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Is Evolution Over In Humans?
Posted by
timothy
on Sun Feb 03, 2002 03:49 AM
from the fait-accompli dept.
from the fait-accompli dept.
BrianGa writes: "Is evolution over? Are current humans the final version? This
article presents a number of interesting theories, including the theory that
'Our species has reached its biological pinnacle and is no longer capable
of changing.' Professor Steve Jones believes this, in part, because
'human populations are now being constantly mixed, again producing a
blending that blocks evolutionary change.'"
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Is Evolution Over In Humans?
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the fittest (Score:4, Insightful)
1. horny
2. too stupid to use birth control
3. likes to get drunk at parties
4. lazy (no job) -- more time to reproduce
5. likely to rape, or not resist rape
6. can't see consequences of actions
7. too passive, fearful, or religous to abort
8. physically attractive
9. those who can convince someone into bed
Social programs ensure that the offspring
survive. Bimbos and jocks will multiply,
while nerds and career-addicts will die out.
Re:Blending (Score:5, Funny)
I'd say they got it wrong due to poor spelling, since it's more like "survival of the fattest" from what I've seen in certain areas of the USA...
/max
When it's most people, it's not individual fault (Score:4, Insightful)
Suddenly I saw the same pattern everywhere. When "most people" have a problem adhering to some rule or behavior, it's almost always because there's something in the environment or the rules that make compliance difficult or impossible.
We definitely see this pattern here. It's easy to say that adults should eat better and get more exercise. It becomes a bit more problematic when you hit the fact that the amount of free time available is much less today than a generation ago - far more hours at work, more hours doing household chores (larger houses and more possessions more than offseting labor-saving devices), etc. It becomes impossible when you hit the practical difficulties of arranging childcare, etc.
The situation is even worse with kids. A generation ago schools offered nutritional, albeit instititutional, cooking. Soda and candy machines were rare. PE classes mandatory, extracurricular sports and scouting common. Today schools have junk food in and outside of cafeterias. Many are eliminating all sports, and even PE class.
Some kids have external resources available... but anyone who expects more than a handful of teenagers to get up 30 minutes early every day so they can run through a calesthenics program before school (assuming they can get time in the shower, etc.) is crazy. This is a program that has to be solved as a society, not wagging a finger at the individual.
Re:Blending (Score:4, Interesting)
But this is also a problem. Educated and intelligent people have few children. Stupid people breed like mad. They not only pass along stupid in their genes, their environment sucks (no decent home fostering of learning so the kids have double strikes against them).
Re:Blending (Score:4, Insightful)
To be perfectly fair, I don't believe he stated his opinions on whether evolutionary theory not applying to western civilization was good or bad. He may have opinions on this, but they weren't in the article. All that was in there was an observation that Darwin's basic rules don't seem to apply any longer due to a variety of reasons.
I may not agree with the conclusions personally, but I can't assign anything more sinister than a difference of opinion to the notion that evolution has effectively been turned off.
Genetic Engineering (Score:5, Insightful)
-If
This is the most ridiculous article... (Score:3, Insightful)
Variation is the subject for Human Change and Progression. Why doesn't "Professor" Jones look at something like, say, Malaria in relation to Sickle-Cell genes, or other diseases or climates and how they effect populations?
Since the entire world doesn't operate on a level where we can completely control our environment, there's no way to be sure if evolution is truly over. Then again, in Biology and Psychology classes, it HAS been noted that we are the only species on the planet that currently effects its own evolutionary change.
I just hope we can all come to the better conclusion that evolution isn't nearly over. We're still a changing species - but we're looking at ourselves in a relatively small time window. Modern society in comparison to evolution is a silly idea. The window isn't large enough to fit 'evolution' in.
Re:This is the most ridiculous article... (Score:5, Insightful)
I read the article a few hours before it was posted here.
It's a load of crap. Things have certainly changed, and many things that used to kill people no longer do, so evolution no longer selects on that basis. But Humans still reproduce mixing genes. Some people still have more children than others. Humans are still subject to evolution. It's just that there are different pressures than there used to be.
Human technology has chaged our envirnment radically. We live in heated homes. We work in offices. We die in car crashes. Eat processed food. Etc etc etc. If we assume that we don't start genetically engineering ourselves, this would eventually result in some signifigant (but unpredictable) changes to the human race.
One disturbing trend is an inverse relationship between wealth(social success) and number of children. Sucessful families with 1.2 children (below the replacement level, their genes are effectively selected against). Poverty level people having 3.6 children (geneticaly sucessfull).
We are effectively selecting against being sucessfull. Wierd.
-
Re:This is the most ridiculous article... (Score:4, Interesting)
Defining success purely on the basis of bank balances is, indeed, daft. However, the poster was observing that those who are socially successful - the managers, the top people in their domains and so on - have fewer children, on average, than those who are less socially successful - the mediocre, those who do not stand out at all or those who only stand out by being worse at what they do than most others.
It is also noticeable that those who meet this criteria of social success have a higher mean IQ than those who do not. Anecdotally, I would observe that they also tend to have fewer congenital health problems.
To put it in purely scientific terms, the mean quality of the breeding stock amongst the socially successful is higher than amongst the socially unsuccessful, yet it is the unsuccessful who product more young.
The interesting question is what effect this has. The likely supposition would be that humanity as a whole would devolve because our current system was almost producting 'survival of the weakest'. However, I'm told that point scores on US military IQ tests have been consistently rising for some time. The distribution remains the same and the IQ scores don't change because they're generated fromt he distribution, but the raw scores on the graph are apparently rising...
All in all it's interesting, and the original poster certainly wasn't talking bunk, but I'm not sure what the end result is
Re:This is the most ridiculous article... (Score:4, Insightful)
This was noticed by scientists in the 19th century, who postulated that in time, the world would be taken over by morons. My belief is that this actually happened, but we are now too stupid to realise.
Re:This is the most ridiculous article... (Score:4, Interesting)
This actually argues for the statement that evolution is still in progress. (BTW, I think the article that started all this is as silly as saying "gravity doesn't apply to us now that we have rockets.")
The thing to note is that optimal reproduction is having as many offspring as you can afford to rear into your ecological niche. Flies can lay lots of eggs, because raising a baby fly is very, very cheap. Lions have orders of magnitude fewer cubs because raising baby lions (who must be defended, fed, taught to hunt, etc.) is a prolonged and time consuming enterprise. (Just try it some time if you doubt this.)
So the observed birth ratios are perfectly consistent with the notion that there is a lot more competition to be "wealthy" and "successful" than there is to be "poor"--and as a consequence, it takes disproportionately more effort to raise a successful child that to raise a luser.
Not only have we not "escaped evolution" we haven't even escaped this simple definition of "optimal" family size; Bill Gates could certainly afford to follow the "fly" strategy produce an army of tens of thousands ill educated brats that would assure his success in the gene pool, but instead (as we all do, on average) he follows the logic of optimal family size and chooses the "lion" strategy. Likewise, I had my first child at 40. I could have started at eighteen at had dozens of "I can count to twenty 'cause I ain't go no shoes!" kids, but I preferred to raise one that will be more likely to someday explain the zeta function [wolfram.com].
-- MarkusQ
Re:This is the most ridiculous article... (Score:4, Informative)
The problem with modern society is that evolution has no CHANCE to take its course. Let's use your Sickle-Cell gene as an example. In any other species on the planet, Sickle-Cell genes would be gradually phased out of the population, as people with them died at an earlier age, and thus having less offspring than those that don't. The same rings true for basiclly all genetic diseases; the reason evolution takes care of them IN THE FIRST PLACE is beacause they kill the animals with the defects off.
The same rings true for animals born with advantagous mutations. They have a greater chance of survival, and thus, for producing offspring. Over generations, the breed with the mutations is so much more likely to survive than those that won't, that it eventually takes over, and the inferior breed dies off.
Human's don't follow this trend any more. People with genetic diseases are given drug treatments and so forth to prolong their lives as long as possible, often far beyond what they would achieve otherwise. And they definitly mate as well, thus passing the defective gene along.
Without the threat of extinction, evolution falls apart. When a species becomes as dominant over its environment as humans have, how can its environment have any impact on it? It is totally illogical.
I think that, unless we move in with some other alien species and start cross-mating, physical evolution by humans has indeed come to an end. As for cultural evolution, that is a never ending process that has nothing to do with external environmental factors.
Worse Than Ignorant (tm) (Score:5, Interesting)
QUOTE: 'Things have simply stopped getting better, or worse, for our species.'
Then the Atomic Scientists [bullatomsci.org] wouldn't have a Doomsday Clock. And we wouldn't be worried about destroying our coastal cities with rising tides.
The article is only saved by Stringer who says the obvious, that 'Evolution goes on all the time. You don't have to intervene. It is just that it is highly unpredictable.'
I'd say that any mind that thinks evolution is over, is destined to become roadkill due to 'evolutionary' causes.
In our near future we have the prospect of mutations spreading which fight against aids, tropical diseases spreading north, and resistance to biowarefare or radiation. Somewhere along the way we will likely have changes in populations due to great artificial genes which can be passed on. Robotics and other technologies will enhance humans at some pace or another, there seems little doubt of that or you can read Hans Moravec if you are still unsure about that. We will have plenty of stresses on our populations and our genes, no worries about that. Homo Sap's going to have to advance a heck of a lot more for that.
The problem with a guy like Jones is that when people start to base strategies or policies on such delusions, we all lose out. Do you think we are losing no great artistic or scientific minds in the African tragedy of AIDS? Does it really matter if the makeup of populations change by one outliving the other, or being more procreative, or eating better, or what if they just ethnically cleanse, water war, bomb, poison, or otherwise do each other in? And are we all so homogenous now? I'd rather not consider myself as the least common denominator.
I think the battles of evolution require a lot of creative thinking to elucidate if you are thinking about your own time, and even then all bets are off. If anything evolution will accelerate as we become able to modify/improve our genes more quickly than the natural rate. And lots more people in the world will gain the means to exterminate those with genes they dislike. Finally, Natural Selection is always in operation. You can't turn it off just because increased mobility makes it difficult to measure.
Evolution is sort of like a saying of Buckaroo Banzai's: Just remember, wherever you go, there you are.
It's over (for now, that is) (Score:4, Insightful)
Humans are not presently in a "struggle for existence" -- most people can survive and procreate without much trouble, irrespective of their genetics. (Those who do struggle mostly do so because of political, social, and economic factors, not genetic disadvantages.) However, this could change quite quickly if some massively disruptive event (drought, famine, epidemic, intergalactic war, etc.) were to make it difficult for humans to survive without superior genetics.
In fact, Stephen Jay Gould's theory of Punctuated Equilibrium suggests that most species evolve this way: long periods of stasis, occasionally "punctuated" by rapid change over a small number of generations.
Cheers,
IT
Re:This is not only total nonsense, it is .. (Score:4, Flamebait)
A) It is beyond me how you find anything racist in this. Allow me to clarify: Something isn't racist just because it deals with racial issues - it must also discriminate. Stating the obvious facts that people mix more today than they used to, and that this will create a more homogenous world population is in no way racist.
B) Correct - but not enough. In addition to a lucky combination of genes, there is one more requirement for any evolutionary effect: selection. The point of the article is *not* that there is less chance of lucky combinations of genes - the point is that these fortunate new humans have no advantage to everybody else. Therefore the race as a whole will only benefit extremely marginally from this contribution to the gene-pool. And for every beneficial mutation, there's a thousand harmful. But without any selection each of these thousands of disadvantaged individuals will contribute as much to the next generation as the single lucky one. This adds up to a general degeneration.
Selection is not completely forgotten in the post though:
No, no, no. As is widely known - and described in an earlier post - succes does *not* result in more kids. Quite the opposite actually. Those who don't win the nobel-prize or run a multi-billion company tend to produce more offspring instead, put bruntly. So we actually have a selection towards the lower end of the spectre.
Next up: Common colds second wind:
C) Let me get this straight: In Shanghai or Calcutta, a vicious variation of the common cold is contained completely from the rest of the world, and if it ever leaks out 99% of us are doomed because we have weakened resistances?
I suppose it's just dumb luck that none of the thousands of europeans and americans who visit these places every year, haven't caught this deadly flu yet? Of course not. When we go abroad, we get a stomach ache, because the local set of diseases are so unfamiliar to what we're used to, but thats it. The concept of any part of the world being isolated in respect to diseases is ludicrous. There are plenty of scary bio-hazardous scenarios to ponder about - but this is definitely not one of them.
Sex Appeal (Score:4, Insightful)
Sex appeal is the only force left with respect to the evolution of human beings. We're far too smart to be influenced by anything less barring a catastrophic environmental change.
For evolution to stop (Score:3, Informative)
(an allele is one varient of a gene, like some people have the blue eye allele, some have brown eye allele, while almost all of us have the genes for eye).
1. random mating (i.e. people will randoming mate with any other person)
2. constant sized society (no one leaves or enter, everytime someone is born, someone dies)
3. large society (a group of 50 people, even isolated, will still evolve, while a group of 5000, if the rest of these condistions are met, wont)
4. No selective pressure (favoring one type of allele vs. another)
These were all learned in a basic biology class, btw.
Re:Of course it's not finished... (Score:5, Funny)
Um. That's not evolution. That's *food*.
It's worse than that (Score:5, Insightful)
Things that kept the gene pool pure in the past are no longer problems. A man with a low sperm count and a woman who would be considered infertile thirty years ago are now able to have quituplets. A child who manifests cancer at the age of eight can receive treatment, then pass on his genes later in life.
Our own medicine - which we like to think makes us strong - is making us weak. The process of natural selection can no longer take place. We have, to a certain extent, defeated death.
But death has a surprise for us. It's still there, stronger than ever. It's just biding its time.
Re:It's worse than that (Score:4, Informative)
The whole point of the theory of evolution is that it describes an inevitable one-way process, like entropy. Due to random errors in DNA replication, mutations are produced all the time. Some of those mutations are more suited for the environment they are in, some of them are less suited. The mutations which are more suited tend to out-produce the others (natural selection), and over time, evolution occurs. The genius of Darwin was in recognizing that the ones who survive, by definition, are the fittest, and vice-versa.
Are selective processes still at work today? Yes, of course. So what if 20-20 vision is no longer a fitness trait? It used to be that having gills made us more fit for our environment, some hundreds of millions of years ago. Now it's not longer to our advantage to have gills, nor to have perfect vision. Our environment continues to change, and so must we. Perhaps we now live in an environment where it is more important to be able to play dirty pool than to be able to swim in a dirty pool. Maybe we're evolving into a nation of smooth-talking baby-daddies. More seriously, there are other elements in our changing environment that people are evolving in concert with. It seems increasingly common for people to develop diseases like asthma and bizarre autoimmune disorders which may be related to synthetic chemicals in our environment. Those unfortunates who can't live in a plastic, super-medicated society are dying out -- but the rest of us are evolving into Homo Artificialis, if you will.
Also, a disease like AIDS which is cutting great swaths of death through the developing world will inevitably lead to populations which are largely resistant to its modus operandi. (In fact, some Europeans already are immune to HIV, a genetic gift conferred upon them by surviving the Black Death, scientists surmise.)
The evolution happening now may not seem "higher" on some kind of eugenic scale, but nature works in its own way. Alligators survive but the dinosaurs are long gone. And we all know that after every mammal has perished, bacteria will still remain, deep within the crevices of the Earth, adapting.
Pete and Pete (Score:3)
The conclusion doctor Jones comes up with is we are the best result of natural selection. That is complete crap. We've got far too many genetic problems to be considered the best result of natural selection. Pick any detrimental attribute you can think of and picture a hunter gatherer with that trait. Do you think he'd survive long enough to have kids? It is highly doubtful. All of us four eyed slashdotters would be a mid-afternoon snack if it weren't for a civilized society. Concluding we've reached evolutionary stagnation because there are less adolecent and pre-adolecent deaths in London is pretty dumb. Our kids haven't become any better since 1890, we just no longer put them in factories and actually have cures for childhood diseases besides heavy prayer sessions and burning incense. Monkeys carrying HIV and not being affected by it is a similarly bad conclusion drawn from a dumb case. Chimpanzees don't have an anti-HIV gene, they have enough genetic descrepancy not to be affect by the HUMAN imunodeficiency virus. Humans in Africa in a thousand years won't have a anti-HIV gene any more than Chimpanzees have one today. Anyone left alive in Africa will be those who learned from the mistakes of the peers and practiced safe sex even if their religion or tradition forbode it.
I think this also brings into question: where do biologists learn math? If you look at statistics or studies done by any number of biologists you see REALLY fuzzy conclusions based on some really fuzzy logic and even fuzzier math. To put it into slashdot perspective, imagine somebody does benchmarking of Linux and Windows. They run web server tests using Linux 2.0 on a single processor serving 100 client machines connected to the server with a second hand D-Link hub serving out dynamically generated pages while comparing it to a Windows2k Advanced Server box with four processors connected to 25 client machines connected to the server by a cost-equals-the-GNP-of-a-small-nation router using gold plated Cat-5 cabling serving static web pages. The Windows computer beats the shit out of the Linux system (like...Netcraft) and it is concluded that Windows is superior in every way to Linux. Slashdotters would blow a collective gasket. That is the accuracy with which most biological studies are conducted. If you think I'm full of shit, you can pass a sugar pill through clinical trials and sell it as a anti-anything pill.
Sure, we're evolving (Score:4, Insightful)
Technology and Human Evolution (Score:5, Insightful)
Human existence has been saturated with invention. We invent technologies for the purpose of accomplishing various tasks (as some other animals have evolved to do). From the very first drum to the human genome project, we have been dedicated to creating things to enhance our lives.
As technology increases, we will slowly integrate it more and more with ourselves. We've already begun to witness this trend. Computers, once placed in huge rooms are now held in our back pockets. Now we're looking towards wearable computers and systems that act as personal assistants. Our media looks to a future where technology is actually a part of a human being. Brain jacks? Cybernetic enhancements? These things are shown with cons, obviously, but also with pros (brain augmentation in GitS, mass storage in Johny Mnemonic, instantenous learning in the Matrix, etc...).
In light of this, I would not say that human evolution has ceased. On the contrary, I would say it is rapidly increasing. We've been slowly abandoning biological evolution in favor of something that we can control and manipulate. We have been evolving through our technology and this pace will only increase. Probably in a manor very similar to Clarke's vision in the 2001-3001 series (eventually evolving our minds away from physical bodies) and probably not unlike the Borg (note we already replace human parts with mechanical parts - hips, hearts...). I remember even a story posted on
Thoughts? Ideas? Disagreements?
[bias alert] Re:Evolution is a fairy tale (Score:4, Insightful)
http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-089.htm
you'll find the following text.
We believe God has raised up ICR to spearhead
Biblical Christianity's defense against the
godless dogma of evolutionary humanism. Only by
showing the scientific bankruptcy of evolution,
while exalting Christ and the Bible, will
Christians be successful in "the pulling down of
strongholds; casting down imaginations, and every
high thing that exalteth itself against the
knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity
every thought to the obedience of Christ" (II
Corinthians10:4,5).
I'm not saying this makes any of the text's claims
false, but I'll certainly reread with many grains
of salt.
b
Re:Evolution is a fairy tale (Score:3, Informative)
"This elephant though, like the one with the missing tail gene does not express it, and natural selection does not come into play. 5 generations down the track, two close relatives have a child with this super spit power. Unfortunately, because of the second fact I listed above, this child also has a missing tail, one leg that can't move properly, a reduced brain size, and a bad back meaning it has difficulty feeding in hard to reach places. The problem here is that along with the beneficial mutation there came a host of harmful mutations."
This is an interesting concept mind you but as usualy happens when people have a counter argument to something fairly complicated you sometimes miss fairly obvious mistakes. For one your concept of mutations is driving how you evaluate evolution. Elephants don't suddenly evolve the ability to spit acid and therefore have some sort of evolutionary advantage. In fact the reality is in this case unless the elephant was in a highly isolated enviroment the mutation would get blended into the gene pool as background noise and never remanifest EVER. That kind of mutation is far too severe to really take hold at all. The community would have to be so isolated that inbreeding would kill them off almost. To understand evolution you have to really really concentrate on the time scale involved. As we are short lived beings this is sometimes hard for us to concieve.
For example one of the favorite arguments against evolution is flying. How could anything ever evolve something so complex by just mere natural selection. They think "gee how could such a complext mutation happen no matter how much randomness was applied". The answer is quite simple. We in fact know now the highly likely reason why beings evolved the ability to fly. There is a bug (forget what its called sorry) that skates on water. It uses its extreme light weight (note how low weight is important to flying beings) to float ontop of water without breaking its surface. To move around it kind of hops and skates along the water with its long almost flight capable wings. Scientist took these bugs and did studies on them. They cut the wings smaller and smaller till they were practically nubs and the bugs could STILL jerk around quick as heck with them. They did a documentary on it even the video was quite interesting. Obviously the amount of time it takes for a water organism to evolve into something that floats on the water is astronomical and then who knows how long it goes from floating to skating to jumping and finally flying. It's almost inconceivable but when laid out its obvious to see how it works. Thats how evolution is though unless you know what happened its just almost impossible to imagine how BIG changes happened.
So in conclusion while I it's good to question scientific concepts I think your arguments are fairly uninformed here. "Macro-evolution" as you put it just dosn't even exist. It's a word created by people who can't comprehened that small changes are all that are required to reach huge differences in gentic diversity.
I dont want to ruffle religious feathers but perhaps evidence for your creation theories would be more proper? I've noticed religious people tend to try and discount other concepts instead of promoting their own. Usually they believe that if everything else is discounted then creation must simply be how things happened. This is a futile goal because if you did convince people that evolution isn't true they'd no sooner believe in "creation" than they did before. They'd just go searching for another solution with founding in the physical laws which they can observe. In something like this the observable laws of the universe are the status quo. You'd have to first determine exactly what every law of the universe is then point out how they don't explain EVERYTHING for you to have proof. Even then though the point of faith is to believe without proof though isnt it?
Jartan
Re:Evolution is a fairy tale (Score:3, Informative)
A Brief History of the Evolution and Creation Science Conflict [religioustolerance.org]
Many claims of evidence against evolution are in reality pseudo-science, and are easily refuted. [religioustolerance.org]
Six Flood Arguments Creationists Can't Answer [lhup.edu]
Is Creationism a viable scientific hypothesis ? [hem.hj.se]
Re:Evolution is a fairy tale (Score:3, Informative)
> Harmful mutations far outnumber beneficial
> mutations
No, relatively meaningless mutation far outnumber both of these. Look at the people around you. Most of their differences are minor -- different hair, different complection, some are a little stronger, some shorter, some smarter. Everyone has lots of little, largely meaningless variations. (These can be both recessive or dominant traits.) Relatively rare is the person with a deeply serious genetic variation, good or bad.
> Evolution is impossible as beneficial recessive
> mutations could never have arisen.
This isn't how evolution works. Keep in mind that every population has a good deal of variety in it. When that population is put under stress (say, there's a flood and all the short people die), individuals whose genetic traits give them an advantage for dealing with that specific stress have a better chance of survival.
> Natural selection requires a genetic mutation
> to express itself in order for the selection to
> work
No, no, no. Evolution doesn't take place when an organism inherits some magical mutation, which allows him to eat more, which is somehow magically linked with having more children. Evolution is the result of stress on a large and diverse population -- limited resources, predators, oil spills, et cetera. When that stress occurs, the various weird traits that had always been occuring (different hair, different skin, whatever) give some of those organisms a better chance.
> We have evidence that close relations have
> cumulatively worse of children than average
> partners.
Again, this is a too-shallow analysis of complex systems. Your model (that any one beneficial trait is virtually always accompanied by at least one harmful trait) ignores the way these systems actually behave. Traits are meaningless until stress is put on the population, thus there is little correllation between them.
Anyway, there's a counter-argument; post up what you think its flaws are. Hopefully the moderators will de-lodge their heads from their collective asses, shake their heads vigorously, and mod your post back up.