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Geneticist Claims Human Evolution Is Over
GogglesPisano writes "UK geneticist Steve Jones gave a presentation entitled Human Evolution Is Over. He asserts that human beings have stopped evolving because modern social customs have lowered the age at which human males have offspring, which results in fewer of the mutations necessary to drive evolutionary change. Apparently the fate of our species now depends upon older guys hooking up with younger woman. I, for one, welcome this development."
Even if this guy turns out to be wrong for the reasons he gave, I wouldn't be surprised if modern society is messing with the evolution of humans compared to most other species in the past. Modern medicine may SAVE people that "should have" died and not passed on their genes. For better or worse, this is different than what happens outside of human society.
Women are definitely having children later. So late in many cases that there is a significant chance of genetic abnormalities like Down's Syndrome.
Are males really having children younger? Enough to offset women having children later?
Clearly, since rabbits breed at a much earlier age than humans, they don't evolve at all? Please. Evolution occurs when you have an imperfectly reproducing population with finite resources. Modern social customs have an effect on evolution, to be sure, but they absolutely do not stop it completely. Any attribute which increases the expected number of successful offspring will be selected for, just as it has been for the past few billion years with every single species on the planet. It's one thing to assert that a couple factors may slow it down, but "stopping" evolution by breeding earlier is right up there with "stopping" gravity by building a floor. It all becomes part of the system.
I agree with the thesis, but not the cause. The problem is that modern welfare programs protect the stupid, lazy, and generally incompetent; and allows them to breed without regard for the fact that the parents are not capable of providing for their children. The most basic and immutable law of economics is that you get more of what you subsidize, and less of what you tax. In America, and other first-world countries, we subsidize illegitimacy and tax work. I am not suggesting we do away with welfare, but we shouldn't ignore the consequences of a welfare system that doesn't either encourage birth-control, or discourage unrestricted breeding. Let the hating begin.
Actually, I have this theory:
Most of us nerds are terribly low regarding competition to get females. However, we are more apt at improving society as a whole (or gaining power from society a-la-Billy-Gates).
So what if... mankind has evolved to develop a classes system - you know, like ants, bees and other social insects?
We have the kings and queens (leaders, apt for government)
We have soldiers - very strong and apt for defending us against other dangerous species (even ourselves).
Nerds go here, in the "research and development" class. Let's call ourselves the "pathfinders".
We also have workers. Not very intelligent people, but who can provide goods for everyone. Let's call them "sheeple".
Together, we fight as a whole, for the survival of the species.
Of course, this isn't a valid scientific theory. Just a thought.
One moment he's complaining that fewer mutations are being produced, the next he's complaining that the mutants are thriving. Which is it?
It's not that the mutants survive, it's that everyone survives, so there's no basis for any one mutant having a better chance of survival. Which means we'll just have a lot of mutants.
Evolution can't work if "survival of the fittest" really means "survival of everyone". It looks like we'll either stagnate or evolve completely randomly, in all directions that don't outright kill us. Probably some combination -- all these random mutations won't get really exaggerated, because they'll just be absorbed back into the population.
Of course, that's not really the end of human evolution, it's more the end of meaningful human evolution. Idiocracy is an example of how humanity could (or already has) evolved in a direction we probably don't want, and don't think of as "progress" -- but Darwinian evolution does not necessarily equal progress.
I'm not really sure what the endgame is. I really only see three outcomes: Idiocracy (we stop caring about real science, and fall back on Darwinian evolution); MAD (we blow ourselves up (selecting ourselves out), and science dies with us); or posthumanism (science continues at roughly the pace it has, which means we'll use technology to enhance ourselves).
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
If you mean with genetic engineering then I agree - otherwise I think there is a limit to how much you can fix from the outside, if things are badly broken on the inside. Diabetes and such are liveable, but what if you are missing (broken) an enzyme for making ATP? Or one of the main positioning marker proteins is broken meaning your body parts are all in the wrong places! So at the very least there will be natural selection pressure there.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
You think that's absurd? Read some of the comments. From a quick reading of about twenty, there were four or five who simply don't believe in evolution at all!
Here are a few examples (because I *know* you're not gonna RTFA):
It seems that there's still lots of randomness of _belief_.
Requiem for the American Dream
If genetic mutations is all that is required for evolution, there is more than age that can cause this.
Nearly every month there seems to be a new discovery that some virus or environmental factor causes genetic mutations that result in cancer. Those are just the ones that kill us.
Perhaps there are also some benign or beneficial mutations occurring because of disease or dirty environment. I, for one, believe kids (and adults) should play outdoors and get dirty to help boost their immune systems and reduce the likelihood of allergies.
Eat more dirt
Read some of the comments.
That is of course true. Humans did not evolve from apes but from a common ancestor.
If you think I'm nitpicking, I find this common misunderstanding to be one of the best ways to tell whether I'm going to have a useful discussion with someone or whether I shouldn't bother in the first place.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6057734.stm
we are also apparently splitting into two sub-races.. I call them the morlocs and the eloi
(as I tend to represent the morloc heritage more closely)
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
One way of seeing this is that a man that has become older and is still healthy means that the genes provides less risk of inherited disabling diseases and therefore is a better mate from that perspective. An older man is also likely to have gained a better position in society.
Evolution is still going on, but it is also circumvented by modern medicine. I would rather claim that medicine is the limiting factor for evolution.
Today we have a large number of diseases that is caused by our lazy living and sugared diets. So evolution will pick off the ones that aren't able to live lazy by heart attacks and similar defects.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
You seem to be working under the delusion that evolution is something that someone has control over. Other than the women, I mean. Face it, being highly intelligent and creative and socially supportive may be really desirable, but unless the WOMEN are looking to screw men like that (or the men screw women like that), it ain't gonna be.
What's going to happen is that women will continue to screw the same guys they've been screwing, and the highly intelligent, creative, socially supportive guys will continue to spend time in their basement trying to justify why women should be chasing them in droves.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
What makes you think that society was ever able to stop kids from having sex? Do you actually seriously believe that in the Ye Olde Days 12 and 13 year olds didn't have sex? Just how naive could you be?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Although not quite the same thing, I have often wondered what our current culture is doing to us through natural selection. Now I know it takes many generations to make a difference. However one has to think that those with certain genetic problems may not have had a chance to propagate as they would likely die.
For instance, do you think 500 years ago as many people has bad eyes, or asthma or, other conditions or mental problems? It kind of makes me think what we well all be like in a 1000 years from now, 5000 years.
Also as an extension of that principle it isn't the number of years that matter, but rather the number of generations. So in the distance past when life expectancy was like 40 and people normally had kids when they were like 14 generations were short. Now with people living till 80 and having kids in their 30's, the generations are longer... would this mean that by default we would be less effected by the Darwin's principle? Again expand that out a couple hundred years from now, and things start to get interesting. We start to stagnate, change slower over time, but that change is generally negative. So unless selective breeding and/or we gain the technology and the will to genetically alter our offspring, we are headed down a downward spiral abet a slow one. (Tho I suppose we could become cyborgs of a sort replacing defective parts, however this would seem a negative sum system, however who knows what technology will bring)
Not to even mention:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/ :)
More importantly personality (e.g intelligence creativity etc) is at best weakly genetical, so human "evolution" becomes less about biology and more about sociology.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!