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On February 01 2012 09:42 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote:
Why didn't you know this before?
It's fairly obvious that human society in general screws with evolution. No longer is there a "fight for survival" and the priorities for mating and having children in human society are different than what they are in the animal kingdom. Furthermore, the rapid changes incurred in human society prevent any long-term reinforcement of traits.
Humankind is an evolutionary dead-end.
I disagree with the "dead end." Right now poor people reproduce faster than "average" people, for a variety of reasons. There may not be conclusive evidence for this (I have no idea) but wouldn't you say poor people are less intelligent than people of more wealth because they contribute less to society, hence their lack of income? Thus less intelligent people are reproducing faster than before, which could pass on less intelligent genes. I say could because nature vs. nurture offer varying degrees to which genetics affect intelligence.
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1187 Posts
One should strive to see evolution as a phenomena rather than as a goal or even as a journey. As both of these imply purpose or a guiding intelligence, which evolution doesn't have.
Evolution is just a pattern that emerges as a result of other 'laws of nature' the same way that if you put some rocks of various sizes (say from pebble size to sand) into a sealed jar and shake it gently, eventually the sand sinks to the bottom, and the larger chunks go to the top. There is no purpose to it, noone did it with that goal in mind, it is simply an 'emergent behaviour' that arises do the relevant physical rules.
While we have benefitted greatly from evolution in the past, just because we are dying slower, doesn't 'slow' or 'hinder' evolution in any way. All evolution is is the tendency for a biological gene pool to 'adapt' to changing environmental pressures. If there is little change in the environmental pressure, eg because we are better at controling our 'environment' then naturally evolution has less to adapt to, this does not mean it is slowing, or we've somehow put a stop to it, it just means theres very little to adapt to and that many genetic traits that once would have led to almost certain death without issue, no longer suffer a significant, meaninginful evolutionary disadvantage in this 'environment'.
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On February 01 2012 10:22 Chocolate wrote:Show nested quote +On February 01 2012 09:42 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote:
Why didn't you know this before?
It's fairly obvious that human society in general screws with evolution. No longer is there a "fight for survival" and the priorities for mating and having children in human society are different than what they are in the animal kingdom. Furthermore, the rapid changes incurred in human society prevent any long-term reinforcement of traits.
Humankind is an evolutionary dead-end. I disagree with the "dead end." Right now poor people reproduce faster than "average" people, for a variety of reasons. There may not be conclusive evidence for this (I have no idea) but wouldn't you say poor people are less intelligent than people of more wealth because they contribute less to society, hence their lack of income? Thus less intelligent people are reproducing faster than before, which could pass on less intelligent genes. I say could because nature vs. nurture offer varying degrees to which genetics affect intelligence.
Consider China, where the ruling elite create intentional and systemic political and educational disenfranchisement in farming and cheap factory labor regions where this type of person is predominant. They tend to be poor and reproduce faster than in the mainland, yet the level of education and income levels of the middle to high class in large and modern cities are rising extremely fast, and will invariably overtake Western demographics of income/education levels.
A sociologist in the Chinese Academy of Sciences himself says it is imperative to subjugate and rule over the farming/factory areas as they please because it is economically efficient. It seems the cheap labor derived from the "less intelligent" is as important as the ruling elite are; a classic A <---> B scenario. So are they less intelligent or less rich because of environmental design, or because farmers and factory laborers are just dumber?
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On February 01 2012 08:05 Denzil wrote:
Death is ceasing to exist, but it can also be seen as the signal for new life to start another generations genes to carry on and take over the place and hopefully be more successful than the previous ones.
in nature, organisms die so that they dont compete directly with their offspring for resources. in humanity, technology and production artificially raises the amount of available resources per individual.
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The general idea is:
- Somehow your genes rank you compared to other human beings i.e. superior and inferior human beings.
- The superior human beings, because of their superior genes, are better overall, so they win the fight (against inferiors) for limited life-essential-resources. + Show Spoiler [what I mean by resources] +
I'll define resources as 'anything that will help you stay alive longer. So food shelter clothing first of all, but then stuff like money, education, medical treatment, prosthetics, machine-assisted living you name it.
- Without these resources the inferior human beings die, so then all you're left with are superior human beings. Then you split this group into lower and higher ranked classes. Repeat.
Of course you'd assume the children of superiors would be superior, because of their genes, same way for inferiors.
That's survival of the fittest. Evolution states that through natural selection + Show Spoiler [note on natural selection] +somehow the animals choose to pass on the good half of their genes, and of coursem only the superiors are capable of survival
Where does death fit in? Well it's the result of 'not enough resources', right? (insufficient food, money, heart-stability etc.) So if we want natural selection to run it's course, we would A) Correctly identify the superiors (yeah that's a totally impartial and feasible process, based on their genes, of course) and B) give them ALL the resources so that they'd have the most offspring, repeat on their children.
But you know what? Fuck that shit. Go watch (or read) "The Time Machine" by H. G. Wells, how world disaster (golf courses on the Moon blowing it up and screwing Earth, lol) forces a few people to survive underground for millennia, preserving their genetic makeup and a primitive society. Their counterparts above-ground evolve and become superfit... they devolve into monsterous animals in a dog-eat-dog world, and prey on the humans who've still got intellect. Is that not where simply worshiping your genes leads?
On the subject take his "War of the Worlds" (the novel this time, please) where giant pale brain-creatures attack from Mars (analogous to the rich, technologically advanced upperclass superior few) and literally suck the life-blood out of normal people (inferiors). Is that not where survival of the fittest leads; the powerful eating the weak by virtue of their genes being somehow 'better'.
But now we've got techniques and learning, meaning we can distribute more resources to keep more alive, for longer. Wouldn't it make sense, according to the above theories, to seek out the children dying in Africa or suffocating in China to asses their genes, and if (and only if) they're superiors we feed 'em? But we don't, we feed our own and feed ourselves. So, is human society contrary to nature cause it doesn't let it run it's course? ABSOLUTELY! Thankfully so too.
If feeding and keeping people alive on here for longer is a subversion of nature, well, maybe we've cut out a wonky window to look at it through. We don't need to discriminate between the superiors and inferiors if there are enough resources to share. More importantly, we don't need to rely upon natural selection of randomly mutated genes to pick out who gets fed today, thankfully we're above that. Mutation of the human genome is no longer necessary, what, you wanna bombard people with gamma rays in the hopes they'd become ubermensch?
TL;DR Human society (keeping people alive longer, maybe even reaaaly long) does away with the need for constant variation of the gene-pool, because we can make ourselves survive with SCIENCE (yay!). Let's not give too much glory to animal nature, we're past that.
I'm 1m70 55kg with hereditary knee problems; pretty inferior. But in the space of two generations it went (in my family) from my great-grandfather not starting 4th grade to my father with a PhD. You can have all the genes in the world, but if you don't learn to grow up, work, and use 'em, they're worthless. Judging people by their genes can, and will forever, kiss. my. ass.
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There is 2 kinds of evolution. First there is the evolution of matter, genes, etc. This continues unabated, by definition the genes that survive are fit and those that fail are unfit. What determines a successful genes changes all the time, and ther is more than a little luck. Every idiot that reproduces is by this more successful than say Isaac newton or Alexander the Great. Hoever, the genetic variation of humans is not that great, we are still trying
But this ignores the more important form of evolution. This is the evolution of ideas. With the invention of memory animals began to be able to adapt to their environment with unparallelled speed. Different groups of dolphins with nearly identical genes hunt in their own easily identified styles. The power of this form of evolution dwarfs the power of genetic selection. That is how we measure Newton, and other human greats. Great people have great ideas that survive and reproduce (equality, forming large societies, not murdering). Bad ideas (slavery, stoning women) are marginalized, or fade out entirely (hunter gatherer societies, bleeding to cure illness, worshiping the lightning god).
So even if we become immortal our evolution will not end as long as there are new borders for our minds to explore.
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On February 01 2012 11:59 Hypertension wrote:
There is 2 kinds of evolution. First there is the evolution of matter, genes, etc. This continues unabated, by definition the genes that survive are fit and those that fail are unfit. What determines a successful genes changes all the time, and ther is more than a little luck. Every idiot that reproduces is by this more successful than say Isaac newton or Alexander the Great. Hoever, the genetic variation of humans is not that great, we are still trying
But this ignores the more important form of evolution. This is the evolution of ideas. With the invention of memory animals began to be able to adapt to their environment with unparallelled speed. Different groups of dolphins with nearly identical genes hunt in their own easily identified styles. The power of this form of evolution dwarfs the power of genetic selection. That is how we measure Newton, and other human greats. Great people have great ideas that survive and reproduce (equality, forming large societies, not murdering). Bad ideas (slavery, stoning women) are marginalized, or fade out entirely (hunter gatherer societies, bleeding to cure illness, worshiping the lightning god).
So even if we become immortal our evolution will not end as long as there are new borders for our minds to explore.
Well there would be no chance for us to become immortal by evolution as long as women get into menopause. And for that not to occur there would have to be rather big changes 
Only way we could get older with the help of evolution would be if genes that are benefitial to living longer than the average would equal more offspring.
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On February 01 2012 08:05 Denzil wrote:Hey guys first blog hopefully it isn't terrible I had a thought about if Doctors were harming evolution by keeping people alive that technically without technology's help wouldn't be alive today, we're talking in a very simple sense here of if nature wanted you dead your genes weren't successful if it didn't you were successful Death is ceasing to exist, but it can also be seen as the signal for new life to start another generations genes to carry on and take over the place and hopefully be more successful than the previous ones. The part I'm talking about is genes, these genes can be anything from things that help us being more successful at a problem in the current state of the world to survival things that apply to todays standards. Obviously theres lots of genes and I'm being vague because I'm not pretending to be an expert and list off specific ones but you should get the point. 800 years ago the life expectancy wasn't anywhere near what it was now and I presume millions of years ago it wasn't what it was 800 years ago. That meant that genes and the cycle of life was being renewed roughly every 30 years, successful genes were being passed on roughly every 30 years. If in a 1000 years time the life expectancy moves up to 200 suddenly the time of renewal increases from 30 years, this means genes become staler the ones that were good at the time persist into another generation where perhaps they're not needed because the renewal rate isn't as fresh and does that as a result mean something negative for evolution and mankind? If we can't adapt to new problems naturally do we have to give up on evolution and have technology take it's place instead? + Show Spoiler +I'm pretty tired and partially drunk it's a thought that came into my head, I may be looking like an idiot here and have got it completely wrong
I think it was in the amazing atheist's book where I first heard of this thought... I agree actually. From an evolutionary point of view we are accumulating all these genes that would otherwise have died out had human being not acquired consciousness to the point that we are able to readily manipulate the environment instead of adapting to it.
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On February 01 2012 12:44 Valikyr wrote:Show nested quote +On February 01 2012 11:59 Hypertension wrote:
There is 2 kinds of evolution. First there is the evolution of matter, genes, etc. This continues unabated, by definition the genes that survive are fit and those that fail are unfit. What determines a successful genes changes all the time, and ther is more than a little luck. Every idiot that reproduces is by this more successful than say Isaac newton or Alexander the Great. Hoever, the genetic variation of humans is not that great, we are still trying
But this ignores the more important form of evolution. This is the evolution of ideas. With the invention of memory animals began to be able to adapt to their environment with unparallelled speed. Different groups of dolphins with nearly identical genes hunt in their own easily identified styles. The power of this form of evolution dwarfs the power of genetic selection. That is how we measure Newton, and other human greats. Great people have great ideas that survive and reproduce (equality, forming large societies, not murdering). Bad ideas (slavery, stoning women) are marginalized, or fade out entirely (hunter gatherer societies, bleeding to cure illness, worshiping the lightning god).
So even if we become immortal our evolution will not end as long as there are new borders for our minds to explore. Well there would be no chance for us to become immortal by evolution as long as women get into menopause. And for that not to occur there would have to be rather big changes Only way we could get older with the help of evolution would be if genes that are benefitial to living longer than the average would equal more offspring.
Actually, I don't think it's necessary for menopause to be removed in some way. Longevity genes are not sex-linked (which is why women live past menopause to begin with). Since under normal circumstances, men can reproduce at any age past puberty, it's still possible.
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1187 Posts
On February 01 2012 13:39 Demonhunter04 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 01 2012 12:44 Valikyr wrote:On February 01 2012 11:59 Hypertension wrote:
There is 2 kinds of evolution. First there is the evolution of matter, genes, etc. This continues unabated, by definition the genes that survive are fit and those that fail are unfit. What determines a successful genes changes all the time, and ther is more than a little luck. Every idiot that reproduces is by this more successful than say Isaac newton or Alexander the Great. Hoever, the genetic variation of humans is not that great, we are still trying
But this ignores the more important form of evolution. This is the evolution of ideas. With the invention of memory animals began to be able to adapt to their environment with unparallelled speed. Different groups of dolphins with nearly identical genes hunt in their own easily identified styles. The power of this form of evolution dwarfs the power of genetic selection. That is how we measure Newton, and other human greats. Great people have great ideas that survive and reproduce (equality, forming large societies, not murdering). Bad ideas (slavery, stoning women) are marginalized, or fade out entirely (hunter gatherer societies, bleeding to cure illness, worshiping the lightning god).
So even if we become immortal our evolution will not end as long as there are new borders for our minds to explore. Well there would be no chance for us to become immortal by evolution as long as women get into menopause. And for that not to occur there would have to be rather big changes Only way we could get older with the help of evolution would be if genes that are benefitial to living longer than the average would equal more offspring. Actually, I don't think it's necessary for menopause to be removed in some way. Longevity genes are not sex-linked (which is why women live past menopause to begin with). Since under normal circumstances, men can reproduce at any age past puberty, it's still possible.
I think he means that if there were no menopause, then women who live longer would be able to reproduce for longer (eg their entire life after puberty), thus tenuously giving them an evolutionary advantage (eg if they have children at a set rate per unit time, then they would have more children if they live longer). I think it is a pretty iffy theory at best, but it does make some sense. Although I think the effect would plateau out given that more educated women tend to have less children, and as you live longer, you inevitably get more educated...
On February 01 2012 13:30 cydial wrote:Show nested quote +On February 01 2012 08:05 Denzil wrote:Hey guys first blog hopefully it isn't terrible I had a thought about if Doctors were harming evolution by keeping people alive that technically without technology's help wouldn't be alive today, we're talking in a very simple sense here of if nature wanted you dead your genes weren't successful if it didn't you were successful Death is ceasing to exist, but it can also be seen as the signal for new life to start another generations genes to carry on and take over the place and hopefully be more successful than the previous ones. The part I'm talking about is genes, these genes can be anything from things that help us being more successful at a problem in the current state of the world to survival things that apply to todays standards. Obviously theres lots of genes and I'm being vague because I'm not pretending to be an expert and list off specific ones but you should get the point. 800 years ago the life expectancy wasn't anywhere near what it was now and I presume millions of years ago it wasn't what it was 800 years ago. That meant that genes and the cycle of life was being renewed roughly every 30 years, successful genes were being passed on roughly every 30 years. If in a 1000 years time the life expectancy moves up to 200 suddenly the time of renewal increases from 30 years, this means genes become staler the ones that were good at the time persist into another generation where perhaps they're not needed because the renewal rate isn't as fresh and does that as a result mean something negative for evolution and mankind? If we can't adapt to new problems naturally do we have to give up on evolution and have technology take it's place instead? + Show Spoiler +I'm pretty tired and partially drunk it's a thought that came into my head, I may be looking like an idiot here and have got it completely wrong I think it was in the amazing atheist's book where I first heard of this thought... I agree actually. From an evolutionary point of view we are accumulating all these genes that would otherwise have died out had human being not acquired consciousness to the point that we are able to readily manipulate the environment instead of adapting to it.
To be fair, the environment that we've 'created' IS our environment, so those better adapted to the reality of human environments, eg cities, ARE better adapted evolutionarily. Evolution doesn't give a shit what you think is a 'natural' environment compared to an artificial one, it just cares what kind of environment you have to deal with. So those gene's that would have otherwise have died out become minor evolutionary disadvantages compared to other more realistic evolutionary advantages for our environment. It would only make sense from an evolutionary standpoint for those gene's to die out if we were actually forced to live in a 'natural environment'.
So I completely disagree that we are doing anything to interfere or negate evolution in any way. Since we have no plans to live in an environment that we have not largely modified anytime soon, it would make no sense for evolution to head in some arbitrary 'natural direction'. Instead we evolve to be better adapted to the environment we actually live in.
In short, evolution works exactly the same way as it's always worked. Every gene pool is constantly tending towards better optimisation for THEIR environment. It would make as much sense to say our evolution is somehow deviating from the norm as it would be to say that monkeys not living in the sea have a somehow stunted evolution, that is preventing those who don't have gills from dying out like they should.
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Can't stop evolution. Modern medicine may however have stunted it a little lol.
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well what we talked about in my politics class today is that doctors in developing nations are contributing to overpopulation in those areas but in first world nations even though we are living longer, we are having less children and the population is starting to see a decline now. slight but still it is stabilizing. and we are not near overpopulation in america or in first world nations in Europe either if I am not mistaken
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The cycling time is equal to the time between generations, which is equal to the age at which an individual starts reproducing. People living longer have no effect on this process, assuming that you have lived beyond your reproductive years.
The directed-goal view is not the right way to look at evolution. Evolution is descriptive, not prescriptive. One could just as easily say that the "best" traits to have are to be immune to side effects of modern drugs.
It is however, quite ironic that only those who have benefited most from the advances of modern medicine are in a position to muse about the "drawbacks" of it, that is, less pain and misery for those deemed genetically inferior.
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On February 01 2012 08:05 Denzil wrote:Hey guys first blog hopefully it isn't terrible I had a thought about if Doctors were harming evolution by keeping people alive that technically without technology's help wouldn't be alive today, we're talking in a very simple sense here of if nature wanted you dead your genes weren't successful if it didn't you were successful Death is ceasing to exist, but it can also be seen as the signal for new life to start another generations genes to carry on and take over the place and hopefully be more successful than the previous ones. The part I'm talking about is genes, these genes can be anything from things that help us being more successful at a problem in the current state of the world to survival things that apply to todays standards. Obviously theres lots of genes and I'm being vague because I'm not pretending to be an expert and list off specific ones but you should get the point. 800 years ago the life expectancy wasn't anywhere near what it was now and I presume millions of years ago it wasn't what it was 800 years ago. That meant that genes and the cycle of life was being renewed roughly every 30 years, successful genes were being passed on roughly every 30 years. If in a 1000 years time the life expectancy moves up to 200 suddenly the time of renewal increases from 30 years, this means genes become staler the ones that were good at the time persist into another generation where perhaps they're not needed because the renewal rate isn't as fresh and does that as a result mean something negative for evolution and mankind? If we can't adapt to new problems naturally do we have to give up on evolution and have technology take it's place instead? + Show Spoiler +I'm pretty tired and partially drunk it's a thought that came into my head, I may be looking like an idiot here and have got it completely wrong
I don't mean to sound rude, but sanitation, cities, group living, and perhaps even agriculture are "unnatural". Also @life-expectancy. Generally, the maximum age of people has remained stable for as long as we can remember, but the balance age gets higher as medication helps with child-birth, and keep the young alive.
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Natural evolution wont matter when we reach the singularity that computers can perfectly simulate human brains. No one knows what is possible then, which is why it's a singularity, but it's obvious that technological strides are exponential where as natural evolution is extremely slow.
How much will humans have changed in a thousand years due to natural evolution? Slightly bigger eyes? Slightly bigger hands? Nah, probably nothing as extreme as that. If we reach singularity? Limitless, we might very well be immortal by then.
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I just don't even get trying to extend our life expectancy. when does it stop? When do we cure death? whats even going on here?
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On February 01 2012 09:59 yoshi_yoshi wrote:
I totally believe in the idea that medicine is hurting our gene pool as a species. Consider a world where there is perfect medicine and everyone has the same chance to have a child. What happens in 10 generations? I think the gene pool will actually be significantly worse instead of being exactly the same (as one might expect). The reason is that most mutations are bad, and after enough errors in copying genes between generations, it's going to turn into a pile of crap.
However, I also believe that technology will outpace the above 'de-evolution', so I'm not too worried about it.
yea. Of course, there will be less viable genes that will stay in the gene pool, but modern medicine lets people live a semi normal life even with these conditions. The fact that these people can be alive long enough to reproduce means that these conditions are no longer detrimental to survival.
In the future, when we perfect genetic engineering, we would have officially "beat" the evolutionary process.
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On February 01 2012 10:22 Chocolate wrote:Show nested quote +On February 01 2012 09:42 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote:
Why didn't you know this before?
It's fairly obvious that human society in general screws with evolution. No longer is there a "fight for survival" and the priorities for mating and having children in human society are different than what they are in the animal kingdom. Furthermore, the rapid changes incurred in human society prevent any long-term reinforcement of traits.
Humankind is an evolutionary dead-end. I disagree with the "dead end." Right now poor people reproduce faster than "average" people, for a variety of reasons. There may not be conclusive evidence for this (I have no idea) but wouldn't you say poor people are less intelligent than people of more wealth because they contribute less to society, hence their lack of income? Thus less intelligent people are reproducing faster than before, which could pass on less intelligent genes. I say could because nature vs. nurture offer varying degrees to which genetics affect intelligence.
Poor =/= stupid
Poor people tend to be less educated, so they dont reach their genetic potential, but the potential is still there.
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EPT
