Is Humanity Still Evolving? 374
sciencehabit writes "In a world where we've tamed our environment and largely protected ourselves from the vagaries of nature, we may think we're immune to the forces of natural selection. But a new study finds that the process that drives evolution was still shaping us as recently as the 19th century (abstract). 'The finding comes from an analysis of the birth, death, and marital records of 5923 people born between 1760 and 1849 in four farming or fishing villages in Finland. ... Natural selection was alive and well in all of the villages the researchers surveyed."
It's around everywhere else, too... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It's around everywhere else, too... (Score:4, Insightful)
From the records they had, the researchers could not tell which traits were being selected for, but the variation in the number of offspringâ"from zero to 17â"indicates there was a large opportunity for selection to occur.
paraphrase, "well, we cant actually prove anything, but we're really hopeful that it coulda-shoulda happened!! Partyyyy!"
yeeesh. Go back to undergraduate studies.
Re:It's around everywhere else, too... (Score:5, Informative)
Q: Is Humanity Still Evolving? (Score:2)
A: "Not at these prices, pal."
Re:It's around everywhere else, too... (Score:5, Funny)
Variance in mating success explained most of the higher variance in reproductive success in males compared with females, but mating success also influenced reproductive success in females, allowing for sexual selection to operate in both sexes.
OK, So during that time, successfully obtaining a mate generally lead to children. Got it. Thanks.
Any trip to Walmart will convince you that the situation today seems less clear, and obtaining children seems entirely disassociated with the ability to attract a mate.
Re:It's around everywhere else, too... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, agreed (Score:4, Insightful)
If I were to provide my 2 cents on this topic (which it appears I will), I would postulate that to a certain extent, we are going through a transitional period. While the specimens of humanity that are clearly most suited for environmental adaptation have focused on meeting the market demand to prolong life and attempt to eliminate natural death, people classically selected out through illness, disease and general stupidity on their own behalf are being protected from these dangers and surviving. It is believed that the human race will reproduce more rapidly in areas of higher mortality rates. This is to guarantee the survival of the race. People who were classically at the highest risk of death from disease would also reproduce at the greatest rate in order to perpetuate the race. So, families who have a long history of dieing off from any number of any number of environmentally induced issues will produce a gaggle of children with the hopes that one or two will survive. But since we have eliminated most of the environmental threats to these people, they are living through all these former perils. However since their instinct of survival of the race convinces them to reproduce more rapidly without proper consideration to the lower mortality rate, a great deal more of what formally was considered fodder, are surviving, hence the previous poster's comments to Walmart people.
Women who are pregnant read magazines that educate them as to how to protect their wombs. The articles they read state things like "Doing this increases the chance of first trimester spontaneous abortion by 300%". I can't possibly imagine how a comment like that can be made, there are an infinite number of variables that are involved in gestation, to suggest any single event can increase the risks of spontaneous abortion in the first trimester is just plain rubbish. What is worse, are we talking about 1 in a million to 3 in a million? Are we talking 1 in 10 to 3 in 10? It doesn't say, just says by 300%. Yet, women will instantly stop doing whatever it says they shouldn't do to avoid that.
Nature is no longer selecting out "Walmart people" since we have averted most of the dangers they have faced in the past. In fact, we have even reached a point where people such as my sister (a typical Walmart patron) now survive and bring additional offspring into the world where she attempts to protected them from everything to an extremity. For example, her children were not allowed to play with wooden toys like Lincoln Logs since they might get a splinter from them. She is entirely incapable of rational and intelligent thought, but thanks to medicine and excessive warning labels, her line will perpetuate. Don't get me wrong, I love my sister, but I am a realist in this regard.
We have protected these people to extreme levels and they are still reproducing at a rate that would protect their line against extinction. The "adapted" member of the species on the other hand reproduce at a more conservative rate since their instincts tell them that they'll experience a level closer to 95 out of 100 offspring surviving in their sub-species.
As a result, what is actually happening is that the "Walmart people" are actually in a major transition period of evolution. They are reproducing at a rate based on the fact that until less than 50 years ago, their chances of survival were much worse. It will require a few more generations before their over-reproduction becomes directly detrimental to their chances of survival and they will either be selected out or they will decrease their rate of repro
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No, you are not being a realist. You are engaging in absurd hyperbole. Unless, of course, you're implying that your sister managed to continue her line while institutionalized.
Yet you still made it. It'
Re:Sadly, agreed (Score:4, Insightful)
The difference between artificial and natural is purely semantic in this situation. The process of selection is simply what it is. But I'm more or less on the same page with your post.
If individual weakness are being protected against by social constructs, you might be able to subjectively identify the evolution of a social organism that has developed defenses against minor problems like weaknesses in particular individuals like Steven Hawking, while leveraging their strengths throughout it's body. The more successful this social organism it is, the more capable it is of beating off competition and developing further.
Perhaps those "Walmart" people aren't particularly useful overall, but they do serve some kind of purpose, even if it is just to hand a burger and fries over the counter. Even a hive needs lowly worker bees. Hmm. I wonder how bees evolved into hives? Perhaps evolving into hive societies was selected for at some point, and may be selected for again today.
Africa sure isn't doing that well despite having so many offspring. China is doing pretty well so far, let's see if they can hold up. It's not just about the quantity of births, it's a multifaceted competition that will evolve over time. Perhaps China will find that democracy is a more successful long-term strategy and "evolve" in that direction after enduring the stresses of time. Perhaps America will give up on capitalism and move towards socialism instead if they find themselves lost in China's shadow. The process of constant change continues on both a microscopic and macroscopic scale.
haha!!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
A mirror and a Groklaw account (Score:3)
"Any trip to Walmart will convince you that the situation today seems less clear, and obtaining children seems entirely disassociated with the ability to attract a mate."
Yes, going to Walmart to watch WT is a mistake. Even as a social experiment. Don't get me started on dirt blondes with pimples still clinging to their chain smoking mothers begging for booze. But also, look at the the thai and filippino girls. They don't necessarily have the beauty of air hostesses, either. Go to Brooklyn and you'll see mor
Re:It's around everywhere else, too... (Score:4, Insightful)
Automobile accidents, on the other hand...
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If the death of a parent results in a lack of resources(or sickness or anything else) for an offspring causing the offspring to have fewer dependents than otherwide would happen, then evolution is still working. Just at a lesser rate.
Re:It's around everywhere else, too... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:It's around everywhere else, too... (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's not a "reversal of evolution." It's the species evolving in response to changes in its environment.
Re:It's around everywhere else, too... (Score:4, Informative)
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There's no such thing as reversal of evolution, nor any way to escape it. I did a lot if simulated evolution in the 1990's and I think I gained some insights. For example, evolution is not smooth even progress. It's no progress at all for far too long and then great leaps forward, if all goes well. Sometimes, a trait that can prove highly useful winds up destroying a species. If you suddenly give a predator sight, it might drive it's only prey extinct.
Humans are at such a cross roads. Our superior in
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> Our superior intelligence has yet to prove useful for our survival.
Population 7 billion - the largest population of *any* large animal in the history of the planet. By far the most dangerous apex predator in world history. Capable of unprecedented levels of complex technical collaboration. Okay, on the edge of a major but not insurmountable hurdle with the looming energy crisis. The only species with any hope whatsoever of gaining a foothold off this world.
I'm sure I missed a few things, but all of the
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Not so. Infant mortality may be very low in modern countries, but abortions and miscarriages are not, also there is the growing number of people who have fertility issues.
Yes the ever present automobile makes an excellent replacement for large preditorial carnivors. If anything we should help natural selection along by making it mandatory for predrivers to walk to school and post drivers ride scooters until they are 25. That should help fl
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But countless numbers die before reproducing, even if they're at reproductive age. Ie, dying in wars before marriage. Also there is more to evolution than merely reproducing. Those who don't reproduce are still a part of the environment, they may help or hinder offsprings of others. Ie, ants in a colony, most will never reproduce but they will feed and care for the colony as a whole. For humans, someone coming up with a cure for a disease may influence the evolution of humans to a vastly greater degree
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I know a lot of my soldiers sadly have died before my marriage.
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Dying before the end of your fertile life, infertility, lack of success finding a mate etc all help. Education seems to select you out of the gene pool to since education is negatively correlated to birth rates. You don't have to die, you just need to have less than replacement level births and things will work themselves out over a few dozen generations.
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Re:It's around everywhere else, too... (Score:5, Insightful)
Too many people misunderstand evolution and natural selection. There are a lot of myths and sayings that just don't fit with science. As in "humans are more evolved than cockroaches" doesn't really mean anything; or in thinking that there must be a "purpose" to all physical, mental, or social characteristics. So the very subject of this summary is just more of the same thing. The "I don't know anything about the subject but I am willing to talk about it at cocktail parties" sort of science.
Of course there is still natural selection! People still die while still being able to reproduce, thus evolution would still be occurring. Diseases have a high rate of change so humans are adapting to this. We still have wars that kill off a huge number of fertile people and which create environmental and social stress. People are moving to new environments all the time, more are in cities than before, more people are in professions where you sit all day long, nutrition is changing quite a lot, etc.
Why would anyone who knows anything about evolution think that it stops with all the variability? A more sensible question would be to ask is the rate of change slowing down or not.
cockroaches (Score:2)
I'd say that cockroaches are more evolved than humans. They have a shorter generation time, which means that they should evolve faster. So cockroaches are probably better adapted to do what they do than we are to do what we do. Of course, the microorganisms have us all beat. It's no surprise that we slow-evolving large beasts inherited most of our fundamental protein designs from our microorganism ancestors (or perhaps swiped them from viruses). The much faster evolution of microorganisms means that they ar
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What do you think is happening any time someone gets killed by disease? Heck, even when someone is run over by a semi. Natural selection will shape us forever unless we conquer death itself.
Yeah, it's a pretty safe bet that as long as we are around, natural selection will be also.
But I believe that we are at a point where some amount of unnatural selection is happening too.
Given the progress in combating disease, and even seemingly minor things like eyeglasses, and hearing aids, we are allowing people to reproduce that in much earlier times would not have survived to do such.
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Others die at 40 and leave 12 children of different women.
Who has succeeded biologically?
It rather depends on what happens to those children.
Evidence (Score:5, Funny)
Of course we are! [darwinawards.com]
Yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, we're still evolving. The things being selected for may change, but we are evolving.
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But do we really want the traits that mean the most offspring today in "civilized" societies (I use the term loosely here) to propagate? When I look around myself and ponder who of the people I know breed like rabbits, it ain't exactly the Nobel Prize material...
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What- and whenenver did "want" have anything to do with it?
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You have to be kidding....right? There are mountains of research but simply observing will show that there is some correlation even when environmental and social conditions differ.
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Wow, cool. So we can expect to see random outcroppings of genius in the lemming population?
*Waits expectantly*
Selection of the sexiest v survival of the fittest (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Selection of the sexiest v survival of the fitt (Score:4, Insightful)
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Go back 100 years and you'd say the same thing, except your grandparents would be part of the "poorly education and least equipped to care for themselves" section.
they ARE the fittest (Score:5, Insightful)
Evolution doesn't have a value system that prefers education, a comfortable life, or the ability to exist without government help. Personifying the inherently unthinking force of evolution, we might say that evolution cares about exactly one thing: the number of creatures in the Nth generation with similar DNA. Adapting to the environment is key, and note that our current environment does include government services. Fit organisms take full advantage of the environment to maximize reproduction.
Fitness can mean screwing up the birth control or deciding that God would disapprove. Fitness can mean a non-reproducing individual (gay, elderly, too ugly, whatever...) finding dates for siblings and cousins. Fitness can mean getting the kids taken away by the government (they'll survive) so that time can be focused on activities that might produce more.
It's only in a difficult environment, like Finland a few centuries ago, that fitness means the traits that most of us respect: hard work, planning ahead, faithfulness, etc. We have changed the environment, and now it will change us.
Re:they ARE the fittest (Score:4, Insightful)
Evolution doesn't have a value system that prefers education, a comfortable life, or the ability to exist without government help. Personifying the inherently unthinking force of evolution, we might say that evolution cares about exactly one thing: the number of creatures in the Nth generation with similar DNA.
Exactly, this [huffingtonpost.co.uk] is the evolutionary winner of this generation. Only the passing of the genes matter, doesn't even matter if it's a rape victim unless she gets an abortion or the child is killed. The genes will live on to try reproducing again while those who didn't reproduce won't.
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It's still true, and it's also obvious. The trick, then, is to come up with a society we'd *want to live in*, where evolutionary pressures favour societally useful traits.
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Worry not; my country is proof that you can go from "God - Homeland - Family" and heavy Church influence to "Yeah, we're Catholics, but contraception is fine (95%) and abortion shouldn't be a crime (54%)" in a few decades.
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As long as we will use inheritable criterion for choosing mating partners, evolution will continue.
No, as long as not all people reproduce, evolution will continue.
Genetic influence (Score:2)
Is this the same as asking if their genetic makeup influences a person's chances of having kids?
Re:Genetic influence (Score:5, Funny)
Well, if your parents were infertile, it's likely you will be as well.
Uh... wait ... something doesn't sound right here...
K-rist! (Score:5, Informative)
If you have to ask the question, then you don't know what evolution is.
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First of all, I doubt that's true, and the only thing we have to tell that is the fossils, which do not give us any genetic information, so how do you imagine you could make such a bold statement?
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Yes they are evolving. Maybe not into that many species but their environments do change so they will adapt. Environment isn't just weather either, it also includes diseases, the animals around them, etc). Evolution is not necessarily change from one species to another.
are wasps unchanged? (Score:4, Insightful)
Have they? Is their resistance to disease unchanged? Is their behavior unchanged? Is the efficiency of their enzymes the same? How do you know?
Intellectual Evolution (Score:5, Funny)
Now down to those that can best shape their environment to suit their needs.
Of course, we could be left with generations of Brawndo drinkers.
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Oddly, those are also the ones that don't really propagate too broadly. I mean, take a look around the super rich and powerful. Do they have more than maybe 2 kids? If that?
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Nobody is really sure. A lot of kids' fathers aren't who they think they are. Rich men could well have lots of illegitimate kids. They certainly did in the past.
Evolution is not just who dies, but who reproduces (Score:3, Informative)
Of course it is. Evolution is determined by who reproduces, not (just) by who dies. Some believe evolution to actually be accelerating, as global mobility increases the mixing of genes from different populations.
Of course humanity is evolving (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yes, there are new forces controlling selection. Those who reproduce are the ones who are too stupid to use birth control correctly... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/ [imdb.com]
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We have a winner.
Of course, one could argue that nature favors those who cannot cheat her.
Duh! (Score:5, Informative)
Considering our environment is changing at a radical pace, I'd think it obvious that we're still subject to evolutionary pressures. Now more than ever.
No, not just climate change -- that's going at a much slower pace than the change in diet, access to medical care, exercise habits, and the rest.
(What, you thought that a higher proportion of people with genetic diseases surviving to reproductive age somehow doesn't contribute to the change in allele frequency in the human gene pool?)
b&
Why would it ever stop? (Score:2)
According to Fark... (Score:4, Funny)
Natural Selection is alive and well in the 21st century.
If anything, mankind's crowning achievement is the creation of a vast variety of new and innovative ways to remove ourselves from the gene pool.
Darwin would be proud
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Faster Than Ever (Score:5, Interesting)
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Mmm... I don't know what's going to trump in the end. The higher chance of mixing due to mobility or our much later onset of propagation, often doubling the age compared to a millennium ago, essentially halving the amount of generations per time frame. I'm uncertain whether the lower birth rates will have more of an effect than our ability to keep much more variety alive (unlike the aforementioned 10th century where only people of a certain "robustness" could survive).
So whether evolution continues faster o
How can we not be? (Score:3)
It doesn't make sense that we wouldn't be. Did people stop dying or competing sexually?
Devo (Score:4, Informative)
Question: Are we not men?
Answer: We are not men, we are Devo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRguZr0xCOc [youtube.com]
I should damn well hope so. (Score:2, Interesting)
Um, (Score:2)
"Courtiol is not certain how strong natural selection is today, particularly in the developed world"
Well, I would guess it's just as strong. The criteria and effects may be hard to discern, unexpected, undesireable, or any combination of these and other conditions, but why would you think natural selection is anything but strong.
Now, if he meant to express ihis uncertainty as to how current natural selection is either improving the human race or not, and geographic distributions of these effects, well, tha
Hardy Weinberg equilibrium (Score:3, Informative)
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Sadly, there are people where it really seems that mating is purely random...
Not always for the better (Score:5, Insightful)
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Fertility rates among the more educated members of society have dropped like a rock while birth rates are still high among the lower third. It can be argued that education is a poor survival trait.
I think its important to point out that it isn't intelligence that is being selected against -- there are plenty of intelligent (albeit ignorant) people breeding up a storm.
It bothers me tremendously that this is the case. I believe the following to be true:
1) Natural Selection / Evolution are true, and select for "better" traits over "worse" ones.
2) Knowledge is power, and Education is a good thing.
So when I see what appears to be a selection against education in birth rates, my conclusion is that somethi
Backwards perhaps... (Score:2)
Well... (Score:2)
Whatever produces more grandchildren ... (Score:5, Interesting)
some people have more grandchildren than others - evolution favours those people. Some ''traditional'' pressures physical are not so important (eg: resistance to polio, the ability to run fast & catch a meal, ...) others have become more important (ability to live while grossly overweight).
The mental pressures (ie differences) are often overlooked, eg: ability to produce lots of kids in a high pressure urban environment. Good mental ability seems selected against: those with good education tend to have fewer kids. The need to feel to work hard to produce much needed food for the family is not important, the ''social'' will provide the food if you don't; in fact since (in countries like the UK) the more kids you have the more money you have thrown at you: I fear that we are breeding people who are ignorant and don't work.
I expect to get flamed for the above: unfortunately the numbers seem to support my thesis.
Why all these question headlines? (Score:4, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_Law_of_Headlines [wikipedia.org]
Betteridge's Law of Headlines is an adage that states, "Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no'".
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Betteridge's Law of Headlines is an adage that states, "Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no'".
Let's try that out with some current CNN headlines.
Gergen: Bin Laden death overplayed? "No." ... ? "No."
Cafferty: Do you fear another Bush? "No."
How will the BCS be replaced? "No".
Self-defense or murder? "No."
Women: What's driving your vote? "No."
UPDATE: Where in the world
Is al Qaeda on its last legs? "Yes."
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Damn, I stopped too soon.
What is male menopause? "Nooooo!"
Is it time for a new joint? "No.. actually yeah, if you've got one."
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A better statement of the law (which I came up with myself before hearing of Betteridge) is that if a headline asks a question, the correct answer is the obvious one. They're insinuating its the non-obvious one to get more viewers, but if it really were the non-obvious one, they'd be announcing it as fact.
Doesn't fit on a bumper stick quite as nicely, but it works better in practice.
Well of course we are (Score:5, Interesting)
Just because today's evolutionary pressures are harder to define, it doesn't mean they are not there. For instance, natural selection will favor people with fast reflexes and better depth perception because most of us drive cars. College graduates are favored because they typically get higher paying jobs and therefore better healthcare.
Keep looking. Evolution isn't done with us yet.
I also have a sneaking suspicion that Autism/Aspergers is partially a function of evolutionary response to a technological lifestyle rather than an agricultural one. Name another genetic disease [wired.com] that occasionally provides benefits. [computerworld.co.nz] I'll betcha Autism spectrum disorders are nothing more than Mother Nature trying out new ideas for human brain version X+1, currently in beta and still a little buggy.
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For instance, natural selection will favor people with fast reflexes and better depth perception because most of us drive cars. College graduates are favored because they typically get higher paying jobs and therefore better healthcare.
The only selection factors that matter are ones that lead to your genes getting to your children. College graduates tend to have fewer children, so they are selected against.
Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death in the US among those age 5-34, which is prime
Re:Well of course we are (Score:4, Informative)
"Name another genetic disease [wired.com] that occasionally provides benefits."
Sickle cell anemia. Obesity. Wisdom teeth. The CCR5 d25 mutation. High melanin production in the skin.
The mutation for sickle cell anemia also conveys resistance to malaria. Various genes linked to obesity helped our ancestors survive variable food supplies. Wisdom teeth used to be able to kill, but once upon a time would have helped us eat. The CCR5 d25 mutation conveys resistance to bubonic plague and HIV, but susceptibility to West Nile. High melanin production in the skin protects you from sunburn and skin cancer, but, especially if you live at high latitudes, decreases vitamin D production which is associated with a variety of diseases from cancer to multiple sclerosis.
Over Generalisation (Score:2)
The finding comes from an analysis of the birth, death, and marital records of 5923 people born between 1760 and 1849 in four farming or fishing villages in Finland
So the headline might better have been "Was humanity still evolving 250 years ago in Finland?"
From TFA:
"Almost half of the people died before age 15, for example, suggesting that they had traits disfavored by natural selection, such as susceptibility to disease."
"the variation in the number of offspring—from zero to 17—indicates there was a large opportunity for selection to occur. "
So at least two of the properties they observed in the study from a fishing village 250 years ago in Finland are n
actually mankind marks an intersection (Score:2)
the intersection where genetic evolution, while continuing, has become less important than the new and more important kind of evolution: memetic evolution
the words we say and the ideas we have now shape the world more than the genes we carry
genetic evolution is not over, it's just passe
memetic evolution is the new more important story on this planet
Healthcare is driving evolution now (Score:2)
Natural Selection May Actually Not Be With Us (Score:2)
The science-mag article says "the variation in the number of offspring—from zero to 17—indicates there was a large opportunity for selection to occur."
However, whether this "opportunity" resulted in any actual change is not mentioned. For example, if they found some feature change that correlated with the number of offspring, then you might say that is evidence that evolution is happening, but even only then if the correlation corresponds to some environmental pressures. Do they have statistics
Actually article does say (Score:2)
Actually, the article does point out: "From the records they had, the researchers could not tell which traits were being selected for ..." http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/04/natural-selection-is-still-with-.html [sciencemag.org]
This sentence already assumes the conclusion of the whole article, namely that *some* traits where in fact being selected for.
So kind of weak.
Survival of the fittest (Score:2)
If evolution had its way I would have been dead a long time ago. Fortunately for me I have great corrective lenses so I can see the lions trying to kill me.
Take that, evolution! I may even procreate!
No. Definitely not. (Score:2)
Special evolution, (Score:2)
Has anyone noticed that certain advances seem to happen in widely diverse locations at approximately the same time? Regardless of nationalistic bragging, major advances tend to occur independently within just a few years.
Circa 600 BC saw the beginning of Greek Science, Lao Tzu, Confucius, The Babylonian Talmud, Zarathustra, The Persian renaissance, Mayan mathematics/astronomy!
10,000 BC, Worldwide, agriculture, domestic animals.
Circa 15,000 BC, Worldwide, The bow!
Circa 125,000 years ago all over the old wor
obviously (Score:2)
Not everyone has biological children. People dies of a whole host of issues, for example:
Drug overdose (resistance will gradually arise).
Choice (the choice not to have children will weed itself out).
Homosexuality (now that they can generally adopt, their genes won't get the alloparenting boost, so homosexuality is going to go into decline).
Always preferred natural selection to evolution (Score:2)
Natural selection has nothing to do with the implication of the word "evolve," that we're somehow becoming more advanced. In natural selection, two sometimes contradicting forces; ability to reproduce and survivability compete to make you more able to pass on your genes in a specific environment. All the girls might swoon over the deadbeat guitarist or they might want to hook up with Bill Gates because he's worth billions. Girl moose might love a huge set of antlers so big that it makes it difficult for
Yes (Score:2)
And probably more rapidly than in the past. Given the increased mobility of populations, the degree of genetic variability [wikipedia.org] is increasing. And with that variability, the possibility of adapting to new environments increases and susceptibility to inbreeding decreases.
The jury is still out on natural selection of the fittest of these new combinations. Our society doesn't seem to be willing to weed out the weak.
We're de-evolving (Score:2)
Human Culture is evolving (Score:2)
Humans, as biological entities, are evolving too, but the selection process is given by the culture, everyone can survive, but to reproduce odds are better for culturally acepted ones, no matter if is less smart, or capable to dealing with predators or facing a wordwide climate change. Thats the evolutionary pressure, and it is changing too.
We aren't alone, a lot of animals (i.e. cows or dogs) and plants had some sort of directed evolution, also driven by human culture. If we fall,they could too.
Yeah right. (Score:3)
Yeah right. Except for peak oil, AGW and other minor stuff, we live in perfect harmony with our environment, and there's simply no way we could get in trouble from the vagaries of nature.
Of course (Score:3)
It is a strange thing that we - still - look at ourselves as something apart from "nature". It is a false world-view: the sphere of human activity and culture is not somehow separated from nature; our cities, our technology, our intellectual achievements, though impressive, are part of nature. We haven't escaped the forces of evolution any more than the force of gravity.
Evolution is not "something in nature kills you" - evolution is the interaction between the environment and the capabilities of each individual, and the fact that we have a huge influence on our environment doesn't change that. The fact that we are now capable of curing many diseases etc just means that we evolve in a direction where many, who would have died before, now survive - so we become more diverse as a species.
Furthermore, we are not the only species, or even the first, that has had a big impact on the environment; life has always shaped the local and even the global environment; just take the fact that the oxygen in our atmosphere is produced by photosynthesis.
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Thanks for pointing that out; had overlooked that for my reply.
However, it would be good to check with the original report.