Recent Human Evolution May Have Been Driven By Self-Selection 448
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."
Heard on the evolutionary kickball field... (Score:2)
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Survival of the Fittest (Score:5, Funny)
Whenever I get a package of plain M&Ms, I make it my duty to continue the strength and robustness of the candy as a species. To this end, I hold M&M duels.
Taking two candies between my thumb and forefinger, I apply pressure, squeezing them together until one of them cracks and splinters. That is the "loser," and I eat the inferior one immediately. The winner gets to go another round.
I have found that, in general, the brown and red M&Ms are tougher, and the newer blue ones are genetically inferior. I have hypothesized that the blue M&Ms as a race cannot survive long in the intense theater of competition that is the modern candy and snack-food world.
Occasionally I will get a mutation, a candy that is misshapen, or pointier, or flatter than the rest. Almost invariably this proves to be a weakness, but on very rare occasions it gives the candy extra strength. In this way, the species continues to adapt to its environment.
When I reach the end of the pack, I am left with one M&M, the strongest of the herd. Since it would make no sense to eat this one as well, I pack it neatly in an envelope and send it to M&M Mars, A Division of Mars, Inc., Hackettstown, NJ 17840-1503 U.S.A., along with a 3x5 card reading, "Please use this M&M for breeding purposes."
This week they wrote back to thank me, and sent me a coupon for a free 1/2 pound bag of plain M&Ms. I consider this "grant money." I have set aside the weekend for a grand tournament. From a field of hundreds, we will discover the True Champion.
There can be only one.
Probably that's how it REALLY worked (Score:5, Interesting)
See, selection based on beauty, niceness, etc, are shiny-happy feel-good theories. They make us feel better about us as a species.
They also utterly fail to explain stuff like the ultra-fast evolution of, say, intelligence related alleles.
Now let's think about it for a bit. What's one situation which drives evolution like _hell_? What drove the early evolution of hominids? Having to survive in the face of a nasty predator. That's one _hell_ of an evolutionary pressure.
The early hominids, for example, faced the pressure of having to move out of the trees and compete with nasty carnivores for food. It was a monkey (ok, ape) too unfit to hunt (as late as the Neanderthals, they still couldn't do ballistics: Neanderthals were survival-spec melee hunters;), so it had to steal the food some carnivore had hunted. And it was even less fit to fight tigers barehanded. That's what drove the fast evolution of the brain. Stealth and cunning were the only things that worked.
Now move to the last 20,000 years or so, and humans faced an even nastier predator: other humans.
The history of mankind is, sadly, one of constant warfare, atrocities, etc. Tribes raided each other constantly, and then states fought each other like crazy. And let's remember that this was:
A) millenia before the Geneva convention. If you couldn't take a fortress, it was considered perfectly acceptable to kill or enslave the peasants instead.
B) millenia before logistics. As a peasant in those times, you'd get looted by both the enemy (whole campaigns got slowed down by waiting for the villages in their path to harvest the grain, so the army can loot it) and your own side (as levies.)
So, yeah, humans selected themselves all right. At spear point. Being able to, say, hide and hide your harvest when the next raid came, was already a hell of an evolutionary advantage.
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. Famine, plagues, war atrocities, etc, took their toll starting from the bottom.
Even if you look at the renaissance era, let's just say we're almost all the descendants of the rich folks back then. The poor mostly died out over enough generations. Or IIRC in China they actually did some study and IIRC some 80% of a province's population carried the genes of one imperial family. That's how disproportionate a survival advantage that was.
So that's your other natural selection factor: those who figured out some way or another to claw their way up the social pyramid, had more chances to pass their genes on.
Some did that by just being smart and hard working. Learning enough of the alphabet would automatically qualify one for a scribe job in a lot of places, from ancient Egypt to China. That already made it a lot less likely that they'll starve during the next famine, plus ensured that they can afford to educate their children too.
Some did it by a lot less nice means.
But at any rate, that's another case of humans selecting themselves.
Etc.
Basically, yes, the ones who survived were the ones who went "And I pick... me!" And proceeded to gain some kind of advantage over the others.
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.
So, yeah, let's instead believe bogus shiny-happy fairy-tales where surely the biggest advantage was being sexy. Heh.
Here's another not-nice thought: mortality among women was disproportionately higher than mortality among men. In the Old Kingdom period, for example, the peak of the mortality gauss curve was in the 20's for women, and in the 30's for men. (Of course, again, the rich tended to live longer.) And even primitive tribes raided each other to s
Re:Probably that's how it REALLY worked (Score:5, Informative)
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...
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 (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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.
Re:Probably that's how it REALLY worked (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm, something seems to have touched a nerve there. So, you don't like the thought about being nice as a selective force? No problem.
Your reasoning isn't entirely wrong; but then again it isn't entirely true either. You seem to want to make evolution something that only favours violence and selfishness, which is a rather one-sided view of the world. I haven't read this particular article, but I am familiar with this topic - it isn't as if this is an entirely new idea.
What is evolution really, when you think about it? One component is the fact that in each generation of organisms, some will survive and have descendants and some won't. It is worth remembering that you don't have to be particularly 'fit' in any way in order to produce desendants, you may just be lucky. The thing about 'fitness' only comes in when you look at it statistically - over time, and over a large population, it makes sense to say that the ones that kept surviving and reproducing had traits that made them more 'fit for survival'. This also means is that at any given point in time there is likely to be a proportion of traits in the population that are not advantageous, just to make that point clear.
Another factor that is worth keeping in mind is that the environment is not something seperate from the population. In the case of human evolution this becomes especially important as our numbers grow; it is not surprising to see that genes that influence our social abilities seem to have evolved rapidly since we began to live in larger communities than the typical family groups we see with other primates. Another area where our sheer force in numbers has been important is in diseases; the more people and the close they live together, the more they will contaminate their environment and the more they will pass on infections etc, so we are under a large pressure when it comes to evolving resistence against infections.
The examples you mention, on the other hand, don't seem to make too much sense. Humans are apes; our great advantage has been adaptability; our teeth and gut are general purpose, we are able to both walk and climb, and we have learned to work together - and it is that cooperative ability that has been our greatest asset, and it is probably also the single greatest factor contributing to the evolution of our intelligence. It has also made us the most efficient hunters on the planet - quite well done for a species that is not a predator.
As for what you call 'bogus shiny-happy fairy-tales' - I assume you mean the idea that things like beauty and altruism play a role in evolution. Well, I'm sorry to upset your view on the world, but they do. Altruism is still one of the things we don't entirely understand from an evolutionary point of view, but we can see it happen, even amongst chimpanzees; ie. it is a FACT. Beauty, on the other hand is not difficult to understand - beautiful people are people who look healthy (ie. likelier to produce good offspring), whose facial expressions are mostly kind (probably better at bringing up succesful offspring) etc etc. Our ide of beauty is a result of evolution and therefore important in evolution. The same goes for our morals - our moral rules are the ones that have been valuable for our survival as species.
You refer to some historical facts or factoids about the Romans etc. However, our written history doesn't stretch much more than about 5000 years, and large scale evolution doesn't happen quite as fast as that, which tends to invalidate your arguments. You may not like the idea that physical beauty is important, so you try paint an ugly picture of mankind; yes, even an ugly man or woman can have sex and thus offspring, but looks are after all only one factor in this - an ugly person may have other traits that make him/her very attractive, such as a caring personality, or high social intelligence. But physical beauty is an important factor f
No, you misunderstand my point (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm _not_ saying that altruism and arts are useless. God forbid.
I'm saying only that evolution was most often a matter of predator and prey trying to out-evolve each other. In this case, the humans were both predator and prey. That's really all I'm saying.
Maybe altruism played some role in being able to survive. Could be. Sticking together certainly did. But that's already a bit of a tangent. And I never intended to say that altruism w
That's not what I meant, though (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Probably that's how it REALLY worked (Score:4, Informative)
Also, the Aztecs were decidedly stone age, and were some of the most bloodthirsty people.
American Indian tribes too were only peaceful and nature-loving in romanticized revisionism. The most peaceful tribes there raided their neighbours only about once a year, on the average.
Now I'm not saying that warfare was already a major factor of evolution yet. Just that it already existed.
Eugenics (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Eugenics (Score:4, Insightful)
The root of the problem is that someone really has to know what traits are going to be best for the entire species, otherwise they're just extinguishing genetic diversity in pursuit of a goal which may turn out to be a stupid goal.
There is an economic equivalent to eugenics; communism. The idea there is that the government is smart enough to be able to decide what everyone should be producing and what everything should cost. It's an utter disaster...Whenever you add free market reforms to a communist country you can watch their economies go nuts.
The reason for this is simple. Having a few thousand people making decisions about what will benefit millions doesn't work as well as all those millions making those decisions about what will benefit themselves...No matter how smart or well informed that minority is, they can't be reliably informed about the minutiae of every member of the majorities' positive and negative qualities.
What is dating but a process by which you weed out people whom you believe to be inferior to share your genes with? It's a long term research project carried out by literally billions of people, and you really think that a few people with an idea of what the "perfect" person will be like can do it better? That's some serious arrogance.
genetics, evolution, and eugenics (Score:3, Insightful)
After Darwin wrote The Origin of Species, people just took what they were doing before and rephrased it as pseudoscience. Now you have Hovind and other creationists saying that the eugenics crowd were motivated by evolutionary t
Re:Eugenics (Score:4, Insightful)
Longevity is an evolutionary dead end.
Physical immortality is easy. Bacteria figured it out. That's why they're still bacteria.
If you keep hardware around for too long, it'll be yesterdays hardware very quickly. And thus be obsoleted by tomorrows hardware.
Planned obsolescence of hardware keeps the means of production busy and allows for constant incremental improvements to the layout of the product.
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Re:Eugenics (Score:4, Insightful)
Nazis vs Darwin (Score:5, Informative)
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." [pandasthumb.org]--because an understanding of evolution undermines the Nazi's entire "master race" doctrine.
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Hitler used the state to promote his own personal theories of eugenics. That's "arbitrary" selection, not "natural" selection.
"Libertarians . . . prefer to blur the distinction between Nazism and Communism."
If that's true, I think the primary reason would be that both of those systems are fundamentally based on the supreme power of the state and(typically brutal) suppression of the individ
Physical lull. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Physical lull. (Score:4, Insightful)
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DNA expression is not a fixed thing (Score:3, Interesting)
You may be more accurate than you think, and may even alter the DNA expression during this lifetime according to Bruce Lipton, which show some scientific results behind his assertion:
That our feelings and belief-systems actually alter how our DNA is decoded all the time!
Part 1: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8506668136396723343 [google.com]
Part 2: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-65681073 [google.com]
Who needs evolution with technology (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who needs evolution with technology (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who needs evolution with technology (Score:4, Funny)
Unfortunately my experiences in computer support do not seem to support that theory.
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You might also be interested in the idea of the 'extended phenotype', a term apparently coined by Richard Dawkins during one of his more useful phases. The extended phenotype considers factors beyond simply the body plan of an organism; for instance beavers' dams are part of the extended phenotype of beavers, and techn
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'extended phenotype'
Calling it "phenotype" does injustice to the fact that it isn't just an expression of genetic information, but carries information itself. Humans are currently three different parallel lines of communication information generationally: genetic, cultural and technological. We're using technology to transmit cultural information, we use culture to propagate technology, we use both to pass on genetic information. We're about to start modifying that genetic information at will (by means of technology - possib
Re:Who needs evolution with technology (Score:5, Insightful)
We are changed our tools, while our tools are changing us. Granted, our tools are changing at a much faster rate...
Re:Who needs evolution with technology (Score:5, Interesting)
For now. In just a few generations, humanity will probably be choosing genes for kids as SOP. (Already in the next generation, smart drugs will probably be quite common.)
If we are DNA-based at all in a hundred years. Check e.g. "Mind Children" by Moravec.
All this, like racism, is just history. It won't be relevant soon.
Re:Who needs evolution with technology (Score:4, Funny)
. "evolution" is a response to external conditons. Its cold, I grow fur, water means webbed feet etc. With humans cold means another log on the fire and wet means fix the roof. The roof evolves. I do not...
Re:Who needs evolution with technology (Score:4, Insightful)
However, mental and social evolution continues.
Any further biological evolution of humans will only be on the "resistance to disease" level, and that which we do ourselves. Transhumanists are gonna love this news. Augmentation's always getting closer.
Actually...No. (Score:4, Insightful)
Couple that with a vastly increased species population, representing a staggering amount of genetic diversity, I have no problem believing that we're still evolving, and indeed, that the rate may very well have increased.
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This is part of one of the major misunderstandings of how the evolutionary process works. The survivors aren't necesssrily the ones with the most offspring. If this were true, every species would turn out as many children as they possibly can. But there are thousands of known species that survive quite well with a low rate of reproduction. We're one of them.
The basic explanation in our case is fairl
The environment always changes, tech does nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The environment always changes, tech does nothi (Score:5, Insightful)
Thing is, there are equal numbers for the sexes. Girls like tall guys, so attractive girls will get the tall ones. Unattractive ones will get the short ones. Since there are as many women as men, everyone finds someone to mate with even if they aren't ideal. Since everyone breeds successfully, we *won't* get taller, though you might see a flatting of the bell curve of men think tall women are attractive. There is no "survival of the fittest" as everyone, tall or otherwise, survives to breed.
As long as humans a serial monogamists, this is the way it would go. For animals that are polygamous, it would happen as you say.
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"Since there are as many women as men, everyone finds someone to mate with even if they aren't ideal"
My 27 years of life without sex or even a partner seems to show a flaw in your model. [...] I suppose I'm also just one case, and statistically insignificant, but you're using words like "everyone" and since I'm part of everyone...
Trust me, you're not alone with this one. IMHO, the number of "unwilling" singles has increased quite a bit in the past few decades.
There are several social factors at work, here:
1) Less financial pressure to look for a mate, since people can afford living without a family. You don't necessarily need a partner or children to care for you when you're old. (Although it would probably be nice to have someone who'd visit you...) Also, women do not depend on marriage to survive anymore.
2) Less social pressure t
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It doesn't matter if we evolve, because we change the environment around us as opposed to adapting to it.
Well that's partly right, but that's assuming that we can control our environment. Our man-made environment does harm us in ways we can't seem to do a lot about. Think about the high availability of high energy foods leading to disease, inactivity and pollution, a high rate and fast transmission of infectious diseases. None of these things will change soon. We might start to lose the genes that evolved to store energy in places with
We are sexually attracted to people who look to be thriving (health
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Some of us are evolving to better use genetically modified food.
Some of us are evolving to better tolerate a starch centric diet.
etc.
If some aspect of our environment affects our ability to reproduce (and the artificial estrogens are a huge issue) then we will either go extinct or some random group of humans will get a mutation that can ignore that factor and they will reproduce better.
For now, I think meme's have a lot more
All animals change their environment (Score:2)
Nor is our use of tools any more perfect than (other) animals, we do not have mastery over everything (eg HIV, anti-biotic resistant bacteria) and until we do (ie forever) evolution will still have a role.
Medical science kills natural selection (Score:5, Insightful)
Nature determines that weak and premature infants should die, yet they are kept alive and become adults. Nature determines that some adults should not be breeding, yet fertility drugs override this. Nature determines that various people should die by heart failure etc, but drugs keep them alive.
Sure, these are all good from the emotional point of view of keeping people alive and making childless couples happy etc, but does it really help the human gene pool? Perhaps Mother Nature had a good reason to kill off a weak child or prevent that infertile couple from breeding. The long term impacts can only be known in a few generations.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy [wikipedia.org]
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A huge evolution experiment is sadly taking place in Africa, with the Aids epidemic.
The flu pandemic of 1918 was a significant evolutionary event, estimated deaths of up to 40 million people worldwide. http://virus.stanford.edu/uda/ [stanford.edu]
The next big flu pandemic will also cause evolutionary change. Read "Collapse" by Jared Diamond for many examples of pandemics in recent history - including the 95% wipeout of North and South American natives who had never been pr
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How well aquainted are you with the facts? Have you ever lived in Africa etc, or is this just TV knowledge?
I lived in Africa for 30 years, mostly in rural or semi-rural areas and I could speak two African languages. I even helped out at mission hospitals a few times. Sure, there are still huge mortalities relative
So now with civilization... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:So now with civilization... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:So now with civilization... (Score:5, Interesting)
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but... (Score:2, Interesting)
Fertility rates are coming down everywhere, even in the developed world, where the exigencies of daily survival still tend to apply some selection pressure on intelligence.
Since H.G. Wells, there has been some speculation that the human species will split into two distinct gene pools (I wouldn;t say "species," since interbreeding remains a possibility). However, if one gene pool should find itself supporting the other, larger pool, the burden would eventually become too great and the two pools would eit
sigh (Score:4, Interesting)
As if all of the sudden when you gain intelligence, the rules of evolution change to a new set. Perhaps the term evolution should always be prefaced with a qualifier, such as "biological" or "human" where the qualifier has distinct meaning, and can make it a subset of other qualifiers. It just seems to me that the increase in our intellectual evolution is no different than biological evolution. Not to say we shouldn't put our effort into researching cognitive science, it is a remarkable field. But I think looking at it in this way makes us feel special for no good reason and can muddy the waters more than clear them.
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Europeans no more chose to evolve paler skin than polar bears did white, thick fur.
I disagree - they very carefully bread for paler skin, despite the difficulties it caused. Look it up - "fairest of them all" etc. In fact, there was an article just a few days ago about the UK having to pull skin-lightening medications off the shelves due to the dangers. The view hasn't changed.
Skin color (and skin condition) were major selection criteria during the middle-ages in Europe. Nobody wanted people who were "different" than the ideal. On one end you get the Hapsburgs, on the other you get popul
Re:sigh (Score:5, Interesting)
There are a million things I could give as an example, but think about this, if you did not have modern tools, eating would still be a big part of your daily activity, or trying to eat. I think that early man was probably very intelligent also, just didn't have all the mod-cons that we enjoy today. Without electricity, there is little reason to invent a sit-com, and without petroleum, little reason to invent NASCAR. Technology is a progressive linear-like process, it did not simply happen one day. Intelligence, laboring under the burden of little technology, will seem as though it is less than what we have today. All that we really have today is more KNOWLEDGE, not more intelligence.
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The fact that college students spend years studying the scientific discoveries of men who have been dead for centuries is something of a testament to that. Much of what we know about math, physics, chemistry, and philosophy was explained by the likes of Euler, Newton, and Descartes.
Not to say we haven't come a long way since then, bu
Broken circularity (Score:5, Insightful)
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i was just arguing with some guy (Score:5, Interesting)
my response was to question the supremacy of physical fitness. for example, the rise of humans in larger groups, cities, drives the emphasis on new genes: human empathy, for example, being a highly desirable survival advantage in large groups. and the less physically fit in large groups can still contribute to the survival of the group. such that a well-organized group of less physically fit humans can outcompete very fit physical specimens that unfortunately aren't as well wired for human empathy, and therefore are out there, loners, failng to coordinate with othwer humans for the successful passing on of their genes. the rise of cities changing the emphasis onto new genes for survival
which, ironically, given his utter lack of empathy for the less physically fit, put him on the lower end of the "fit" gene pool, where "fit" now means more empathetic, not bigger biceps
perhaps we should leave him out in the snow i wondered?
Re:i was just arguing with some guy (Score:5, Interesting)
AFAIK even very early cavemen didn't do that, there's evidence of cavemen taking care of the crippled and elderly.
even better (Score:2)
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You do realize this is how evolution works right? That's EXACTLY what every other complex organism does.
Honestly, what is the benefit to our species as a whole to continue to cre
Re:i was just arguing with some guy (Score:5, Insightful)
Evolution works by *differential* reproductive success. This does not require in any way that we leave the "unfit" out in the snow. Their own genetic disadvantages will see to it that they simply leave fewer offspring.
By intervening directly (the "leave them out in the snow" school) you run the very significant risk that you mistakenly identify as "unfit" individuals whose genomes contain significant survival advantages that would otherwise be passed on in the gene pool.
IOW, not being omniscient, people are likely to identify as "unfit" individuals who they simply don't like, feel threatened by, etc., and prevent from reproducing people who are, in fact, carriers of genes with significant survival value.
It's called "natural selection" for a reason: the inevitable expression of each individual's genome will of necessity result in some individuals leaving more offspring than others. These individuals are, *by definition* the fittest. No need to intervene - it's already taken care of.
Note that in artificial selection, breeders can only select for heritable traits that they observe. In the process they often end up with breeds that carry significant deleterious traits because the breeders were not aware that they were inadvertently selecting for these as well.
It all comes down to humility about our lack of omniscience. Anything short of a complete understanding of all the complexity of the human genome, epigenetics, and how these interact with various past, present and yes, even future environments, will lead to the unintended, but potentially disastrous reduction of variation and loss of genes of significant fitness.
The system (natural selection) works well precisely because there is nothing driving it except the objective reality of navigating the myriad vagaries of life successfully to the goal (from evolution's standpoint) of reproducing. Let's not pretend that we understand all of it fully and interfere with it.
Re:i was just arguing with some guy (Score:5, Insightful)
Excuse me?
How about the geniuses with perfectly sound minds but unsound bodies? Like Stephen Hawking?
Are you saying the only value humans have is their ability to survive independently of each other? That children who cannot hunt down a buffalo without the help of a parent, or even a peer, is useless? Yet what is cooperation to achieve things greater than an individual (the space shuttle, the pyramids, the aqueducts of Rome, raising a single child) except "depending on society for the rest of their life"?
Perfectly FIT people depend on society their whole lives! Can you generate your own electricity, recycle your own trash, smelt your own steel, craft your own furniture, etc?
So even genetically wrong people can offer things, such as their minds, their voices, their arts, etc, to humanity. On top of that, their survival broadens our genepool; what if the AIDs resistance virus lies in a mildly autistic child? Or the resistance to the next bird flu pandemic lies in a mildly retarded child?
you seem to lack human empathy (Score:2)
where "fit" now means larger empathy, not larger biceps
therefore, we should leave you out in the snow
Re:you seem to lack human empathy (Score:5, Insightful)
Empathy so extreme that it hurts society, such as allocating resources away from growing our numbers to extending the lifespans of the severely disabled is NOT evolutionary altruistic.
agreed (Score:3, Interesting)
witness modern city dwellers who do not breed, but devote massive resources to the pampering of small yapping ratdogs
gene failure right there... for the humans, not the ratdogs
for the ratdogs, it's the genetic jackpot: what started with a virile wolf who decided to follow the humans around for scraps rather than hunt on its own, many moons ago, has now warped into a small retarded spastic defenseless ratdog. and yet it has a survival advantage like no wolf in the history of wo
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What if the severely disabled (with the ability and the inclination to reproduce) have the genes for AIDs resistance? Bird-flu resistance?
You don't know a priori which genes are important until a selective pressure makes them important. Early optimization is a bad choice in that case. It is a question of degree; how disabled is too disabled?
compassion (Score:3, Interesting)
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"fit" has never meant bigger biceps. There's a reason the average man has smaller biceps than the average gorilla.
yup (Score:2)
but in previous ages of man, ages of sporadic starvation, the fat were most fit. and that was what, a century or two ago all around the world? still real today in some parts of africa?
Homo Superior (Score:3, Interesting)
If this were true there would be way more (Score:3, Funny)
Oh.
Wait.
Never mind.
Yay, evolution!
No surprise (Score:2)
I'll bet if we look closely we will be able to find mutations for plague resistance in European populations. Talk about selection pressure if 30% of the population died.
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I love the internet.
A mutant allele of the chemokine receptor CCR5 gene (CCR5-Delta32), which confers resistance to HIV-1 infection, is believed to have originated from a single mutation event in historic times, and rapidly expanded in Caucasian populations, owing to an unknown selective advantage. Among other candidates, the plague bacillus Yersinia pestis was implicated as a potential source of strong selective pressure on European populations during medieval times. Here, we report amplifications of the CCR5-Delta32 DNA sequence from up to 2900-year-old skeletal remains from different burial sites in central Germany and southern Italy. Furthermore, the allele frequency of CCR5-Delta32 in victims of the 14th century plague pandemic in Lubeck/northern Germany was not different from a historic control group. Our findings indicate that this mutation was prevalent already among prehistoric Europeans. The results also argue against the possibility of plague representing a major selective force that caused rapid increase in CCR5-Delta32 gene frequencies within these populations.
Linked here [nih.gov]
Messages seem to differ (Score:3)
I read the first article and discussion; the impression I got was that by "accelerated evolution" the author meant "more diversity", typified by this comment [slashdot.org]:
The idea being that everyone gets to reproduce these days and that there is no longer a heavy selection process weeding out "unfit" characteristics. Now this article seems to indicate that selection is more intense than ever. I don't see how you can have, at the same time, a more intense selection process and higher than usual diversity.
So it took a bunch of evolutionists... (Score:5, Funny)
The Mating Mind (not a new theory) (Score:2)
The summary (Score:5, Informative)
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.
The Ascent of Man (Score:5, Interesting)
Not Really . . . (Score:2)
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It's Amazing We're Not the Only Animals Left (Score:2)
By virtue of our aesthetic and utilitarian preferences we ourselves have been responsible for molding the present human form and consciousness.
Uh, doesn't that apply to all other animals too? There's a reason, say, flying squirrels don't run around humping anything at random, or humping sick and dying flying squirrels. I suppose we have the probably somewhat special ability to reason who the mate best able to care for young, as simply understanding what people need to do to do well in human society requires a certain amount of reason.
But last I heard, there were some pretty awesome lizards with three different types of males in a complicated comp
Here's the take away (Score:4, Interesting)
The current Ah ha!, backed up by analysis of genetic clues, is that of course evolution applies to creatures in any niche, and the rapid change of available niches forces relatively rapid evolution. Since a niche largely comprised of human culture will actually often change faster than an "merely natural" one, instead of "saving us" from biological evolution, it forces biological evolution to run faster - with the increased populations our cultures support providing more raw material to work the evolutionary process across.
So our cultures are part of the loop that forces biological evolution - both by defining many of the biases of "sexual selection," and also by defining the niches our fitness is for.
It also, of course, can work backwards: the "least evolved" of us work for their own benefit by trying to revert the culture to prior states, in which they used to have some genetic advantage. This is known as the "conservative" strategy.
Simnple explanation of accelerated evolution... (Score:5, Funny)
Smart person: "I wonder if sticking Doofus's head in the fire would improve the human race?"
The Doofuses selected themselves out. Evolution. The smart people helped them. Accelerated evolution.
Try it. Put your head into the fire and watch the results. Go on - it's for science.
I think everybody's oversimplifying (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I would like to see a EUGENICS program in the U (Score:2)
Just sayin'.
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We tried that in the 1990s.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I would like to see a EUGENICS program in the U (Score:2)
Here, see for yourself : http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=14537 [i-am-bored.com]
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additionnal hint for this site, click on the picture to start playing.
Secondary bonus for bearing with me this far a post with many other links about the subject: http://www.diet-blog.com/archives/2006/03/26/celebrity_retouching_10_reasons_to_revise_your_reality.php [diet-blog.com]
This was just about 20 seconds of googling it. I count two professional photographer within my friends, and when discussing with one of them who does p
Eugenics doesn't work (Score:3, Insightful)
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Thank you (Score:3, Insightful)
You could have wasted our time but all it took was a 7 word comment and a three word sig. Ten words.
Gah. (Score:2)
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Every person I've met encouraging eugenics in the one or other form has himself a genetic flaw which could result in his/her extermination/sterilisation. Having a need for glasses could be a reason, for example. Mild forms of Aspergers (which often is linked to geekdom) could qualify (and - in fact - are currently fought against with Ritalin). Maybe the society just does not like your hair color. Where do you draw the line?
We are all mutants, you know...