may the Lord our God have mercy upon the heathen's souls who have blasphemed so.
cultural evolution would seem to be self-evident though.
I was born without wisdom teeth.Kill the mutant!!!
I'll say that, despite only skimming the article, I pretty much agree. I've long believed that civilization negates evolution. Oh, we get a little evolution here and there, but every time we can do something to prevent someone from dying before they have children, we halt the progress of evolution in our species. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but we'll either have to keep it up or face a disaster of unprecedented magnitude when we stop. Okay, okay, I'll admit, I was being extra-dramatic just then.
Anyways, we're not entirely losing evolution, but I'm not sure I like the way it's happening. Evolution is all about having children. It's more likely for a stupid person to have children than a smart person, because of accidents with birth control or the like. It's also more likely for catholics to have children than non-catholics, on account of the "use birth control and go to hell" thing that they like so much. Which is brilliant on their part, incidentally.
So, we get more stupid people, and we get more people who are genetically inclined towards religion. The former, not so good, the latter, if there is a genetic component to religion, is not necessarily a bad thing, depending on your outlook in life.
yes.
I heard once that inhaling diesel fumes over a long period can alter one's DNA. Is that possible, or is the concept wrong overall?
Evolution is slow, people. Civilization has only been around for a few thousand years. Evolution has, will, and most likely will continue to happen.
I haven't read the article yet, but I thought that evolution was defined as the changing of allelic frequencies within a population. As such, all populations of organism technically evolve from generation to generation.
Nope, I disagree with the article.
There are some truly savage selection pressures at work in the modern Western world today, at least as great if not more so than were present in the distant past.
And it's only going to get worse.
At the moment all I can mention are anecdotes, I hope to actually be able to post real data later on but consider:
already, we have sampling of amniotic fluid to look for particular genetically based diseases, and couples are also able to get genetic counselling prior to trying to conceive. Both of these would act to eliminate, by direct prevention of birth, progeny with particular genetic traits.
There are other pressures too; people are putting off child bearing to later in life. There are all sorts of reasons, but the trend in the west at least, is real. So there is another selection pressure. I'm still thinking through of what type/s it could be (wealth for one thing; is there any good statistical data to say that people who have children later in life are generally wealthier, better educated, more successful? And does this make their children more or less likely to successfully procreate?
That's kind of the point, shawnj. Civilization is fast, and evolution is slow. There's currently few driving forces for humans to evolve, so why should we? Evolution is an effect, it's not a cause.
Polychrome, unfortunately, wealth is not necessarily a factor. Sure, wealthy people can attract spouses, but that doesn't necessarily correlate with breeding. I suspect that if we checked the numbers, more poor people will have large families than rich people. This is especially true if you have a welfare system that gives you more money for every additional child you have, but it's also true in situations where people can't afford proper birth control.
Remember: it's a lot easier to have a child than it is not to have a child. You need a license to drive, but anyone can make babies.
I'm talking about wealth in the sense of modern western society, more so than individuals Sandspider. If you live in the west, then chances are that you will have access to genetic testing for certain known genetic traits which will allow you to make choices about what genes your children get, before they are even born (or conceived).
The change in Western diet is possibly applying some selection pressures (an anti-obesity gene?) and I'm sure there are other examples (response to pollutants, response to school, height and so on).
well, i'm talking about human tails.
What shawnj said. Evolution is slow. Sit back and enjoy the ride, monkey boy.
HUMAN. TAILS.
Yikes. I just noticed I said "has, will, and probably will".
I meant "has, is, and probably will continute to". And by is, I mean that with the increased mixing of gene pools of last century and this one, evolution is happening, and probably won't show until well down the line.
Human Tails aren't a sign of devolution. They are a mutation based on a few things. First, the tail has little characteristics except shape with tails. Second, they are merely leftovers from previous evolutions called analogous structures. Third, even if we did all grow tails, it is not as if we would be moving backwards. We would be moving forward to another unknown subspecies or species.
people are putting off child bearing to later in life.
but is it really "later in life"? The Life Expectancy is increasing (hasn't it doubled/tripled in the past 200 years?) so if you looked at when procreation occured as a % of their Life Expectancy, its about the same or decreasing? Wouldn't then "later in life" procreation be a natural evolution/response to longevity?
its called punctuated equilibrium -- an accepted hypothesis presented by stephen j. gould which explains that the earths geological and biological history is mostly made up of long periods of stasis interupted by a few major events that contribute to the major changes that have occured. so basically, things slowly evolve until there is some kind of mass catastophe/extinction which allows for species to rapidly evolve (hundreds of thousands of years on a geological time scale) and fill a niche that was vacated by the event.
That seems to hold true for culture as well (Rome - Dark - Renaissance - Colonial - Industrial)
I heard once that inhaling diesel fumes over a long period can alter one's DNA. Is that possible, or is the concept wrong overall?
I think you just found yourself an at home science project, pete.
Life expectency has increased, blogRot, but on the whole, female fertility is the limit to the length of time having kids, and that really hasn't changed that much. It's just women now commonly outlive the "having children" phase of their lives, instead of being killed by it.
It will take generations, as it always has. However evolution will still be with us. I suspect that if we could look 400 years into the future, we would be quite surprised by what has been selected for, and also what has been selected against.
Another point: Grandmothers are important.
Tails, however, will not be selected for. I am sure of that.
Evolution hasn't stopped. Evolution never stops (although the rate of change changes obviously, depending on the stability of the environment).
Each generation of children is slightly different to its parents, after all.
(I haven't read the article, though...)
Pete, mutation happens at a slow rate. Working in an area where there's a great deal of diesel around would cause respiratory problems and kill brain cells. Mutation (over generations) would be building up a resistance to such adverse conditions.
I don't think there's any escape from evolution. There may be intervals when selection doesn't bite very hard, and human beings are, I think,on a 'looser leash' than most species (intelligence generally favours survival, but its effects are much less predictable than, say, the effect of long necks on giraffes) but in the end we're subject to the same logic.
That said, the scenario discussed in the article, whereby humans survive so uniformly, thanks to technology, that they accumulate damaging mutations, is slightly worrying. If every mother, to take a possibly controversial case, has a caesarian, mutations which inhibit normal childbirth will not be eliminated, and eventually all or most women might be incapable of giving birth without surgical help - a precarious situation for the continuation of the species.
That sounds awfully eugenic, though - can't imagine witholding caesarians (and implicitly risking lives) on genetic grounds?
Ban fat people from having children - its the only way to ensure the purity of our species.
Plegmund. Maybe we will need more women like thisone.
posted by Zemat
You're evolving into me! Resistance is futile!
Ban fat people from having children
This thread has a high Godwinization rate. Excellent!
I would think that my very existance is proof that evolution is happening right now.
>set devilsadvocate on
So evolution is a theory, yes? Name an example of evolution in the human species (i.e. Galapagos does not count) that is watertight - one humanoid that turns into another.
We don't evolve. We got here, here we are.
*creepy theremin music*
>set devilsadvocate off
shawnj, I disagree. Yes, evolution is generally a slow process, but it has been shown (even in this thread) that it can move extremely quickly when provoked. Kind of like frogs changing gender spontaneously when necessary. I think the article is right on. We're all moving towards a cyberpunk world here, people.
And wealth is definitely a factor. Much poorer people often have no other entertainment but sex, and less access to birth control. Intelligence tends to indicate higher social and economic status (at least in American culture), and sometimes less/no children. Think of the shift towards "career women," strong, intelligent women who have chosen not to pass on their superior genes. Like the song says, "The rich get richer, and the poor get children."
I have long thought that the people who should be breeding more are not, and the people who SHOULD NOT be breeding are going at it like rabbits.
I have several gay friends who refer to straights as "breeders." I tend to agree, as propagation of the species is no longer a high priority.
"Go forth and multiply." Check. Now what?
The theory of evolution doesn't explain old age. What possible evolutionary advantage does outliving one's fertility give a species?
Increased survival chance for your second-generation progeny. The "grandmother" effect.
So evolution is a theory, yes?
No. A given population of organisms at a given time has a frequency for every gene in the gene pool. For example: 30.1% of the population might have "the gene" that gives you red eyes.
A year later 30.0% of the population might have the have "the gene" that gives you red eyes.
By definition, we say that the population has evolved. This is an oversimplified explanation, but that's the idea. This is evolution.
The question is whether this process leads to huge changes over time.
Further derails...
‘Fast mouse evolution’ claims as seen by creationists.
Those funny zealots.
I don't know why they insist on denying evolution on "scientific" grounds if can be proven that the "natural selection" principle is an universal one
Look! Evolving Cars!
I think you should have titled this post:
Is the blind watchmakers watch all broken and fucked up and shit?
Indeed.
It's more likely for a stupid person to have children than a smart person ...
Intelligence tends to indicate higher social and economic status ...
women might be incapable of giving birth without surgical help ...
No, No, and No.
A bell curve shows most people are of "average" intelligence. Children of "averages" tend to be "average" with a with a few moving toward the both the high and low end of the scale. Among high IQ individuals with children, there will be a bell curve among the children, with some being high, most being average. Very low intelligence individuals tend not to reproduce, and unless helped, can't care for their offspring as well. Out of the moderately low scale, some children will be low intelligence, but most will be average. Occasionally you get a genius out of an average or low scale family.
Although there is an indirect relationship, high social and economic status in developed countries are NOT directly indicative of intelligence, but there is a direct correlation with EDUCATION.
Why do women need surgery for delivery? It's those damn big heads with all the brains in there. Humans have been evolving and slecting for big brains as opposed to scales, teeth, and claws, because brains work for us. We don't need fur, because we have fire and clothes. Animals live in very specialized environmental niches competing constantly for food--these are primary factors driving the evolutionary engine. Humans are omnivorous, and thanks to their big heads, they live anywhere on the planet. Caesarian sections have been around since the Romans--not all that long in the evolutionary scheme of things. Talk to me in the year 9987, and we'll see what a baby's head and a woman's pelvis looks like then. I'll bet my jet fusion pac that there won't be much difference in either.
There are many kinds of intelligence. Social intelligence, emotional intelligence, creativity, school "smarts" whatever. A successful evolutionary trait is one that WORKS. If you're socially and emotionally intelligent enough to work together, educate your young, keep grandma around, not kill off the tribe in pointless wars, elect good leadership, etc. then you win the evolution game. Creativity is another successful trait. Booklarnin' and the ability to make money are all well and good, but I can think of a few folks with degrees and a big bank account that aren't smart enough to pour piss out of a boot.
It's only in the last 200 years that the majority of people haven't lived like humans did thousands of years before them. Let's hope all the high status, high income, "high intelligence" folks can keep from screwing up the planet to the point we're back in the same hut within the next 50 years.
I'm too tired, but just for grins and giggles, somebody google for graphs on both intelligence and US income. IQ is a bell curve; US income is like nothing you've ever seen before. Pretty scary when 90% of the wealth is in the hands of 2% of the population.
Talk to me in the year 9987, and we'll see what a baby's head and a woman's pelvis looks like...
It's a date.
Wow, nice answer Bluehorse. The smartest opinion all around.
Still we are changing ourselves. Just like our social skills mutated us into the "grandma effect", our technology is changing us in ways we don't expect. For better or worse, genetic manipulation will probably shed out most the mutations we will accumulate in the future; Social pressures will still dictate with what frequency hereditable personality traits are propagated and wich are not; And our technologically and culturaly defined enviroment will shift the peak of the bell curve one way or the other as it is "best fit" for our survival as a species.
Social pressures will still dictate with what frequency hereditable personality traits are propagated and wich are not
All traits will propagate although with different rates.
Zemat: Gosh, thanks for the nice words.
Actually, I could *almost* agree with you. If we continue to hang in there and not FUBAR things up royally with our technology, we'll eventually start to see hereditable change across the population. I just don't think we're quite there yet. To scramble it well, we're on the cusp of a watershed. It could go either way depending on how badly we screw up the enviroment in the next 50 years.
All traits will propagate although with different rates.
Werd, Dude!
And even if we try to eradicate certain traits, they can occasionally pop-up as throwbacks or high probable mutations. For centuries we've bred our livestock species to where we have Shetland ponies, Arabs, and Clydesdales--and we've got Boxers, Poodles, and Salukis, but it doesn't take but a few generations of random breeding before they revert back to a generic type of proto-horse or proto-dog. Fortunately, we don't try to shape and cull our own species--yet. We don't know what makes a Hawking, Fisher, or an Einstein. And it will probably be a hellofa long time till we do. In the nurture or nature connundrum, our best bet is to work on the nurture end--give the kids good food, good health, EDUCATION EDUCATION EDUCATION.
I'm just ranting on here with no real clew. Where are our biologists and social science people?
Paging Mr. Frogs, paging Mr. Frogs.
As has been pointed out evolution has not and will not stop, it's natural selection that is being suspended in modern societies. Take the diesel workers, for example. Which is more likely: that a family that earns a living from working around diesel would spend enough generations performing that work so a mutation will appear that limits the negative effects of the fumes thereby making the individual some sort of "super refinery worker", or that the company will get sued by former workers with lung cancer and will buy respirators for all the at-risk workers. Add in the fact that it's increasingly unlikely for children to follow their parents into a profession, particularly dangerous blue collar jobs like steel mills and refineries, and the question of whether an absolutely pointless mutation will appear, get noticed, and somehow lead that mutant's offspring to crowd out the less well adapted workers seems pretty silly.
That's the point the article was trying to make, with our big sentient brains and our advanced tools, we humans tend to make our repoductive choices based not on the physical or mental fitness of the potential mate but on cultural pressures and a crazy little thing called "love". With physical and mental fitness made moot by eyeglasses, prozac, and orthopedic shoes traits the would have been eliminated continue while cultural pressure (the real driving force in current human evolution) enhances or reduces more arbitrary traits like hair color or skin hue. That being said, why aren't we talking about memetics?
Linked to earlier, but appropriate: Mefi thread about Asperger's Syndrome (referred to here as the Geek Syndrome).
From the Wired article:
High tech hot spots like the Valley, and Route 128 outside of Boston, are a curious oxymoron: They're fraternal associations of loners. In these places, if you're a geek living in the high-functioning regions of the spectrum, your chances of meeting someone who shares your perseverating obsession (think Linux or Star Trek) are greatly expanded. As more women enter the IT workplace, guys who might never have had a prayer of finding a kindred spirit suddenly discover that she's hacking Perl scripts in the next cubicle.
One provocative hypothesis that might account for the rise of spectrum disorders in technically adept communities like Silicon Valley, some geneticists speculate, is an increase in assortative mating. Superficially, assortative mating is the blond gentleman who prefers blondes; the hyperverbal intellectual who meets her soul mate in the therapist's waiting room. There are additional pressures and incentives for autistic people to find companionship - if they wish to do so - with someone who is also on the spectrum. (Temple) Grandin writes, "Marriages work out best when two people with autism marry or when a person marries a handicapped or eccentric spouse.... They are attracted because their intellects work on a similar wavelength."
OK Spooky, will you please define what physical and mental fitness consists of within our species?
Lessee, we'll pick Stephen Hawking, Mel Gibson, GW Bush, and OJ Simpson. They're all considered "successful" individuals if you measure by our weird cultural standards. Which ones, if any, would fall under your heading of physically and mentally fit to reproduce themselves? (whether or not they have done so is another story)
Individual genetic "fitness" is simply the ability of an individual to reproduce itself and to have its offspring continue to reproduce whether by choice in nest selection or TLC and Gerber's. The health and well-being of the individual matter only insofar as it affects successful reproductive ability.
A species genetic "fitness" consists of enough individuals to carry various traits that will allow for adaptation to different environmental pressures over time. The individual is of no account--Nature is extremely wasteful.
The genetic trait for sickle cell anemia is actually beneficial if you live where mosquitoes could kill you off before you have the chance to reproduce. Anything that happens to us after the age of about twenty hasn't much bearing on our individual or species reproductive fitness. It's good for the species if there are some grandmas left to help with the kids, but nature doesn't care which individual helpful grandmas survive.(Eeek, I can't believe I wrote that!)
We're just lucky we're not Mayflies.
When I said fitness I was referring only to the genetic traits expressed in an individual not any of the cultural baggage. In that definition Mel Gibson and OJ would be considered physcially fit, and in a hunter-gatherer society would be more likely to pass on their genes than a genius with MS or a rather scrawny guy with a predilection towards addiction.
What I was trying to point out is that reproductive choices in todays world usually don't hang on the genes an individual is born with. Someone who in the past would have been a severely mentally disturbed (and therefore unlikely to reproduce) can now be given drugs and treatment and those lacking a resistance to malaria can now pop some chloroquinine and wander around the Congo naked.
What I'm trying to say is that "fitness" (and you are right in saying its merely the ability of an individual to pass on their genes) used to be determined by our genes but are now primarily determined by cultural factors. OJ and Mel are getting laid not because they are in good shape (although I'm sure it helps) but because they are a rich and famous athlete and movie star and Dr. Hawking and GW Bush and no longer unlikely prospects for mating but, on account of their intellect and political power and wealth, respectively, are now attractive prospects.
In this age I think memes, even if not proven to be real (although they work as a wonderful metaphor) are a much stronger force driving human genetic survival than the genes themselves. Which is weird because memes don't necessarily need that a human bears offspring to propagate and genes do. Maybe that's why in the information age highly communicated populations tend to have less children. They actually don't need to propagate their memes. Instead isolated tribal cultures requires strong familiar traditions for memes to survive.
Mmmmmmm, OK Spooky, I getcha. The problem as I see it is that we simply cannot sever the cultural baggage from the rest--make a good attempt, yes, make the best attempt possible for clarity's sake, but when the dust settles, our big brains and what we do with them may have more impact on our reproductive fitness than we can imagine.
I might take the old Road Warrior--after all, he managed just fine in Bartertown, but I'm not so sure a guy that murders his wife is a good bet for getting his genes passed. I'm sure SH is a very good pick for a husband, but as a stud horse, he might be a bit iffy even with the finest technology on hand. As far as GWB goes, most women I know would rather screw a syphilitic snake.
I'm not ignoring the memes question, I just have to think on this a while. I want to relate this to the spread of ideas-whose-time-has-come or mental serendipity. W&C's model of the double helix barely beat out a closely related, but independently developed, model. Or maybe I'm just rambling because I've had too many beers and it's one thirty in the morning.
Speaking of too many beers, you got any pictures of the aforemention syphilitic snake lovefest?
I haven't decided if Paris Hilton is a case for or against the evolution halt.
I'll vote 'for.' Nothing that anorexic and witless can survive for long without cash or a TV camera.
This is an example of what I meant - amniocentesis allowing parents to decide whether or not to complete a pregnancy. From www.theage.com.au (posting full article because it's short and I don't trust their archive)
More women aged under 35 are terminating their pregnancies because the foetus has Down syndrome, researchers have found, suggesting prenatal screening is occurring widely, even in younger age groups.
Veronica Collins, an epidemiologist in public health genetics at Melbourne's Murdoch Children's Research Institute, said there had been a shift in the ages of women who gave birth to children with the syndrome, which is the leading cause of intellectual disability.
According to statistics from the Victorian Birth Defects Register, when diagnostic testing was first introduced for older women in 1986, 71 babies with Down syndrome were born in the state to mothers younger than 35 - three-quarters of the total live births - reflecting young women's limited access at the time to diagnostic techniques, which include amniocentesis.
But by 2002, only 30 babies with Down syndrome had younger mothers, representing just over half of the total number of Down syndrome babies born that year.
Figures indicate that only one quarter of Down syndrome pregnancies now result in a live birth.
and wich are notAll traits will propagate although with different rates.