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Recent Human Evolution May Have Been Driven By Self-Selection
Slur writes "The New York Times reports an insightful theory of Human evolution that gives credit for our accelerated evolution to the evolving brain. By virtue of our aesthetic and utilitarian preferences we ourselves have been responsible for molding the present human form and consciousness. Applied to other species we call it 'artificial selection,' but the new theory implies we did it all quite naturally, unconsciously, and that the exponential evolutionary acceleration we have achieved as a species in recent time is just what you'd expect. It also suggests that the current lull in our physical evolution is by 'choice' as well."
"And I pick.... me!"
Eugenics works, but is of course worse than the disease. I guess all you can do is buy some new clothes and get a car with a pussy magnet.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
In my next incarnation, I want six digits on both hands, a tail, and four nipples. So just grin and bear it, people!
It doesn't matter if we evolve, because we change the environment around us as opposed to adapting to it. Therefore evolution has been irrelevant as a factor of survival since humans learned to use tools.
...advanced to the point where really stupid people can safely breed with other really stupid people, the predicions of "The Marching Morons" and "Idiocracy" will come to pass.
We just have to feel special, don't we...
As if all of the sudden when you gain intelligence, the rules of evolution change to a new set. Perhaps the term evolution should always be prefaced with a qualifier, such as "biological" or "human" where the qualifier has distinct meaning, and can make it a subset of other qualifiers. It just seems to me that the increase in our intellectual evolution is no different than biological evolution. Not to say we shouldn't put our effort into researching cognitive science, it is a remarkable field. But I think looking at it in this way makes us feel special for no good reason and can muddy the waters more than clear them.
Almost like theres a intelligent designer moving us forward saying "nothing to see here"
The 5 books which should be mandatory reading for North Americans:
1) Against Empire by Michael Parenti
2) Other People's Money by Nomi Prins
3) American Dynasty by Kevin Phillips
4) John Kenneth Galbraith by Richard Parker
5) Brothers by David Talbott
So, we're talking about teleological choices, made by teleological beings, driving a non-teleological process?
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Just sayin'.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Maybe the selection wasn't always completely unconsciously ?
How many new species are there now?
God spoke to me.
Yes, let's kill people that do not fit your arbitrary definition of beauty. That would solve all the world's problems.
..and there was a down side: KHAAAAAN!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Wow, that is absolutely abhorrent. I am speechless...
who comes from that classic heartless eugenics-oriented pov that we as a species are getting physically unfit as we allow the autistic, the downs symdrome, the epileptic, etc., to survive and breed. in classic trollish fashion, he insisted the cavemen had it right when they just left the old, infirm, etc. to die outside in the snow
;-)
my response was to question the supremacy of physical fitness. for example, the rise of humans in larger groups, cities, drives the emphasis on new genes: human empathy, for example, being a highly desirable survival advantage in large groups. and the less physically fit in large groups can still contribute to the survival of the group. such that a well-organized group of less physically fit humans can outcompete very fit physical specimens that unfortunately aren't as well wired for human empathy, and therefore are out there, loners, failng to coordinate with othwer humans for the successful passing on of their genes. the rise of cities changing the emphasis onto new genes for survival
which, ironically, given his utter lack of empathy for the less physically fit, put him on the lower end of the "fit" gene pool, where "fit" now means more empathetic, not bigger biceps
perhaps we should leave him out in the snow i wondered?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Once again proving, geeks are there own worst enemies when it comes to the sex.
So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
Companions the creator seeks, not corpses, not herds and believers. Fellow creators the creator seeks -- those who write new values on new tablets. Companions the creator seeks, and fellow harvesters; for everything about him is ripe for the harvest.
Ya, because its awful that we don't keep creating stupid and poor people.
You want to implement EUGENICS in the US. Historically this has had some downsides as well, granted yes it can be beneficial in someways, as you have listed, but how do we avoid reimplementing segregation, and genocides in the process. Can you assure that you yourself will be acceptable in the eyes of this new program? There is far too much gray area here for some innocent people to be hurt or worse because they don't fit in. Basically I disagree...
hot asian and hispanic chicks around.
Oh.
Wait.
Never mind.
Yay, evolution!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Just watch how quickly the genes for HIV resistance will spread in Africa.
I'll bet if we look closely we will be able to find mutations for plague resistance in European populations. Talk about selection pressure if 30% of the population died.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
About point 3 : I have a hard time seeing how you could breed with photoshop to create these extremely beautiful people, or rather I prefer not to imagine it.
Here, see for yourself : http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=14537
Fertility rates are coming down everywhere, even in the developed world, where the exigencies of daily survival still tend to apply some selection pressure on intelligence.
Since H.G. Wells, there has been some speculation that the human species will split into two distinct gene pools (I wouldn;t say "species," since interbreeding remains a possibility). However, if one gene pool should find itself supporting the other, larger pool, the burden would eventually become too great and the two pools would either re-merge or one would become extinct.
"The impossible often has a certain integrity that the merely improbable lacks" - Dirk Gently
I read the first article and discussion; the impression I got was that by "accelerated evolution" the author meant "more diversity", typified by this comment:
The idea being that everyone gets to reproduce these days and that there is no longer a heavy selection process weeding out "unfit" characteristics. Now this article seems to indicate that selection is more intense than ever. I don't see how you can have, at the same time, a more intense selection process and higher than usual diversity.
We always knew Comcast was corrupt, here's the proof: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1909890&cid=34545432
Sorry this was not the original link : http://demo.fb.se/e/girlpower/retouch/retouch/index.html
... that about sums it up.
additionnal hint for this site, click on the picture to start playing.
Secondary bonus for bearing with me this far a post with many other links about the subject: http://www.diet-blog.com/archives/2006/03/26/celebrity_retouching_10_reasons_to_revise_your_reality.php
This was just about 20 seconds of googling it. I count two professional photographer within my friends, and when discussing with one of them who does portraits, she told me that when she takes the picture she is already thinking of the things she can fix on photoshop later
... to tell us that to some degree, we are... intelligently designed.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
smacks of the phrase, "Well, duhh!".
"Natural Selection" was never defined as some great force of nature. No, it has always been a handy way to describe the consiquences of lives of living entities on their own populations. For instance, many birds pick the prettiest mate, for whatever reason, thus it's the prettiest birds that live on rather than the ones who can feed themselves more efficiently.
Seriously, humanity has to step down from its bloody high horse - we are beings. That's it, just beings living on a ball of dirt in space. Waahoo. Of course our preferences will help form our population... duhh... I hope no one was paid governement money to come up with great revilation...
That's not a new theory at all; I first read about that in the book "The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature" by Geoffrey Miller - good book, worth a read.
The summary seems to have little relationship to the article. The article doesn't say a damn thing about choice, nor does it at all imply that humans intentionally directed their own evolution (as the summary implies.)
Prior to this, evolutionary scientists assumed that the power of culture was so strong that it swamped evolutionary effects by essentially keeping people alive where they otherwise couldn't have. What this says is that no, that is not true, and that the human race evolved to adapt to new environments just like every other species. Essentially what this means is that our brains let us survive in new environments (for example, the arctic, which without knowledge of clothing and shelter would kill a human quick) and then those that did so evolved to adapt to the environment (for example, the way the Inuit tend to deal better with high fat diets like you'd expect living on seals.) This wasn't by any sort of choice. This was because the ancient Inuit who had cholesterol problems all died off.
This is, of course, all something that happened in the past. We aren't entering any new environments, but even if we were, the death rate has become so amazingly low, that any sort of evolution is hard to imagine. Evolutionary works fastest when lots of people are dying.
The name for selection that depends on choice is "sexual selection" and it is found in many, many species and was recognized from the beginning. The extent this happened in humans is unknown. This article says nothing about that.
The cake is a pie
it's always good to dismantle a harmful pseudoscience's "facts" and show that their "facts" are nothing more than propaganda
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
For demonstrating so succinctly the wilful ignorance that many religionists have with regard to evolution.
You could have wasted our time but all it took was a 7 word comment and a three word sig. Ten words.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
This is a pretty old theory. It's the basis of the 1970's book and TV show "The Ascent of Man" by Jacob Bronowski. His final chapter (as I recall it, it's been years since I read it) says that human evolution accelerated because of "cultural evolution." In other words, Man is the only species that can pass its knowledge to future generations by means of words. This allows each generation to evolve beyond the previous, without having to create everything from scratch. But Bronowski also said that alongside Cultural Evolution, there was also real biological evolution, because people tend to fall in love with people like themselves, and intelligent people marry intelligent people, a form of natural selection for intelligence.
I don't think intelligence came from self-selection breding. Look at it this way: we don't go after the smart chick. We go after the hot chick. Sometimes the smart chick is the hot chick, but stereotypes suggest this is the exception rather than the rule.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
So what if we change the environment? That doesn't stop evolution. There are always traits that will give an advantage, and those that will give a disadvantage, and there are always novel ways of combining previous traits that can lead to something new. Evolution has never been about survival, it is about passing on genes. And every organism out there changes the environment. Organisms define the environment: prey to some, predator to others, host to still others. To stop evolution in humanity, one would need to ensure that every human on the planet had exactly the same chance to pass on their genes as every other.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Eugenics might work in the short run, but I doubt it would be a very bad thing in the long run. First off, by selecting such traits, you decrease the amount of genetic difference between offspring. Sure, they might all live to be 120 and be able to bench press a truck, but that won't be much consolation when a single virus kills everyone. I find the commercial banana to be a good example. Years of breeding the best fruit and healthiest plants, and it is very possible that a single disease could ravage the population because of that lead to too much genetic similarity between plants. You can also look at the cheetah population to see the long term results of a small breeding pool. You stop the 'unfit' from breeding, you're going to have one hell of a mess on your hands in a few generations. Personally, I'll take cancer and obesity over crippling birth defects and constant fear of illness.
And besides, evolutionarly speaking, life evolves by trying new and weird things. Maybe fat and ugly is the next phase in human evolution. Do you know? Do you think anyone knows enough to direct human evolution? Then shut up.
Oh, and there's the fact that you'd have to be one immoral bastard to decide that certain groups arn't allowed to have kids.
A 4 word sig.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Yes of course I know we have developed over time, it is purely logical. Put two stones together and you have 3! I am a mindboggling genious on the brinck of madness sitting here browsing the other mindless blogging egos typing their life away all fighting for good karma just to impress some damn bytes streaming to the epiphany of evolution at the other end, chezus KRIST we are screwed! You know what? I bet those people who joined a sect to go to a "better" place in fact DID go to a better place, anything is better than here, or anywhere, for fuck sake - take me away from this goddamn place.
Oh, btw. - thanks for all the fish!
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
therefore, you are on the lower end of the "fit" gene pool
;-)
where "fit" now means larger empathy, not larger biceps
therefore, we should leave you out in the snow
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I've been saying this for years. First though, we need to isolate the genes that cause greed, arrogance, and stupidity. Once that's filtered out of the gene pool, then maybe we can advance as a species. Also, whoever modded you troll needs to quit being such a damn fundamentalist. Maybe they're afraid they'd be first on the block.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
I wish they would stop calling it mutation like something new never seen before suddenly appeared in our DNA - which is contrary to almost every new discovery about how our DNA changes over time. Too many of these people still beleive Darwin's Finches actually "evolved" new beak shapes. In fact, the finches beak shapes where already coded in their DNA and methylation of the DNA allowed their evironmental adaption (not mutation) to be inherited by their offspring. No mutation required. In fact, adaptions inherited through methylation can disappear after a few generations if they are no longer beneficial. Yet Darwin's Finches were the undisputed proof of evolution in textbooks when I took biology in college a few decades ago.
In human "evolution" grandparenting became a survival factor because the knowledge obtained from grandparents taught to children and adults was more valuable then the energy grandparents consumed. Our longer lives are mostly due to our hairlessness (boosting our immune systems) and increased levels of superoxide dismutase (slowing aging) - neither of which required a new mutation. Our larger brain capacity augmented the passing of knowledge between generations. But increasing the size of something we already have doesn't require mutation. For example, men produce testosterone in varying amounts. If having more testosterone proves to be beneficial then those who have more will survive passing the trait to have more testosterone to their offspring. No mutation required.
A true mutation has so little chance of being beneficial in a complex biological organism as to be almost beyond belief. So I doubt the rapid changes we have seen during the last 50,000 years has had anything to do with evolution; we are just adapting rapidly as traits we already have are being emphasized.
But last I heard, there were some pretty awesome lizards with three different types of males in a complicated competition between them that all adds up to great evolutionary fun. Maybe when we genetically alter ourselves to take that lizard trait we'll be something special. But when it comes to procreation, we're just apes, man.
Property is theft.
This is called sexual selection and is nothing new. Darwin wrote about it extensively.
I've been self selecting for so long I'm facing extinction.
Humans are no different, other than perhaps on the scale they operate. There is no real difference between birds building a nest and us building a house.
Nor is our use of tools any more perfect than (other) animals, we do not have mastery over everything (eg HIV, anti-biotic resistant bacteria) and until we do (ie forever) evolution will still have a role.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
what "fit" means is constantly changing. fat people are now seen as unfit. well, we live in an age where the food supply is rock solid dependable. there's no need for a biological reserve, and all of the cardiovascular and other health related deficicts associated with a a lot of adipose tissue
but in previous ages of man, ages of sporadic starvation, the fat were most fit. and that was what, a century or two ago all around the world? still real today in some parts of africa?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Nature determines that weak and premature infants should die, yet they are kept alive and become adults. Nature determines that some adults should not be breeding, yet fertility drugs override this. Nature determines that various people should die by heart failure etc, but drugs keep them alive.
Sure, these are all good from the emotional point of view of keeping people alive and making childless couples happy etc, but does it really help the human gene pool? Perhaps Mother Nature had a good reason to kill off a weak child or prevent that infertile couple from breeding. The long term impacts can only be known in a few generations.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Here's one example of an evolutionary path. Data indicates that sickle-cell anemia may have evolved in order to give resistance to malaria. As a plus side, people with sickle-cell anemia have resistance to a deadly disease, on the downside, people with sickle-cell anemia can experience pain in their joints and death. If our governments got their act together we could either eliminate or severely curtail the presence of malaria-carrying mosquitoes. If such a decrease in malaria occurred, it might lead to a reduction in sickle-cell anemia in the human gene pool. An example of tech (and to one's confoundment, politics) influencing environment and evolution.
LOL.
Who said kill? You can convince people by winning them over.
Dwarfs marrying and having kids is a SIN
We're getting improvements all the time - you don't just suddenly pop into being a new species. It's gradual.
Examples:
Autism. Most likely this is evolution trying out ideas for the next generation human brain. People with autism can occasionally do extraordinary things - but usually at a cost which makes the change non-beneficial, so evolution sorts them out. But eventually some selection will take place and we'll get a beneficial autism-like ability added to our species. Maybe someday soon we'll all be able to count cards ala Rain Man, or be able to tell you the square root of a six digit number without a calculator, or memorize the phone book.
It happens. Here's (most likely) a recent improvement to our species - extra cones in the eyes. Some women can see in more colors than the rest of us. They're called tetrachromats.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
What the hell are you talking about? What exponential evolutionary acceleration?
but anyone who champions the supremacy of a brutal racist rationale like eugenics, something that went out of vogue sometime around the first world war, yes, such a person is 100% a troll according to the majority of definitions of what a troll is. a "classic" troll, in fact, like i said, because the troll champions an old dead way of thinking
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It doesn't matter if we evolve, because we change the environment around us as opposed to adapting to it.
Just for starters, infectious diseases will continue to drive human evolution. The bugs evolve immunity to technological helpers (such as antibiotics) and our large population and easy travel means lots of potential for plagues. And bugs swap protective genes around - even between drastically different species (such as e-coli and salmonella) and collect them (on plasmid "charm bracelets"). In reasonably short order they can be expected to evolve to the point that some are resistant to pretty much every chemical compound our own cells can survive. As a result our immune systems are still undergoing evolutionary pressure - and evolving at an accelerated rate compared to the times when humans were scattered bands of hunter/gatherers.
Example: Bubonic Plague caused a strong selective pressure for a previously rare form of one receptor in the immune system's communication net. Those with two copies of the common form died off in droves as the bugs used it to ride into the lymph system and undermine active immunity. But those with one each of that and a particular variant got very sick but survived, while those with two copies of the variant didn't have enough of an infection to be identified as having the disease.
Nowdays plague is mildly endemic in the US southwest and still very susceptible to antibiotics. But evolutionary pressures are at work again - on the same two forms of the gene and working in the same direction. HIV targets the same same receptor and misses the same variant, so people with two copies of the variant don't develop AIDS despite exposure to HIV. (Which is what led to the immunity to Plague being discovered.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
But a very common belief nonetheless.
You can't take the sky from me...
No way, it's becoming ever more relevant! How many people die young because they are too stupid to safely handle cars? Or too stupid to realize the dangers of electricity? Or any other technology?
Technology is making evolution go faster and faster, but it's turning from adapting the physical features to adapting the brain.
And, please, don't start this "virgin slashdotters" myth again. In the 13th century nerds became monks and never married, what's so new about that? The difference is that with sufficiently advanced technology nerds have a higher chance of meeting someone who will be willing to mate with them and bear descendants.
so does this mean that blondes aren't endangered anymore, since gentlemen prefer them?
First we learn to change our DNA as we see fit. In an "ideal" world I could imagine this being common place in less than 50 years, but factoring in politics, beaurocracy and ethical concerns and I wouldn't be so optimistic.
Then we master the physical world, down to the single atom. We've already made great strides toward this end, but think replicators from Star Trek. The ability to efficiently build up any form of matter from single atoms.
Not long after that we'll bridge the two disciplines. Now a body doesn't have to be solely organic, hell it doesn't even have to be a body in the form we have today. Most people may choose to keep the standard two arms, two legs, 10 fingers and toes form simply because it's what we've always known, but a select few might take a completely different path. For those who've read Vaccuum Diagrams by Stephen Baxter think Silver Ghosts.
At this point the seperation between the mental and physical worlds can be erased completely, whatever we imagine we can create, or be. Absolutely everything would be changed. Money has no use, every physical resource becomes renewable, the seperation between reality and the virtual, or the imagination, disappears completely. Death becomes a rare occurance. Space travel becomes a simple matter. The possibilites are endless.
Maybe this scenario is far too optimistic, but we're in for a very interesting century either way.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
Why do you think so many horror movies lately have had hordes of shambling, cannibalistic zombies. The only way to kill them being to shoot em in the head.
They represent the masses of average retards, shambling through life without thought, consuming everything in their path. In particular making life difficult or impossible for those still capable of life and thought.
Deleted
It's long been claimed that the development of human culture freed us from evolutionary pressures, by separating us from our prior, "natural" niches. Thus we may be "evolved from monkeys," but that's enough evolution, thank you. We've stopped doing that nasty stuff!
The current Ah ha!, backed up by analysis of genetic clues, is that of course evolution applies to creatures in any niche, and the rapid change of available niches forces relatively rapid evolution. Since a niche largely comprised of human culture will actually often change faster than an "merely natural" one, instead of "saving us" from biological evolution, it forces biological evolution to run faster - with the increased populations our cultures support providing more raw material to work the evolutionary process across.
So our cultures are part of the loop that forces biological evolution - both by defining many of the biases of "sexual selection," and also by defining the niches our fitness is for.
It also, of course, can work backwards: the "least evolved" of us work for their own benefit by trying to revert the culture to prior states, in which they used to have some genetic advantage. This is known as the "conservative" strategy.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
You can't take the sky from me...
There has been plenty of writing inquiring whether cesarean section has contributed to evolution. Most think we are too early in the cycle to answer this question since modern c-section. There hasn't been a statistically significant number of c-sections that went well for both mother and child until recently(mothers, in general, exert environmental influence in the long term survival and well being of the child). The logic is that if the mutation that causes our brain to grow really large continues, it hits a natural physical constraint - the size of the birth canal. The head can only be as large as it can be reasonably pass through the female pelvis. Previously difficult pregnancies that resulted in emergency c-sections would mean brain damage for the child and high mortality rate for the mother. Modern c-sections are much more safe and most are even planned. In US around 30% of all births are through c-sections. I don't think I have read a study yet on what that means for modern human development - could all the increase in ADHD, asperger's and other developmental issues be a result? Maybe it hasn't shown up in the Flynn effect because of normalized curve is wider - ie there are more intelligent people but also people who are born with mental issues as a result of the increase in brain size?
Forced breeding programs?
Hooray! The population of Slashdot will finally get some tail!
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
Doofus: "I wonder if sticking my head in the fire would improve the human race?"
Smart person: "I wonder if sticking Doofus's head in the fire would improve the human race?"
The Doofuses selected themselves out. Evolution. The smart people helped them. Accelerated evolution.
Try it. Put your head into the fire and watch the results. Go on - it's for science.
I am anarch of all I survey.
Yes, since (as we all know) genetics, not upbringing or education, is the number one, undisputed, primary factor in determining intelligence (and income, and value to society!)
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
If you really think evolution is limited to gross physical changes, you've got a really poor understanding. We may not be evolving hooves or fur, but resistance to diseases, resistance to certain types of chemicals that are now more abundant in our environments, ability to withstand a lifestyle that would have been utterly alien to our cave-dwelling ancestors...All these things represent tremendous environmental pressures.
Couple that with a vastly increased species population, representing a staggering amount of genetic diversity, I have no problem believing that we're still evolving, and indeed, that the rate may very well have increased.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
How about winning mindshare and urging people with cancer genes or deformities to use egg/sperm bank for kids.
Dwarfs having dwarf children is morally wrong.
too much empathy is a bad thing
witness modern city dwellers who do not breed, but devote massive resources to the pampering of small yapping ratdogs
gene failure right there... for the humans, not the ratdogs
for the ratdogs, it's the genetic jackpot: what started with a virile wolf who decided to follow the humans around for scraps rather than hunt on its own, many moons ago, has now warped into a small retarded spastic defenseless ratdog. and yet it has a survival advantage like no wolf in the history of wolves ever did
but, like any parasite, it mustn't destroy it's host ability to reproduce
conclusion: small yapping ratdogs need to somehow evolve the ability to somehow convince their empathy immobilized hosts to reproduce, and make more empathetically addled humans who dote on small yapping ratdogs
maybe some sort of pheromone, hmmm
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
*Taken from the Best of Craig'slist*
Whenever I get a package of plain M&Ms, I make it my duty to continue the strength and robustness of the candy as a species. To this end, I hold M&M duels.
Taking two candies between my thumb and forefinger, I apply pressure, squeezing them together until one of them cracks and splinters. That is the "loser," and I eat the inferior one immediately. The winner gets to go another round.
I have found that, in general, the brown and red M&Ms are tougher, and the newer blue ones are genetically inferior. I have hypothesized that the blue M&Ms as a race cannot survive long in the intense theater of competition that is the modern candy and snack-food world.
Occasionally I will get a mutation, a candy that is misshapen, or pointier, or flatter than the rest. Almost invariably this proves to be a weakness, but on very rare occasions it gives the candy extra strength. In this way, the species continues to adapt to its environment.
When I reach the end of the pack, I am left with one M&M, the strongest of the herd. Since it would make no sense to eat this one as well, I pack it neatly in an envelope and send it to M&M Mars, A Division of Mars, Inc., Hackettstown, NJ 17840-1503 U.S.A., along with a 3x5 card reading, "Please use this M&M for breeding purposes."
This week they wrote back to thank me, and sent me a coupon for a free 1/2 pound bag of plain M&Ms. I consider this "grant money." I have set aside the weekend for a grand tournament. From a field of hundreds, we will discover the True Champion.
There can be only one.
the first domesticated animal. Humans follow the same rules for breeding that other animals obey.
My wife always says I'm such a monkey, but I keeping telling her that I'm an ape.
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
They just proved the premise at the beginning of Idiocracy on the dumbing down of the world.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
No physical evolution by choice, eh? I have been trying to evolve myself a blow-hole for over 25 years now with no luck. sigh.
How is that? As long as they're happy...
So, what you're really saying is that we are the script-kiddies of the history of humankind?
In the words of a superior race once depicted on the silver screen: "Ouch."
But I must admit that I admire cockroaches. They survive everything, even without a head attached. Mark my words, they are 1337@survival.
Defining Statistics and Social Research
Think Agricultural Revolution, Modern Medicine, Welfare State.
The rules of the game have been different in a fundamental way for us and our ascendants for a long time now.
Nature has spent a very long time honing the human gene pool (at least 6000 years by even the most limited world view). Medical science has only really been around for 50 or so years (on a wide enough basis to make any significant difference). Sure, we might have a wider gene pool (by keeping alive people that would not naturally be around) but quality is extremely important. The "selection" part of natural selection just is not happening any more.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Actually, it's not necessarily that much of a lull.
DNA just wants to be free...
and a culture that provides enough sustenance to allow the biologically less-capable to survive is inherently better equipped to survive than one that cannot.
Likewise a culture that has the medical technology able to allow people with genetic defects to live long enough to themselves reproduce is better able to adapt to other challenges than societies that are unable to do so.
Cave-men may have left their cripples out in the cold to die.
There is a reason cave-men no longer exist
Natural selection tries to weed out a huge % of the population, but medical science overrides it.
Nature determines that weak and premature infants should die, yet they are kept alive and become adults. Nature determines that some adults should not be breeding, yet fertility drugs override this. Nature determines that various people should die by heart failure etc, but drugs keep them alive.
Not necessarily. You have to realize that most people in the world do not have as many medical resources available to them. Most people in the world have very low standards of medical care, and are in fact largely adapting to infectious diseases - just look at Asia, India, and Africa and how HIV/AIDS, Malaria, Tuberculosis and other such diseases affect the life and death of far more people than even LIVE in the industrialized nations.
Not everyone is like you, or has the evolutionary pressures operating on them that you do. Humans have adapted to many different regions and are impacted differently depending on where they live.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Yes, but to what end? What's the point in solving obesity and cancer, when everyone who would benefit from this program would never have had cancer or obesity? What's the point in forcing everyone to live longer or die without reproducing, when it would be any different for them either way? Oh wait, you answered that with point number 3.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
The rate of evolution is determined mostly by the percentage of the population that fail to breed. We are living in a time where an unprecedented percentage of the population survive to breed. Only 200 years ago, the chance of a baby making it to breeding age was only something like 1 in 3. Now the vast majority do.
It may not be entirely stopped, but it is very likely that the rate of evolution is currently so low that it is swamped by random genetic drift.
The cake is a pie
People, get a grip on yourselves! The human race is not "speeding up its evolution" - there's no known way for a species to do that. Instead, the human race, having removed all driving forces of evolution, has stagnated to a dead standstill and half of it is now slipping back to the ape stage. The vast discrepancy is not attributable to the higher half advancing, but the lower half falling back.
And don't get too smug. Soon it will be all the humans slipping back. I've seen this coming for 20 years. Nature has no use for exceptional brains, beyond knowing how to feed yourself and stay alive long enough to ejaculate or spew out a kid, nature doesn't give a damn.
Yes, it's an awful truth, but face it anyway.
The goal of evolution is to survive long enough to breed, and have the most surviving offspring.
Mating that doesn't produce offspring doesn't count.
Currently that process is selecting for the traits of :
Catholicism (no birth control)
Welfare recipient (no job - plenty of time to procreate)
Inability to defer gratification (start having babies young)
It is downselecting against
Intelligence (Likely to limit family size to improve lifestyle)
Education(Likely to defer child rearing for career)
Independence (Unlikely to get married)
Think about it - the future product of evolution will be a vast army of dependent superstitious welfare bums.
Who will be ruled and cared for by a small elite cadre of the few intelligent people who bothered to have children.
Maybe "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes", but as Ms Loos wrote in the sequel, "But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes"...
You are right about how many kids make it to breeding age. But it's not just who breeds and who doesn't, it's how much they breed, and how much of a chance to breed frequently they pass on to their kids.
;-)
How can you contrast random genetic drift with evolution? The one is a crucial component of the other. The rate of evolution is partly determined by the rate of random genetic drift. Evolution isn't some linear process of good-better-best. It's a system, and that system isn't going to shut down just because one of many inputs changes.
You want to know what the future of human evolution looks like? With our technology, we don't need strength, so we'll probably become skinnier. Girls like tall guys, so we'll get taller. Intelligence is more and more important, so our heads will get bigger. We'll need some large, chitin covered eyes to survive in our dark and polluted future, and soon after that we'll develop time travel, come back to the 1950s, and scare the bejesus out of random people for kicks. UFO abductees probably have videos of their ordeals posted on the future equivalent of youTube.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
NASCAR decided use nuclear reactors in the absence of petroleum!
Sexual selection is hardly a new concept. The fact that we do it as well as other animals isn't that surprising.
And what "current lull"?
I like the NY Times, but it has issues with science. Though no more so than the rest of the mass media, I guess.
Humanity, has compassion and empathy more than other complex speices, but since we do need to evolve, instead of leaving him/her out in the snow, we could just make them sterile.
I have always thought this to be true... even birds choose the strongest and cleverest mates first.
Is that why I have a thing for ex-gymnasts who could beat me up AND out think me?
If it is true that we have slowed our physical evolution,
it would likely be because we have adapted and "tamed" our
environments to have fewer problems and more opportunities for
ourselves.
One can view this as an internalizing of part of our environment
so that it actually becomes an integral part of the
artificial stable-yet-evolving systems we are creating around
ourselves. We human individuals are clearly cogs in larger
homeostatic cultural and technological systems that are
in competition and cooperation and being group-selected.
In doing this, however, we need to be careful that we don't
kill the environment's prior, long-term sustainability, and
try to be clever enough to tend all of it by invented means.
That would be an unwise underestimation of the environments'
pre-existing complexity and robustness. We are smart enough
to tame parts of it for a cushy, safe, lazy life. But we are
also clearly destroying much of it as we do this. And we are
not smart enough to replace it by wonders from drawing boards.
So we'll see how this evolutionary tactic works out in the
fairly near term (next 500 years I imagine.)
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
And it will be the downfall of our kind. As a male - Work as hard as you can and learn everything you can and become the smarted male on the planet. What are your chances of mating? Zero - no woman wants you. You are not amusing enough. As a woman - Work as hard as you can and learn everything you can. Become the smartest woman on the planet? What are your chances of mating? Depends. How big are your tits? We're doomed.
Thing is, there are equal numbers for the sexes. Girls like tall guys, so attractive girls will get the tall ones. Unattractive ones will get the short ones. Since there are as many women as men, everyone finds someone to mate with even if they aren't ideal. Since everyone breeds successfully, we *won't* get taller, though you might see a flatting of the bell curve of men think tall women are attractive. There is no "survival of the fittest" as everyone, tall or otherwise, survives to breed.
As long as humans a serial monogamists, this is the way it would go. For animals that are polygamous, it would happen as you say.
The cake is a pie
Well, that's insightful, and probably how that evolution _really_ worked.
See, selection based on beauty, niceness, etc, are shiny-happy feel-good theories. They make us feel better about us as a species.
They also utterly fail to explain stuff like the ultra-fast evolution of, say, intelligence related alleles.
Now let's think about it for a bit. What's one situation which drives evolution like _hell_? What drove the early evolution of hominids? Having to survive in the face of a nasty predator. That's one _hell_ of an evolutionary pressure.
The early hominids, for example, faced the pressure of having to move out of the trees and compete with nasty carnivores for food. It was a monkey (ok, ape) too unfit to hunt (as late as the Neanderthals, they still couldn't do ballistics: Neanderthals were survival-spec melee hunters;), so it had to steal the food some carnivore had hunted. And it was even less fit to fight tigers barehanded. That's what drove the fast evolution of the brain. Stealth and cunning were the only things that worked.
Now move to the last 20,000 years or so, and humans faced an even nastier predator: other humans.
The history of mankind is, sadly, one of constant warfare, atrocities, etc. Tribes raided each other constantly, and then states fought each other like crazy. And let's remember that this was:
A) millenia before the Geneva convention. If you couldn't take a fortress, it was considered perfectly acceptable to kill or enslave the peasants instead.
B) millenia before logistics. As a peasant in those times, you'd get looted by both the enemy (whole campaigns got slowed down by waiting for the villages in their path to harvest the grain, so the army can loot it) and your own side (as levies.)
So, yeah, humans selected themselves all right. At spear point. Being able to, say, hide and hide your harvest when the next raid came, was already a hell of an evolutionary advantage.
Also let's remember that mortality was disproportionately higher among the lower classes until very very recently. As in, until 2 centuries ago or so. Famine, plagues, war atrocities, etc, took their toll starting from the bottom.
Even if you look at the renaissance era, let's just say we're almost all the descendants of the rich folks back then. The poor mostly died out over enough generations. Or IIRC in China they actually did some study and IIRC some 80% of a province's population carried the genes of one imperial family. That's how disproportionate a survival advantage that was.
So that's your other natural selection factor: those who figured out some way or another to claw their way up the social pyramid, had more chances to pass their genes on.
Some did that by just being smart and hard working. Learning enough of the alphabet would automatically qualify one for a scribe job in a lot of places, from ancient Egypt to China. That already made it a lot less likely that they'll starve during the next famine, plus ensured that they can afford to educate their children too.
Some did it by a lot less nice means.
But at any rate, that's another case of humans selecting themselves.
Etc.
Basically, yes, the ones who survived were the ones who went "And I pick... me!" And proceeded to gain some kind of advantage over the others.
Not a nice thought, but history or humanity weren't nice until the 20'th century. Stuff that we all now get horrified about, when we read about the Third Reich or Stalin, were the stuff human civilization was built upon.
So, yeah, let's instead believe bogus shiny-happy fairy-tales where surely the biggest advantage was being sexy. Heh.
Here's another not-nice thought: mortality among women was disproportionately higher than mortality among men. In the Old Kingdom period, for example, the peak of the mortality gauss curve was in the 20's for women, and in the 30's for men. (Of course, again, the rich tended to live longer.) And even primitive tribes raided each other to s
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"Since there are as many women as men, everyone finds someone to mate with even if they aren't ideal"
My 27 years of life without sex or even a partner seems to show a flaw in your model. And I'm above average height and attractiveness. Granted, I've got a lot of life left to go, but the safe bet would be on things not changing for me any time soon--if ever. I suppose I'm also just one case, and statistically insignificant, but you're using words like "everyone" and since I'm part of everyone...
Wow, there's two self-righteous stuck-up idiots with no knowledge of genetics here today. Can I get a third?
It is domestication. We share many traits with other domesticated species. We are much less agressive and social than our ancestors(well not US I mean humanity in general) and have strange eye and fur colors due to conscious selective breeding. We were the first domesticated animal.
If the Christian church had evolved any sooner we wouldn't have evolved as far as we did.
I think the chruch is the cause of the lull, every mutant human born has to be kept alive and allowed to procreate its defective genes.
I not saying who should choose in these cases, only that we have no NO selection pressure on improving the gene pool and a significant pressure from the church to weaken it severely.
The right to lifers would have us breed ourselves back into vegetables.
However, this is ridiculous, because in the theory of natural selection, fitness is defined by survival (more accurately, propagation of one's genes). So it doesn't have to be "enforced"--it happens automatically. So eugenics is actually an attempt to override evolution by applying principles of selective breeding (which of course long predate Darwin) in order to prevent those who are the fittest in an evolutionary sense from predominating. This is probably why the Nazi's banned "Darwinism."--because an understanding of evolution undermines the Nazi's entire "master race" doctrine.
What exactly is the evidence for your supposition? Bloke, they will mate smart chicks (may or may not be beautiful) with the jocks. "They"'ll keep the beautiful chicks (may or may not be smart) for themselves.
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
Who cares? We do not exist for the benefit of our "gene pool," and our gene pool is not something that exists in isolation from human technology. Natural selections still works--it just favors the genes that increase fitness in our actual environment, not some pre-technological environment without access to modern medicine. Doubtless there are many genes that increase fitness in the modern technological world that would reduce fitness in a pretechnological environment, and others that are more benign than they would be in the absence of modern technology. Sure, if there were a radical change, such as some kind of global catastrophe that wiped out technology, then many of those genes would decrease in frequency. But we don't need to weed out those "harmful" (in an environment different from the one we actually live in) genes; that will happen automatically if the circumstances arise. All our gene pool needs for evolution to work is genetic diversity. And considering the size of the human population, we have more diversity than ever.
Again, who cares? You can't just substitute "Nature" for "God." You can really mislead yourself by anthropomorphizing nature. "Nature" is not a sentient entity. It does not "determine" anything. It does not have our best interests at heart--it quite literally does not, cannot, care about us. There is no reason to expect that natural selection will favor human survival, much less human quality of life. It is more like gravity. Yet nobody seems to complain that gravity "determines" that people "should" die by falling, yet airplanes and parachutes keep them alive.
This is idiotic. "Fitness" does not exist apart from an environment. Natural selection tends to maximize fitness in our current environment, which happens to be a technological and medically sophisticated one. We don't need to do anything to help it--it happens automatically. There is no benefit to the species of interfering with the process in order to enhance fitness in an environment (e.g. a pretechnological one) different from the one that we actually life in.
The capacity for empathy is itself subject to natural selection. The fact that it is so widespread strongly suggests that it has benefits for fitness. It is worth noting, that we--with our capacity for empathy--have exhibited population growth unparalleled by any of the other species that you seem to think that we should model ourselves upon.
How well aquainted are you with the facts? Have you ever lived in Africa etc, or is this just TV knowledge?
I lived in Africa for 30 years, mostly in rural or semi-rural areas and I could speak two African languages. I even helped out at mission hospitals a few times. Sure, there are still huge mortalities relative to first world countries, but there have been huge changes. Infant mortality has been reduced significantly and many diseases have been almost wiped out (relative to say 40 years ago). Even small mission hospitals are able to provide obstetric services (caesarian section & premature baby care). 50 years ago those babies would have died (and many of the mothers too). Now they live on to keep their genes going.
From an emotional/sentimental point of view I think it is great that we can be saving human lives, but genetically it is perhaps not the best practice.
I live in a rural sheep farming area. Keeping a flock of sheep is all about improving the genetics. If a ewe has a problem giving birth then the ewe and her lambs are marked for culling (ie not allowed to breed further, but get rendered to meat). This is done because the farmers know that the daughter of a problem ewe is likely to also have the same problems. Culling prevents passing on the gene to the rest of the flock.
At the natural level we are not really any different. When we interfere and artificially keep people alive and allow them to reproduce then we artificially introduce weaker genes to the human gene pool.
I'm not for a second suggesting some sort of forced human selection etc, but just raising the thought that medical technology does have a potential long-term genetic downside.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
"The ultimate aim of all love affairs ... is more important than all other aims in man's life; and therefore it is quite worthy of the profound seriousness with which everyone pursues it. What is decided by it is nothing less than the composition of the next generation ..."
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860).
PEÃ'AROL: SerÃs eterno como el tiempo y floreceras en cada primavera
I just don't think you fully conceptualize either how large 6 billion really is, or the time spans over which evolution can work. And I think you are idealizing world conditions right now. Plenty of people never breed even if they survive to old age. Without immigration, many countries such as Italy would have negative population growth right now. Plenty of people breed more than others. The short and unattractive don't always meet up, and they don't always get it on when they do. We aren't as much serial monogamists as you seem to think. Do you know about the link between testicle size and promiscuity in the animal kingdom? By body mass, our testicles fall in between bonobos and chimpanzees amongst our closer relatives. Do you know that bonobos are kinky, promiscuous little beasts that are run by dominant lesbians? Even amongst chimps, who are mostly polygamous (where the dominant male gets the chicks) the ladies will get some outside the harem. And genetic surveys of humans show that upwards of 10% of children don't have their mother's husband's genes. Trust me, there is still plenty of wiggle room for evolution to work in.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
This is the biggest "duh" of gee-whiz! breakthrough science research, ever. We are, by definition, domesticated animals. Of course our evolution has been shaped by human choice. This is some kind of revelation?
Maybe you are a complete asshole with no social skills?
I fully understand guessing the latter but the former seems a tad presumptuous, perhaps even rude.
My 27 years of life without sex or even a partner seems to show a flaw in your model. [...] I suppose I'm also just one case, and statistically insignificant, but you're using words like "everyone" and since I'm part of everyone... Trust me, you're not alone with this one. IMHO, the number of "unwilling" singles has increased quite a bit in the past few decades.
There are several social factors at work, here:
1) Less financial pressure to look for a mate, since people can afford living without a family. You don't necessarily need a partner or children to care for you when you're old. (Although it would probably be nice to have someone who'd visit you...) Also, women do not depend on marriage to survive anymore.
2) Less social pressure to seek a mate, since it's become socially acceptable to be single for both men and women.
Both #1 and #2 contribute to a shrinking market of potential mates, since people have less reason to look for one in the first place, and even if they do they'll be more discriminating, since their survival doesn't depend on finding a partner.
3) Less opportunities to meet people. Imagine the world before TV: If you didn't want books or crafts to be your only source of entertainment in your spare time, you had to go outside and meet living, breathing people. With TV, your home offers more entertainment than any theatre, but without the fellow audience. (Actually, the internet may lessen this effect, since it's obviously a very social medium, although without actual physical presence.)
4) More ways to spend your time alone. This is closely related to #3: With more solo activities available, shy people will have more ways to avoid human contact, thus they'll have less opportunities to develop their social skills and overcome their shyness. Again, social contacts via the internet might counter that effect to a certain extent.
With relationships being much more optional than ever before, the natural advantage of sociable people is amplified, and quieter, more reclusive people are less likely to find a mate. However IMHO, this state would need to stay like that for quite awhile in order to have any significant evulutionary impact, especially since all of this only applies to societys that are roughly similar to our western culture, of course. I have no idea how things work in other cultural regions.
More socially acceptable to be single? Maybe more in the same way that 2 is more than 1 on a scale of 100. It's still not very acceptable. I really don't expect anyone to be able to understand though unless you're living it yourself. You'd see the differences first hand and you'd know that it's very much not OK to be single at my age, especially when you've always been single. I've seen the changes first hand when people find out; you're never treated the same after that. That's why it's not something I wear on my sleeve as you can imagine.
Dawkins mentions memes rarely (relative to his volumes and volumes of written and spoken output on other subjects) and only wrote at length about them once. That "length" was in fact rather short, in an almost-brainstormy section of but one book where he riffed on the concept. It was other authors and speakers who picked up that concept (or I suppose I should say meme) and ran with it.
But in that evolution is just "genetic change in a population over time," of course there is still human evolution. As long as there is variation and some selection process, there will be evolution, though perhaps not speciation. All this speculation is just us pretending that we have more control over the selection process than we actually do.
Another part of the problem is the misunderstanding that evolution means progress forward, or a bettering of the species, or the development of super powers or some such shite. Evolution doesn't advance any species, only makes some alleles more common than their competitors.
It could be that the compassion we show to the old and infirm is just a by-product of the compassion we have for our own kids and even ourselves. In other words, a recognition that this, too, is our lot in time. That compassion, that working together to protect each other, just might improve the survivability of the set of genes that make up the individuals we're talking about. The evolution of compassion and altruism is a very hot topic. I wouldn't dismiss it, or the significance of compassion to our species, so readily.
After Darwin wrote The Origin of Species, people just took what they were doing before and rephrased it as pseudoscience. Now you have Hovind and other creationists saying that the eugenics crowd were motivated by evolutionary theory. The movement had much less to do with evolution than it did Mendelian genetics--does that mean genetics is a fraud? Does the idea of inheritance lead inexorably to Nazi eugenics experiments?
Or can we safely say that people have always been tempted, here and there, to wipe out anyone whose existence they found distasteful, and they'll tack their bigotry onto any pseudo-science they can just to lend their efforts a patina of legitimacy?
You're probably right on all your points. But the idea that this is human self-selection is wrong. I didn't evolve the ability to select for myself. Humans need to evolve faster and faster because one generations culture is little like the next generations culture. And our big brains and ability to evolve our own culture forces us to adapt more and more. We have considerable advantages of potentially occupying every niche, but, our own little niche changes all the time. Punctuated equilibrium indeed. Humans don't have an equilibrium anymore.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
I don't like it when people see evolution as something that can be measured, or something that only happens genetically, etc. Isn't evolution simply a synonym for "things change, and some things change in a way that sucks for them"? What i mean to say is that yes, we are at a special moment in history, starting to have the power of genetics, and thus the basis of (a part of) biological evolution in reach of having it under our control. But genes are just the means to an end. So is the fashion-du-jour of what is sexually attractive, or what way of thinking is 'better' than others. In a certain way, evolution doesn't even have to be limited to biology (maybe it is by definition, but IMHO shouldn't be), since every physical and chemical reaction also strifes to equilibrium points, in accordance with their environment - just as animals and therefore humans do. Whether this happens because genes change, or because we decide consciously what we want our offspring to be like, is kind of irrelevant, since transhumanism (which i am a big fan of) wouldn't be the end of evolution, but just another form of it. Just as when fishes first started crawling on the land, it just changed some of the rules of the game, but the game is still the same.
read up on things called Memes!
I probably didn't explain it clearly enough. By self-selection, I didn't mean you evolved (or ever had) the occasion to select for yourself whether you want to live or die. I mean, blimey, then everyone would choose to live.
I meant in the sense where predator "selects" the prey. Rabbits evolve to be faster, because the fox kills the slow ones. Gazelles get to be fit and have a working immune system because even the slightest illness is disproportionately more fatal: you get to be eaten by a lion if you're under the weather enough to be slower. Etc.
What I'm saying here is that humans were both predator and prey lately. And inherently both predator and prey evolved at the same rate. The more fit humans who evolved as prey (e.g., the survivors of enemy raids), some of them were then the predators in the next cycle. That's one hell of an evolutionary pressure.
That said, you're probably right that culture played some part too. As I was saying, the ones that managed to climb up the social pyramid, did get a massive survival advantage. I can see how culture would play a part in that.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Heh... well, that's not quite what Smith meant with the "Invisible Hand" metaphor. On the other hand, I think I can see your point too.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
sucks calling out the guy who actually went to africa, huh?
FYI: I don't know what you guys are talking about half the time.
Obviously the evolutionary time-scale for biological change is too long for this to be related to the Flynn effect, but I wonder if there isn't some other link between the two.
A more "out there" hypothesis might include something like Sheldrake's morphogenetic field, only at a global level -- i.e., that as human beings perform more and more such IQ tests, then through some unexplained mechanism, other human beings might potentially become better at doing them. This is reminiscent of David Brin's Practice Effect.
Paul Gillingwater
MBA, CISSP, CISM
Since the output of evolution is death anyway, why not consider this its ultimate aim? We are getting close to discovering the ultimate cause of the universe, the Higgs field. Perhaps the knocking of the Higgs boson into sight will trigger the last act of symmetry, yielding a universe that has no change or time. Close enough to death, by my reckoning.
Taking your example of sheep farming. The sheep are very well adapted to the environment they currently find themselves in where they are well protected and looked after but should those environmental conditions change then they're in trouble compared to other animals which do not have such a low genetic variance. It's the same with humans, by keeping as diverse a genetic base as possible we're more likely to have some types of people who are better at adapting to whatever environmental changes come along.
The key is that we don't really know what those future conditions are likely to be so attempting to steer the population in a specific direction may well horribly backfire when the future throws up something we haven't anticipated. Luckily we are such an adaptable species that some of us are likely survive almost any disaster which doesn't completely wipe all life on the planet.
I've also been reading lead author Hawks's feed fairly thoroughly for quite a while despite concerns about his obsessive hydrophobia. On dry land he usually presents a balanced view of oft contentious anthropological topics like Homo floresiensis.
It will be interesting to see how many of our recently domesticated genes proved advantageous to those making precarious shore hugging journeys on the long route around the Indian Ocean close to his starting time.
*I've also played with the standard line that we were domesticated by house cats or, more experimentally, that domesticating humans was the African elephant's great mistake (c.f. the dinosaur space program nudging mineral-rich asteroids towards orbits where they could be mined more efficiently).
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
i've heard that in rural china they still put hairy babies out to die...and wasn't abel a hairy man?
recent studies show women prefer the scent of men most unlike their fathers, scent & immune system being genetically related, which of course provides for diversity. but women on the pill prefer similar-smelling men...hmmm
This is just a new phrase for the basic assumption we had forever. Obviously and as millions of people have stated, natural selection is no longer driving evolution but rather our choices in and as a society.
Call it what you want, but it's a very old idea.
I think we have a problem with people inventing phrases and science for the sake of getting their PH.D. It's sound bytes and techno babble to factlessly justify a common assumption.
Obviously our culture shapes our evolution within a society of shared wealth, power, medicine, ect.
See, what's one good aspect of Ron Paul's vision of America as an anarchy, at least we might restore natural selection when society collapses due to mass poverty and ignorance.
This isn't new. What we need to know, is how to stop this idiocracy from driving image and ignorance instead of innovation and intelligence.
I suggest, if our children are our future, we should spend a HELL of a lot more time focusing our efforts and money on education. We spend some 10 times more money on tanks and aircraft carriers that we wind up sinking in the ocean as artificial reefs. That's just not a smart return on money.
Being tricked into wasting money on military will only wear down our economy in the long run.
It's only under the foolish Reagan administration that America has been taken into such wasteful and irresponsible spending practices.
Before this we used to TAX THE RICH to pay for war and we ONLY spent hundreds of billions every year on military DURING WARTIME.
That strategy won us World War 1 and 2. The only real wars and also got us out of the great depression.
The trick is that when you do spend hundreds of billions of dollars you do so in a way that either creates long lasting infrastrcuture or puts the US ahead technologically, such as the internet and computers.
Spending 500 billion a year in BLOATED defense contracts for a war we aren't fighting has been a bad ideas from the start. The USSR fell apart on ECONOMIC sanctions alone. Our 10 trillion dollar military had little to do with their overall economic failure and at no point was it actually necessary to win the cold war.
It's not as if the USSR or any other country was/is going to invade a nuclear power, especially the worlds largest nuclear power.
Then the cold war ended.... we kept spending like it's wartime.
GET IT THROUGH AMERICA'S HEAD... wasteful military spending is NOT patriotic or supportive of your country and up until 20 some years ago we didn't do this. The traditional funding of the military is minimal during peacetime.
No nation not at war can justify a 25% tax revenue investment every year for military spending.
This is not the age of conquest, we are not the Roman empire. We have no use for military spending of this level for decades, during peacetime. We are very well isolated from other major military powers and we are allies with all the major military powers.
There simply is no threat to justify 25% of our tax revenue on, and especially with no return on that investment. If anything the military just costs us money and then it's deeds cost extra.
Just as the Iraq war represents an extra trillion dollars or so on top of the 500 billion a year we give them anyway and that's not all for cost of operations is for things the FIRST 500 billion should have bought.
Every year we get less and less for our money from these defense contracts. The only way to keep them honest is to foce them to stop sucknig the US money nipple for a decade or two.
You can't keep them honest giving them basically no competition HIGH PAY contracts every year. Everyone knows the government pays BIG, everyone says 'overcharge' it's the government.
Sadly the same people also think tax breaks are a good idea.
But would you change yourself at all?
BTW: Excuse the personal questions. I only dare ask them because you chose to remain an AC anyway. Feel free to ignore anything you don't feel like answering.
I'm 32 and single, and over here in Germany nobody's giving me a hard time about it. I also have single friends and colleagues (both male and female) who are in their forties or even fifties, and AFAIK people don't treat them any different from those in relationships. (It's another question whether they themselves are happy with their status, of course...)
Come to think of it, I can see how that might be different in other Western countries: I spent about a year in the wonderful metropolis of Collinsville, OK in High School, and over there, most people seemed to get married in their early 20s, so I could see how an unattached person might stick out.
We've been selectively breeding every other animal (exaggerating) for centuries to increase desirable traits and eliminate of undesirable ones, why the hell don't we do that with ourselves? We've managed to steer every other natural process for our benefit, what about evolution? How am I a "self-righteous stuck-up idiot" for wanting my progeny and all future generations to be better than we are? If you want to make a comment, add to the discussion instead of being a flamebaiting prick.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
No, you misunderstand my point. Probably I didn't explain it well enough.
I'm _not_ saying that altruism and arts are useless. God forbid.
I'm saying only that evolution was most often a matter of predator and prey trying to out-evolve each other. In this case, the humans were both predator and prey. That's really all I'm saying.
Maybe altruism played some role in being able to survive. Could be. Sticking together certainly did. But that's already a bit of a tangent. And I never intended to say that altruism was worthless, or anything. (Though I would bet that a lot of altruistic people got themselves out of the gene pool anyway.)
I'm just saying that humans _did_ kill other humans, regularly. There was much the same eco-system as between foxes and rabbits, or lions and gazelles, but this time with humans in both roles. And that seems to me like plenty of natural selection.
But I never meant that only the predators evolved. There's just as much pressure on the prey to evolve.
What I'm saying is that between the two factors
A) evolutionary pressure based on survival or death (as in, literally, if you don't think fast, someone will literally lop off your head and put it on a pike), and
B) the evolutionary pressure of picking the prettiest wives,
Dunno, the former seems to me like a much stronger pressure. In fact, for most of human history, the latter was probably rather weak.
Even if you look at selecting the guys or gals who look healthy, I'm betting there were more short time pressures to actually _be_ healthy. Looking healthy might have given you a little better chance of finding a good husband, but actually _being_ healthy meant you actually survived the next famine or epidemic. Not looking healthy might have had an effect in the decimals, but not _being_ healthy actually killed.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Oh, how convenient! A theory about God that doesn't require looking through a telescope. Get back to work!
Oook.
go eugenics...... ummm yay social darwinism..... ummm.. go hitler?
As another poster has already alluded to, this is not an apples-to-apples situation. A sheep farmer chooses to cull her flock in order to maximize profit; not so their flocks will continue having offspring in to the unforeseen future. It's an economic decision based on the knowledge that A) there is value in turning the sheep in to meat for human consumption and B) there is value in only keeping the really healthy ones for the purposes of sheering and selling the wool.
This should not be confused with the process of evolution that occurs in the natural world because they are quite different; if a catastrophic sheep virus were to spread around the world the culling process could serve to hurt the population because the traits selected by the farmer might not necessarily be the traits needed to combat the virus.
In my next incarnation, I want six digits on both hands, a tail, and four nipples. So just grin and bear it, people!
You may be more accurate than you think, and may even alter the DNA expression during this lifetime according to Bruce Lipton, which show some scientific results behind his assertion:
That our feelings and belief-systems actually alter how our DNA is decoded all the time!
Part 1: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8506668136396723343
Part 2: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6568107389365915765
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
So it's more relaxing to place your head in two plush pillows of mammary than stick your hooter in some lass's ass-crack.
"Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.
It's been 56 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment"
Humans have bred themselves for attractive charcteristics that interfere with being able to run without clothes. Both genders, to be fair.
Some people, in the same upbringing, with the same education, manage to escape and go off to college and do well, while the majority don't. This happens in the inner city, and in rural areas. We're even talking members of the same family.
So please, tell me why some manage to end up doing well, and others don't?
Imagine that all people die at the same age, all males have the same sperm count, all women have exactly the same wombs, so all people can produce exactly the same number of children. The only different thing is that they all procreate by choice determined by the ideology.
In this case, people who have the fitness advantage are those people who have the fittest ideology (ideology of survival and procreation), not the fittest genes.
My assumption was wrong of course: people are biologially different, but this difference plays less significant role, and the difference in ideology plays more significant role nowadays
Ideological fitness vs biological. That is it.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
A summary of the debate so far:
My contribution:
Breasts beat bums: but bigger isn't better! Smaller breasts are more shapely!
(There we go. That's me: Furthering the discussion of important topics on Slashdot since 2002.*)
*[or whenever it was...]
and I am nearly 28, and living in the United States, California.
"Weaker" is highly subjective. Allowing everyone who is not PERFECTLY physically fit to die off will result in something like large-scale in-breeding, and genetic homogeneity. That tends to lead to a genetically feeble population, which dies out with the first environmental or biological challenge.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
So, short girls will get ugly, tall girls pretty, and speciation occurs. I for one welcome our new pretty, tall overlords.
When I took anthropology classes in college this was referred to as sexual selection. I suppose it has been sanitized in these more PC days...
Think Deeply.
You forgot that men have a higher tendency to mate with more then one women - and women have a higher tendency to accept that.
The is a nice study on some birds. All birds live in pair bonding and looked well - until genetic parental test came into play:
30% of the male are father to 70% of the childreen. A 70% of male birds where raising childreen which where not there own.
I fear it is not that different with humans - after all there must be a reason the german goverment fears uncontroled genetic parental tests so much.
Martin
It doesn't matter if we evolve, because we change the environment around us as opposed to adapting to it. Therefore evolution has been irrelevant as a factor of survival since humans learned to use tools.
Wrong. Your position presumes that all environmental changes caused by humans are deliberate and increase our prospect of survival. For a historical example, the shift to urban life allowed by the advent of agriculture resulted in easier spread of disease. For a contemporary example, Global Warming is likely have widespread undesirable environmental consequences.
And as previous coverage (linked this post and mentioned in TFA) has noted, evolution has actually sped up since humans began using tools, at least through the advent of agriculture.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
I said: "Not everyone is like you, or has the evolutionary pressures operating on them that you do. Humans have adapted to many different regions and are impacted differently depending on where they live."
...)
And then u asked: How well aquainted are you with the facts? Have you ever lived in Africa etc, or is this just TV knowledge?
I have lived in a few countries, traveled to Africa, Europe, Central America, Australia/NJ/Fiji, have friends living in about 40 countries, and speak more than four languages. Plus, I work in Medical Genetics at one of the world's topped rank global universities, and we come from all around the world. I'm more than acquainted with the facts. I've even been to a few rural sheep farming areas (guess how many sheep there are per person in NZ, and how many of those live on the South island while most people live on the North island
I'm talking about genetics. And science. Not what an untrained person might think, who doesn't realize the difference between one individual human to another individual is greater than the difference between one "race" and another "race".
Life is far more complex than it appears on the surface.
And the supression of diseases has, in fact, led to the alteration in risk profiles thus creating more diseases. Our infectious loads nowadays in first world nations are much lower than they've been for a long time, and the parasitic loads are a lot smaller, but not all of this impacts all humans worldwide. As friends of mine in Africa setting up TB research clinics and Malarial research clinics could attest to.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I understand all that, and I was looking for Funny mods, but if you really watch the beginning of Idiocracy, there is a clear depiction of the nurture part of it as well as the nature. The breeding morons lived in conditions not exactly fertile for big thinking. The parents popped out kids like they didn't care while the "smart" parents had it all planned out. Note how they showed the father totally approving of the football hero son's loutish behavior. There was more said there than many appreciate.
Most of my highly educated friends (Phds) are either single or DINKS (Double Income No Kids). None are obese, and I would say they are rather in good (and sometimes excellent) shape, but they simply do not procreate.
If you don't like your current situation then change it: start and research bodybuilding and force yourself into group activities. Although painfull at first, you've got to make many mistakes until you have acquired the right skills to be sucessful with people.
Unfortunately, that doesn't mean it's easier to get a date over here.
I wonder what may be the cause of these perceived cultural differences: Ist it actually "USA vs. Germany", is it "the people you know vs the people I know", or is it just "the way you look at the world vs. the way I look at it"?
Lame conclusion: Probably some combination of the above...
And it's balanced and reasonable until your last paragraph.
Assuming an omnipotent creator - why can't she choose creation to continue through the medium of evolution. Evolution involves a certain degree of random genetic variation (by cosmic rays and other radiation at least) which leaves a nice little hole for slight perturbations to be applied by the creatrix (which perturbations then can bifurcate into new subspecies, etc.).
>>> "The sort of anti-social behavior you describe wouldn't really be "fit" because the chances of it working consistently over time are small."
Proof?
That's *all* - it doesn't mean that things like tetrachromatism are an improvement - being a tetrachromat is cool, and being the son of one is uncool, and it doesn't mean that sickle cell anemia is good, even though being a carrier for it reduces your chances of dying from malaria so there are lots of carriers in places where malaria's common and variants on it have shown up independently in at least five different times and places. It *certainly* doesn't mean that evolution is or could try out ideas for the next generation human brain; evolution doesn't work like cell phone marketing, where you announce complex plans for a something you want to call a next generation and see if everybody else signs on before you've finished making it work. It just means that some random changes don't stick around because they lead to their hosts being dead or less reproductively successful, and other changes stick around and become more common, and "more common" doesn't mean "better", it just means "more common".
Don't get me wrong - NewAgey Progress-worshipping people who misunderstand evolution are usually much nicer to be around than Social Darwinist kill-the-inferior-races-and-dominate-the-inferior-social-classes people who misunderstand evolution. (Usually, anyway - occasionally they switch sides if they think you're standing in the way of progress, especially if they're socialists who believe in History.) But they still don't understand it.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks