Geneticist Claims Human Evolution Is Over 857
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."
How convenient! (Score:5, Funny)
Imagine that. Old guy scientist claims that old guys should bag young women. "But, baby, it's scientific!"
I immediately thought of this:
General "Buck" Turgidson: Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn't that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?
Dr. Strangelove: Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious... service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.
Ambassador de Sadesky: I must confess, you have an astonishingly good idea there, Doctor.
Re:How convenient! (Score:5, Funny)
MEIN FÜHRER! I CAN WALK!
Re:How convenient! (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:How convenient! (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is always that people assume that the only evolution is disease/lifespan related.
Healthcare that removes selectors like heart disease, cancer, diabetes, etc, just pushes selection in a different direction, and it becomes more about who you can convince to mate with you, rather than whether or not you'll be picked off by a disease.
Re:How convenient! (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:How convenient! (Score:4, Interesting)
More importantly personality (e.g intelligence creativity etc) is at best weakly genetical, so human "evolution" becomes less about biology and more about sociology.
Re:How convenient! (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't have a cow, man!
Re:How convenient! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's difficult to see how a geneticist could actually make such an absurd statement. I suspect either there is major misrepresentation going on, or he's about to have his proverbial testicles handed to him by any number of researchers showing that the claim is factually false and conceptually retarded.
All sorts of species evolve in spite of any particular start or length of reproductive capacity. Since the vast majority of what diversity between members of a population happens during conception, the evolutionary engine is largely fueled at that point.
Re:How convenient! (Score:5, Insightful)
As an FYI even the original claim is incorrect as the number of mutations in the population is overall increasing, due to the fact that the effect of natural selection is reduced. If anything we should be worried that the increase in harmful mutations in the general population is going to result in increased birth defects / genetic diseases.
Re:How convenient! (Score:5, Insightful)
But if anything, mutations should be increasing with all the potential nuclear devices. That should keep the evolution going.
Re:How convenient! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How convenient! (Score:5, Insightful)
but you're missing one important point. Say that someone comes up with a treatment for some serious problem with the atp cycle (for an extreme example). Sure it would mean that when civilisation falls a lot of people who need the drugs will die but there's also a chance that you can get a 2 stage mutation which otherwise would never have been possible.
Think in terms of
Change X: you die.
Change Y: you die.
Change X and Y: new extra effecient solution to a problem.You live.
It doesn't really matter if 99% of the population dies after civilisation crumbles due to genetic problems etc since 1% of 6 billion is still loads.
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Benefit? You can run for hours at sprint speeds and your tendons or joints will wear out first
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You appear to be living proof of that.
Re:How convenient! (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>"modern social customs have lowered the age at which human males have offspring"
That makes no sense. Men have been marrying later (or not at all). Heck Romeo married when he was 16, and that was customary at that time... in the 1800s most americans married at 22.... you don't see that happening today. A lot of people are waiting until their 30s.
Re:How convenient! (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Re:How convenient! (Score:5, Informative)
The biggest driver of evolution will always be catastrophic changes to the environment. Evolution advances rapidly when space in made available for mutations develop into empty spaces within the food chain in specific locals. It is very likely that the biggest driver for human evolution has been the relatively frequently recurring ice ages in recent geologic history.
Just as in future, the major drivers for human evolution will be those same ice ages recurring or, on own impact upon the environment being so great as to alter the environment sufficiently from the conditions under which we evolved as to force evolutionary adaptation to the new altered environment. Other changes in bacteria or viruses could also force associated changes in humans and, of course not to forget catastrophic impact.
Although evolution occurs across millions of years, there will be numerous periods, millennia, where evolution is accelerated fro particular species due to particular environmental conditions, so not much gradual change, but periods of relative stability interspersed with periods of accelerated change.
So as it has occurred in the past, a catastrophic event will either accelerate human evolution or end it, extinction being the only reason for a species to cease evolving. Crazy short haired rock throwing monkeys are really going to have to get over the idea that this universe needs or wants them to survive ;D.
Re:How convenient! (Score:4, Insightful)
No amount of evolutionary changes will remove the basic trait of human being - stupidity. From that perspective it does not matter whether evolution actually stopped, accelerated or reversed - we will continue to be stupid, gullible species and it is enough to look in the news any particular day in a year to see that it is so.
Gosh, maybe it is actually better for survival of the species if they are stupid and gullible. Now if mr Scientist clarified that - I would be impressed.
TFA is just confirmation that humans are stupid and this including mr scientist - fact that we reach maturity earlier does not mean we procreate earlier too in fact the opposite seems to be true. He mentioned Glasgow in his article which well says a lot...
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I expect that in a couple of days the news will be that evolution is slowly reversing..
Q: Are we not men? A: We are DEVO!
you never saw this? (Score:5, Interesting)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6057734.stm [bbc.co.uk]
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)
Re:How convenient! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:How convenient! (Score:4, Insightful)
and with ever greater populations and intermingling of cultures, i think it's safe to say the human species has plenty of genetic diversity at the moment.
there's also no shortage of genetic illnesses and cancers which are the direct results of genetic mutation. heck, people are probably exposed to more carcinogenic influences today than ever in human history. just look at all the mutant three-legged frogs that are turning up here in America.
biological reproduction is inherently imperfect, thus creates copying errors that introduce genetic mutations. the lack of mutations is not something that we'll ever have to worry about. and i'd argue that it's unethical to try to conceive children after a certain age just as it's unethical for closely related individuals to have children since their children will be at much higher risk of having congenital illnesses or other health problems.
Re:How convenient! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well yeah, the mechanism by which evolution has always worked is having lots of mutations; and ensuring that the 'faulty' mutations don't reproduce.
Nowadays our advanced medicine is ensuring that people with many of possible genetic defects are able to live a more or less normal life. It is very good for those people and their relatives; but it does mean that such defects will be becoming much more common in future.
Re:How convenient! (Score:4, Funny)
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And here a few ways one might go about handing him his... wrongness.
There was a time where the life expectancy was my current age, and I don't have kids (yet). We are getting older. In fact, put yourself in the shoes of a male homo ergaster whose balls have just dropped; you walk around, suddenly you see a girl crawling around on all four, with a good rear wiev of her pussy. Do you (A) get horny as hell and fuck her will she nil she; or (B) don't do anything?
Also, our collective cognitive skill (as measu
Re:How convenient! (Score:5, Insightful)
"There was a time where the life expectancy was my current age"
There was a time when _average_ life expectancy was your current age, because average life expectancy is calculated on figures that include infant mortality, which was (and still is in some parts of the world) around 90% for much of our history. Those who survived to the age of twelve years did however live just as long as people do today.
"We are getting older"
We're getting older _on average_ because birth rates in nearly all Western countries (and some Eastern ones such as Japan) have dropped below the levels required to maintain historic age ratios, so their "native" populations are declining. This does not however mean that our typical maximum ages are longer than they were historically, hence the Old Testament passage which says that men (no figures are given for women) live 70 years, and some reach 80 or more, "but they have little joy of it", i.e. men who live more than 70 years were likely to suffer from age-related health problems, just as they do today.
"Also, our collective cognitive skill (as measured by IQ) is steadily increasing."
IQ tests only measure the ability to pass IQ tests. There is a correlation between that ability and intelligence, but it's nothing more than a correlation, so an increased IQ in a population over time could just as easily be due to changes in the tests themselves as changes in those being tested.
"IQ is influenced by environment to some degree"
But intelligence isn't, otherwise we'd be able to produce environments that turned every child into a genius (note here that I'm referring to true geniuses such as Newton and Einstein, not those who fall into an arbitrary statistical IQ region).
"I'd rather we go along with slow evolution until we can do some genetic engineering on ourselves."
There's no such thing as "slow" or "fast" evolution, because organisms only change permanently when doing so makes them better at surviving in their environment than those without the new traits. There's a distinct body of evolutionary theory (based on evidence) which suggests that it actually happens in distinct spurts rather than by the slow accumulation of changes, which if true, would mean that the next phase in human evolution will be a distinct "jump" whose nature cannot be predicted by our current knowledge of genetics.
"by using our hands and frontal lobes, we have this great ability to adapt our environment to us instead of the other way around."
And this may be the ultimate result of evolution, whose only goal is after all to perpetuate a bunch of genes. What better way of doing this is there than by evolving an organism that can first make its environment suit it, and later come up with ways of changing itself at will to suit new environments? So perhaps it's time for geneticists to consider human technology as being a part of evolution just like our genes are, because it's those genes which produced our technological capability, including the emerging science of genetic engineering which will eventually allow us to modify our genetic makeup in a single generation in ways that would take millions of years otherwise.
So perhaps we should stop thinking of human technology and evolution as being separate things, something that's IMO hypocritical when we treat the technology of other animals such as species of ant that farm crops or livestock as being an evolutionary adaptation.
Re:How convenient! (Score:5, Interesting)
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_.
Re:How convenient! (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:How convenient! (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention that nowadays boys do not regularly become fathers as soon as they start maturing sexually; if anything, the onset of reproduction is moving forward, to mid- or late twenties.
Re:How convenient! (Score:4, Interesting)
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
Obligitory: 'You must be new here!' (Score:5, Insightful)
"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"
I happen to agree 100% with you, but I could not resist...Sorry!
If you want to grow a strong, healthy child, you need a lot of dirt, fresh air, and sunshine to allow for strong roots.
It also was way cool to grow up on a farm with room to explore and discover my world on my own.
Sadly, this is becoming a rarity for kids now.
I guess times change though, and before I start a 'Get off my lawn!' rant...
I have always kept in mind something my grandfather used to tell me:
(rough paraphrase)' Life is like a river- water and life are connected for a reason- a river has falls, slow pools, eddies, whirlpools, boulders, sandbars, rapids, all of those things and more. Remember, stagnant water breeds mosquitoes. Who wants that?'
That wisdom he passed to me has enabled me to keep faith in the good overall fate of the human race lately.
Re:How convenient! (Score:5, Insightful)
You think there is no selection pressure? It may not be based on the same criteria, but there is still definitely pressure for males and females to meet certain criteria before they will be allowed to mate successfully. As any geek should well appreciate!
Ugh (Score:5, Funny)
"I for one welcome our old men banging young women overlords."
Keep on dreaming buddy.
Re:Ugh (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, like a young woman could be an overlord... (not counting if McCain wins and has a heart attack)
No, we're not counting a 44-year-old bit^H^H^H as a "young woman".
Darwinian evolution? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Darwinian evolution? (Score:5, Interesting)
And I don't know about "de-evolving", but for me it seems like people "with low IQ" (I don't know how to say it without being offensive) are breeding more than smart people, because usually smart people leave having children for later, or even not even have them, for the sake of their careers. I don't have anything against pursuing what you wanna do with your life, but I'd rater have more smart kids being born.
Re:Darwinian evolution? (Score:5, Interesting)
Your radical new ideas have already occurred to Mike Judge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy [wikipedia.org]
Re:Darwinian evolution? (Score:5, Interesting)
Or more accurately, his ideas have been studied/proposed since the early 1900s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics [wikipedia.org]
Re:Darwinian evolution? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but OTOH smart people have more opportunities to meet each other that they didn't have in the past. If you were born on a farm in 1900, chances are you'd stay there all your life, even if you had an IQ of 160. Now, most reasonably smart people have the opportunity to go to universities, and work in environments where they're going to meet other smart people. Of course, the children of smart parents tend to regress toward the mean, so genetics may play a lesser role in intelligence than you might think.
Re:Darwinian evolution? (Score:4, Interesting)
A shout out to Mendel for this tidbit.
Re:Darwinian evolution? (Score:5, Informative)
He's talking about the specific case where both parents are high intelligence. If it's recessive both must be II, so all the offspring will be.
It's similar to blue eyes (the simplified version, in practice it's a liitle more complicated).
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Indeed, I mean here all these people with high IQs are hooking up, yet the average IQ remains at 100!
Re:Darwinian evolution? (Score:5, Insightful)
-its hard to measure 'smart' and there are multiple kinds of 'smart'
-'smart' parents may be poor at bringing up children properly
-'smart' may require certain things to 'trigger' it which differs as well as the age range etc
-many genetic traits we know about skip generations etc. This could be more complex than the simple stuff we know about now
-developmental problems could contribute; where infant health could inhibit brain development or indirectly impact it
-'smart' people could just be lucky and there are more than we realize (even they don't realize it) I'm not just suggesting environment, but also luck, and timing. There are plenty of physically capable people who just lack the diet, exercise, motivation, where there is clearly SOME genetics but its also other factors
-LONG TERM trends were what got us here
Mod parent up. (Score:3, Interesting)
This is exactly right.
For anyone interested in examining the topic of stupidity, I highly suggest looking up, and obtaining in whichever way you choose, a recent CBC documentary on stupdity [imdb.com].
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
1000 years ago, a child who developed diabetes would probably die long before they were able to reproduce. If they were lucky, and had parents wealthy enough to afford the best medical care the times could provide, they might live into their early twenties. Now, of course, a diabetic child can grow up to live a happy, healthy, normal life, including raising a family.
Re:Darwinian evolution? (Score:4, Insightful)
1000 years ago, a child who developed diabetes would probably die long before they were able to reproduce. ... now a diabetic child can grow up to live a happy, healthy, normal life, including raising a family
You cannot stop natural selection, you can only change the selection criteria.
Re:Darwinian evolution? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, but that's balanced by the possibility of smart kids being born from dumb parents via genetic mutation. How else did the smart parents become smart?
Re:Darwinian evolution? (Score:4, Insightful)
People "with low IQ" are breeding more than smart people.
That could be a matter of memetics, instead of genetics.
Here's the brunt of it: many children grow up in a family and social environment lacking in intellectual stimulation, where even asking questions and/or searching for answers may be taboo.
I'll keep it apolitical and mention a friend who, when caught at a very early age reading comic books by his mother, was chastised for "reading garbage". Well, guess what, that person has never read for the sheer pleasure of it, his intellectual curiosity was stomped lifeless by his stupid fucking mother, who probably had the TV on all the time, and probably "thought" the proper thing for her offspring was to start reading on their own with The Illiad, The fucking Book Of Acts, Milton's Paradise Lost, or not at all.
This may more common than one thinks, in varying degrees, through different circumstances. In my twenties, in vacation from college, my fundamentalist mother tried to take Hesse's The Steppenwolf from me, but I told her she would have to pry it from my cold, dead hands. Later that summer, I noticed my Philip K Dick paperbacks had disappeared from my bedroom.
So, to reiterate my point: nascent memes in individuals collide with established memes in others, sometimes the "willfully ignorant" memes persevere in the end.
I'd rater have more smart kids being born.
Yeah, that's quite a painful paradox, isn't it? It comes down to "memes of openness" to new ideas, found in the educated segments of the population, embracing contraception, while "memes of closed-mindedness", found in most religious segments, repudiate birth control. Guess which segment's gonna have more babies.
If the religious establishment had accepted contraception when it came out, things would have be a whole different shade today, yet what the educational system currently reflects is exactly the opposite. The viewpoint that contraception begets immorality has resulted in a spike of teen pregnancies as well as venereal diseases like gonorrhea, syphilis and herpes in the Bible Belt and beyond, go figure, like they went straight from the nineteenth century to the twenty first, and the twentieth never happened.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't have anything against pursuing what you wanna do with your life, but I'd rater have more smart kids being born.
Given that as a species we still have an overpopulation problem, wouldn't less dumb kids being born work the same, just better?
Ethiopian Boredom Dance... (Score:3, Insightful)
people "with low IQ" are breeding more than smart people
...Oh, I don't know, I think there's also alot to be said about occupied having less children than unnocupied people.
Re:Darwinian evolution? (Score:5, Informative)
The aptly titled book "The blank slate" by Steven Pinker is a really good overview of the research that has evolved our understanding of the nature and nurture debate.
There are genetic factors that influence intelligence, as well as environmental factors. The notion that everyone is born equal is unfortunately not true. (people are much more accepting that physical differences are genetic, but not mental...)
Re:Darwinian evolution? (Score:5, Interesting)
Having good genes does give you an advantage in life - just like having a predisposition to creativity, good motor skills, not being born a psycho or any number of traits with genetic components. Having good parents (also an unearned privilege) is a massive advantage in life. Likewise being born a haemophiliac or with down syndrome is a disadvantage. However that is life, and you have to make the best of what you have.
As for your notion that this is how things should be all I can say too bad. Life is how it is, and pretending otherwise doesn't change anything. http://xkcd.com/240/ [xkcd.com]
Re:Darwinian evolution? (Score:4, Interesting)
You are factually wrong.
1) IQ (as opposed to knowledge and skill) is mostly pre-set and is able to be determined comparably early in childhood and will have only comparably minor variations throughout later years.
2) There is a not huge, but statistically significant correlation between IQ of children and their parents. Children of IQ 150 parents won't statistically have huge IQ, but their mean IQ will be approx 110 instead of 100 as for general population, which does suggest that intelligence is at least partly inherited.
3) Genocide based on genetic properties is evil. But this does not make the above things untrue.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
G G G G GODWIN!!!!!
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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.
Seems to me that just results in selecting for genes that improve the odds of getting modern medical treatment, same old darwinian evoluation.
This is obviously true, but (Score:4, Funny)
we are looking, within a few generations at the ability to edit our own DNA. We will start selecting ourselves.
Re:Darwinian evolution? (Score:5, Funny)
Modern medicine may SAVE people that "should have" died and not passed on their genes.
Hell, I do that all the time when I slam on the brakes for idiot pedestrians. I feel like such a traitor to Darwin. I'm screwing up the whole system.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Why don't you look up the word "supremacist", then read the post you're replying to. I don't see where he said anything about superiority.
On a lighter note:
As someone pointed out, due to assortative mating that doesn't actually happen in practice.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I didn't spend any dollars to get my degree. In fact the government gave me some pounds.
Seems a little strange (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
According to the article, he cites one guy who was a ruler at his time so obviously that person had lots of women to foster children.
If anything, men today are living longer than they were before due to better health care and medicine.
I don't have quotations on this, but I remember reading that in the olden times, if they lived past 50, that was amazing.
I call bullshit on this guy. He's just trying to hook up with young girls
Re:Seems a little strange (Score:4, Insightful)
50 year old don't marry 14 year old as often these days, though...
Re:Seems a little strange (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Seems a little strange (Score:4, Insightful)
Not really true if you look beyond the recent past. Humans evolved as hunter-gatherers and in pre-agrarian hunter-gatherer communities reaching 70+ wasn't uncommon. There's plenty of documentation on the health and lifespan on Australian Aborigines (prior to the almost entirely negative effects of Westerners spreading through their country). Plus, the general rule was that the culturally more powerful older men had most of the women with the younger men largely having to wait their turn. You're right about the women having kids young though.
Personally, I don't know about the changes to this system affecting evolution, but I suspect there isn't much going on in humans. Look how we're breeding fertility problems into our species by the use of IVF (not that I oppose the use of IVF). Plus, most evolution is mainly viewed as a punctuated equilibrium these days, so we need a major change in our environment to push significant evolution.
I have to wonder (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, I just have to wonder, though.
I mean, cats on the average live 14 to 20 years if kept indoors and well taken care of, or a _lot_ less out in the wild. Most humans don't have children at the age at which cats die. I don't think it stopped cat evolution.
Squirrels have a life expectancy of a couple of years. Humans would still be a toddler by the age when a squirrel dies, and thus stops reproducing. I don't think that was a big problem for evolution.
Mayflies live between 30 minutes and a whole day as an
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Seems a little strange (Score:5, Insightful)
I accept my fate (Score:5, Funny)
I accept my fate. I will propagate with younger women, if for nothing else than to save our species. :)
Steve has some issues. (Score:3, Interesting)
Right for the wrong reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
If human evolution is slowing, it isn't because of old dudes having mutated sperm.
* Historically most people and any animal I've heard of reproduced as soon as possible, old fart mating doesn't really make sense. People are actually reproducing at an older age(TRUE)...we get autism(*WILD SPECULATION*).
* Stupid people have more kids, raise them to be stupid.
* Smart people have fewer kids, raise them to reproduce responsibly(less).
* Health care, safety measures, and social medicine keep stupid people alive to the age of reproduction.
This guy is waaaay off. We're devolving...at least mentally, has nothing to do with saggy old balls.
Re:Right for the wrong reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not devolving, there's no such thing. People will evolve to best adapt to the environment over a long period of time. If the best way to survive is have the "talking shit and lying out your ass" trait then you'll start to see it more. If rich & smart people aren't reproducing as much then apparently there is a level of stupidity and poverty required for reproduction. Though that is not necessarily a bad thing. Nature doesn't give a fuck about money or intellect, only the ability to survive the longest and create the largest amount of progeny.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
To be fair, if it gets really bad, there's always the chance that the stupid people will get so stupid, and the smart people will get so smart, that the smart people can easily solve the problem by herding the stupid people off a cliff (real or metaphorical).
And in a postapocalyptic world, you don't really have to worry so much about earning a wage, so it makes sense to have as many children as you want. (Plus, it's not as though condoms will be easy to come by, if it truly was apocalyptic.)
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My son was born when I was 24 and he's autistic. From the information I have available it seems the rise in autism is caused by a combination of increased diagnosis and some as yet undiscovered (probably man-made) environmental factor.
Dysgenics (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Dysgenics (Score:5, Insightful)
Evolution doesn't just "stop"... (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, society and technology have only been around for a few thousand years. If you're an optimist, the future of the human race looks really hot, and is fairly promiscuous. If you're a pessimist, society collapses, and we're back to the good ol' fashioned try-not-to-die for a while.
Feh! (Score:3, Funny)
The article is worth reading. (Score:5, Informative)
This is absolute rubbish (Score:5, Insightful)
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Bacteria, for example, reproduce at age 1 hour, say, and have no trouble evolving.
Bacteria also reproduce in an exponential fashion, given an adequate supply of food. In one day a single bacterium will turn into 2^24 bacteria for a total number of 16,777,215 divisions per day or 6,123,683,475 times per year. That's far more than the 300 or so divisions for the 29-year old mentioned in the article, a rate of around 1 per year. This means that a single bacterium mutates around 6 billion times faster than a human.
Yes, this is an extreme (and simplified) estimate but it does give you an i
Idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, were under no evolutionary pressure. The world is in stasis. There will be no more pandemics like Spanish Flu that wiped out tens of millions of us a couple of generations ago.
What a fucking tool.
Anonymous Coward (Score:5, Insightful)
This is absolute garbage science of the highest order and I'm surprised it is even mentioned here.
Idiotic (Score:5, Insightful)
Evolution of a species only stops with extinction. Period.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I've thought for some time that evolution in humans must be stagnating. There is very little natural selection if most humans are likely to grow up and reproduce regardless of their intelligence or physical attributes due to medical advances and states caring for their citizens. This probably means that many genetic disorders will not die out as they might have in the past.
You start wondering if some people should be allowed to reproduce, but that gets into dodgy territory.
Are their any societies where 'sel
He is almost right (Score:5, Insightful)
Disclaimer: IANAEB
This has nothing to do with older men and younger women.
I say we will stop evolving any significant changes fairly soon because:
A) We have interracial mixing on all continents and in almost all genetic populations due to advances in human transportation.
B) Our other technological advances mean that we are highly capable of surviving due to the nature of our innovations as opposed to radical changes in our bodies (that in other species' histories may have been the major factor of eliminatig the unsuitable). This includes fighting natural disaster, possible predators, and food supply/type changes (industrialized production of food).
C) Welfare. We have organised the distribution of our resources. The weak will not flourish, but they won't die.
D) We are highly selective physically (males at least, females to a much lesser extent) due this time to communications technology and the entertainment industry broadcasting good genes everywhere, so we are less forgiving in terms of physical absurdity that may occur in our corner of the world.
E) He just wants to bang young girls. The hypothetical secretary in his office, to be exact. Slashdot is being used. Again.
Intensely wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
I call shenanigans. The process of evolution has not stopped in the least.
What has happened is that the criteria for fitness in our population has changed. No longer do we select for the strongest, cleverest, fittest individuals.
The criteria for selection is now much less genetically determined. Those who survive to adulthood, elect to have children, and raise their children to grow up to be adults who have children are more likely to pass on their genes.
Those who live in safer areas with better access to healthcare are more likely to survive to have children will experience some benefits to selection, but those who live in areas with pro-breeding cultures (where children are more desired or birth control is not present) will be vastly more selected for.
In short, we're experiencing artificial selection to a much greater degree than that of natural selection. But so long as human beings are reproduce and are born with mutations, we will continue to undergo evolution in some form.
Natural Selection (Score:4, Interesting)
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/ [imdb.com] :)
Condoms On Plaes! (Score:4, Funny)
This is hardly news. It's been obvious for many years. But it's interesting to see someone famous talking about it.
It's still not quite right--there are selective pressures. For example, in 1000 years the genes associated with the ability to use contraceptives will have been purged from the population. For example, all of humanity might have an innate terror of taking a pill every day. And then they'll release the new horror movie, "Condoms On Planes"!
Re:The Problem is Natural Selection (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Problem is Natural Selection (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh my. Someone on the Internet understands evolution through natural selection, and the definition of fitness in relation to environment. The world's about to end.
It's so frustrating to see so many other comments that treat "fitness" as something that exists outside of any context, as if what they value as fitness is what the selection process used.
Re:The Problem is Natural Selection (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:The Problem is Natural Selection (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The way I see it, problem is not a matter of fitness---it's a matter of desirability of the outcome.
In today's society, we have highly educated people in developed cultures (hence "successful" and "desirable" to some degree) producing fewer and fewer children, while the less educated in under-developed world continue to grow in population.
By definition, this would make those who are less educated "fit". Not that there is a problem with that, but if we are to assume that human evolution should point in the d
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Natural Selection is interesting in that there's not really anything we can do to stop it -- by definition, it is always happening.
And it's not just about individuals. Our altruism is a selected quality, as is our technology. It means we get to survive, instead of some other species. It is apparently working, as we are still here -- and it makes sense that it should work.
After all, if you think back to a time when there was a lot more pressure from natural selection, if a person is wounded by a tiger, we co
Re:Not evolving because why? (Score:5, Informative)
There's a blog post from PZ Myers on Pharyngula that addresses this statement from Steve Jones fairly well I think. Read it in full here [scienceblogs.com]
This[the idea that older men have more mutations in their sperm] is true, but it makes no sense. It's not as if younger fathers produce no mutations -- they generate plenty. It's a difference in degree, nothing more, so we still have plenty of new mutations percolating into the population. And of course, over most of human history parents have been relatively young, since you couldn't count on living to the age of 35.
And then there's this odd argument.
Another factor is the weakening of natural selection. "In ancient times half our children would have died by the age of 20. Now, in the Western world, 98 per cent of them are surviving to 21."
That makes even less sense. Natural selection is going to eliminate variants; by reducing its effects, we permit more mutations to persist in the population. One moment he's complaining that fewer mutations are being produced, the next he's complaining that the mutants are thriving. Which is it?
tl;dr = Steve Jones is full of wacky.
Re:Not evolving because why? (Score:5, Interesting)
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).
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
And when we kill them, the neocon menace will finally be over. Too bad we'll have just killed the last Neanderthals.