Evolution for the human race..

[imamartian]

LMB, this thread wasn't aimed at the personal level. And if i touched upon anything affecting you then i apologise immensely.... it wasn't meant to cause pain for anyone.

My point was a theoretical one.... the difference between a 10,000 yr old human and todays nurtured environment...!!

 

[Heat4input]

Natural selection in the human race is non existence,you can be weak,thick,disabled, but still breed.That's evolution.

 

[LastMagicBean]

LMB, this thread wasn't aimed at the personal level. And if i touched upon anything affecting you then i apologise immensely.... it wasn't meant to cause pain for anyone.

My point was a theoretical one.... the difference between a 10,000 yr old human and todays nurtured environment...!!

My point was, although It may well be easy for people to have a theoretical point of view, and in many ways a good one, put yourself in the position of letting your baby girl die, slowly and painfully because it will stop the cancer gene..???????? It beggars belief.

I sincerely and genuinely believe you would be in favour of giving your daughter medication as opposed to letting her die in pain for the benefit of the human race.

 

[imamartian]

LMB, this thread wasn't aimed at the personal level. And if i touched upon anything affecting you then i apologise immensely.... it wasn't meant to cause pain for anyone.

My point was a theoretical one.... the difference between a 10,000 yr old human and todays nurtured environment...!!

My point was, although It may well be easy for people to have a theoretical point of view, and in many ways a good one, put yourself in the position of letting your baby girl die, slowly and painfully because it will stop the cancer gene..???????? It beggars belief.

I sincerely and genuinely believe you would be in favour of giving your daughter medication as opposed to letting her die in pain for the benefit of the human race.

LMB i'm not talking about any personal experience,.... but the theory......

 

[imamartian]

Natural selection in the human race is non existence,you can be weak,thick,disabled, but still breed.That's evolution.

that's eactly my point.... that ISN'T evolution !!!

 

[LastMagicBean]

Martian, now it's you thats missing the point. (personal stuff aside).

Very interesting subject............ But ok.....

What about if the genius's of the world became sick with easily treatable illness's and died because of your 'new world' structure of no medicine.
Their potential offspring would never be born.

The scum would survive because they will always be in greater numbers....... as in todays world.

 

[Mickymoody]

It seems that whatever medicine does to prolong life, viruses always seem to find a way round them, like the recent e-coli virus outbreak, that reportedly kills middle aged women, rather than the young or old, or male, unless middle aged women in Germany like eating raw beansprouts? More than any other group of people?

 

[RedHerring2]

my point was, are we removing natural selection with medicine?

I don't think medicine is to blame, more like the tax/benefit system that we have in place in the UK.
Obviously that won't have a universal impact. But perhaps might go some way to explaining the deteriorating situation in this country.
Consider the average intelligent, employed, potential parents limiting themselves to the number of children that they think they can afford.
Contrast that with one or two unemployed, potential parents who realise that the more children they have, the more benefits they will recieve.

 

[cumbriahandyman]

People who live at high altitude apparently live longer , age slower and are generally taller.

Yes I have noticed how people from Nepal age slowly.

Only 44 years old.

 

[EngStudent]

Yes I have noticed how people from Nepal age slowly.

That toddler is tall though.

 

[adlplumbing]

look don`t worry about evoltion for as we all get killed by the machine when they finaly are cable of rising up
think of what we can actualy still do without them
not that much anymore
and their getting smarter their starting to get near the finsh line in chess
championships

 

[Space cat]

To get back to the original question, "Has evolution for humans ended?", no it hasn't but the rules have changed.

In our little corner of the planet (Europe isn't very big), you could argue that natural selection now favours stupidity. People who have half a dozen babies before they work out the cause can now expect most of them to survive. Meanwhile, those who limit their offspring to two or less may improve their own quality of life (and that of their offspring too) but pass on fewer genes to the next generation.

Will this cause future problems? Not necessarily. Will it eventually lead, as EngStudent suggests, to the evolution of two different species. I would consider this highly unlikely for it would require the differences to be so great that interbreeding became impossible. Geography caused early humans to split into different races but not different species - and, if anything, interbreeding is slowly removing those differences.

my point was, are we removing natural selection with medicine?

We're certainly changing it. Our ability to keep people alive who would have died before they could breed will, in theory at least, increase the number of faulty genes in the population. On the other hand, our ability to detect genetic defects in advance has the opposite effect.

maybe as a race, we should be selectivley and proactively combining successful genes, e.g. Steven Hawkings with the latest Chinese female genius.... to get a race that will take human knowledge so much further?!!!

The theory has a potentially fatal flaw. What other genes will be unwittingly selected or discarded? Life as we know it thrives on diversity. What if the new, carefully bred super-human has a defect that nobody noticed until it was too late? It's not an uncommon problem in agriculture.

no we are going to evolve into machine of our own design

We won't evolve into machines but the machines themselves are evolving already. Sooey said it:

Perhaps robots will be the ones to evolve from now on.

Robots are already faster and stronger than us and they're getting smarter all the time. They can't yet advance without our help but that day isn't far off. How long will it be before we have computers designing the next generation of microchips without any input from us - and robots building them?

I would go so far as to predict that some time in the future, if we aren't very careful, the dominant 'life-form' on this planet will be a machine!

 

[WestmidsChippy]

my point was, are we removing natural selection with medicine?

I don't think medicine is to blame, more like the tax/benefit system that we have in place in the UK.
Obviously that won't have a universal impact. But perhaps might go some way to explaining the deteriorating situation in this country.
Consider the average intelligent, employed, potential parents limiting themselves to the number of children that they think they can afford.
Contrast that with one or two unemployed, potential parents who realise that the more children they have, the more benefits they will receive.

I actually lol'd at this one.
friggin chancer speak.

It will actually pay off having all the yucky muckers breeding like rabbits as the way i see it with the current climate and how the world works as it does, it is working the way it does thanks to the plucky brit who rolled with the idea who which was taught from his 'ole man'.

the state of things is crap through and through, you would of thought some people out there at some point in time would of tried to change it for the better
But you canne have it all good just yet.

Imamartian, you speak utter *******s. keep your "imagination" where it is and get on with the general duties in life, and hope some one else out of the 6billion on the planet is smarter then yourself and creates something for you to do to keep your mind from straying.
it'll be good when the aliens do decide to turn up, get a good war on the go and fingers crossed if we were to survive the likes of the middleaged day dreamers were to cease to exist

As for evolution itself and the original comment, in a thousand + years from now i can't see anything that will change in the physical appearance or any change on the intellectual stance of your average homo sap but what i can be very most certain on is no matter how many years you go into the future you will always have a wood butcher hanging around somewhere in more ways then one

 

[thatbloke]

People who live at high altitude apparently live longer , age slower and are generally taller.

Yes I have noticed how people from Nepal age slowly.

Only 44 years old.

Nope , you may be right. I watched something about it on telly.
Anyhow the theory or relativity and newtons law would suggest people will age more quickly the higher up you go, however this is dependent on the point of reference actually moving through space and its mass.

 

[WestmidsChippy]

To get back to the original question, "Has evolution for humans ended?", no it hasn't but the rules have changed.

In our little corner of the planet (Europe isn't very big), you could argue that natural selection now favours stupidity. People who have half a dozen babies before they work out the cause can now expect most of them to survive. Meanwhile, those who limit their offspring to two or less may improve their own quality of life (and that of their offspring too) but pass on fewer genes to the next generation.

Will this cause future problems? Not necessarily. Will it eventually lead, as EngStudent suggests, to the evolution of two different species. I would consider this highly unlikely for it would require the differences to be so great that interbreeding became impossible. Geography caused early humans to split into different races but not different species - and, if anything, interbreeding is slowly removing those differences.

my point was, are we removing natural selection with medicine?

We're certainly changing it. Our ability to keep people alive who would have died before they could breed will, in theory at least, increase the number of faulty genes in the population. On the other hand, our ability to detect genetic defects in advance has the opposite effect.

maybe as a race, we should be selectivley and proactively combining successful genes, e.g. Steven Hawkings with the latest Chinese female genius.... to get a race that will take human knowledge so much further?!!!

The theory has a potentially fatal flaw. What other genes will be unwittingly selected or discarded? Life as we know it thrives on diversity. What if the new, carefully bred super-human has a defect that nobody noticed until it was too late? It's not an uncommon problem in agriculture.

no we are going to evolve into machine of our own design

We won't evolve into machines but the machines themselves are evolving already. Sooey said it:

Perhaps robots will be the ones to evolve from now on.

Robots are already faster and stronger than us and they're getting smarter all the time. They can't yet advance without our help but that day isn't far off. How long will it be before we have computers designing the next generation of microchips without any input from us - and robots building them?

I would go so far as to predict that some time in the future, if we aren't very careful, the dominant 'life-form' on this planet will be a machine!

the day the homp sap can actually use all of his brain (you know we can't as when the magnet is switched on half the s,***t don't seem to light up will be the day machines will be building machines under there own steam.

don't know why i am even writing on this subject, maybe abit of my brain is in use which at other times is not