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."

Comments

The summary

[ucblockhead]

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.

Nazis vs Darwin

[tgibbs]

It is also interesting to note that both Nazis and Ayn Rand Libertarians both get hard over Darwinism for exactly the same reasons. The only difference is that Hitler uses the State to enforce survival of the fittest

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.

Re:Probably that's how it REALLY worked

[Iron Condor]

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.

Uh, what? Mortality is still disproportionately higher in the lower classes. Everywhere on the globe. And that shows not the slightest sign of changing. As a matter of fact I'd be willing to define "classes" along the lines of life expectancy. How else would you do that? Even the lowest hobo can own a DVD player these days. But he can't afford health insurance...

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.

Absolutely nothing whatsoever has changed since the 20th century. The same atrocities are committed right this moment by the same power-hungry tyrants all over the planet for the same reasons.

I do not know where you get the delusion that today is somehow different from the rest of history, but to the people 100 years from now you will just be one of these folks back there in the past and they will not perceive any more of a change in conditions at the turn of the 21st century than we perceive one today at the turn of the 20th.

Re:Probably that's how it REALLY worked

[Moraelin]

Uh, what? Mortality is still disproportionately higher in the lower classes. Everywhere on the globe. And that shows not the slightest sign of changing. As a matter of fact I'd be willing to define "classes" along the lines of life expectancy. How else would you do that? Even the lowest hobo can own a DVD player these days. But he can't afford health insurance...

Ah, right, the USA. In Europe everyone gets healthcare, so sometimes I forget that somewhere an advanced society would leave its less fortunate members just die, out of no other reason than greed. Thanks for the correction.

Absolutely nothing whatsoever has changed since the 20th century. The same atrocities are committed right this moment by the same power-hungry tyrants all over the planet for the same reasons.

A) Not on the same scale, buddy. And,

If you look some 2000-3000 years back, going and enslaving your neighbours and treating them like in the nazi slave-labour camps was a lot more common. Some greek city states had slaves as a third of their population.

And while again we remember the nicer parts -- e.g., the clerk or home servant slaves that were freed later by the rich Romans in Rome itself -- the same Roman society used slaves elsewhere as just a long death sentence. The cost of keeping buying new slaves to replace the dead ones, was an integral part of the cost of business for, say, mines. Or the same rich Romans let slaves starve in Sicily so they could export more grain to Rome. There was at least one slave revolt motivated literally by hunger.

So basically wake me up when you have 100,000,000 people in Guantanamo. That's when you'll have the same extent of the problem.

B) Now at least the common people tend to be horrified about it. In times past they actually were part of the problem. The very fact that you seem pissed off and disillusioned about it, is actually a sign of how much we progressed.

If you look as little as, say, 1000 years back in time, the medieval communes (towns whose citizens swore to stand together for their rights against the noble of the land) found it perfectly ok that, when they were wronged grievously by a noble, they'd go kill the noble's peasants. Or burn his crops so, again, then some peasants would starve.

We're not talking about power hungry tyrants. We're talking about ordinary citizens who found it perfectly normal to go kill some peasants to get their point across.

Or if you look farther back in time, you see such examples as Sparta. A relatively small city held a much larger population of hellots in line by sheer terror. Kids' graduation to adult consisted of being sent to terrorize and kill a few hellots for sport and training.

Basically, nowadays it may be the sport of kings, but back then it was a mass sport. That's already some progress.

That's not what I meant, though

[Moraelin]

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.