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

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.