Are we de-evolving

Are we de-evolving?

I guess you know how natural selection works (if not then check it out if you want to understand this post).

A soon as Darwin found out what was going on he considered that humans as tool users were able to change their environments. This meant that you didn't need to evolve a claw when you can make a knife, didn't need to grow fur to live in cold environments when you have fire etc. Now today you don't even need to be fertile to have babies. I probably would have died as a young child if not for being well fed, inoculated and warm.

Lots of people have considered that we may no longer be evolving but I think we could even be going backwards.

For example if a child dies a family that wants children may try for another. In the olden days children died a lot so each family may have had upto 20 'attempts' at children -and only the two or three toughest would have survived. Now its just the first two or three of the 20 that get to live.

Random genetic alterations will wash away anything that is not vital for survival. Like now we don't have tails and our muscles aren't as strong as a wild ape. This means that as useful traits are being eroded by a lack of strong natural selection, humans will lose functionality that we value - like being intelligent, healthy, strong etc.

How can we get out of this dilemma?

Note:
I have been corrected below that this is not de-evolution exactly because evolution can't go backwards. What this is is loosing functionality that we currently value. Evolution is generally used for 'getting better' so I used the phrase de-evolution for getting worse.

 

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Interesting ! You are another one of them 37 people . Have you googled 37 and seen the 37 guys anomalies. Read Job over and over again and it will give you insight . I know it is a tired old worn out book . They say it is the oldest on in the bible .
O.K. How are we evolving ? Well if you read the threads around here you might find the answer . One thing I noticed is people are getting bigger heads and smaller bodies . Every one just take a good hard look at that Wiener guy next time you see him on T.V. and tell Me I am wrong . I seen it before in a micro cosmic environment . Lena Lake ! The fish population is way to high . Fuck you have never ever seen anything like it . One draw back is the fish have big heads and little snake bodies . They are rainbow trout . Well I don't call them that . I call en snake fish . There deformity takes em right out of the trout family . If it don't taste like a trout then maybe it is not ? They are trout I know don't fuck with me about it . I know I Know there trout, stop it

 

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Yes, I do. I'm not so sure that you do, though.

Many people have considered this. Many people are wrong. If anything evolution may even be proceeding at a faster pace. Evolution involves the change in allele frequencies in a population. All the scenarios you describe of smaller families, better health care, etc are most certainly changing those. Changes in the environment promote evolution. We have massively changed our environment in the last ten thousand years and the process is continuing.

You cannot go backwards in evolution. Evolution does not have a direction in that sense. You seem to think that fitness equates to physical strength and robustness. No! Fitness means a match, a fit, with your environment. Those that better match their environment are more likely to produce offspring.

And your point??

 

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My point is that things we value will no longer be present in most people. Do you want your descendants to be less intelligent, less mobile and more reliant on healthcare and life support? That is the environment we are creating.

By de-evolving I mean loosing functionality. The idea that evolution cannot go backwards is valid I suppose - although you know what I'm talking about by de-evolution (or I hope you do now). My point is that evolution is leading us down an unfruitful path.

 

No your confused . It don't work like that . The things you are talking about apply to the old . It is because of natural deterioration. Young people are going to run there butt off taking care of retiring boomers . They will be sharper than shit too . They will chap your ass if you are not good to them . So my advice is to treat them all like they were your fucking flesh and blood . That is my plan , So if they do get to killing old folk the angel of death might pass Me by

 

You see I started that rumor many many years ago . That is funny how it is getting back to Me this late in life . I called it the degradation of the human race . I don't think like that anymore . I can see a day were the madness ends and people come to there senses . Yeah vital keys and key people with determination will rise to the occasions . The human spirit is stronger than you think . Hell stronger than I ever thought. It is common to think like you do. We don't see peoples lives and there connections to the world . We only get our personal slice of there life . The full implications of this was hard for me to understand at first . So the tendency ( because of conditioning , Humans Bad ) is there worthless . So we will pigeon hole people into subordinate positions to our selves. Hell we won't know shit about them and yet we do it automatically. It is like " If I make you small then that will make me bigger " The thought fucks everything up . Gets way in the way of human production . No fear cause we are waking up to this fact . I know I am and I look at people way different now

 

Interesting......

For some reason, I had the impression that you might have a bumper sticker that said:

Old age and treachery shall overcome youth and skill at every turn.

Just teasing you Me......

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What I observe along the accelerated evolution line is that the population seems to be diverging into two or more streams of thinking, and I am hypothesizing genetically also.

There are those who are concerned about the planet and respect all life, and those who seem intent on quality over quantity and who cares about the rest of it.

This was brought home to me when a customer in our grocery store was seeking a fair trade coffee in our corporate grocery chain. Not so long ago, such an item would only be found in a 'politically correct' specialty store. We carry whole bean fair trade coffee only and she needed decaf. and already ground for her circumstances. We settled on an organic house brand as a compromise.

We have healthy food and we have processed food, and you can almost discern what people think on most topics by watching which they buy. There is definitely a shift underway and I'm thinking that it's going to be an interesting one.

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You make some excellent observations about the human tendency to make comparisons and judgements, when as you point out, it is impossible for any of us to completely comprehend the experiences of another.

 

I blame the Jews.

 

Yes.

:spank:

 

actually its probably a good thing that there is reprocutive tech as we are quite close to losing half of the population, the Y chromosome is aparently suffering copy degretation and after a few more generations will break down compleatly. Either we sit back and hope something else comes along naturally to replace it or we activly seek away around it through reproductive technology.

 

Best reply so far is number 3 post, by Ophiolite, which is scientifically sound and packed with good sense. Some of the other ideas verge on crackpottery.

I just add one thing to Ophiolite's. Humanity is now on the brink of being able to deliberately control our own genetics. That is : to produce offspring with superior genes. This will at first be expensive, but as with all new developments, will get cheaper over time. Within 100 years, plus or minus a big error margin, new born children will pack a better set of genes than their parents.

This means children will be bigger, stronger, more athletic, smarter, better memories, healthier, more disease and cancer resistant, longer lived, better looking, etc., etc.

 

im sorry if you think its "crackpottery"

I admit my time frame was off a bit

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and that its not a certainty but personally i think having the tech is better than not having it.

 

Asguard

Don't get defensive. I was not referring to you.

 

I agree, manipulation of genetics seems to be the best way out of this. However, the technophobic may stop this happening. (Germany has just condemned all of its nuclear power stations and we just had our first big step backwards with use of technology when Concorde was decommissioned.)

People need to be aware that useful genetic traits are being eroded away.

 

The problem is that only the rich will have the money to genetically manipulate their children's genes not the average human or the poor a well. That could lead to a very big jump for a very few but leave the majority of humanity just trying to survive while those who can afford the manipulations will get far, far ahead in many aspects of life. Imagine a viral outbreak that only the genetically altered humans would be able to survive but no one else just as one example.

 

A good point. I'd rather the human race split into two factions than everyone 'de-evolved' but it would be nice if it was not just the rich who got this service. In most developed countries healthcare is available to all - hopefully a genetic tweak or two too.

 

But what "tweaks" would be ethically allowed and who will be certain that those are the only "tweaks" that will be used? When rich people want something done they can pay allot extra to have whatever it is they want to be done while the rest of humanity must follow the rules as to what is available to them from their insurance carriers or governmental health care agencies. Imagine the rich altering the intelligence levels but the rest not being able to do so due to ethical reasons. Where will humanity end up with that kind of class warfare?

 

"Backwards" is just your opinion of the direction. Evolution doesn't have a good or bad direction; it just moves in the direction that allows that combination of traits to survive best. Cave fish lose their eyes because they don't need them. Eyeless fish reduce their risk of injury, reduce the energy needed to grow etc and thus reproduce more successfully than sighted fish.

Being strong has value to YOU - but as you already stated we've already lost much of that because we have machines to do our work for us. "Useful traits" as defined by evolution are traits that allow you to reproduce more frequently, not as traits that produce anything that any society values in general.

Really the only way to try to "breed" humans towards an ideal you like is to kill, sterilize or otherwise prevent people without the desirable traits from reproducing. This has been practiced in very limited cases (killing female infants, aborting fetuses with some genetically heritable diseases, eugenics) but hasn't caught on in a big way.

 

I don't want to be associated with this kind of attitude. This is not the point I am trying to make. I don't want to stop anyone from doing anything. I just want people to be aware that if we do nothing then we will not retain what we value. Doing something about it does not require repression of anyone.