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The Role of Human Culture In Natural Selection
gollum123 writes with this excerpt from the NY Times: "... for the last 20,000 years or so, people have inadvertently been shaping their own evolution. The force is human culture, broadly defined as any learned behavior, including technology. The evidence of its activity is the more surprising because culture has long seemed to play just the opposite role. Biologists have seen it as a shield that protects people from the full force of other selective pressures, since clothes and shelter dull the bite of cold and farming helps build surpluses to ride out famine. Because of this buffering action, culture was thought to have blunted the rate of human evolution, or even brought it to a halt, in the distant past. Many biologists are now seeing the role of culture in a quite different light. Although it does shield people from other forces, culture itself seems to be a powerful force of natural selection. People adapt genetically to sustained cultural changes, like new diets. And this interaction works more quickly than other selective forces, 'leading some practitioners to argue that gene-culture co-evolution could be the dominant mode of human evolution.'"
just wait until it becomes culturally acceptable to intentionally modify our genes using technology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_evolutionary_synthesis
The write up is misleading on many levels, and reflects a very nineteenth century understanding of evolution. Fitness criteria are constantly changing, and success changes the fitness landscape. Of course culture will impact evolution. The idea that it could somehow protect from selection pressures is just silly. Culture may protect you from the cold, by giving you a fur coat. Or you could evolve a fur coat, but would you then claim that the fur coat protected you from selection pressures and 'slowed down' evolution? Evolution isn't going some place, it doesn't have a direction, so it is a bit misleading to talk about how fast it is going.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Notice the phrasing "gene-culture coevolution" is consistent with Dual-Inheritance theory which considers cultural (behavioural) transmission as an evolutionary process on its own. This can also be extended with Epigenetic mechanisms and Symbolic transmission modes. Technology evolves too and seems like a sensible extension. Its not so far fetched when you consider that Reproduction (or amplification in the continuous case), Variation and Selection are sufficient conditions for evolution. Keep in mind cultural evolution is Lamarckian though... and different in many other ways too.
It's not just humans impacts on themselves. Humans have become 'superpredators' speeding up the evolution of the species they hunt and harvest at rates far above what is found in nature. Hunting techniques such as bagging the biggest trophy animal to commercial fisheries where mesh openings in nets capture the largest while allowing the smallest to escape has impacted the natural selection process. Removing the strongest and biggest species from the gene pool has resulted in offspring characteristics such as reduced body size and lower reproductive age.
More info from this article
I will speak to this.
Based on world per capita income levels, I am quite wealthy. In fact, my income is beyond the dreams of avarice of the inhabitants of several sub-Saharan peoples.
Last week I bought 5 Casual Day stickers benefiting the American Red Cross. They cost $2 apiece, which is equivalent to me working four days in the field on a Guatemalan farm.
Have I not done enough?