influences. Think of it another way: given two Christian parents, how likely is it that the child will end up as a Christian parent? (We are interested in the child as a distributor of genes.) Fifty years ago, that answer would have been "very likely." Today, I think the answer would be "somewhat likely." Who knows what it will be in another fifty years.
But yes, I'll cede that there is a *higher* probability that a child will adopt the views of its parents. That is strictly cultural though, in my opinion. To suggest otherwise is the very essence of Lamarckism. Now if we start seeing children that automatically and predictably reject the fundamental tendency to act as social creatures that's encoded into our DNA, *then* we would have something to talk about. That would be an (alarming) evolutionary adaptation. Everything else is indicative of larger social and cultural issues.
I can't remember his name at the moment. But there was a scientist who raised a chimpanzee along side his own son. He discontinued the experiment after his son started immitating it, instead of the intentended cause of the chimpanzee immitating human behavior.
1 4/\/\ 1337
Evolution is purely change over time. Evolution occurs regardless if it's "survival of the fittest" as long as heritable traits are favored for selection. Natural selection still occurs as long as everyone doesn't have the same amount of children. It just doesn't select based on our idea of "fittest".
If anything, it hints that life does not generally evolve towards big intelligence like ours, even when it gets the chance (there was after all 500+ million years of complex life prior to us, none of which could start a fire)-
.. K
We may be specialists, evolved to think great thoughts since that was advantageous for our context at the time. Since it appears evolution does not favour philosphers, it might means we're an accident, and pretty alone in the cosmos.
Would be kind of sad if we made our own extinction then, wouldn't it.
Even though people believe that religious influence is on the rise, America seems to have gotten more atheistic. A 1997 ABC poll put the number of Americans that did not believe in a god at 4% and a Newsweek poll a few weeks ago put the number at 6%. Although this is not a change within the margin of error the number has most likely increased. There are many signs of a welling if atheistic ideas catching hold on Internet forums, on Youtube, and in bestselling books. I think people will be surprised by a steady but slow increase in non-theism.
Also the birth rate of religious and nonreligious people is not the only determinant of future demographics. After all a person raised in a religious family can become nonreligious and visa-versa. This is a characteristic determined an individual and not necessary their genes alone. In fact nearly all of the vocal atheists that I respect were raised in a religious family.
They spend their days eating bananas, having sex with everyone and climbing trees, and they get away with it. They ARE more evolved.
...progressive and generally smart people may fuck as much (or more)... This IS Slashdot. Your assertion looks like pure wish fulfillment from here.chimps appear to keep up until basic grammar. they definitely have some very similar brains, but their intellectual capacity more or less maxes out around human toddler level.
They give grants for research this. I believe grants have been given out for previous research projects which revealed:
a) Babies learn
b) Alcohol make students drunk.
and, most famous of all
c) Dogs can associate sounds with food ("Here doggie, good doggie, come and eat" or "ding" - its culturally dependent)
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
THat's because evolution doesn't work that way. It's opt-out, not opt-in. Natural selection selects who will die, not who will live. Unless you take that definition implicitly, but it's better not to. Just consider that natural selection wipes out unviable species, it shouldn't be interpreted as a reward for viable species.
Like what I said? You might like my music
Personally I suspect that a small amount of oral history and knowledge like proverbs are probably more than 10,000 years old, but we have no means of knowing.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
The Borg could go two ways - you could have the Star Trek portrayal, ruled by a central intelligence that compels it to extend, embrace and extinguish, or you could have a happier Borg - a collective of individuals who collaborate on the machinery that supports their life, in order that they can spend the majority of their time having a great time in a virtual theme park of a life.
I mean, give me full body cybernetic implants including systems that can generate all the nutrients my body requires from nothing but the energy inputs required to reprocess waste products? Hell yes, I'd spend most of my time doing whatever the hell I liked, either in the "real world" or in a virtual utopia that could either be my own private universe or a MMO game on steroids (but without the levelling grind).
I'd like to think that a Borg society arising from a more liberal culture, like the Swedish, would be more like that. I always saw the Borg as characterising global capitalism in Star Trek, although I'm not sure that was the official intent.
They weren't invented because horses can't walk without them but that they act as a new protective layer between the animal walking and the ground that's pointy.
Not to mention, it doesn't matter. Average intelligence has arguably not changed in the last 5000 years, what's changed is our knowledge of the world around us, so any perceived modern intelligence has more to do with applying the same creativity our ancients had to a better developed understanding of the world around us. If you (you the reader) compare the average fifth grade education even in our borked US public schools to the average education of, say, a Roman peasant or a peasant in the high middle ages, I think you'll find that we've got the better education. We need to keep trending towards more understanding, and the fact is that more crazy religious whackos have made positive contributions to society than otherwise (I'm thinking about Newton and Galileo and the likes of them). There isn't any objective way to look at our current body of science and conclude that religious whackos are a bad influence, because overall they have been a net positive influence.
So no, I don't think any existing religious movement is going to damage our overall understanding of the world around us nor do I think it's going to result in massive scientific and technological regression. Rather, I think the danger has to do with undoing a great deal of work in areas of human rights, good government, and so forth, and that's understanding that it's these particular areas where religious whackos have had a net negative influence.
Like what I said? You might like my music
I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure.
-You-Know-Who
Eclipse PDE and Me
A single species extinction event doesn't tell us anything about the general fitness of species for environments. Assume an especially avaricious predator evolves that specifically targets your species or only lives in the environment where you live: you go extinct and so does the predator. Tough luck. A less talented species over time can fill up the empty ecological niche because there is no better competitor around any more. Only on the level of many extinction events natural selection becomes evolution. Evolution is not some kind of Crusoe economics: no straightforward hill-climbing towards better species X environment matches with a static environment.
Native Indians when asked by white men about where they come from (loosely from memory so bear with me): Maybe YOU come from the apes. Our ancestors and our spirit comes from the stars. We live in this world, but we are not of this world. We have legends of humans BECOMING apes, because of evil deeds and ignorance (degeneration), however our ancestors came from the stars in the sky and is not native to this planet.
In Mali, West Africa, lives a tribe of people called the Dogon. The Dogon are believed to be of Egyptian decent and their astronomical lore goes back thousands of years to 3200 BC. According to their traditions, the star Sirius has a companion star which is invisible to the human eye (science has shown this to be a white dwarf). This companion star has a 50 year elliptical orbit around the visible Sirius and is extremely heavy. It also rotates on its axis.
This legend might be of little interest to anybody but the two French anthropologists, Marcel Griaule and Germain Dieterlen, who recorded it from four Dogon priests in the 1930's. Of little interest except that it is exactly true. How did a people who lacked any kind of astronomical devices know so much about an invisible star? The star, which scientists call Sirius B, wasn't even photographed until it was done by a large telescope in 1970.
The Chakra systems of native americans directly corresponds to the chakra system of the Tibetan and Vedic knowledge from around India. If you look at a tibetan and someone native from e.g. high mountains in Peru, they have the same colours of dress, the same frame, even many of their rites are directly mirroring each other. Chakra systems are also found to correspond to Egyptian lore, the Kaballa and many other spiritual traditions around the world. 7 is a holy number in most traditions, which corresponds to the 7 chakra energy senters in the body (if youd like to see energy around your body for yourself, take alternating cold and warm showers and relax in a hot sauna (alone so you can relax) - you might just catch the glimpse of "fluid-like electricity" around your body against a darker corner).
From Ezekiel 1 (International Version of the Bible). Notice the detailed description of an UFO, astronaut dress with glass bulb and wings/jetpack / airplane with cockpit and metal wings, wings of metal, fire beneath and ezekiel being physically transfered, a description of "moving wheels", some sort of movable backpack or robot. We laugh of abduction stories today, but they are not new to human lore. These "moving wheels" are even not invented yet, but might be useful to us in the future! Having a mobile backpack movable by our "spirit" / thoughts, might be handy indeed!
The Living Creatures and the Glory of the Lord
1 In the [a] thirtieth year, in the fourth month on the fifth day, while I was among the exiles by the Kebar River, the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God.
2 On the fifth of the month--it was the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin- 3 the word of the LORD came to Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, [b] by the Kebar River in the land of the Babylonians. [c] There the hand of the LORD was upon him.
4 I looked, and I saw a windstorm coming out of the north--an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light. The center of the fire looked like glowing metal, 5 and in the fire was what looked like four living creatures. In appearance their form was that of a man, 6 but each of them had four faces and four wings. 7 Their legs were straight; their feet were like those of a calf and gleamed like burnished bronze. 8 Under their wings on their four sides they had the hands of a man. All four of them had faces and wings, 9 and their wings touched one another. Each one went straight ahead; they did not turn as they moved.
10 Their faces looked like this: Each of the four had the face of a man, and on the right side each had the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also ha
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
>> I can't remember his name at the moment. But there was a scientist who raised a chimpanzee along side his own son. He discontinued the experiment after his son started immitating it
George Bush Senior?
> Natural selection selects who will die, not who will live.
I Think you are missing the point of Natural Selection. I am a living being. Every day I am faced with choices, and decisions that need to be taken. From the options available to me I select the option that I deem to be most valuable to my survival. This is fundamental Natural Selection. Over time, my choices or selections have a cumulative effect on my survival. For instance if I was faced with the choice to live in a cold or warmer climate, and I select the colder climate, over time I will adapt to the climate. Over generations, there will probably be physical changes to the genetic lineage that supercedes me, to adapt to the environment, and to increase the odds of survival within it. This is evolution.
There is no "Natural Selection" process that decides my fate for me. Apart from the choices I make in my own life, and the effect of the environment upon me, and how I co-exist in it, there is no greater power that decides whether I should live or die.
Participatory Governance : The only feasible option for a real democracy, where everyone really does have a say.
>> if you could only find a credible link about intelligence being hereditary
> Yes, this isn't immediately obvious so we need to raise a monkey and a baby human together and see which grows up to be smarter!
Rather than mimicking adults, the scientists found that young chimps are better at working things out for themselves than children, who will simply copy the actions of their elders. http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1327942004
Everything points to the fact that chimps are on par if not more intelligent, but humans have this vastly more powerful communication which allows us to build on other peoples' ideas far better than simply watching what they do and copying that.
Besides, my experience with mensa people is that high IQ has pretty much nothing to do with conventional wisdom, analytic thinking, scientific mind or other traits I actually value more.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/
Major funding for this project provided by the Michael Jackson foundation.
That's interesting, so it should be human see, human do.
Chimps could write, or use sign language, or have beneficial selection on better vocal chords, but didn't. I think it's more than bad I/O.
... all that really counts is survival. And at the current rate, it seems this underevolved species is on the fast track to getting those overevolved monkeys extinct.
And like many others have pointed out in other words: the need for a species to make a lot of genetic adaptations only reflects its mental or cultural inability to move out of a threatening environment or come up with an alternative solution to the problems in it.
The Solutrean ice pyramids for instance (19,000 BCE), that served as an example for the smaller Egyptian pyramids, left no trace whatsoever. We will never be able to prove that they existed: we can only surmise their existence from the stone copies by the Egyptians (who had no access to ice), and the similarities between Solutrean and early Egyptian tools and art (both made tools from stone and bone, both made images of animals, etc). And the Solutreans also discovered and colonized America, of course, leaving countless ice pyramids in their wake, which unfortunately left no trace whatsoever.
There is a politically correct term for intelligence/IQ used in many contexts. It is "Parental Educational Level".
It is used to rationalize things such as increased crime and poverty among minorities.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Dang. I was just getting ready to say that.
Ummm... What does that mean in English?
Rebelling is a myth... The teenage rebelling is a social construct because we keep extending childhood (first school to 16, then 18, now college until 22) while the brain is wired that after puberty it should go out and seek a mate. Being kept in an artificial state (with parents, while capable of procreating) has created a perception that "teenagers rebel."
If you look in religious communities, where marrying young is encouraged (not 14 anymore, but 18-15 is young in the modern world, but the norm in religious communities, women between 18 and 20, men between 20 and 25), as is having children, the teenage rebellion is MUCH lower.
Basically, the spoiled boomer kids artificially rebelled, and expected their kids to, but the rebellion is a joke... What percentage of boomers as children were A) in college B) part of a counter-culture rebelling, and C) didn't graduate, get a good job, and move to the suburbs and have a life like their parents? 1%?
The political correlation (between parent's political affiliation and child) is somewhere around 80%. Some of this could be because economic circumstances are USUALLY similar (parent's education is the second most highly correlated factor with income, after one's own, but it's a CLOSE second).
The fact is, if fundamentalist birthrates are 4x the "norm" and it APPEARS to be... the right-wing of religious groups appear to be averaging between 6-8 children/generation, while secular birthrates are around 1.5 and overall around 2.2 in the US, then even if 25% of the religious kids become secular and NONE of the secular kids become religious then the religious population is doubling in size each generation. Combine that with generations starting at age 20 instead of 30, and you get 3 double-sized generations in the time that the secular population had 1.
But when you combine a large fundamentalist population that believes secular people are the devil, and a large anti-religious secular population (which also appears to be growing albeit from drop-outs from religious populations), you are tending towards two subsets that hate each other... Without something triggering the reversion to the mean (which normally happens), we're in for a bumpy ride.
That's the thing, the "in" thing to do is use birth control and not have children. Feminist ideology has be subtly discouraging women from having families. It isn't blatant, but it's the "start your career first," "plan your children," etc., that suggests that children are a burden. It's a subconscious thing, but if children are things to wait to have until you can afford, and should be planned for, clearly they are a "bad thing," and it is reflected in birth rates.
:) It's not intentional, it's a whole lot of subconscious things.
The culturally "in" things are: get a good education, make a lot of money, buy fancy toys, etc. People that DO those things have fewer children than those that DO NOT. People that have the most children either "get knocked up as teenagers," engage in anti-social behavior like cheating and child abandonment, or are religiously motivated.
We are selecting cultural and genetic traits that are NOT culturally in. Unless culturally large families become a status symbol (which is unlikely as the government and courts make having large families miserable, try getting 3 kids into a sedan, easy in the 70s, but now with 1-2 car seats and 1-2 booster seats, it can't be done, you need a mini-van or SUV -- and that's just at 3, not large yet) and the cultural elites have big families, you're going to keep de-selecting those traits.
Hell, look our Ms. Spears is derided for getting married and having two kids, while her "rivals" are lauded for partying all night. She is criticized for acting like the celebrity culture wants her to act because she has kids, talk about a message to young people that having kids sucks...
The human animal gets around its genetic imperfection by exploiting its advanced reasoning, mathematical, and tool making abilities. Many of these skills are less advanced in Chimpanzees, so they are more reliant on selective mutation to improve.
You mean Idiocracy?
I'm still undecided whether it is mainly entertainment or very seriously meant warning. I'm just quite sure it is not both. :)
hany
This sounds familiar, but it sounds like the case of a scientist raising a feral child, and giving up when he realized the feral child would never become "human".
I seriously doubt that a normal human child would defer to an ape in a social environment.
Here's a question: ATAGGGCCTGATTACGT. Answer?
DNA scientists are struggling to find the answer. CS'ers know they need a decoder ring. That decoder is the organism itself.
If the organism works, not much reason to change the code.
I look forward to posting this exact same comment 40 years from now...
>> Yes, this isn't immediately obvious so we need to raise a monkey and a baby human together and see which grows up to be smarter!
Though it may not be exactly your point, you seem to acknowledge that the way you raise someone is important for his/her intelligence too. Thus intelligence is partly hereditary.
Do wee need to leave Einstein's baby alone in the jungle to see how long he can survive without any proper education ?
The real question could be: "can Humans become stupid enough so that education won't improve them any more ?".
Since this article says that Humans have not evolved much, this may not be an urgent issue.
That's only because we invented 'teenagers'.
In the actual real world, when those hormones first start showing up, you run out and get a family and fend for yourself. That is what is hardwired, and it's hardwired not just in humans, but in all mammals.
When that is prevented, in modern human teenagers, is when they start acting weird and attempting to distance themselves from their parents.
That's also why teenagers are very self-conscious...they know they're supposed to be trying to attract a mate.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Adopt a child.
Preferably one with dumb biological parents.
Will moving into a clan of intellectuals make that child grow up to be smart?
I hope it dose. Otherwise, our species is in deep trouble. (See my parent post.)
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
So according to the evolutionist theory, a tornado could go through a junk yard, and produce a 747!
/ 0684834936/ref=cm_cr_dp_pt/103-3356292-9553457?ie= UTF8&n=283155&s=books
Biochemistry has put the death nail in the evolution coffin.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews
We have older evidence already. This here gives us 12000 at least: http://www.swr.de/international/en/2007/01/22/beit rag3.html
When the British fought the Zulus they were quite impressed as the Zulus wore no shoes. The British were astounded at the terrain the Zulus could walk over without injury. The soles of their feet were supposedly tougher than most of the infantry men's boots and shoes.
Well fuck me sideways. You're right. You're absolutely spot on. This explains everything. One only has to watch Fox News to see it.
Thank you for a truly brilliant post.
ps: You need to update your URL. Link is broken.
So let me ask this... how do we ban dumbasses so we don't have to see their second grade recess posts?
You are all a bunch of idots.
> Rather than mimicking adults, the scientists found that young chimps are better at working
> things out for themselves than children, who will simply copy the actions of their elders.
>
> Everything points to the fact that chimps are on par if not more intelligent, [...]
No, it shows that young chimps are on par with pre-school children.
In other words, it takes more time for the human brain to mature and reach its potential.
"substantially more genes in chimps evolved in ways that were beneficial than was the case with human genes"
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I don't think the time from puberty to fully fledged adult is our "invention", it's simply a label for that stage of life. Other than that your post basically expresses what I was trying to say.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
There surely will be people with those genes in the general population most of whom will not become 100m runners.
What puts apparts those great athletes is a lifetime devoted to doing a sport. Any body abled person could become a professional athlete, not everybody could win, but it is perfectly feasible that with training any helthy person reaches quite decent sporting standards.
The difference between the champions and other athletes is in general so small that it becomes a statistical irrelevance (in 100m there is a 1 sec difference between the top of the class and the lousiest proper athletes, which is frankly nothing).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Feminism is about equality, not about having childrens or not.
No serious feminist nowadays will call children a burden, even tangentially.
The problem is that males use them to dominate the family relationship on their favour (immensily more women stay at home with the children than men) and the state (of whatever ideologuy you care to mention) does not recognize the work of women staying at home as real work (they are considered unemployed) which further disadvantages women in society, in economic power , etc.
Do not blame feminists for the lack of care for the needs of women in male dominated societies
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Of course there were probably civilisations prior to 10,000 years ago. Unfortunately the only evidence we have of this is the Sphinx.
You mean the Sphinx that has been variously dated between 6,000 and 2,000 BC (i.e., less than 10,000 years ago)?
At least you’re predictable.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
Long delayed post, pulled up my history and saw this. You are defining raising children successfully to "have the ability to financially support their family." You are setting the bar pretty high, the ability to have a nice middle class life.
However, biologically, "raising children successfully" means that your offspring reach the age at which they can reproduce, then reproducing. When you observe 2-3 generations of "welfare moms" with teenage daughters that have babies, you will notice that they are, biologically speaking, successfully raising children and spreading their genetic component. While the "baby daddies" may not pass their cultural traits on, they will pass their genetics on.
Your listed reasons as to why adultery isn't rewarded financially, it ignores my point, it's rewarded genetically. And those things that discourage that behavior are true for middle class and up families, but not lower and working class, where lawsuits and paternity tests are more rare. Since the birth rates are much higher further down on the totem poll, it IS rewarded where birth control is less used and paternity suits less common.